The 19-Gun Salute

When I heard yesterday that Henry Kissinger had passed away at 100, I was curious to see where the NYT would put his expected front page obituary. 

I'm sure most are unaware there is a hierarchy/protocol when the famous pass away that dictates where their obits might appear in the NYT. The famous might get the front page teaser acknowledgment which informs the reader that so and so has passed away and that you can read about them inside on page whatever.

There is the below-the-fold treatment where the whole obituary starts, with a photo of the deceased, below the fold in either the left or right corner. The fold in a broadsheet is seen as the dividing line between news you immediately need to know, and that which is somewhat less important.

There is above-the-fold, a placement reserved for...I really don't know the rule. A current head of state, maybe the president, or recent former president. Above-the-fold is rarely awarded to the deceased by the NYT. I really don't remember the last one. Perhaps an alert reader can point this one out. Will Jimmy Carter get such a placement?

NOTE: Henry Kissinger's obit appeared in Thursday's print edition, just above the fold. In Friday's paper the obit appears again—in the same space—which goes to show you how important Kissinger was. Maybe it's a 20-gun salute from the NYT editors.

Then there is the just-above-the-fold where a portion of the story appears above-the-fold, say the name of the deceased and the years they lived, and perhaps a portion of their photo. The just-above-the-fold is rarely awarded too, but serves as a somewhat neutral acknowledgment that someone notable has passed away.

In today's print edition of the NYT Henry Kissinger earned the just-above-the fold placement. I call this one the 19-gun salute.

The burial of a U.S. President would qualify for a 21-gun salute. I'm familiar with the 19-gun salute when my Uncle George was buried in Arlington Cemetery in December 1968. He retired as a Rear Admiral in the Navy, having commanded destroyers in the Pacific in WW II. He was the first Greek-American to graduate from the Naval Academy in 1931. He was the second son of my grandparents; my father was the third son. George was my father's favorite.

At the burial in Arlington that cold, but clear December day, a full military funeral was held. Riderless horse, caisson, honor guard from Fort Myers. They fired their rifles into the crisp Virginia air, each retort echoing across the cemetery.

I counted the shots...16-17-18-19. When they got to 19 I will always remember saying to myself, Jesus, two more and he's the president. Nineteen was it, based on rank apparently.

The Washington area is not somewhere I go back to. My father worked there, but we never visited Uncle George's gravesite. But apparently you can access photos of it online. A simple white headstone, consistent with all the surrounding headstones is there, etched with the service medals awarded.

The 19-gun salute.

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In Memoriam

As I've mentioned before, I always glance down at the In Memoriam section of the obituary page of the New York Times. I do this because over the years I've taken out my own In Memoriam sentiment for my co-workers who were murdered on September 16, 2002 at work.

Usually the sentiments are not accompanied by a photo, and usually they always run the gamut of a heartfelt sentiment on the anniversary of someone they lost and loved greatly. Eventually, everyone still misses someone.

So when I glanced down yesterday I was taken in by the playful one that was posted for the man pictured above, David Inglis Urquhart. Playful In Memoriams are extremely rare. They are expensive to post and not many people express death in a humorous, dry witted manner..

We are told by the person who took out the In Memoriam that Mr. Urquhart lived between 1929 and 2022. With this information it is probably safe to assume Mr. Urquhart passed away on November 27, 2002, as most In Memoriams are posted at some milestone anniversary.

That's a long life. Ninety-three years is a tremendous amount of time to be walking the earth for humans. The sentiment tells us: "Self described as an Irascible Curmudgen, politically to the right of Atilla the Hun, yet loved and admired by so many." Wow. "To the right of Atilla the Hun," yet still loved. Whatta guy!

I'm not sure I've ever seen or heard someone described as being "to the right of Attila the Hun." Who would have been to the left of Atilla the Hun? Charlemagne? Attila was a warlord in the 5th-century who gave the Holy Roman Empire fits. He was a badass warrior, whose name still resonates as a bad and barbarous guy.

Urquhart is not a common name in America. Maybe Scotland, where a Celtic clan named the Urquharts built a castle overlooking Loch Ness in the 7th-century. 

The photo of Mr. Urquhart shows someone who might be a bit impish, and if of Scottish descent would have an accent that would delight most people here in the states if they could understand him. Obviously, there were those who did.

But who was David Inglis Urquhart who delighted enough people and relatives that they would take out an In Memoriam in a widely read newspaper and post his obituary on Legacy.com?

There aren't many means at my disposal to find out who this man might have been. Is he the author the Google search turned up who wrote a series of books explaining how things worked, like refrigerators, internal combustion engines and bicycles in the 1970s, and whose books are available at Abebooks.com?

I suppose if I were to find a hardcover copy of one the books I could see if there is an author photo on the back cover flap and compare it to the one in the In Memoriam.

My guess is the books are so old that the library probably wouldn't even have them, unless I made a trip to the main New York library on Fifth Avenue. Not going to happen, however

I've Tweeted Bill McDonald, the obituary editor at the NYT, and Amy Padnani another editor on the desk, but haven't gotten a reply. In fact, I would be surprised if I did, since the paid tributes are not run through the obituary desk, and Mr. Urquhart is not likely to earn a bylined tribute obit.

Little matter. I'm sorry for the loved ones' loss, but would love to know how Mr. Urquhart got compared politically to the right of to Attila the Hun and still be lovable. 

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We've Gotta Stop That Man

If you think the legal system in the United States has been "weaponized' to be a freight train aimed at trying to keep Donald J. Trump from getting his name on the Republican ballot next November, you haven't been watching the most cunning septet on the face of earth trying to keep billionaire Michael Thomas Aquinas Prince from being an Independent nominee for president and getting his "first strike" hot-button finger on the "Go" command for firing nuclear weapons. With Prince as president, the first mushroom cloud is his.

As I've already written, I've been storing aired episodes of Billions on my DVR to help me prolong the last season since sports is at a fair low point, at least in New York. It's sort of my 18 week, 17 game NFL season. I have bye weeks.

So, there shouldn't be any spoilers here when I reveal that cabal inside  Mike Prince Capital (MPC) in the form of Wendy, Wags and Taylor are trying to bring to the stage that show-stopping number, "We've Gotta Stop That Man."

You might say Wendy, Wags and Taylor are the founding trio of those who are trying to derail Mike Prince and his bid for the presidency. In the 9th episode Chuck Rhoades, U.S. Attorney for the Southern district of New York,  makes it know he wants in as well.

For Chuck, there's a bit of a credibility problem because he'd be joining the type of people he's usually trying to get dirt on for shady trading. He needs to assure them he's in it to win it.

The opening montage of scenes for the episodes shows the outside of landmark New York City  restaurants where the movers and shakers drink and sup. We see the front of Peter Lugers, Sparks Steak House, Keen's Chop House, and Patsy's, to name a few.

It's inside an empty Patsy's that Chuck meets with the NYC police commissioner for tips on how to derail someone without getting arrested themselves.. Mike Rispoli is beautifully casted as the NYC police commissioner, who offers streetwise advice that it never goes well when you're trying to frame someone. He shows off, and impresses Chuck with his Catholic school Latin when he tells Chuck, anima in pericolo, meaning putting the inner self in danger. Bottom line: don't do it Chuck.

