A Celebrity Sighting

Whether you like them or not, it's exciting to be in close—or somewhat close proximity—with a celebrity: a celebrity sighting. Maybe even a photo with, as easy as that is with a cell phone these days.

For myself, I've had a few, but not enough to talk about, and few of whom are still alive. Longevity gets surrounded by death. This is not about my celebrity sightings, but rather my granddaughter's. A far more contemporary sighting.

Having Easter dinner at my oldest daughter's home in Pleasantville, NY. (My wife, has passed the baton on preparing holiday meals.) My son-in law prompted his daughter, my 14 year-old granddaughter to tell me who she saw at the movies the other night at the 7:30 showing of Sinners at the Chappaqua cinema. (She's was off for Easter spring break.)

"Bill Clinton."
"Wow, really, where?"
"At the Chappaqua Cinema on Thursday night."
"Was he with any sketchy females?"
"No, just Hillary."
"Wow."

Clinton sightings are not uncommon, since Chappaqua is the adjacent hamlet to Pleasantville. Chappaqua is in New Castle Township; Pleasantville is in Mount Pleasant. They are the same in many ways, other than the median income. Chappaqua is lots more. Chappaqua is within walking distance of the family home in Pleasantville.

Bill and Hillary were taking in a showing of Sinners. I asked my granddaughter about the movie and she said it's "violent." She and her girlfriend sat close enough to the Clintons in their reserved seats to observe that Bill is wearing a hearing aid. She said Hillary looked good.

A small security detail surrounded the Clintons. My granddaughter didn't get a selfie with the power couple.

I don't remember when the Clintons started calling Chappaqua home. Hillary of course was twice elected U.S. Senator for New York; served as Obama's Secretary of state, and famously ran for president in 2016, only to be dfeate4d by a real estate developer from Queens. The ignominy will never wear off.

I related my story to a dedicated reader who was surprised to hear I had a 14 year-old granddaughter. Perhaps not as surprised as I am, especially when I consider she has an 18 year-old sister who is in her freshman year at Penn State, studying nursing.

Life if full of nice surprises.

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Jamie Ding. Steamroller

Jeopardy Champion Jamie Ding has entered space, just like the Artemis II astronauts.

Wednesday's game saw Jamie become a 14 day champion with $371,600 in winnings. Right out of the gate Jamie blitzed the opening round before commercial, answering or passing each clue. His opponents never even buzzed in! It was a blitz. After the electronic dust settled, and we learned what we good Americans should be buying, Jamie stood there with $45,000 in winnings: his opponents each with $0. Jeopardy needs a Little League Mercy Rule.

It was like Dr. Fager left them standing in the starting gate, or Willie Mosconi ran the table several times and left his opponent glued to their seat. Ken Jennings opened the next round after commercial stating Jamie had "steamrolled."

Jamie continues to sport the orange themed clothing to honor his grandmother with her favorite color. Going into Wednesday's Final Jeopardy, round, one opponent had to be dropped out because they were in negative territory. Jamie had sucked out all the money there was to have.

All the extra money on the board couldn't bring Jamie's opponents any closer. Headed into final Jeopardy Jamie was sitting on $55,800, One opponent was in negative no-mans land. See ya.

Final Jeopardy: "Mark Twain wrote the quip that on this date of the year, we are reminded of what we are on the other 364."

Easy enough to solve if you realize that the clue is being aired on April 1st, April Fool's Day. Of course Jeopardy is filmed in advance; it is not televised live.

So perhaps Jamie didn't have April Fool's Day at the top of his brain. No matter. The only contender left got it, had insufficient money to threaten.

Jamie on the other hand went into the round with $55,800, the proverbial royal flush.  He was untouchable. So what did Jamie bet? Certainly not all of it and risk the win. But he's got his eye on a record round and wants to finish with $100,000, a princely sum for a round of Jeopardy. 

Astonishingly, Jamie bets $44,200, that if right, will give him that legendary $100,000 round. In a gambler's vocabulary, Jamie is playing with "house money."

Jamie's answer: Labor Day. Oh boy. Ken Jennings applauds the bet, recognizing that Jamie is aiming to be in James Holzhauer territory, but he fails. April 1 is the answer: April Fool's Day. That Mark Twain.

Jamie of course still wins and advances through the next two days like a hot knife trough butter. He finished Friday's round with his 16th win, with a total winnings of $462,401. He's crawling up the leader board.

