Robert Zimmerman

It has come down to this. There are surprises left in the world. And perhaps the biggest surprise in a good while is that Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature yesterday.

Of course this doesn't resonant, good or bad with all. That oracle of sports talk, Mike Francesca on WFAN yesterday started the show with the announcement that the plugged in had already heard. Except in Big Mike's alternate universe he dryly noted that Bob Dylan had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

When the first caller up reminded surly Mike that it was the prize for Literature, sweetheart Mike, immediately annoyed he was being questioned, acidly asked the man, "is that why you called me up," then hung up.

There were certainly reactions to the announcement, from it's about time, to simply being dumbfounded that a singer/songwriter with perhaps a voice that could sand wood could even be considered for an award that has gone to some paragons of literature who boasted a lifetime of writing books, not songs.

Never mind the contretemps the announcement brought, it brought true surprise and delight from those who counted.

Back in April when the Mets still had a chance to win the World Series, Rosanne Cash gave one of those 'Live from the New York Public Library' series interviews, with Paul Holdengraber crafting the questions. This was covered in a prior posting.

Part of Paul's technique was to show Rosanne a series of pictures that were sharply projected on a screen for all the see. This was not a blind taste test, Rosanne knew what the images were going to be when Paul asked her to comment on them. Thus, photos of needlework,  family, roses, an exploding airplane, a favorite example of an interior decorator's work, and paintings were clicked through and commented on.

Then the photo of a young Bob Dylan came up. Rosanne, with the barest of pauses commented with almost a hushed tone of awe and reverence that "Dylan is responsible for all the singer/songwriters after him; without him we wouldn't be here."

In today's Times there are several stories and essays on Dylan, including Rosanne's Twitter quote from early Thursday morning that I responded to by adding my two cents to that it is still possible to be pleasantly surprised in this world. Rosanne tweeted:  "Holy mother of god, Bob Dylan wins the Nobel Prize." In Literature Mike, not for Peace; someone else already got that one.

Back in April, Rosanne knew what the Swedish Academy has now told everyone.

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The Aussie Rendezvous

I told my wife I was going into Penn Station today to meet a woman I know from Twitter. She told me to knock myself out...would I be home in time for dinner? Yes.

Given the Internet, emails, Twitter, Facebook, and FaceTime, and any other platform that allows communication through the World Wide Web, my guess is interest in being a HAM radio operator is at an all time low.

I'm sure there are people who probably don't even know what a HAM radio operator is. HAM of course stands for Heinrich Hertz, Andre-Marie Ampere and Gugliemo Marconi, pioneers in radio waves and electronics.

I say of course, because that's what I've always known the acronym to mean, and it does. Apparently however, there is a very coarse definition that has come into use, all through the Internet form of communication. We'll leave it at that.

I knew a fellow at work who was a HAM radio operator. He told stories of talking to Russian cab drivers, among other people in other countries. The thing about the HAM radio is that you're broadcasting, so that anyone who wants to listen into your call letters, can do so. You can have an audience way beyond one. You're the Fan; You're on 'The Fan.'

The Twitter acquaintance was born out of a common appreciation of obituaries. "@lifeasinzy, meet @jdemet," Tweeted @marilynajohnson, author of 'The Dead Beat.' @lifeasinzy has now undergone a handle change to @justjenking. This is what is similar to HAM radio operators who get call letters. The operators do have to be licensed by the F.C.C. in this country, and can't just start spewing out whatever they want just because they feel like it. There are broadcast standards, unlike of course Twitter, where anyone can get a user name.

Twitter does have standards of conduct, but the regulations are somewhat self-generated, and self-enforced by the audience, who can block those who they'd rather not hear from. The rogues of course can just keep getting new user names.

Regardless, the woman from Australia who I met is Jennifer King, (a shelia?) rendezvousing under what is a new arrivals and departure board on the Amtrak level at Penn Station. She and her husband Steve were waiting for The Northeast Regional train to take them to Washington, D.C. where Jen can use her press credentials to gain access to a White House News briefing (if there is one while she's in town), and a tour of the Library of Congress.

Jen is a former operating room nurse who left that profession to become a journalist, who now works for Australia's version of our NPR, ABC News (Australia Broadcasting Company) in Brisbane. In her Twitter profile she describes herself as an 'ex-nurse and #obit fan morphed into @abcnews digital producer/journalist, sharing my favourite stories with the world.'

She doesn't get to do much writing in her current role, but can brag that she wrote the obituary for Rupert Murdoch's mother, Dame Elisabeth Joy, Lady Murdoch AC DBE when she passed away in 2012 at 103. Rupert (85) has been quoted that based on the longevity lines in his family, no one should look forward to his imminent demise. He did just marry Jerry Hall (60), a Mick Jagger-ex, who is certain to carry Rupert further down the field of play and through the uprights.