And just to show that two shakers and movers can get a restaurant to themselves, although not the corner Sinatra hung out in, they prepare to smoke postprandial cigars. Indoors. We don't see them light up, however. (My guess is Jilly's is not around anymore.)

Chuck is determined to help the inside Mike Price cabal of Wendy, Taylor and Wags, but needs to prove he won't, in his prosecutorial role, use anything against them. They are skeptical his intentions are pure ,anti-ballistic Prince.

Chuck mystifies his father and his counsel Ira by sitting at his office desk and speaking to a camera, creating a video that is a confession of all the dirty tricks, law-bending, against the law maneuvers he's done over the years to get convictions. 

It's not very reassuring to the public, we the audience, that a U.S. Attorney plays dirty. But really, only a newborn would think the world is on the level. Chuck's motive for this taped confession?

He approaches the cabal and tells them that if anything he learns from them that might be used against them, just release the only copy, encrypted flash drive and lead him away in handcuffs to jail. This convinces them of Chuck's pure passion to take down Prince that they let him join in their reindeer games.

Any casual viewer of Billions is aware that every episode is a lesson in back-stabbing machinations. Mike Prince didn't get where he is by playing nice in the sandbox. In a tense scene in Mike's townhouse (from the outside the National Arts Club across from Gramercy Park) Mike has called the cabal before him to mete out his justice, for he knows there is a plot against him. The Gramercy Park Massacre.

Wags is demoted, as is Taylor and Wendy. They stay on board, but in tightly held NDA jobs. Bonuses will not be paid, and their funds in Prince Capital are frozen. Mike has maneuvered Wendy into being a CEO of a mental health startup that he knows to be valued on bad, fraudulent financials. He's boxed Wendy in. If she makes a move against him he drops the dime on her and tells the Feds Wendy is head of  mental health provider that is fraudulent billing the government for in person visits when all they are doing is counting online AI run encounters. It's Club Fed for Wendy if this gets out. She's screwed.

Meanwhile, Ira, Chuck's counsel has joined the mutineers, and Taylor has made a personal visit to Bobby Axelrod, ensconced in this baronial castle in England, Haddon Hall, to enlist him to the cause. There is no one who dislikes Mike Prince more than Bobby Axelrod.

Bobby is aware of the vise Prince has put Wendy in, and is thinking, thinking, how to extricate her from his clutches. Chuck is beseeching him to come up with something. Bobby owes Chuck a favor for something did for the Russian oligarch.

Wheels are turning, and Ira, Chuck and Bobby come up with a plan to turn a Chinese national loose, a son of a major donor for Prince who went overboard cheating people through bitcoin and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that Chuck got convicted and incarcerated, much to Mike's dismay.

A prisoner swap is proposed to the Chinese. Son of so-and-so gets released, and Derek, the mountain climbing boyfriend of Mike's ex-wife Andy, that got plucked off the mountain on the Chinese side when Mike left him out to dry gets, to come home to the U.S.A., specifically to Bobby's place in New York since he has flown over from London for a Mike Prince takedown.

Mike is being feted at the Metropolitan Opera house with a fund raising concert with U2 providing the music. This is a pure New York A-lister event. A prelude to Mike sealing up his lead in the pols, and his expected anointing on being called Mr. President.

But who should come out of the black tie crowd as Mike and his entourage make their way to the entrance but Bobby Axelrod, attired as only Axe can be attired wearing a rock concert T-shirt under a black leather jacket, with Derek in tow in black tie. 

Bobby takes great delight in introducing Derek to Prince as his Plus-One for the evening, and reminds Mike who Derek is. Mike gets a little nervous.

Derek says a few remarks about the people he met in a Chinese prison and how his girlfriend Andy has shared so many intimacies about her time with Prince. Derek leans into Mike's ear and whispers an unheard monologue of what we can only surmise are things about Mike's either sexual inadequacies, or his kinky delights. Maybe both. No matter. He's got Mike's attention. Deus ex machina

Bobby then, in his best lemon soaked, Steve McQueen grimace, gets in Mike's face and lays out the terms of the détente. Bottom line, all things being held over Wendy go away.

Mike knows he's toast if Derek gets out there with the media and agrees through his silence that Wendy will not be held as a financial and legal hostage.

As the parties part, Mike tells his lieutenants to convert all the firm's positions to cash. He's not going to leave himself exposed for the Magnificent' Seven's guns.

There will be more.

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The Anniversary

Today marks the 60th anniversary of the assassination of JFK. It is not a joyous one; it is a historic one. JFK is forever linked to the shooter Lee Harvey Oswald, who himself was assassinated on live TV the next day by Jack Ruby, a Dallas night club owner who employed strippers. No reality show has been able to top that one. Bada bing. Bada bing.

There has never been a shortage of theories/opinions of what is the truth. Come to some conclusion on your own and you'll find plenty of company, no matter how implausible or outlandish. In fact, there are no implausibles for this one.

No one at our Thanksgiving table tomorrow other than my wife and myself were alive to remember it first hand, each of us in different high schools, dismissed when the news hit the principal's office that Friday afternoon.

Only 17% of the US population in 2020 is over 65, meaning about 83% of today's population wasn't alive in the United States on November 22, 1963. No adult that my wife and I remember alive on that day is still alive. The ranks are thinning.

When I was a kid in the '50s it was news when the oldest Civil War veteran had passed away. Veterans Day parades might have once had vets from the Spanish-American War and WW I. Not any more. There is no one alive who was alive when President McKinley was killed in Buffalo in 1901.

The only piece I find in today's papers about the anniversary is an Op-Ed piece by a former FBI agent in today's Wall Street Journal. The headline is a doozy: How to Botch an Assassination Investigation.

There's is nothing in retired agent Thomas J. Baker's piece I didn't know already know, other than that in 1963 there was no law on the federal books for killing a president. Oh boy. Think about that one.

Mr. Baker lays out the Gordian Knot of jurisdictional disputes that enveloped the case immediately after the president was pronounced dead.

No one had the lead in the investigation. Who's in charge? The FBI, the Secret Service, The Dallas police or the sheriff's office?

I remember video of some law enforcement officer walking through the crowded basement of the Dallas police headquarters proudly holding aloft with two hands Oswald's rifle, as if Sitting Bull had just been disarmed. It was not this country's shining hour.

Mr. Baker writes that after the assassination Congress passed a 1965 law—Title 18 U.S. Code 175—that made assaulting  the president a federal crime. Mr. Baker recalls being in charge at the FBI when President Reagan was shot in 1981 by John Hinckley and how different the investigation flowed from there.

There was no jurisdictional gray area. The FBI was in charge, and Hinckley was whisked away and placed under Marine guard at Quantico, Virginia. He was not approached by a disgruntled night club owner in a basement garage of a police headquarters carrying a pistol, annoyed because his president had been killed.