How high will the numbers go? How do I bet on Jamie? What's the over/under? Are those prediction markets taking action? You don't need to be in Vegas to get down on such bets. All you need is a phone, which doubles as a computer.

There's a maxim in better: never bet on something that can talk. Since Jeopardy is filmed in advance of its showings, piling in 5 days' worth of telecasts in one day's taping, Jamie has either already been toppled, or is still steam rolling along.

There are several somebodies who know about Jamie's status today, in real time There's an audience of course, and the staff associated with the show, The lag time between a taping and its viewing can vary from 2 to 3 months, or 4 weeks to 5 months! depending on the time of the year. Jamie has either taken up living in California, or he's back at his job in New Jersey. No prediction market is touching Jamie bets.

It's a bit like Joe DiMaggio's 56-day hitting streak, when the daily question in the morning was, "did Joe get a  hit yesterday?"

Although Jamie's fate is probably already sealed, I don't know what it is, and don't have the wherewithal to try and find out. I'll set the over/under at this point at 26 games and take the under.

Anyone interested?

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KitKat

The four U.S. astronauts soon to be launched in the Artemis II mission for a few spins around the moon and back, will eventually be the only people who will have probably not heard about the 12 metric ton heist in Italy of collectible KatKat bars, because they will literally be out of this world. It is world wide news. Outside of newborns, who doesn't know anything about candy cars?

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and value is in the hands of the holder. Nestlé is the Swiss company that produces the candy bar, that I only see around Halloween when my wife puts together a variety of mini-bars for what are now the few Trick-or-Treaters we get. KitKat must be popular, because one goblin shouted with joy when I plopped a KitKat in their sack. Go for it kid.

My favorite candies were Canada mints and Mounds bars, those twin chocolate bars covering a coconut filling. Almond Joys with the almonds were okay, but Mounds bars were what I spent my tip money from the flower shop deliveries on.

I may be wrong, but there is something about a heist that grabs our attention. Remember the scene in Goodfellas where the truck driver goes into the diner, leaves the keys to the rig, and Bob's your uncle, his truck is hijacked by the Goodfellas who provide so many story lines to TV and movies. We can't get enough of them, either.

The Wall Street Journal's A-Hed piece, that soft piece of journalism that can be found every day for decades below the fold, now for decades, commenting on silly trends and other quirks of the human race, I doubt is rarely written on deadline. Until day.

The headline tells us: How a Massive KitKat Heist Turned Into Crisis PR Gold

The sub-heading goes: Nestlé response to chocolate robbery shows power of embracing embarrassing news

The WSJ, being a business paper, goes on about how Nestlé and even other companies are trying to turn embarrassment into lemonade.

Details of the heist are limited to the fact that 12 metric tons of the candy bars, 413,793, were "swiped by thieves when they were on their way from the factory in central Italy to Poland. Both the chocolate bars and the truck carrying them remain missing, though no one was hurt in the theft." Pretty dry stuff. They aren't used to reporting on crime. The PR angle follows.

Poland! 12 metric ton of KitKat bars are were headed to Poland. I don't know about you, but I never think of American candy being consumed by Eurozone nations.

The heist details are the truck was traveling on March 26 on a stretch of highway outside Turin when it was stopped by what turned out to be thieves posing as police. (Sound like the Isabella Gardner Museum heist?) The driver was later found, unharmed, but the truck was gone.

That driver will immediately be suspected of being in on it, just like one of the watchmen at the Isabella Gardner museum was. (He wasn't.)

Can you imagine a crew of thieves sitting around sitting around a garage somewhere drinking coffee and annoying each other, waiting for the intel to come through that the truck they want to hit has just left the factory with highly desirable Formula 1 shaped candy bars? Other news outlets carry details of the heist.

According to Forbes, "unlike electronics or high-value components, chocolate requires no technical resale network, It can be moved quickly through informal channels—small retailer, pop-up markets, or even online listings—before authorities can react.

This heist disrupted a carefully timed campaign designed to align with key races, including the Italian Grand Prix at Monza. Marketing windows in motorsports are unforgiving; miss the moment and the impact fades quickly."

My wife tells me that in CVS she's seen KatKat bars in the shape of Easter bunnies for the soon-to-arrive holiday. The day after Easter an Easter bunny shaped candy car is just another candy bar, and can be ignored.

