Garden Party
Hello World,
Of course, everybody knows how I hate to be an alarmist around here, but I feel it's only fair to warn everyone that the rogue Daylight Saving Time has snuck up on us all, and is already set to foul everything up this weekend, a good three weeks ahead of schedule. Just when you think you've got the range on this evil creation, it somehow manages to throw us another curve, and out of the blue besides. Mind you, this is with keeping a pretty close watch on this slippery devil, imagine what it would get up to if we were just blithely ignoring it, and going nonchalantly about our daily business. The mind reels. So be sure to "Spring Ahead" one hour this weekend, and reset your clocks so that what is now, say, 10:00 PM on Friday, next week will be the glorious October Revolution, 14 days and 45 degrees longitude later, according to the Gregorian Calendar. Or something like that anyway, I'm pretty sure. If you can't figure it out, please don't bother to ask me, because the dinosaurs and I will be hanging around in the primordial ooze until the dust settles, and we're not coming back out until everyone knows what time it is.
Speaking of people who don't seem to know what time it is, we have the usual spate of "preenies," which is a term that describes things that have gone prematurely green, as so often happens this time of year. Last weekend, the newspaper was already awash in pictures of leprechauns, bagpipe bands and shamrocks, as the local municipalities from Yonkers to Wappingers Falls and everywhere in between, got a jump on the spirit of "Erin Go Bragh," which is Gaelic for "Full Speed Ahead." These eager beavers launched what they insist on referring to as their St. Patrick's DAY parade, even though anyone can tell that it's weeks ahead of the actual St. Patrick's DAY by any reckoning, except perhaps the switch-over from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar. (Of course, you lose an hour when you divide the longitude by the International Date Line, and then you have to carry over the hypotenuse from the circumference of Pi and conjugate the square root of the equilateral dodecahedron, but I'm sure you knew that.) In any event, now that St. Patrick's DAY has joined the ranks of movable feasts in the hearts of party animals everywhere, we can count on seeing a steady green stream of marching bands, folk dancers and tinted foods from now until the actual St. Patrick's DAY parade on the 17th. Of course, the real parade will seem old hat by then. Old green hat, that is.
While we're on the topic of special days, Bill and I had one recently, as we celebrated our anniversary last Saturday. For the occasion, we did something that at least one of us had never done before, and that is that we went to Madison Square Garden to see the New York Rangers play an afternoon game against the St. Louis Blues. While the Garden may be, as they claim, The World's Most Famous Arena, I had never set foot in the place, and in fact, had never set eyes on it in actual person, and never realized that it's right on top of Penn Station, where I had been many times on the train. (In fact, in my mind, it was supposed to be on top of Grand Central Station, the other train station in midtown Manhattan, which is some place else that I had never been until recently, and this is probably why people should not ask me for directions.) Bill had been to hockey games at MSG when he was younger, and was content to leave it at that, but I wanted a chance to see what all the excitement was about, at least once in my life. So, for Christmas last year, Santa had brought Bill some Rangers tickets, which had the advantage of being inexpensive, although they were terrible seats. Faster than you can say, "NHL, the NHL Shield, the word mark and image of the Stanley Cup, and NHL Conference logos are registered trademarks of the National Hockey League. All NHL logos and marks and NHL team logos and marks as well as all other proprietary materials depicted herein are the property of the NHL and the respective NHL teams and may not be reproduced without the prior written consent of NHL Enterprises, L.P. (c)," Bill had used his super powers to replace them with better seats at a different game, and we were on our way.
We left home early Saturday morning for the train station, where we were impressed with the improved amenities and cleanliness, as if a "sprucing up project" had taken place since the last time we were there. To boost the local economy, we took a cab from Grand Central to the Garden, although it would have been faster to walk than to fight through all that traffic in a car. We were at the Garden good and early, and took some pictures outside, because all over the visitor advisories it said to leave extra time for their stringent security measures, and also that cameras were strictly forbidden in the arena. You can imagine our surprise then, when we found ourselves being waved in by bored staffers at the front entrance, without so much as a first or second glance. This is in stark contrast to our usual experience with security gauntlets, where I go empty-handed for fear of having my belongings confiscated, and Bill continues to set off the metal detectors until he has pretty much removed everything from his pockets and most of his clothing besides.
