Miller High Life

There are strange things done in the Belgium sun,
By the agents who campaign,
And create a sight when they think they're right
When they declare that beer is champagne.

It's true. Belgium customs agents have emptied and destroyed 2,352 cans of Miller High Life beer because it entered their country with the company's slogan plastered on every can: The Champagne of Beer.

It's a trademark violation to bring something into the country that's labeled champagne when it isn't. The fact that beer isn't champagne didn't mean anything The slogan said it was champagne, and that's a protected commodity not to be trifled with when you enter Europe and you're not champagne. Empty cans. Destroy. Champagne imitators stay away from our borders.

I have to think that tailgate parties all over America would lay down in the middle of the 50-yard line if someone were to give them 2,352 cans of Miller High Life. Okay, they're in Europe. Do they tailgate before soccer games? I have no idea, but my guess the fans fuel up somewhere before taking their seats around the pitch and start singing songs. 2,353 cans of an alcoholic beverage would be just what the teams ordered.

The improbable story hit the WSJ on Saturday, and the NYT on Tuesday. The European Union regulators took Miller's slogan of "The Champagne of Beers" literally, and ordered the shipment destroyed for the protection of the word Champagne that can only be used when it is really champagne.

The fact that it was only the slogan that used the word champagne, and was not used to portray the contents as if there really was champagne inside didn't mean anything. Emma Bubola's story in Tuesday's NYT tells us:

"The destruction, the authorities explained, was a consequence of the European Union's strict rules regarding the protected designation of the origin of several wines or foodstuffs produced, processed and prepared in a specific geographical area..."

Would the regulators bar Scotch tape from entering the country because it's not from Scotland? Hmm.

The parent company of Miller High Life told the authorities that they don't even import into Belgium  The authorities don't know how the beer arrived in Belgium. "The person who was to receive the shipment was informed of the plan to destroy the cans and did not contest the decision..."

Wow. No contest. Just get rid of the shipment and leave it at that. Hard to believe an appeal to a higher enforcement body was not sought.

I used to drink Miller beer decades ago, before I morphed into a steady Budweiser drinker, and eventually not a  drinker.

Noel, a bartender at a pub on 55t Street off Fifth Avenue may not have known my name, but he knew what I drank. The cap was off the bottle before I sat down to watch the Ranger game.

According to the article, Miller beer is considered a lightweight of beers. "Unsophisticated." This I never knew. I know Budweiser is not considered a heavyweight either, and Bud Lite fell off nearly everyone's test buds lately ever since the failed advertising attempt to be "more inclusive." There's an advertising campaign soon to be consigned to B-school case studies to analyze what went wrong there.

Matt Simpson, the owner of  the Beer Sommelier, a consultancy based in Atlanta just shakes his head. "No matter how relatively simple in understanding the typical Miller High Life drinker is academically, I think at the very least they understand the difference between beer and wine."

This is as nice as possible way of saying that even the most cretinous lowlife drinker of Miller High Life knows that they are not drinking champagne.

Which is way more than you can say about the European Union regulators' intellect.

http://www,onofframp.blogspot.com

An Infectious Little Ditty

I grew up watching war movies. And one I particularly loved was Bridge on the River Kwai. I love it when the best plans of the enemy are thwarted by a devious bunch of Allies who get in the way of the enemy's progress.

It's a 1957 movie, directed by David Lean, starring William Holden, Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins and Sessue Hayakawa. It's only missing Trevor Howard, Robert Ryan, Steve McQueen, Lee Marvin and James Garner. No matter.

It's a POW movie about the British soldiers interred in hot, very hot Burma, held prisoner by the Japanese. The plot revolves around not escaping, but rather being put to recreational work building the sturdiest railroad bridge possible from bamboo over the river, and then putting it to unintended use.

The British are lead into the prison camp by their very unflappable, stiff upper lip commander played by Alec Guinness, marching in step, waving their arms, and whistling an infectious little tune that no one ever knew there were actual lyrics to. And once you hear those lyrics you can never, ever watch that scene again without singing to yourself:

Hitler, has only got one ball,
Göering has two, but very small.
Himmler, is somewhat sim'lar,
But poor Göebbels has no balls at all.

It's true. There's way more than just whistling going on there. Someone objected vigorously to having the prisoners march into the camp singing the lyrics, so they whistle the lyrics. The theme became a big hit for Mitch Miller, for whom you would expect to be at the center of a large group of people whistling. Even Leonard Bernstein recorded the march.

