'Tis the Season

Unless you are off the grid or watch no television, then you are aware of how commercials at this time of year seem to repeat themselves from the prior year.

There's the cute couple enjoying the snowy outdoors when he presents her with a puppy. Ahhh, how adorable. It's followed by the cute woman who fakes a whistle using fingers in her mouth (I never could  do that) and tells him she's got something for him..

Cut to the next scene of some behemoth urban assault vehicle truck exploding through the powder and presenting itself as her gift to him. Adorable. A dog vs. a truck that charges at you like Rin Tin Tin. (look it up.)

Then there's the guy who's walking his dog and telling the dog that "there goes our next vehicle," a cross-over of some kind as traffic passes them. He does this at least three times on their walk since we know there are no longer any simple cars in America anymore; there are trucks, SUVs, and cross-overs.

Next scene is the guy getting congratulated by a "neighbor" who surely doesn't live next to him in real life, on driving a "nice vehicle." Of course the guy bought something other than what he was admiring, which of course were models from the same manufacturer. He has now settled on the fourth model from the same auto giant. The dog is suitably puzzled. What's up with guy at the other end of the leash?

Trucks are the best. Like the one that is its own power station that lets you light up your outdoor lighting that rivals the Griswolds. Why you need your truck as a generator for your outdoor Christmas lighting, is puzzling, but I guess it's a selling point. If the power goes, or you don't pay the bill, gas up the vehicle and power away and hope you don't succumb to carbon monoxide poisoning.

Trucks are never seen just hauling groceries. That's not a man thing. They are shown forging rivers and climbing rocks with a gun turret on top carrying Guatamalan rebels to a state park that you don't live near.

And in general. where do all those giant bows come from that people put on top of their vehicular gifts? I've never seen seen bows that size in my local CVS. Amazon?

Then there's the ever-present phone ads. Ted Danson is always pointing out that Consumer Cellular is better than the plan the guy in the mall is hawking that includes a gym membership and a parking space. Spectrum answers its own question of reliability. "It's reliable coast-to-coast."

The granddaddy of phone ads belongs to Verizon. They carpet bomb the airwaves with a cutie talking to Scrooge, or another cutie talking to a football player, about no dropped calls. They offer an iPhone 14-Pro with a slew of additional electronics that make up a value of $1,900, all while it's snowing on the set.

It is hard to leave the house and not head on over to your Toyota dealer and see Jan, or sign up for that phone plan that has "all the talk, text and data you'll ever need." What makes Ted Danson so sure he knows what I need?

http://www.onoffram.blogspot.com 

What Came Next

When I sit down with any of the three newspapers I try and read each day, I often wonder if either of them is going to yield the source for my next posting. Usually my postings spring from obituaries, but not always. I'm not sure what the ratio might be, I would guess that only half of them spring from reading someone's obituary.

So imagine my surprise when I plowed through yesterday's Mansion Section of the WSJ and got an inspiration to write my next posting, sort of springing from an obituary.

The Mansion section recounts the sales of very upscale real estate, replete with photos that I guess make people wish they lived there. I never wish I lived there, mostly because I know I couldn't afford it, but also because if the place was so great, why are they selling it? Okay, the owners may have passed away, but that's only a small reason you find for the fact the place is up for grabs.

Today produced a total surprise. There on page two of yesterday's paper, complete with mouth-watering photos we learned of:

The Purr-fect Listing: Kitty Litter Inventor's Home for Sale

It's the house that Kitty Litter built. For sale: $15 Million, 1,025 acres, pool, pool house pastures.

WHAT? Yes. The Florida home of the late Edward Lowe, who is credited with inventing modern-day cat litter, is for sale.

One of the most famous obituaries ever written was the one for Edward Lowe. It was penned by the late, great Robert McG. Thomas Jr. and appeared in the NYT in 1995. It is hard to believe that the guy who started experimenting in the 1940s with a clay mixture as a substitute for sawdust as the usual material meant to absorb the stench of cat urine..."an odor borne from a cat's desert constitutional origins that produces a highly concentrated urine that is one of the most noxious effluences of the animal kingdom..." would have leave behind a house and property that his wife, Darlene Lowe, would be putting on the market in 2022.

It is no wonder Mr. Thomas's obituary of October 6, 1995 became titled: Edward Lowe, Cat Owner's Best Friend.

I can attest to the desirable properties of Mr. Lowe's mixture which now has a "clumping" property which turns the wet litter from cat discharge into clumps sometimes the size of Rhode Island, that are easy to scoop out with the proper sieve-like scooper, preserving the rest of the litter in the box.

We're had a cats in our household for nearly 50 years, and the litter box duty always falls to me. I am very appreciative of the fact that whatever the "noxious effluences" once were have now been dissipated by Mr. Lowe's fix. No one walks into our house and thinks we're keeping a lion somewhere.

Mr. Lowe was 75 when he passed away, and his wife, who certainly was much younger than him when the knot was tied, is still with us.

