Maureen Dowd

I really wish The Times would fire her. She is as incomplete as a dropped forward pass. Her once a week column today is on the funeral for Officer Jason Rivera, one of the two officers killed in an ambush from a domestic disturbance call.

The only good thing about reading Maureen online is the color photos you get that you wouldn't get in the print edition. Ms Dowd writes more about herself and the experience of her father as a Capitol police officer and his disarming of one of the Puerto Rican nationalists who opened fire from the House of Representatives gallery, wounding five Congressman in the process. It was 1954. As in a long time ago. She's told the story in her column many times. Yes Maureen, we've heard about this. You're the daughter of a police officer. Lots of people are.

There is nothing in her incomplete forward pass about the widow Dominque Luzuriaga's eulogy about the new asshole she ripped the Manhattan DA, Alvin Bragg,  and the standing ovation it lead to.

Maureen, not being from New York, may not even be aware of the DA's statements a few weeks ago about how his office was going to downsize crime. He can't change the penal code, but he stated he's perfectly willing to ignore it.

Maureen doesn't even mention any words from NYC's first female police commissioner, Keechant L. Sewell, a Black woman who was chief of detectives in Nassau County. Maureen may not even know where that is. (It's adjacent to Queens County, one of NYC's five boroughs, or counties that is often lumped in with the non-Manhattan boroughs and referred to by the NYT as an "outer borough," despite being connected by two bridges and tunnels, rail and auto.)

Ms. Dowd is a favorite punching bag for me. She doesn't work very hard. I constantly applaud the three columns a week, eventually two, that Russell Baker wrote years ago. That too is long time ago. To paraphrase Lloyd Bensten, she's no Russell Baker. But then again, who is? Her back of an envelope column only appears once a week. Perhaps The Times has her on half pay.

Even if that's the case, they're not getting their money's worth.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

A Definite Fan

Giuseppe Verdi

Since I myself have placed In Memoriam tributes in the NYT and know what they cost, I always scan that section of the paid death notices to see who has what to say about someone. And imagine what they shelled out to do so.

You can expect the usual family member paying tribute on the anniversary of the subject's birth, or death. You pay by the line, so naturally, the tributes tend to be short. 

Sometimes however you get an In Memoriam from someone who is not a relative. There's been the one for the birth/death of Isaac Stern, the violinist. There was once one for David Niven, the actor. Today there is one for Verdi, as in Giuseppe Verdi the composer of so many operas.

Verdi was born October 10, 1813, and passed away January 27, 1901. The sentiment goes for seven lines:

Viva Verdi. For over 120 years Verdi's music has lived on without the presence of its composer and that music is now younger, more vital, more universal than ever. "Un bacio ancora."

Rabbi Saul Wohlberg, Haverstraw, New York.

Of course I had to look up what the Italian quote was, and found it means "a kiss one more time," a love duet from Verdi's opera Otello. I confess, I'm not an opera fan, but the good Rabbi obviously is.

January 27 is Mozart's birthday, 1756. It is also my second daughter's birthday, 1982. That of course makes her a milestone 40 today. Right now she and her husband are skiing at Lake Placid. She sent a photo of her sporting a T-shirt she had made, "A Legend Since January 1982."

Happy Birthday.

http://www.onofframp.blogpsot.com

Beware of Librarians

Anytime the occupations of the contestants that were going to face off against champion Amy Schneider on 'Jeopardy' were introduced and someone was a librarian, I'd say to myself, "maybe they're the one."

It took 82 contestants, and I don't know how many librarians, but Amy has finally been defeated, after 40 wins and $1,382,800. Nice work if you can get it.

Lately, Amy has been in a bit of a slump when it came to getting the Final Jeopardy clue right. She had been knocking them out of the park, but in the last week and a half or so she'd been vulnerable. Not that it mattered. Her opponents had no chance of catching her, no matter who got what right.

But the key to beating Amy lay in being in a position that you had more than half her day's total, and you bet the right amount (usually all-in) that would exceed her total, get the clue right, and have her falter.

And that's exactly the perfect storm that knocked Amy off the perch in last night's telecast. The librarian, Rhone Talsma from Chicago made a not quite all-in-bet, but one that would leave him ahead of Amy's game total, in the hope to be right when answering the clue of...

Countries of the World 

The only nation in the world whose name in English ends in an H, it's also one of the 10 most populous.

and have Amy falter on her answer. 

I can usually get the right answer to the day's Final Jeopardy clue about 80% of the time, but I was thoroughly out to sea on yesterday's final clue.

The answer? Bangladesh. The contestant in the middle, Janice Hawthorne Timm, had no clue, and Amy had none either. Game, set, match to the librarian. Always beware  of the librarian.

