As Easy As Falling Off A Bicycle

Hello World, Happy July! It's hard to believe that the first week of the new month has already come and gone, and if you're anything like me (heaven forbid!) nothing to show for it besides. For anyone who is planning to go camping in another couple of weeks (like someone who shall remain nameless, but who looks suspiciously like yours truly) and is woefully unprepared, this is a daunting prospect indeed. Of course, it's all too true that normal people can toss a few incidentals in the back of their SUV and head out for a week in the woods in blissful contentment, but anyone can tell you that my gargantuan preparations for vacation would make the Normandy invasion look like a spur-of-the-moment backyard fling, and don't spare the howitzers, my good man. Normally I would be starting out this weekend, but with July 4th so late in the week, I figured the weekend would be a mob scene at the campground, especially if the weather is fine, and I decided to hold back a week and hope for smaller crowds after the holiday. That gives me an extra week to pack, and the way things have been going lately, I have the feeling that I'm going to need every bit of it, especially if I have to make room for all those howitzers, Big Bertha. But if nothing else, I'm sure many alert readers will be relieved to learn that The Flag Brigade managed to do a perfectly adequate job of flying the colors on Thursday, upstairs and downstairs, which is nothing to sneeze at, as we are all too painfully aware, from previous experience over the years. Later that same day, we were treated to the spectacle of glorious fireworks over the water at a nearby park, which we could enjoy from our upstairs porch, to our rockets red glare content, Francis Scott Key. Now that it's July, after all, and even the ridiculously long-drawn-out hoops and hockey playoffs are a thing of the past, a reasonable person could be forgiven for thinking that there would be nothing of note, or newsworthy, in those areas, at least until the new seasons started up again later in the year. Au contraire! (That's French for, "I sneeze upwind of your flag!") I am here to tell that otherwise reasonable person that they would be not only completely wrong, but enormously so, and in such unexpected ways that it would make their very heads spin - sort of like Meadowlark Lemon spinning a basketball on his finger, only with cartoon eyes popping out of their heads. I couldn't help but notice, when I was reading a story about the recent NBA draft, that certain picks were being assigned to the New Orleans Pelicans, of all things. (Please let me know if this starts to sound fishy, because I wouldn't expect anyone to swallow it hook, line and sinker, or think that I was just pulling a load of tripe out of Davy Jones locker for the halibut, by Neptune.) Now I will admit that I am no basketball maven, and I don't know everything there is to know about the NBA and all of its storied franchises. But one thing I do know is that there is no such thing as the New Orleans Pelicans, at least up until now, and nobody is going to convince me otherwise, try as they might. No, you're not imagining things, it's our old friends the Charlotte Hornets (who baseball legend Ralph Kiner once famously referred to as the "Charlotte Harlots" during a broadcast) once again making more noise in the news than they do on the court. I should warn you that you're going to have to pay close attention to this next part, because it's almost impossible to tell the teams without a scorecard, as the saying goes. The Hornets started in Charlotte way back in 1988, before moving to New Orleans in 2002 as the New Orleans Hornets. At that point, the bereft city of Charlotte was awarded a new NBA franchise (no, not the Harlots!) known as the Bobcats, and still playing there now. Meanwhile in New Orleans, the Hornets petitioned the NBA to rename the team, and requested a return to the city's previous franchise name, the New Orleans Jazz - which team had relocated decades ago to become the Utah Jazz, who are also still playing there now, and flatly refused to give up the team name so New Orleans could have it back. At that point, they settled on the Pelicans, which is the Louisiana state bird, and the rest, as they say, is history. Not so fast! It turns out that before the Pelicans could even take to the boards for the first time, the Harlots - I mean, the Charlotte Bobcats - applied to the NBA to change the team's name back to the Hornets once again, bringing everything full circle, and making matters just about as clear as the proverbial Mississippi mud, thank you so very much not. Frankly, it would be all too easy to describe this whole pandemonium as a hornet's nest, but the dinosaurs and I agree, that would be an insult to hornets everywhere. Not to mention, the harlots. Meanwhile in the NHL - proving once again that the management has way too much time on their hands, if indeed any more proof was needed - the upcoming season brings yet another re-alignment to the league, and a new playoff format for everyone to get used to. There will still be the East and West Conferences, but they will now have 2 divisions in each, rather than 3 previously. (These appear to be identified as Green, Blue, Orange and Yellow at the moment, so apparently they didn't have enough time on their hands to come up with divisional names yet.) This restructuring moves the Rangers back into an 8-team division with the Flyers, Penguins and Capitals (thanks not) while next door, the Bruins will be duking it out with the likes of Ottawa, Buffalo and Montreal, among others. In order to make the divisions more geographically cohesive, perennial western powerhouse Detroit was re-allocated to the East, so the Winnipeg team could make the switch to the West and play other clubs closer to home. Another feature of the new re-alignment is that each team plays in every other city at least once during the season, which hasn't happened in over 15 years. This should be particularly helpful for those acrimonious breakups, where players or coaches leave one team for another, in the full flower of antagonism, mud-slinging, and the wholesale airing of dirty laundry in the media, and the only saving grace is the hope that you're never going to see that other team ever again, or at least until several years have passed and the whole sordid affair has blown over. Now you're guaranteed to have that unwelcome reunion in your very own arena within the same year, and if that doesn't make for some interesting times ahead, well then, I just don't know what it would take. Of course, there's always the harlots, but what with the Pelicans coming home to roost, I figure they're already going to have bigger fish to fry, if you know what I mean. And here on the local scene, someone who hadn't already been following this story in the community newspaper, couldn't help but be stymied by this arresting headline: ==================================== Putnam Tables Vote on Bike Path Ads ==================================== Well, I can tell you that the dinosaurs and I can remember a time when tables weren't allowed to vote on anything, much less bike path ads, by golly. Times have certainly changed, heaven knows, and not always for the better, you can believe that. First of all, bike path ads don't make any sense to start with, and then when you add in the part about the tables voting on them, well, it just goes from bad to worse, as far as comprehension is concerned. But apparently, there is some method to their madness after all. It turns out that Putnam County was about to strike a deal with Bikepath Country, a company that sells advertising along bike routes, and splits the profits with the municipality, giving the cash-strapped governments money to pay for upkeep of the trails. Putnam is small, but its population is vociferous, and the outcry over this plan was predictably swift and clamorous, so much so that the Legislature had no choice but to back down. In that context, the headline makes way more sense, when you realize that "tables" is the verb and "vote" is the noun, rather than the other way around. Of course, the dinosaurs and I can also remember a time when headlines made sense all by themselves, and you didn't need a whole drawer full of footnotes to figure out what they meant - which after all, is why they invented headlines in the first place. On the other hand, when it comes to a place that lets tables vote on things, I guess we can all agree that anything goes, and that's not just the placemats talking, believe me. And speaking of anything goes, I hear that Charlotte is very nice this time of year, and if you happen to patronize any harlots while you're there, tell them Ralph Kiner sent you. Elle