She Married Up

When you're 92 and you pass away and "Socialite" is part of your obit headline, you know you lived in a different era than one would be in today.

The above photo smacks of so much of what wealth and celebrity used to look like: someone smiling, bejeweled, furred, and looking gorgeous with their clothes on with male eye candy on their arm.

Ms. Pat Montandon didn't have to pose with her bra and panties on covered with an open coat to gain attention to wind up on a TMZ segment, or a New York Post Page 6 spread of babes with their tits and asses hanging out. This was someone who looked every part of the word elegant.  

And the NYT obituary writer, Penelope Green, who gives Ms. Montandon a 6-column, 19-gun sendoff with photos that nearly covers a full inside page, seems to be at her best when her subject has made the rounds of galas and fund raisers and sat in those distinctive chairs with the finial knot at the tops of each back that all those affairs have.

I don't know how obits get assigned at the NYT. I detect some are written by reporters who have been covering the subjects' lifetime endeavors, say classical music, or dance, but for the most part they seem to be randomly assigned. Maybe.

I once heard that in the Manhattan DA's office there is a wheel that is spun to see you will be the next prosecutor on the next incoming case.  Somehow, I just don't see a wheel being spun at the NYT.

Obits can be of the pre-written kind, obits that have been sketched out with all the salient details of the person's life, waiting to be released into the world when the subject passes away, with the few additions that might be necessary to bring it fully up-to-date.

Or, obits can be written on deadline, assigned and expected to be completed for the next edition. I have no way of knowing which kind Pat Montandon's obit is, but if it's one on deadline, then Penelope Green should be eligible for an obit Pulitzer, if one exists. (I don't think there is one, but there's always room to expand the categories.)

Ms. Green takes us on a near cradle to grave breathless account of Ms. Montandon's life that makes me  wish I had met her, or at least had my picture taken with her. That of course would mean I would have been invited to one of the many galas and fund raisers she appeared at, or chaired. That would be moving on up

The print headline for Ms. Montandon goes: Pat Montandon, Who Focused on Partying, Then Peace, Dies at 96. The online headline goes:  Pat Montandon, Socialite Who Sought Publicity, Then World Peace, Dies at 96.

Talk about a hard scrabble childhood. Ms. Montandon was the seventh of eight children of "itinerant evangelical preachers whose tent revival ministry took the family throughout West Texas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. During childhood she picked cotton for pennies. At 19, she survived heart surgery." Talk about material for Ms. Montandon's memoirs. And of course there's more.

There were men, Numerous men that are described as being part of a chaste summer courtship with Frank Sinatra, [Frank, chaste?] a 12-year marriage with an abusive rancher, a six-month marriage to a gay man, and an improbable marriage to Melvin Belli, the lawyer who defended Jack Ruby, in a Shinto Temple in Tokyo that was voided after being declared "not legally binding." Her last husband was one who made his fortune in real estate and wineries. She was married to James Borton for 12 years.

The trail of hookups that it took to get to her divorce from Mr. Borton are a dizzying tale of musical matrimony that should be a mini-series. Ms. Green has it all down pat. (If all the names are arranged  just so, they likely adhere to the Six Degrees of Separation leading back to Kevin Bacon.)

Ms. Montandon was a west Coast person, having a radio show and a gossip column in the San Francisco Examiner.  The legendary, acerbic columnist for the Examiner, Herb Caen, constantly poked jabs at Ms. Montandon, calling her Pushy Galore, and the Dumb Bombshell. He called Ms. Montandon's short marriage to Mr. Belli, "30 Seconds Over Tokyo." You get the picture of the animosity.

To those who may not get the jab at being called Pushy Galore, you have to have seen the James Bond, 1964 movie Goldfinger, where James meets a female in airplane management who owns a fleet of small planes all piloted by young women. Honor Blackman, a British actress, plays Pussy Galore, (I kid you not.) an attractive, substantially well-figured woman who James has a wrestling match with in a barn. You haven't heard "pussy" sound the way it does until you hear it said with Sean Connery's Scottish accent.

Herb Caen was known for holding up two fingers in a symbol of V, but said it meant vodka. He lasted a long time, and I'm sure there were those who weren't unhappy about his demise in 1997.

Surely tired of men, or at least marrying them, Ms. Montandon and her son set out on a campaign for World Peace. Talk about a Sisyphean task. No matter.  She met with more heads of state than the U.N. Secretary General. Who wouldn't want to meet her and talk about World Peace?

Ms. Montandon wrote her memoirs after her son, her only child, apparently wrote a somewhat "tell-all" that attracted a lot of attention from those who follow those things, the memoir first being serialized in the San Francisco Chronicle and The New Yorker to rave reviews.  Definite cred there.

Pat wrote her own memoir after, but remained on good terms with her son, who some might have assumed threw Mom under the bus.

Live long enough, and you get the last word over those who ridiculed you. When she was being dumped by John Borton for a much younger woman, the columnist Herb Caen "did a forensic" reporting on the divorce filing, holding up to the light the requested $57,000 a month requested in the settlement that lead the National Enquirer. to call her "The Most Expensive Wife." [More than Liz Taylor?]

