Bob's Car

The title might seem like a strange one for a recap of the quartet known as The Assembled meeting Saturday at deteriorating Aqueduct racetrack in South Ozone Park Queens.

No one likes to go to Aqueduct these days. Getting there is a nightmare traveling on the Van Wyck Expressway (Distressway) from Flushing after picking up Johnny M. who is without a car these days. Another story. Construction, construction, construction, in both directions and an accident. Just made the  first race with little time to spare.

We four eventually all met at the agreed upon spot on the 2nd floor, just to the right of the boxes, where no one sits these days. Bobby G. had trouble finding a parking spot. The parking lot is a hodge-podge of places dominated by the casino parking. Bob usually relies on VIP or valet parking, but there is no such thing at Aqueduct these days. There is little there that enhances the fan experience. This is not patron friendly Disneyland.

Bob finally parked near an entrance next  to an ambulance, which was probably a restricted spot. He was frustrated, and thought he might be towed.

But Bob is a retired surgeon who keeps his medical license active and drives a vehicle with MD plates. We told him they probably don't even have anyone on staff who could tow him, and the MD plates would likely save him if it came to that. And parking next to an ambulance as such would give the illusion that he was connected with the track's health care.

Bob still went down a few times to check that his car hadn't been moved. The fate of Bob's car became a running theme throughout the day. Jose was on FIRE, and eventually hit a $120 exacta. We told Bob that Jose would pay the towing charges if there were any.

It was a colder day than we anticipated, and windy, which was good as the marijuana smoke didn't hang in the air. As soon as you get off the escalator you smell it, despite not being allowed to smoke inside. Yeah. CVS has better security.

Unfortunately, Aqueduct is the only Downstate track until 2026 when the new Belmont will open. The Belmont Stakes will be run at Saratoga at the usual interval of three weeks after the Preakness, but at 1¼ miles rather than the usual 1½ miles in 2024 and 2025. Belmont should be back in business for 2026.

2026 is two years from now, and The Assembled, while all breathing and with no signs of terminal illnesses, are not getting any younger. We consist of two octogenarians, one septuagenarian, and a youngster at 66, a sexagenarian. Each one has health issues, and like anything in life, attendance in 2026 at a new facility is not guaranteed. We're holding our breath.

We skipped Aqueduct all together last year, and considering the infrastructure shortcomings, will likely not be in attendance in 2025. Yesterday, sitting outside, the announcer's call of the races could not be heard. Nada. Nothing at all. It was Keeneland in the 70s', when they purposely didn't use a track announcer.

At one point, Johnny D. had the binoculars on the backstretch starting gate, only to see it start to move up the backstretch. The horses had already left the gate, unannounced, and were two furlongs into the race  before he picked them up with his binoculars.

NYRA's VP of communication Patrick McKenna (PCMckenna), had a Tweet Saturday about how the  backstretch facilities were going to be even better in the new Belmont. I'm always one to tell NYRA their shortcomings, and I Tweeted a reply that I'm hoping they include an audible outside PA system in their Belmont plans. I expect no reply.

Despite the infrastructure inconveniences that also included bird poop on the seats, we're there for the handicapping and the betting. And it was good day for all, despite the discomforts and privations that NYRA manages to inflict at every outing.

Jose B. as usual lead the quartet in money won. But everyone else was either slightly ahead for the day, or even. An even day is a winning day because you have to have winners to offset the losing bets. So you're in the game.

There is no on-track attendance to speak of. Sure, there are other people there, but hardly anywhere near the numbers of the 1970s. This is not news. Betting drives the  game, and the dish antennas and simulcasting have kept the game going now for decades.

I was always good at math, although I met my match with college calculus. How did Isaac Newton actually devise calculus in his Principia Mathematica? I wonder if he could have grasped Racing Form hieroglyphics as easily.

The enjoyment of horse racing exists on several levels. You have the owners, trainers, jockeys, breeders  and agents whose livelihoods depend on winning at the game, and not necessarily from betting. There is a documentary on FX that ironically is hosted by two NYT journalists, Joe Drape and Melissa Hoppert who used to write about horse racing for the paper. 

The NYT has outsourced their sports department to an outfit called  The Athletic, which I think is a subsidiary of the NYT.  The paper sees no obligation to assign beat reporters to the local teams. It's Sports Illustrated of the old days with regional reporting done by The Athletic's non-Guild writers. The NYT is as haughty as NYRA is. The good news from their approach to sports is that I'm enjoying the New York Post to no end.

