The Put Down

There are some quotes that should make it into "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations," but sadly won't. I'm here to try and memorialize them as best as I can. The pictured edition is the volume my mother had, and the one I grew up with.

I've written about these bon mots before. Call it utterances you can use on your own in the future when the time is right. People will think you're using a gag writer. You may even get invited to appear on a talk show if you're good at it and get the right exposure.

Since it's now a week since my last posting, I start to wonder what is going to set me off on a writing jag? Obituaries are usually a good muse for blog postings, and this time one came through.

You never know when you're going to encounter a bon mot in an obit. It could be the kicker at the end, a quote from the deceased, or something said about them. In this case it's about a movie they appeared in, a critic's unkind comments.

The movie is "Harold and Maude", described as: "a quirky romantic comedy." No kidding.  

The woman gripping handlebars of the Harley is Ruth Gordon, and the lad on the back in Bud Cort, the subject of the obituary: "Bud Cort, 77, Dies; Star of the Classic 'Harold and Maude.'"

It's a 1971 movie that you might not be old enough to remember, even the title, much less ever having seen it. It was poorly received, but given time, it's become a cult classic and "considered one of the best films of the 1970s." You remember the '70s, right?

For some reason, when I saw the title, I thought it was an Art Carney movie about him with a cat. But that's another movie. I never saw "Harold and Maude," and based on the description of "Ruth Gordon's  79-year-old, happy-go-lucky Holocaust survivor" who lives in an abandoned railroad car who has a romantic relationship with a teenage Bud Cort, it is not likely to ever make it to a list of movies I'd like to see. I'm not sorry I missed when it was first out.

In retrospect, the movie, while initially taken to the cleaners in its reviews, has emerged as a cult classic, and one of the best films of the '70s. This is no doubt to a critical review of the movies of Hal Ashby, the director. Have enough pompous words written about you in a Sunday section, or a magazine, and eventually you're famous again, I guess. And an artistic genius. Whatever.

A good obit writer, and The New York Times's Clay Risen, having joined the obit desk fairly recently, is a good obit writer. It is the obit writer's job to set the backdrop of the era the deceased lived in. Additionally, Mr. Risen does a good job of excavating a review of the movie—in this case from Variety—that tells you all you need to know about he movie if you were considering on seeing it.

"It has all the fun and gaiety of a burning orphanage."

With or without the children inside?

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

LXXXVIII

Quick, what number is that? Well, it's a Super Bowl coming to you 28 years from now. Based on actuarial tables I'm not likely to be around when it does. My viewing streak will be broken by then. Halftime won't be on mute. Death has its advantages. I won't be watching.

But I watched last night's game My streak is at 60. I started to watch a bit of halftime, but the music is not my music. Reminds me of being on the C train as soon as we got to Brooklyn. Not even a raft of shaking female behinds could sway me. So I left TV on and did something else.

I guess Bad Bunny was trying to give us the impression of cutting sugar cane in Puerto Rico. I have nothing against a guy who wants to dress like a rabbit. In fact, I got a kick of him when he reminded Trevor Howard, host of the recent Grammys, that when Trevor asked if he could come live with him in Puerto Rico since things are so bad here in the States, Bunny didn't miss a hop, and reminded Trevor that Puerto Rico is part of the United States. One woke drone shot down.

I get a kick out of telling people that once upon a time a white, singer-songwriter, woman, Mary Chapin Carpenter, stood on a stage at halftime with her band and sang, "Down at the Twist and Shout." Once upon a time things really were simpler.

I remember Springsteen almost sliding into a cameraman; Shakira and J-Lo spinning on poles: Madonna climbing up and down on blocks while singing and seemingly putting her life in danger.

Of course the most memorable halftime award has to go to Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake who while singing "Rock Your Baby" got to the end of the song with the lyric, "bet I'll have your body by the end of this song," and quick as you can, pulled on a Velcro piece of fabric and exposed Janet Jackson's left breast.

My wife came into the living room and I told her I've just seen Janet Jackson's left breast. She thought I was mistaken.

No, the earthquake that followed that 2004 halftime show took a long time to stop registering on the Richter Scale.

The Super Bowl commercials that have become a hallmark of creativity were hardly cutting edge this year. Sophia Vergara stepped into a pair of Skechers, and I think appeared in some other commercial where she's in a plane. Like a lot of commercials I couldn't tell you what they were selling. I wonder how many people have ever appeared in more than one commercial in any one year.

Lots of A.I. themed ads, with one fellow putting his foot up on a desk relaxing because his work for the day was done: he got A.I. to do it. Who the "f'" are they kidding? If  A.I. is doing his work, who needs him?  His free time will be spent, unshaven, at the unemployment office. Tell it like it is.