But when Herb was getting a divorce, Ms. Montandon listed his assets in her column: a family home, a '69 Mercedes and a '77 Honda Civic. She wrote: "Life ain't easy honey, ask one who knows."

No word if she attended his funeral.

Note:

Other links to blog postings about obituaries Ms. Green has written lately. 

https://onofframp.blogspot.com/2025/11/no-detail-escapes-obituary-writer.html

https://onofframp.blogspot.com/2025/07/jane-stanton-hitchcock.html

https://onofframp.blogspot.com/2025/04/reinaldo-herrera.html

http://www,onofframp.blogspot.com

In Memoriam

Judge Joseph Force Crater

Ever since the murder of my two colleagues on September 16, 2002 at work, and my placement of In Memoriam tributes to them in the New York Times on milestone anniversaries, I always look at the In Memoriams placed by others to read the sentiments If I'm still able, the next milestone to place is 25 years; I plan to place another listing. It's not closure. It's remembrance.

Last week there were two rather unusual In Memoriams, one for Vilmos Langfelder and the other for Raoul Wallenberg. They each got the same narrative "Disappeared in Soviet Captivity January 17, 1945. Gone but not forgotten" 

The 80th anniversary of that disappearance was being acknowledged. That set these In Memoriams far apart from others. Also unusual, the same pair of In Memoriams appeared the next day, almost as if someone was allowing for a time zone difference.

The Wallenberg name was familiar. A Swedish diplomat who helped Jews escape the Nazis was the extent of my knowledge without going to the usual Google/Wikipedia source to find out more. 

The disappearance of the two, Vilmos was Raoul's driver, became the stuff of legend and conspiracy theories.

Why did the Soviets detain and likely murder the two when at the time Sweden and Russia were part of the Allies fighting the Germans? Why didn't the Swedes get angrier at the affair? Many unanswered questions still remain.

Seeing an In Memoriam for some people who likely died in 1945 got me thinking. What if there was someone out there who was missing Judge Joseph Force Crater so much that they were willing to spend some bucks and alert the world to an anniversary of his disappearance? And who would that person be?

Most In Memoriams are either signed by someone not giving their full name, or there is nothing at all. In my case, I choose not to use an attribution.

Judge Crater might be the oldest missing person case on the New York Police Department's books. He was a municipal judge who was likely ethically compromised, and who was thought to be a stain on the Democratic party when FDR was New York State governor. Crater was due to give testimony in a corruption trial. 

On August 6, 1930 Crater had come back from a vacation home in Maine, and attended a show and had dinner with friends in a restaurant on West  45th Street in the theater district, and supposedly got into a cab and was never seen again.

The investigation didn't result in any explanation for the Judge's disappearance. The coroner's report came down on the side of every possibility, including that the judge might still be alive. Judge Crater was declared legally dead in August 1939.

As the case disappeared from the front pages, the memory of  his disappearance didn't. He was joked about by Johnny Carson, and others, on The Tonight Show. Numerous books were written and theories advanced.

In 2005 when Stella Ferruci-Good died, the authorities received notes she had written that alluded that her husband,  Robert Good, a NYPD detective, had learned that Crater was killed by another NYPD officer, Frank Burns, who did freelance killings for Murder Inc., Lucky Luciano's mob family. Frank Burns drove the cab that Crater is said to have gotten into leaving dinner.

The truthfulness of the notes was challenged by those who long studied Crater's disappearance. But then again, they might be true.

All theories aside, wouldn't it be a hoot if there was someone left who put an In Memoriam piece to acknowledge the centennial disappearance of Judge Crater in 2030? 

After all, someone is always missed.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

The Original Smiley Face

I don't know if the smiley face was the first emoji. It certainly hasn't been the last. There is some authoritative body that approves new emojis. I kid you not. We're back to Egyptian caves and hieroglyphics. I don't know what the last emoji count was. It's several hundred.

Unicode Consortium

A nonprofit organization based in Silicon Valley, is the official body that reviews, approves, and sets standards for new emojis. Founded in 1991, they ensure that emojis are consistent across all digital devices. They work with tech companies like Apple and Google to integrate these symbols into the Unicode Standard.

There is a probability thought problem that claims there is a chance (it's not a big one) of a team of monkeys writing the complete works of Shakespeare. Yeh, so? I bet they can't write a sentence using all emojis. Can AI?

The above creation, thought to be the first smiley face, is a creation of my good friend Lady M., a woman who joined the next to last company I worked for around 2007. Like any new person, she "came aboard." New people are always "coming aboard" and the rest of us are happy to have them "on board."

Lady M. likes to leave her version of a smiley face on things. She drew it on my white board and I left it there when I left in 2010. My guess is its been erased by now.

In one of her many employment incarnations, Lady M. once found herself delivering U.S. mail in New Jersey. She drove one of those funny looking trucks, and became quite adept at maneuvering it and backing up it up into tight spaces. There isn't any open parking space Lady M. can't back into and still leave room for the doors to open. You're in good hands.

I commented on the appearance of the smiley face in this year's Christmas card, and Lady M. revealed the back story. If Lady M. were into graffiti, we would be treated to the image all over the place. Sort  of like a caricature Kilroy Was Here. However, Lady M. is more law-abiding. In a recent email she revealed the genesis on the smiley face.