The above photo, which is in color in today's WSJ's digital edition, is jarring for me. It was a bright sunny day, the president was waving, Jacqueline was beside him in what became the famous pink suit with the pill box hat that probably moments after this still photo was shot found herself covered in her husband's blood with pieces of his skull blown off.

Mr. Baker's piece is really about the contrast between the handling of the JFK aftermath and the Ronald Reagan aftermath. 

The JFK assassination theories will never goo away, no matter what the Warren Commission report wrote. I'm keeping my own thoughts about who was behind the events of 11/22 to myself, or at least not publicly stating them. Way too many others have, and there are enough of them that would agree with me, and may more that wouldn't. So what's the use of adding to the pile?

A few years ago I went to my high school reunion, Class of 1966, and there wasn't one of us who didn't ask the other if they were in school that day. My own personal journey between the JFK assassination and the attempt on Ronald Reagan has been a progression from a high school letting its students out early in the afternoon, with no explanation, to 1981 when my boss came over to my desk and in a stunned voice said that president Reagan had been shot.

History is made every day. Sometimes you're there for it.

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Say Your DDS Is Dead...

As I've stated before, I'm not afraid to watch any number of miniseries on BritBox, Masterpiece, or whatever that might be dubbed, or even in the original foreign language, helped along with subtitles. I'm there, seeing the world though the eyes of the police in Shetland, Scotland, Usedom, Germany, Iceland, Sweden, or wherever the series is set. It's my way of joining the navy and seeing the world.

The best part of seeing the murder mysteries unfold in the north of Europe is realizing how many ferry rides those people take to get from A to B. I'm forever consulting my atlas to see that Denmark is really close to Sweden, borders Germany, and Scotland is close to Norway, 

Big ferries. Not like the Staten Island ferry, but huge jobbers that take on tractor trailers, buses, and look like cruise ships if the journey is long enough. Not that long ago I binged my way through the  series Shetland, and nearly came away talking with a Scottish accent. 

The lead investigator in the four person police shack in Shetland is from Fair Island, home to 700 people and 70,000 sheep. The island is known for making great use of all that wool, and I'm hear to tell you that the four pairs of brightly colored socks I bought from Fair Island are the warmest, best socks I've ever worn with my Timberlands. Just mentioning it.

Lately I'm making my way through "Nordic Murders" set in Usedom, Germany, hard by the Polish border, so close that if you can't get milk in Usedom, which is an island, you can drive to Swinoujscie, Poland and find a place open there.

These murder mysteries are set in contemporary times. In Usedom, the Berlin wall has fallen and East and West Germany are reunited, but the pain of the separation is not forgotten. And the enmity between the Germans and the Poles is very much a part of daily life, when for example, a German suspect is questioned about using a mechanic in Poland, he replies with clear disdain, "why would I take my German engineered car to a Polack?" Maybe it was a silly question, but they had to ask.

Murder mysteries of course need someone who is not only dead, but one whose life has been snuffed out by the actions of another. And let me tell you, the perps are not always so obvious. Children have  done in others.

No police department, no matter how isolated, cannot fail to call in a forensic unit to take photos, dust for prints, bag, and make plaster molds of tire tracks (tyre on the subtitles) tracks, footprints and extract fibers with a tweezer off a fence post. I learn that a woman who has washed up on the beach in Usedom has been at the Baltic bottom long enough, and in frigid temperatures long enough to be somewhat preserved in a waxy covering. The local paper headlines: Wax Woman Found on Beach

Who is she? Well, the prosecutor in Usedom tells the lead detective, an attractive woman from Denmark, that the deceased is so and so, a psychotherapist who lived in Usedom for two years. The female investigator, Ellen, asks how do they know all this? 

Now the woman detective is not incompetent, but in these European jurisdictions the public prosecutor is also an investigator who got the forensic report before she did. "Dental records, Commissioner."

Fair enough. We've probably all watched a crime show where the deceased is identified through their dental records. We've been so informed of this so often we've probably failed to ask, "well, how did you know what dentist to ask to see their records?" If she's only been in Usedom for two years, maybe she didn't have an dental appointment while there, no? Or, she's originally from Bulgaria.

No, we've accepted on faith that dental records can  get you the name of the deceased. Well, maybe if there's a National dental insurance and everybody's molars are on a database at the capital, but what if they're foreigners?

I will admit I've fallen for "we checked the dental records" statement from forensics as gospel, never thinking what lead them to check with the right dentist in the first place.

The light bulb finally came on in my head when it came to having a dental appointment yesterday. It was just after a Nordic Murders episode where the psychologist was found on the beach. Murdered. Reliably identified through her teeth.

My dentist is local, and as I was walking there I started to think what if my body washed ashore with no means of identification? Now, it's probably foolish to predict what will lead to my demise, but I really doubt it's going to be caused by what did this poor woman in, dumped in the ocean by a fellow who runs a marine salvage business and retrieved by another salvage ship and further dumped back in the ocean because the second salvage boat didn't want to draw attention to themselves since they were busy retrieving dumped WW II German ordinance and illegally putting it back on the Black Market. It's like being killed twice.

No, a feeling occurred to me. Since the dentist I was going was a fairly new dentist since my prior dentist who I had been seeing for decades has passed away, if my body were to lie somewhere and I couldn't be identified, what dentist would be consulted for my records, and what would lead the investigation team to that dentist?

The prior dentist was a one-man practice, so I don't know where his records might have wound up; maybe in his daughter's garage.

Am I headed to Potter's Field?

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Wood

Rich Cohen writes a "Back When" column that appears in the Saturday/Sunday Wall Street Journal. The latest: Shop Class Taught Me About Myself and The World sounds a bit lofty, as if without shop class Mr. Cohen might be writing columns from a correctional facility. Saved from a life of crime by sawdust. I jest.

The sub-heading is a bit less lofty: Amid the dangers of the circular saw, we learned how to achieve things step by step. Definitely true.

I think about my shop class nearly every time I work in my woodworking shop in what was once a one car attached garage here in a New York suburb. Even before we moved to the suburbs, I had woodworking shop in our cellar in Flushing, Queens. It's a bit more extensive now.

Mr. Cohen describes his teen-age experience with a circular saw. There may have been a circular saw in our shop class, and I'm sure I used it, but I don't remember it. Probably a table saw, an item I wouldn't go near these days. My own shop has a 10" radial arm saw I bought from Sears in 1978 for $250.  I remember the drill press and a planer. There may have been a lathe, but we didn't use it. There was a band saw, and a friend of mine nearly lost part of a finger using it.

The columnist Jimmy Breslin once cracked wise that any kid in the city with a German surname was set to learn how to use a lathe. Germans were big woodworkers. I always regret never having been taught how to use a lathe. It's one of the standard pieces of equipment I do not have in my shop

My high school was in Manhattan, Stuyvesant, in what is now referred to as an "elite" public school. There is still an entrance exam, but the curriculum was a small part vocational, and the rest academic. My father went there in the '30s. No legacy admissions then, or now.

Woodworking shop was an elective. I also took ceramics. The great thing about these electives was they were double periods. You got to be in the same space for an hour and a half.

