Jeopardy and Long-Running Champions

If because of the holidays you've been missing your nightly dose of Jeopardy, you might return to it and find that the world hasn't changed all that much for Amy Schneider, a computer engineer manager from Oakland California, who has anchored herself in the champion's lectern now for over 20 days and is due to take home at least over $800,000. She's in rare air. Her totals change each  day, ever upward.

My guess is long-running champions are good for ratings. I know when they had that two-week hiatus of "Professors Championship" I tuned out most nights. Boring.

But when the lights go up on the Alex Trebek stage and the introductions are made, there's Amy, a stout 40ish woman who if you look closely has a small nose ring attached to her left nostril. Well, she is from California. Doesn't Governor Gavin Newsom admit to having pierced nipples? TMI?

To me, Amy is at the upper range of age that Jeopardy contestants usually clock in at. There are never any contestants who are septuagenarians for instance. They can't get past the audition with TV show and song title clues that they know nothing about. When those categories come up, I'm ignorant.

The host Ken Jennings tries to create some drama, but Amy clicks off the answers like sinking the break ball in pool. She then proceeds to run the table, leaving the other contestants marooned at the lecterns vainly trying to buzz in, to no avail.

Buzzing in is the key. No wasted motion. Amy doesn't play a tactical game by diving for the high value questions first. She starts at the top, and runs her way down. Sometimes you forget there are other contestants present.

And before you know it, she has amassed a sizeable margin. Her Daily Double bets are modest, and she generally sinks the 9 ball at the end by getting the Final Jeopardy answer right.

Only once last week she could have been caught when she overplayed her final bet. Had she gotten Final Jeopardy wrong and the other contestant was right, she would have been out of there.

The other contestants are so dominated by her that you wonder how they got on the show. We don't really know exactly when they have filmed these segments, but one of the questions yesterday involved knowing that Kathy Hochul was New York's first female governor.

Since Andrew Cuomo only resigned in August, paving the way for Ms. Hochul's succession, we know at least that there is some relative freshness to when these segments are filmed.

None of the three contestants identified the Hochul question correctly, but that was somewhat understandable since Amy is from the West Coast. But why the dunce in the middle, who was billed as being "from Brooklyn" didn't know the answer is beyond me.

But with Milennials, there  is a vast difference in being "from Brooklyn" (read living there; moved from somewhere else) and actually being from Brooklyn—like born dere, ya know?

Ken Jennings has pointed out how infrequently Amy misses the Final Jeopardy question. He says she's batting the best at it of all contestants he ever had the experience to work with. But for the most part, she doesn't even need the Final question to seal the deal. The other night she stood pat, bet nothing, but knew the answer anyway.

Because the buzzer means everything, you don't really know if the other contestants don't know the answer, or are just not able to out finger press the champion.

Amy's 21 day total now has her over $800,000—rare air indeed. It will be interesting to see if she can end the year still as the champion.

You just don't know. She might turn out to be the Eveready Bunny—GOAT.

http://www.onooframp.blogspot.com

A1 and John Madden

If you're still a regular print reader of the NYT then you will certainly have noticed there has been a spate of A1 obituaries, below the fold. It's almost as if  people are racing to leave us before the end of the year so they can make the highlight reel for 2021.

An online reader might not realize that A1 is the front page, and below the fold is the lower half of the front page. Print newspapers come folded, not scrolled. These concepts are likely lost on the online reader.

When I go into the city I will invariably have the print edition of the NYT or the WSJ with me to read on the way in. I know I'm the only person in the train car who is reading a print copy, and probably the only person who would know how to fold a paper so that it's not like you're unfurling a table cloth across  another seat occupant's lap. I am a master of the fold, perfected from 40+ years of riding mass transit, commuter trains and subways into work. No matter how crammed in I ever was, I always managed to put newsprint in front of my face.

The NYT front page obit is obviously accorded to only those who are deemed worthy by the editors. If the person is so noteworthy, an above-the-fold placement might be accorded. This is a 21-gun salute, reserved for only the highest of notables. I don't think even Colin Powell rose above the fold. But an A1 obit, even below-the-fold, is high acknowledgment for a life well lived.

The current procession of A1 obits to me seems notable in that there are so many. It started with Stephen Sondheim, of Broadway music and lyrics fame. His reputation was sealed when he wrote the lyrics to West Side Story while only in his 20s.  I love those lyrics, and think they are among the cleverest ever written.

To me, it's not a surprise that the Steven Spielberg musical has not gained traction with audiences, even allowing for low expectations due to the Covid Omicron outbreak.

The story is purely a NYC Romeo and Juliet tale of lovers who have connections to rival street gangs. Most people these days are not versed in NYC's street gang warfare that was driven by restless youth who were fearful of the Puerto Rican exodus from the island to New York's West Side and other city neighborhoods. The children of longshoremen and teamsters cast an evil eye on the migrating Spanish.

The West Side of the 50s and 60s that was slated for so much urban renewal doesn't exist today. The opening scene of the West Side Story movie is danced on newly bulldozed lots that will give rise to the Lincoln Center complex. Try and find an expanse of empty space like that now. And the elevated West Side Highway, holding so much danger and fright underneath, is long gone.

The West Side was the scene of the Capeman murders in 1959, two teenagers stabbed by a 16 year-old Puerto Rican gang member who mistook them for members of a rival gang. I know two brothers who grew up in the West '50s whose father was petrified for their lives until The Capeman was caught. He was a forerunner to Son Of Sam, but with a switchblade rather than a .44. Paul Simon tried to raise a musical about The Capeman only to see it fail after 68 performances.

Next we have Joan Didion, a writer, poet, critic, essayist, and playwright, who personified New York literary elite. I will confess to have never read anything of hers.

Forward to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Anglican clergyman who fiercely fought against the South African policy of Apartheid, advocating a policy of non-violence that earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, and seeing the dissolution of Apartheid in his lifetime. He was 92, and with no disrespect whatsoever, I truly thought he had already passed away.

Then there's Edmund O. Wilson,  a Harvard professor and research scientist who floated many theories about evolutionary behavior by observing ants. He wrote extensively and won two Pulitzers. He too was 92, and apparently left a vast legacy for others to follow.

And today, we get another A1 obit noting the passing of John Madden, the NFL Hall-of-Fame football coach and broadcaster, who you could probably say was like Sara Lee desserts: "Nobody doesn't like John Madden."

There is a retweet from Joe Drape (@joedrape) of a Conner Ennis (@ennisnyt) tweet who tells of urging Ben Shpigel (@benshpigel) to write Madden's advance obit 10 years ago, guaranteeing that it will appear on Page A1 when the time comes. The time came, and it did appear on A1.

Madden was John Candy in the back of the polka band bus, offering comfort to the mother who left her kid Home Alone while the family went to the airport for vacation.

Surprisingly there is no mention of the All-Madden Team that he would announce at the end of the season, a spot on which was a cherished place for  player. Fox Sports did a Madden feature before Sundays' game. I'm sure they will replay it. It was interesting to realize how many players saw John Madden the announcer, as soundtrack for their careers. After all, he did broadcasts for over 20 years. The Pat Summerall-John Madden broadcast duo was the prime time game of the week. The two teams had to be worth it to have them broadcast the game.

For the longest time I never really thought a turducken was a real thing. Madden awarded it on Thanksgiving telecasts to the winning team. The players of the game got one of the several drumsticks.

A turducken was a turkey stuffed with duck stuffed with chicken. It's a real thing. A butcher who would sell turduckens tells the tale on the Madden Fox Sports feature of how before Madden started talking about them he only sold a few. Afterwards, when Madden started using a turducken as a metaphor for excellence, the butcher couldn't keep up.

Madden's broadcasting popularity was so great that the obit for Harry Reid, the Senate Majority leader who just passed away, was relegated to a teaser on the lower portion of A1. Madden was bigger than a long-term U. S. senator.

And why not. Anyone who could make you appreciate a player who was playing their heart out because their uniform was full of grass stains, or who was so hot that when they sat down on the bench vapor came off the top of their head, had to be somebody you'd take a bus ride with.

http://www.onoffferamp.blogpsot.com

Christmas Past and Past and Past

Once again, @coreykilgannon has proved to be a muse for a posting when he posted the adjacent photo of a incredibly denuded Christmas tree already hitting the garbage on December 23. The tree looks like a bomb hit it, or it was sprayed with Agent Orange. It can't have possibly dried out this fast if it was bought this year. Can it?