It started when I started working at the post office in 1999. When a customer put their mail on hold. The carrier would take a bucket and attach a slip of paper with the address on it. Anytime I had a street name with two Os in it I made the smiley face. It’s going on 26 years now.

Would Bansky tell us this much?

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

All Things Lead to Dilbert

 

Any alert reader who reads enough of my postings has come to know that something always reminds me of something else. We're all connected. We live on a Möbius strip. There is some giant doling out probability and sometimes I feel it's aimed at me.

What are the chances that talking about a John Prine lyric to my daughter Susan would lead to wondering about whatever happened to the comic strip Dilbert, to just a few days after that reading that Dilbert's creator, Scott Adams, has passed away? Any takers? The answer:100%

And so it goes in the world I live in. I'm not sure exactly what lead me to buy another John Prince CD .I'm glad I did. It was before there was a piece on him being honored posthumously by a group of musicians. I already had one of his CDs, but I had just bought another, Fair and Square, released in 2005.

I always read the liner note lyrics with the first playing of any new CD. This hardly guarantees I'll  remember the lyrics, no matter how many times I'll play the CD, but it is a read.

But lines from one of the tracks, titled "Other Side of Town," brought recognition. The poetry put to guitar music is John's love song to his wife. He loves her. Love being defined in the song as his ability to put up with her: "you might think I'm listening to your grocery list...but..." The list for what love is is long. Listening to grocery lists is on it.

And there it is! My wife giving anyone within earshot of her at the table what she's going to buy at the grocery store on her next  trip, which knowing how often she goes to the store, could be any moment.

It's like a book. You can get the printed version, which is her written version of the grocery list written in the tiniest cursive writing that defies being able to be read, to the audio Kindle version which she will tell you even if you haven't asked what she's buying this week.

My daughters and I know this trait of hers very well. It doesn't just include what she's going to buy, but the order of her stops that will bring her to one of three stores she buys edible things at.

I purposely left the liner notes out for my daughter Susan to read and ask her who does this remind you of? I said, "see, Mom's not the only one who recites her grocery list to an audience."

My daughter, being related, said she was talking with someone about office personalities and found that person had the same experience as she was having with people in her office. (John Paul Sartre: ""Hell is other people.")

I said something that Dilbert fully captured what it was like to be to be a cubicle dweller faced with obtuse management. "Whatever happened to the comic strip? Is Scott Adams still alive." Turns out a few days later we're reading Scott Adam's obituary. My thought had nothing to do with. Mr. Adams had to have been diagnosed with prostate cancer long before I wondered about his whereabouts.

I first saw the news of Scott Adams passing in the New York Post, which doesn't usually write a tribute obit for anyone. "'Dilbert' maker logs out."

I didn't understand the "logs out" bit of the headline until I read the obit. Apparently, Mr. Adams had embarked on a podcast called "Coffee with Scott Adams." He was a Trump supporter and in 2015 predicted Trump would win when no one else even considered the possibility. Mr. Adams had a strong following. After all, who can't have a podcast these days?

As anyone who embarks on a opinion show, you can get yourself in trouble with those who want to take you on, or down. Mr. Adams met that fate apparently over some comments which out of context might have been skating near the edge, but when just prominently out-quoted spelled doom. I hadn't heard of any of this. Comics are in so few papers that I really didn't know Dilbert was gone. 

His syndicators dropped him and Dilbert was gone from the funny pages. Such as there are funny pages. Few newspapers print comics, and they never restored the complete width of the panel cartoons. Once shrunken they have stayed shrunken.

The New York Post at least provided a sample of a Dilbert strip in their January 14, 2026 print edition, where the pudding-headed boss has trouble distinguishing Unix, a programming language, from eunuchs, male castration, when he tells Dilbert that more eunuch programmers are needed.

Dilbert, sitting at what is now an old computer, large monitor, has to explain that he, Dilbert, knows Unix. Of course Gilbert knows Unix. He looks like a NASA team member at Cape Kennedy with his pocket protector and spiked hair from a crew cut. He's straight out of control center casting.

The boss with the oafish ears and rotund belly, retreats and tells Dilbert, "If the company nurse drops by, tell her I said "'never mind'" Dilbert was the everyman who had a boss who had been promoted to their level of incompetence.

Then we get the New York Times obit where Scott Adams is basically treated a 6-column raspberry for being a Trump supporter. The whole obit is somewhat dour because of what the New York Times considers their enemy to be: anyone who is not them.  

The print edition does not reprint a sample boss/Dilbert encounter, but rather in the online edition prints a color one that looks likes a Sunday's strip of Dilbert trying to start a bakery. The pudding-headed boss is not to be seen; the while premise of a Dilbert strip was his frustrations with dense management. The Everyman identification. No appreciation of the humor, but rather an essay on the political views of the creator. 

In the New York Post Opinion page on January 15, 2026  there is an editorial cartoon that basically tells us Dilbert is missed by all cubicle dwellers.

The image is hard to read, but the towering boss is talking gibberish:

"Our goal is to leverage human capital and generate synergy to streamline the process and move the needle toward a paradigm shift, right? Circle back to me and we can dialogue further..."