I wasn't taking notes, but one produce/service? was using Justin Timberlake's song "Rock Your Baby" as its backdrop. I wonder if anyone realized that.

Moronic commercial? I'll nominate Will Shat (William Shatner) telling America we need more fiber in our diets. He's pitching Kellogg's Raisin Bran cereal. "Shat," how cute. What the hell is that, the past tense of "shit" as a verb? Yep,  the OED tells me: verb pa. t. & pple: see shit verb. The "p" stands for past; the "t' stands for tense; "pple" stands for participle. Does anyone realize that they finally zipped a form of "shit" to be said on mainstream television?  I never liked Shatner anyway.

Come to think of it, the right amount of fiber in your system and you might be able to tell anyone who will listen that you just "shat" and now feel better. Maybe they were going for that all along. Just saying.

But of course there was a game in between all this. Thank goodness.  Perhaps not exciting with a defensive show being put on by the Seahawks, but certainly enjoyable, if that's where your allegiance (or money) was headed.

Mike Tirico and Chris Collinsworth were good as the announcers. Chris, because he played the game couldn't help remarking that what was being displayed was a defensive gem by the Seahawks. It was.

The only slight charge of electricity came at the end, when there was hope that the Patriots would surge in the final moments and tie the game. Nope. 

All week long I checked the points spread and the over/under. I do not bet on sports, but I told my wife that if I did, I would take Seattle and give the 4½ points and take the under in the over/under set at 45½ points. With a 29-13 score for a total of 42 points the under looked in danger as the Patriots seemed to come to life. Didn't happen. The under stood.

Sixty. I never thought about it, but 60 in 2026 is the number of Super Bowls played, as well as the 60th anniversary of my high school graduation. 

I got an email from the Alumni people informing its members that in October they were scheduling several class reunions, and that 1966, was the featured class. If interested, answer the short survey as to desired format (buffet, sit-down dinner, etc.) if you were to attend. I thought why not, and filled it out. It's just a short trip into the city.

I emailed the only classmate I've kept in touch with and asked him if he would attend as well. He lives in Lancaster, Pa, but still has several family members in the New York City area. He said it might be nice to see some other old fossils.

I distinctly remember getting a haircut the Monday after the first championship game in 1967, when it was the showdown between the N.F.L. and the A.F.L., and bragging rights as to which was the better league.

The barber near the flower shop had the radio on, and it must have been one of those talk shows when whoever was talking was trying to give Kansas City some credit for only being behind 14-10 at the half. The sports talk of that era was filled with viewing the upstart A.F.L. as playing inferior football to the N.F.L. 

That first game ended with Green Bay winning 35-10; it was called a Championship game, as was the second meeting the following year between the Green Bay Packers and the Oakland Raiders, with Green Bay winning, 33-14. The A.F.L. was still considered inferior.

But the leagues were merging and the third meeting was really the first Super Bowl. But Pete Rozelle, the N.F.L. commissioner that all football owners should pay homage to, called that championship  game between the Jets and the Baltimore Colts the Super Bowl, and labeled it III, Roman numerals, to portray it as a historic clash fit for the Roman Coliseum. Thus, Roman numerals have forever followed, reaching undecipherable, and impractical lengths.

Sitting in that barber chair in 1967 I was not thinking ahead as to what I, or the rest of world would look like in 60 years. I was making no projections. Sixty years hence was not even a thought. One year hence wasn't either.

Now I've got 60 years to look back on, and will perhaps get to share some memories with classmates in October. What can I say now 60 years hence? 

It's been a surprise.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

On the Waterfront

It was a good while ago when I read it, but I never forgot Anthony DePalma's valentine to his father about his working as a longshoreman on the Hoboken Docks.

It was in the New York Times Sunday Magazine section that I used to read religiously. Not so much anymore. Never mind why. The reason I'm thinking of it again is because I saw a book review in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, "On This Ground," by Anthony DePalma, reviewed by Naomi Schaefer Riley.

Even since the Sunday magazine story, which was in 1988, I always looked for Mr. DePalma's byline in the NYT. Generally his stories were about the waterfront, its changes, its organized crime side, the latest corruption cases against organized crime. He wrote what he knew best.

I always wondered by I was no longer reading Mr. DePalma's byline. Simple. He left the Times in 2008 and devoted his time to teaching and writing several books. On the lively Google page his name takes you to  you see a wiry man of 73, who looks hale and hearty. He's only a few years younger than myself, so we've been alive for the same presidents.

