Will o' the Wisp

Hello World, Happy June! It's not your imagination, Saturday is the time for the month to start busting out all over, and pretty soon school will be out, so that tells you something right there, about how summer will be right on top of us before we know it. In keeping with the season, we needed to clear out a closet where the air conditioners were stored, so Bill figured he might as well just put them in the windows as long as he was moving them anyway, and be done with it. Of course, as anyone could tell you, that would be all it would take to plunge the whole region into a deep freeze, which is exactly what happened the previous week, and for which we have no choice but to take full responsibility. The overnight temperatures were in the 40's, and the daytime not much better, with leaden skies and sporadic showers, as well as a biting wind that was no joke. The joke came later, when Monday and Tuesday found me bundled up in flannel nightgowns and wool socks, followed by Thursday and Friday, when it hit 90 degrees with wilting humidity, thanks not. On the other hand, I'm happy to report that the exertions of The Flag Brigade worked better than might have been expected on Monday the 27th, running up the colors in the morning and taking them back in again after dinner, but it can't be denied that they completely forgot about the whole idea on Thursday the 30th in spite of conspicuous reminder notes for that specific purpose, alas. So, traditional Decoration Day came and went with a notable lack of decoration around here, and that sound you hear is the unquiet spirit of the aggrieved Barbara Frietchie, and I can't say that I blame her one bit. Always right on time, last Sunday saw the 97th running of the Indianapolis 500, a Memorial Day weekend mainstay, and beloved by racing fans the world over. I notice that it always seems to rain on race day, as if the weather gods had their own editorial comment about this annual celebration of noise, petroleum, engineering and wrecks. The storied race was first run in 1911 and took over 6-1/2 hours to complete 500 laps, at an average speed of 74.6 MPH, which must have seemed blisteringly fast to the general public back then. Putting this in perspective, this year's winner, Tony Kanaan, crossed the finish line after a mere 2 hours and 40 minutes, with an average speed of 187.43 MPH - which unfortunately, doesn't seem in the slightest way remarkable to anybody at all nowadays. The crowded field of 33 drivers included 4 women, which also is not remarkable to anybody these days, with Ana Beatriz in 15th place finishing at the top of her gender, and the other ladies clocking in at 17th, 26th and 30th out of the pack. There were no crashes, and the weather was not a factor - although it must be said that I got this information from an article that described the racetrack as a "superpeedway" (gee, I sure hope not!) so I'm not exactly certain how much I can trust the accuracy of their data. Heck, I think even The Flag Brigade can do better than that. And speaking of the venerable Brickyard, I guess this is as good a time as any to share my all-time favorite racing story, which admittedly is not much of a distinction, since it may be the only racing story I know. The way I heard it, one year in the early days of the famous race, one of the big city newspapers arranged to have one of the local reporters cover the event and transmit the results back to them, to spare the paper the expense of sending one of their own reporters all the way there and back. The eager young man was delighted to receive their request, and quickly fired off a telegram (that's the 19th century equivalent of today's email, for you young whipper-snappers out there) with the message: "WILL OVERHEAD WINNER OF INDY 500" right back at them. What he meant was, using the common vernacular of the day, that when he had the results, he would send his story to them the fastest way, via overhead telegraph wires, which he expected they would certainly understand - rather than going to all the trouble and expense of saying "I will send you a telegram with the winner of the Indy 500" as if they were a bunch of backwoods rubes who had no notion of modern technology. What happened instead is that the wire was mis-directed to someone who wasn't in on the original plan, took it at face value, and hurried it to the copy room, to get it into the paper before press time and scoop the competition. One of the sportswriters fabricated an entire story out of whole cloth about the intrepid Will Overhead, a racing novice who came out of nowhere in a dense field packed with cagey veteran drivers, to take the checkered flag at the Indy 500, in a surprise victory that was dramatic and unforgettable. No doubt the story thrilled the hearts of the big city readers who got a jump on the other dailies with this news flash recounting the daring exploits of the invincible, but oh so non-existent, Will Overhead. And that, my friends, is how a lowly cub reporter from a community tabloid, inadvertently invented a racing legend, who not only had his imaginary name splashed all over a major newspaper chain, but also managed to win a contest where he wasn't even entered to begin with. Of course, there's a better than average chance that this story, great as it may be, is totally apocryphal, but I really don't want to know. I'm sticking with Liberty Valance on this one, and the unquenchable spirit of Will Overhead lives on in lore and legend, if only in my own imagination. In other sports news, the poor over-matched Rangers lost to the big, bad Bruins in 5 games, and promptly fired their coach, in spite of a 171-148 won-loss record, or .536 winning percentage that was the best in franchise history. Of course, Christopher Columbus is the poster child of the "What Have You Done For Us Lately" school of thought, so this would come as no surprise to him, although it might seem somewhat incongruous to more logical people, who would tend to fix the blame on the players themselves who are on the ice, and not the man in the suit behind the bench. And proving that the world of athletics has turned completely upside-down, if in fact, any more proof was needed, the hapless Mets beat the vaunted Yankees in four straight games, which sounds like nothing so much as The Bizarro Universe version of summer baseball, and I'm sure, had the odds-makers laughing all the way to The Bank That Ruth Built, by George. It's only a lucky thing this happened in May, when the games don't mean anything, rather than the thick of October's pennant races, or there would be a full-blown pinstripe panic meltdown from one end of Mudville to the other. As it is, this is just an anomalous blip on the Bombers' season, where they are still firmly fixed near the top the AL East standings, while the hapless Mets, even after winning 5 in a row, remain mired in the division's nether regions, a woeful 8 games under .500 and 10 games out already - with no reinforcements on the horizon riding to the rescue of the beleaguered outpost, as it were. Here I'm thinking, Will Overhead would certainly come in handy, if only he existed in the first place, alas. Everyone knows that we already went to see Iron Man 3 in the theater several weeks ago, which was the unofficial kickoff to the summer movie season, thrilling audiences with the best of the new and the novel and the notable that Tinseltown has to offer. Not so fast! It seems that the middle of 2013 promises to be the summer of repeats, retreads, sequels, prequels, rehashes and remakes - or what the pundits are referring to as "deja viewed," and that's not just a lot of Raisinets, believe me. Here is just a sample of what's already out, and what we still have to look forward to, in this uninspired season, and if you spot a single original idea in here anywhere, please let me know: Superman, Man of Steel The Great Gatsby Thor: The Dark World The Wolverine Star Trek Into Darkness The Hangover 3 Fast and Furious 6 The Hunger Games: Catching Fire Monsters U 300: Rise of an Empire The Lone Ranger Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters Despicable Me 2 Grown Ups 2 RED 2 Smurfs 2 Et tu, Papa Smurf? I said to Bill, what's next - Hopalong Cassidy and Lash LaRue? Sky King and Sgt. Preston of the Yukon?? Lassie and Francis the talking mule??? Honestly, it's stupefying to think of the untold millions upon millions that the over-stuffed Hollywood honchos rake in, year after year, with the purpose of creating memorable motion picture entertainment, to satisfy a clamoring public with their innovations - and instead, this is the best they can come up with. Heck, if this was the Rangers, they'd all be fired by now, and that's without "Ma & Pa Kettle Meet The Keystone Kops," by golly. Now, I'm not claiming that The Flag Brigade could do any better, heaven knows, but it's at times like this you really miss having a hero to look up to, someone who can ride in and save the day, making the world a better place and restoring our faith in humanity. Alas, by a cruel twist of fate, or rather fiction, Will Overhead has been snatched from our grasp, and in the words of the Irish lament, "we hardly knew ye!" Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking with it, or my name isn't - Liberty Valance