The ambushed worker caught in a hive of management buzz words has the thought bubble: "Honestly, how much more of this can I take without Scott Adams in the world?"

Is the duel over? No.

The New York Post responds to the New York Times obit on January 16, 2026: Obituary Warfare: Left's Last Hateful Hit.

I don't have a scorecard, but I think it might be unprecedented that a paper attacks another one over an obituary.  But it's pistols at sunrise as the decidedly right-leaning New York Post takes the decidedly left-leaning New York Times to the woodshed. It's almost William F. Buckley vs. Gore Vidal.

That's it, right? Wait for the coup de grace. Down comes the blade

In Sunday's New York Times Opinion section—as depressing a read if ever there was one—we are treated to the major hit piece by Joel Stein, described as a humor writer with a Substack newsletter. The headline goes: "The Man Behind 'Dilbert' Was Always MAGA." An out-quote goes: The resentments and cynicism in Scott Adams's comic strip are now a familiar worldview."

Mr. Stein produced a book in 2019 titled: "In Defense of Elitism: Why I'm Better Than You and You Are Better than Someone Who Didn't buy this book."  How it sold I have no idea. I never heard of it, or Mr. Stein.

As research for his book, Mr. Stein once upon a time interviewed Mr. Adams in his California trophy home. Although the tone of the essay is polite, Mr. Stein can't seem to understand how someone like Mr. Adams, "who attended graduate school at Berkeley, lived in an overwhelmingly Democratic Bay area town, who put solar panels on his roof and made art for a living" left the tribe.. "Why would he suddenly turn against his class." Well, maybe he was never in your "class."

Mr. Stein, who describes himself as "a Jew from a liberal East Coast town" who apparently lacks a MAGA uncle at the Seder table, who can't seem to understand how there can be a Scott Adams.

William F. Buckley Jr. went to Yale and went in as a conservative and came out that way. As did pa and son Bush. Oh well. It's hard to understand what Mr. Stein doesn't understand.

And it's hard to understand why there is no puff piece on Dilbert himself, who surely would scoff at all that is being attached to him because his creator had a podcast.

Jesus guys. I'm a popular comic strip for a reason. Get it?.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

77 Sunset Strip

You have to be as old as I was this past Thursday to remember the 1950s TV series "77 Sunset Strip," a popular P.I.-themed show where the cars were fast, the hair was groomed, and the women with champagne, blonde color hair sitting at the bar were gorgeous, especially when they  carelessly crossed their legs and had a cigarette lit for them. (You could smoke indoors then, and believe me, everyone smoked.)  I love to look back at what things looked like then, and I'll tell you, a women who was good looking then, would be good looking now. Only the hairstyle would be different.

My father, born in 1915, and so longer with us for quite a while now, would, if he watched TV, call them dames, or dolls. It would not be pejorative. It would be endearing. The only TV I ever saw him watch was Lawrence Welk or The Honeymooners, and later Jackie Gleason's show. Well, maybe Ed Sullivan's show as well. I do remember some post-Elvis appearance comments by the adults that were not favorable. Also, when th Beatles first appeared. We were headed for the toilet.

77 Sunset strip starred Efrem Zimbalist Jr., son of a classical musician, and Roger Smith as partners in a detective agency. Then, as now, detective show were popular.

The vibe, or coolness of the '50s was enhanced by the car jockey Kookie, played by Edward Brynes. Kookie wore the same type of cloth jacket, the James Dean look, Fonzie wore on Happy Days before they figured out that he would look better in leather. 

But no leather look for parking expensive cars. The owners expected them back. Kookie always has a comb ready to sweep back his 1950s locks and secure the '50s male look. "Kookie, Kookie, lend me your comb," became a song.

77. My long-tine dentist, who has now passed away, had his office in the Empire State building on the 77th floor, with a window by the chair facing south; a magnificent view of Manhattan traded for the joy of some dental work.

My daughter Susan, who was a Dr. B. patient, one day was in the city with her friend Donna and decided to do some sightseeing. Without an appointment, Susan and Donna showed up at his door to take in the view. If there was someone in the chair they waited. Dr. B. got the biggest kick out of that. He is missed.

Dr. B., being even older than myself would, answer the door, and nearly break into the song about Kookie and his hair. Dr. B. of course remembered the show.

When 911 hit and Dr. B. saw the Twin Towers engulfed in flames, he immediately closed the office, and headed for Penn Station for the ride home. It was early then, and the trains were still running.

Adding to the cast of characters in 77 Sunset Strip is Jacqueline Beer, the former Miss France of 1954, as Suzanne Fabray answering phones for Sunset Answering Service. No phone mail then. No texting either.

Louis Quinn plays a bookie named Roscoe, who hands out racetrack tips. He looks like the prototypical Hollywood version of what a 1950s bookie, and race track patron—a railbird—should look like. Even a still photo gives you the impression he talks fast, without or without a cigar in his mouth

Connie Steven plays Cricket, the curvy blonde who is attached to Kookie, who else? The name Cricket anticipates naming Angie Dickinson as Pepper in Police Woman. Short, saucy names.

I can't recall a single episode of 77 Sunset Strip. It hasn't ever been shown on one of those nostalgia TV channels.