Well, being bought this year might be the natural assumption, but it definitely looks like a smaller version of one of the three trees my father kept on his terrace in Crystal City, VA when he worked in Washington over 30 years ago.

There was a tree that looked like the one Mr. Kilgannon posted—fully stripped looking; there was another one that still had some needles and green on it, and obviously was the tree that was a year newer than the naked one; then there was the one that had to be last year's tree because it still looked like a Christmas tree, and one that some birds had taken up residence in.

The terrace was a fire hazard, but my father seemed to escape management's attention to remove the trees, or any entreaties by adjacent neighbors that might have gone, "Ted, don't you think Christmas is over?" My guess is he was just too likeable.

My father was a full-fledged character who seemed unable to part with things. Anything that was used might have some use further down the road; I guess even Christmas threes from three years ago, and certainly last year's tree has not outlived its purpose, right?

He was professional man, an engineer, who just couldn't think anything new was a good thing. He bought used suits from a tailor on 18th Street, Witt and Panetella, adjacent to Pete's Tavern, up the block from the flower shop, and across the street from where he was raised, who altered them to his size. He furnished our home in Flushing with furniture either bought from others, or gleaned from the curb. There were few items that were never pre-owned.

Even when he had a parrot in the apartment it was bought from someone else. But since parrots live to be about 40, my guess is most parrots are pre-owned. He even used the prior owner's name for the parrot, Stash. I used to joke he bought a used Polish parrot. Stash didn't talk, but screeched. He sounded like the Bernard Hermann soundtrack in Psycho when Janet Leigh takes a shower and is no longer needed for anymore scenes because her black and white blood is circling the drain.

We didn't have a car, but if we did, you can certainly believe it would never have been a new one. Once he bought a used car and had it parked in the driveway in the hopes that I would take an interest in it and repair it. It didn't run. I don't know how it got there.

He didn't drive, didn't repair cars, and I was too young, and had no interest. I learned years later when somehow the car disappeared, that his thinking was kicked off by someone at his job that told him he bought a used car for his son to work on. My father thought that was a good idea. He just never told me.

He had trouble throwing out junk mail. I've already written that he piled it unopened in his briefcase and carried it back and forth to Washington with him. It was only when he was finally sick and not working that I emptied his briefcase. He wondered how did I make it so light. 

I wish I had a picture of the three Christmas trees in various stages of fading on his terrace with the pigeons nestled in one.

But then @CoreyKilgannon has provided a nice reminder.

http:/www.onofframp.blogspot.com

Claridge Food Company

How would a seven-year-old boy who when walking on Murray Street to P.S. 22 in Flushing in the 1950s, passing the Claridge Food Company with silver Art Deco lettering that was on both sides of Murray Street by the firehouse, know that he would be passing a company owed by Alexander Garvin's father, Jacques, apparently a wealthy man whose son has now passed away at 80 and who is credited with reinvigorating ground zero after 9/11? It's a lot to process, but that's the realization you can get hit with when you read obituaries.

I'm not going to say I nearly fell over (I was already seated) when I read Alexander Garvin's obituary two days ago in the NYT by Paul Goldberger and it was revealed as background that Alexander grew up in Manhattan, went to Riverdale Country School, then Yale, and that his father Jacques, and the family's wealth, stemmed from the ownership of "the Claridge Food Corporation, a canned goods producer." 

I pretty much defy any reader to tell me they remember Claridge Foods and their location on Murray Street. I passed the factory on my way to school every day through the fourth grade until my father sent me to a Greek school in Beechhurst.

When the weather was warm the doors were open and behind the screens you could see the Black men, smoking, with shovels churning through huge barrels of what was believed to be meat. There was no particular odor, but a wet, hot steaminess blew onto the sidewalk.

My walk to school was unaccompanied. There was only one street to across, Barclay Avenue, a street with so little traffic there was no need for a crossing guard or a STOP sign. There was a YIELD sign at the intersection with Murray Street.

Barclay at that point, running east, bordered the school grounds. There were no homes on it at that point, only small industrial outfits.

P.S. 22 was literally around the corner from the house. We were sent home for lunch. I cannot recall a time that I ever ate lunch in the school building. It was heated by coal and has long been replaced by something that itself is no longer new.

There were two entrances to P.S. 22, one marked BOYS, the other GIRLS. I have a picture of the school, a solid, red brick fortress typical of NYC elementary schools at the time. 

By the time I was going there all classes were co-ed. It had been only a few years before I got there that the building housed K-8th grade. The junior high, middle school grades hadn't yet been introduced.

The Claridge factory could be seen from our backyard, with a large smokestack that at one time belched black smoke on my mother's laundry drying on the line.

At some point the buildings housed Star Catering, which I believe made meals for the airlines. There was an Arnold bread commissary there at some point. The Claridge building on the east side of Murray has been repurposed as something claiming to be "Real Estate Management." The west side building is gone and is an empty lot. For now.

Only once in my life did I ever see a can of goods from Claridge on a supermarket shelf at King Kullen up the street from our house. My father said Claridge made Army rations during the war. This is corroborated by a 1946 story in the NYT in a News of Food section that tells us:

Tinned Corned Beef Hash Is Adaptable to Many Uses by Those Who Cook in Haste

The Claridge Food Company of Flushing, which had hardly started to turn out canned goods for the general trade when the war came along and it had to divert its output to the Army, is back now in civilian production.

Yes Virginia, people used to eat hash, not smoke it. The article is a real foody story about the things you can do with Claridge's hash at 22¢ a pound. 

I wonder if the Garvin family somehow played down where their money was made from, somewhat like when Niles Crane on Frazier learned that his unseen wife's family fortune was derived from restaurant/bar bathroom urinal cakes used in the men's rooms nationwide. After all, an image of meat being worked on with shovels might not be a photo in a silver frame on the family's piano.

As for Alexander Garvin's achievements, they had nothing to be with canned meat. In a series of municipal planning commission postings, he had a hand in shaping what NYC looked like, especially after 9/11. 

Mr. Garvin was the first student at Yale to come away with a dual degree in architecture and urban planning. He taught at Yale for 55 years.

If anyone remembers the imbroglio of opinions and proposals that flooded in when suddenly 16 acres in lower Manhattan had no buildings on it, they will remember that at times it seemed nothing was ever going to get built. 

I was working on the 29th floor of Tower One that day, got down safely to the street after about a 35 minute staircase descent, when I met three other women from my floor who were walking north on West Broadway.

One of the women, Beth, had a husband who worked in the Puck building on Houston Street. He was an architect for Swanke Haydn Connell. When we reached the office and were accommodated by the stunned and somewhat frantic staff,  I sat in a chair in the conference room and said to no one in particular, "boy are they going to fight over this one."  By then, both towers had crumbled.

The obituary tells how Mr. Garvin worked his way through the thicket of conflicting, self-centered interests and was able to help make what we see today as the result of the planning efforts.

Credit is given to Mr. Garvin for restoring Greenwich Street as a through street through the site, rather than being blocked by the original building placements. 

Mr. Garvin was also Mayor Bloomberg's point man on trying to get the Olympics in NYC for 2012. That of course didn't work. No mention is made if Mr. Garvin was behind Bloomberg's desire for a West Side football stadium to be built over the Hudson Yard tracks.

The idea of the Jets and Giants playing on the West Side might have seemed like a terrific idea, but the logistics of crowd and parking killed the plan. My thought on that was that a tailgate meeting of the Budweiser and grilled bratwurst set with the white wine and shrimp set from the U.S. Open crowd might create some sparks. Talk about a divided city.

I wonder if Alexander Garvin's father Jacques ever took him as a lad to see how the hash was made in Flushing.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot,com

Kelso

Anyone of a certain age who is a horseplayer—and you have to be of a certain age to admit to being a horse player—will know the name Kelso, a fantastic horse who won at all distances in the early '60s at NYRA tracks and other venues. He was a crowd favorite, because in those days there was a crowd. I won't even try and count the number of times in his 63 starts he went off as the favorite.