Amy's final winnings total of $1,382,800 is certainly a near-life altering amount, even when you consider there are taxes to be paid. In today's NYT there is a story of an interview held with  Amy.  There is another story about the streak and Wednesday's game, the final one for Amy. 

Amy is as saddened by the defeat as she is relieved. There was a constant commuting from her home in Oakland to Los Angeles to fulfill the taping schedule. She had to accept a demotion at work because she wasn't there often enough in her usual capacity. And her personal life was disrupted.

The fellow who beat Matt Amodio, Jonathan Fisher, went on to win 11 games. Rhone Talsma has big shoes to jump into.

To me, the show is most interesting when there is a streak that builds, usually if a contestant wins enough games that they go into the next week of telecasts.

Today's Final Jeopardy clue is:

18th-Century Names

In 1793 he left Dublin for the United States saying, "I expect to make a fortune" off George Washington, & he did.

Who thinks up this stuff? I have no freaking idea. Probably not a dentist. Ask the librarian.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

It Has to be Tempting

It has to be tempting for someone who knows of, or is living with someone who passes away, not to act on cashing a social security or pension check that is laying around post-mortem. Trying to cash that check may not take the extreme form of propping the deceased up and wheeling them, or walking/carrying them to the check cashing outlet, but it's not beyond what some will do.

Through the joy of Twitter I've learned of what might be the latest example of trying to cash a deceased's check when two friends propped up their departed buddy and attempted to collect his pension check in Carlow, Ireland at the post office.

The Twitter universe went amok with 'Weekend at Bernie' memes, and comments like a new definition of Post Mortem, but their attempt by the two didn't succeed. The Irish police arrested the two when the cashier became suspicious. The deceased was taken to the morgue, and the two friends were taken to the nick.

I immediately thought of the two guys who in 2008 plopped their deceased buddy onto an office chair and tried to wheel him into a check cashing place on Manhattan's West Side. That attempt didn't work either. A NYC detective eating at place adjacent to the check cashing place grew suspicious when a crowd started gathering around the very lifeless figure on the office chair who was outside, while one of the two was trying to arrange for his check to be cashed.

Obviously, not everyone has a check direct deposited, or at least in 2008 you weren't required to have it so. And Ireland might be a little behind the times as well, dispensing pension checks at their post offices.

My grandmother passed away in 1964. Her husband passed away in 1958. I distinctly remember Social Security checks still coming to the flower show after she passed away. Widows and widowers then, and now, get half of the spouses' benefits, in addition to their own if their are any. My grandmother never worked outside the home, so she wasn't getting anything that was primarily hers.

As I grew older I was impressed that my grandfather was getting anything. He was always self-employed with first a shoe shining parlor, then a flower shop. I can't imagine anyone in that family keeping up with the paperwork of paying into the fund. I never saw any evidence that anyone was keeping the books. There were no books. Perhaps in that era you could get bare bones benefits even if you never contributed. I don't know.

My grandmother's check was $47, hardly a tidy sum even in 1960s dollars. I do remember the check arriving at the flower shop for several months after she passed away. I asked my father if didn't he need to have them stop the checks. He said he'd take care of it.

Money was always something my father needed, so I have no doubt that for at least those few months when the checks were coming that he was cashing them. Banks didn't care about double endorsements then, so it wouldn't have been hard to deposit the checks into an account that was not my grandmother's. He probably cashed the check at some bar and they deposited it with a double endorsement. 

I remember stories the old timers would tell at the flower shop of some slob who passed away in a rooming house and his friends would immediately descend on his room and feel his mattress for hidden cash. The guys that were passing away in the '60s had been through the depression and didn't trust banks. Banks failed. Cash was king.

When a neighbor passed away in Flushing my father advised his widow not to wear black when closing out the bank account. The rights of survivorship laws were different then and even a small estate was sent into probate court. If a teller got a whiff that a widow was closing an account, then the account would be frozen. A different era.

The Twitter scroll on the Ireland story was filled with reference to 'Weekend at Bernie's' and other stories similar to mine of my father of relatives that kept cashing checks for years after someone's demise.

The best Tweet other than someone saying it was a new definition of post-mortem, was perhaps the one that claimed that that's how voting for Trump was accomplished.

The majority that was created in Illinois in the 1960 presidential election that gave the electoral votes to JFK was said to have been engineered by Chicago's Mayor Daley, who famously knew how to keep deceased people on the voting roles and have them vote from the beyond.

The past is never dead; it's not even past.

http://www.onofframp.blogsptot.com

Wednesdays with Dad and Sue

I have a daughter Susan, who having attained her life's objective of being a professor, basically has the month of January off. The academic calendar creates a chasm between semesters that puts January out there with no classroom obligations.