The number 7 plays prominently in craps. "7 come 11, baby needs a new pair of shoes;" the hoped for coming out throw. The dreaded 7 before the point that gets in the way of your roll.

How about jet airplanes? Boeing seems to use a 7 in nearly everything it makes: 707, 727, 747, 767, 787.

Slot machines? Wouldn't three 7s across mean some winnings? And how about Cary Grant playing the gambler Joe Bascopolous (got to be a gambling Nick the Greek, right?) in the 1943 movie Mr. Lucky, who jumps in a New York City cab that has a fistful of 7s in its license place. He feels even luckier now. 

Note:

All AI search engines failed to reveal how many 7s there were in the license plate. I'll have to wait for an alert reader, or TCM to show the movie again. Cary Grant is a favorite of mine.

You'd think if is AI was so great it would go out and try and find the answer to my query. But it didn't. The answer was not in any retrievable piece of information AI used in its Large Language Model. Why didn't it queue up the movie and watch it for me and come back with the answer? Ha! Some intelligence. 

I'm thinking about all these 7s because I turned 77 on Thursday and have in longevity outlived the ages of my parents and my grandparents.

I got a new pair of glasses on Tuesday and I told Peter, my long-time optician, that I was going to be 77 on Thursday. I don't know Peter's age, but he said I look good. I told him what I always tell everyone who might make that comment: "You haven't seen the x-rays." 

Yet, since I'm alive to tell the tale, maybe I'm Mr. Lucky.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

Rack 'Em Up at RAXX

It is now January and usually by now I'm cashing in one of my daughter Susan's Christmas gifts: lunch at the Burger Spot on Seventh Avenue in Garden City, and an afternoon of playing 8-ball at RAXX pool hall in West Hempstead. 

The two-piece cue stick my other daughter Nancy bought me for my birthday a few years ago gets to come out of the sling-back, padded, leather case and I take charge. I always wanted my own cue. I am in my 20s again playing pool at Broadway Billiards with the Piermont brothers in Manhattan at 52nd Street under the Penny Arcade. I'm no better at it now than I was then. But I'm playing pool with an offspring while the 26-month old grandson is in daycare. Works for me.

I've written about RAXX before. What I haven't written bout is the Burger Spot, a narrow outlet on the very upscale strip of Seventy Avenue in Garden City where you can enjoy terrific burgers at odd prices.

Certainly not low prices. The Texas Bacon, Cheese Bar-B-Que one I always get is now $16.51. French fries and an ice tea adds to make a decent check. But the food is good and fresh cooked.

The burger comes loaded with bacon and cheese on a large bun. It is dripping with juiciness. There's a place somewhere that calls itself the 5-Napkin Burger. I use napkins, and prepare for the burger's arrival with at least 12 napkins I've pulled from the dispenser. They're small and thin. Sometimes I might need a few more.

So, this is the pre-match meal. Onto RAXX.

My daughter always tells me she's going to be the only female in the place. She's basically right. When we start, she is the only female playing. But the attendant is a woman who greets us warmly and who is the bartender of the very large bar. There's only one person at the bar, but then again it's only 2:00 P.M., which is when we usually start.

We tend to play for 90 minutes, which creates a $30 tab on checking out. I can never get over how expensive it seems to be to play. Well it is two players, but still.

We can count on seeing one particular older man who is always playing alone at the same table in the back corner. He is always wearing a type of wrist glove that I guess helps his wrist, hand and finger positions when shooting. It's not hard to see that he's good. Very good. A enviable, smooth stroke. He's there when we leave. Setting up shots, or playing a solo game of 8-ball. Practice. Might play in some of the tournaments the place runs.

The tables at RAXX are all new now from when we first went a few years ago. As such, the pockets seem a bit tight. Several of my shots bounced off the edges of the pocket rather than go. There isn't anyone who ever plays the game that won't assign blame for a missed shot to something other than their own play. 

Sue and I usually play 8-ball, and it has taken us the full 90 minutes to finish three games. But there must be some indication that we're getting better in that this outing we played 4 games in 90 minutes. We're both making more shots.

When Susan went on a bit of a run sinking three in a row one of the older guys at the table next to ours took notice and shouted out praise. Neither of us ever play anywhere other than when we do this, so any improvement is not due to more practice but to just playing better.

The two older guys look older than me, and I'm 77 on Thursday, but they may not be. They're playing 8-ball as well, both with their own cues. As they start to wrap up I ask one of them did they ever hear that straight pool can referred to as 14.1.

Dorothy Wise

No. One of the guys says, "Google it!" I tell them I read of straight pool called 14,1 when I read a recent obit for Dorothy Wise in the Overlooked No More feature of the New York Times in December 2025.  I didn't really expect either of them to have read the obit, only to ask if the heard of "14.1."

One of the elder statesmen I talked to went and asked another hardcore player about "14.1". After wrapping up, he purposely came back to tell me that yes, the other fellow heard of 14.1. I thanked him.

The confirmation was welcome. I didn't need to "Google it." I had correctly surmised the term referred to when playing straight pool you and your opponent work your way through any of 14 balls, and purposely leave one to be the "break" ball when you re-rack. Straight pool in a full tournament is played for the first player to reach 150 points.