I didn't see Kelso run in person. My entry into the world of handicapping and betting started in 1968, so Dr. Fager and Damascus were the first great horses I saw run. Then Forego then John Henry, then Cigar. In my book, there haven't been any horses after those that can compare. Okay, maybe Zenyatta. 

And being a horse player, I long ago lobbied as a gift the Daily Racing Form's "Champions: The Lives. Times and Past Performances of the 20th Century's Greatest Thoroughbreds." It is a must have book.

Arranged by decades, the comprehensive book covers the greats from the 1890s through the 1990s, stopping at 1999. Okay, that's the 20th Century, but we're 20 years into the next century, how about a new book. The DRF's answer was that there are no plans for one. What's wrong with those guys? 

Never mind, the volume affords a look at the records of the greats, and Kelso was certainly one of the greats, perhaps the greatest. He's so far back in the '60s that when you Google his name the horse Kelso doesn't appear until the second page. You get a few people named Kelso, and a town, but the horse is not first. It's understandable. His era is like what Man-O War's era was to me when I started marking up The Morning Telegraph.

How great was Kelso? Let me count the ways. He was horse of the Year from 1960 through 1964, five straight years. No one has come close to that durability.

He won at all distances: routes and sprints, dirt mostly, and a few times on the turf. He ran 63 times and was 39-12-2, winning $1,977,896, in an era when the top purse was pretty much just over a $100,000. He ran in $3,000 allowance races after winning his first start in 1959. He did not compete in the Triple Crown races, not racing as a three-year-old until they were over in 1960.

His owner was Allaire duPont, an American sportswoman and a member of the French-American Dupont family of chemical manufacturing. His breeding does not suggest where the name Kelso comes from. His sire was Hold Your Hand (from an Alibaba mare) and Maid in Flight by Count Fleet. So, where does the name Kelso come from?

The only time I've ever heard the name was when it referred to the horse. Now I read in a WSJ book review that Christopher Grasso has written a book 'Teacher, Preacher, Soldier Spy' about John Russell Kelso who was a very colorful character who was born in 1831 and assumed many roles in life.

His name would certainly stump a Jeopardy contestant. He was hardly widely known, but still merits a 529 page book from Oxford Press.

As a horse, Kelso's name was so well known that when I started out there was a handicapping tool that was being hawked known as the "Kelco Class Calculator." It was a slide rule that was supposed to reveal hidden class in an entrant. I never even held one. It disappeared.

So where does the name Kelso spring from? Connected with a duPont family name was Kelso some kind of acronym like Sunoco, Esso, or Aramco? Perhaps an alert reader will dive into the origin of the name for me.

Neither the author of the book, Christopher Grasso, or the WSJ book reviewer, Gerard Helferich, carry Twitter accounts, so there is no hope from that quarter.  My guess is they are probably not even aware of the horse named Kelso and his greatness.

Note:

A very alert reader has responded before today's sun set. Barbara Livingston, chief photographer of the Daily Racing Form, who can easily be spotted outside the winner's circle with 12 cameras draped across her body, who I was secretly counting on to weigh in, has offered the definitive explanation of the origin of Kelso's name by searching Newspapers.com Perhaps not as romantic as naming the horse after John Russell, but Kelso was named after a person named Kelso, a friend of Mrs. duPont's. What a gift!

Kelso is named for Mrs. Charles Everett of Wilmington, DE, a friend of Mrs. Dupont's...Mrs. Everett is the former Miss Kelso Alsop, daughter of Mr. And Mrs. Robert Alsop of 210 N. Plum Street...The Times Dispatch, Richmond, VA 12-2-60

When in doubt about a name, consider someone's maiden name.

John Russell Kelso sounds like more than interesting character. The reviewer tells us the author argues "the man embodied the political and philosophical currents running through his times." Way too early for his own talk show.

Since Allaire duPont passed away in 2003 after a significantly long life, anyone who can tell us about Kelso's name is going to be tough. John Russell Kelso lived a long life as well, passing away in 1891, but becoming known to a woman who was born into such wealth in 1913, it is doubtful her horse's name springs from John Russell. Kelso the man was a forgotten man by the time he died.

On October 15, 1983, the 26-year-old Kelso was paraded prior to the start of Jockey Club Gold Cup (a race he won often) at Belmont Park along with champion horse Forego and the still active John Henry in front of a crowd of 32,000 spectators. It was Kelso final public appearance—he died the next day on October 16, 1983.

They couldn't leave the old guy alone.

http://www.onofframp.blogpsot.com

December Advertising

If after watching Sunday football and its commercials you don't go out and buy a truck or a cell phone for yourself or someone else, you must have a credit rating in the toilet.

I don't do year-end wrap ups or political screeds, but I am nevertheless an observer of what life in our country is like. And television delivers more basis for commentary than a Capitol full of invaders who didn't pay to get in.

You can tell what were the best commercials of the year when you see them again at the holiday gift giving season. I love the one where the very attractive couple are in the snow and he tells her he's got something for her. He whistles and a puppy comes bounding out of the fresh powder and leaps into her arms. And she's as cute as that puppy, right guys?

Then she tells him she's got something for him. She puts two fingers in her mouth and emits what I'm sure is a dubbed whistle and suddenly an urban assault vehicle comes crashing out of the snow, spreading powder everywhere. I don't know who's driving the monster, but it's headed their way.

Then there's the one where the cute Millennial couple plop key fobs down on their marble kitchen counter and tell each other they got something for the other for Christmas. (No, it's not an O Henry story.) And wouldn't you know it, outside their front door are two Sherman tank armored personnel vehicles parked by the front door. Each is a different color, and she claims the one he really got for himself. She hugs the hood, looking truly Lilliputian in front of all that horsepower. He settles for the other one as if he really did want the other color.

How these two went to bed the night before and didn't see these mammoth vehicles parked in front is beyond me. They must have been coming in using only the back door.

If you don't think you'll be driving an electric vehicle in 10 years you haven't been watching TV or reading the newspaper. I don't know if it's a hybrid or a pure electric truck that shows off its ability to act as  a generator for your house suffering a through a blackout or whatever, but there it is. Plugging your dark house into your truck using what looks like an extension card to get the Christmas lights going. Ha-ha neighbors, I'm watching football, what have you got on?

Then there's the neighborhood show-off who's demonstrating the adjustable tailgate on some truck he likely really doesn't need. See, you can use it as a step up bumper, drop it all the way down for a long load (that he's probably never going to bring home) and best of all, adjust to a keyboard height so he can set his laptop on it and type out emails. It's obviously very versatile.

The next biggest category of goods being offered are of course cell phones, those hand-held devices that are now as big as a 1950s color TV that are not just your answering service and a telephone, but are the repository for your complete identity.

The "apps" you place on this device will open your car's trunk, open your front door, peer into your refrigerator so you can see what you might need at the store. The apps alas cannot identify the food that's wrapped in aluminum foil and how old it might be. That's just the few apps I remember without setting out to compile a list.

There are all kinds of deals, contracts, no contracts, and of course the now much needed camera lenses so that you can capture all the dance moves that break out on the subway, because face it, everyone who has a cell phone is either themselves dancing, or watching someone dance. Recording disturbances are of course now easier in case the police ask if there were any witnesses.

Food is another heavily advertised category, but usually the kind of food that can be delivered to your door, or consumed in the happy atmosphere of eating out. Beer comes in here as well.

It's already been noted that Big Pharma is hard at work hawking drugs they feel you should ask your doctor about for the symptoms you probably don't have. Sure, some people do have Type-2 diabetes, or COPD, but the other ailments are a lot more obscure. See your doctor. Please.

As the day wears on, unless you're watching the evening news, the pharma ads diminish, probably on the premise that if you've made this far into the day you already took your medications.

A few Sundays ago there was only one football game being broadcast in the New York market—a Jets game. The Jets were playing someone, or at least were on the same field with another team, when I tried the other channels. All in vain. The Jets were the only game on at the time.

The JETS have been woeful for so long that I find it hard to believe that Bobby G., one of the racetrack Assembled members, admits to being a JETS fan. This stems from his once having been a season ticket holder, but bowing out when the need to buy a "seat license" was required in order to secure season seats. It was like asking you to buy a taxi medallion because you needed a ride to the airport. Bobby G. declined.