She hates it if you say she gets the month off between semesters, because she doesn't really. She doesn't teach, but she still has a slew of other academic responsibilities. Her schedule to do these things is quite flexible, and as such she makes a point of meeting me on Wednesdays for an activity and lunch.

The activity could be ferrying me around for some errands, or taking in a sight. Last week we visited the Planting Fields Arboretum in Oyster Bay and had lunch. Searching for other things to do, Sue suggested bowling. I could go bowling, but my left arm is not what it was so I said I'd rather play pool.

Now pool is a game I've seldom played in the past 40 years, but it's a game I played constantly with either of the two brothers I was friends with. I'd play with Dennis after high school, and later his brother David when he came home from military school.

Dennis developed into a superb player and even as a somewhat cocky teenager was so good at straight pool that the hustlers and other grizzled veterans at Broadway Billiards near Time Square would never play him a game of straight pool. These guys were quick game specialists in 9-Ball and 8-Ball.

Dennis wasn't interested in hustling anyway. He just wanted to see how many balls he could run before his opponent got another chance at the table. Only once in a game of 50 points did I come close to beating him. I got to 48 points, but he went on to win.

He knew how to play with precision positioning, leaving his cue ball for the next shot that was not a particularly hard one. He eventually invested in a Balabushka cue stick and even had his own locker at the place. 

Dennis at one point when he was in college and still playing pool at Broadway, came to the attention of the actor Paul Sorvino who wanted lessons from him. Dennis never portrayed himself as a teacher for hire, but obliged for some small agreed upon sum. I never was there when he was giving lessons to Paul.

Dennis, Dave and I played at Broadway the most, but would sometimes for variety take in other places. We played at McGirr's on 8th Avenue, a place that could have been the backdrop for 'The Hustler,' but Ames was that. We played at Julian's, near the Academy of Music on 14th Street, and Jaycee's in Flushing, near where I lived. Julian's, Jaycee's and McGirr's were old-style-three-lamps over the tables and abacus beads strung overhead for scoring.

Dennis even attempted to get good at three-cushion billiards and once entered a tournament against Bill Maloney, a top-ranked played. Dennis had a spot, but never really got close. Maloney became a subject of a Sports of the Times Column and one of my postings.

I never got to play with a "two-piece custom made pool cue" as the lyrics go in a Jim Croce song about Jim ('You Don't Mess Around with Jim'). It was always the house cue for me. And that's how it was today with Susan. We descended on a place in West Hempstead called Raxx near my home and played 8-Ball—basically badly, but with concentration.

Susan was pretty much a babe in the woods with the game, so I instructed as we went along. I was never even good, but as the afternoon progressed a bit past the first hour we each got better. A lot of the touch to the game was coming back to me, but I miscued and scratched too often for my own good. It took us nearly 1½ hours to play three games of 8-Ball, each of us never running more than two balls.

Back in the day, and I mean back in the day—basically 50+ years ago, Dave, Dennis and I pretty much lived at Broadway Billiards, a super clean, well-lit place below the penny arcade on Broadway at about 50th Street.

Mr. Monaco ran the place, and brooked no sleaze buckets or nonsense. He arranged for tournaments, and we saw some of the top plyers of the era shoot straight pool, Cicero Murphy and Machine Gun (he shot fast) Butera come to mind. The games were official tournament refereed games. Eventually Mr. Monaco even installed three billiard tables for the three-cushion crowd of old guys.

My daughter Susan is highly social and knows and remembers nearly everyone she meets. When she worked at Mercy Hospital as a speech language therapist one of her colleagues was Neena, an Asian woman of a certain age who knows her was around the felt and the padded cushions, owns a two-piece pool cue, plays in tournaments, and even travels to Vegas to do so. I've definitely got to meet her.

The place Sue and I chose to play in is in West Hempstead, Raxx, a large pool emporium/sports bar in the Cherry Valley shopping center that can also serve comfort food. There must be at least 30 tales on the floor, blue clothed Brunswick models with dial counters at the ball return side. No overhead beads. but several TV scattered around, basically tuned to the horse racing channel TVG. A pool hall and horse racing. How much of a throwback is that?

The lighting is not drop lamps over the tables, but it is sufficient and directed at the tables. We played in the early afternoon and you really couldn't tell if it was night or day because of the heavy curtains over the windows. Typical pool place—no clocks and no time of day. When you're not over a table, you're basically in very subdued lighting. I call it cocktail lounge lighting.

Susan, being of the iPhone generation took pictures, even sending one of her about to shoot a break shot to her friend Neena, who Susan knew was on her break at the hospital. Neena responded pretty fast and said she had just played in a tournament at Raxx. She was understandably familiar with the place.

