Fuzzy Wuzzy

Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear,
Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair,
Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn't fuzzy,
Was he?

What was he? An Olympic swimmer? 

Mary Roach has written a book titled "Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law." And when Fuzzy Wuzzy breaks the law often enough by tipping over garbage cans, diving into dumpsters, breaking into homes, campers, cars and trucks, and paddling into campsites, the wildlife law enforcement people generally get involved. And it doesn't always turn out well for the bear.

Repeat offenders might be relocated deep into the forest, only to somehow find their way back to the scene of their previous crimes, eating uninvited, and certainly not cleaning up after themselves.

Ms. Roach tells us the story of a tagged bear who made his way back 142 miles, six of which involved an ocean swim. Mother bears, or sows, actually teach their offspring cubs how to turn handles, remove doors, climb through windows and get to where the goodies are. It's as if the cubs are  juvenile inmates who learn from the adults how to pull the next caper. A new generation of transgressors is born and groomed.

I'm only part way through Mary's book, and I'm hooked. The first chapter is cleverly called "Maul Cops" and lays out the various wildlife agencies that get involved when the wildlife invite themselves over too often for a snack. Or a banquet.

I don't know if it is investigative reporting, long-form journalism, or just plain fun reading, but Ms. Roach has mastered the art of pulling together a vast set of facts and numbers and making it an interesting read.

I suppose the bibliography would tell me how she's able to tell us that:

For the most part of the past century, your odds of being killed by a cougar were about the same as your odds of being killed by a filing cabinet.

However, your odds of being fined by the IRS, or even jailed because of what is found in a filing cabinet are a good deal better.

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Hibernating bears who live off their own fat do not need to use the toilet. They reabsorb their urine and form a fecal "plug." Cubs, on the other hand, let it go inside the den, Not a problem, because the mother bear eats it—partly as cleanup, but mostly as food. She is nursing, after all.

Thus, if you get mad at a mother bear and tell her to "eat shit" she is more than likely to simply comply, and is happy to do so.

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Between 2001 and 2007, 1,100 automobiles were broken into by bears at Yosemite campgrounds. It turned out that fewer than five bears—sows and their cubs—were behind the break-ins.

Talk about a crime family.

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I'm not even through Chapter Two and reading about the bears that prowl the alleys behind the restaurants in Aspen, Colorado, when I read about Hank the Tank in the NYT, a black bear thought to be behind numerous break-ins in South Lake Tahoe, California.  

Hank, as pictured above, is 500 pounds—unusually large for a black bear—and reminds me of when a trio of professional wrestlers were boarding our flight from Wausau, Wisconsin to Chicago late one evening.

My boss and I were making a connection back to New York after a one-day meeting in Wausau (saw nothing of the place other than a conference room) when it became apparent that the three very large individuals we saw in the bar were slated to be on our flight. 

Because it was a short, commuter type flight, I don't think the seats were pre-assigned. When the wrestlers sat close to each other I distinctly remember the flight attendant separating them and distributing them—and thus their weight—to different parts of the aircraft. We weren't leaving until the load was better balanced. It seemed like they got a lot of that.

The February 22, 2022 NYT story tells us of attributing more than two dozen home break-ins to the gargantuan black bear that has earned the nickname Hank the Tank.

Hank has evaded capture, bypassing a trap set for him. But patience is running out, and the last resort of euthanizing the bear is becoming increasingly likely. Most residents of the gated community don't want that, they just want the problem to go away.

Unfortunately for Hank, the sanctuaries are filled, and relocation deep into the forest either just eventually leads him to come back, or causes Hank to be the same problem somewhere else. He has acquired a strong addiction for human leftovers, and may not even be hibernating because the pickings are so lush. Born to eat and run.

In fact, it turns out in a follow-up story in the Times, it is revealed that it is now thought that there is more than one Hank, perhaps as many as three of them based on DNA evidence. Extremely large black bears tend to look alike and may not carry the right id. To the untrained human, they look alike. 

Thus, Hank has not acted alone, reinforcing conspiracy theories. This is good news for Hank I. With multiple bears involved, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife said it would work in the coming weeks and months to trap and study them and then release them into more suitable habitats.

This is when the NIMBY people might really have a valid concern: please, not in my backyard.

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The Cat

Emile Francis lived so long that I lost track that he was still alive yesterday. He was 95 when he passed away, decades removed from his days as the New York Rangers coach and General Manager, my golden age of going to games and watching them play.

