Laugh Lines

Hello World,

And so here we find ourselves, right on the brink of Thanksgiving, which will be next Thursday, and anyone who isn't already prepared for the annual Tom Turkey Trot had better shake a leg - or should I say, a drumstick. An even more remarkable event occurs on the Sunday following Thanksgiving, which will be November 27th, and is the earliest that you can have the first Sunday in Advent, and only happens when December 25 falls on a Sunday. This generally happens about every 6 years, although there was a gap from 1995 to 2004 that it never happened, and personally, I blame the Y2K bug. (Now THERE'S a pop culture reference that's lost on young people nowadays, that's for sure!) So this is just a warning to everyone that once Advent begins, the holiday countdown has really started ticking in earnest, and while it may seem way too early (as I'm sure it did also in 2005) you can believe me when I say that there's no time to waste. My advice to you is to get out there and shop like it's 1988!

Also not wasting time, the World Series has just recently wrapped up, and already they're naming the Cy Young award winners for the best pitchers in both leagues. The AL winner from the Detroit Tigers made the front page of the Sports section with this gushing announcement:

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Justin Verlander unanimously won the AL Cy Young

Award, as was expected. Now, the far more intriguing

question is whether he will also take the league MVP

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Now, I leave it to the purists to argue whether a pitcher can be a valid choice for MVP, compared to position players who play every day. My question is where was Detroit when St. Louis was winning the World Series? Oh, that's right - they had already been eliminated from the playoffs before the Fall Classic ever started, and I think anyone could hear the ghost of Branch Rickey saying the Tigers could have done that without a Cy Young winner in their ranks, by golly. Not to downplay Verlander's contributions to Detroit's season, but I can't help but feel that a league MVP should at least be on a team that gets to the World Series, if not win the darned thing, because otherwise the "most valuable" part of that is just completely incomprehensible. Meanwhile in the National League, the Cy Young was awarded to Clayton Kershaw of the LA Dodgers, although no mention was made of the league MVP in his case - which was just as well, since the Dodgers finished the season at .500 and a full 11-1/2 games out of first place in the West. I have the feeling that somewhere Cy Young and Branch Rickey are both having a big laugh.

Speaking of laughs (or perhaps "nervous laughs" might be a better choice under the circumstances) alert readers of the AOL Welcome screen on October 31 couldn't help but notice this startling tidbit about pop singer Jessica Simpson:

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Simpson finally confirms big news

After months of rumors the star has

finally revealed that she's expecting --

and she did it with Halloween flare

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Gee, I sure hope not! I realize that times have certainly changed, and not always for the better, but I'm sure that the wisdom of modern pre-natal care would be to absolutely keep the mom-to-be away from flares of any kind, holiday or otherwise. And for a relatively obscure word with specific and arcane uses, somehow "flare" gets the call more often than not, when people are reaching for "flair" instead, as if "flare" has the better publicist or something. Next it will be winning the league MVP, and then we'll really all be laughing - except Justin Verlander, that is.

In other Halloween news, I admit that I was disappointed at having only 50 visitors for the event, although bringing in the left-over candy from the remaining goodie bags could not have been more popular at work if I tried. I thought it might have been the cold that dissuaded the youngsters from tramping about in their costumes, but I found out later this was not the case at all. Many coworkers said that they had the usual crowds showing up for trick-or-treat, several with over a hundred, and in some places they had to close up early because they had already run out of candy after 150 callers. (Although it must be said that one colleague admitted to me that they packed it in at 8:30 so they could go inside and watch Dancing With The Stars - which I think we can all agree with Jessica Simpson, is no one's idea of Halloween flare, and that's not just a lot of Monster Mash, believe me!) And while I was glad to find out that the holiday is still going strong in the local area, it made me feel even worse about our paltry turn-out, which was the lowest in the last 10 years, except for 2009 when it rained all night. So this was no MVP year around the old homestead, and Justin Verlander has nothing to worry about, in fact, even Clayton Kershaw might have a shot at it.

It was that same weekend that the northeast had been pounded with a freak snowstorm on October 29, which was a minor nuisance and historical curiosity for us, but which turned into a major disaster for many other areas. There were accumulations over a foot around New York, while New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts saw that and much more, with a high of 31 inches in New Hampshire. Transit came to a standstill, as planes were grounded and trains stopped dead on the tracks, stranding travelers in record droves. Over 2 million customers lost their electricity, many of them for more than a week, mostly from the welter of trees that toppled in every direction, not only taking the power lines with them, but closing the very roads that the emergency crews needed to fix the wires. Schools closed, events and sports were canceled, and even businesses that were open found that their employees couldn't get to work. An unexpected victim of the catastrophe (or, what sounds like "How the Grinch Stole Halloween") numerous municipalities imposed a curfew on Monday and wouldn't allow their residents to trick-or-treat for Halloween, citing slippery sidewalks, downed trees, and lack of electricity for street lighting as too hazardous conditions for roaming bands of revelers in costume. So I suppose I should consider it lucky that Halloween wasn't canceled here, and be grateful for the 50 intrepid souls who braved the cold and came to the door, because otherwise, it would have been the zombie apocalypse version of the holiday along the deserted streets - and no amount of Halloween flares would turn that trick into a treat, Jessica Simpson or not. And in the immortal words of Branch Rickey, "We could have done that without you, Grinch."

Elle