I expressed sympathy when he told me he was a JETS fan. I said, "Bob, one Super Bowl that was more than 50 years ago (1969) that the average person could identify the Roman numerals that Pete Rozelle introduced to make the game seem epic...they should be made to drop out of the league like a bad performing soccer club and only be allowed back in when they are competitive. They're still in the AFL." He sighed and agreed.

But then I thought of myself who would tell you "I'm a RANGERS fan," perhaps more of a lapsed RANGERS fan, who did once have season seats for about 10 years, who has only seen them win the Stanley Cup (on TV) once, in 1994.  Prior to that it was 1940, 1933 and 1928. There were at least a few trips to the big dance, unlike the JETS who never get there, but you can hardly call the RANGERS perennial Cup contenders.

On the Sunday when it was only the JETS on I stared at another channel that was featuring Emeril hawk an air fryer for $69.99 for four months. I have no idea if that's a good price, but I doubt it. My wife has an air fryer and brings it out now and then to make French fries, which it does a pretty good job of.

My daughter Susan is getting a new stove that also doubles as an air fryer. Sorry Emeril. I'd rather watch the JETS and commercials for trucks and cell phones. The woman who gets the puppy bounding through the snow is a lot cuter.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

Still Alive Through the Power of Words

There are lots of people who pass away that we never knew anything of while they alive, but who, with a decent obituary, should forever remain etched in our memory.

The definition of "decent" is quite subjective, and decent might be the wrong word. "Lively" might be better. No matter, the obituary for Renay Mandel Corren penned by her son Andy should make its way into an anthology of obituaries penned by tongue-in-cheek, no doubt slightly exaggerating relatives who create a colorful person without using crayons. In fact, with sufficient research, someone should be able to compile such a book. It won't be me, but an attentive reader might take the project on.

Take the obituary for Ms. Corren, who would probably upbraid you for even using the Ms. honorific. The obituary is really a death notice written by a son who is not directly named, but is inferred to at the end of the obit as being "her favorite son, the gay one who writes catty obituaries in his spare time, Andy Corren, of–obviously–New York City." The obit has appeared online in the Fayetteville Observer on December 15, 2021 and other newspapers. It's gone viral. Ms. Corren passed away on December 11, 2021, having been born on May 10, 1937. She would thus have some memory of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, but it is not mentioned. 

The cause of her death is not disclosed, but if the lede to the obituary doesn't pull you in, you're just not a reader of obituaries: El Paso TX—A plus sized Jewish Lady redneck died in El Paso on Saturday.

There are a lot of details in the obituary, none of which are the traditional tidbits that usually appear in a death notice, or a tribute obituary. Renay's education is not disclosed, nor is her workplace, other than to say "she worked double shifts with Doreen."

Her parents are not mentioned at all. No names, or occupations. We learn Ms. Corren was born in McKeesport, PA where she probably for the first time went bankrupt. Thus, she probably lived there past high school, assuming attendance at one.

Survivors are named, but acknowledging the Miami phase of her life, it is mentioned that she was preceded in death by Don Shula. When you think of it, anyone who is alive today, or the day after Don's demise, will be preceded in death by Don Shula. Millions. Some experiences are best appreciated when shared.

Renay apparently was an avid bowler, but no lifetime average is disclosed, or what difficult splits she might have made. She just might have been a lady who didn't keep records of scores, likely stemming from her disregard for money and numbers in general. Her son claims there were several bankruptcies. Since it takes seven years to shed the stigma of bankruptcy, the claim that there were several should be believed. I was told once by a lawyer Thomas Jefferson had two bankruptcies. Renay was 84, and obviously joined good company.

The bowling aspect of Renay's life is planned to be acknowledged when there will be a non-denominational memorial on May 10, 2022, at a so far undisclosed bowling alley, but one that will be in Fayetteville, NC. The memorial is apparently open to anyone to attend since the son tells us "the family requests zero privacy or propriety."

Renay was also fond of dirty jokes, although none are sneaked into the obit, I'll guess because if they were cleaned up for a family newspaper they might lose their punch. Jokes are like that. They don't revise well. It seems unlikely the NYT is going to pick up on her demise and write a tribute piece. And given the son's details of Renay's life and her very recent demise, she certainly is not an overlooked historical figure.

Although the son doesn't attribute Renay's prowess at cribbage to her being Jewish, there is often a correlation. The son tells us Renay was ranked nationally as the "11th or 12th-ranked woman cribbage player in America." Admittedly, there is no corroboration.

Although it is not mentioned, Renay would by all accounts of New York City speech be referred to as a bubala. A Yiddish dictionary, one of which I don't have, but one I posses in my head having grown up in New York City, is a "term of endearment. It's like 'oh, sweetie!' But more fun. Because it sounds like boobie." 

The son tells us in the obituary Renay didn't cook, but certainly in the above photo hardly looks like anyone who has missed many, if any, meals. Someone cooked. The old joke about Jewish women is that they don't make much of anything regarding food other than reservations.

When we moved into our current home in 1992, the prior owners were an elderly Jewish couple, who of course were moving to Florida. There is no secret that Florida has been attracting New York Jews for decades. All their friends were there already. They had to move to Florida.

The couple's kitchen had just been redone and the appliances and cabinets were all new. How new I don't know,  but there were still remnants of shrink wrap attached to the oven handle door. I have always joked that the owner's manual was inside the oven as well. (It really wasn't.)

The absolute bombshell in the obit is that Renay had an affair with Larry King in the '60s, who of course also preceded her in death, as he has millions of others, and untold more millions who have yet to be conceived.

An unnamed husband is mentioned, but he is described as a "philandering Sergeant Major" who she divorced in the '70s. Perhaps the marriage to the Sergeant Major can explain the reference in the obit that Renay bowled in Japan, likely when he was posted there for some reason.

But the Larry King reference hangs in the air. Renay is said to have hailed from Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida and Texas. Larry King's obit tells us he "began as a local radio interviewer and sportscaster in Florida in the 1950s and 1960s."

Renay and Larry could have certainly run into each other, an occurrence made plausible, when you read in Mr. King's obit it is disclosed he "married eight times to seven women; a chronic gambler who declared bankruptcy twice and was arrested on fraud charges that derailed his career for years."

He and Renay could have easily run into each other at any number of venues: crap and blackjack tables, slot machines, or even in line at bankruptcy court. The son tells us to "spend some government money today on a one-armed bandit, or a blackjack table to find the family inheritance," since Renay left no one anything other than memories. Well, maybe the dress she's wearing in the above photo. It's not mentioned.

Given Renay's proclivity at relationships, having "six kids, one Cesarean, a few abortions from the Quietly Famous Abortionist of Spring Lake, NC" the son wonders out loud in print if he could be one of Larry's children.

Renay passed away in El Paso, Texas, and the son who wrote the obit, Andy Corren, lives in New York  City. According to the son, Renay "eked out her final years of luxury (she literally retired at 62) under the care, compassion, checking accounts and evidently unlimited patience of her favorite son and daughter-in-law Michael and Lourdes Corren, of world famous cow sanctuary El Paso, Texas."

We'll leave it at that. There's even more in the obit, but why keep paraphrasing someone's memories?

The only real question left for me is if when the bowling alley venue is chosen for the May 10, 2022 memorial service, is how many lanes will be devoted to it, and will TV cover it?

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

What A Link!

The name in the obituary hit me right between the eyes. Elfrida von Nardroff has passed away at 96. She would have been just a fairly obscure person who has passed away in their 90s if it hadn't been for her part in the great game show scandals of the 1950s on the show Twenty-One.

Anyone who grew up in that era of early television would remember those weekly episodes of Twenty-One where contestants were isolated in soundproof booths with bulky headsets and answered what seemed to be questions from the MC Jack Berry that only a genius could answer. Game shows were hugely popular, and the Robert Redford 1994 movie 'Quiz Show' captures the era perfectly. 

I had forgotten there were two notable contestants who were fed questions and answers before the show would air, herself, and Charles Van Doren, who proceeded her.

The lid was blown off the deceit when Herb Stempel, as Queens postal worker, started to blab that he had been fed questions and answers and that he took a dive that allowed Charles Van Doren to win what then was a record $129,000. 