The school offered a wide array of courses where things were made, something that Mr. Cohen feels has gone out of education. I would agree.

My guess is the school no longer has woodworking shop, which is a shame. You did learn how to follow a plan and create in my case a straight back chair, using every piece of equipment the teacher assigned.

I remember the plans called for a round tenon, but since we weren't shown a lathe, the teacher created a jig that allowed us to safely insert the piece of wood in the jig on the table saw and create a rounded tenon at the end.

A good friend in the '70s advanced my woodworking horizons when he suggested I buy the radial arm saw. Shop class didn't have us using a router, but a router is perhaps the most vital piece of equipment in a shop. I like to compare it to the Queen chess piece. It can do everything. It is absolutely essential. I have two.

One is mounted on a router table and lets me do rabbeting and dado cuts. Another router is a hand-held plunge router that lets me do all that nice edging you see on furniture pieces, ogees, chamfers and cove cuts.

Over the years I've made lots of things. Anything I need I either design myself or follow someone's plan I've made several Adirondack chairs, cabinets, tables, bookcases, benches, frames, and end tables with dovetailed drawers.

At 74 I feel it's a bit too late to start using a lathe. I've ducked any project that would call for using one. I get  away with mortise and tenon joinery with a mortise machine and the table mounted router to cut the rectangular tenons. I have a dovetail jig that I've used sporadically, and would really love to go for the $1,800 PantoRouter that lets you do dovetails and other router cuts easily. The video on this piece of equipment is so enticing, but I don't think I can justify getting one for the few things I make these days.

Mr. Cohen extols the virtues of learning to make something, as opposed I guess to using something. Playing video games is using something. Computers have taken over, but unless you learn how to program then, you're just a user.

I can't find the copy of a Russell Baker piece he wrote in the late '60s or early '70s titled "The Paper Working Stiff."

Obviously, this was long before computers and computer users, but even then Mr. Baker was pointing out that it seemed we didn't actually know how to make things anymore.

A long time ago in Flushing we had new overhead garage door installed for the two-car unattached garage. They were a big improvement over the two double glass topped swinging doors. that dated to 1923. When my father and I started to stain the doors with a rag he commented did I know where he learned how to apply stain. I knew the answer. At the high school we both attended.,

Perhaps it's the logic of following steps, but when I think of woodworking and the programming I did I find great similarities. Any programmer I ever met also made things around the house. They followed plans, step by step. 

One IBMer I know even has a lathe for metal. You should see what his place looks like.

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There Used to Be...

I probably did read the obit in 1989 for the musician, songwriter Joe Raposo, but I don't remember any details from it. His name came up on a recent Jeopardy clue/answer for being associated with writing songs for Sesame Street and co-creating the show with Jim Henson and Jon Stone. This I did not know. 

When they said his name on Jeopardy I froze a bit. That Joe Raposo? I've always loved Frank Sinatra's version of 'There Used to Be a Ball Park' an elegy to the disappearance of a baseball team and stadium from a locality. I looked up the writer years ago and found it was Joe Raposo, but knew nothing else about him until the Jeopardy clue/answer put his name once again on my forehead.

Mr. Raposo was only 51 when he passed away in 1989. Retrieving his NYT obit I learn aside from the Sesame Street connection he was a co-author of the hit play "You're a Good Man Charlie Brown." Never heard of it?

Well, in 1967 "You're A Good Man Charlie Brown" was performed in a tiny East Greenwich Village theater, Theater 80. (80 might have been the capacity.) I went thee with a friend. At the time I was a BIG Peanuts fan and the play just seemed as the best way to appreciate Peanuts even more. It was.

Turns out Mr. Raposo was the musical director. I remember the production well. I think there was one person who was the 'orchestra'. Reva Rose played crabby Lucy, and Gary Burghoff played the lead, Charlie Brown. Gary Burghoff later played Radar in the TV series of M*A*S*H. Reva Rose later appeared in commercials, TV shows and the musical The Fantastiks.

But back to "There Used to Be a Ball Park." Sinatra's voice gives the song all the right nuances of a bygone era, a ball park that was so cherished for the "hot dogs and beer." I consider the song as important a song as Don McLean's American Pie, an elegy to Billy Holly and a style of music that was disappearing.

Ebbets Field disappeared into a housing project and the Brooklyn Dodgers disappeared from Brooklyn after the 1957 season when the owner Walter O'Malley didn't get approval for a domed stadium to replace Ebbets field at the confluence of Flatbush Avenue, 4th Avenue and Fulton streets in downtown Brooklyn. 

Mayor Wagner, and the perpetual parks commissioner Robert Moses, didn't like the idea, so no approval came. O'Malley, owning the balls, bats, gloves and the players decamped for Chavez Ravine in Los Angeles, getting a sweetheart deal for a stadium and the chance to tap into the fastest growing market in the United States, Southern California. Goodbye Wagner. Goodbye Moses. I'll write and thank you someday.

The lyrics to "There Used to be a Ball Park" are the most poignant in describing a loss. Mr. Raposo was born in Fall River, Massachusetts of Portuguese descent. He was educated at Harvard and L'Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris. His father was a pianist, violinist and flutist. Music was in his veins, and remained so.

At some point he same to live in Bronxville, NY, just north of the New York City borough of The Bronx, home of the Yankees.

When the Dodgers were yanked from Brooklyn it was like someone performed open heart surgery on the borough and its fans without anesthesia. I worked with someone whose father claimed Walter O'Malley couldn't have passed away from a heart attack because he didn't have one.

I have a friend, Johnny M., who is in his early 80s and remembers going to Ebbets field with his father who owned a bar in downtown Brooklyn on Court Street. Johnny M. did see Jackie Robinson, but said the place was really a wooden bandbox that could have gone up in flames with one match.

Fred Wilpon used to own the Mets—"the new team that hardly tries" —built a structural valentine to Ebbets Field when he had Shea Stadium replaced. 

You have to be a Mets fan of a certain age to realize Citi Field is modeled after Ebbets Field. Anytime I hear the song I wonder again what Brooklyn might have stayed like if the Dodgers had stayed as well, even with a new domed stadium.

The borough is only now emerging from a decades-long decline as it shakes off its catharsis. When Brooklyn was a city, and even after it was incorporated into Metropolitan New York, it held everything: manufacturing, ship building, amusement parks, baseball park, horse racing, beaches. parks, mansion-like private homes, apartments, colleges. museums, theaters. It was a city state. 

There used to be a ball park, right there.

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A to Z

In a prior posting I wrote about playing my iPod playlist in the bathroom alphabetically by song title. I really don't know how many songs are on this iPod, but just a few days ago I got through the As to the last song 'Azure', a song sung by Emily Saxe, who years ago recorded a few albums and disappeared back into her law practice.

Many years ago I saw Emile Saxe perform in the Rose room at Lincoln Center, a room that dramatically overlooks Columbus Circle. Johnathan Schwartz introduced her.

Kids still learn their alphabet in elementary school. Mine looked like the photo above, with upper case and lower case letters of the alphabet in sculpted script circling the room over the blackboards. (Yes, they were blackboards. Slate, written on with chalk, and erased with felt erasures.)