The obituary, probably written on deadline before Mr. Thomas scooped up his NYT friends for dinner in NYC, outlines how Edward substituted a mixture of kiln-dried granulated clay, an absorbent material that "his father who sold sawdust to factories to sop up grease, had been offering as a fireproof alternative.

As anyone who follows and studies obituaries knows, there is a volume of Mr. Thomas's obits, 52 McGs, The Best Obituaries from Legendary New York Times Writer McG. Thomas Jr.

Sadly, Mr. Thomas is no longer with us, having himself passed away at 60 in 2000. Michael Kaufman's obit of Mr. Thomas in the NYT describes him as having "flunked out of Yale, out of his decision, Mr. Thomas said, 'to major in New York rather than anything academic.'"

I always liked that turn of phrase, and somewhat use it to apply to myself, after having dropped out of two colleges, an engineering school and City University to eventually major in drinking beer in Blarney Stones, working, and attending New York Ranger games, eventually marrying and raising a family. I somewhat like that arc.

To illustrate how famous the Edward Lowe obituary is, you had to be there in 2008 when Paul Holdengraber of the New York Public Library, in his very Teutonic Austrian accent, was interviewing two obituary writers, Marilyn Johnson, Ann Wroe, and a newspaperman Daniel Okrent of the NYT on the stage about why is the Edward Lowe obituary about "keeeety-litter" so famous. 

Today's Mansion piece makes no mention of Mr. Lowe's obituary, or Mr. McG. Thomas. And why should it? It's about the house, its sprawl, it rooms, what it initially cost, its location in Arcadia, Florida, and everything you'd expect to read about a trophy home, with of course those photos that I guess make some others jealous of how the rich and famous live..

"The Lowes both loved animals, and the property contains three barns and about 600 acres pf pastures and hayfields...The property has a forested area with about 2.5 miles of riverfront that is home to deer, turkey, hogs, armadillo and tortoises..."  

There is no mention of cats anywhere on the property.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

An Anniversary

Fifty-nine is not a milestone anniversary. It is not evenly divisible by five or ten. But November 22 is still an anniversary of the day JFK was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. It was a Friday, and it was before Thanksgiving.

I was in high school, as was my wife. It is one of those days that forever is a 

bookmark in your life. What you were doing when you heard the news? What did you do after? 

It was the 9/11 of 1963; it was Pearl Harbor; it was either of the two armistice days: V-E Day, May 8 1945; V-J Day, August 15,1945. Even November 11, 1918 if you go back far enough, the day my mother was born.

Soon after 2 o'clock an announcement came over the school PA system telling the teachers to dismiss us. No further explanation was added. We had no idea what had transpired. We thought it had something to do with the early morning ruckus that was raised in front of the school as there was an impromptu rally for the Stuyvesant football team that was going to play our arch rival, DeWitt Clinton on Saturday.

For me, getting home was easy. The school was on 15th Street, near First Avenue; the family flower shop was on 18th Street and Third Avenue. Getting there didn't take long. And it wasn't long after I got there that the owner of the hairdressing place two doors down from the flower shop, Larry, came in, shaken, telling us that the president had been shot.

At a high school reunion a few years ago the shared experience of being in school on that fateful day was again shared with classmates. It was almost the first thing we asked of each other: "Were you in school that day?"

The weekend dragged on. Nothing on TV but news of the assassination, and then of the incredible assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald in a parking garage on Saturday morning. My father called me at home and told me what I just missed on television. A live shooting.

Will they play football on Sunday? Yes, and no. Al Davis of the AFL said no; Pete Rozelle of the NFL said yes. College games were played on Saturday. Nothing happens that isn't controversial.

The burial was Monday, November 25. School resumed on Tuesday. I distinctly remember the home room teacher, Mrs. Demas, asking us what words we might have heard over the weekend that might have been new to us: cortege, and caisson were answers I remember.

Assassinations produce frozen moments in history. Yesterday's Final Jeopardy question was under the category of Plays:

The January 12, 1864 Washington Evening Star reported a performance of the "dashing comedy" to a "full and delighted house."

It was the Tournament of Champions, the sixth game, with Amy Schneider and Andrew He each having won two games; Sam Buttrey had one game. You needed three games to win.

The right answer and the right wager was going to win the game. Amy Schneider had both, writing "Our American Cousin," and getting crowned the tournament champion, taking home $250,000, adding more reasons for her to have left her prior employment when she was first a contestant months ago.

The key to the answer was of course not so much the date but the setting of the play. Lincoln was watching a performance of the play on April 15, 1865 when John Wilkes Booth killed him. The play apparently was popular and had opened earlier in New York, years before the 1864 performance in Washington D.C.  I never knew it was a comedy.

I remember after JFK was killed the "prophesies" started: Lincoln was killed in Ford's theater; JFK was killed riding in a Lincoln. It went on like that. 9/11 was like that as well.