So there we were inside, and way ahead of time, so we took the opportunity to do a little exploring, as well as shopping for souvenirs. The Garden boasts a wide array of food options, and you can eat on the spot, or carry your meal back to your seat with you. Since we had spent way too much time (and money!) shopping, we didn't want to miss any more of the pre-game activities, and we opted to bring the food to our seats, although this can be a tricky proposition for any food choices more complicated than a pretzel, for instance. We elected to have the pizza, and to be kind, it did have a few pizza-like qualities, although its chief advantage was that it was warm and we were hungry. We settled in to enjoy the rest of the pre-game activities, and were glad we did.
The new General Manager of the St. Louis Blues is John Davidson, former all-star goalie with the Rangers, and for 20 years after his playing career, a beloved broadcast announcer for their games. On his return to New York with the Blues, MSG threw him a nice ceremony with his former partners from the team, as well as the broadcast booth, and presented him with some very thoughtful mementos. It was a wonderful gesture, and the Garden faithful were out in force, stamping and screaming to hail the returning hero. It was a Kodak moment to be sure, and everyone else must have thought so too, because everywhere you looked, there was the unmistakable blaze of flash bulbs going off all over the place. This really made us wonder about all those advisories that said cameras were prohibited from the arena, and since mine hadn't been confiscated at the gate, we figured we might as well take pictures along with everybody else. After that, we hunkered down to cheer on the home team, and although we did our best, they were still losing 2-0 in the third period.
With under 9 minutes left to play, the Rangers finally scored, and the diehard regulars, who had grown impatient with the lackluster play, came alive to rouse their Blueshirts to even greater heights. In improbable fashion, they tied it up with less than 3 minutes in the game, and the place went wild, as if it was the last game of the Stanley Cup finals or something. (It wasn't.) The 5-minute overtime period resulted in no goals for either team, and under the new rules, the next step is a "shoot-out" which is an innovative tie-breaker mechanism that was introduced to the NHL last season, and has proven to be a fan favorite. This was a favorite with us as well, because the Rangers ended up winning, and the way things had been going, it seemed way more than we could have hoped to expect. The Broadway Blues pulled it off, in exciting fashion, and made the home-town fans happy, us included. Going through the whole game, plus overtime, plus the shoot-out, we figured that we really got our money's worth out of this adventure, and we had no complaints about the way things turned out.
They do a lot of things during the game that you don't see on television, like contests, fan recognition and youth activities. They even had a nice ceremony for one of the referees, who was officiating in his 1,500th game and received a plaque for the occasion. My favorite part was at the beginning of the second period, when there was a penalty and apparently (we found this out later when we watched a replay of the game that we had recorded) the penalty clock was not working, so in the middle of the power play, the rink's public address announcer informed us, "There's one minute left in the period." This startled the crowd, since there was still more than 17 minutes left in the period, and you could hear a collective "Huh?" rise up out of 20,000 people. The announcer quickly corrected himself to say, "There's one minute left in the PENALTY," and at this admitted gaffe, the arena erupted in boos. Admittedly, these may have been good-natured boos, but they were boos nonetheless, and a very telling indication of just how seriously local fans take their sports around here. You've got to be on top of your game, or expect to get booed in a New York minute.
After the game, we went outside and took some more pictures of nearby sights, and enjoyed the lovely weather, which was unseasonable for the time of year. We thought about finding some place to eat, but decided instead to walk back to the train station, where we caught the next train back home, and had a nice meal at a diner in our area. Anyone would think that this must be all the wonderfulness that any two people could stand in one day, but no! Don't forget, this was our anniversary, so when we got home, there were presents! (And people say there is no God!) By the time we turned in much later, we were tired but happy, and had a memorable anniversary full of special moments. And now even I can say that I've been to The World's Most Famous Arena, and didn't even jinx the Rangers in the process, so I think we can pretty much lay those rumors of a curse to rest now.