Will this heist be like the Quebec maple syrup heist? They made a NetFlix movie out of that one. Will it be solved, or will it go ice cold like the missing Rembrandts and Vermeers from the Isabella Gardner museum?

The perpetrators of the recent Louvre heist have been caught (save one, I think.), but the jewels have not. There was just a heist of three paintings from a small museum in Parma Italy. A Matisse, Renoir and Cézanne were all taken in three minutes, the thieves racing away as the alarms kicked in.

But candy bars? Who do you fence them to? Who is going to absorb over 400,000 candy bars, no matter how you split them up? Is there a European bodega network that will snatch them up and put them next to other candy offerings?

For their part, Nestlé says the candy bars all have identifying codes. Maybe AI will crack its first case.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com 

Renewal by Andersen

I need another house.

Not necessarily a vacation home, just another house that needs to have the windows replaced. How else can I take advantage of the affordability that will let me go without paying for 18 months? No money down: Zero, Zilch, Nada. 

I feel like I'm keeping people out of work since there are no windows in my home that need replacing. That's been done decades ago. I feel I'm keeping people out of work.

No design consultant to greet at the door. No expert measurer; no certified installers, no customer service team. I'm keeping a small platoon of people from invading my home. It's the advertising campaign that must have an end. But when?

An invitation size envelope lands in the mailbox Friday.  "Our neighbor at..." is the addressee. It's okay they don't know our name. It's better that way. Open the envelope and there is a card telling us about the offer that you'd have to be in a coma or in prison (maybe at the space station) not to have heard by now: 

"This month, take advantage of our special financing! No Money Down...No Payments... No Interest....with trailing smaller print: "if paid in full." Well yeah. No free lunch here.

Huge phone number, and of course a QR code to scan and schedule online. We all know how to do that, right? What the hell does QR stand for, anyway? Two years my friend and I were at a table in the Fourstardave Sports Bar at Saratoga Race Track and in the center were instructions to scan the QR code for the menu.

Not knowing at all how to do this, I had to ask the waitress to verbally give us the menu. It's not extensive, so this doesn't take long.

The following year we were at the same table and there was a print menu on the table and no QR code. Know your audience.

I have to say, I am a bit envious of anyone who might be needing and ordering new windows these days and having the choice to pick out window trim in a variety colors. Designer colors of course. Black does look nice. Up to know it was the Henry Ford marketing maxim: Any color you want, so long as it's white.

Who gets to stuff newspapers with Renewal by Anderson inserts? Is this a job I might get paid for in retirement? I'm sure the publishers are not spinning newspaper copies off the presses with these nuggets tucked inside the sections.

The back of the mailed invitation to redo my windows and take advantage of the special financing might give a clue as to when Renewal by Andersen might be disappearing, somewhat like Mikie Sherrill's ( I was a Navy pilot.) ads for running for governor in New Jersey this past November. There's an expiration date of  the renewal campaign: 3-31-2026, looking like it's handwritten by the person stuffing these inserts in envelopes to "Our Neighbor At..." Auto pen, definitely.

Will the campaign end and another one follow? Only time will tell.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

On His Way

Jamie Ding, now an 8-day Jeopardy champion, is headed for rare air. His streak is now approaching double digits, and he seems like he's permanently at the champion's podium.

His winnings are approaching "real" money, something Ken James slyly alluded to after Jaimie's 8-day total of $222,203. Financial advisers are circling,

Jamie has cracked the 5-game ceiling and is now eligible to compete in the Tournament of Champions, whose 2026 Champion is Paolo Pasco, a crossword puzzle creator, 

Jaimie explained the persistent orange themed outfits to having something to do with his grandmother who was asked what her favorite color was. Orange.

The bureaucrat moniker is not so clear. It has something to do with his job, which is also not so clear. Given that his father is a neuroscientist, and the family moved from Australia, where Jaimie was born,  to Nashville, and that the parents made their way out of Communist China, there is my suspicion that they are connected with classified U.S. government work. Just speculating.

Jaimie hails from Lawrenceville, New Jersey, which is a stone's throw from Princeton, and where Einstein finally came to rest at the Institute for Advanced Studies. Think the movie Oppenheimer. Just saying.

Jaimie is also described as a law student. He is near 30, his exact age not revealed. He looks near 30 anyway.