In a prior visit to the States, Jen did get to meet obituary writer Margalit Fox at her place of work, The New York Times, and did go out to lunch with Stephen Miller (@obitsman), when he was doing obits for the WSJ. Stephen has moved onto Bloomberg News, where obit writing is not as much of a feature. In fact, based on my memory of her Tweets over the years, this current U.S. visit might be at least her third to our shores. She's almost a commuter from the other side of the world. The antipodes.

Jen's husband Steve, who I'll venture to say with his full beard, glasses and perfect diction is either a naturalist, a professor, a documentary film maker, or none of the above, offered that Rupert controls about two-thirds of the media enterprises in Australia. He's not doing bad in the Northern Hemisphere either. Mr. Murdoch owns several floors of the recently completed condominium tower at One Madison Avenue on 23rd Street, the city's latest in place to live, the Flatiron District.

Jen at her Twitter account is one of the most prolific and interesting Tweeters, usually offering pictures, links, and now little colorful emojis. They are an ice cream cone with sprinkles (or jimmies) on top. It's fun to see an outdoor picture from the Southern Hemisphere, with their seasons are opposite ours. Apparently they don't get much snow in Brisbane, so to me the place always looks like spring and summer. The picture she attached of the guy voting in his bathing suit can make you think they just might have an enviable, relaxed lifestyle. And we have LA.

Ms. King Tweets so often during the day that my wonder is that she doesn't get fired for not paying attention. But when you're a digital producer/journalist, your job is social media, so who can tell anyway what she's doing with those thumbs and fingers.

There's a bit of  running joke between Jen's Tweets from Down Under that are directed at me. Australia is famous for one's finding snakes and spiders in rather populated places. She likes to show me pictures of the latest slithery soul that has popped its head out from under someone's refrigerator in their kitchen and is now climbing up their wall. One of her latest was to show off two snakes in someone's house that were wrestling with each other. I returned the Tweet telling her that's a great idea for a new Australian reality show.

Steve explained that the spider/snake preconception is so powerful that they once had a guest who was from LA who entered the front door, walked straight through the house, peered out the back door, and in complete seriousness asked, "what is out there." Steve had to assure her she was in the suburbs, and hadn't somehow wandered onto a Kenyan game preserve.

Train track is now posted. So, did the lifelong New Yorker leave the Aussies with any words of advice? With traffic on the opposite side of the road here, I did mention to make sure you look the way you're not used to looking when crossing the street, beware of bikers, and of course, "if you see something, say something."

They love New York.

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The Changing Times

Live long enough, keep most of your marbles, and you have to realize the world has changed from when you first entered it.

I often mentally subtract someone's age from the current year to get their year of birth. Not calculus. I then apply whatever knowledge I have of what the world, though particularly the United States/NYC was like, at the year I land on. Thus, someone I know who just turned 80 was born in 1936. Depression, five years before Pearl Harbor, nine years-old when the war ended. Someone who can have distinct memories of the War years, even though they were fairly young at the time. They cover a lot of ground.

My own impression of what parts of Manhattan were like starts around the first Eisenhower administration. There was a story on the front page of this past Saturday's NYT that reported there are plans afoot to build an underground park, something dubbed the Lowline, out of what was once a trolley terminal under the Williamsburg Bridge, on the Manhattan side, abandoned since it closed in 1948. This acre of land beneath Delancey Street would be a space lit by solar piped light, fed to the subterranean area through mirrors that will allow enough light to create and maintain an underground park, with a wide variety of plantings.

The idea is an outgrowth of the success the High Line has had on the West Side of Manhattan, a park/walkway fashioned where an elevated freight line once plied up and down the West Side between warehouses.

An architect became interested in the old trolley space, teamed with an former marketing manager for Google, and developed plans for what could be accomplished with $80 million.

Funding is nascent, but preliminary approval hurdles have been cleared. A proof-of-concept prototype has been displayed twice and generated excitement.

If anyone knows anything about what this area did look like before what even now is hardly complete gentrification, they could not imagine an underground terrarium.

Two people are quoted in the story about what the underground park might mean. One person is fairly negative, voicing probably what many would say, that they like their parks above ground.  Another person is way more positive, saying, "Sounds like a cool thing to take friends to." I can just imagine the Corona beer and cell phone commercials that might get shot in this space. An episode of 'Younger' would surely shoot there.

The person with the positive spin is Dave Wiskus, 35, a singer and guitar player in a local rock band, Airplane Mode, who was questioned while walking his Italian Greyhound dog toward Delancey Street.

That anyone is living in this area with a Greyhound! of any national strip is all the evidence you need that things have changed in New York City.

And if that's not enough evidence for the jury, consider that the developers have been so successful growing all kinds of plants with piped in solar light that they were even able to grow mint plants, from which lunch break construction workers on the project peeled off leaves to add to their sandwiches.