When we finished playing and I was putting the cues back an older fellow, who had been on a nearby table practicing by himself, asked me "who won." He sported a two-piece and looked like a decent player. If there is one thing you do in a pool hall it is watch other people.

He had been watching us as well as I was imparting all my knowledge gleaned from my past to Susan. He showed Susan how to get a better grip on the stick at the impact end—make sure your hand is flat to keep the aim steady. He was watching her. Said she had a good stroke. Needed to work on her bridge hand. Watch some videos. Sue was chuffed. I told him Sue will be back.

When I retired I thought my pursuit of running would take even more hold of me. I'd get more time to train more, and run in longer events. Back issues got in my way, and even though much of that has been resolved, running is pretty much out of the question.

I'm tired of playing with house cues and the worn down tips. A decent two-piece maple cue seems to go for about $100. That's easily what I would spend on running shoes, so there is definitely a two-piece cue in my immediate future—with a carrying case. There is even a place near the house to shop from.

So a day has passed and I'm not any younger. I just feel that way.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

The Amy Train is Rolling

The Amy Schneider Jeopardy train is rolling like Grant through Richmond, leaving a roadbed filled with contestant road-kill. The opposition is barely laying a finger on her.

I'm sure there are people who know nothing about the show Jeopardy, but for those who do, they are watching another contestant turn into a near GOAT—Greatest of All Time.

I just got my 2021 blog postings compiled into the annual book and I was surprised to read I started to write about another Jeopardy champion, Matt Amodio, when he had just won 11 games. I looked at the back of the 2021 compilation, and I see I wrote about Amy on December 30th, wondering how she was going to fare into the New Year. Very well it turns out, thank you.

Amy at the close of show on January 14, 2022, has now gone 33 games for a total pile of cash of $111,800. Ken Jennings tells us she has answered over 1,000 clues correctly. She in now third in games won. 

Each champion has their own style, and Amy's is conservative to a fault. She starts with the lowest denominations, but just keeps buzzer-beating the other contestants. She doesn't adhere to a scorched board approach of burning away the high amounts first. She doesn't gamble.

At the start of one show this week Ken told us that the day before Amy had answered 41 of 60 clues correctly. Of course it wasn't the prior day, it was the prior telecast. The show tapes six episodes in one day, loading up for later telecasts. Bring a change of clothes if you're the champ.

Amazingly, results don't seem to leak out. Amy has already met her match, or, is still going so strong that she has yet to be conquered. Either way, we the audience do not know.

How would you feel as a contestant to be told that the champion you're going to try and topple has now won over $1 million and over 30 straight games? Because of the taping schedule, these people do not even know such a person existthat before they get behind their little lectern. The contestants are being fed to the lion in the Roman Coliseum.

If there were a thoroughbred chart caller writing about each game, they would not be wrong to tells us the other contestants were "no factor in a dull effort."

Aside from just winning, Amy had been knocking the Final Jeopardy question out of the ball park. Not so lately. She's wobbling there, but it doesn't matter. She's in no danger of losing since she always has more than twice what the nearest opponent has. And some opponents have so little money going into the final round that you feel sorry for them and wonder if they have enough to get back to Ohio, or wherever they're from.

The press media has caught onto her story. The NYT did a piece at the start of the week headlined 'Jeopardy' Streaks Now the Norm. Are the clues getting easier?

The producers flatly deny that, and I would say they're not. The low amounts are softballs, but they do get progressively harder as the amounts increase. Amy just makes it look easy.

The Final Jeopardy clues seem as clever as ever, but when you get the answer right and the champ falters, wasting say $20,000 on not being able to answer...

Cemeteries and Memorials

60,000 are at rest in a national memorial cemetery opened in 1949 in the crater of an extinct volcano in this state.

...you start to wonder how did they get there? Well, there were plenty of clues I had no clue of and Amy did.

One contestant offered Wyoming as the state; the other Oregon. Amy's going to get it, right? No. She offers California. Wastes $20,000, buy hey, it's Monopoly money at that point, right?

Yikes. A state with volcanoes can only be Hawaii, and it would be natural that there would be a huge veterans' cemetery there considering Pearl Harbor and the casualties from the Pacific conflicts with Japan in WWII. In 1949, Hawaii wasn't even a state. It was a territory

Being the NYT they try and theorize why there seems to a recent spate of long-running Jeopardy champions. The guy who dethroned Matt Amodio went 11 games himself before going under. Eleven is not a bad streak. Not a GOAT, but certainly one that keeps you in the top spot for over two weeks of telecasts.

Covid delays are offered an explanation. When Covid hit the contestants slated to go were held back because of the lockdown. The theory is they had time to study more and therefore were more likely to answer what can be truly obscure answers.