Learning the alphabet was a good foundation, and alphabetizing was a good exercise. So when the song selection went from Az to Ba I was hardly surprised.

What did surprise me to no end was how many mornings it took to go from Ba, Baby titles to the next one, Bach. Yes, I've added some short classical pieces, probably ones that were background music to whatever I might have been watching and was taken with. You really can download nearly any title.

Prior to this endeavor I was wondering to myself what word is the most common word in any pop song ever written. I figured it was "baby" but had no means to quantify it.

I still have no way of telling you how many songs start with Baby in their title, but I'm here to tell you it took several days to plow through the Ba's and get to Bach. I've looked at my master iTunes list and counted 28! songs with Baby in the title.

The first one up is 'Babies Making Babies' by Miranda Lambert, closing out with 'Baby's Gonna Kick' by John Hiatt. There are only three selections that are Bach, before the list moved on to "Back at Sou- Chou Prison,' soundtrack from the movie 'The Spy Game.'

As the different artists unfold it sometimes strikes me how many of them are no longer with us. Just looking through the As I find that 43 artists are no longer recording due to no longer breathing. A few more are still alive, but no longer recoding, like Linda Ronstadt.

I've imagined that when someone was teaching a class at Columbia School of Journalism on obituary writing, they asked the class to practice writing their own. I have to say I've thought about some clever sentences that might appear in my own if written by someone whose tongue is firmly planted in their cheek, but I've never actually completed the exercise with dates, cause, achievements, and names for survivors.

But playing this playlist back in alphabetical order has gotten me to thinking of what could be a perfect lede.

"....passed away yesterday just before hearing songs in his bathroom start with U in their title..." No cause was given.

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Death Down Under

The title of this posting could be the latest Agatha Christie mystery if Dame Christie hadn't died 47 years ago at 85. She usually bumped off the victim of foul play through poisoning, and it is alleged a woman in Australia has done the same to some luncheon guests through their ingestion of highly poisonous mushrooms called death caps. Dame Christie might have applauded the method, but surely not the deed.

I missed the original story back in August when the news hit he media that a woman in Leongatha, Victoria served a meal of beef Wellington topped with mushrooms to her guests only to later learn three of them died after ingestion and a fourth was critically ill, but recovered. 

The story in the NYT on August 2023 remarked that Leongatha is a quiet town. I'm sure it remains so, even through three people croaked there. I mean, how much noise do you make when you're dying?

The fact that the town is named Leongatha and I'm drawing parallels to Agatha Christie—get it?— just furthers my contention that everything is connected, and the Möbius strip extends all the way to the Antipodes. I didn't make this up.

The initial dispatch of course reports that the three deaths raise a whole host of questions. The dead are Ms. Patterson's former mother-in-law, Gail (from Ms. Patterson's ex-husband, Simon) and her husband Don and Gail's sister Heather. Ms. Patterson, the host, initially did not report any symptoms from the death cap mushrooms, nor did her two children, also at the meal. Heather's husband Ian Wilkinson took deathly ill, but recovered after two months. Ms. Erin Patterson, 48, was divorced from her husband, but was supposedly on good terms with his family members.

The police at the time were reported to be keeping an "open mind" Apparently, death cap mushroom are common on Victoria, Australia in the fall, March to June. (The seasons in the Southern hemisphere are opposite of ours.)  Mushroom deaths from death caps are 90 percent of mushroom deaths. Dame Christie would have surely used them in her story if she were alive to write one set in Australia.

I missed the initial story in August, but did a double take when the follow up story appeared in the NYT on November 3. A headline that reads: Police Charge Host of Lunch With Murder by Mushroom will get your attention, if you're paying attention. I suspect the International Classification of Diseases has a code for this.

The "open mind" of the  police in Victoria has shifted to charging the host, Ms. Erin Patterson, with three counts of murder, and five counts of attempted murder. Counts of attempted murder were made due to an unidentified man in 2021 and 2022 who became ill. Erin's former husband, Simon, did not attend the meal where the four people fell ill. Erin herself said she had stomach pains and diarrhea, and was hospitalized.

The big takeaway from the second dispatch for me is that the police had dogs who sniffed Erin's house for USB sticks and SIM cards. Huh? They can do that?

Obviously with Agatha Christie passing away in 1976 she couldn't have written about crime being solved with dogs sniffing for computer parts.

It's not known was evidence the police presented to the CPS,(Crown Prosecution Services) but Erin claims her innocence. She says she bought fresh mushrooms locally at a supermarket and dried mushrooms from an Asian grocer 85 miles away in Melbourne. Now Australia's a big place, but buying mushrooms 85 miles away for a food ingredient might have been a clue. The police also report Erin disposed of a food dehydrator in a dump.

What is a food dehydrator? Turns out it pretty much is used for what you might expect it to be used for: remove food moisture to preserve food.

Mushrooms? If my wife starts serving death cap mushrooms I'm eating out. I now know what they look like. They are pictured above.

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Whoooppeeee!

You would be correct to assume that anyone who is born named David Antony Christopher Potter, who later changes their surname to Kirke—their mother's maiden name—to prevent the family name from gaining too much unwanted attention because they've decided to bungee cord jump off bridges and take part in other dangerous stunts is British, you'd be 100% correct.

A testament to David Kirke, who has just passed away at 78, is that he didn't die doing any of the "out there" stunts that got him and his Dangerous Sports Club members so much attention. He died in Oxford, in a council flat, surrounded by all the memorabilia of his life as a Merry Prankster.

His claim to fame started when he became the first to bungee cord jump off the Clifton Suspension Bridge (or any bridge, for that matter) in Bristol England on April Fools' Day in 1979. It was a 245' drop, risking his life while dressed in morning clothes, a top hat and carrying a bottle of Champagne on untested, but military grade elastic cords used to keep landing fighter jets from sailing off an aircraft carrier's flight deck on landing. 

There was no rehearsal. The cords were purposely not tested before the jump. Mr. Kirke claimed the jump couldn't be declared dangerous if it was known it was going to work out. Thank God for military specs. 

His family said David lead from the front, and on that day, after a night of  drinking and waking with a massive hangover, he showed up at the bridge with a coterie of followers who were willing to do the same thing—if he survived.

Mr. Kirke was dressed formally, as if he was going to a wedding, or being laid out in a coffin. He told BristolLive "the main thing going through my wind  was "Whoooppeeee!" on the way down, which could have been his last word if the military grade bands didn't hold. If he hadn't survived anything that would he written about him could have been titled "One Jump and a Funeral."

He patterned his bungee jump after young men in the Pacific Island country of Vanuatu who used vines  to break their fall from towers. Now there's a Jeopardy answer/clue. Anything to do with Vanuatu should earn you big bucks.

David was born of privilege, but was not from nobility. He was the first of seven children whose father was a schoolmaster and whose mother was a concert pianist, descended from a heroic military family. The family vacationed in Switzerland and France, employed 15 servants and drove around in a vintage Rolls Royce.