The Joe Drape and Melissa Hoppert documentary is about the use of drugs to keep horses running and the subsequent injuries and deaths that occur. Last year, Derby week at Churchill Downs saw an outlier number of breakdowns and deaths.

The theme of the documentary is how there are aspects of horse racing that resemble giant corporations. Bob Baffert, a controversial trainer, is mentioned in connection with winning $350 million in purse money. Churchill Downs has banned him from entering horses there because of a positive drug test on a Derby winner Medina Spirit a few years ago. Medina Spirit died on the West Coast soon after of a heart attack.

But like anything else in life, there is the lifestyles of the rich and famous and the rest. For every Super Trainer and owner there is a huge multiple of owners for whom even one horse is a large stable.

I'm actually amazed when I watch a starting gate being loaded how much has gone into the life of even a bad horse who is going to be asked to run usually ¾ of mile (6 furlongs) and whose effort will take about one minute and twelve seconds before they are either feted in the winner's circle or quickly led back to the barn. Either way, win or lose, a lot goes into even having an unaccomplished horse ready for the races that is pretty much over in blink of an eye.  

The enjoyment of horse racing for The Assembled is found in picking winners, converting the information gleaned from the Racing Form into a bet that is hoped will return money. Be right enough times, with good money management, you might even come out ahead or even at the end of the day. Even even is a good day.

Getting the Racing Form is another matter. There is no serious handicapper who will approach a day at the races without consulting, studying the encyclopedia of data that is truly time sensitive. Saturday's past performance are no good on Sunday. They are only then of historical value.

Newsstands have dried up in the Metropolitan area. The few that once existed would only get a few copies of the Form and would quickly sell out. Thankfully, the people at the Daily Racing Form are a savvy computer bunch and make the past performances downloadable if you have a printer. Thus, what might cost $8 to $11 for a past performance booklet at he track for several race tracks for that day, can be obtained now for $4.25 in downloadable form for one track.

Johnny M. could not get a copy of the Form a day ahead of time (newsstand went out of business) so Johnny D. printed another copy. The nice part of the downloadable Form is that you can print as many copies as you want of the race card you're paying $4.25 for.

Bobby G. usually arrives with a copy of the Form, but I don't think he studies it the night before. So Saturday, he showed up without even a copy of the booklet because he was so flustered from his parking odyssey. He bet the first looking at my printed PPs, then went downstairs to get an $8 copy of the booklet.

Jose as usual comes loaded with the efforts from a night of preparation. Color-coded selections dot his paperwork.

Johnny D. spent a good part of Friday, and Saturday morning going over the Form and attaching his "numbers" to each entrant. And there aren't many entrants to work with. On Saturday, there were only 82 horses entered for 9 races. Usually a Saturday used to carry a 10 race card, but there just aren't a lot of horses running these days. There are only 4 days of racing scheduled these days. There used to be six days years ago. Even Saratoga can only manage a 5 race day week. The sport is withering on the vine.

The information in the Form is astounding these days. They keep adding information. Now you even get the date on which a horse was gelded, a procedure that is done to quell their temperament. A recently gelded horse can be a betting angle that mitigates what might have been bad past performances. Any angle in a storm is useful.

Saturday's results were more than predictable. Favorites won 7 of the 9 races, a trend that even continued into Sunday. 

But, with a flexible betting strategy, even favorites winning an inordinate amount of time there are betting options. Johnny D. and M. prefer win and exacta wagering. Multi-leg betting is for deeper pockets and robs you of a winner in the sequence when another one in the sequence bombs. The ticket become worthless unless there is a consolation payout, like in the Pick-6. For the Johnnies they had 4 split exactas; betting selections that ran 1-3. Very frustrating.

Johnny D. even put together a 10¢ Superfecta, boxing 4 horses based on the "numbers." A 10¢ boxed Super with 4 horses is in effect 24 bets at 10¢ a bet, resulting in a modest $2.40 outlay. The payoff can be decent, even with a favorite winning.

Johnny D's 6th race Super hit! Well, it hit unit until the stewards took a look at Dylan Davis's ride on the favorite Carson's Run who bolted on the turn on the turf into the stretch and carried the horse next to them wide. Very wide.

The INQUIRY light went on, and after a somewhat lengthy delay Carson's Run, who finished 4th was placed 5th removing it from the Superfecta results, and removing Johnny D's hope for a payout. C'est la vie. You hate to see your number blinking on the board. Stop blinking, will ya?