Consider how the remembrance of the date can be observed. Clyde Haberman, a retired reporter for the NYT, Tweeted that his parents, who were married on November 22, 1933, no longer celebrated their anniversary on that date after 1963. 

It reminds me of when I found the comedy album, The First Family by Vaughn Meader, at a Vermont flea market years and years ago. In the early '60's, Vaughn made a career of imitating the Kennedy New England accent and cadences of speech in a comedy album that was a huge hit. A second album was produced.

By the standards of comedy in the early '60s, it was funny. I never bought the albums until finding the first one in a dusty LP record bin in a flea market at Kennedy's (consider the coincidence) nostalgia emporium in Vergennes, Vermont. It was maybe $1; maybe $2.

On getting it home I never had the heart to play it, despite still having an LP turntable hooked up. It all just seemed so disrespectful at what could no longer be laughed at. Mr. Meader's comedy career basically ended on the afternoon of November 22, 1963.

Oddly enough, when I tuned on to Turner movies last night it must have been an Angela Lansbury theme, because The Manchurian Candidate" was bring shown, a dynamite 1962 movie starring Frank Sinatra, Lawrence Harvey, Angela Lansbury, John McGiver, Janet Leigh, and James Gregory. The plot involves brain washing by the Communist Koreans, and embedded foreign agents who have an assassin ready to pull the trigger with a post-hypnotic suggestion upon seeing the Queen of Diamonds playing card.

It's a terrific cold war movie, notable as much for its plot as it is for NYC scenes. Sinatra's favorite  New York haunt, the bar Jilly's, as is the old Madison Square Garden, decked out for a political convention, are as much a part of the cast as the actors.

Sinatra, being a personal friend and supporter of JFK, for decades exerted influence over the TV showing of the movie. It just plain wasn't shown. Conspiracy theories do not go gentle into the night.

For the last several years my wife and I have been spending nearly a week in Hyannis, Cape Cod, as much to see her cousin as to launch sightseeing trips. The JFK museum on Main Street has a statue of JFK in front in a contemplative pose walking through the grass of Cape Cod dunes, a favorite pastime of his since the family base was centered in Hyannisport.

I've never felt a need to go into the museum. I feel I know enough about JFK. But when we pass the statue I reflect how long ago it was when he did walk through the grass barefoot, and Hyannisport was the summer White House.

You never age when you pass away young.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

Scrabble

If it wasn't for a recent A-Hed piece in the WSJ about an I.T. guy from Ottawa, Canada who returns to his ancestral life as a camel herder, I wouldn't know there was a word in the English language that started with the letter "q" and didn't have "u' as the second letter that was officially acceptable as a Scrabble word. The word? Qat.

Turns out, Mohamed Isaaq wearied of being a computer network administrator and opted for the life of his father, grandfather and even great-grandfather in Somaliland, a self-declared independent state within Somalia's borders. In fact, camel herding runs so far back in his family you have to go through 15 layers of ancestors before you find the family member who did something else.

Mohamed is not in it for the money, despite owning 78 camels. He clears a small sum after expenses selling camel milk. If he needs to file a tax return it would reflect $150 a day in sales.

But where does the word qat come in? When I read it in the piece I had to first check the OED, then Google, where I learned it really is a word and is an acceptable word for playing Scrabble. Imagine the advantage you might have over your opponent if you can drop that three-letter word on the board without needing a "u".

The OED tells us qat is a noun variation of khat, with khat being the leaves of an Arabian shrub that when chewed, or ingested, is a stimulant that can also produce a bit of a high.

Turns out one of Mr. Isaaq's employees, after a dispute with another worker, abandoned the herd to go off and buy some qat.

It seems no matter where you are, it is tough to get the right people to work for you.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

Poetry

Someone I know not that long ago posted a Tweet that they had some poems published in one of those literary quarterlies, the "North American Review," a publication that proudly proclaims to be around since 1815, which if you do the math right, is three years after the War of 1812 when the British set fire to the White House. That is truly a long time ago.

I will confess complete ignorance of the publication. But in the spirit of seeing what was published I ordered a copy. It wasn't free, but it didn't bankrupt me either. 

And there inside were the two poems that were published. I knew from some Web profiles that they were "into" poetry. I will also confess that long ago I sort of gave up on reading poems. I just plain don't understand the ones that are now written. I did, I think, understand and like one of the two poems this person had published in the publication. As for not understanding the other one, it's not the author's fault, it's mine. Try as I might, I just find it hard to relate to poetry that doesn't rhyme.

Through Twitter (which I hope doesn't go away) I remarked to them that I used to write poetry. They expressed surprise. I explained that way back in the '60s I used to write what I considered Light Verse, heavily influenced by reading lots of Ogden Nash and Phyllis McGinley.