Despite Matt Amodio telling us he boned up on contemporary pop music while waiting for the lockdown to be lifted,  it only led to his correctly answering one clue that he otherwise would have blanked out on. One. 

Jim Holzhauer, who you should remember has advanced degrees in mathematics, tells us clusters happen. It's natural for there to appear aa a winning streak that is a product of chance. 

"People always assume everything is a paradigm shift, when it is actually fairly normal for results to occasionally cluster."

And who better to talk about chance than Holzhauer, who is a professional gambler living in Las Vegas. He goes to the betting window like we go to the grocery store.

Amy's head is just filled with more facts than most of the rest of us. She tells us, "you just have to live life where you're learning stuff all the time." And she's a buzzer-beater, an art form of the game.

Amazingly, Ken Jennings, now a co-host of the show, won an incredible 74 games before losing. Amy's not even halfway there, but she's advancing.

Only time will tell where she's finally headed.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

Sidney Poitier

The recent passing of Sidney Poitier reminded me of the passing of an era in my life, when with two of my friends we used to go to the movies in Times Square, seeing the latest releases of the week. There were decidedly less movies released in that era than now. But I distinctly remember seeing three of Poitier's movies in theaters that were not chopped up multiplexes, but held several hundred people. A live audience that gave audible reactions to what they were viewing.

It was the late '60s and the early '70s when Dennis, and his brother Dave and I met on Saturday nights for movies, pool and a little drinking at the Spotlight bar on 52nd Street and Broadway, where we were nicknamed by the bartender Gene as, Rings, Champ and Specs. 

Dave could blow smoke rings better than the guy puffing away on the Camel billboard in Times Square. Dennis was not a pool hustler, but could play like one. No one at Broadway Billiards would play him for even split time a game of straight pool. And I was Specs, only because I wore glasses. Neither of us had girlfriends at that time, so we weren't pulled apart by dates and "romance."

Since the brothers lived on West 55th Street, Times Square was not far away. In that era it had its XXX-rated seediness, streetwalkers, but lots of regular movie houses running the new releases. It was, and still is, a destination for New Yorkers and tourists alike. The Crossroads of the World. There used to be a saying that if you hung out at Hotalings newsstand, where newspaper from all over were sold (pre-Internet) you would eventually meet someone you knew.

Given that our Saturday nights started out in the late '60s we saw three of Sidney Poitier's movies when he was of course becoming box office candy.

I don't remember the order, but when we saw 'Guess Who's coming to Dinner' the scene where the Katherine Hepburn character scolds and tongue lashes her gallery employee Hillary, and then fires her for her outspoken bigoted views on the possibility of having a black son-in-law, is met by the full theater audience with raucous cheers and clapping, as much for Hepburn's delivery as the words. The times, they were a changin'. Poitier is not even in the scene and the audience is lapping the movie up.

I remember some of the criticism the director Stanley Kramer took for not having Hepburn's niece Katherine Houghton and Poitier give the world an inter-racial kiss. I think it's shown in a rearview mirror. Kramer was angry with that criticism saying look what he's presented for God's sake: a black and white couple who want to get married.

Then there was 'In the Heat of the Night' and Virgil Tibbs has to deal with a rose-tinted eyeglass sheriff played by Rod Steiger, who is not happy about a having Black "boy," despite being a Philadelphia detective, in his town.  Eventually, of course, they camp out in the Sheriff's house late one night and polish off some alcohol.

There is of course the slap heard around the world when Poitier, as Virgil Tibbs, smacks the white wealthy plantation owner in the greenhouse, Eric Endicott. Again, the audience is loving it.

And 'To Sir with Love,' the Poitier character who can't get a job as an engineer because of race, who has to take an assignment in a tough neighborhood London high school as a teacher and deal with a room full of white teenagers whose only thoughts are about sex, drinking and probably beating someone up, who of course throws the curriculum overboard, wins their respect, and dances in a beautiful, funny fashion with one of his white colleagues played by Judy Geeson. Lulu's song of course is as popular as the movie. The audience loved it.

Going to the movies is not the experience it was, a viewing shared with hundreds, perhaps near a thousand people. The Cineplexes are measured by "screens" and the audience may as well be in their living rooms, isolated from any other mass of people. The times, they are a changin'.

When Poitier won the award for the 1963 movie 'Lilies of the Field' the movie wasn't on anyone's radar. But it was correctly viewed by the voting academy members whose votes fittingly earned Sidney Poitier the first Oscar awarded to a Black performer. I only ever saw that movie on television years after it came out.

Being the reader of obituaries that I am, I took great delight in the detail given the Sidney Poitier sendoff in the NYT by William Grimes.