Not all INQUIRIES result in a change in the order of finish. Jose survived one, and got a decent trifecta payout, which helped him be the leading money winner of the day. Again.

The blustery weather drove Bob to leave after the 7th race, having secured a go-ahead day. His car was still there.

The remaining three of us retreated inside to sit and watch the rest of the races on the large TV screens, where you could actually hear the announcer. What a concept! Sitting inside at Aqueduct is like sitting in a dingy waiting hospital room or a DMV office. But, all you need is there, including a seat with no poop on it and large screen TVs bringing anyone who is interested all the simulcasting action they desire.

The Johnnies hit the 8th race exacta (finally) and had the winner separately. The combined payout insured a break even day.

My own attraction to racing is not solely centered on any money I might make. I never bet more than I can afford to lose, and even an o-fer day is not a financial disaster. Reading the Racing Form is like getting a Valentine.

Already mentioned is the ton of information available these days. There are so many nuggets of what is esoteric information revealed.

Take weight assignments. I never saw 127 pounds assigned before. It was usually 126 the top weight on the allowance scale. The Jockey Club scale must have changed.

How many races would you guess a horse has won who has a lifetime earnings total of $151,318? My guess is you would never say zero.

And yet, in the 9th race, a Maiden Special Weight New York State-Bred race at a mile on the turf there was 6-year- old gelded Scherzando who was sporting an o-fer 24 past performance! Every race in the maximum of 12 lines displayed in their past performance showed being entered in a similar State-Bred Maiden Special Weight race. It's as if the repeat button was hit.

This horse never won a race and yet amassed over $151,000 in earnings for the Dee Tee Stables. This is a career maiden, and yet had a 10-1 morning line. An owner's pet.

Not all trainers are Super Trainers who could be listed on the stock exchange. This horse was being trained by Gary Siacca, an extremely low percentage trainer who so far this year has started horses 13 time, 3 at this meet, and won a total of no races. They are o-fer 13 on the year.

Scherzando wasn't always such a zero. They are the product of a $40,00 stud fee and a $50,00 auction price. They have finished in the money 9 times from the 24 starts, which is how the earnings were accumulated.

I have never seen a horse who wasn't bet on, and I have never seen a race where there wasn't a winner—sometimes 2 winners if there is a dead heat.

So, how did Scherzando do? The new tote board that NYRA is providing doesn't give you any information as to how much is bet on the three places for any given horse. This information can be useful if you're looking for lopsided show betting. The new board is annoying in that it can display two rows of odds if there are more than 6 entrants. It looks cluttered.

Years and years ago I was once at Greenwood racetrack in Toronto (long closed)  and saw that there were horses who had absolutely nothing bet on them to show. I remember taking a picture of the tote board. At the bell, it's possible some money flowed into the place and show pools for the longest shots on the board.

Scherzando? Well he went off at an optimistic 12-1 and finished 4th, getting a piece of the $70,000 purse and advancing their lifetime earnings even further. He wasn't even the longest shot on the board. That honor was reserved for Sweet Tone at 87-1, making their 4th start and having the look of eventually amassing a record matching Scherzando's if they stay on the track.

The Johnnies finished their day with their 4th busted 1-3 exacta in the 9th. but finished the day even, even with hardened pigeon poop on the seats. We didn't sit on those seats. It was a good day.

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Coyote Spotted

A coyote has been spotted in Central Park. No, it didn't escape from the zoo. How it got there will likely never been known.

No one has given it a name since coyotes probably aren't seen as being cute, like Flaco the owl was who captured the city's attention and love when  he lived free for almost a year after escaping from the Central Park Zoo when his enclosure was vandalized.

Flaco of course met his death when he likely devoured a rat who had ingested the rat poison that is spread down to help decrease their numbers. Goodbye Flaco. I don't want to have what he just had. 

The New York Post carries the story and tells us coyotes have been spotted in all the boroughs except Brooklyn for some reason. A city Parks Department spokesperson tells us, "we have no reason to believe this particular coyote is unhealthy or pose a threat to human safety." Of course they haven't been spotted in Brooklyn yet. Just wait.

A jogger in the park noticed the coyote over the weekend during a morning run and naturally had their celllphone with them and recorded the critter's movements. Famous for a day.

It's not likely the coyote made its way from Phoenix, Arizona where the N.H.L. team is set to move to Utah's Salt Lake City. The New York Times did a story via their outsourced sports department, The Athletic, on how the Phoenix Coyotes are moving to Utah.