I tried to get something published, but it never happened. I stopped trying to write poetry of any kind until the events of 2001 and 2002 occurred in  my life. I've memorialized those two events in one poem I publish it in my blog every September 16, the anniversary of the second event, and the one that usurped any feelings I might have had from 9/11, despite finally emerging from Tower One's 29th floor, approximately 40 minutes after the impact of the 767, a little wet and dusty, but without any physical harm, and without any of my belongings that I brought to work that day, or had at my desk.

I could find examples of the verse I used to write, but choose not to. There's is one quatrain I wrote that I can still remember, based on the experience of living in my grandmother's apartment on East 19th Street in NYC, just east of Second Avenue, a railroad flat apartment that was in a building that still stands, although I'm sure by now has been converted into desirable condos or co-ops.

At the time in the '60s the rent was less than $100 a month, and after review by the city was actually lowered. Despite its basic seediness, it wasn't all that an unattractive place. I mean, a pigeon only flew in from a open window once and landed at my feet as I lay in bed.

There were other creatures that came and went, and lead me to write the following unpublished classic, "Midnight in the Bathroom."

Roaches, do not run and hide
When I venture your side.
Slow down and take a breather,
Because it seems I can't sleep either.

Anyone who would like to publish this now can still get in touch with me.

http://www,onoffram.blogsot.com

The Best

Money won is twice as nice as money earned; and money earned through manipulation is best of all.

The best manipulation I think occurred in 2002 when a group of enterprising young fellows, fraternity brothers at Drexel University, gained access to the Pick-6 betting data in 2002 and were able to in effect past-post their selections to the point of eventually winning the entire substantial Pick-6 pool (including the consolation payout) when a true long shot (43-1) named Valponi crossed the finish line first in the Classic, the final leg of the betting sequence.

One of the perpetrators worked for the computer people who ran the Pick-6 data transmissions and exploited a weakness in the system that allowed him to change wagers mid-Pick-6 before the entire race sequence was run. The scheme worked. However, they became the only winners of the pool, never playing a losing combination, and came to the immediate attention to those who pay attention to that sort of thing. They did prison time.

Recently, consider whoever played with a quinella pool at Gulfstream Park and made a quinella payoff be $42 when the exacta for the top two choices paid $18.

It is not known how much this Houdini might have netted for their efforts, but they pumped $18,000 into a quinella pool of $24,280 that generally tops out at $2,000.

They didn't fix the race; they fixed the payout. A whole other animal, and apparently one that is not considered illegal, but is certainly worthy of the track's attention.

A quinella is one of those obscure, forgotten bets. It involves picking the first two horses to cross the finish line in any order. It is sort of a boxed exacta, a permutation of two bets, into one bet, a combination. It generally pays half of an exacta and is available on select races.

I think the bet type might have migrated from jai alai to horse racing. I always forget about the bet, concentrating on win bets and exactas. My departed friend Fourstardave was good at exploiting them when their will-pays were going to be lopsided in relation to the exacta payouts.

It turns out the individual pumped $18,000 into a quinella pool that usually only sees $2,000 in it. They purposely picked unlikely combinations, which in effect would produce higher than expected payout for what might actually be the outcome if the two favorites ran one-two, which that did.

Pari-mutuel wagering is predicated on payouts that reflect the ratio of winning bets to that of losing bets in the pool. Usually long shots have little placed on them, so if they win, the bettors in effect get everyone's else's money that didn't use them. Tote board odds are not predicated on the statistical probability of something coming out that way; they are a function of the wagering distribution.

Gulfstream has suspended quinella wager for now. The feeling is that the perpetrators placed numerous bets with off shore accounts on the favorite combination that rather artificially was made to pay $42.

My departed buddy Foustardave was good at noticing and exploiting quinella/exacta anomalies. I pretty much completely forget about the bet's existence on selected races, instead concentrating on win and exacta bets.

What I'd love to see, even before this, is a real-time app that lets you determine the will-pays for exactas that you are interested in, rather than waiting for the tote board's scroll-cycle to reveal the possibilities. A constant readout of your own choosing.

Even better would be an app that compares the exacta will-pays with the quinella will-pays side-by-side. Say a will-pay for a 1/2 exacta compared with a 1/2 quinella. Right now they're there, but you have to align the comparison for yourself.

Generally, quinellas can be counted to pay the half the exacta. But it would be nice to know if there are other forces at work that are going to upset that expectancy.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

Dodging the Blubber

I don't really care who owns Twitter. I just hope it doesn't go away. If it were to, how would someone reach us with a 1970! news story on the demolition of an eight ton, 45' sperm whale beached on a remote Oregon beach with 20 cases, or half-a-ton of strategically placed dynamite. The mind boggles.

I'm going to say I almost remember this story. The fact that it is over 50 years ago boggles my mind as well. I'm having trouble getting my head around the fact that the '70s are now over 50 years ago. So much of my life is defined by what happened in the '70s. Pretty soon the resignation of Richard M. Nixon is going to feel like something probably half the population wasn't even alive for.