Talk about a Subway sandwich.

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The Race Tightens a Bit

The race between Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel and Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May got a bit closer the other day with this publication of Prime Minister May's photo in the NYT. The race, you will remember, is for 'The World's Most Photographed Woman with Clothes On.

Until the ascension of Ms. May's position as a female leader of a large European country, Chancellor Merkel pretty much had the field to herself. Now, here comes Ms. May, seen here headed to giving a speech to delegates in Birmingham, England. Her theme is that there is a 'new center ground' to take.

Ms. Merkel is probably mired down with immigration woes, and the announcement by the U.S. Justice Department of a $14 billion fine against Deutsche Bank, causing people in Germany to start to utter the words, "too big to fail," which by the way was an answer to a final 'Jeopardy' question the other night. (I got it.)

In the photo, Ms. May is seen wearing a simple, age appropriate suit, at an age appropriate length, mid-knee, completed with stylish, but sensible shoes with just he right of heel. Simple, but elegant, as they say.

Watch out, Angela. The British are coming.

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Unbuttoned Bill

I haven't worked now for over 5 years. Another way of saying this is I've been retired for a little over 5 years. And it is even longer since I've worn a necktie on a daily basis, despite being employed in white collar jobs for over 43 years.

The last time I put a tie on, someone had died. I did still remember how to make a nice dimpled Windsor knot, but it took me several attempts to get the resulting length correct so that the tip of the tie was slightly above the belt. Several attempts.

I have an image someday of someone having a garage sale with the contents of my closet, and draping the ties I have over say a ladder, and putting a price on any one of them, or making a 5-for- something offer. And no one buys a single tie. Why? Because very few men wear ties these days, no matter what their line of work. I mean, doctors aren't even running all around in white coats these days.

Lucy Liu looked cute in her necktie on this season's first episode of 'Elementary,' but woman don't count when they wear a tie. It is always about fashion with them. With men, it was a habit that became broken.

I have somewhere near a 100 ties, that if tied end-to-end could provide the escape rope to the ground for a convict, or a wife's lover, from a 12 story window. Not as many as the elderly gentleman in Burberry's whose attention I was drawn to years and years ago when I overheard his wife announce to a sales associate that she wanted to take a video, so she could record her husband's 500th purchase of a necktie. She might have been joking. She might not have.

Ties are passe. When AOL and Time Warner merged the CEOs had opposite ideas of what looked cool. The AOL guy showed up with a tie, and the Time Warner guy showed up without a tie for the news conference. No wonder the merger failed. They couldn't agree on the dress code.

The above picture is of former President Bill Clinton, tieless, after hoarsely speaking this past Monday in Flint, Michigan on several subjects, one of which was health care, remarks that are as funny as anything you've ever heard a politician, current of otherwise utter.

Bill, in animated fashion, made remarks that Republicans are having more fun with than perhaps what Republicans should be allowed to have, when the sound byte has Bill telling the crowd that the current Obama health care plan is..."a crazy system...it's the craziest thing in the world...where peoples' premiums are doubled and have their coverage cut in half."

If you've been reading obituaries you know that Eddie Antar, the founder of the Crazy Eddie electronics store chain that years and years ago lit up the New York, New Jersey area with, as Crazy Eddie's famous TV pitchman, Jerry Carroll proclaimed, "...prices that are insane!"

Mr. Carroll has been out of this kind of animated pitching ever since Crazy Eddie went out of business years ago, when a stock fraud scheme consumed its founder. Eddie Antar has only recently passed away, so any hopes that Mr. Carroll will find work hawking the virtues of an electronics store, Crazy Eddie or otherwise, are slim.

But, consider of what use the Republicans can make of the old Jerry Carroll commercials. From now until Election Day there's a window of time that Jerry screaming into a "Paid for By... I Support this Message..." TV ad can once again proclaim that prices are "in-sane!" Obama's. "His health care prices are in-sane!" There are people in advertising who are going to regret not reading my blog.

What has this got to do with ties? I think a loosened neck can be a good thing, or as dangerous as "loose lips sink ships."

Can wearing a tie keep you from saying dumb things? Not if you consider the Republican candidate, Donald Trump, who is always seen in a suit and tie, and probably wears one to bed, or maybe even to the bathroom at 3:00 A.M. when he Tweets about corpulent beauty queens.

The baseline for The Donald is only now being drawn. He's probably been like whatever you want to call him for decades, but is only now getting everyone's due to his presidential candidacy. Bill, on the other hand, was the president who did dress the part, for the most part, with suit and tie.

Bill, I've got a closet full if you want to go back to wearing one. It might help keep you out of being an ad for the Republicans.