The above photo is surely from the Old Garden, sometime in the '60s before the "New" Garden opened in 1968. It is not credited, but I'd almost bet it accompanied a Roger Angell piece that appeared in The New Yorker. I have a copy of it somewhere, having gone to the library to find the article, then paying some bucks to get a copy of the magazine from E-Bay. I remember reading the article when it came out, probably in a doctor's office, then buying the issue to finish the story. (Vic Hadfield and Jean Ratelle are in the foreground.)

The Rangers were getting good. No longer the perennial doormats of the six-team league that was about to add six more teams. Most teams had one person as the coach and general manager. And why not? What was there to keep track of? When the N.H.L. was six teams it meant there were 120 players in the entire league. How hard was it to keep track of who's who? They certainly weren't getting paid beaucoup bucks.

Reading the obituary I realized how much I lost track of Emile after he was ousted from the Rangers. I forget who owned the Rangers when he was let go, perhaps Gulf and Western. But Emile had put together the best teams that were continuously in the hunt, often advancing in the first playoff round by knocking off the prior year's Stanley Cup Champions. 

I distinctly remember the 1970-1971 season when the Rangers lost two home games all season. There were of course ties, no overtime periods and no shootouts. I was a season ticket holder from 1969, lasting 11 lasting seasons.

I was at the game when the goaltender Eddie Giacomin took to the ice as a Detroit Red Wing after the trade engineered by Emile. I don't specifically remember a chant "Kill the Cat," but I do remember the Garden town crowd was raucous throughout the game, booing every time the Rangers touched the puck. At one point, Giacomin almost passed the puck to a Ranger defenseman, Arnie Brown ("hit him with your purse, Arnie'), as he was clearing the puck. Giacomin quickly fell on the puck when he realized what he was doing. Detroit won and everyone was happy about that.

Fans never forgave Francis for trading Giacomin, then Ratelle and Brad Park, even if it did bring a befuddled Phil Esposito to the Rangers. Esposito said at the time that Giacomin should die as a Ranger.

I have a framed blowup of the Daily News photo of Giacomin standing in front of his goal and wiping tears from his face as the anthem is played. It is amazing the difference in goaltender protection between then and now. If Eddie were on roller skates he would look like one of us playing roller hockey on a Sunday morning in a 32nd street school yard. 

The high point of Emile's tenure with the Rangers was probably the 1972 Stanley Cup finals against the Bruins. Although the Rangers lost the series 4 games to 2, it almost wasn't even that close. The Bruins had a superior penalty killing lineup  of Don Marcotte, Bobby Orr, Eddie Westfall and Derek  Sanderson. I swear I still remember the Bruins scoring twice short handed on the same Ranger power play. After the series Francis just said, "Orr killed us."

I remember Emile's migration to the St. Louis Blue front office, but not to the Hartford Whalers. That was so long ago that there are probably people in Hartford who might be reading Emile's obituary surprised to learn Hartford was once an N.H.L. city. (After being a W.H.A. city.) I forgot they became the Carolina Hurricanes. Gordie Howe put Hartford on the W.H.A. map when he joined the Whalers when the league started.

To read the quote from defenseman Harry Howell that Emile brought a bit of a system to the Rangers is interesting. For all the years I watched the Rangers, they always brought the puck up ice with someone first starting behind their goal with the puck and waiting for another forward to come back, circle in front of the net, and run a bit of interference for the puck carrier. It always drove me crazy why they waited to bring the puck back up ice, but that's the way Emile wanted it.

Emile was tough on his players and expected over 100% all the time. When Cesare Maniago was a  Ranger goaltender he was emerging as a star. One night at the Old Garden Cesare stopped Bobby Hull from getting his 50th goal of the season, an achievement that would have tied him with Maurice "The Rocket" Richard of Montreal. Leaving the game we as fans were so pumped that we were chanting on West 49th Street, "Hail Cesare, Hail Cesare."

Maniago fell out of favor with Emile when he complained of some ailment and didn't want to play in a game, preferring to sit it out over what Francis thought was a minor ailment. Emile, ever the combative, never complaining goaltender himself, never played Maniago again and traded him. He buried Cesare.

As I keep rereading the obit, and perhaps when someone who was with me at a lot of those games weighs in, I'll have even more to write about Emile and the Rangers.