His current book is about a Newark Catholic prep school that came back from the abyss of the riots and is thriving quite nicely under Father Edwin Leahy. Mr. DePalma is himself a product of New Jersey Catholic school education, graduating Seton Hall University. 

His current book tells of the year he spent at St. Benedict's Prep interviewing students, faculty and administrators. The reviewer is a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute who is the author of "No Way to Treat a Child." Mr. DePalma's book gets a resounding thumbs up.

It was nice to learn that Mr. DePalma is still with us. In his Sunday magazine piece titled, "From Fathers to Sons on the Waterfront," Mr. DePalma writes of growing up in Hoboken with 5 siblings, with a mother who controlled the house and a father who worked as a longshoreman on the Hoboken docks, until one day in 1971 he went to work and the gates were closed. Locked. For good. Basically, containerization changed everything.

His father was 60 when the gates were locked. He had been on the docks for 32 years. Eventually, his father is an A-Man, the most senior of the longshoremen which guarantees him work, or pay even if there is no work.

When they were making the movie "On the Waterfront" Anthony's father tells of the time the movie people wanted to use "his legs" on camera for the scene when Terry Malloy, played by Marlon Brando, staggers back to the shack after his fight with Johnny Friendly, played by Lee J. Cobb. His father declined. He wanted to work. (As to whose legs might have been used, if anyone's, it is left to those who research movies.)

Mr. DePalma never worked on the docks. His grandfather and uncles did. His father enjoyed his work and took pride in the accomplishment of unloading a ship and neatly stacking sacks of cargo for their next journey. His son, Anthony. works with palettes of words.

But here's the sentence in Mr. DePalma's article that I've dined on. so to speak.

"Legend has it that in the old days, an Italian shoe manufacturer used to send his goods to New York in two shipments in insure they weren't stolen: first the left shoes, then the right. Containers effectively ended that kind of pilferage."

I love anecdotes. All my life I seem to insert them into a conversation with someone. I'm always telling a story. I have a cousin who told me that when he and his family visited us in Flushing, coming in from Illinois to see my mother, I kept him laughing so hard with stories. I have no memory of this, but I do know I could have only been maybe 7 when the family visited.

I once had a cluster of salesmen at Saks in the men's department in hysterics when I told them the left/right shoe tale. I of course inserted a bit of imaginary  dialog about the guys opening up the crates and finding only shoes for one foot.

There was once a New Yorker cartoon of hippies holding up a Fink bread truck. One of the hippies tells his accomplices, "Hey man, it really is bread."

I see a cartoon of wise guys opening a crate of Italian designer shoes and seeing that there are only shoes for the left foot: "Hey, where we gonna find de people wid two left feet?"

My work life eventually morphed into the detection of fraud in health insurance. I once closed a meeting with the tale of the left and right shoes being separately shipped. People who commit fraud are clever, and I love it when there is a clever way to thwart it.

Here's to the Italian shoe manufacturer.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

I Dropped Something

Ever drop something on the floor? Sure you have. Have you quickly found it? Not very likely. Where did it go?

I'm not talking of dropping something big, like a dollar bill. No, something small, like a screw, a nut, a pill.  Einstein said matter can disappear by converting it into energy. 

When you drop something on the floor and can't find it, the disappearing matter has been converted into the energy of your trying to find it. Good Luck. The object has disappeared into some wide abyss, probably never to be found no matter how hard you look on your hands and knees. It's gone. Your floor has made something disappear.

Right now I'm still looking at sections of the kitchen floor where I heard a pill drop. I didn't see it drop. I heard it, and as such, I know it landed somewhere. Ha! Come and find me.

I cleaned the same kitchen floor a few days ago and came across a pill I dropped from some other day. A different pill; a different size and color. I didn't notice what part of the floor it came from, but there it was, the missing pill from last week. Or two weeks ago. I threw it out. 

I scan the kitchen floor pretending I'm in a helicopter dispatched from sea and rescue unit to look for survivors. I mentally stare at the floor as if there are quadrants. I slowly sweep my vision over all parts. I make believe I'm searching for important people like Amelia Earhardt, John F. Kenedy Jr. and the Bessette sisters. I report back into my imaginary headset: "Negative."

I report back into my imaginary headset.

Anyone who might have crashed in a plane, or been in a ship wreck. I imagine it's urgent, like looking for John Kennedy Jr. It doesn't help. No matter how much I concentrate on what is really not a large kitchen floor, even after imagining I'm searching in quadrants, I come up empty. It's disappeared.

Amerlia Earhardt...The Bessette sisters...Judge Crater.

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