Mr. Kirke's friends were interested in hang gliding, so then he was too. He formed the Dangerous Sports Club to promote out-there doings like bridge jumping, skiing down the Alps on a piano, or the best one, sailing off a cliff in the pouch of an inflatable kangaroo suspended by helium balloons making his way across the English Channel.

To hear his friends talk, David was hardly ever sober, said to be able to drink a bottle of wine with breakfast. Going out with him required stamina, for one friend claimed if you went to lunch with him it might last six weeks.

Mr. Kirke did some work in publishing, but pretty much lived out his life doing stunts. This past Sunday was the NYC Marathon and I distinctly remember a story from a few years ago where a group of buddies left a Brooklyn bar at the 4 A.M. Sunday closing and thought it would be a good idea to repaint the blue marathon line the runners are supposed to follow and divert then into the Gowanus Canal.

Marathon Sunday in New York has a police presence greater than if the president is in town. The line diverters were arrested and charged with whatever you get charged with for repainting the pavement.

Mr. Kirke, still being able bodied, celebrated the 21st anniversary in 2000 of his Bristol bridge jump. It's not known if he was arrested, as he and his buddies were in 1979 for their mischief. When they leaped from the Golden Gate bridge six months after Bristol they were also arrested.  

Mr. Kirke never married. A friend of his claimed, "that would have been a very brave lady" if he had found a bride.

No doubt one nut in the family is enough.

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My Beer is Rheingold the Dry Beer

I voted for this woman in 1959.

 A just off the presses NYT obit tells us: 

Robbin Bain, Pageant Winner and 'Today Girl' Is Dead at 87
After winning the annual Miss Rheingold beauty contest, in which millions voted, she covered fashion for the popular morning show.

I was only 10 at the time, didn't yet drink beer, but with the help of a local grocer and a friend we stuffed the Miss Rheingold ballot box with tens of ballots, maybe hundreds, no doubt for Miss Bain, but also for all the other contestants, which I think were 8 in total.

In the 50s and 60s Rheingold beer held an annual Miss Rheingold beauty contest. Contestant pictures were displayed in your local grocer (there weren't many super markets then). Hung across the store were the photos of the girls in kind of a pennant. The voting was done from a pad of square red and white (Rheingold colors, naturally) entries, about 3"x3," with each contestants name and a check off box.

You marked your favorite and put it in a cardboard box. Maybe you were supposed to have only one ballot per customer, but since we kids didn't drink beer and we were in love with the photos, the grocer let us have pads of the ballots and we were allowed to mark off as many as we wanted.

Miss Bain looked like my Sunday school teacher, who I was in love with. All the contestants had a fresh, well-scrubbed look with engaging smiles. No boobs and legs hanging out on Page Six-like photo spreads. These were girls you could take home to meet mom. 

I can still remember the grocer's store, Bill Nagy's, just across the street from the Flushing home, a crowded space with a huge walk in refrigerator that Bill retrieved the cold beer bottles from and carried it to the counter in his apron folds. My mother was a constant customer, but not for Rheingold. She preferred Rupert Knickerbocker, and for some reason always bought 8.

A kids we bought hostess cupcakes, coconut covered snowballs, and those cream filled small chocolate cakes, with the white swirl on top, always two in a package. Mission cream soda was my favorite. It's amazing I kept my teeth.

New York City brewed a lot of beer. Rupert Knickerbocker, Rheingold and Schaeffer. It was always about the water and that once upon a time New York City had manufacturing industries that made things.

Thinking about those ballots and the sub-heading claim that "millions voted" I now wonder if anyone really counted the ballots, or some committee just sampled the sacks of ballots and declared a winner.. I'll never know.

Turns out Miss Bain was born in Flushing, just like me. Born in 1936 she would have been a wholesome 23 when she was elected Miss Rheingold. As a beauty pageant winner she got money and made promotional appearance for Rheingold. I remember being in Manhattan's Chinatown for a Chinese New Year's parade and there was Miss Rheingold in a convertible waving to the crowd, complete with sash telling everyone who she was.

Miss Bain basically achieved a career in modeling, commercials and was a Today Show Girl for a brief stint before having to leave due to pregnancy (that wouldn't happen today).

I don't remember how long the contest ran before it was discontinued. Bill Nagy's grocery store closed, and of course we all got older. Rheingold was a very popular beer. I saw their red and white empty cans  everywhere the teenagers drank.

I don't remember seeing empty bottles. There was a 2¢ deposit on bottles then (maybe not cans) and as kids we were always looking for empty Coke and other soda bottles to redeem. Large quart Coke bottles ones went for 5¢

The Rheingold font was evocative of Teutonic lettering. Advertising was everywhere, with an ear worm jingle that claimed : "My beer is Rheingold, the dry beer" to the melody of a light waltz, "The Students Waltz": Estudiantina Valse, Opus 191, No. 4 by Paul Lancome, but made popular in a rollicking two piano arrangement by Emile Walteufel who famously wrote The Skater's Waltz. 

I only ever knew of the jingle's classical music origin when I heard the Students Waltz played as part of a Sirius classical music selection. I stopped dead in my tracks when I heard the Rheingold jingle as classical music. (Alan Sherman's Hello Mudder, Hello Fahter sleep away camp message to home is set to a classical music piece as well. Who knew?)

I never knew beer could be so educational.

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Bohemian Grove

Truth is stranger than fiction; fiction is stranger than truth. Have it either way, and you've got the essence of a recent episode on Billions, The Owl.

The episode aired a few weeks ago, but I've been letting them stack up, building a bit of a library to fall back on now that New York baseball went kaput. I'm going to the well slowly. 

I haven't been as anxious to keep up with weekly episodes of Billions as I was in the past. Maybe, knowing it's the last season I want to draw it out, but it's also because I'm a bit tired of the snappy, pop culture references in the dialog that the characters spout at each other. I've even taken to keeping a pad of paper and pen nearby to write down the references I have not idea of what they're saying. It's good the show has run its course.

Nevertheless, it is still entertaining, even though Mike Prince has replaced the hedge fund nemesis Bobby Axelrod. Chuck Rhoades, once again the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District in New York, is still after the ultra-rich.

Mike Prince is in Bobby's old firm, but now known as Mike Prince Capital, MPC. Pretty much the same characters surround him. Played by Corey Stoll, Prince is ell named after Niccolo Machiavelli's Prince. There are no coincidences in the writing, which we will see more of later.

The major plot line running through this last season is that Mike Prince is running for U.S. President in 2024 as an independent. He is wealthy enough, and if Ross Perot could do it, so can he. He's got the stones and the money, so away the scriptwriters go.

How do you make a multi-billionaire likeable? Well, you need a political strategist, and Mike gets one, a young, somewhat obnoxious know-it all who knows every poll result ever taken everywhere.

Immediately, this wunderkind tells Mike he's got to be married, or at least appear to be married to the woman he's separated from. The nation doesn't need a Golden Bachelor running for office.

