It's Good To Be Pope

Hello World, Happy October! Considering that it's way too early in the month for anything to have happened already, it's certainly been some eventful times around here lately, and that's saying something. After a disappointing homestand against the Yankees last week, the plucky Mets righted the ship in Cincinnati, clinching their division in dramatic fashion, and heading to the playoffs for the first time since 2006. A small but noisy contingent of their fans made the trek to The Great American Ballpark to enjoy this special moment with the team, which turned into a rollicking celebration by all accounts, and much deserved after all this time - including the announcers (understandably after witnessing many more bad seasons than good) who were positively giddy. The hometown faithful erupted in the kind of euphoria generally reserved for winning the Powerball sweepstakes, and by no means taking for granted this return to post-season play for only the 6th time in franchise history. So for all of us who bleed Mets blue (and you know who you are) now is the time to get out there and party like it's 1969, 1973, 1986, 1988, and 2006! Of course, the other local newsworthy event was the visit by Pope Francis to New York City, in between his stops in the nation's capital and Philadelphia, and spreading good will in his wake like a crop duster on a field crowded with amber waves of grain. His Holiness could not have been more popular (perhaps that should be "pope-ular" under the circumstances) if he tried, and he was welcomed everywhere with open arms, throngs of well wishers, and a media frenzy not seen in The Big Apple since the last time Alec Baldwin appeared in court for slugging a photographer. (Oh, hit that easy target!) Admittedly, a media frenzy happens so often in the city as to be commonplace nowadays, but perhaps kicked up just an extra notch for the papal visit - and not to mention, the retailers had a field day with commemorative items to beat the band. My personal favorite was the Pope Francis bobblehead doll, but there was also no lack of mugs, T-shirts, buttons, caps, bags, jewelry, plates, bumper stickers, and every other darned thing under the heavens. In what I consider an interesting coincidence, it was exactly 10 years ago, almost to the month, that I went to work in my Halloween costume as a pope, and was very popular everywhere I went as well. Between the two of us, I can't deny that there's only one who could be considered actually "pope-ular," and I will defer to His Eminence on this point without qualm, and that's not just a lot of bobbleheads, believe me. Even more on the local scene, we had every reason to expect interesting times around the old stomping grounds - anything from plagues of locusts to zombie apocalypse and everything in between, including flaming arrows at the covered wagons, pard'ner - when we received yet another notice about yet another film shoot in our neighborhood. Our idyllic enclave has already been host to commercials and movie projects, so this should be a routine walk in the park for us old timers by now, but each production seems to come with its own surprises, disadvantages, challenges, and inconveniences that can't help but make a normal person wonder why anyone would agree to this a second time - much less a third, fourth, fifth, or so on. This time the culprit - I mean, the esteemed sojourner in our midst - was the crew from the critically acclaimed TV series "Orange Is The New Black," which they were filming at one of the neighbors' houses. They turned up on Tuesday tacking notices to the trees saying that we couldn't park on the street Wednesday or Thursday (in front of our own homes, mind you) or be towed away, thanks not. We expected the equipment and food service trucks at 7:00 AM on Wednesday, but still hadn't seen hide nor hair of them by 9:30, so they either got a late start, or perhaps parked around the corner. I will be the first to admit that we don't subscribe to the premium cable channel that carries this particular program, but at a distance, my impression of it was that it was about people in prison, which is where you would expect the filming to take place. Since we have no prison in our neighborhood, or anything that even remotely resembles one, it can only be surmised that there must be occasional scenes of a "non-callabozo" nature, among acquaintances of the incarcerated, and that our neighborhood would serve as the ideal habitat for the friends of convicts. Frankly I find the implied connotations somewhat disturbing on several levels, I don't mind saying, and that's not just a lot of jailhouse rock, I can tell you that. Meanwhile at work, one of our vendors was trying to fax over an insurance certificate, and the cover sheet came over fine, but the second page with the actual certificate quit after a couple of lines and the rest was completely blank, thanks not. They tried again with the same result, with the first page being perfect, while the page that I actually needed still tantalizingly out of reach, and looking to stay that way, by all appearances. I finally called them and asked them to just send the second page by itself, since I didn't need any more copies of the cover page after all, and hoped for the best. I apologized profusely on behalf of our recalcitrant fax machine, for making their hard-pressed staff do extra work through no fault of their own, but as I explained, occasionally the equipment acts up for no good reason, and all we can do is try our best to work around its intermittent idiosyncrasies, and apologized again for the inconvenience. They seemed to think it odd for one page to print while another page wouldn't, and I found myself saying helplessly, "Oh I don't know, sometimes after the first page, it just sort of loses its focus, and doesn't care what happens after that." At least that made them laugh, if nothing else. Also at work, I was traveling around the property handing out notices to the tenants about an upcoming elevator shutdown that people needed to be aware of ahead of time, and to say that I was extremely unpopular (much less unpope-ular, heaven knows) would be an understatement of epic proportions, believe me. In any case, one of the offices that I went into was full of chatty folks, and we fell to talking about various things in a convivial manner. Just as I was leaving, one of the ladies remarked, "Has anyone ever told you that you look just like ... " [And here is where, upon having this opening salvo shot across your bow, as it were, you tend to think of exotically glamorous celebrities that you might be compared to, such as Elizabeth Taylor or Cary Grant, Robert Redford or Marilyn Monroe, for instance] so I was understandably pulled up short when she wrapped up this promising query with " ... Aunt Bee from the old 'Andy Griffith Show'?" Ouch! I admit that I didn't see that one coming, and it certainly came as a bolt out of the proverbial blue (and an unwelcome one at that, I don't mind saying) especially since my new companions obviously considered this a great compliment, and a lucky happenstance much to be embraced. Fortunately for them, I was brought up to have better manners than to burst into tears at a time like that, in spite of what I might consider ample provocation, so I mustered the will to smile gamely, and thank them for their observations on behalf of long defunct 50-year-old television shows everywhere, and matronly spinsters in particular, it goes without saying. Personally, overall I much preferred being the pope instead, even without attaining his lofty heights of "pope-ularity," and I've always felt that bobblehead dolls were vastly over-rated in any case. Anyway that's my story and I'm sticking with it, or my name isn't - Aunt Bee