(See http://onofframp.blogspot.com/2018/08/twenty-one;

http://onofframp.blogspot.com/2019/04/charles-van-doren.html)

Mark Van Doren had a polished resumé and pedigree. His 2019 NYT obituary written by Robert McFadden wrote of him:

"His father was Mark Van Doren, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, literary critic and professor of English at Columba. His mother, Dorothy Van Doren, was a novelist and editor. And his uncle, Carl Van Doren, had been a professor of literature and a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer. Charles himself had a bachelor's and master's degree, a $4,400-a-year position at Columbia and an honest look about him." Looks proved deceiving.

Elfrida's father was a physics professor at Columbia, Robert von Nardroff. His father, Dr. Ernest von Nardroff, was my father's principal at Stuyvesant High School in the 1930s. When the scandal broke and Van and von were front page news, I remember my father talking about the science experiments that Dr. Ernest von Nardroff performed at the high school during the assemblies. They were hugely popular. When I attended the same high school in the 1960s, the principal, Dr. Leonard Fleidner at the time demonstrated chemistry experiments at assemblies.

Elfrida's winning streak at Twenty-One ran in 1958 and gained her $220,500, which Richard Sandomir points out in her NYT obituary would be $2.1 million today, which ranks up there with top Jeopardy winners, a show of course free of scandal.

I remember Mark Van Doren in the isolation booth, but was probably not watching the show when Elfrida was running up her streak. The teeth gnashing and sweating in the booth was it turned out staged, as the contestants sweated out their answers. I remember one answer, given I think by Van Doren about an obscure Pacific Island that my father had a trouble believing he could possibly know anything about. My father was in Guam during WW II.

One of the game shows' contestants that wasn't tainted was Dr. Joyce Brothers, who won on The $64,000 Question. Dr. Brothers was the nation's TV psychologist long before Dr. Phil and other self-promoted television gurus, earning her doctorate from Columbia University, proving that all contestants with Columbia backgrounds weren't deceitful.

The late '50s saw game shows pulled down in disgrace, and then the record rankings were smudged with the 1960s Payola scandal that saw American Bandstand's DJ Dick Clark get nailed for accepting money to play certain records to get them to achieve popularity via "air time."

And hardly for the last time, Americans were beginning to realize they could be lied to and manipulated.

http://www.onofframp.blogpsot.com

Recovery Barometers

As if it's not already obvious, you need time to recover from spinal surgery. Certainly the extent of the fusion drives the recovery period, I don't really know what my "simple" L5/S1 fusion calls for, but I am measurably feeling better every day. I have a follow up visit with the surgeon on December 23rd, after having already had a follow up with one of the PAs (physician assistants) assigned to my case. 

One of the PAs drew an "air graph" for me after the third or fourth day that correlated intensity of pain and discomfort with the number of days after surgery. As her finger progressed along the imaginary x-axis for time from surgery, the level of y-axis pain decreased significantly. The body is remarkable.

The evolution of PAs is fairly new. These are licensed physician assistants who are able to write certain prescriptions and perform simple exams. They certainly allow to knowledge of the physician to be stretched over their patient base. While in the hospital for four days the surgeon saw me twice. But every day I would be seen by another medical physician and an array of PAs, some of whom worked for the doctor, and others who worked for the hospital. I was never ignored.

One of my followers today asked me via a direct Tweet, "how are you recovering post surgery." Well, they did ask on the very day I was prepared to offer something tangible as an improvement rather than just telling them the conversational, but rather vague, "I'm doing better." I put "better" into words.

Since the follower knows me fairly well, I'm not sure how they thought I was going to answer, but my guess is they weren't completely expecting the reply I gave. And truthfully, I wasn't expecting it either until I thought about it for a split second and started typing a reply. 

"Doing better each day. I can now swipe up the pee I get on the floor by the toilet when I miss. TMI? Liz [my wife] has taken the rug away by the toilet. It looked bad anyway. But it was only temporary. Next bathroom in the next life gets a urinal. Do I feel a posting coming on?"

The reply was simple, and thankfully not the overused LOL, but rather a hearty, "Ha!."

I'm adhering to the BLT guidelines, but feel able to add a little more flexibility to my movements. BLT is described in an earlier posting: http://onofframp.blogspot.com/2021/11/blt.html

Now mind you, all this except the reply, transpired before I went out to lunch with my daughter Susan. Before leaving the restaurant, I went to use the bathroom. We've been to that restaurant before, but I guess I just didn't take notice.

There are two bathroom room doors in the restaurant, each designated with the universal icons to denote MALE/FEMALE usage. I've used bathrooms like this before, but I never remember there being the usual sink and toilet, towel dispenser/air hand dryer along with...a urinal. A true MALE/FEMALE bathroom and one I've threatened to have built if there ever came a new need to design one for a house. (My wife claims she'd never clean it if I were to have one installed. Yeah, so.)

All progress is not measured via the bathroom. My daughter Susan I set up the outside candy canes this evening on what had not yet been a lighted, decorated house. Two weeks ago this would not have been possible for me to do.

TMI? Too much information? Not anywhere nearly as much as a news story this morning on HLN (and probably other media outlets) of the young married fellow's wife who took it on herself to share on TikTok images of how she sent him to the dermatologist.

She was worried about the skin tags appearing on his chest and neck. She wanted to make sure he pointed them out to the dermatologist. Thus, she took a dry marker and circled them with arrows leading to them, and sent him on his way.

All these images were apparently shared via TikTok, with the whole skin tag/dermatology referral going viral. The results of the exam went viral as well, since there was little to worry about since only one tag showed any signs of being pre-cancerous and not untreatable.

Since I am waaaaaaaaaaay older than that young married couple, (they're clearly under 25 and married a scant 6 months) and know nothing of TikTok other than how to spell it, there will be no bathroom pictures of wet tiles that have now been wiped dry because I can bend down better these days—not yet much better than the one knee marriage proposal drop—but certainly without the shooting sciatica pain that made me feel my left leg was being electrocuted.

Medical progress. Getting better each day.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

Army-Navy Game

Yesterday the Army-Navy game was played at MetLife Stadium in Rutherford, New Jersey a short hop from Times Square, where I like to think the Cadets and Midshipman went after the game.

I find it hard to believe when I do the math that when I went to the Army-Navy games in 1960 and 1961, and maybe some other year, that it was more than 60 years ago. World War II was basically freshly over, and not some fly speck in the history books that it is today.

My father was a civilian employee of the Department of Navy, a naval engineer who worked at the Philadelphia and Brooklyn Navy yards, then in some office in Washington after those places were closed.

His brother was a career naval officer, eventually retiring as a Rear Admiral, the first Greek-American to graduate Annapolis in 1931. We didn't go to the games with Uncle George, because by then he was living in Greece, retiring in 1958. We did however always get good seats to the games, although it might be hard to call any seat at the Old Municipal Stadium in Philadelphia a "good seat" when it consisted of plopping your butt on a frigid, backless slap of concrete. How nice to see the game played in a state-of-the art stadium like MetLife.

We were not military family per se, but my father was in the Army as a Tech Sergeant in the Corps of Engineers during the war, basically stationed in Guam making maps from reconnaissance photos. He tried to get a commission in the Navy through his brother, but it didn't go through, so my assumption is he enlisted. His engineering degree got him placed in the Corps of Engineers. I still have his castle collar insignias.

The little he talked about his service, and the little we ever asked our parents, I got the impression he didn't like being a Non-Com. He particularly carried a grudge against the KP duty he had to serve. KP stood for Kitchen Police and was a rotating assignment of having to do work in the kitchen like cleaning massive pots and preparing food. It was a day's worth of drudgery, and enlisted men sometimes paid one of their fellow soldiers to take their place when their time the barrel came up.

My mother was in the Army as a nurse, a Lieutenant serving stateside in Thayer General Hospital in Nashville. It was there she and my father met. My father was never in combat, but was somehow wounded from the effects of a typhoon and a building collapse. That's the best I came to know. How a soldier serving in Guam wound up in Nashville, half a world away, is something that was never explained to me. It 's one of the many questions we didn't ask our parents. My parents married in Nashville during the war.

My father told me that while he was in the hospital they removed his pilonidal cyst. It was surgical practice time.  There was nothing wrong with his pilonidal area, but the military wanted to keep their surgeons busy. When I told one of my gang from my racetrack coterie, The Assembled, Bobby G., a retired surgeon whose residency was interrupted by Vietnam-era Army service at Fort Dix about my father, he declared it was "Jeep riders disease,"  The Army loved taking out your pilonidal cyst when they had the chance.