There is of course history behind Colonel Bogey's March, and the name has nothing to do with the British commander, but rather a shot over par in that confounding game of golf. The ditty was written in 1914, but the lyrics that caught up with it were penned in 1939 as a British satire on the German command. Is there more? Yes.

Hitler, has only got one ball,
The other is in Albert Hall.
His mother, the dirty bugger,
Cut his off when he was small.

You can certainly understand why the British prisoners might be whistling (singing) the lyrics as they are marched into a prison camp, even if is a Japanese camp.

So what brings this up? Something that always reminds me of something else. What else?

There's been a recent seven-part Netflix series called Transatlantic about the true efforts of Americans and other resistance patriots working in Marseille managing to get 2,000 Jews out of the country in 1940 to safety over the border to Spain and Portugal, and then to America. The effort was run by Varian Fry, a 1930 Harvard graduate who was openly hostile to the Nazis and even the uncommitted American politicians in trying to get the refuges out of France, even if it was the part of unoccupied France. The Vichy government was seen as Nazi collaborators.

Fry had the ear of Eleanor Roosevelt, and entered Marseille with a list of people he wanted to help, writers, artists, and other intellectuals. Aiding him was an American heiress, Maryjane Gold, from Chicago, wealthy from her father's radiator business. Together they helped notables get out of the reach of the Nazis. Max Enrst, Marc Chagall, Heinrich Mann, Hannah Arendt, Marcel Duchamp, Alma Mahler, Gustav Mahler's former wife, were amongst those who benefitted from the ERC's efforts..  

Varian Fry headed the Emergency Rescue Committee (ERC). If Varian seems to be a first name you never heard of you only have to read the 1950 engagement notice in the NYT mentioning he was the son of Mr. And Mrs. Arthur Varian Fry. Oddly, the notice doesn't even mention his work with the ERC.

The Netflix series received a lot of press for its story and the co-creator Anna Winger who became obsessed over the Fry, ERC narrative.

The series is well-acted, lushly filmed on location in Marseille, and has more than one moment of hilarity in it. The 1940 timeline informs you to the world of politics prior to the United States entering the war, which of course only happened after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Prior to that, there was a lot of ambivalence and apathy toward what was happening in Europe.

There was a hotel in Marseille that was used by the ERC as sort of as a stop on its underground railroad to house the refuges prior to arranging for their exfiltration. One of these refuges would never be a household name to Americans, but was someone who the Nazi's considered a huge pain-in-the-ass because of his criticism of the German regime. Walter Mehring passed away in 1981 at 85, and the NYT described him as when he was in his 20s he was hugely popular for his caustic Expressionist style reflected in his songs, poems and plays. 

Mehring is secreted into the hotel Hôtel Splendide. He's a kinetic guy who can't sit still. There is an absolutely hilarious scene where he starts marching around his small hotel room gathering props and singing..."Hitler, has only got one ball..." No wonder the Nazis hate this guy. He knows the lyrics.

I didn't immediately make The Bridge on the River  Kwai connection. But the lyrics, where have I heard them before? (The Man in the High Castle) Did Mehring write them?

No, he didn't write them, but there have been several recordings of the music with all the lyrics, and I happened, for whatever reason, previously downloaded a version sung by John Jones that occasionally surfaces on random play when I have the iPod on the workshop.

More Google, and You Tube searches yielded a skit by the British comedy team of Armstrong and Miller that gives us an additional rhyme in its skit "...Göering's prick is so full of diseases/That's why he has to piss with tweezers..."

Walter Mehring's NYT obit tells us he was a warehouse administrator on Long Island but returned to Europe in 1953, living in seclusion in West Germany and Switzerland.

I'm sure he never forgot the words.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

Downstairs Records

As much as I like music, having probably over 1,000 CDs and so many LPs before them that I can't find them all, I can still read of the passing of musicians and singers who I never heard of. Generally, when this happens as I read the obit, I mark it for possible downloads from iTunes. I have a lot of downloaded tunes from deceased recording artists on my iPod and computer.

But the recent passing of Ahmad Jamal doesn't leave me in the same position. I've been playing his music since sometime in the '60s, with his Argo record label LP of 'Naked City Theme'' having been played enough times to wear it out.

I saw him perform on two occasions. Once with a friend of mine when he appeared at the Top of the Gate jazz club in Greenwich Village, probably in the late '60s, early '70s, and again with my daughter and her then fiancé at the Iridium in 2003.

