Go To Town

Hello World, Well, what better greeting on a beautiful crisp fall day like this, than to wish everyone a very happy United Nations Day! And as good a time as any to remember the great statesman and diplomat, Dag Hammarskjold, who once famously observed: "Go west, young man, because there's a sucker born every minute, my little chickadee." There's something even more raucous than usual about the derisive howls of laughter from our old friends the dinosaurs, leading me to question whether that quote completely fulfills the attributes of pinpoint accuracy that we continually strive for around here, and perhaps falling woefully short of perfection. In any case, the UN is still going strong after nearly 70 years, since replacing the ill-starred League of Nations, which started with high hopes in 1920, only to hang up its spurs in 1946, a victim of international non-cooperation on an epic scale, and through no fault of its own. It may have been Dag Hammarskjold who said, "That's the way the cookie crumbles," and that's not just a lot of chocolate chips and rainbow sprinkles, believe me. Meanwhile in the Fall Classic, things certainly didn't turn out the way the odds-makers might have anticipated. The #1 teams in both leagues (the Angels and Nationals) were summarily booted out of the first round, thanks not, while the teams that made it through all rounds of the playoffs, and right into the World Series, were the two Wild Card teams, the Giants and Royals. Go figure. The Cardinals and Dodgers, Orioles and Tigers all had their chances, but alas, their hometown fans were destined to be disappointed this time around, and join the rest of the also-rans on the sidelines of the long cold winter ahead. For the Pride of the Midwest, this would be their first World Series win since way back in 1985, while the Bay Area contingent has already won twice in the previous 4 years. The teams are evenly matched in many ways, and even the usually controversial sports authorities are cautiously expecting the series to go all seven games before a champion is decided. Everyone knows that I'm never one to play it safe, so I'm happy to throw caution to the wind, and say that my money's on Affirmed. Speaking of things not going as expected, I had a plan on Thursday to go to the Post Office, and as plans go, this one was a marvel of simplicity, a veritable surgical strike with no extraneous trappings or tangents to throw it off course from its intended target. In fact, all I needed to do was get in the car and drive to the Post Office - and I don't mind saying, as I have done countless times in the past - and the mission would be accomplished in a model of efficiency and ruthless precision. (Alert readers may have already sensed the impending storm clouds gathering on the horizon this undertaking, and the unmistakable sounds of Daffy Duck yelling, "Shoot me now! Shoot me now!") I can tell you that it didn't take our old friends the dinosaurs in The Peanut Gallery to rise up as one and bellow: "Not so fast!" And they weren't far off the mark, that's for sure. I was only about halfway to my destination when everything in front of me dissolved into a sea of blinking lights, and the whole of North Avenue was shut up tighter than Fort Knox, with police officers every which where. I had no idea what was going on, but it was certain that I didn't want to know, so I high-tailed it down the first side street that I came to, and never looked back. But Friday's local newspaper said it all, in this admirably concise synopsis of the event: ============================= Reports of possible gunshots near New Rochelle High School sent police scrambling Thursday afternoon - but the fusillade turned out to be fireworks. ============================= I was lucky to find another way to the Post Office, skirting around the incident, but it certainly added a whole lot of extra time, inconvenience, and aggravation to the process - not to mention, melodrama - which I never expected when I left the house to begin with, I can assure you. Next time you can be sure that I'm going to check with Daffy Duck first, and not leave it to chance. Also on the local scene, we were at the diner when I bumped into a former coworker, who had retired from the hospital a couple of years ago, and we spent some time catching up on all the news. He mentioned that his son was living in Larchmont, which reminded me that I had just heard about a car accident there, where a runaway vehicle had jumped the curb and slammed into the front of a hardware store where a friend of ours was working. I said most likely, the driver was in a hurry to get to the store and pick up some brake fluid. (Get it?!) Then my colleague's wife recounted the time the same thing happened where she worked, in one of the local medical buildings, which was home to an ophthalmology office and a urology practice. At the time, they reckoned the errant motorist was someone on their way to their eye doctor appointment, and with good reason, since they obviously couldn't see well enough to know where the parking lot stopped and the building started - and which, I don't need to point out, is certainly a cautionary tale that requires no embellishment from me, heaven knows. She said they didn't bother to go see if it was anyone they knew, because they already figured if it was one of their patients coming to see the urologist, they probably would have backed in instead. (OOF!) Elle