The acting road of Poitier's formative days came through New York. And like any actor on that road, he struggled mightily. William Grimes tells us Poitier took all sorts of menial jobs, had but $3 in his pocket when he arrived in New York, and saved his nickels so he could sleep in pay toilets on cold nights.

Pay toilets. A nickel. The mechanism depicted above is what was on a pay toilet door, a sort of vending machine/parking meter that needed a nickel to have the lock disengage and allow you access to a toilet.  Unlike a parking meter, there was no time limit, but someone could come by and roust you out. 

These pay toilets were still around in the '60s, in Penn Station, Port Authority Bus Station, Grand Central Terminal and just about anywhere there was a men's room. I never knew if the women's room had pay toilets, but eventually the pay toilets were legislated out in New York City. You could poop for free, if you found a toilet you wanted to use.

Arrived in New York City with $3.00 in his pocket There is a great scene in the Tony Curtis, Debbie Reynolds 1960 movie where Curtis, an aspiring musician, tries to get a room at the Time Square Dixie Hotel on 8th Avenue, but doesn't have the $7 for a room. The place was too swanky.

The Dixie Hotel. Swanky. Before the Port Authority Terminal was built on 8th Avenue the Trailways busses left from the back of the Dixie Hotel. There was a giant turntable in the garage that turned the buses around to head back out. I remember this because this was how my mother and I traveled for 12 hours, in the '50s, pre-New York State Thruway, to see her Army nurse buddy in the summer who lived on a farm with her husband and daughter in Brushton, New York, near Malone where the bus let us off, near the Canadian border. I can still hear the bus gears changing.

Malone, New York I later learned was where the gangster Bugsy Segal was incarcerated in the 1940s for a while. Malone's principal industries are farming and correctional facilities.

Greyhound Bus lines had their own terminal across from Penn Station, and somewhere else on the West side.  Seedy places if there ever were seedy places. They seemed to be filled with broken glass.

The Dixie Hotel has long since morphed into the Carter Hotel, and basically functions as a welfare hotel. No more busses though.

Times Square is no longer the XXX porn palace it once was.  It is now 2022 and one of the brothers, Fourstar Dave, has passed away. The other brother is someone I no longer hear from, and he lives in Ohio with his third wife. I'm 73, married 46 years and have two married daughters in their 40s, along with two granddaughters.

Can I be this far removed from those three Sidney Poitier movies?

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

Tin Pan Alley

The Piermont brothers would know the answer as to the origin of the phrase for that music writing center of Manhattan that was in full blossom in the early part of the 20th Century.

The brothers, Sidney and Bennie, were booking agents for Loews theaters, vaudeville acts. They grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and remember the 9th Avenue El. Yes, there was an El on 9th avenue, a towering erector set of steel beams and girders that allowed a steam driven subway line to run up and down the West Side spine on Manhattan.

Their parents were immigrants from Lithuania and their full name was Piermonsky, reflecting the Russian occupation of Lithuania.

Sidney was the father of friends of mine, two brothers, Dennis and David. Bennie was a lifelong bachelor, a WW I Doughboy who fought in France and who lived his adult life in the Prince Edward Hotel.

On Sunday mornings, Bennie would let Dennis, Dave and I into the Friars Club on 55th Street to gain unfettered access to the pool table in the game room. The Friars was a theatrical club that eventually ceased to exist some years ago. The building is still there. I just passed it a few months ago. The Friars Roasts of celebrities emanated from there.

These guys were show biz in the glory days of The Hotel Astor, Broadway, Lindy's, Stage Deli, Shubert Alley and Damon Runyon. Women were dames, gals, dolls, broads, tootsies, tomatoes, and either had great pins or gams (legs) or not. They knew Mayor Jimmy Walker and Toots Shor, and all who crossed Toot's bar/restaurant threshold, with Sidney introducing the gangster Frank Costello ("I pay my taxes.") to his young son David. They got shaves in a barber's chair, and might have even gotten some in the same chair Albert Anastasia last sat in at the Park Sheraton hotel.

Sidney's second wife was Susan, a ginger-haired USO singer who was Mike Todd's secretary. She was Dave and Dennis's Mom. Sidney went from being a vaudeville booking agent to being a TV producer for CBS, for the Gary Moore and Carol Burnett shows. He showed up at CBS's Black Rock building each morning and never came back to his desk after lunch and several glasses of Dewars at Toots's across the street. He was home by 3:00 P.M.

Sidney was a judge at the Miss America competition in 1945 in Atlantic City, and famously didn't vote for New York's Bess Myerson, the eventual winner. He was known well enough by the post office that he once got a piece of mail simply addressed Sidney Piermont, Times Square, New York. His telephone exchange was LOngacre.

The only reason I'm mentioning all this is that the Wall Street Journal's Ben Zimmer has done his weekly piece on the origin of the phrase "Tin Pan Alley" in the Saturday edition.