The Village Gate was a great venue for jazz performances. There were two levels, the Top and the main level. The Top was a bit cheaper. The price isn't what drove me to the Top. I was already a fan of Ahmad, by then owning several LPs.

Nancy and Tim married in 2004 and labeled one of their wedding table Ahmad Jamal. An older friend of mine who didn't listen to jazz (he was steeped in classical music) was seated at the table and asked me, perplexed, "Who is Ahmad Jamal?" I had to explain.

I know Clint Eastwood is a fan of jazz. He's used Tierney Sutton music in his film on the Hudson River pilot Sully Sullenberger. And he managed to pipe in Ahmad Jamal into an Iowa kitchen in Bridges of Madison County.

I remember reading a review of that movie and the writer commented on how unlikely it is that jazz music was coming into an Iowa kitchen. It seemed okay to me. Don't radio waves travel great distances, and maybe she was tuned into a Chicago station? Critics.

It was interesting to read in the obituary how Miles Davis thought so highly of Ahmad Jamal's music. I think the night I saw Jamal at Top of the Gate Miles was playing downstairs. I know the upstairs musicians would go downstairs on their break and listen in, and probably vice versa.

For years and years my favorite album of Jamal's, the Naked City Theme was not available on CD. There must have been some contract dispute over label ownership. It is available now on CD.

It was probably sometime in the late '90s when I was on a LIRR train going home when this very large guy sat next to me in a two-seater. He seated himself cautiously since he knew he was large. Despite that you do get squeezed in a bit. I inwardly groaned. Of all the seats this guy could have picked, he sat next to me. Oh well.

I didn't complain, and somehow we started talking. He was the owner of Subway Records, a record store I think on 6th Avenue near Penn Station, on the second floor of an old building.

His knowledge of recording was of course great. He spoke of having the Beatles White album and how much it was worth. I was never a Beatles fan so this meant nothing to me. But it turns out this LP is worth a good deal of money, then, and of course now.

We got to talking and I mentioned that I wanted a CD of Jamal's Naked City Theme. At the time there wasn't much downloading. I don't even think iTunes was around then. Streaming was nascent. He told me to drop by the store and they'd make a copy. I did, and they did.

My co-worker Isabel told me it was a "practical miracle" that he sat next to me. She was a fan of John Gray's Men Are from Mars, Women are from Venus. Okay, maybe she was right.

The only other time I ever saw the guy was when I went to the store to pick up the CD. I never saw him again on the train. I remember him telling me he was likely going to pack it in soon; it was too hard to make any money selling old LPs. He even branched out to being a ticket broker for concerts. Eventually the shop was gone, and he was selling out his home and on the web I guess.

The  NYT did a story on Jamal in the Arts section on September 11, 2022 by Giovanni Russonello. There was going to be some new releases of two two-disc live recordings he made at the jazz club the Penthouse, 'Emerald City  Nights: Live at the Penthouse 1963-1964 and 1965-1966.' A third set is scheduled soon.

I bought one of the sets, and will soon add the other. The NYT mentions that Ahmad had a hand in all the selections for the CDs. Naked City Theme did not make his cut, but it will always make mine. I never heard him perform it. At the Iridium they announced that if we stayed for the second set he would take requests. We didn't stay, and I missed my chance.

Passing away is permanent at any age. Passing away at 92 means there will be no 93. But I've got the LPs and the CDs. The music lives on.

htpp://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

Astonishment!

I'm a bit of a sucker when it comes to reading about punctuation. I think I have Mary Norris's Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen around here somewhere. I have Benjamin Dreyer's English with its cute jacket cover of the misplaced apostrophe and dot over the I. (Is the dot over the lowercase i a period? It doesn't end a sentence. Hmmm.)

Of course I started with Elements of Style by Strunk and White and later with Eats Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss, who did not become a short-lived prime minister of England. That was Linda Truss.

Add to this collection of books on the vexations of punctuation now comes An Admirable Point by Florence Hazrat 175 pages from Godine, $17.95, about the exclamation mark. Priscilla M. Jensen recently reviewed the book for the WSJ, 'The Mark of Excitement,' which is how I know about it.

The great thing about print and online copy is that the print copy is where I start, and the online copy is where I go for the color photos and artwork. The above cartoonish WOW!!! is found in the online version of the book review. It would never fly in the print edition.