He interviews Mike and his former companion as they try and pass off that they're together. This kid can smell a tell before he gets off the elevator. He's not fooled by their cuddly appearance on the coach holding hands like in a Diane Sawyer interview. He can tell they had a night of sex just to act as if they are together. He's even checked Mike's bathroom medicine cabinet for the presence of feminine products. They're there, but he's not fooled. (My guess is that they were all unused.)They're going to have to appear together as a marital unit if Mike is going to have any chance at campaigning.

Wunkerkind gets them to type into their cell phones all the people they've slept with in the recent past and send him the list. Of course there's a list. Nobody's a monk or a nun. Neither sees the other's list, but wunderkind lets them know that as of now they're best advised to no longer seek a partner other than the one they're now sitting next to. They agree. But they're not happy about it.

The episode that is nearly stranger than truth, or that truth is stranger than fiction, is titled The Owl. No, it's about Flaco who escaped one from the Central Park zoo and had been showing up a lot on X (Twitter). Come to think of it, I haven't seen many Tweets about him lately. I think he's still at large and will remain so. They say the rat problem in New York City has improved. They need more Flacos.

The Owl episode opens rather abruptly with someone carving an owl out of a cut tree with a chain saw. It's a bit jarring, because you first think it's a Chevy truck commercial and you're going to see men doing manly things, as Robin Williams would say. The scene continues with manly things being done as the owl is hoisted on top of a skinned tree in a forest, leaving a carved owl atop what could be a totem pole. Stay tuned.

Chuck and his dad are having dinner in the dad's well-appointed brownstone. the maid has just sliced the beef wellington, when Chuck Sr. comes in and challenges Chuck Jr. to come with him to The Owl Retreat, an almost all male gathering in the Adirondacks where the shakers and movers, old and newly minted gather for a naked romp in the cold and get back to nature. It's very elitist.

Chuck's dad has been doing this for 50 years, but you'd expect that. He is the personification of Old New York Money.

Chuck demurs and declines. But further into the episode it's revealed that Mike Prince is going so that he can curry favor with George Pike IV, a character who looks a bit like David Rockefeller and George Soros. That the character is also named George is no coincidence.

Mike is going because he's learned that his major opponent in this presidential bid is a woman governor from Montana named Nancy Dunlop. It would seem she's a Ddemocrat, but in a terrific cameo role she's played by Melina Kanakaredes. (There doesn't seem to be a Republican opponent in the script.) Dunlop and Prince are craving George Pike IV's (hereinafter referred to as The 4th) endorsement. An endorsement from him opens doors. They basically both want to lick his ass.

I knew Dunlop looked familiar but couldn't put my finger on it until the credits rolled. Kanakaredes is well known from CSI roles. She might be the only Montana governor to have a New York accent.

She's plain spoken and no nonsense. She belts down red-eye whiskey at the bar like Hillary Clinton with coal miners in West Virginia, and rips off her blouse to reveal a black sports bra before she takes to the mat and leg wrestles a poor sap who is badly outmatched. She is the first female member of the Owl retreat.

She and Prince rate front row seats at the exclusive invite that is The 4th's fireside conclave. Just to show off his lineage The 4th tells us how he got his nickname when Billy Graham wanted someone to roast smores with and how he remembers JFK talking about the Berlin airlift crisis and the Cuban Missile Crisis and the go/no go decision on the use of nuclear weapons with Nikita Khrushchev.

This sparks a revealing debate with Dunlop and Prince. Dunlop says Kennedy's restraint saved the world. Prince reveals he would use a first strike policy if he had good intel (there's that word intel, every scriptwriter's favorite) that someone was readying a first strike attack of their own. How would he have good intel? He'd have the best people around and he'd listen to them. Oh boy. Is this ever an eye-opener.

Chuck Jr. who hates Prince and is amongst others—there being a cabal within Prince Capital—to judge Prince out of his mind and unfit for the office. He confronts The 4th that he can't possibly think Prince is worthy of his endorsement.

The 4th says something about the current "nanny state" and that it's unusual for someone to advocate a first strike policy. Chuck is aghast.

All these shows weave in a few sub-plots, and in this one there is one involving Prince's ex-wife, cutely named Andy who is a champion female rock climber and who was instrumental in getting rock climbing into the program of Summer Olympic events. It seems her real other half, Derek, is seemingly hopelessly stuck on Mount Makalu and needs to be rescued. Time is running out.

Prince is Ross Perot because when his ex Andy tells him about the dilemma h gets his right hand man Scooter ( Scooter Libby, a former White House chief of staff?) on the phone to patch together a rescue team from the Tiger Rescue team (the best) to get the disabled Derek down.

Since the level of production and scriptwriting is first class in Billions, there are no coincidences. Ross Perot famously got his hostage-held EDS employees out of Iran with a private military-style rescue effort. Ken Follett turned it into a book, On the Wings of Eagles.

The 4th is obviously leaning to the first strike guy, Prince. Before The.4th gets back in his chopper to leave, he leaves Prince with the impression they'll continue to talk, 

Meanwhile, things are going badly in rescuing Derek. They're going to have to do a "helo rescue," which is military-speak for a helicopter rescue. Problem: Derek is on the Chinese side of Everest, and an air space violation could have repercussions with the touchy Chinese.

Prince has okayed a helo rescue, firmly believing the Tiger Team can get there and back without showing up on Chinese radar. As The 4th bids Prince adieu outside one of the cabins he tells him two things: Get his marriage back in order; complete the rescue without pissing off the Chinese. Then, they'll talk some more.

How does The 4th know about the rescue? Well, we have to believe a man like The 4th (George Soros) knows everything that goes on in the world. Prince gulps,

Next thing you know there is radio communication from the rescue team that they're close, but oh-oh, wait, there are Chinese bogeys in the air. They've been made. They abort the mission, and the next thing you hear are shots, with the assumption that the Chinese have taken Derek into custody. 

Derek is probably alive and saved off the mountain, but the Tiger Team couldn't stay around and risk trading shots with the Chinese. Prince's Andy is distraught, but has a feeling. She asks Mike did he tip the Chinese off so that he wouldn't be caught running a military operation on foreign soil? Prince coldly tells her she wanted him off the mountain. Mike Prince is a cocksucker, because he surely did tip the Chinese off to remove himself from a political catastrophe. (We don't hear or see Mike do this ,but we know he did because he took The 4th's warning about creating an international incident. Mike is a selfish bastard.) So what if Derek doesn't eat well for several months or even years. Mike's political future is unharmed, but his propped up relationship isn't.

That would be enough to end the episode, but the producers and screenwriters come full circle and show us what that chain saw owl hoisted onto of a pole in the forest was all about. A ritual of The Owl retreat people, The Cremation of Care ceremony.

They come bearing fire torches in the night, clothed in hoods and looking like a gang of friars in the forest who set fire to the pole and the owl. WTF? This is some scary shit. Is this a KKK ritual?