The link will take you the video news story, spending a little over three minutes of coverage by an earnest, hot combed, frat boy haircut newsman, who points to the beached whale and interviews George Thornton of the State Highway Division on whose shoulders the removal of the whale has fallen.

You might think it is somewhat reassuring that someone at the state level is in charge, but when you listen to the interview with George you start to wonder about the whole thing.

First off, it doesn't seem there is much precedent in this kind of beached whale removal. George freely admits that the half-ton of explosive might not do the job of blasting the whale to Kingdom Come in the hopes that the fragments will be small enough for the vast army of sea gulls to finish the cleanup job by chowing down on the pieces.

In fact, if you remember how inaccurate the effects of dynamite can be, you realize George just might be winging it there. Just think of that memorable scene in the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid where Butch is frustrated with the mail clerk Woodcock's reluctance in opening the railcar door to reveal where the money is kept.

Pleading with Woodcock is to no avail. Woodcock is a company man, and Butch can't have access to his employer's mail vault. Butch orders dynamite to be rigged to the door. How much dynamite? Well, Butch is winging it. He probably never studied the effects of dynamite in school, and even if he did, he's probably bad at math and forgets to divide by something.

Sundance stuffs the door with an indeterminate amount of dynamite, that when set off does indeed blow the door off the rail car. It also has enough force that the safe inside is blown apart and the sky fills up with Uncle Sam greenbacks fluttering down from the sky. Sundance slyly asks if Butch used enough dynamite.

Since there are onlookers at the beach for the November detonation, they are advised to get back at least a quarter of a mile. They do. The dynamite is detonated, and the result is well, less effective than expected.

Large chunks of blubber rain down on the site, just like Butch's rail car money. A car in the parking lot is totally flattened. No one is hurt, but you have to wonder of the State Farm spokesman, J.K. Simmons would be bragging about the unique situations that State Farm Insurance has covered: namely vehicle destroyed by blasted whale blubber. I bet the owner of that car in the parking didn't get any money right away. Or any at all. They certainly needed a ride home.

As for the hoped for natural cleanup by hungry seagulls, it never happens. The seagulls fly away, scared by the blast, and the truly terrible odor that is now in the air.

George Thornton and his crew shake their heads, and decide that a second charge won't be done. They'll bury what's left. 

I know every so often a whale gets stranded on the shores of Rockaway Beach in Queens. They've tried to drag a still living whale back into the ocean, but if DOA, they bury it. I don't recall anything as big as the monster that landed in Florence, Oregon as washing ashore in the NYC area. I really doubt detonation would be considered. Blowing up dead whales just might be the last thing even New Yorkers will tolerate.

Aside from the memories of that 1970 event coming to a Twitter feed near you, you have to take note of who posted it, Sarah Lyall, @SarahLyall, a veteran, at-large-reporter for the NYT who also does book review duty.

You have to wonder how this refined woman came to post the archival video from a posting by @RexChapman.

There's a whale of a story behind the whale story.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

The Right Word

If the pen is mightier than the sword, think of how powerful the one right word can be. Mark Twain recognized this when he claimed "the difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug." The difference in illumination is immense.

The NYT loves to pat itself on the back. It does this in their second page, A section feature called: "Inside the Times: The Story Behind the Story." Their self-praise is often justified. 

Take yesterday's essay on writing on deadline for obituaries. Obituaries are perhaps my favorite section of the paper, and not driven by any morbid sense, but rather by how informative and often witty they are.

Yesterday's piece pours the praise on Neil Genzlinger and Clay Risen, relatively new bylines to the desk. I find Mr. Risen to be particularly clever on occasions when he slips in the lightning word, or ends with a great kicker. And he did this when we wrote yesterday of Paul Morantz, a California lawyer and investigative journalist who campaigned against cults, who has just passed away at 77.

Mr. Morantz holds the unenviable position of being the target of an assassination attempt by a set of his enemies who placed a rattlesnake in his mail box. Mr. Morantz went to retrieve his mail not noticing the snake that subsequently bit the hand that wasn't there to feed it. Mr. Morantz nearly died from the reaction to the snake's poisonous bite. 

The two perpetrators, the dirty tricks muscle for Charles Dederich, leader of a cult-like organization called Synanon, were convicted and served light prison sentences. Charles Dederich, received a suspended sentence for ordering the attempt on Mr. Morantz's life.   

Undeterred, Mr. Morantz continued his battle against the cults that were popping up in the '70s in California in an atmosphere that Mr. Risen described as "the post-hippie weirdness that was California in the 1970s."

"Weirdness," the one word that captures the trend of an entire era that probably still exists to this day. The succinctness of the word reminds me of a Margalit Fox obituary on Delbert Mann, a producer of the TV movie Heidi that NBC felt compelled to air at the "ultrapunctual" time of 7:00 P.M. EST rather than the completion of a close scoring, seesaw NY Jets-Oakland Raiders AFL football game in 1968. (I remember the famous preemption. Boy, did NBC take a lot of heat over that one.)