His research usually is a deep dive into some phrase that has been appearing in the news recently, but I guess it was a slow week for buzz word utterances by politicians and media types. 

Ben does a good job researching printed references to the phrase and finds it was made as far back as 1903. He tells us the Tin Pan Alley district was on West 28th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues. I didn't know it was that far removed from Times Square. The wholesale flower district still survives a bit in the area between 6th and 7th Avenues.

Mr. Zimmer writes of a reference to the famous street in the January 16, 1903 edition of the Morning Telegraph (a racing newspaper) telling us a reporter wrote that "William Morris, the vaudeville agent" had leased office space on West 28th Street, "more commonly known as Tin Pan Alley from the multiplicity of song publishers' pianos." 

Mr. Zimmer uses the explanation of the sound of music coming from cheap pianos, "tinny" as the source of the area's' name. Consider buildings in Manhattan that behind frosted glass doorways with neatly painted gold leaf lettering pianos there were pianos constantly being played on by songwriters and music publishers, trying to churn out the next hit that Al Jolson or whomever was going to make famous.

Sheet music was a major product of the music business. Most homes had a piano of some kind in he parlor and someone in the household who could read music and bang out a few tunes.

Manhattan office workers then and now ate lunch in the office. I'd like to think one of the Piermont brothers told me that Tin Pan Alley got its names from the tin pie plates that the publishers plopped on top of the piano's hammers to disguise the melodies that they were trying to create from the ears of rival publishers in the building.  After all, who wants to lose the rights to the next Swanee River?

Interestingly enough is the section of Manhattan on the East Side where several major hospitals are is known as "Bed Pan Alley." Bed Pan Alley became somewhat famous as the residents of the apartments watched from their terraces as the hospital staff shifts changed at 7:00 P.M. during the height of the  Covid pandemic in 2020 and banged on pots and pans, blew trumpets, and in general made New Year's Eve type noise as a salute to the front line workers.

What goes around comes around.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

Covid and Curling

Sweden's Skip Niklas Edin

The NYT in all its comprehensiveness created a section summarizing each winter Olympic sport and what to watch for. They don't cover the local New York hockey teams, but we're going to know what to look for in Beijing bobsledding.

But it's not the bobsledding I'm interested in—it's Curling. And how will Covid affect the participants? We are already seeing a tennis player being denied entry into Australia because he's unvaccinated; U.S. figure skaters are testing positive in Nashville, and some skiers are doubtful because of the pandemic. But what about the Curling people? No news yet.

You remember Curling from the last winter games, right? And the replays. What tension in seeing someone with a broom sweep the bowling alley ice to speed up, or impede this giant round stone with a handle on top as it heads toward a target and the opponent's pieces. Shuffle board on ice. It's a game started in Scotland. The Scots also gave us golf and something to drink. We can't thank them for everything.

Did you know the U.S. won the gold medal in Curling at the last games after a shaky 5-4 start lead by  John Shuster? When you read the NYT summary you are reminded how we emerged as an underdog powerhouse.

There isn't much more detail about whose who in men's and women's curling. There is even a mixed doubles event! There is a link to a 2008 story, "What is Curling? Power Plays Rocks and Hammers"

This piece is invaluable in understanding the game and the strategy. With colorful terms like hammer  hog line, button, house, end, skip and sheet, all that's missing are trading cards and player endorsements for insurance, vodka and scotch.

Several years ago I was coming home on a LIRR train and a group of younger lads were commenting on how they were hoping they'd get home in time to watch the Curling competition. It seems NBC gives it outsized coverage. Not just "plausibly live" but really live. It's one event where you needn't worry about social distancing. There's no one watching.

I immediately added to their conversation that the replays were what I enjoyed most. They were of course kidding with each other, because outside of hockey, there are few winter sports that are any fun to watch.

The preview does tell us that the Men's Swedish team is favored to win. I can't wait.

Let the game begin.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

King Cake

This is the time of the year when I get an email reminder from some bakery in New Orleans reminding me it's time to order this year's King Cake. I was reminded of the impending reminder when the NYT in yesterday's Food Section did an informative and quite colorful feature on King Cake, 'A King Cake Is Their Way to Make Joy,' its meaning, and how to create one for yourself if you're tired of baking sourdough. Believe me, King Cake is nothing like sourdough.

It's also the time of the year when I tease the members of my family that I'm poised to order this year's King Cake. A chorus of derision breaks out so loud that they drown out NY Giant fans who haven't seen their team score a touchdown in four appearances. You can't call them games. The only chants louder were when Allie Sherman, the Giants coach of long ago was pleaded with to find another job.  (Hey guys, I'm only teasing about ordering a cake.)