I was entertained by the review and have demurred over buying the book. After a bit of thinking about it, I've decided to order the book. I mean, 175 pages is not a lot, but the fact that someone can write about the exclamation point for 175 pages and it only costs $17.95, plus tax, seems like a bargain. I easily spend that on a good bacon hamburger with French fries in a restaurant/pub. And the book will last longer. Sold.

To a person like Florence Hazrat, a British (what else), a scholar of the Renaissance Florence, 175 pages on a blot and a dot is likely child's play.

We get the story of its origins when in the 14th-century Italian poet and scholar (what else), Iacopo Alpolelo da Urbisaglia considered that a "clear point," and a comma placed on its side above that same point might provide "punctus admirativus" (of course) to a text.

Of course that was the beginning. We now know the exclamation point to be a tapered tear drop hanging over a dot, or period. It's sort of like an upside down earring, except when the text is Spanish, and it starts the sentence as an earring and an upside down exclamation mark. (For another time.)

Nothing sets the refined mind off more than an opinion about the use of punctuation and how they find it used. Ms. Jensen's review of Florence Hazrat's book was in the edition dated April 7 and it didn't take long before the WSJ printed a letter (April 13) from a reader that revealed a somewhat violent reaction to the use of the exclamation mark.

Edgar Issacs of Salisbury, MD tells us: Priscilla Jensen's review of "An Admirable Point: A brief History of the Exclamation Mark by Florence Hazrat (Bookshelf, April 7) reminds me of something the novelist D. Keith Mano wrote in National Review in 1975: "The exclamation point may be used in dialogue and then only if the person has recently been disemboweled."

Wow!!! The tense seems a little off. If you've recently been disemboweled, I doubt you might then have a use for the exclamation mark other than to yell, "Ouch, that hurts!"

As I said, strong views of punctuation and word use are not uncommon. I keep a framed July 17, 2001 note I received from Russell Baker here in front of me that was a typed reply to my query to him on the use of the hyphen, which I pointed out at the time seemed to have disappeared, leaving us with words that once were hyphenated, but are now smashed together with no dash separating them. Mr Baker replied: 

"After awhile it no longer seems worthwhile to keep fighting. I surrendered to hyphen idiocy years ago before leaving the Times.

I confess that I still rage against the jamming together of words to form corporate entities, as in PBS's Newshour, for instance. There are more born every day. It's a byproduct of internetaddresstalk.gabble, I guess. When one of these appears I think you can be excused for shooting on sight without asking questions."

Both Mr. Baker and Mr. Mano advocate death to offenders. No trial.

Ms. Jensen's review gives us examples of reactions to the mark by writers and others sprinkled in Ms. Hazrat's book.

Leonard Elmore proposed to allow two or three exclamation marks per 100,000 words. Cormac McCarthy has said that punctuation consists of "weird little marks that block the page."

I have no idea of the frequency of my own use. I've composed over 1,750 of these postings since 2009 and have no idea how often I've used the mark. I doubt it would show to be excessive. I recently used it in a Tweet to Joe Drape, a sports reporter for the NYT when two horse racing stories appeared in the sports section in the same week. I've expressed strong disappointment to the paper on the paucity of its local sports coverage. My Tweet went:

"TWO horse racing stories in the same week! Do you guys have a new editor? "Mr. Drape did not respond, and I'm not surprised.

My own use of the mark I think is confined when I'm meaning to express astonishment, as in "can you believe WTF just happened?" (I'm not spelling this out to order to avoid Google's AI community standards algorithm for spotting explicit text. The appearance of the f-word in my text might touch off the sensors and cause Google to place my posting behind an "Explicit Warning" prompt, requiring the reader to acknowledge there's naughtiness to follow. AI gone too far, which is a shame. Richard Burton once declared that the f-word was the single greatest word in Anglo-Saxon speech. Four little letters. So much meaning. There's way more to his story, which someday I might share.)

In signage, ! seems to beg you to pay attention to where you're going.

In fact, I was astonished! that the word astonishment did not find its way into the book review. I'm going to have to buy the book and see if it has found its way into Ms. Hazrat's book.

Donald Trump's use of the mark is of course fodder for comment, as so many things that man does are an excess of sane usage. His Tweets, when he was doing them, invariably had double, and often triple exclamation marks. Typical overkill.

Lynne Truss in her Cutting a Dash chapter touches on the exclamation mark, or point, as we say in the States. She's for it, with moderation. She offers an example of Victor Hugo telegraphing his publisher asking about the sales of his recently published Les Misérables who received the simple reply "!" A mark that replaces words. How can you hate it?