Most of his games are runaways where he is monetarily over 2x ahead of his nearest challenger. That's when you're holding 4 aces, or a royal flush and can only be beat if you're crazy.

I'm looking forward to seeing how far Jaimie will advance in the game count. He's hot yet in double digits, like Harrison Whitaker, but he's getting close.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

How She Rolls

Maureen Dowd in her NYT Sunday Opinion piece reminds us of the circles she travels in. If you are anywhere near suicide and need a push, all you need to do is just read the headlines of the end-of-the-world- stories in this section. Newspaper assisted suicide. Available weekly if at first you don't succeed.

Examples:
•First page: Whims, Impulse, Memes and Lies...America should never fight  a war like this.
•This Is What Trump Is Fixated on Right Now?
•Better Ways To Spend the War's Billions
•2008's Financial Crisis Was Bad. What's Next May Be Worse.
•Joe Kent Blames Israel for the War. So Will Many American.
•An Unjust War Without Plan or Purpose
•Americans Deserve The Truth About Iran
•Dubai Was Supposed to Be safe, But War Doesn't Work That Way
•Measles Is Roaring back, and We're Not Ready
•White House to Music Fans: Just Kidding About Coming to Save You

Whew! 
Ain't nothing good happening here.

But Maureen's column is a bit of sunshine. At least until it devolves into an anti-AI screed.

Maureen is always dropping names. I'm guessing she's considered a Washington D.C. political reporter, but she's really a Hollywood reporter.

She reminds us where he goes: "I certainly felt aspirational. I aspired to have fun in the beautiful, curvaceous new wing of the Los Angeles County Museum of art—before my high heels started to hurt"

The translation is she was at Vanity Fair's after Oscars party. That's some columnist's gig she's got there. Expenses to attend the Oscars and rub elbows after? Well, at least it turned into a story. For tax purposes it had to.

We are treated to the celebrity eye-candy Maureen encountered. "Stars like Larry David and Al Pacino, who often dart away early [implication is she's been there before] were grinning and lingering. And who doesn't like to see Mick Jagger devilishly dancing with Jon Batise." Who? Isn't that two guys? Don't ask Jake, it's Hollywood.

Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez "were acting as passionate as a couple of teenagers." Jeff, get a room to keep the honeymoon from being over with your overstuffed pool toy. (My daughter's description of Lauren.)

"Timothée and Kylie Jenner were holding court across the bar from Kendall Jenner and Jacob Elordi.[Wuthering Heights] A gorgeous Jane Fonda [83, a reworked visage], was naturally, literally getting her  feelings off her chest, sporting a "BLOCK THE MERGER" button on her deep-brown sequin gown—referring to the depressing marriage of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery." Nothing new here. Jane is always beseeching the government to do something. 

"The party was a euphoric vibe." At least until Jeremy O Harris, a young playwright who shot to fame with "Slave Girl and Sam Altman, "the sly C.E.O. of OpenAI" got into a protracted grudge match over the use of AI by the Pentagon for classified work. Harris accused Altman of being "Goebbels of the Trump Administration."

Harris later said he misspoke after too many martinis.  You think? He meant to compare Altman to Friedrich Flick, a prominent Jewish businessman who made a fortune working with the Nazis. Frick was found guilty of war crimes at Nuremberg and sent to prison." Altman's people are mad at Harris for being antisemitic.

And there you have it. The Washington reporter is the Hollywood reporter. Mark that expense report PAID. After all, Maureen did win a Pulitzer decades ago.

Gee whiz Maureen. You ruined all the fun! We find out more about a tipsy playwright than where Jeff Bezos's hands might have been headed in that "dimly lit" little corner.

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Florida

There may not be many people who are more protective of Florida than the journalist and novelist Carl Hiaasen. In highly comical ways his characters wade through a state that is gaining population faster than raging flood waters. Carl shows no mercy toward developers and politicians. They are the enemy.

Carl has famously created a character named Sink, who now only has one eye, lives under a bridge, and is a former governor of the Sunshine State. Carl's books are hilariously funny, while trying to make a point.

In one of his books, 1987's Double Whammy, Carl gives us R.J. Decker, a disgraced newspaper photographer turned private investigator. Decker is hired to investigate cheating in a Florida bass-fishing tournaments, which draws him into a dangerous, chaotic plot involving murder and a memorable character, the vigilante former governor Skink, who has one eye and lives under a bridge.