NOTE:

The faithful reader Bobby G. has this to add about pilonidal cysts.

As a private practicing surgeon Bobby G. tells of removing lots of infected pilonidal cysts. The Army had a policy of removing them prophylactically. They figured as long as you were in the hospital anyway for something, they might as well get about to yanking that cyst that could get infected and would just require you to be back in the hospital anyway. After all, they weren't about to get rid of Jeeps, just your cyst.

My Uncle George's son graduated Annapolis as well, retiring as a Commander. He never was assigned sea duty, serving instead in ordnance depots and disposal duties, mostly in Hawaii. Not a bad assignment.

I think it was the 1961 game when we saw JFK at the game. We were seated fairly close to the president and watched him cross the field at halftime. I think he started on the Navy side, and then crossed over to the Army side. He was of course he Commander-in Chief of all servicemen. It is hard to reconcile that mental image with what would happen to the president on that November day in Dallas in 1963, just two years later..

It is hard to imagine the games we saw pre-dated Navy's Roger Staubach. But Joe Bellino was the star halfback and eventual Heisman trophy winner then who was tearing up the ground game. And a ground game is what you see most of in an Army-Navy game. And yesterday's Navy 17-13 upset win was won on a mistaken snap from center to halfback Diego Fagot who wasn't expecting the ball, but once he secured it, ran for the needed 4th down yardage and kept the time-consuming drive alive. The center thought an audible had been called, but it hadn't been. 

A college game like the Army-Navy game lets you see a different brand of football than that played on Sunday by the pros. There is more rushing, less passing, and a variety of option, end-around plays and fake punts that you just don't see in a professional game.

Joe Drape on the NYT wrote a book about Army football some years ago and offered a piece in yesterday's online edition and today's print edition about how the players epitomize true student- athletes. Joe doesn't just do horse racing. He has a deep knowledge about college football.

When my cousin was slated to go to Annapolis we were able to take a tour of the Naval Academy. We ate lunch with the midshipman in the vast dinning hall. When someone at the table wanted more bread they held up the bread basket and a Filipino sailor came rushing over. The kitchen was staffed by regular enlisted Navy sailors.

We got to go through Bancroft Hall, the dormitory, and meet with one of the Midshipman in his room. The room was spacious, and afforded a large closet area for the various uniforms that were required to be worn. I think there was also a bathroom. The hallways were especially wide to accommodate drills and formations. When we toured in the '70s, the Academies had yet to admit women.

The Midshipman we met described an academic workload that approached 20 credits in a semester for an engineering degree. He wasn't a football player, but he certainly was in shape.

In the games we went to I don't remember the post-game singing of the Alma Mater songs. I do remember the mad swarm of people, Cadets and Midshipman alike, who rocked the goal posts and took them down and carted off pieces of wood.

Goal posts of that era were somewhat flimsy affairs, unpadded, that were anchored with two posts and rather short uprights at each end. Determining field goals and extra points was not always easy with the old arrangement.

But the demolishing of the goal posts at either end, no matter who won, was a tradition. I wanted to take part, but being probably 11 years old, it was considered a bit dangerous to get involved with the mob that was splintering wood with their bare hands. It pretty much would look like this year's January 6th riot at the Capitol without the headgear and painted faces.

I probably could haul out an Army-Navy program from a file cabinet in the garage. But I'll let it be for now. Too much in the way.

The Army-Navy game is always way more than a game for me.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

Marie-Claire Blais

Marie-Claire Blais was a Canadian author who by all accounts should have been more widely read—but wasn't. She wrote in French, being a native of Quebec, so her works had to be translated. Some were, most weren't. Canadian critics raved about her, others not so much. And though I never heard of her, I was intrigued enough to read about her in yesterday's NYT obituary by Clay Risen.

The out quote caught my eye: "Astonishingly long sentences were a hallmark of a novelist's work."

How long? Longer than the 116 words I once counted in a sentence written by Robert Caro in The New Yorker, full of clauses, phrases, semi-colons and em dashes? I scanned the obit for a quick look-see if any examples of "an astonishing long sentence" were offered. Something set off by italics, like poetry. Nope. Well, read on McDuff. And I did.

Turns out Ms. Blais once opened a novel with a first sentence that measured 55 pages! Even if double spaced, (which I doubt it was) that's going to weigh in at more than 116 words. Caro's a lightweight compared to this lady.

Mr Risen tells us: "She made astonishingly long sentences a hallmark of her work; the opening sentence of "Le Sourd Dans la Ville" (1979) published in English as "Deaf to the City," occupied 55 pages. Dialogue might appear without quotation marks. Within each sentence she might shift time and place and points of view, stranding readers unable to go with the flow of her sometimes hallucinatory prose."

I remember the early grammar school years when the teachers told us of the dangers of "run-on" sentences. I think I learned to diagram sentences in 6th grade, and I did love it.  I still get a kick of a sentence like Caro wrote, or an obituary lede by Bruce Weber that take flight and leave you gasping for air—but when looked at through the lens of diagramming, are not run-on sentences. Mrs. Katzman would be impressed.

Mentally, I've always somewhat diagrammed sentences like those of Caro, Weber, and anyone else who pushes the boundaries and wards off the dreaded period. I imagine the sentences elegantly diagrammed looking like a cantilevered  bridge, perhaps like the old Tappan Zee bridge across the Hudson. But a 55 page sentence would defy diagramming. I think even if it were, it would look more like a Frank Gehry building than anything attractive., even if you strung twinkling lights on it.

Fifty-five pages is more than a marathon, it is an ultra marathon. Jimmy Breslin would scoff at journalists who wrote long worded sentences as their way of showing off that they went to J-school, likely an Ivy League J-school at that.

Breslin of course didn't got to any J-school, but he still managed to win a Pulitzer for his reporting on the gravedigger's preparation for JFK's grave in Arlington Cemetery. The way I saw it, Breslin being Irish-American and growing up in Queens, land of more headstones than perhaps Arlington itself, was fully equipped to view JFK's passing completely different from other the reporters. Breslin could even discuss the merits of granite or marble headstones from an erosion point of view if they were to used anywhere near salt water, like near Rockaway.

The headline for Ms. Blais's obituary reads: Marie-Claire Blais, 82, Writer Who Captivated Canadian Readers, Dies.

Apparently, not even a 55-page one sentence overture could discourage those from reading her.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

The Greek Inflection

As anyone who has been in a hospital in the last few decades will tell you, they don't stop asking you your name and date of birth. This is to prevent errors of treating the wrong person with the right stuff.

When I had my recent spinal surgery and was walked into the operating room they of course wanted to know who I was. There was a new array of people who hadn't yet heard me declare my identity and my date of birth, even though I had just affirmed in the pre-op room.

In deference to one of the nurses who started to talk to me in Greek, I recited my full name in Greek with an authentic Greek accent. I wasn't so sure of my Greek numbers, and I didn't want to keep anyone waiting, so I did my date of birth in unaccented English.

I like to think I almost got applause. Telly Savalas couldn't have done better even if he were to have thrown in "Who loves ya baby." And of course Telly's no longer with us.

I have to admit I was a bit emboldened by my new audience that I started doing shtick when one of the OR nurses who was readying the hardware turned around to greet me who was the absolute double of Al Roker. This of course lead me to ask if this whole operation was going to be a special edition of the Today show.  There is little I remember after that.

Greeks and the Greek language are not often in the news. There aren't even many Greek jokes, other than the one about separating the men from the boys with a crowbar. They wear out fast.

But all that's changed with the latest variant of the Covid virus, Omicron, "O me krone." That's how a native Greek would pronounce it, but the rest of the world seems to be having a great deal of trouble.

Alpha and Delta have sailed through the gauntlet of pronunciation, but on reaching the 15th letter of the 25 letter of the Greek alphabet, newscasters seem to become a tongue-tied Demosthenes with a mouth full of acorns. You can't understand anything that's being said. 

The WSJ has spotlighted the trouble the world is having saying "O me krone" (think Julie Krone, the retired jockey) first with a story by their Ben Zimmer, who has become the William Safire of word origins. His analysis appears weekly in the weekend section as the tries to inform us about the latest word that has crept into news reports.