My oldest daughter, who just now turned 44, given the chance to refer to California somehow always  works in her definition of the place as "the land of the fruits and nuts."

Mr. Risen is a fairly new addition to the obituaries desk that is no longer the purgatory part of a newspaper where the dinosaurs are sent to get old enough to receive their pensions. His background as a writer on bourbon and Teddy Roosevelt would seem to belie an obit desk assignment. But the quality of the writing puts him there continuing the Gold Standard the NYT has for tribute obituaries.

When possible, a tribute obituary will end with a so-called "kicker," a humorous anecdote about the deceased, or a quote from them. Mr. Risen doesn't disappoint when he ends Mr. Morantz's obituary with his answer to the person who asked him, "how do you know when you're in a cult." Easy, the answer is  held in your hands.

Mr. Morantz replied: "Count the number of Hollywood stars in it. If you get past five, you are in one."

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

Trans-Atlantic Crossing

I remember reading something Russell Baker wrote years and years ago about an ocean crossing. I think it was in one of columns, but more likely in his Pulitzer Prize winning autobiography 'Growing Up,' when he reminisced about taking an ocean liner across the Atlantic, taking five days to reach your destination, and the formality of having to wear a tuxedo to First Class dinners. It was an elegant journey. It certainly beat "hurling through space in a tin can with strangers" he would go on to write.

Mr. Baker passed  away in 2019, born in 1925, which would make him just under 100 years old at 97 if he were still alive today. And that's how old you need to be to remember the era of formal dinning and the unhurried pace of ocean crossings that took five days to reach the opposite shore across the Pond.

In the '60s I would deliver flowers to the West Side piers. Cunard was Pier 90 at 50th Street (You arrived at the intersecting street by subtracting 40 from the pier number.) Cunard of course sailed The Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth, three stacks vs. two. The S.S. France and the S.S. United States were also nearby.

I remember two things about the S.S. United States. The ship held the speed record for crossing the Atlantic (which direction I do not know), and there was nothing on the ship that was made of wood other than the musicians' instruments. The things you remember.

People will get on a plane these days with maybe a knapsack, but in the era of ocean liners there was such a thing as a steamer trunk that served to hold all the clothes you needed. NYC cabs, at least the Checker cabs, were big enough to get you to and from a ship with a trunk. But a sign on the meter warned you; Trunks 50¢ Extra. 

At the flower shop we had array of enclosure cards at the desk for the different occasions for sending flowers: Get Well, Births, Birthdays, and Bon Voyage cards. In this era, the Bon Voyage card would be for a cruise, although I think there is still a once-a-year ocean crossing on the QE 2.

As always, I was reminded of all this when I read the NYT obituary for Doris Grumbach, Author Who Explored Plight of Woman who has just passed away at 104.

At 104 she was old enough to have survived the Spanish flu when she was born in 1918, (same year as my mother) and then Covid-19. The obit, written well in advance by Robert McFadden, tells us Ms. Grumbach was as prolific as she was versatile. She wrote seven novels, six! memoirs, a biography of the writer Mary McCarthy, and contributed book reviews and essays to numerous publications.

In the next to last paragraph of the obit Mr. McFadden tells us Ms. Grumbach wrote of what she saw as simpler times, when shopping involved going to a bakery, a butcher, and a greengrocer, all places I can recall going to with my mother in the '50s.

Ms. Grumbach "described the sheer enjoyment of wasting time, and mourned the passing of leisurely  Atlantic crossings on ocean liners." You have to be as old as her and as old as Russell Baker would be  today to miss those things.

Mr. Baker's description of flying through space in a tin can with strangers will get even more frantic when Boom Airlines starts flights to Europe in 2029 or so on flights that exceed the speed of sound several times over. You'll be able to hear Big Ben chime away in person faster than it takes to ride the NYC subway from Van Cortlandt Park to Coney Island.

Of course, the compression of flight time will still bring the perils of being with the public in small spaces (Hell is other people.) as I once encountered on a flight when I was told I couldn't have my selection of a packet of cashews because someone in front of me (how many rows I never knew) was allergic to peanuts.

I didn't argue that cashews weren't peanuts. Maybe all nuts are peanuts to nuts. I just got the pretzels. I bet that didn't happen on an Atlantic ocean liner crossing.

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The Other Ten O'Clock

There's a famous black and white photo taken decades ago by Art Kane of jazz musicians arranged on a Harlem stoop, spilling over at the sides onto the sidewalk and the curb. It was all staged and planned. Louis Armstrong is in the first row, and to the right, sitting on the curb, accompanied by a gaggle  of youngsters. It was taken fairly early in the morning, with those invited expected to be there at 10 o'clock.

Jazz musicians are of course night owls, playing late at night into the early hours. One of the musicians is reported to have told another musician, "So, this is what the other 10 o'clock looks like."