It is a game that goes to the player who can put together "long  runs," that is, constantly sinking a ball to keep getting the next shot. Any pool game is always about trying to play "position," that is after sinking a ball to leave the cue ball where it is in the best position to sink another shot. Ideally, not a tough shot. String enough consecutive shots together and you have a "run."  And played well, it can keep your opponent in his seat quite a while.

When 14 balls have been sunk, the player to sink the last ball gets to chance to shoot the remaining ball at the newly racked 14 balls. Thus 14.1 can become a way of describing the game.

If the player is good, they leave the break ball where they can sink it and then plow into the rest of the rack and "open" it up and hopefully continue shooting. And on and on.

While a run is being established, the opponent has to sit and wait for the player to miss, allowing them back to the table. Pool balls that are been "opened up" can scatter anywhere. The game is improvisational like jazz. After a break, balls go anywhere, and their positions doesn't get repeated with another game. No series of shots are the same. They're all snowflakes. 

Usually Susan I only play 8-ball, with each player having to sink all the high or low numbered balls  that get assigned to them by virtue of the first ball sunk. before getting a shot to sink the 8-ball. Sink all the high or low balls in any order you get a shot to sink the 8-ball before your opponent, and therefore win. Susan won our first game of 8-ball. I won the next three games.

Consulting with Pool Statesmen

The two senior statesman I asked never heard of Dorothy Wise, but of course heard of straight pool and had played it. Sometimes I switch the game up with Susan and say we'll play straight pool to 25 points. That way you're not limited to the next ball you need to sink after potting one. The tough part is to establish a run, and to continue it with a good break ball. Since Susan and I have high "runs" of three, no one is forced to stay seated because someone is running the table. We've gotten better, but progression has been small.

Dorothy Wise was a leading women's pool playing champion, (14.1; straight pool) in the 50s, 60s and 70s. Aside from the obvious interest in the obit is that Dorothy's reign as a woman's champion ended in 1972 when she didn't make it to the finals when Jean Balukas, a 13-year-old! prodigy from Brooklyn became the champion. Her father owned a pool hall.

I had heard of Jean Balukas because that was the era I was playing pool. I never saw her play, but she won a phenomenal number of tournaments; straight pool and 9-ball, a favorite tournament game that is quick, and played in a run to first player to win 9 games within sets.

Jean, at 66  is still with us, retired from competition and having closed her pool parlor in Brooklyn in 2020 after her father died in 2009. She is now interested in golf. Both games requite a good swing, or a good stroke. In golf, it don't mean a thing if you ain't got that swing; in pool, it is the stroke.

In all my years of playing at Broadway Billiards, I don't think I ever saw a female playing. My daughter says eventually when we play there will be a couple who will come in, and sure enough, on the table vacated by my senior statesmen, a couple started to play. They weren't particularly good. The guy bounced the cue ball off the table twice. And they seemed more interested in their cellphones, whipping them out of their back pockets after nearly every shot. What update did they need so badly? I'm sure if we played later in the day, like "date time" there would be some female players. We're early birds. Still trying to get better.

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Affordability

Anyone who has listened to the news these past few weeks and taken in the new mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani's comments about what "we're facing' in New York City, it is summed up in the word "affordability." The Democrats have latched onto the word and tell us that's what President Trump needs to do, make things more "affordable." It's amazing how a word can take off and suddenly be what ails us all.

But then you read the obituary of a playwright who just passed away, Robert Heide, 91, Whose Stories Shone Onstage and Off,  who lived in a rent-control West Village, Christopher Street apartment for over 60 years and you know he had no problem making the rent.

The pictured building is not his apartment house, but rather where my grandmother, her brother-in-law, and I lived in the 1960s when I went to high school in Manhattan: 310 East 19th Street, a few feet east of 2nd Avenue, on the south side of the street, across the street from a public school and playground. Still a desirable location these days. Prices reflect.

Edwin Booth

The boast is that it's in the Gramercy Park neighborhood. No. It's near Gramercy Park. Gramercy Park is one very wide city clock west, at 20th-22nd Streets between Third Avenue and Park Avenue South, a private park with a statue of Edwin Booth in the center. The buildings that surround the park are Gramercy Park buildings.

Yes, Edwin Booth, John Wilkes Booth's older brother, part of a dynastic Shakespearean acting family in the mid 1800s. Edwin founded The Players Club, a distinguished brownstone on the south side of Gramercy Park that appeared in some scenes of the series Billions near the end of its run.

I'm currently reading a book, Lincoln's Lady Spymaster, by Gerri Willis, currently a correspondent and anchor for Fox Business. The sub-title of the book is: The Untold Story of the Abolitionist Southern Belle Who Helped win the Civil War. The Southern Belle was Elizabeth Van Lew, an unmarried, wealthy woman in Richmond, Virginia who was an Abolitionist and aided Lincoln's generals in getting information about the Rebels. She aided in Union soldier POW jail escapes as well. She was a thorn in the side of the Confederates.

John Wilkes Booth

Since most of the story takes place in the early1860s with the backdrop of the Civil War, there is an entire chapter on John Wilkes Booth, famous of course for assassinating Lincoln in 1865.