But for now in my memory, The Cat came back.

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Gangsta Rap and Hip-Hop at 1600

Not widely reported in the mainstream media was that President Biden spent Super Bowl weekend at the White House rather than make the trip back to Delaware on Friday.

The president did this so that on Sunday he could watch Super Bowl LVI on a bigger screen than he has in the Biden homestead game room, and also to be closer to a kitchen full of government snacks like nachos, dip, wings, pepperoni pizza, and hard seltzer.

During the halftime show the president imitated grabbing a microphone and started bustin' some moves. Our correspondent was just outside the door and was certain they heard:

"Folks, it ain't no joke,
I'm here to say
I'm gonna poke
CornPop
With a metal top"

Dr. Jill came in to calm the president down with some hot cocoa and a Jimmy Carter cardigan. President Biden awoke on Monday morning well rested and ready for his Zoom call with Russia's president Putin who was going to pose shirtless from the top of a tank turret pointed in the direction of the Ukraine.

Stay tuned. There are always more developments.

After the Zoom call President Biden is scheduled to meet with NFL's commissioner Roger Goodell to discuss racism in football and halftime shows.

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The Connection

I didn't know the deceased—I had never even heard of the deceased—a Cuban born painter of bold shapes who came to fame quite late in life, who has now passed away at 106, Carmen Herrera. I did know her husband though.

I almost didn't finish reading the six-column obit for Ms. Herrera by Robert McFadden. But as I read the first column in today's NYT I learned that she didn't really make any money from her paintings until very late in life when she was "discovered." She relied on the income of her husband, Jesse Lowenthal, an English teacher at Stuyvesant High School, who for 45 years tried to get something across to his students, one of whom was me. ( A photo of Mr. Lowenthal is in a frame in the upper left corner of the above photo.)

Mr. Lowenthal passed away in 2000, and I had him as an English teacher, perhaps in 10th grade—I really don't remember and the report cards are not handy—sometime between 1963 and 1966. I remember he came into the family shop on 18th Street and Third Avenue now and then. I occasionally delivered flowers to his apartment on East 19th Street, never knowing he was married, let alone that his wife was an artist. It is mentioned in the obit that her studio was on East 19th Street, "near Union Square." Well, sort of near Union Square, five blocks away. Close enough.

Mr. Lowenthal—always Mr. Lowenthal to me, never Jesse— was a bit of a tall man whose hair crept back over his shirt collar. He had a bit of a Bohemian look, dark plaid shirts with a tie—all the male teachers wore a tie then. When I saw him in the store, or delivered flowers, I don't think I reminded him he had been my English teacher for a semester. I was always shy about drawing attention to myself then.

Now that I'm reminded of him, I think it would have been nice to mention it to him and show him all the books I had by the desk in the back where I did my homework. Lots of reissued classic paperback novels, lots of John Steinbeck and Sinclair Lewis, and some new releases that I bought from the card store/stationery store a few doors down in the same building as the flower shop.

Now that his wife's paintings have became as famous as they are, (and expensive) it is doubtful I could add any of them to my overcrowded walls here at home.

The lesson here of course is, if you start reading an obit, make sure you finish reading the obit. You never know what you're going to learn.

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LVI

Somewhere Pete Rozelle is beaming. Fifty-six iterations of the Super Bowl, all designated with Roman numerals. And I've seen them all.

The former commissioner of the NFL conceived of the Roman numeral tags to promote the epicness of the battle between the two teams. It's a Roman Coliseum face-off.

Since Pete is now deceased, it is impossible to know if he realized that with enough continuity of the spectacle, the Roman numerals are going to get quite lengthy, and if they're hard to decipher now, they're going to be downright impossible to decipher in a few decades.

A basic knowledge of the numbers will let the beginner determine that LVI is the designation for 56. The L represents 50, and the VI is 5+1=6; thus 56. Quick, can you envision what Super Bowl 89 will look like on a T-shirt? Not many people can. It's going to have to be worn by the plus-size people. That, or the font is going to have to be really small.

In the Roman numeral scheme of things, you're adding or subtracting values associated with the symbols. Think of the numbers as being built by Lego pieces. Eighty-nine is 50, L, plus three tens, Xs, and nine, designated by subtracting 1 from 10, which equals 9, and is designated by IX. Thus, 89 checks in at LXXXIX, certainly a lot to squeeze onto the front of a sweatshirt or T-shirt.