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The Slogan

The Egyptian duo who unwittingly disarmed a bomb in the Chelsea area of Manhattan on September 17 when they reached for a knock-off Louis Vuitton bag have been further identified now by name and occupation: Egyptian airline security guards.

That's right, the, "See something, do nothing" duo actually have jobs as unarmed guards on Egyptian flights. Their role on flights is essentially to handle unruly passengers, air marshall bouncers. They are not under suspicion in any way to be part of the bombs that were placed, but don't really get a glowing review from one official with their airline who tells the world, "These guys are harmless, they would be useless in a fist fight. They cannot in any way be involved." Gee, I feel safer already.

No soup for you guys. The two NYPD detectives from the bomb squad who did disable the bomb as part of their duties received promotions to second grade detective. Is seems the Egyptian guys are painted as pantie-waists.

The two Egyptian men, Abou Bakr Radwan and Hassan Ali are somewhat in hiding due to the attention they've drawn to themselves. Fame of all kinds can be fleeting, but it can take awhile to go away.

Meanwhile, in case anyone was wondering who coined the phrase, "If you see something, say something," all you have to do is read today's WSJ on the man who literally formulated the phrase soon after 9/11, Allen Kay. The phrase is actually licensed by the MTA to other transportation and law enforcement agencies world wide at no fee. Mr. Kay has never received any monetary compensation for the words he strung together.

He does however derive immense pleasure that people have the phrase in their head and do, on occasion "say something" when something is suspicious. And that "something" can turn out to be something that really is suspicious.

I was at the last regular season home game and noticed that the fellow who was in front of us must have left a small carry case under his seat. Did I "say something" because I saw something? No. The fellow was with perhaps his five-year-old daughter and the two of them disappeared for at least three innings to get food at the concession stand. Why people come to a game so famished that their next meal has to be something attained at a long, slow moving line at a concession stand and miss the live action is beyond me. Further, the section I was in you could give a vendor an order and have the food delivered to you. Apparently the father didn't know that.

The woman who did "see something" after seeing the suspicious pot on the New York sidewalk sans its Louis Vuitton bag headed to Egypt was Jane Schreibman, a 66-year-old photographer who first saw the object, continued on, but then doubled back and called the police.

Ms. Schreibman explained that as a New Yorker she's always looking at garbage. I will say this is not a trait performed by all New Yorkers. It is a trait that my father had as he furnished parts of our living room with discards rescued from the curb. I can still see the tilted living room end table brought in from the Sabatino's curb two houses down.

The new slogans, "if you see something, take something...steal something" are of course satirical in origin but not in thought. Umpteen years ago the country singer Roger Miller had a mega-hit with a song he wrote, "King of the Road," about an itinerant hobo who knew how to make ends meet through craftiness, "I know every lock that ain't locked when no one's around."

Roger Miller was born in Oklahoma, not New York.

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Legitimate

One of my all-time favorite pieces of movie dialog occurs in the movie 'Chinatown' when Jake Gittes, played by Jack Nicholson, meets Noah Cross (John Huston) at the orchard as Mr. Cross is enjoying a meal outdoors in the California sunshine.

The Noah Cross character is a crusty old man who knows plenty, and is phenomenally rich through land deals and political connections. He is a one percenter of the era, when California is set to take off in a post-war population and building boom. He's poised to reap plenty of money through control of the water that will provide the life sustaining liquid.

He is a power broker. When Jake remarks that the water that Noah's talking about sits outside the county, so how can it benefit the county, Noah patiently explains that the answer is simple: move the county to where the water is. Expand the boundaries, and viola!, the water in now in Los Angeles county. It's so simple it can make you cry. Gerrymander the water rights.

Noah Cross further explains the facts of life to Jake when he tells him: "politicians, public buildings and whores all gain respectability if they last long enough."

Perhaps the screenwriter was paraphrasing someone else's boast, or was making up an original one. It doesn't matter. It's a great piece of dialouge.

As already mentioned in these postings I read nearly every obituary that's published in the NYT and WSJ, and then some if exposed to other papers. I don't like sci-fi moves, or slasher, gore movies. Many people do however, and their production can prove quite lucrative. So much so that when Herschell Gordon Lewis passed away at 90 he was hailed as a horror visionary for literally creating the first output of gore, blood, mayhem and dismemberment to hit the movie screens. He was so far ahead of himself apparently there were no decency codes that could be applied to severed heads and dripping blood when he produced his first filmed blood bath

A good obituary will end with a zinger, or a pithy quote from the decreased that will sum up their entire life, and Mr. Grimes's obituary on Mr. Lewis does not disappoint when he reveals a 2002 quote from Mr. Lewis.

"To some extent, 'Blood Feast' is an embarrassment...but the result has been a realization of my personal philosophy, which is: 'If you live long enough, you become legitimate.'"

Noah Cross and Herschell Gordon Lewis. Partners in longevity.

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