In what I think is a wonderful example of how everything gets connected, Ms. Willis outlines a narrative of John Wilkes Booth's peripatetic life as an actor.

He is set to play at a playhouse that has a new manager, Louisa Lane Drew, "a woman who would become the grandmother of Lionel, Ethel and John Barrymore (and the great granddaughter of Drew Barrymore)." Wow. Drew Barrymore's great-grandmother gave John Wilkes Booth a booking.

The apartment I lived in at 310 East 19th Street is visible from the street. It is the three windows on the  second floor, right, in a six-story building built in 1920 with no elevator. That I remember, there were four apartments to each floor; two in the front and two in the back.

The rent in the mid-1960s was $64 for what would be called a "railroad flat." The rooms were in a single file. You entered and the bathroom was straight ahead. To the left was kitchen of a decent size, with a small bedroom off to the side. That bedroom is where my great-uncle Peter slept, my grandmother's brother-in law, my deceased grandfather's younger brother.

It was a narrow room just big enough for the bed, but that had its own door to the hallway. We never used the door, but the room could be entered without coming into the apartment proper, almost like a maid's entrance. Maybe it was indented for that.

After entering, there were two room, on the right, of a decent size. The larger of the two and the first one you walked through, could be a dining room. Then there was the front room that had the three windows that looked out onto 19th Street. The window to extreme right was to the fire escape. One of the adjacent apartment's front windows opened onto the same fire escape. Very symmetrical.

To the left of this front room was what was a small bedroom, and was where my grandmother slept. I slept on a very padded cot in this front room.

It was decent place to live and the rent was initially $68 a month in the early 60s. At some point the Department of Buildings reviewed the premises and lowered the rent to $64 a month. I never forgot that.

Perhaps it was sometime after my grandmother died in 1964 that I remember the owner of the building  and his adult son coming to the flower shop for I think something for my uncle Pete to sign. It was perhaps a new lease. I don't know. But I remember the owner's name was Reich, with a Pennsylvania address.

I remember looking at these two people and realizing how they looked liked their horse and buggy should be outside. They were what typical Pennsylvania Dutch people looked liked. Whether they were Amish I do not know. 

New York of course was first settled by the Dutch. If I was adventurous enough I'd love to track the ownership of that building. As to what it is today there is really no surprise. An apartment in the place goes for $5,500 a month. 

A website details the building's current history. There are 26 units. We were in No. 7. It is owned by Haki Bakoli and has a history of some complaints, but is free of rodents and bed bugs. This is good to know if you've got the $5,500 a month to shell out. It is classified as a "New Law Tenement." 

Haki Bakoil is an Armenian name. associated with property ownership and management, principally in the Bronx. For some reason, there is a lot of Armenian association with buildings in the Bronx.

Four units to each floor, six stories makes 24 units. The additional two units  of the 26 must be on the ground floor under the stoop. There are many such older apartment buildings like 310 East 19th street.

If you ever look at real estate ads for apartment buildings in New York, listed will be how many apartments in the building are at "market rate," and how many others are at "rent control" or "market stabilized." Thus the prospective buyer is informed at how many apartments they can count on to go for current rates. The others are occupied by longstanding tenants who are protected by rent control laws. They've got to die or move out to allow the vacant apartment to pass onto market rates.

This posting is indicative to my reaction to something I've read. Something always reminds me of something else. The connective tissue of the Möbius strip.

The obituary for Robert Hilde is more than interesting in many ways. He and his husband John Gilman, who moved in with Mr. Heide years ago, recounts how their rent-controlled space in the very desirable West Village "was not much more than the cost of a single [my emphasis] expensive dinner in today's West Village."

And there was have it: Affordability.

Do you know how many people in New York City are living in sweetheart rent-controlled units that allow them to enjoy more of the city because the rent makes the rest of the city affordable? The mind boggles.

The recent obituary for the architect Robert A, M. Stern quotes him as saying that growing up he always looked up at the buildings. When in Manhattan, I do the same thing. I wonder who are all the people inside those buildings living off hallways that elevators (most of the time) take them to?

Mr. Heide was certainly not a well known person. You almost might say someone at the Times thought his tribute, obit, 6-columns, 15-gun salute was deserved because of the people he knew, rather than any great accomplishment of his own. An out quote from the obit goes: "An Off Off Broadway pioneer with endless tales of bohemian life."

He was a playwright whose best work was staging two good-looking lads in "The Bed" in white boxer shorts sitting on a bed discussing their feelings of aimlessness. The script was "15 pages and lasted half an hour because of extended pauses. The same rock song, Dave Clark Five's 'Anyway You Want It,' played twice all the way through it with the actors on the stage incongruously silent." 

And lest you think something like that went unnoticed, read what Stephen Bottoms wrote of the play in "Playing Underground: A Critical History of the 1960s Off-Off Broadway Movement" (2004): "The Bed" provides the missing link between the Beckettain absurdism (two men filling in empty time) and the New York avant-garde's fascination with the detailed observation of banality." Well, if you say so.

There's more like that in the obit. Mr. Heide worked with Andy Warhol and wrote a script for one of his films, "Lupe." Mr. Heide knew all the bold face names of the artists and playwrights of the 60s': H.M. Koutoukas, Edward Albee, Terrance McNally, Lanford Wilson, Sam Shepard.