Of course, everybody knows how I hate to be an alarmist around here, but I feel it's only fair to warn everyone that the rogue Daylight Saving Time has snuck up on us all, and is already set to foul everything up this weekend, a good three weeks ahead of schedule. Just when you think you've got the range on this evil creation, it somehow manages to throw us another curve, and out of the blue besides. Mind you, this is with keeping a pretty close watch on this slippery devil, imagine what it would get up to if we were just blithely ignoring it, and going nonchalantly about our daily business. The mind reels. So be sure to "Spring Ahead" one hour this weekend, and reset your clocks so that what is now, say, 10:00 PM on Friday, next week will be the glorious October Revolution, 14 days and 45 degrees longitude later, according to the Gregorian Calendar. Or something like that anyway, I'm pretty sure. If you can't figure it out, please don't bother to ask me, because the dinosaurs and I will be hanging around in the primordial ooze until the dust settles, and we're not coming back out until everyone knows what time it is.
Speaking of people who don't seem to know what time it is, we have the usual spate of "preenies," which is a term that describes things that have gone prematurely green, as so often happens this time of year. Last weekend, the newspaper was already awash in pictures of leprechauns, bagpipe bands and shamrocks, as the local municipalities from Yonkers to Wappingers Falls and everywhere in between, got a jump on the spirit of "Erin Go Bragh," which is Gaelic for "Full Speed Ahead." These eager beavers launched what they insist on referring to as their St. Patrick's DAY parade, even though anyone can tell that it's weeks ahead of the actual St. Patrick's DAY by any reckoning, except perhaps the switch-over from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar. (Of course, you lose an hour when you divide the longitude by the International Date Line, and then you have to carry over the hypotenuse from the circumference of Pi and conjugate the square root of the equilateral dodecahedron, but I'm sure you knew that.) In any event, now that St. Patrick's DAY has joined the ranks of movable feasts in the hearts of party animals everywhere, we can count on seeing a steady green stream of marching bands, folk dancers and tinted foods from now until the actual St. Patrick's DAY parade on the 17th. Of course, the real parade will seem old hat by then. Old green hat, that is.
While we're on the topic of special days, Bill and I had one recently, as we celebrated our anniversary last Saturday. For the occasion, we did something that at least one of us had never done before, and that is that we went to Madison Square Garden to see the New York Rangers play an afternoon game against the St. Louis Blues. While the Garden may be, as they claim, The World's Most Famous Arena, I had never set foot in the place, and in fact, had never set eyes on it in actual person, and never realized that it's right on top of Penn Station, where I had been many times on the train. (In fact, in my mind, it was supposed to be on top of Grand Central Station, the other train station in midtown Manhattan, which is some place else that I had never been until recently, and this is probably why people should not ask me for directions.) Bill had been to hockey games at MSG when he was younger, and was content to leave it at that, but I wanted a chance to see what all the excitement was about, at least once in my life. So, for Christmas last year, Santa had brought Bill some Rangers tickets, which had the advantage of being inexpensive, although they were terrible seats. Faster than you can say, "NHL, the NHL Shield, the word mark and image of the Stanley Cup, and NHL Conference logos are registered trademarks of the National Hockey League. All NHL logos and marks and NHL team logos and marks as well as all other proprietary materials depicted herein are the property of the NHL and the respective NHL teams and may not be reproduced without the prior written consent of NHL Enterprises, L.P. (c)," Bill had used his super powers to replace them with better seats at a different game, and we were on our way.
We left home early Saturday morning for the train station, where we were impressed with the improved amenities and cleanliness, as if a "sprucing up project" had taken place since the last time we were there. To boost the local economy, we took a cab from Grand Central to the Garden, although it would have been faster to walk than to fight through all that traffic in a car. We were at the Garden good and early, and took some pictures outside, because all over the visitor advisories it said to leave extra time for their stringent security measures, and also that cameras were strictly forbidden in the arena. You can imagine our surprise then, when we found ourselves being waved in by bored staffers at the front entrance, without so much as a first or second glance. This is in stark contrast to our usual experience with security gauntlets, where I go empty-handed for fear of having my belongings confiscated, and Bill continues to set off the metal detectors until he has pretty much removed everything from his pockets and most of his clothing besides.