Benjamin Dreyer offers a few very specific edicts on the use of exclamation points. No. 63 reveals more about the character of Donald Trump than anyone realized. Mr. Dreyer tells us: "No one over the age of ten who is not actively engaged in the writing of comic books should end any sentence with a double exclamation point or question mark." Unsaid, but implied, a triple mark is beyond heresy. Should be shot on sight.

In three years of high school, 10th-12th grades, I took the equivalent of 4½ years of various math courses through electives. It will be interesting to see if Ms. Hazrat has anything to say about the math notation using the ! point. In math, orthographically the symbol ! means factorial. What?

5! means all the permutations of five numbers: 5,4,3,2,1. Permutations means the multiplication of all the possibilities of how 5 numbers can be arranged. 5! gives us 5×4×3×2×1, or 120 possible combinations.

When I was in high school in the '60s, pari-mutuel betting on horses did not include exactas, triples, or superfectas, picking two, three or four horses in the exact order of finish. Thus, in high school we weren't exposed to the betting tactic of betting called "boxing," taking your selections and in effect betting all possible finish outcomes in order to hit the bet and still (hopefully) win money.

My introduction to playing horses came two years after graduating high school and a few years before the exacta bet and other "exotic" wagers became a staple of New York Racing Association (NYRA) wagering. A common "box" bet it to take two selections and bet them to finish in either order. Thus, two selections becomes two bets, one bet that is an automatic loser if the other bet wins. Both bets of course can lose, as is often the case.

Exactas have appeal because they can pay more than what the winner pays, basically because you're trying to pick a more precise event than just picking a winner. You're picking the winner and the second place horse. You're doing 2!.

Use three horses in your selection process and you're doing 3! This equates to 3×2×1=6 selections, only one of which you win your bet, or none (Excluding a dead heat; for another discussion).

The more selections you choose to box, the more your bet costs, and the greater the likelihood that the cost of your bet will not be rewarded with a payout greater than your outlay. You could box 6 horses in an exacta, but that would cost you $30 in dollar bets (6×5×30). Most one dollar exacta payouts do not exceed $30, even with a moderate long shot in there. 

In a triple, picking the order of the first three finishers using 4 horses in your selections costs you 4×3×2=$24 in dollar bets. While triples pay better than exactas, they are commensurately harder to hit. In that example, three of your four selections need to cross the wire first, second or third. Sharpshooting.

And by dint of mathematics, superfectas, picking the first four horses to cross the wire are even harder to hit. There is no ardent horseplayer no matter their education level who isn't good at math.

I have to say, I have never read a racing text that described "boxing" as betting factorially, but you are.

I will say though that my take on hitting a boxed exacta is generally what Victor Hugo's publisher told him: !

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The Masters 2023

Anyone who might have been expecting to watch their regular shows on CBS this weekend has found themselves running into this year's Masters, running longer than a Jerry Lewis Labor Day telethon due to bad weather forcing massive rescheduling. 

Sunday is normally the fourth round of the tournament, and not meant to be televised until sometime in the afternoon. Today it's been on since 8:30 A.M. with the restart of the third round. The weather has been rainy, cold, (in the 40s) and windy. There have been more Ping umbrellas up than ever before.

It's an odd image in golf when a course marshal appears on the course blowing an air horn warning that play will be suspended because of electrical storms in the area. The air horn sounds like a Southern Pacific locomotive has left the tracks and is headed for the putting green.

I never heard of pine straw until I watched the Masters. The "straw" are the brown pine needles that carpet he ground under all the pine tress ringing the course. If your shot is not too deep in the woods on the pine straw you're probably going to recover. At least these golfers do. But if you're too far into the woods, oh-oh.

And those pine trees usually stay upright, providing beauty, shade and acting as obstacles. But this year, several of them toppled over, their roots losing their grip in the soil. These trees were BIG. It was a slow motion timber and no spectators were hurt, having scurried away in time before they hit the ground.

There was one spectator who was standing in the middle of two trees as they hit the ground. Biblically the Red Sea may have been parted, but this lucky soul parted the pines and emerged unscathed. They're checking the membership roles and seeing if Paul Bunyan was issued a PGA card. Someone Tweeted that there's a new Amen Corner on the course. They're going to have to come up with a name, something like Falling Pines, or something.

When the weather hit 40° during the third round, golfers could be seen with stocking caps pulled over their endorsement headgear. They looked like Keebler elves scurrying around with a putter.