And if you think that Mr. Heide's best known play, "The Bed" is a disappearing example of a one-off  Off Off Broadway production in the heady 60s, consider a teaser on the front page of Thursday's New York Times January 8, print edition, that leads into a story on Page C3 in the Arts section:

Dispensing With Dialogue

The dreamlike play "Mami" from the Albanian Greek director Mario Banushi has no talking for a reason. "Words can limit things," he says. The show leads the Under the Radar Festival. [As it should.]

There's one more link to my memory emitting diodes (MEDs) that was set off by the story of rent-control: Andy Warhol.

We've established that I lived for a time in a rent-controlled apartment on East 19th Street. But what is also true is that the apartment was just half a block east of Columbus Hospital, a hospital that probably went back to the turn of 19th-century that I delivered flowers to often. It must have been run by Catholic Charities because it was populated by nuns in full black habits, the penguins, I had to sneak past them to get into the hospital to make my bedside deliveries, taking cranky, balky elevators that sounded like every lift was going to be its last. I can still hear the sounds of the machinery in my head. 

Columbus Hospital became Cabrini Medical Center, which then became condos. But in the 60s Columbus hospital was where one afternoon they dumped Andy Warhol out of a cab onto the sidewalk with a gunshot wound to his stomach. He was shot multiple times by a pissed off feminist writer at his film studio, The Factory, at 33 Union Square West by Valerie Solanas, who thought he lost one of her scripts. It was June 3, 1968 and was of course front page news the next day.

Official news accounts say police and an ambulance were called. In June 1968 there was no 911 emergency number to call for an ambulance. It's not knows if an ambulance, if called, actually got there. The cab story is what I heard, and I'm sticking to it. The doctors only gave Warhol a 50-50 chance to recover. He was forever disabled by his wounds. 

It was the 60s.

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Jeopardy 2026

Most people are aware that the goal of Jeopardy is to pose the answer in the form of a question to something the clue is referring to. The clues are often multi-layered and can be as opaque as frosted shower glass. They sometimes leave you saying "huh" to yourself. But you've got to act quickly and press that buzzer and hope you've got the answer. Some examples of  recent Final Jeopardy clues are:

Arts and Artists

He once said, "a hole can have as much meaning as a solid mass."

U.S. Presidents

His mom Eliza, was the first mother to attend her son's inauguration, survived him by about 6 years; his wife by 36.

I'm not here to provide the answers, but to merely show how clues can be constructed working backwards from a single answer. The answer to the U.S. Presidents is a doozy. No one got it.

Clues have degrees of difficulty, with the Final Jeopardy ones meant to be the coup de grâce for the contestants.

Last week, there was an appropriately valued $1,000 clue in a "Hodge-Podge" category that went:

Military leader who is credited with building what became a modern Egypt.

That someone buzzed in quickly with the right answer, Muhammad Ali, (WHAT!) is a testament to why I'll never be a Jeopardy contestant.

I've taken the Anytime Test online. They don't tell you how you did, but when the phone don't ring, you know it's Jeopardy not calling.

My guess is that they only need to start to cull respondents from people who've gotten all the answers right. They're not going to start marking it on a curve you for you.

But you're shitting me. Someone with the name chosen by Cassius Clay when he converted to Islam was famous for modernizing Egypt?

Did Muhammad Ali know whose name he chose? It's too late to ask him, since he passed away in 2016.

We have to go to that crutch Google.

Muhammad Ali was the Ottoman Albanian viceroy and governor who became the de facto ruler of Egypt from 1805 to 1848, widely considered the founder of modern Egypt.

I'm a old enough to know a good deal about Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali. I saw Ali fight Joe Frazier on March 8, 1971 in Madison Square Garden for what was considered the "Fight of the Century" where two undefeated Heavyweight champions fought each other. (It's complicated how that was true.)

I saw the closed circuit telecast of the "Rumble in the Jungle" when Ali "rope-a-doped" George Foremen into a tired mass of humanity. My wife and I were vacationing in Toronto, so we went to Maple Leaf Gardens to see the telecast, late at might on the East Coast, but early morning in Zaire.

Who can forget Ali always jumping up and down and telling everyone he was "The Greatest." Pulling Howard Cosell's hairpiece off?

I don't know, did he say anything about making Egypt "The Greatest?". He might have. It wouldn't be beyond something he'd say and no one would believe him. "I conquered Egypt!." I never heard anyone explaining who Muhammad Ali was other than the former Cassius Clay.

I've doubled back on his New York Times obituary to see if there is any reference to the name he chose when he converted to Islam.

The only reference is that when he changed his name to Muhammad Ali he said it meant, "worthy of all praise most high."

And Muhammad in Islam means just that, worthy of high praise; Ali in Islam means noble, or high ranking.

Muhammad Ali's was given his name by his father, Ibrahim Agha, who was a commander of a small military force for a governor of Kavla. Muhammad Ali seems to have fulfilled the promise of the name.

But, until a Jeopardy clue researcher came along, few ever really knew that Muhammad Ali's name meant more that just a name chosen by a boxer to boast his "greatness."

The things we learn from game shows.

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