Six Pack

Hello World, Happy (belated) Mother's Day! I hope that everyone made time on Sunday to honor the mothers and maternal figures that have played such a major role in all of our lives, and made the world a better place, with their devotion, compassion and selfless sacrifice. I can always count on the resident felines around here to come through as usual, with plenty of hairballs and poop, not to mention, all the catnip mice that any matriarch could ever hope for, I dare say. We spent the day visiting with a friend who not only has her own menagerie of the hairball-and-poop variety, but also a large and boisterous dog, as well as five human children on top of it all. Alert readers may recall these kind folks as having a dining room table that is actually a pool table with a custom top - and which now, with the addition of a short net, has been magically transformed into a ping pong table besides, and what won't they think of next. A couple of the youngsters prevailed upon me to join them in some rather unorthodox table tennis (I guess that should be pool table tennis) and I discovered that, unlike what they always say about riding a bicycle, ping pong is one of those things that doesn't automatically come back to you decades later, in spite of growing up playing ping pong in the basement for untold years. Although they had youth and enthusiasm on their side, they weren't really any better at it than I was, and since we seemed to be playing some sort of rogue 3-handed ping pong with 6 balls at a time, plus the cats and dog joining in to boot, it was certainly not anything that the Olympic Committee would recognize as a legitimate sport of any kind. On the other hand, if 6-ball ping pong with 3 players, 2 cats and a dog ever catches on, I've already got plenty of experience. Naturally, I couldn't accept money, for fear of losing my amateur status, but I'm not above being bribed in other ways, so please make mine chocolate, and plenty of it, my good man. Meanwhile, at the place where I'm working now, there's a family pharmacy (not a chain) on the corner, and when I walked past it at the beginning of last week, I couldn't help but notice a huge sign in the window announcing that Mothers Day cards were 50% off already - and mind you, this was still a whole week before it would actually be Mothers Day for real. Of course, the first time I went into the store, it surprised me that they were still selling left-over Easter candy and Christmas decorations, so the management's opinions regarding the timeliness of festive occasions might be significantly different from the rest of us, I shouldn't wonder. Far be it from me to cast aspersion on anyone's perhaps radical re-interpretation of time-worn traditions and customs, but if The Holiday Police ever get wind of this, it's not going to be a pretty sight, I'm afraid. And speaking of families, I made a note in my calendar on April 26, when I first spotted the dramatically colorful monk parakeets returning to our neighborhood after their winter migration. Actually, you don't so much see these amazing parrot-like creatures, as you do hear them first, because their strident squawking signals their presence for blocks in every direction, I can tell you that. After I heard their unmistakable high-decibel screeches, I saw the first four of them at the bird feeders next door (and yes, I'm not embarrassed to say that I have plenty of blurry pictures to prove it, despite the ill-mannered snickering from our old friends the dinosaurs in The Peanut Gallery) and they seemed to be settling right in, just like last year. Not so fast! After that first time on the 26th, I haven't seen hide nor hair of them since, so either they're setting up housekeeping very quietly, and keeping their bright green plumage under wraps, or they have found greener pastures for their raucous and rambunctious colony this time around. Of course, everyone knows by now that our local juvenile delinquent squirrels are not to be trusted at all costs, but I'm sure that scrawled note of "ROANOKE" tacked to a tree was nothing to be concerned about. On the playoff scene, the plucky New York Rangers came roaring back from the brink of elimination against the pesky Washington Capitals, forced a decisive Game 7, and just barely pulled out a win in overtime, to clinch the series, for their euphoric legion of die-hards. It was nothing but nail-biters all the way, and no margin for error, or breathing room to speak of - after 7 whole games, the Rangers scored a total of 13 goals, with 12 for the Capitals, so that tells you something right there. Heck, those are the kinds of numbers you expect from the World Cup, where they routinely play to 0-0 ties, and goals are about as rare as Kardashians with all of their clothes on. (Oh, hit that easy target!) Next up is Tampa Bay, fresh off their own hard-fought tilt against Montreal, which seems impossible to us hide-bound traditionalists, who painfully remember the dominance of Canadian teams in the NHL, and scoff at the very idea of ice hockey in Florida, of all places. Out in the wild west, Anaheim made short work of Calgary in 5 games, while Chicago did even better, sweeping Minnesota out of the joint in four straight. If Chicago and New York advance to the Stanley Cup finals, it would be another "Original Six" matchup to delight the purists, while an Anaheim-Tampa Bay series would thrill the sun worshipers, no doubt. Hopefully with the Preakness going on, the evil spirit of Affirmed will be too busy sabotaging poor American Pharoah to weave his diabolical spells on Broadway's finest, but I would warn the players against taking any wooden horseshoes anyway, and not take any chances. In other sports news, we had the first of two subway series this year between the local pinstripe brigades, with both the Mets and Yankees leading their respective divisions at the time, as improbable as that might sound. The vaunted Bombers managed to take 2 out of 3, tumbled the Amazin's out of first place, dashing the hopes of the Flushing faithful, but at least making the home team happy in the (replacement) House That Ruth Built - although truth to tell, their fans expect them to win every game anyway, so this is just another day at the office for U.S. Steel ... I mean, the New York Yankees, as Joe E. Lewis would say. And speaking of comic relief, there was at least one bright spot for the Mets recently, and not only because they actually won a game, which is a rare enough occurrence as it is, but turned out to be statistically significant as well. Last Tuesday, the Mets' Bartolo Colon became the first pitcher in over 100 years to beat the same ballclub with 7 different teams, as the Mets squeaked past the Orioles (who coincidentally have lost 7 in a row to the Mets in their last meetings, going back to 1999, believe it or not) and certainly gave the statisticians a workout in the process, by golly. Colon accomplished this feat with the Cleveland Indians, Chicago White Sox, Anaheim Angels, Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees, Oakland Athletics, and now the Mets - and you have to figure by now, the poor Orioles' snakebit fans must flee at the very sight of him. Even in these cynical days, where teams and players are considered interchangeable commodities, and loyalty is a quaint anachronism of the past, this is a remarkable record to compile, and in fact, may never have been done before in the entire history of the game, going back to those halcyon days of yore, when the dinosaurs and I were tossing the old horsehide around on the unformed land masses in the primordial ooze. Apparently they can only verify the data about this going back to 1914, and before that is anyone's guess, so it's entirely possible that Colon might be the one and only ever, since the very beginning, which would certainly be a feather in his cap that even the dinosaurs would have to respect, and they are notoriously cavalier in their outlook, I don't mind saying. As for the Orioles, the solution is obvious, if they want to stop this streak where it is and not have it potentially continue with yet an eighth team - all they have to do is take a page out of Affirmed's evil handbook, and get Bartolo Colon on their own team instead. If Baltimore isn't interested, I might take a run at him myself - I'll bet he would be a whiz at 6-ball 3-player ping pong including 2 cats and a dog, and let's face it, it can't hurt to have a famous partner when we make our application to the Olympic Committee, after all. Elle