In the past weekend Review Section he takes on the pronunciation and the reason "O me krone" (Omicron) was chosen after skipping the prior two letters in the Greek alphabet, Nu and Xi.

A new variant called "Nu" was considered untenable, and wisely so. New "nu" wasn't going to fly, and might even have someone starting off with the Abbot and Costello routine of "Who's on first?"

And Xi just happens to be the spelling of the Chinese prime minister. Off limits. It's like trying to get a vanity license plate with SEX in it. The word police are out there.

And then we have a lively A-Hed piece in today's WSJ about trying to nail down the pronunciation. Usually these A-Hed pieces carry one byline. Today there are two: AnnaMaria Andriotis (clearly a Greek name) and Joanna Sugden. The subject just presents so many varieties that it's like herding cats. No one seems to be able to get all the variations in one place where there's a consensus.

The heading for the A-Hed piece offers examples of the wide disagreement on the pronunciation of Omicron.

Oh My Krone?

Omni-Kron?

It's All Wrong

The kerfuffle over the pronunciation has set many Greek and Greek-American teeth a gnashing. The A-Hed piece goes scholarly with quotes from linguistic professors far and wide. Of course one from Oxford, England is quoted: "There isn't one way of saying Omicron," declares Armand D'Angour professor of classical language and literature at the University of Oxford. (Well, that settles that.)

The A-Hed piece travels down one of my pet peeves on how to pronounce "gryo," that lamb dish served with vegetables wrapped in Pita bread. Any Greek-run diner in the Northeast has a "gyro" on their extensive menu.

The A-Hed piece tries to unravel some of the dissonance. "The English letter 'g' is replaced by the Greek letter gamma, which has a sound in modern Greek that's somewhere between a 'g' and a 'y'. For context, think 'gyros.' To Americans, they are 'JIroes.' To Greeks, the 'g' is softer and the sandwich is a 'YEE-ro.'

Right. To my Irish-American wife she's always ordering "Jiroes." I tell her it's "YEE-ro."

All I know is, growing up surrounded by Greeks and Greek-Americans in the family flower shop, and the occasional attendance at an after-school Greek school I was expected to attend, Omicron is pronounced "o me krone."

Of course you'd have to ask me.

http://www.onofframp.blogpsot.com

Coffee

I've been aware now for some time now that ordering a coffee at Starbucks is not really just about ordering a coffee—it's about how many extras can you add on to make it your coffee. But after reading an A-Hed piece in The Wall Street Journal, I now realize it's more like ordering a liquid birthday cake. If it hasn't happened already, names and years will start to appear on top of the foam.

Consider the A-Hed piece by Heather Haddon with the heading: "When a Double Chocolaty Chip Crème Frappuccino Isn't Enough." 

Apparently the influencers on TikTok, now the most followed social media site by today's young adult youth, dream up dozens of concoctions. Ms. Haddon tells us "The drinks treat Starbucks' menu less like a lineup of drinks and more like a buffet of ingredients to be mixed together in unorthodox ways to create off-menu drinks that may list 10 separate customizations on the side of the cup."     

Needless to say, the baristas are struggling to keep up while the lines get longer because of added wait time, just because someone is reciting the Gettysburg Address when they finally reach the counter. Think of the "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General" soliloquy from Pirates of Penzance and you'll know what you're up against when you're third in line.

Ms. Haddon includes a dizzying array of combinations that are getting ordered these days: "A Venti cold brew with caramel syrup and vanilla sweet cream cold foam, apple brown sugar syrup, apple in the foam and cinnamon dolce on top." (I'll assume there's coffee in there somewhere. You're on your own if you don't know what a dolce is.)

There are more. Many more. Some that even strain to let you believe there's actually coffee in there somewhere, since it's not listed as an ingredient.

I will tell you now I'm not a coffee drinker, and on a few occasions that I did wonder into a Starbucks to buy the print copies of the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times it didn't go well.  It's bad enough that I went in without carrying a laptop, but I wasn't buying any coffee, tea, or anything else other than the newspapers.

The person whose attention I finally got was straining to find the UPC codes to scan into the register. They were actually opening the paper. The manger, closer to half my age could sense I was about to blow a gasket when they came to the rescue and took over. I now reliably get home delivery of both papers.

As for drinking coffee, I believe that may have stopped sometime in 1967 when my last cup might have been in what was then called a "Coffee Shoppe" on 17th Street and Third Avenue. There were lots of places like this, small places with a counter and some booths that were a cross between a diner and a luncheonette.

This particular place was owned by a pair of Greek brothers-in-law, one named Dino, who was outgoing and friendly, and the other whose name I forget, who was never further than two feet from the cash register, always with a hang dog face that grew out of his always being worried about what the stock market was doing. 

Coffee then might have been 25¢ and was served in a thick ceramic cup on top of an equally thick ceramic saucer. (If you remember those, my God you're old too.) I took it black and was usually on my way in the morning to City College at 137th Street, the second and last institution of higher learning that I dropped out of. 

After engineering school, taking French had no appeal to me. Nor did my schedule which on certain days required me to make it from the lower part of the campus to the upper part of the campus in five minutes so I wouldn't be late for phys ed. in Goethals gym. It was impossible. A speeding presidential motorcade with lights flashing couldn't do it.

Then there was the snobby attitude of either the history or English instructor who laughed at the image of a guy in front of a TV with a beer in his hand, watching a ball game in his living room, possibly wearing a so-called "wife beater" T-shirt.  It didn't fit the description of anyone in my family, but I saw nothing wrong it. 

Try as I might, coffee just seemed to upset my stomach, even decaf coffee. So coffee and formalized higher education and I parted ways and I went to work at a health insurance company for 36 years. It pretty much financed my life.

I don't shake my head or belittle those who live on $8 coffees topped out with all the ingredients they can think of. 

After all, like I was back then, and like they are now, they are just trying to have things their way.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

Time Travel

You might have missed the story in the last few days about the launching of a NASA probe with the objective of smashing into an asteroid and knocking it ever so slightly off course—as a practice run.  

The probe is expected to travel 6 million miles and is scheduled to crash into the asteroid after a 6 month journey as it smashes into the space rock at 15,000 miles per hour. Talk about speeding.

The asteroid as it is poses no threat to planet Earth. It is merely being used as target practice should the need ever truly arise that Earth needs to be saved from a speeding asteroid headed right for us.

Apparently there have been some asteroids that have clunked into us and proved Chicken Little right, the sky was falling, causing some major league damage. The WSJ story by Robert Lee Hotz tells us that "in 1908 a mysterious space rock exploded over Siberia and leveled 830 square miles of forest. In 2013, a 65-foot asteroid blew apart 20 miles above Chelyabinsk, Russia, That airburst released more than 30 times the energy of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. It knocked people off their feet and blew out windows in thousands of buildings." 

Most asteroids that do tumble toward Earth burn up before they enter our atmosphere. It is a good thing, because there might be politicians who would build a "space wall" to keep the interlopers out. Think what that would cost, and Mexico likely would have no part of it.

There is good news in all of this. A Near Earth Object Surveyor is scheduled for launch in 2026 designed to find "near -Earth asteroids large enough to cause regional damage," said Dr. Mainzer, who heads the project. "The question is to answer what could happen in the next 100 years. We hope the answer is nothing." Good news for the great-great-great... grandchildren who haven't yet been born. 

But there is Sword of Damocles hanging over someone's head. Asteroids 6 miles across or larger, like the one that wiped out most dinosaurs and torched much of the planet about 66 million years ago, are believed to strike only every 15 million years or so." (If I read this right, then there have been several cataclysmic events since 66 million years ago. But we're not going to beg for details, or confirmation.)

I'm not sure if the clock starts now on that 15 million year count, but if it does, then there are people (assuming there will still be people) who 14,962, 979 years from now who might see someone holding a sign telling them "The End is Near." who are really in danger of facing the Apocalypse. Tell someone planning a family in 14,965,000 (what's that in Roman numerals?) that their children won't be around long enough to give them grandchildren and there might very well be worldwide panic.

The really good news might be that credit card debt, car loans and mortgages will come due after the Big Event, leaving a LOT of people off the hook, but probably dead and unable to enjoy their new found financial freedom.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

Batting .400

Think of the guy who recently passed away who had 100 great ideas before breakfast. It was said 60 were impractical. or too expensive to implement, but the remaining 40 were viable ideas. Thus, by baseball metrics he was consistently batting .400, and therefore a sure first ballot Hall of Famer.