So there we were inside, and way ahead of time, so we took the opportunity to do a little exploring, as well as shopping for souvenirs. The Garden boasts a wide array of food options, and you can eat on the spot, or carry your meal back to your seat with you. Since we had spent way too much time (and money!) shopping, we didn't want to miss any more of the pre-game activities, and we opted to bring the food to our seats, although this can be a tricky proposition for any food choices more complicated than a pretzel, for instance. We elected to have the pizza, and to be kind, it did have a few pizza-like qualities, although its chief advantage was that it was warm and we were hungry. We settled in to enjoy the rest of the pre-game activities, and were glad we did.
The new General Manager of the St. Louis Blues is John Davidson, former all-star goalie with the Rangers, and for 20 years after his playing career, a beloved broadcast announcer for their games. On his return to New York with the Blues, MSG threw him a nice ceremony with his former partners from the team, as well as the broadcast booth, and presented him with some very thoughtful mementos. It was a wonderful gesture, and the Garden faithful were out in force, stamping and screaming to hail the returning hero. It was a Kodak moment to be sure, and everyone else must have thought so too, because everywhere you looked, there was the unmistakable blaze of flash bulbs going off all over the place. This really made us wonder about all those advisories that said cameras were prohibited from the arena, and since mine hadn't been confiscated at the gate, we figured we might as well take pictures along with everybody else. After that, we hunkered down to cheer on the home team, and although we did our best, they were still losing 2-0 in the third period.
With under 9 minutes left to play, the Rangers finally scored, and the diehard regulars, who had grown impatient with the lackluster play, came alive to rouse their Blueshirts to even greater heights. In improbable fashion, they tied it up with less than 3 minutes in the game, and the place went wild, as if it was the last game of the Stanley Cup finals or something. (It wasn't.) The 5-minute overtime period resulted in no goals for either team, and under the new rules, the next step is a "shoot-out" which is an innovative tie-breaker mechanism that was introduced to the NHL last season, and has proven to be a fan favorite. This was a favorite with us as well, because the Rangers ended up winning, and the way things had been going, it seemed way more than we could have hoped to expect. The Broadway Blues pulled it off, in exciting fashion, and made the home-town fans happy, us included. Going through the whole game, plus overtime, plus the shoot-out, we figured that we really got our money's worth out of this adventure, and we had no complaints about the way things turned out.
They do a lot of things during the game that you don't see on television, like contests, fan recognition and youth activities. They even had a nice ceremony for one of the referees, who was officiating in his 1,500th game and received a plaque for the occasion. My favorite part was at the beginning of the second period, when there was a penalty and apparently (we found this out later when we watched a replay of the game that we had recorded) the penalty clock was not working, so in the middle of the power play, the rink's public address announcer informed us, "There's one minute left in the period." This startled the crowd, since there was still more than 17 minutes left in the period, and you could hear a collective "Huh?" rise up out of 20,000 people. The announcer quickly corrected himself to say, "There's one minute left in the PENALTY," and at this admitted gaffe, the arena erupted in boos. Admittedly, these may have been good-natured boos, but they were boos nonetheless, and a very telling indication of just how seriously local fans take their sports around here. You've got to be on top of your game, or expect to get booed in a New York minute.
After the game, we went outside and took some more pictures of nearby sights, and enjoyed the lovely weather, which was unseasonable for the time of year. We thought about finding some place to eat, but decided instead to walk back to the train station, where we caught the next train back home, and had a nice meal at a diner in our area. Anyone would think that this must be all the wonderfulness that any two people could stand in one day, but no! Don't forget, this was our anniversary, so when we got home, there were presents! (And people say there is no God!) By the time we turned in much later, we were tired but happy, and had a memorable anniversary full of special moments. And now even I can say that I've been to The World's Most Famous Arena, and didn't even jinx the Rangers in the process, so I think we can pretty much lay those rumors of a curse to rest now.
posted by El Tango Fandango @ 3:02 PM
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