A Poem Lovely As A Tree

Hello World, Now that it's more than halfway past the middle of the month, it's really starting to seem like fall around here for real. After weeks of unseasonably warm weather (nonetheless welcome for all that) there's finally some cooler temperatures, especially overnight, and that sound you hear is the unmistakable clatter of people shutting their storm windows all over the region at long last. Some of the leaves are changing on trees and bushes, and it won't be long before the frost is on the pumpkin in earnest, I'm thinking. The venerable Farmers Almanac is standing by their assertion that we're in for another frigid and snowy winter, like last year, while meteorologists insist that we can expect milder conditions to prevail throughout the Northeast for the most part. I'm not one to take sides, heaven knows, especially when it's all guesswork to start with, but one thing I do know - it all depends on who gets to our old nemesis Comrade Mischka and his infernal weather machine first, da? Speaking of weather, all of us around this idyllic enclave in the Queen City on the Sound were presented with the following invitation from our friendly neighborhood association last week - ========================== Greetings, One of the activities discussed by the Social Committee was a plant swap. There are still some good gardening days left. If anyone has excess plants in need of dividing or anyone who is interested in obtaining plants, please let me know and we can organize a plant exchange/swap/ give a way. For instance, I have hostas, of various types in need of dividing, Siberian Iris for anyone who is interested. Let me know so we can arrange this. Mary O. =========================== My reply was swift, concise and unambiguous: To paraphrase Henny Youngman, "Take my poison ivy ..... PLEASE!!!" So far, I haven't been overwhelmed with requests, but it's early days yet, and I refuse to become discouraged. But while we're on the topic of discouraging things, what hasn't been happening in the printed press these days - ye gods, it's enough to make grown men weep, and normally sober intellectuals long for the oblivion that only strong drink can provide. You know it's bad when even columnist Phil Reisman (who is an actual writer, and not just some cub reporter or copy boy pressed into service to fill a void) and who should certainly know better, lets slip some ridiculous mistake into his usually meticulous prose, setting off waves of eye-rolling on an epic scale. In a recent column, he offered this commentary on Governor Cuomo's new book: ===================================== "No one is likely to read this 513-page book, except the governor's closest friends and relatives. Everyone else will skim the index for their names. Otherwise, they will use the book as a doorjamb." ===================================== Inasmuch as a "jamb" refers to the actual frame of the door, it is all but certain that "doorjamb" is not the word that he wanted to use by any means, and I'm not just saying that because a book that can be used as a door frame has yet to be invented by the publishing or construction industries - which is probably just as well. I'm convinced that his intended target was "doorstop" instead, and although I'm willing to concede some style points for the idea that a creative type might hope to coin the term "door jam" for an object that you jam into a door to keep it open, I still have to draw the line at using "doorjamb" in the sense of "doorstop," and I am unanimous in that. Meanwhile, in the Life & Style section of the local newspaper, there was this follicle faux pas in an otherwise workmanlike article on fall fashion trends: ============================================ This season masculine-inspired hairstyles also are trending. Switch up your look by sheering long locks for a short 'do. ============================================ Ouch! Like "peak" and "peek," or "real" and "reel," the poor over-burdened spell-checker is not going to help you when homonym trouble crops up, and you go ahead and choose "sheer" in the place of "shear." Of course, this is why the late and lamented Daniel Webster invented the dictionary in the first place, bless his heart, and even a cursory examination would show that "sheering" is pretty much restricted to nautical uses, for a ship going off course. In the newspaper, they would probably refer to it as going off "coarse," I shouldn't wonder. It was actually in the same day's paper that they ran a news story about the iconic Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City being sold off to a Chinese insurance company, to the tune of $2B (that's two BILLION dollars, mind you) as