And as for Tiger Woods, he wasn't burning bright. His third round was suspended, forcing the prospect  of his having to play 29 holes on Sunday. Tiger withdrew from the tournament rather than subject himself to that task. His leg was bothering him.

Tiger, Tiger is not burning bright these days, but you can't be on top forever. The younger players are whacking that ball off the tee more than 300 yards, so far they really can't see where it lands. Someone I know was told the trouble with their game was that they were standing too close to the ball after they hit it. Not this bunch.

Lately I'm reading an anthology of sport columns by Dave Anderson, the Pulitzer-award winning sportswriter for the NYT. Dave passed away in 2018, but the columns, mostly from the '70s, still ring great. I met Dave at a talk he gave at Brooks Brothers at the Madison Avenue flagship store (now no longer here) of all places, quite a few years ago. Until then I had never met him face-to-face, but he did on Christmas Day in 1994 publish a letter I wrote him about the hockey and baseball strikes. Dave made use of quite a bit of the letter in his column, including my name,  'It's Not Going to Be A Baseball Christmas.' I was famous for a day. Maybe two.

There weren't a lot of people at the Brooks Brothers talk, and why would there be? Despite this, I introduced myself and listened to Dave make his comments on the sports he loved to write about: hockey, baseball, boxing and golf. Especially golf. Dave himself was an avid golfer, and rarely missed an opportunity to write about it, particularly when the majors rolled around.

The talk was in April, (I do not remember the year.) and Dave commented that for a sports fan this was a GREAT time of the year. Baseball has started, hockey and basketball are entering the playoff rounds, and golf was getting ready to present the Masters Tournament from Augusta, Georgia.

Dave talked about his trips to the Masters, and the pre-tournaments events and practice rounds he witnessed. He described one practice drill where the golfers would hit golf balls at their caddies many yards away who were holding baseball mitts. The drill was to hit the golf ball to the caddie and have him catch it without having to move a step in any direction. Shagging balls in the outfield without moving. I had never heard of that.

Dave did add that whenever he visited the Masters he couldn't shake the "plantation feel" of the place. He never really felt comfortable, despite the beautiful surroundings.

And why would he fell comfortable? Dave was born in Brooklyn and started his sports writing career writing for the now long defunct Brooklyn Eagle.

There is some irony there. His colleague Red Smith, another Pulitzer-award winning sports writer for The Times, would comment that as he started in the Midwest—born in Wisconsin—and was trying to make his way to New York City writing assignments he was eventually offered a job to write for the Brooklyn Eagle. Red demurred, and took the offer to write for a Philadelphia paper, reasoning that Philadelphia was closer to New York City than Brooklyn, despite Brooklyn being only across the river from Manhattan, considered to be within the borders of New York City, and having a major league baseball team, the Brooklyn Dodgers. Dave had no such problem with starting out in Brooklyn. After all, he was born there.

I've probably paid more attention to this golf tournament than any other. Maybe because of the time of year, or maybe because of the landscaping. This year I watched it with my son-in-law, an avid golfer, as we were having Easter dinner over my daughter's house. Covid restrictions are over. At least for now.

I told him I will forever remember the 1986 Masters when Jack Nicklaus made his charge and won his 6th Masters. We lived in Flushing at the time, and my friend and I had just gotten back from visiting my father who was in St. Francis hospital in Roslyn, recovering from a mitral valve replacement.

When we got there the entrance was blocked by a phalanx of doctors and nurses standing by the door as someone was coming out. I couldn't see who it was, but my friend was taller than me and told me it was Jerry Lewis. Lewis was known to have heart troubles, and might have been there for a procedure.

I told my friend as much as I felt inconvenienced by the temporarily blocked doorway, I thought perhaps Donald Manes had been taken there after his suicide attempt, Manes being the Queens Borough president who would later successfully commit suicide rather than face the Parking Violations scandal that was unfolding. He failed at his first suicide attempt.

But learning that Jerry Lewis used the place for his medical needs, I figured the hospital must be good if a Jew goes to St. Francis rather than Mt. Sinai. 

The weather broke nicely for Sunday's renewal of the suspended third round, and of course the start of the fourth round, with Spain's 28-year-old Jon Rahm winning his first Masters fairly easily with a 12-stroke under par 276, a 4-stroke lead over Phil Mickelson and Bruce Koepka who tied for second.