Since I'm now LXXIII, it is probably safe to say when they get to the 89th Super Bowl I'll be amongst the departed.

But no need to dwell on the inevitable, live in the present. And the present is allowing me to be amongst what I suspect is an ever decreasing number of people who can say they've seen all the Super Bowls. Not just be alive for all of them, but to have seen all of them. And I'm not really a football fan.

Favorite Super Bowl? Certainly not just one. The first, Joe Namath's ride to glory in the third with the New York Jets and his ability to stay alive and hawk Medicare Advantage insurance in 2022. No one has ever gotten more out of an athletic achievement than Joe helping the Jets win a Super Bowl in 1969, upsetting the Baltimore Colts, and putting the AFL on a parity with the NFL.

That 1969 Super Bowl is the only one the Jets have ever been in. Their championship drought is within one of the New York Rangers and their 1940/1994 Stanley Cups. And at least the Rangers made it to the Cup finals after 1940. The poor Jets haven't even appeared in a Super Bowl since 1969. Their tickets should be nearly free.

The run of the Pittsburgh Steelers was always exciting, as well as the New York Giant wins. Perhaps the most unbelievable game was Tom Brady steering the New England Patriots to their come-from-behind, overtime win over the Atlanta Falcons. Atlanta fans might still be in therapy.

Commercials? There are those who say they can be the best part. To me, they're either bad or good, with the game being bad or good. Different combinations always emerge. I have to say last night's batch left me confused as to what they were selling. The one takeaway I have is that they were bad. Someone I know called them "stupid."  To me, they were only memorably obtuse.

Halftime? don't get me started. I admit to using the mute button. Even when as far back as when Janet Jackson lost the covering to her left breast it happened in my house with the sound off.  When my wife returned to the living room I reported that, "I think I just saw Janet Jackson's left breast." Until it was confirmed that I did, see Janet Jackson's left breast, my wife thought I was just being a fantasizing male.

I watched last night's halftime show with the mute button on as well as being out of the room. I caught a glimpse of what looked like prefabricated white housing on the field. I know golf courses build homes near the courses, but this seemed like it was housing really close to the field. It was on the field. How are they going to play the second half? Fear not. A massive army of workers whisked the buildings away between the commercials, and the second half got underway.

They used to say you went to the fights and a hockey game broke out. Last night, right on schedule, a football game resumed between the commercials and the entertainment, and thankfully the same teams that started the game resumed the game. No one took planes home until the clock wound down to near zero. This was good, because if different uniforms were on display for the second half, the game would have been as confusing as the commercials to me.

The game? The Rams won, at home, 23-20, thanks to some generous penalties. I thought there was only "home cooking" in basketball. Maybe the refs were making up for blowing the face-mask call on the Bengal who pulled the defender down and waltzed in for a touchdown. These things happen, and not even replay can change things.

I made a mental bet to take the "under." at 46 points prior to the game. I "won." The fact that I still don't have an online betting account for sports betting shows something, but I'm not sure what it is. When Off-Track horse wagering emerged in 1971 I was there with a telephone account on Day One. I never got into placing wagers on other sports, so all the online gambling commercials aimed at me go for naught.

There has to be a better way to watch the game. Maybe I'll record Super Bowl LVII, stay in a news blackout, and fast forward my way through all the segments that have nothing to do with the game itself. I'll be in bed in no time.

After LVI Super Bowls, I think it's time.

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FWD

That I know of,  FWD is not some Twitter/Internet shorthand for something like LMAO (laughing my ass off. See what I know). It is my own shorthand for Fridays with Dad.

Since I have two very adult daughters, and there are five week days in a week, I can expect a visit from the daughters on the day their schedule allows them. Susan on Wednesdays; Nancy, generally on Fridays. And since Nancy heard of my new found interest in playing pool and acquiring a two piece (not custom made) pool cue and case, she suggested that since my birthday was in January and she hadn't yet bought me a present, why doesn't she just buy me the pool cue rather than taking the easy way out with a gift card. I didn't object.

So, since I'd already window shopped for a cue at a local store, D'Angelo Sports on Wantagh Avenue, a place that sells baseball and all sorts of trading cards, darts, dart boards, flights, and pool cues, it was a easy trip down to D'Angelo's to pick out a cue, on a Friday, as in yesterday.