And that's how it was yesterday at Aqueduct when The Assembled assembled for the first race on the card, scheduled to go off at 10:50 A.M. The normal fall post time had been moved up from 12:35 to 10:50 to accommodate Breeders' Cup races at Keeneland being simulcasted that afternoon. Clever scheduling allowed bettors to have enough time to bet races from both tracks and still have time to handicap in between. It's all about goosing the handle.

Jose B., Bobby G., Johnny M. and Johnny D. all had winning, or at least break even days. Jose B., true to his nature, toggled between Keeneland races and Aqueduct. He was not having great success with his Keeneland picks, but lassoed a few of the day's longshots at Aqueduct that kept him from declaring he was tapped out.

The rest of The Assembled were content to only playing Aqueduct. Bobby G. left after the ninth race of 10 races, getting the horse player's prayer answered: "Please dear God let me break even, I need the money."

Johnny M. had a good day and Johnny D. had a GREAT day, cashing tickets in the last four races, hitting three exactas in a row starting with the 7th race, and pretty much having one of his best days at the races ever.

The only downside to the day were the surroundings on the second floor Clubhouse area. There aren't many places to sit since NYRA compressed the available seating because of near zero attendance, but those that were there had no problem filling the outside air with smoke from cigarettes and pot, since it is now legal in New York. Belmont in April will be greatly looked forward to.

Since the 10th race at Aqueduct went off at 5:15 , and the Breeders' Cup classic was going off at 5:40, Jose B., Johnny M. and Johnny D. opted to go to the 3rd floor where the Classic could be viewed on one of the simulcasting TVs..

The front of the 3rd floor is dominated by the dining area called Equestris, seating that overlooks the track behind a nice expanse of glass, but that is only accessible by buying into a terribly overpriced buffet. We used to take advantage of the buffet, but have been passing that one for years now that the price is beyond silly.

The remaining trio from The Assembled settled into the study carrels on the third floor and watched The Classic. There is no sound on simulcasting TVs, but it wasn't hard to know what was going on.  In fact, on the second floor for live racing, the announcer John Imbriale could hardly be heard.

Aqueduct is showing its age, and is in desperate need of maintenance. The seats we were in on the second floor, two sections from the boxes were not painted, and looked like they were suffering from alopecia. Seats in my row were sagging from crumbling concrete, a decent size piece that just lay there. But hey, that's what you get when you get in for free, without even having to pay for parking.

The 3rd Floor was an oasis compared to the 2nd. Johnny M and Johnny D. no longer play the Breeders' Cup. There are too many entrants, and too many foreign horses, creating way too many unpredictable  and unlikely results for the average handicapper.

But by following racing all year, The Classic contains horses you know of, even without a set of past performances. And so, Johnny D. boxed an exact with the highly touted Flightline, Hot Rod Charlie and Epicenter with his XpressBets account before leaving for the track.

The modest wager went for naught as Epicenter broke down and had to be vanned off. Hot Rod Charlie was not so hot. Flightline dominated, as expected, and released an explosion of praise anointing him as The Greatest, or one of the greatest. 

Set your context. In my very early days of going to the races over 50 years ago, my friend, who worked for Racing Star Weekly and American Turf Monthly, pointed out a guy in the stands named Gil, who worked for them and who had seen Man O' War run. I never met Gil, but I'm guessing Man O' War was the greatest horse he had ever seen.

Jose B., ever the handicapper who thinks outside the box, concocted an economical Triple for $1 each of Flightline keyed on top, with Olympiad and Taiba boxed underneath. It was a beautiful bet that rewarded Jose B. $83 when Olympiad and Taiba ran 2-3 behind the speedy Flightline.

So, despite the smoke and lousy physical surroundings, it was a good day for all, Even a great day, especially for Flightline's connections that are so numerous that if the winner's circle were indoors they would have exceeded a fire department warning about how many occupants can be in one space at the same time.

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Roz and Da Bums

It is incredibly hard to believe there was anyone alive yesterday who had a hand to getting the Brooklyn Dodgers, and by extension the New York Giants baseball teams to leave rowdy New York for the land of wine, produce and sunshine that is California. But there was.

Those New Yorkers who remember those teams playing in their respective dumps are long in the tooth now. Two of the octogenarians who comprise The Assembled at the racetrack remember going to Dodger games at Ebbets Field, that wooden bandbox in Brooklyn that would burn to the ground if someone so much as lit lighter fluid on a seat. They were brought up in Queens, parts of which are so adjacent that they may as well be in Brooklyn.

The principals that had a hand in the decision to move the teams are long dead. Walter O'Malley, the owner of the Dodgers passed away from a heart attack decades ago, which the scorned fans consider an anatomical impossibility, since he had no heart.