Well, a little Google doing reveals the owl place is meant to depict Bohemian Grove, a 2,700 acre private retreat in Northern California, very much for real, that is home to a two-week conclave of movers and shakers who are members who gather to run naked through the woods, skinny dip in cold lakes, drink up a storm, and maybe smuggle a little paid female escort activity in 

The place has been around since 1872, and now boasts a membership list of 2,700 (I guess one for each acre) movers and shakers who have paid a $25,000 initiation fee in addition to ongoing dues. It's a bit of think tank that started with artists, poets and writers in 1871. Members have included several past presidents, Walter Cronkite, Mark Twain, Henry Kissinger, et al. Plans for the Manhattan Project were hatched there.

One of the Google entries tells of Elon Musk being a member. No surprise there. Walter Isaacson's book Musk has an index, but no entry under Bohemian Grove. No surprise.

Security is tight, but in 2000 Alex Jones clandestinely gained access to the proceedings and filmed extensively. Yes, that Alex Jones of Sandy Hook denial infamy who has been seeing conspiracies for a long time now. He saw Satan at work everywhere. But...as odd as the goings on at the end of Billions are somewhat unbelievable, there really is a Cremation of Care ceremony that takes place at Bohemian Grove where an owl on a pole is burned by hooded guys bearing fire torches.

Truth as fiction is the best kind.

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A Spelling Variation

It wasn't until I finished reading Ben Zimmer's latest probe of Word on the Street that appears weekly in the Review Section of  the Wall Street Journal that I remembered there was once another spelling variation of "tush" that was prominently displayed in New York City subway advertising.

Mr. Zimmer takes us on a tour of the origins of the word that is now part of football's fourth down strategy with short yardage, delightfully now called "tush push." Anything that rhymes will have traction.

Ben Zimmer is this century's William Safire who analyzes word origins that have appeared with frequency in the media. "Push tush" is what might have once been called a quarterback sneak where the quarterback takes the ball from the center and just lunges forward, aided by backfield players who try and push the quarterback enough short yardage to get the first down and keep the ball in play It has all the appearance of a rugby scrum. It is not elegant, but it sometimes works.

Where Mr Zimmer reacts to the latest use of a fad word, Mr. Safire dissected the proper use of words. "Free gift" was called out as being redundant, since a gift is expected to be free, unless it's a reduction in taxes that is offset by a hidden loss of deductions.

"Exact same" was another overdone pairing. Exact and same imply a copy, therefore the same as. Eliminate extra words.

My favorite eye opener from Safire was the correct use of the word "literally." "He literally hit the ceiling." Oh yeah? Unless it's a Kareem Abdul-Jabbar sky shot in an Manhattan apartment, it is unlikely someone is going to actually hit the ceiling. Yet, the misuse lives on.

Mr. Safire is no longer with us, but Mr. Zimmer is doing a capable job of offering disquisitions on the trendy language hitting the airwaves, for it is usually the newscasters and sportscasters, or Saturday Night Live guests who start the ball rolling with a cute phrase that is suddenly on everyone's lips.

The Philadelphia Eagles seem to be the ones whose shove toward the line of scrimmage on fourth down that has everyone saying "tush push." Mr. Zimmer tells us that since the motto for the city of Philadelphia is the city of "Brotherly Love" the action after the snap could be called "Brotherly Shove." No way, José.

"Tush" is just too cute  a word not to use. Of course its roots are in Yiddish, "tokhes" (took-us), for rear end. A British slang expert, Jonathan Green,  has identified the first use of "tuchus," "toches" or "tochas" as appearing in a British newspaper, The Sporting Times, as early as 1885.

And according to a 1962 article on Yiddish idioms in the journal American Speech "tushie" was popular among Midwestern Jewish children as in the slide "tushie slide" for a slid down a slope on one's bottom.

1962 seems far too recent for "tush" to have entered the language. Any Jewish kid I knew growing up was urged by their mother or grandmothers to wipe their tush really well after No. 2 emerged. "Did you wipe?" Cleanliness is next to Godliness, and a clean tush is one way to make sure you're still eligible for life after death in heaven.

The Philadelphia Eagle center is Jason Kelce, older brother of Travis Kelce, the most famous man on earth for currently dating the most famous woman on Earth, Taylor Swift.

As anyone who is not in a coma knows by now, Kelce is the star running tight end for the Super Bowl Champions Kansas City Chiefs. As Taylor Swift is a media magnet stronger than the North Pole, their relationship is media fodder. When she shows up at Kansas City games in a sky box with her entourage, the camera will find her any number of times that my suspicion is that Vegas will quote an over/under  line on her camera grabs.

Of course being a boyfriend of Taylor Swift might come with an expiration date. The evening news the other night couldn't resist putting a New Rochelle house's Halloween decorations in its newscast showing a likeness of Taylor Swift on the front yard surrounded by fake headstones with the names of former boyfriends. Will Kelce's name appear on a headstone next year? Who knows.

If you were to ask me to spell "tush" I would spell it "tusch" because of all the times I saw overhead subway ads for 1-800-MD-TUSCH, a Manhattan proctologist who advertised to a great extent in the subway as being the go-to doc for anal warts, fissures and hemorrhoids. Nothing wrong with medical advertising, and making it cute is making a memorable ad.

I spent nearly the last 20 years of my employment in the role of health insurance fraud detection for a major New York health insurer, and then for a consulting firm that provided detection services for its clients nationwide. We always had work.

And how do you detect health insurance fraud? Through a combination of specialized computer programing, tips, and looking at subway ads. Huh?

Anyone who is spending as much money as MD-TUSCH was and other practitioners to attract business might not really be on the up-and-up. And it was proved that MD-TUSCH was attracting business and reporting services as covered medical expenses when, to be honest, he was merely providing a bit of a thrill for his patient clientele.  

When it came time to amass the data I suggested to my director that MD-TUSCH really wanted the golden phone number: 1-800 ASS-HOLE. I said the phone company denied his request.

Our fraud unit at the health insurer employed two field investigators who were retired Irish-American NYPD detectives. These guys were pure cop, and not likely to convince too many people they weren't that at some time. It didn't matter.

As much as they investigated health insurers, they also served as in-house detectives for employee drug activity and theft of materials, particularly from the in-house printing operation that was somehow going through a lot of paper.

One of the investigators was assigned to make an appointment with MD-TUSCH to get a lay of the land about his medical practice. The investigators would wear wires.

I didn't get all the investigative details that led to the loss of MD-TUSCH's license in New York, other than the investigator observed the entire waiting room looked like a bus from Christopher Street had discharged its passengers at the desk. The doctor's boyfriend was down the hall offering hair styling services. True medical need didn't seem to be in sight.

There was a dermatologist who was snagged after spending nearly $40,000 a month on MTA advertising for removal of acne. Non-covered cosmetic procedures were billed as legitimate covered services.

Since I'm retired these days I don't ride the subways as much as I once did. But when I do I always look up to see if there are any prospects for my successors. Alas, not. Subway advertising doesn't seem to be the same these days.

Entire subway cars seem to have a theme. Maybe police recruitment; maybe a storage service for storing stuff that you can't keep in a Manhattan apartment; ads for the MTA itself on its MetroCard/OMNY fare payment systems. Individual businesses don't seem to be using the subway to attract business.

Those were the days. Tusch...Tush push...No matter how you spell it, it's all the same.

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