well as major renovations of the premises. This caused panicky jitters all along the Potomac, with fears that federal offices and diplomatic staff already located at the hotel would be subject to electronic surveillance and international espionage at perilously close range. This is normally what I would consider a snoozer of a story, but it caught my eye because it featured this arresting headline: ============================= Government weary of potential privacy, security risks at hotel ============================= One can only suppose the writers intended to portray the administration as "wary" rather than "weary," and here again, the spell-checker is powerless to help in these situations, whereas Daniel Webster's old-fashioned hard copy version would be all it would take to avert disaster on the long and weary road to wariness, I dare say. On the other hand, we can't overlook the possibility that the word they were actually clutching for was "worry" rather than either of the other two, and then the joke would really be on me after all. And finally, we have the following alarming tidbit courtesy of one of our alert readers (thanks, Deb!) which only goes to prove, if any more proof was needed, that things can always be worse - =========================================================== There was a spell-check mistake in Sunday's Inquirer which made me think of you: The Rev Father Peter Konteh lives next door to death. From the yard of his house in Freetown, the Catholic priest watches a procession of copses arrive at King Tom Cemetery. ============================================================ At our house, this is what we call the "Zombie Apocalypse" version of the spell-checker, where instead of the usual benign and inert corpses that should be going to their eternal rest, apparently this burial ground is being over-run with rampant stands of trees, traipsing about the place, no doubt waving their branches in menacing fashion, and giving the locals reason to hope that their bark is worse than their bite. All they need now is the chainsaw-wielding lunatic, and the lingerie-clad co-ed in the basement with the broken flashlight, to really turn this gothic pot-boiler into a page-turning thriller of arboreal proportions. Personally, I intend to use mine as a doorjamb. Elle

Shake & Bake

Hello World, Happy (belated) Columbus Day weekend! Of course, we have all long since realized that poor old Christopher Columbus is the veritable poster child for the "What-have-you-done-for-us-lately" school of thought nowadays, heaven knows, and unceremoniously relegated to the scrap heap of history for the most part - and that's when he's not being reviled for even worse crimes against humanity, by revisionist historians everywhere. In fact, the day is not even recognized throughout the entire states of Alaska, Hawaii, Oregon, and South Dakota as it is, and the way things are going, probably even more yet to follow, I shouldn't wonder. If any further proof was needed, one need only glance at the AOL Welcome screen to find more of the Great Northwest jumping on the Columbus-bashing bandwagon, joining numerous other localities in continuing to observe the day as a holiday, but renaming it "Indigenous Peoples Day" in honor of the native populations already living there in 1492. This was a wildly popular move according to Fawn Sharp, president of the Quinault Nation, a tribe on the Olympic Peninsula, who is also president of the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians. "Nobody discovered Seattle, Washington," she said to a round of applause. In these politically correct days, when just wishing someone a "Merry Christmas" is considered a radical act of civil disobedience, the dinosaurs and I flatly refuse to go down quietly with the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria, and firmly stand by the beleaguered and abandoned explorer, right or wrong, in defiance of the consequences. After all, things could have been possibly even much worse, as we might have been discovered instead by extra-terrestrial space aliens, and we'd all be speaking Klingon today, I dare say. In other news (or rather, just the opposite) our local newspaper had the following blurb on the top of their front page last week, ostensibly to entice us to delve deeper into their interior pages: =============================== USA Today Sports: Junior Discusses Future Plans See Page 5D =============================== I said to Bill that not only do we have no idea who this mysterious "junior" might be, but we don't even know what sport this personage might possibly be associated with - or even their potential scholastic, amateur, or professional status that purports to make the discussion noteworthy in the first place. This is a classic example of what the lost and lamented editors of yore would describe as a "non-story," where someone has gone to all the trouble to string together a bunch of words, all in acceptable English, that utterly fails to say anything at all, and explains nothing in any way that would be of use to the