I was shocked! to learn that the former Winnipeg Jets were playing temporarily for two years in a 4,600-seat arena in Phoenix. The N.H.L. team has been in Phoenix now for 27 seasons under various ownerships. They were booted from their home ice in Glendale, Arizona after a deal to build a new multi-function arena and $2.1 billion entertainment district fell through, thereby sealing their fate in Arizona.

Naturally, a move to another city will require a name change, but to what? The atlas in the car has never been turned to Utah. The pages are pristine and not dog-eared. I've only ever been to two states west of the Mississippi, Nevada and California. Utah will probably never be a destination.

Ryan Smith, who also owns the Utah Jazz N.B.A. team, says they will play the hockey games out of Delta Arena, an 11,000 seat venue that will be remodeled to accommodate hockey. So, what will the new team be referred to as?

Smith tells the reporter "Utah" will be on the front of the Jerseys for the 2024-2025 season.  "It will be 100% 'Utah' and then it will be 'Utah Something.'" They are going to take time before committing to a name for the team.

So, what do you think they will call the team? Certainly nothing referring to Indians or The Church of Latter Day Saints. Too controversial. The new Seattle franchise chose Kraken to recognize a mythological Norwegian sea monster. They're big on the water in Seattle.

A look at the atlas map of Utah gives me one idea. "Golden Spike" to recognize the joining of the transcontinental railroad. There is a national historic site in Promontory, Utah commemorating the event.  

Wasn't there something about the Utah state flag a while ago? Yes. I wrote a  posting on it last year.

It seems last year the Wall Street Journal did one of their inimitable A-Hed pieces on the fact that the governor of Utah didn't like the state flag: too generic. So what did they come up with? 

Naturally it doesn't please everyone, but apparently Utah's nickname is the Beehive state. Huh?

Well, it seems it is a symbol used by the Mormons to honor the pioneers who arrived (Mormons) in the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847. Google tells us: 

Mormons believe the beehive is a symbol of harmony and cooperating and work for the early pioneers of the Church. Brigham Young used the symbol to inspire Church members to work together to transform the barren Salt Lake Valley into a beautiful and thriving community. 

The sentiment is a good one. The state
flag now looks like a beehive, with a backdrop of the mountains.

The Utah Bees. You can hear the announcers now: "The bees are buzzing around the goaltender."

Golden Spikes is not bad either.

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Definitely Not the Royal Flower Shop

My grandfather John and his younger brother Peter started the family flower business. They arrived from Greece separately in the early 1900s, and after running a shoe shine parlor and blocking hats on St. Marks Place they moved their enterprising spirit uptown to 18th Street in Manhattan and established the Royal Flower Shop. Eventually, one of the neon signs spelled out: "The Demetropolis Bros."

The first shop was a cover for the speakeasy in the back, Bellas's on Irving Place and 18th Street. Irving Place is a short street between Third Avenue and Park Avenue South, running from 14th Street to 20th Street.

In the era of Prohibition flower shops in the city served as covers for speakeasys. Pete Bellas's place became Pete's Tavern and is still there. The cracks in the hexagonal tiles on the floor outline the short depth of the flower shop. My father as a kid wound the huge regulator clock on the left that no longer works.

My grandfather and grandmother had four sons, two who became bartenders, one a career naval officer and my father, who was a Design engineer at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and who could not resist "helping out" at the flower shop after my grandfather passed away in 1956. The flower shop consumed my father's life, and eventually mine during my teenage years in the '60s.

I made deliveries, bought the flowers at the wholesalers on 28th Street, waited on customers, cleaned the store, and pretty much was an unpaid employee. There were no employees, only family. My father's brothers had nothing to do with the store.

I know what the numbers were of the era; cost of flowers, rent, overhead, sales. If there were profits it was what my great uncle and my father took out of the register. There was no bookkeeping, other than my preparation of bills for the few charge customers we had. I did the banking. There were virtually no credit cards them, and we didn't accept them anyway. Cash is king.

Eventually Prohibition ends and Bellas's needed the front of the place. The Royal flower shop moved to 202 Third Avenue, on the southwest corner of 18th Street. There were two entrances. One on Third Avenue and another on 18th Street. I always thought that was so cool.

It was good size store, and I have a photo of what it looked like as it peaked out from under the 3rd Avenue El. There was even a stop at 18th Street.