Baseball cards are big business, and so are trading cards for all sports, sports that when I was growing up did not have dedicated cards. Near the two revolving pool cue kiosks, there were hockey trading cards. And since everything always reminds me of something, I started to tell the salesperson about the photo I saw that morning in the NYT of Sarah Palin leaving Federal court in Lower Manhattan in connection with her libel suit trial against the New York Times with Ron Duguay in tow. 

Ron Duguay! A former NHL hockey player, who when he was with the Rangers as #10 and played with no helmet in the era I was attending games as a season ticket holder, you knew his flowing curly locks were a macho, sex appeal magnet to every young female hockey fan. He is now apparently squiring Sarah Palin.  Hey, Alaska is close to Canada, eh?

Duguay has been seen occasionally on some network analyzing games, looking obviously a little older, but surely just as desirable, perhaps to an older set of hockey females, but still advertising his looks. Palin described herself in court as being a single mom (divorced from Todd in 2020) taking care of a special needs child. Duguay is only referred to in the caption for the above photo. 

Ron has the appearance of a bodyguard, or a tough as nails P.I. in a NetFlix series, with his dark glasses and his open collar, towering over the diminutive Palin. Just friends? No matter. I digress.

I settled on a good looking 20 oz. cue with the look of highly polished maple from a company appropriately called Action. (I've always loved the scene in The Color of Money when Tom Cruise opens his case and refers to his cue as 'Doom.' I once flirted with naming some fraud detection software we developed also as 'Doom.') The case is a simple, black padded one, also from Action, with a shoulder strap, just like the ones I see the guys with who have their own cue at the pool hall, "where the bad folks all get together at night." My daughter Nancy, fresh from a trip to the ATM, forked over cash, thus no tax. I like this girl's style.

I can't believe that after all these years, and there are A LOT of years, that the next time I aim a cue ball at a rack it will be with my own cue. No more searching through the house racks. I really can't wait.

And for me, that waiting will be over sometime early next week when I descend on Raxx in West Hempstead, having the look on entry of someone who can play the game. The look will evaporate if someone spends five minutes watching me sink a few, then miss. Then miss again. I don't care.

If someone wants to play me for "split time" I'll tell them to come see me in six months. With any effort and luck, I can only get better, with my own cue.

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Robin Herman

Once again I'm greeted with an obituary of someone who I briefly met and someone who has now passed away slightly younger than myself.  If we were to meet again, we could remember the same presidents.

Robin Herman was a reporter for the NYT who I remember covered the New York Rangers. I remember her byline after each game. It's funny to think where journalism has traveled to think that Robin was one of the few females covering sports, getting into men's locker room, and now the NYT doesn't even send a beat reporter to Ranger games. Read a story lately?  You might get yesterday's score in agate type in tomorrow's paper. The times, they are a changin'. 

I forgot what women looked like in the '70s when Robin set out from Princeton and got a job at the Times—the Ivy League pipeline. The hairstyle, the kerchief around the neck. Robin would easily have been one of the young women in my office. She looked like someone I wanted to date. 

Like so many young woman in the '70s she was aware that her gender was condescended to. She set out to change it, and apparently did.

I didn't remember the part about how she got Pooh-Bahs to allow her into players' locker rooms, but there was a lot of that push going on at the time. I distinctly remember a female reporter who wrote a story in The Times about being at baseball's All-Star game and writing that the men's underwear on display showed the generational shift from fuddy-duddy boxers to the skin tight, bulging briefs. (As I remember it, there was a photo of the boxers and briefs on a clothes line.)

At the time I read that I didn't get how observant they were. I only thought that, "there goes the locker room." It was the era when a rather large woman got carried out of McSorley's Ale House on 7th street who had the nerve to break through the men only rule when she asked to be served. ("We drink 'em two at a time here.") An even bigger bartender deposited her on the sidewalk. I have the photo somewhere. The ban eventually fell like so many others.

Even to graduate Princeton, Robin represented a new gender of undergraduate—a female. Princeton didn't go co-ed until 1969, the year she entered the school. A good year. The Mets won the World Series as well. The times, they were a changin'.

I read in Robin's obit that she grew up in Port Washington. We weren't neighbors, but the Port Washington line that ran behind our house in Murray Hill Flushing provided a rail connection. Growing up in the Nassau County suburb I doubt Robin went to Ranger games at the Old Madison Square Garden like I did growing up. Her interest in sports seems to have sprung from her college newspaper days at Princeton.