The telecast finished a little after 7 o'clock. I suspect CBS got 60 Minutes in in its entirety. Dinner and dessert had been great, and the golf was fun to watch. We went home, full and happy.

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On Rye

I just read the most amazing statistic ever. This one exceeds anything found in sports, finance, politics, history, warfare, peacetime, anything, and of course I read it in an obituary, so it must be true, right? But how?

Mimi Sheraton, Innovative New York Times Food Critic Dies at 97. Her life writing about food went on for six decades, took her to 49 countries and 21,170 restaurant meals. She was a prolific food critic for numerous publications. She wrote tour guides based on food and of course cookbooks.

But you still haven't heard of the most amazing statistic I've ever read about. Before writing about delicatessen food she is said to have "collected 104 corned beef and pastrami samples in one day to evaluate the meat and sandwich-building techniques." And since the advance obit was written by the redoubtable Robert D. McFadden I have to believe it. But how did she do this?

Okay, let's try and analyze. A pastrami and corned beef sample from one place counts as two samples. That implies that samples from 52 establishments were obtained. Still strains belief even if you consider five boroughs and maybe Nassau and Westchester Counties.

Could 52 places be found in one day selling pastrami and corned beef sandwiches? What year was this? Sometime in the '70s? 

Okay, seven counties could contain 52 places selling a pastrami and corned beef sandwich, but how many people were sent on this mission? No doubt there would be many willing staff members who would volunteer to go on extended lunch and dinner hours to order pastrami and corned beef sandwiches, but this sounds like a well-planned, synchronized military operation.

Assuming enough people volunteer, and the budget allows for the expense for not only buying the sandwiches, but in traveling all over he place to obtain them, who gets to pass judgment on the sandwiches?

Someone or many, can visually pass judgment on the Jenga block construction of 104 sandwiches no doubt made with Levy's Jewish rye bread, or Fink's rye bread, but who gets to taste the sandwiches and render an opinion that can be put in print? The mind boggles.

One person taking a bite out of 104 sandwiches in a single day and taking notes must be related to Joey Chestnut, the July 4th Nathan's hot dog eating champion of the past decades. Paul Newman ate all those eggs in one sitting (50) to win a bet in the movie Cool Hand Luke while in a chain gang prison, but that's Hollywood. 

To look at a photo of Ms. Sheraton she doesn't strike you as someone who could do a one day sampling of 104 deli sandwiches, but she did come from a non-Kosher Brooklyn Jewish household, so nothing is impossible.

At this point my only wish is that someone would enlist me to update the study. I can be reached.

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Shhh...

Hush money. How can it be called hush money if everyone knows someone paid a sum of dough to keep something quiet? It is an oxymoron. Someone didn't get their money's worth.

Hush money has been in the news a lot lately. And no more so than yesterday when a former president, Donald J. Trump, was arraigned in a Manhattan courtroom on 34 felony charges related to hush money paid to an adult film performer (she's not a star) and strip club dancer, Stormy Daniels, to keep their relationship quiet as the 2016 presidential race started.  Only newborns and those in a coma may not have heard about this.

I emailed Ben Zimmer of the Wall Street Journal suggesting he do a piece on the origins of the term "hush money." I read his weekly piece on word and phrase origins in the WSJ's weekend edition. If he did one already I might have missed it, or forgotten it, and apologize for a lame suggestion.

Nevertheless, although I have no ability to research words and phrase origins like he does, I'll still write about hush money. I just won't know where the term originated.

The Donald, as he is sometimes referred to in newspaper copy, has been facing the prospect of indictment on these charges for years. The newly elected Manhattan DA, Alvin Bragg, has finally taken up the supposition that the Donald did something illegal, presented it to a grand jury over a period of weeks, and walked away with a 34 felony count indictment which hit The Donald and New York harder than Carlos Beltran taking a called third strike in a playoff game for the Mets in 2006, ending the series and advancing the St. Louis Cardinals to the World Series against the Detroit Tigers.

In addition to Stormy Daniels, The Donald is accused of paying hush money to the Playboy Playmate of the Year (1998), Karen McDougal, and a Trump Tower doorman to keep some things quiet. Mum's the word, until it isn't.

Anyone who knows anything about Manhattan doorman know they hold more secrets than the CIA building in Langley, Virginia. They may dress like Mexican generals, but their Christmas gratuities likely allow a lifestyle beyond that provided by union wages.

Did I ever pay anyone hush money? Not unless you consider the time I promised the kids a Happy Meal not to tell their mother that I put a significant amount of liquid dishwasher soap into the dishwasher, ran a cycle, and turned the kitchen into a bubble bath.