Such a person was Alan Paller, 76,  who made cybersecurity education his mission. The guy few knew was alive when he was.

Nicole Perloth of the NYT takes us through the life and times of Mr. Paller in yesterday's obituary.

Mr. Paller was a "cybersecurity pioneer who devoted his life to improving the digital defense of the United States. His death was confirmed by the SANS institute, the organization he founded in 1988."

He not only provided cybersecurity services, he was instrumental in training and grooming the next generation of cybersecurity sleuths, a cadre of individuals he felt there were far too few of in the United States. 

His work of course put him in touch with the National Security Agency (NSA) and Cyber Command. He worked with Jeff Moss, the founder of Black Hat, as they were co-chairmen of a proposed cybersecurity task force for the Department of Homeland Security. 

When we think of Homeland Security we naturally think of people crossing our borders with bad intent. But years ago I will always remember the quote from John M. Deutch, a Deputy Secretary of Defense, who sounded the alarm that "the ultimate strategic weapon is the electron."

The obituary carries a great photo of Mr. Paller taken in 2014. He has the craggy face looks of wisdom, sitting next to his Apple laptop.

And if he truly did have those 100 great ideas before breakfast, as Tony Sager, the former chief operating officer of the National Security Agency's International Assurance Directorate, which oversees cyberdefense claimed, then think of what he was capable after of after eating a bowl of cereal.

By all accounts, he's going to be missed.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

Multitasking

Multitasking was going on during my spinal surgery recovery, but it wasn't two tasks being performed by one person, it was two tasks and two people, specifically the nurse taking my vitals, and myself, trying to use their cell phone to get a bet down on The Breeders' Cup Classic around 8:38 P.M. EST, Saturday, November 6.

I make online wagers all the time through my account, but it's always at my desktop computer. I'm not much of a cell phone user, and use a small, outdated smartphone model handed down to me from my daughter Susan.

I can never cleanly enter characters with my fingers or fingernails. I have to use a rubber tipped stylus. It's only then that an F goes in as an F, and not a D or a G. Even with the stylus, being presented with a hand held screen that I rarely encounter, I had trouble navigating the entries.

I was watching the racing telecast courtesy of a hospital bed in Manhattan, lying slightly upright from a 30° tilt or so from the back position. I could see the telecast well enough, and the sound was fine. On Saturday at that hour I even had the semi-private room to myself, due to my roommate's afternoon discharge, so I was able to make the sound comfortably audible.

Over the last several years I've pretty much avoided betting the Breeders' Cup races. Too many horses, too many from overseas, too hard to get a good read on them, even with a deep dive into the past performances.

I've never had a winning Breeders' Cup day. I've had some memorable winners, especially Ridgewood Pearl, a filly who took a turf race years ago, beating males. The jockey was nearly being pulled out of the saddle by a horse so anxious to run during the warmups. I always look at her winner's circle photo at Belmont when I'm there.

I was once on my way to a very nice exacta payout until one of the foreign turn horses took a solid interest in what was going on in the stands and ruined my exacta by drifting toward the stands, as if to talk to someone as they approached the finish, leaving me with the exacta split of a 1-3 finish; horse racing's version of the bowling 7-10 split. 

I liked Blame once in the Classic to beat Zenyatta, which they did. For some reason I only had Blame to win, and didn't bother making a very logical exacta bet. Brain freeze. Even when we win we lose.

So, as Jerry Bailey as the gang went over their blurbs for the Classic entrants, I knew enough of what the leading contenders were like to know that Knicks Go had never won at a mile and a quarter. I knew Max Player had won their last two starts at the distance, taking the Jockey Club Gold Cup at Saratoga, and the Suburban at Belmont.

The adage handed down from Pittsburgh Phil is you never bet on a horse trying to do something they've never done before. This can mean carrying their weight assignment, winning on a track that is now in a condition they've never encountered—something other than fast or firm—or trying to win at a distance they've never attempted. 

Knicks Go is a solid, formidable front runner. But as the NYT reporter Joe Drape once pointed out to an attentive crowd at a book signing at Saratoga's Northshire book store years ago, champion horses take it to the front and hold on and win. Do we go with Pittsburgh Phil, or the longtime racing reporter? 

Fumbling with my stylus and my phone, as the nurse is intently taking my blood pressure (from my left arm and I'm left handed) and aiming a thermometer for the space under my tongue, I manage to negotiate the unfamiliar screens and punch in my bet for Max Player.

The race is history. It's in the books. Kicks Go runs the race of their life, going wire-to-wire under Joel Rosario, and winning in a championship time of 1:59.57. Champions go to the front and win. (Unless of course you're Zenyatta.)

It's the last race of the day and my Max Player has run last. It's almost fitting. Did they not like the track? Possibly. They had never run at Del Mar before.

My betting lose is small. But my other bet is coming through and I'm recovering on all cylinders and I'm set to blow the taco stand on Tuesday. And I did.

The very good news is if there's a next time and I have to make an online bet via my phone, I won't be attached to a blood pressure cuff with a thermometer under my tongue.

Though I'm sure even with the stylus, I'll have trouble with the screens.

http://www.onofframp.blogpsot.com

BLT

Anyone who has ever ordered a sandwich at a luncheonette or diner will tell you BLT stands for Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato. Your choice of bread, toasted or plain also follows the order: BLT on plain, white toast, with mayo. Always recommended. 

A BLT sandwich is my favorite, and was one I usually ordered two of when I ate in the company cafeteria decades ago.

In the world of post-op spinal surgery, BLT stands for three things not to do for a while as you recover. BEND, LIFT and TWIST. Use your legs to lower and raise yourself; do not lift anything greater than 10 pounds, and do not twist your body to reach for something. Turn your body so that you face whatever it is you're trying to reach.

The pre-op literature they give you advises against against BLT for at least two weeks after surgery. Your post-op visit is in two weeks after surgery. In my case, even in the pre-op holding area the surgeon and his fleet of PAs (physician assistants) reminded me about BLT.

"Now you know what BLT is, right?

"Yes, I've read about it. It's my favorite sandwich."

"I like them as well, with a piece of avocado on top."

"You're kidding me. You're probably a guy who likes hummus."

"Well. my three-year-old loves hummus." Spreads it all around and eats it."

"Hummus is wallpaper paste. It looks like what you'd buy a gallon of at the paint store.  In fact, I never knew what hummus was. My oldest son-in-law loves hummus. When I once asked what that lump of brown stuff in the refrigerator was, he told me it was 'hummus.'"

"Yeah, and what the hell is hummus?"

"It's ground chick peas."

"You're kidding. I somewhat like chick peas. Whole chick peas. Tad's Steaks seemed to sprinkle a few into the green leaves they called the salad you got when you bought one of their steaks, originally $1.19 in the 60s. Later a $1.29. Later who knows what, and then they disappeared. I'm not sure they're missed.

"In fact, in the early 60s and 70s there was place on Park Avenue South between I think 18th and 17th Streets called "Max's Kansas City." The neon sign announced the name and that they had "Chick Peas."

My father and I passed the place most evenings when we closed up the flower shop and headed for the 16th Street entrance to the BMT to go to 34th Street and Penn Station, to take the Port Washington train home to Murray Hill. All short trips.

Neither of us ever knew what Max's Kansas City was. When we passed it it was dark, say 8:00, 8:30 P.M. and there didn't seem to be any activity going on. It looked partially lit, but I could never tell what the place was all about.

My father and I were basically both ignorant of  NYC nightlife. I was maybe 12, although his destination sometimes lead him to Port Said, a Greek, Middle Eastern belly dance cavern somewhere on Eighth Avenue. (I was never there.)

It wasn't until sometime in the latter 60s when I was working that someone at work mentioned Max's Kansas City as a place where one of the co-workers played in with a rock band. Perhaps a punk rock band. I don't know. They did cut a record, but my curiosity took me no further.

I 'm not sure I 've ever gotten over that chick peas could appear on a neon sign for a place that I knew nothing of, and that ground chick peas was hummus.

The image of a piece of avocado on a BLT sandwich is now something I can't get out of my head.

Recovery seems speedy. Thanks for asking.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com