My own encounter with Robin was at a Ranger "game," or rather a workout at Madison Square Garden that the Rangers opened up to season ticket holders as part of their effort to retain fans.

The Rangers in the mid-'70s were starting to resemble the post-Casey Stengel Yankees. They stunk. I had two season seats in the 300 Green Seat Section for about 10 years starting in the late '60s. 

Garden management was trying to reward loyal fans with a peek at a workout, thus the sit-anywhere-you-like admission to the arena one afternoon. I got married in 1975, so one of my tickets always went to my wife. We had no kids yet.

I distinctly remember sitting a little off to the side in a close to the ice seat for the workout with my wife, when this young woman came over to interview my wife. It was Robin, with a notebook. I think her angle was to get a feel for what the female fan thought. I remember I didn't say anything other than to remind my wife once about something.

I have no memory of what questions were asked. When I asked my wife last night if she remembered the interview she said she didn't. "What did the reporter want to know?"

I explained I think she was looking for a feeling about what the female fan was thinking. My wife laughed out loud (LOL). I said yeah, you came to the games because I had a ticket, you weren't really a fan, and still aren't.

Little did Robin know that she was interviewing a woman who paid so little attention to sports that during a Pictionary game on summer vacation with the kids Liz identified the blue line as the foul line. Liz was still always good company, despite her inattention to what was going on.

Nowadays, there are far many more woman who attend games and know what they're watching. And everyone seems to wear some piece of team apparel. Did you see anything other than red in the stands at last week's Kansas City Chiefs game? Red does stand out.

Just look at the sideline reporters, studio reporters. There are plenty of females who string together cogent sentences about the game.  

When you haven't lived long enough yet you have no comparison of the current to the past. Robin eventually left The Times, wrote a book, did much freelance work, was an assistant dean at Harvard, but kept up her writing by putting out a blog, "Girl in the Locker Room."

By the looks of it, her blog started in 2004, mine in 2009. We had something in common other than knowing the same presidents.

The times, they are always a changin'.

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We Miss Amy

Anyone who has been watching 'Jeopardy' for the past two weeks knows that once Amy Schneider was knocked off by a one-night wonder librarian, there have been a succession of one-night champions, with only one guy so far winning two games. Amy, where are you? At your agent's office? Tax attorney?  A book deal beckons? She's taking a leave of absence from her job.

Last night was no different. One and done. There's more champion turnover than New York Yankee managers during the height of the George Steinbrenner era.

Missing are the rapid responses—invariably correct responses—that Amy machine gunned at the board. Now there can be quiet, because either no one knows the answer, or two people don't know the answer and the third is too reluctant to try. I wonder if the clue creators get points for devising a clue that no one can answer. Some of those clues have more twists than that crooked street in San Francisco.

Amy is still in the news. The WSJ did a recent A-Hed piece on how her dress style has become influential. Namely the pearls she took to wearing during each telecast. To me, there was nothing about Amy that screamed "style," but apparently she's responsible for an uptick in that classic fashion accessory, a string of pearls.

To me, pearls are a '50s thing sported by the moms imitating Donna Reed on 'The Donna Reed' Show. But since the '50s are a lifetime ago, it is not surprising that pearl popularity is spurred on by something else, especially since I haven't seen any reruns of 'The Donna Reed Show.'

Since Amy's giant upper left arm tattoo was always covered, there is no mention of women flocking to imitate that one, but you never know. Amy's tattoo is of Princess Ozma of Oz.

Amy explained on Twitter: "My tattoo is indeed of Ozma of Oz. For those who don't know, L. Frank Baum wrote many sequels to The Wizard of Oz, and in all of them the ruler of Oz was Princess Ozma. She had been the rightful heir, but was kidnapped as a baby by a sorceress, who enchanted her to become a boy." [Tip] 

In a subsequent Frank Baum story, the Good Sorceress discovered what had happened and forced Mombi to turn Tip back into Ozma; ever since then, the Princess has possessed the Throne of Oz. Everyone knows by now Amy is transgender. It all fits. What MGM didn't tell us in 1939. And no doubt why there wasn't a sequel. 

At this point, the 7:00 P.M. telecast of  'Jeopardy' is not must-see-TV for me. The turnover is starting to remind me of the Trump administration.

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