Robert Moses, The arrogant NYC Power Broker who refused to get behind O'Malley's plan to build a domed stadium at the confluence of Fourth, Flatbush and DeKalb Avenues in downtown Brooklyn, took a helicopter ride in his 90s to look at all the infrastructure he was instrumental in building, then went quietly into the night, much to the delight of many.

NYC's Mayor Wagner couldn't get a compromise between Moses (who could, he wasn't Jesus) and O'Malley, so O'Malley started to cast his eyes westward, which was really prescient since that's where the post-war population was headed, and has continued for decades. My father used to tell me that any of the neighbors who moved to California never moved back. No one did.

But being New Yorkers, no one here ever considered who at the West Coast end might have been pulling the strings. Until you read the obituary of Roz Wyman, a young woman in her 20s! who loved baseball, who was a freshly elected LA City Councilwoman (the youngest, and only the second woman), who pulled the levers at the Los Angeles end that secured the deal to get O'Malley to sign on the dotted line, do we now learn of all the characters involved in the Great Migration, or The Great Steal. And she was alive yesterday.

Roz Wyman, Key Player in Moving Dodgers to Los Angeles, Dies at 92

Yes, the fresh-faced young woman pictured above was, as Peter O'Malley, Walter's son and successor owner would tell anyone who would listen, his father trusted Roz, and while other people claimed to have sealed the deal, it was she who "deserves all the credit"

Horace Stoneham, the owner of the New York Giants was sweet-talked into moving west by O'Malley so the clubs could play each other without a lot of travel. Walter got sunny California and a sweetheart deal from the city to build Dodger Stadium that rivaled the purchase of Manhattan from the Native Americans for $24 of trinkets not yet made in China.

Walter famously got Chavez Ravine as the site to build Dodger Stadium. Chavez Ravine was long the site of housing for Latinos, but it 1952 was ordered cleared for a housing development. Then, as now, people were pushed around in the name of progress and urban renewal. The housing project never got built, so the vacant land was just waiting for an O'Malley to be welcomed in with blueprints. 

Perhaps ironically, when Ebbets field was demolished, a housing project was built there. As was when the Polo Grounds finally bit the dust.

It took a lot longer for the Polo Grounds to be rendered for scrap metal. It hung on as the home of the New York Titans, New York's AFL entry, and the first home of the Mets in the early 60s as they awaited the construction of what would be Shea Stadium in Flushing Meadow. 

Shea Stadium was a product of William T. Shea, a partner in a well-connected law firm of Shea, Gould, Climenko, and Joan Payson, the owner of the Mets (The Metropolitans) who had been lobbing for years to get a National League back in NYC.

Mrs. Payson owned champion thoroughbreds as well as a baseball team. She adorned Willie Mays and was heart broken like millions of others when the team was uprooted from upper Manhattan and whisked 3,000 miles away, so far away that the box scores from their night games didn't make the early edition of New York papers. Life was rough.

Joan, ever the Great Compromiser, adopted orange and blue colors for her Mets to signify their ties to their National League predecessors. Blue for the Dodgers; Orange for the Giants. Mike Repole, a relatively young billionaire from the proceeds from Vitamin Water who grew up in Queens, is such a Mets fan that his Repole Stable colors are a distinctive combination of orange and blue. Mike's horses do a good deal better than his Mets, winning multiple races at the highest levels.

Mrs. Payson finally got Willie Mays back in NYC as a member of the Mets in the early 70s. Mays of course was at the end of his "Say Hey" career, but he was still adorned by all those missed him.

Richard Sandomir's NYT obituary for Roz Wyman tells us baseball and politics were welded in Roz's life starting in her college years at USC when she drove the senate candidate Helen Gahagan Douglas around town as she campaigned and lost to Richard Nixon in 1950.

Roz became the youngest person ever elected to the LA City Council in 1953, serving 12 years, years of course she worked with Mayor Norris Poulson as she played O'Malley like a fiddle, simultaneously dangling a deal to the Giants as O'Malley waffled.

In the end, she got the LA City Council to approve the terms of a deal to O'Malley (who many correctly believed was getting too much in the deal) before O'Malley himself made a firm commitment to LA. But once the vote was in, O'Malley packed the teams' bats, balls and uniforms, and convinced Horace Stoneham to play in damp, foggy Candlestick Park in San Francisco as he basked in the sun of Southern California. And thus, the first Major League teams west of St. Louis came to be anchored in California, eventually followed by three more MLB teams, supported by the nation's largest statehood population. If location is everything, then timing is as well.

Roz remained active in California Democratic politics for the rest of her life, admitting that her hobby was the Democratic Party. 

Baseball stadiums across the country have made bronze likenesses of favorite players to adorn their entrance plazas. Tommy Lasorda, longtime manager of the Dodgers, had his own candidate: "What this lady did lady did for baseball in this city...they should erect a monument to her." He's right.

Because if the jilted, adult gang back in New York, who are now basically either cremated or pushing up grass in Green-Wood Cemetery knew what she had dome, they would have burned her in effigy. Maybe worse.

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