reader. Heck, they could have just gone ahead and sold that space to a local car dealership, and at least had something on the front page that made some sense, and not just a load of gobbledygook, for heaven's sake. Speaking of sports, it was bad enough when the baseball playoffs got underway without any representation from The Big Apple, thanks not, as both the Mets and Yankees failed to make a run for it in September. Now even the teams that are still playing in football and hockey can't help but make a person wonder if that isn't more of a mixed blessing than otherwise. Both the Jets and Rangers managed to win their first game, then went straight down the tubes from there, and only the Giants can lay claim to any semblance of respectability at this point. This is certainly not the direction that anybody wants to be going in, and I suppose the only good news is that the Knicks haven't even started playing regular season games yet, so they haven't added to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that are confounding the local fans on all sides. One can only hope for a rapid improvement all around, with much better numbers, and by that I mean, better numbers for the hometown fans to cheer about for a change, and not just the bookies and odds-makers, for pity's sake. And speaking of numbers, a normally observant person couldn't help but notice that on the college football scene, the Big 10 conference actually has 14 teams, not ten. Just between you and me and the doorpost, you'd think they'd be able to count better than that, by the time they get to college and everything. Honestly, you can't make this stuff up. Other stuff you can't make up (in fact, now you don't have to, because they already did) and these days it seems impossible to get away from all of the commercials and pop-up ads for the new Nestle Delightfulls, which (believe it or not) are filled Toll House morsels for all of your baking exploits, and whatever other indulgences may apply. (Eating them straight out of the bag has been known to happen by various and sundry individuals around here, who shall remain nameless, but look suspiciously like me, I have to admit.) Of course, everyone who hasn't been living under a rock for the past century is familiar with the iconic Nestle chocolate morsels from their famous Toll House chocolate chip cookies, which have been thrilling cookie monsters the world over for untold generations, and with good reason. These new stuffed treats come in dark chocolate and milk chocolate varieties, with caramel, cherry, mint, and peanut butter fillings to make all of your baked delicacies literally explode with even more gooey goodness than ever before. The idea of baking them into brownies, cookies, pies or - heaven help us - pancakes, makes me woozy with confectionery overload, and since I couldn't bake my way out of a paper bag, I can only imagine what real cooks must be thinking right about now. (Personally, I would probably just pour them in a bowl, toss them in the microwave, and eat them out of hand, because it's a well-known fact that I am such a menace to the culinary arts that I have been banned from more kitchens than Agent Orange.) At our house, we file this kind of extravagance under the category of "This Is Why The Terrorists Hate Us," and I can't say that I blame them all that much, frankly speaking. Heck, we might have been better off with the Klingons after all. Elle

So Goes The Nation

Hello World, Happy October! You know the time has surely come, and not a moment too soon, when the baseball playoffs are underway in earnest, thrilling fans in baseball cities all across this mighty nation - that is, at least 10 of those cities anyway. Unfortunately for the local loyalists, both the vaunted Yankees and the hapless Mets missed the playoffs again, although it must be said of at least one of them (not the Yankees) that it came as no surprise to anybody. The surprise, if there was one, was that the Amazin's actually finished in second place in the NL East, of all things, in spite of their record, which ended up the season at a woeful 4 games under .500 - so that tells you something about the rest of their division right there, if nothing else. In fairness, Da Bombers didn't exactly cover themselves in glory this season either, because although they finished in second place, their record was only a scant 6 games over .500 at the end. The Wild Card games have already come and gone, so the matchups have been set among the remaining hopefuls in Baltimore, Detroit, Kansas City, Los Angeles (both teams, believe that or don't) San Francisco, St. Louis, and last but not least, the nation's capital. (For the linguistically challenged among us, such as my last two poor addled brain cells, we have to remember the old schoolroom mnemonic: "The capitol building is in the nation's capital.") The Los Angeles Angels (sorry, but the stickler in me insists on pointing out, for "Los Angeles," please read "Anaheim" throughout) had the best record in baseball, but anyone can tell you that often doesn't carry over