RJ Decker has been turned into a recurring ABC broadcast show based on Mr. Hiaasen's P.I. character who was once a news photographer for a Miami newspaper, played by Scott Speedman. Mr. Hiaasen is himself a journalist for  the Miami Herald. Many of Mr. Hiaasen's hilarious books have newspaper backdrops, and great South Beach colored pastel covers

 RJ is quite likeable with emerging facial growth that might some day be a better beard. He's a railroaded ex-con, who wears colorful floral shirts with no T-shirt, and was married to a woman who divorced hum to live with her lesbian detective wife. RJ tell us he always knew his wife was "bi".

While spending 18 months in jail protecting his manhood, RJ took courses and passed the test to become a licensed private investigator. However, being a convicted felon for beating up a robber breaking into his car to steal his cameras, who happened to be the troublesome son of a corrupt state senator with aspirations for the Governor's mansion, RJ cannot carry a handgun. But his brain works fine, and he helps solve some cases that his journalist wife's lesbian  detective is having trouble solving. RJ gets in the way quite often. But with good results. His ex graciously (there is no animosity between them) lets him live in the pool house since his trailer home fell into the sinkhole. in the trailer park. Home sweet home for Hiaasen's people.

We are first introduced to RJ as he sits on the courthouse steps admiring a wrapped candy bar. An attractive lithesome woman plops down next to him and with some suggestive talk we next see RJ in the back of his car in an empty, indoor parking garage having sex, steaming up the windows, with her emerging adjusting her dress, and RJ at least naked from the waist up, wondering what the hell just happened. If only it were that simple.

Turns out she's the step-sister of the youth RJ took out when he caught him trying to break into his car. It didn't matter that the kid "threw the first punch." RJ is found guilty, a verdict heavily sealed when the lithesome young woman testifies in court that RJ is the man who beat up her young step-brother. She felt sorry for him in the parking lot, since she knew where he'd be going after she left the witness stand.

It's great to finally see the imagination of Mr. Hiaasen come to the little box. The Florida settings are authentic, and not where the tourists are. Carl is listed as one of the many executive producers. What do all those executive producers do? Get paid, I guess.

I've been reading Mr. Hiaasen's books for years, and even re-reading them. I even read the YA books. Right now I'm re-reading Tourist Season where Brian Keyes, a former reporter for the Miami Sun tries to investigate the series of deaths being perpetuated on Florida residents and tourists by a wacko columnist for the paper, Skip Wiley. Skip leads a four member squad of nut jobs who are the Las Noches de Diciembre and have plans to disrupt the Orange Bowl parade and cause harm to the beauty queen.

Ship Wiley believes if he causes enough damage to the reputation of Florida, all the people who moved there in the past decades will leave and the state will revert to what he remembers it was like when he was a kid. The good old days. Everyone wants the good old days.

There are advantages to re-reading a book I have no memory of how it turns out. I don't have to buy another book. And, there is no addition to be made to the towering stack of books shown in my nightstand photo that approaches the ceiling.

The photo was taken in 2009, and still would be representative of the height, which means I have subtracted book as I've added. The stack drives my wife nuts, but we do not actually have room for another bookcase. I've love to have a stack of books frame a doorway and walls, but I'm not going to get away with that in this lifetime.

In one of many prior postings, I've remarked how Mr. Hiaasen uses what for me are to die for phrases. I'll try memorialize a few more here.

Viceroy Winston, a former running back for the Miami Dolphins, and a member of Las Noches de Diciembra crew, when happy, flashes his "touch down smile."

As he another member of the wacko brigade are casing out the beauty pageant as security guards, they come across some rehearsals of the contestants for the pageant.

"Viceroy Wilson had never seen such large bright teeth on a white person. You could tile swimming pool with teeth like that."

With a metaphor that, I'd like to go back add the swimming pool tile to the description of Good Day New York's  Tina Cervasio who can't stop preening and tossing her head and showing off her choppers.

The latest episode of RJ's encounters to solving a crime, are to interview people connected with being a high school's mascot dressed as a green sea cumber. Pure Florida. I don't know what the reviews are for RJ Decker, but it is an appealing show. With Mr. Hiaasen somewhere near the helm, it should get renewed. I'll be disappointed if it isn't

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