Way Out West

Hello World, Well, I'll tell you if you could bottle this weather we've been having this week, your fortune would be made, and you would lack for nothing all the rest of your days, that's for sure. It's been just one glorious day after another, with sparkling blue skies and puffy clouds, lovely warm, dry weather, and cool crisp nights that make you glad to be alive. I can only surmise that our old nemesis Comrade Mischka is taking a well-deserved vacation in the Urals, and away from the controls of the Kremlin's infernal weather machine, and as far as I'm concerned, he can just stay there. Speaking of other good things, it must have been the previous week when I left for work in a steady downpour, so when I got to the big parking lot, I took out my handy car umbrella to take that long trek up the hill to my building, several blocks away. Aha! I luckily remembered yet another benefit of parking in the big lot, compared to the stupid little lot of yore, which is that immediately across the street from the big lot is one of the many out-buildings on the hospital campus, all conveniently connected with a series of tunnels - so you can duck right into the closest one to get out of the weather, and skip right to your own building in comfort and safety. Take that, Comrade Mischka! We're getting into that interesting time of year for sports, when a lot of different things all seem to be happening at once - or as Bill likes to point out, when all four of the local teams can lose on the very same day. Right now, the vaunted Yankees are locked in a see-saw battle for first place with the pesky Orioles, with the dratted Rays not far behind and nipping at their heels. Meanwhile across town, the spunky Mets are out of the playoff picture at this point, but feature a legitimate Cy Young candidate on their pitching staff, with an impressive record of 18-5 on a team that's a woeful 13 games under .500 for the season. Having a career year, fan favorite R.A. Dickey is a potential 20-game winner with 3 weeks remaining, which would be the latest for the franchise since Frank Viola way back in 1990, and joining an elite group of only 5 other pitchers to reach this mark in the club's history. This would be a lone bright spot in an otherwise dreadful season, and perhaps offer a glimmer of hope, however misguided, for the loyal "Wait until next year!" contingent, and that's not just a lot of peanuts and Cracker Jacks, by golly. In other sports news, Week One of the football season has come and gone, with a mixed bag of results that might not be all that could have been hoped for. The defending Super Bowl champion Giants unexpectedly lost to the odious Cowboys, of all things, which is certainly not the fast-break start to the season that would thrill the hearts of Big Blue fans, especially against another NFC East opponent. (Although how Dallas got roped into anybody's idea of the East is a mystery to me, I'm sure, and just goes to prove that the NFL management, like most Americans, is geography-challenged, and has no concept of where anything is located. For the record, Dallas is almost 700 miles west of St. Louis, which after all, is the official Gateway to the West, so that tells you something right there, Horace Greeley.) At the same time, their stadium room-mates in green, the hapless Jets who couldn't win a single game through the entire pre-season, romped over the Buffalo Bills, vaulting to the top of their division at a stroke like some offensive powerhouse taking the AFC by storm. (They're clearly not.) Of course, the pundits will tell you that it's much too early for panic - or conversely, euphoria either - with still a double-octet of games left to play, and five months yet to go. But early season results in football are always so entertaining, however inadvertently, and wildly unrepresentative of the season as a whole, which makes it even more fun. Takers on Gang Green in Super Bowl XLVII, anyone? This is normally where I would wrap up with good news from the frozen front, but alas, there is no joy in Mudville, and that's not just the Zamboni talking, believe me. It all began months ago, when the surprising Los Angeles Kings won the Stanley Cup, and once the season was officially over, the off-season trades and deals could begin in earnest. Anyone can tell you that when it comes to tossing around big money for the big names in the free agent market, you're not going to see the New York Rangers right in the thick of the action, because that's not their style, and they're more likely to acquire players in trades, rather than competing with other teams in a buyer's frenzy for some high-priced superstar. So it certainly came as a surprise to just about everybody when the marquee player of the available free agents this summer, Rick Nash, was summarily snapped up by the pride of Broadway without a fight, and leaving the bevy of disappointed hopefuls shaking their heads in wonder. Admittedly, Nash is no dewy-eyed phenom at 28 years old, but has a proven track record of 289 goals and 258 assists over his 9-year career (including 7 straight 20-goal seasons, and 5 consecutive All-Star game appearances, where he is the leading goal scorer since 2004) making this a genuine off-season blockbuster deal that is almost unheard of in Rangers history. Frankly, many of us were looking forward to seeing how this scheme was going to pan out, good or bad - whether the plucky Blueshirts would be the team to beat this time around, after their heart-pounding run last season, or instead, if the front office would fall flat on its face and be the laughing-stock of hockey towns in two countries. That was the plan anyway, giving the hometown faithful a tingle of anticipation for the upcoming season for a change, and just in time as baseball is going to start winding down. Not so fast! Instead of the hockey pre-season getting underway as scheduled, the owners and players are caught up in another intractable contract dispute, leading to the second lock-out in 7 years, and dashing the hopes for legions of fans far and wide. For the local die-hards, this is a bitter pill to swallow indeed, landing the cream of the free agent crop for once and dreaming of glory days ahead, only to have the rug pulled out from under the victory parade before the first puck is dropped, thanks not. Well, all I have to say to the NHL hierarchy and owners is: "Puck you!" And while we're on the topic of unexpected developments, it was almost 7 years ago that we rescued a handsome long-hair orphan kitty from our yard, and with his mottled brown coat, he reminded me of a sort of ragamuffin cousin to our Invisible Matriarch, Muffin, so I called him RaggMopp. (Which in all fairness, is much too plebeian a name for such an aristocratic character, as he would be more than happy to point out.) His voluminous coat makes him appear large on the outside, but he doesn't act like a big cat, and mostly stays in one room by himself - and while not exactly timid, tends to ignore the other cats, presumably on the theory that if he doesn't acknowledge them, then they technically don't exist. Over the course of time, his excessive fur had finally gotten so badly matted, that when I brought him to the groomer, they had no choice but to shave off all of his long brown hair, and he came home looking like a tiny bald gray squirrel, and it was all we could do not to point and laugh uproariously. Although he looked positively wretched, we hoped that he actually felt better, at least in that his tender skin wasn't been pulled and pinched in every direction by an implacable web of knots, which must have been terribly uncomfortable. The first thing we noticed as soon as he came home, was that suddenly his entire personality changed, and he strutted all around without a care in the world, exploring upstairs and downstairs, in parts of the house that he had never set foot in all the years he's lived here. We decided that without all of his hair, he must now think that he's invisible, so it doesn't matter where he goes, or who else might be there. Meanwhile, the other cats that used to chase him around and lord it over him, have no idea who might be this new and bizarre looking interloper in their midst, and avoid him at all costs, probably because they think he's an escapee from the giant alien rat planet, and they want no part of him. It's certainly been a big change in the feline dynamic around here, and as entertaining to watch as getting a whole brand new cat in the household. Or to paraphrase the French royal court: "The Mopp is dead, long live the Ratt!" Elle