into the pressure-packed, fast-paced minefield of the playoffs, where anything can happen, and usually does. Of course, everyone knows that I'm never one to court disaster, so for what it's worth, my money's on Affirmed. In other sports news, NHL camps have thrown open their doors, and skaters have hit the ice in two countries across the northern hemisphere, with several pre-season games already under their collective belts, as it were. Desolate fans saw the Rangers lose a heart-breaking Game 7 in the Stanley Cup finals last season, and many hope that now will be the time for them to pull it all together and finally come out at the top of the heap. Unfortunately, what usually happens when a team comes so close but falls just short, is that it's such a letdown that they have a horrible year afterward, and frankly, I personally think Affirmed would have a better chance of winning the Stanley Cup than the Rangers at this point. Meanwhile, for their roommates at the World's Most Famous Arena, the Knicks are about to start their season with a new head coach, Derek Fisher, whoever the heck he is. I admit that I've never heard of the guy, but it turns out that he's no slouch, and his credentials need no "dee-FENCE dee-FENCE" from me, I dare say. He recently retired from an admirable 20-year career in the NBA with 5 different teams, including 13 seasons with the LA Lakers, where he won 5 championships, and has the rings to prove it. He leads all NBA players in the number of playoff games, more even than Kobe Bryant and Tim Duncan, and as former President of the players union, is a well-respected figure throughout the league. One can only hope that he might be just the spark plug the under-performing Knicks need to get them back on track to post-season glory once again, and give the Garden faithful something to live for, after literally decades of disappointment. After all, they haven't won it all in 41 years, since those halcyon days of yore with Walt Frazier, Willis Reed, Dave DeBusschere, "Dollar" Bill Bradley and Dick Barnett - and let's face it, that's even longer than Affirmed has been sabotaging the Triple Crown, for heaven's sake. Not technically sports news - in fact, just the opposite - last week hard on the heels of the Yankees' legendary shortstop retiring from the game, the world found itself confronted with the following nonsense, published by The Empire News, a fictitious news source (like our friends at The Onion) specializing in mis-information and fabrications for comedic effect: ================================= Derek Jeter Cancels Retirement, Signs 3-year Contract with Boston Red Sox ================================= For anyone not already familiar with them and their satirical humor, this salvo hit like a bombshell, and anybody with a Twitter account can tell you that the whole Twitter-sphere was all agog, right from the start. The prank got so much traction that urban legend debunker snopes.com had no choice but to weigh in, with reassurances to hysterical fans on both sides of the pinstripe divide, that it was nothing but a silly hoax after all. I actually thought it was pretty funny under the circumstances, although I couldn't help but sense the unmistakable hoofprints of Affirmed's evil genius working its sinister magic behind the scenes. And speaking of hoofprints, today our local newspaper printed a review of The Filling Station in West Haverstraw, featuring their signature organic hamburgers, hand-cut sweet potato fries, and craft beers - and as the food critics can't wait to tell you nowadays - the ingredients are all locally-sourced. Apparently the eatery is renowned for its burgers, but I don't mind saying that what really got my attention was this tasty tidbit: "The Hudson Valley cattle received no antibiotics or hormones, and were allowed to roam the range." Inasmuch as this place is a mere 35 miles from the bright lights and skyscrapers of New York City, I'm thinking the only range these organic cows might be roaming would be the driving range of the local country club. After all, the Hudson Valley has long since become one of the most over-developed areas anywhere, and even in its bucolic heyday was not exactly the wide open spaces of the wild, wild west, that's for dad-gum, gol-dang sure, pardner - and not to mention, sure as shootin' and true as the crow flies. So they can say what they want about these free-roaming beasts, but it still fails to conjure up any vistas of the lone prairie in my mind, much less mighty herds of longhorns stretching across the horizon as far as the eye can see. I won't go so far as to say that the wags at The Empire News somehow hornswoggled the restaurant reviewer with that "home on the range" claptrap, but I get the feeling that somewhere off in the great beyond, Affirmed is having one big fat laugh. Elle

Take Two