A King Cake is so sweet it is no wonder the people of New Orleans are not annually thrown into cardiac and diabetic shock. To me, it is delicious. But I won't order one. I may have even unsubscribed to the bakery's reminder.

I don't remember how many years ago it was that I did order one, and it arrived in all its kaleidoscope of sugary colors, beads, sporting of course the tiny pink figurine that I had no idea what it symbolized. It's baby Jesus. The preamble to the sugary recipe explains the meaning behind stuffing a tiny plastic Jesus in the dough.

Kayla Stewart explains:

And in New Orleans where Roman Catholicism is still the predominant religion Twelfth Night celebrated here on January 6 holds deep significance. The date, also known around the world as Epiphany or Three Kings Day marks the moment when the three Magi, or kings, reached the baby Jesus in Bethlehem after bring stuck on the Middle East's version of a snowbound I-95 in Virginia in January as they tried to reach Bethlehem before the Super Bowl. (The Giants were not in it.) Twelve days and nights to follow that star. Camels are not known for speed.

I'm not a baker, but if you read the recipe for the King Cake you will realize it needs enough sugar to create a shortage on your grocer's shelf. Consider the filling...

½ packed cup/110 grams brown sugar (For those bad at metric conversions, this equates to ¼ pounds of sugar.)

Then there's the dough...

3 tablespoons plus 1½ teaspoons granulated sugar

And don't forget the icing...

3 cups/330 grams confectioners' sugar (That's about ¾ pound of sugar.)

Ms. Stewart takes us through the ingrained tradition of eating King Cake as children in New Orleans and the search for the tiny Jesus. It's a wonder anyone has any teeth left in Louisiana.

The cake has evolved into a sort of highly sugary, colorful Danish that in some quarters is not meant to be eaten before January 6th. From the Epiphany on, the bakeries in the Crescent City are busy turning out King Cakes for the residents and the online orders like I used to place.

Damn. If the members of my family weren't so vigilant about my health, I'd like to at least order a slice of a King Cake. They don't have to eat it.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

Pushing the Envelope

Betty White with Alan Ludden

She missed the deadline.

In a prior posting, I theorized that notables were rushing to leave us before the end of 2021 in order to make the highlight reel for 2021. It seemed A1 below-the-fold was becoming obituary territory at the NYT as the year drew to a close

When Secretariat nailed down the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness in with track record performances in 1973 the horse-of-the-prior year was given to be a lead pipe cinch to win the Belmont three weeks from the Preakness, and be crowned the first Triple Crown winner since Citation in 1948.

Secretariat appeared on the covers of Time, Newsweek and Sports Illustrated before the Belmont.  Jesus. No pressure there.

So consider the advance hoopla accorded to Betty White who was set to be 100 on January 17, 2022. They were talking about the latest centenarian; she appeared on the cover of People magazine. She was everywhere as a model of living to be 100. Until she just didn't quite make 100.

Yesterday the NYT printed 72 facts that caught their attention in 2021. One was the demographic progression of the aging population: 

No. 25 - The United Nations  estimates that there were 95,000 centenarians in 1990 and more than $50,000 by 2015. By 2100. there will be 25 million.

But Betty didn't make it. And by passing away after the deadline for the December 31, 2021 edition of the NYT , she missed inclusion in William MacDonald's year-end wrap up of obituaries. She's fallen through the cracks. Because next year's wrap up will start with January 2022, and Betty made it to December 2021—but late.

Her long life is not made short by not making it to 100. Only those who are already 99 have a chance at 100. What can be said of her at 99 would have been said of her at 100. She did make the vaunted position in the NYT, A1, below-the-fold. 

I remember her from the 1960s game shows and her marriage to Alan Ludden, host of Password. She was pretty much always appearing on television, being given credit for a seven-decade long career. that put her in the Guinness Book of World Records. A twirl on Dancing With the Stars in her 90s nearly put her in the hospital though.

Unless I leaf through a copy of People magazine in a medical office (however, they've taken to not putting them out for fear of spreading Covid) and read that Betty White attributes her prolonged life to some mixture of substances, frame of mind, or environment, my guess is a long life is achieved by not dying young. 

Lee Kaufman, whose cleaning ads with her husband Morty when she was 91 for Swifter cleaning pads, whisked her and him to stardom has also passed away at 99.

Lee and her husband Morty were cast as a kvetching suburban cleaning couple by Swifter cleaning pads in 2013 and became overnight celebrities. They lived in Valley Stream, NY, and Lee told Newsday newspaper in an interview that her late-life fame held a lesson.

"The bottom line is, don't die young. There are too many things that can happen."

Betty White would surely agree, even though she didn't make it to 100 either.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com