Come and get me. Am I going to need a lawyer, or two?

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Spring

It's occurred to me that when I go to the bathroom at about 5 A.M. I'm hearing the birds outside start to tweet. Daylight is dawning, and we're technically in spring.

I say technically, because in New York although it says spring on the calendar, the three months of spring here are really a mixture of winter, spring and summer. It is a hybrid season more than the others.

But I always tell people who complain about the weather in New York that we really don't ever have it bad. Sure, there was hurricane Sandy in 2012, but that was the worst storm, rain or snow in decades. The proverbially 100 year flood.

We don't experience many really cold, single digit temperature days, and not many under 20° either. We don't get cyclones, or tornadoes that level everything in their path, tossing cars around like toys, and leaving only foundations. We get hurricanes, but the damage from them is slight compared to what shows up on the nightly news during the hurricane season from other parts of the country. And we don't get earthquakes.

We get snow. Sometimes several storms a year, but rarely ever one that cripples the place to a standstill. And this year the snow shovels remained in the shed. They were never called upon to do anything but move out of the way. We've had a year like this before, and not all that long ago. It is rare, but it happens.

The latest I can remember it snowing here in New York was April 4th or 8th, 1982. That's 41 years ago. I remember having to shovel several inches of the white stuff when we were living in Flushing. Our second daughter had just been born in January, and I can distinctly remember my wife holding her by the front storm door window to watch me shovel. I may have even taken a photo of the two of them.

Does the NYT editorial board still do a piece on the arrival of spring? The editorial page of that paper has so vastly changed that it's unrecognizable to anyone who hasn't just starting reading it. The pieces are bylined; there are photos and sketches. There used to be an annual puff piece heralding the arrival of spring. But then again, many, many years ago a poem was published there daily.

As for myself, I never stop and read anything on the editorial page, before, or now. And seldom anything on the Op-Ed side ever since Russell Baker retired from the game. And 1998 was a long time ago.

In fact, I don't even think they call it an editorial page. It's an "Opinion" page, that, and the adjacent page that used to called an Op-Ed page, now also full of bylined opinions. The Times is a changin'.

There are a few sure signs of spring other than the opening of the baseball season. Turf racing returns to Aqueduct racetrack. I think it starts this week. Already you can see they've removed the permeable tarp that covers the turf, showing off a lush green surface that looks too good to be chewed up by horses' hooves.

The turf looks as green as the golf course at Augusta, Georgia when the Master tournament starts on Thursday. Augusta of course is made to look especially lush with early blooming magnolia, cherry and callery pear trees that have been force fed fertilizer, along with the azaleas and rhododendrons to put on a show.

But the spring meeting at Aqueduct doesn't last long, and like Belmont, there are two turf courses there again, so the wear gets evenly distributed.

And there's the Wood Memorial, the true racing harbinger of spring in New York when 3-year-olds compete at a mile and an eighth, once around the track, trying to earn points to qualify for the Kentucky Derby on the first Saturday in May.

The Wood still holds a position on the calendar as a decent Grade II prep race for the Derby. It is to be held this Saturday, four weeks before the Kentucky Derby.

This past weekend another harbinger of spring was held at Gulfstream Park, the mile and an eighth Florida Derby, another prep race set up to establish points for eligibility for the Kentucky Derby.

This year's edition was taken by Forte, a Todd Pletcher trained colt, owned by Mike Repole and St. Elias Stable that is easily an early favorite for the Kentucky Derby, likely a near odds-on favorite.

Forte was 3-10 in the Florida Derby, despite breaking from the 11 hole in 12 horse field. At this point, no one is conceding a race to anyone. They're going to show up and try and beat you.

Forte broke well enough, 7th, and settled in mid-pack. With the size of the field, Forte looked like he was going to get boxed in as they came out of the far turn and started for the stretch. Forte was swung 5 wide by the Eclipse award winning, cool riding Irad Ortiz Jr. The chart caller tells us what our eyes saw: "patiently ridden three wide between foes around the far turn, swung five wide turning for home, surged outside and was up late" in a driving finish, finishing one length ahead of the second place Mage. He looked done for, until he wasn't.

Forte won't be in the Wood Memorial. He'll continue training for the big day in May. And we have to see  who will be in the Derby, but you can be guaranteed that 20 horses of wide-ranging ability will start.

Get ready to place your bets. It's spring.

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