Hello World, L'Shana Tovah! Now is the time that we can finally wish everyone a very Happy Jewish New Year, and don't spare the latkes, if you please! It's true that I have my suspicions about any holiday that doesn't include green beer and fireworks, but I'm sure that we can count on people having a very happy time of it nonetheless, in their own way. Please don't forget to wear red, drink champagne, and toss your beads at strangers, to really get into the spirit of things, whether you're actually Jewish or not. Now I notice that The Holiday Police are desperately trying to get my attention, and our old friends the dinosaurs are rolling on the floor laughing their heads off, so I have the feeling that not all of those suggestions are appropriate for this particular event - but frankly, I tend to lose interest in any occasion where chocolate is not the main ingredient. For anyone who hasn't been living under a rock for the past year, it's been impossible to ignore the pandemonium and hoopla over (as they always say in sports broadcasts, "the future Hall of Famer") Derek Jeter retiring after 20 seasons with Da Bombers, leaving the Bronx a much poorer and sadder place, alas. There were tributes to him in every stadium in every baseball city, with the home-town fans greeting him with waves of welcoming applause, and cheering him like one of their very own, wherever he went. It was reported in the Sports section of the local paper that young people in their 20's came from all over the region for his final homestand at Yankee Stadium, many of whom pointed out that he's the only shortstop they've ever known in pinstripes, for their whole lives. Those of us "of a certain age" and growing up in The Empire State can certainly relate to that - at least I know I felt that way about Nelson Rockefeller in my formative years, way back in the day, as they say now. Since he ruled the roost in Albany from 1959-1973, I had no other experience with anyone else holding that spot. In fact, I always thought that the title of the position was really "Governor Rockefeller," regardless of the name of the person actually holding office at the time, and if anyone else got elected, they would still be called Governor Rockefeller anyway. So hats off to #2, as the Captain sails off into the sunset for the final time, and as so many before him, those are shoes that will never be filled. And while we're on the topic of filling things up, I screwed up my courage and tramped back into a room that had basically been used for storage, lo these many years upon years - with the somewhat sketchy plan of returning it to its original purpose of an actual room, and not just a dumping ground for copious piles of random unwanted detritus, as it was currently. When the roofers were here long ago with their Dumpster, we had managed to make some good headway into what we always referred to as our "computer graveyard," and ditched a bunch of outmoded technology that was obsolete even by prehistoric standards, with the howls of derisive laughter from our old friends the dinosaurs still ringing in our ears. But apparently there was even more yet still to go, as I discovered in my reclamation efforts, and digging ever deeper below the surface revealed the sordid truth of the matter, with warts and all, and I ought to know. There were another two dead desktops buried in there, and two more monitors, including one ancient CRT model that seemed to weigh about as much as my car. I also turned up a handful of old roller ball mouses, and believe it or not, 7 keyboards (!!!) including 5 that were PS/2, and two that were actually serial, if anyone even understands what that means anymore. (Notwithstanding the ill-mannered guffaws from The Peanut Gallery, you can just go ahead and ask your grandparents if you have no idea what serial ports are.) So far, it's been an interesting walk down Memory Lane, digital style, and more yet to be uncovered in its squalid labyrinths, no doubt. Parallel cords and 5-1/4" floppy diskettes, anyone? Meanwhile on the local scene, I bumped into one of our neighbors in the supermarket, who was recently back from visiting relatives in the state of Washington. (And was she ever glad to get back here to this glorious weather, especially after the inclement conditions out there, you can believe that.) She was telling me about the grocery store where her family shops, which was part of a chain in that area. She said that just like a lot of stores nowadays, they have an automatic water mister to keep the produce at its best - but the difference there was that just before it goes on, it makes the sound of distant thunder and the smell of fresh rain. Apparently this is what passes for humor in Seattle, where they probably have little enough to keep them amused, I'm thinking. Then she said the next thing you know, they would have the sound of cows mooing in the dairy section, or the aroma of hay bales. We had a good laugh about that, but I said it would certainly make me avoid the aisle with the dog food and cat litter, that's for sure. Of course, I always say that technology is a double-edged sword, and I think we can all agree that we've all long since learned that what they call progress (such as it is) may not always be a good thing, and there's just no two ways about it. Elle