The family lived above the store at 148 East 18th Street, next to what was a famous apartment house, the Stuyvesant Apartments. General Custer's widow once lived at the Stuyvesant Apartments.

I never saw a set of books that anyone kept of the family business. I often wondered if anyone ever paid income taxes. When my grandfather passed away I remember my grandmother's Social Security checks came to the shop, one half of my grandfather's benefits. It's hard for me to believe anyone paid into Social Security, so the criteria for getting benefits may have just been being past 65. I have no idea.

Sunday's Metropolitan section of the NYT ran as store headlined: How a Bouquet of Roses Got to be $72. I dove in, and my mouth flew open.

No surprise that Ditmars Flower shop in Astoria is owned by Greeks, the Patrikis family. If Greeks were not in the flower business, they were running diners, luncheonettes, and once upon a time were furriers.

The $72 price for a dozen red roses didn't shock me. Not in 2024. I've long become aware of the vast price difference between the business in the 1960s and now a quarter of century into the 21st Century.

But until reading the article I never knew a flower business could generate sales of $150,000 to $300,000 a month!, employ 8 people at the minimum wage of $25 an hour, and sell 15,000! roses on Valentine's Day. 15,000! That's not a store. That's a 1,500 square foot factory. The Royal Flower shop never got anywhere near those numbers, even after adjusting for inflation. It was however a decent size store.

The reporter, Stefanos Chen tells us George Patrikis came into the family business by way of his father who first sold flowers in the subway and eventually opened a store in 1983. At 75 I have trouble realizing that 1983 is quite some time ago in some people's eyes, but not mine. It's yesterday.

The story breaks down all the ancillary expenses that drive the $72 price tag. George Patrikis tells us he gets his roses from Ecuador at $1.03, which to me sounds like a very low wholesale price.

Apparently Ecuador is the largest exporter of roses. Ours came by truck to the flower district on 28th Street and 6th Avenue from greenhouses somewhere in Pennsylvania; Roses by André, and depending on the length were generally 25-50¢ a stem. Triple XXX were the longest stems. And there were two types. American Beauty, a dark red, the most expensive, and Better Times, a lighter shade and less expensive. Baldies were blooms that didn't open.

Someone in the Patrikis family must have majored in the rigors of cost accounting, perhaps at Pace University, because the article has the cost of all the ancillary expenses and items that go into the $72 price, up from $60.

Glass vases, that were once $1 are now $2. (We used paper mache tar-bottomed vases.) Cellophane paper (We used Say it with Flowers wrapping paper from a roll from Janine Paper and Twine; cost unknown) to wrap the arrangement went to $46 from $26 in 2019 for a 2,100' roll. Baby's breath (gypsophilia) from Colombia, 10 stems for $8 from $3. Lemon  leaves, 20 stems from Washington State now $8.50 from $4. 

The roses themselves are now $1.03 from 60¢ in 2019, but $2 apiece in 2020. (Some things apparently get cheaper.) A thousand sheet box of wax tissue paper is now $30 from $10. Cost of electricity that runs the shop and three refrigerators is now $2,500 a month from $1,200. Maintenance of the three refrigerators is now $3,000 a year, from prepandemic $600 a month.  

We never calculated what the ancillary items cost. We just doubled the wholesale price and went from there. 100% markup. Our attention to these outside costs was never considered. And pretty much we didn't really make any money. If we had, I would have known about it.

The rent was $375 a month at the new shop at 206 Third Avenue, across the street from the old shop in what was then a new six-story apartment house at 157 East 18th Street built by Belkind and Brenner. The building is still there, dwarfed by the high-rise apartment houses that came after it on the other corners. 

Our family went out of business in1975. The shop became Showcase Flowers, and eventually that closed and the corner store is now a coffee shop. The money is in selling coffee these days.

My father was hardly a businessman. He didn't charge the right amounts for what we sold. "Gave the store away" as one would say.

We always had trouble making even the $375 a month rent. My father would not pay on time and then when the new month came around we owed two months. He had trouble paying that. I was forever having to go the landlord's office on Lexington Avenue with what was then two months rent in cash or money orders to ward off eviction. Sometimes I had to meet the lawyer at Centre Street to stave off the Marshall notices. Loan shark (6 for 5 guys) loans kept us going.

I used to say my grandfather never bought any property—18' of frontage I used to say was all we needed—so therefore we were always renting. George Patrikis knows the value of owning the building they bought in 2003 when he tells the reporter, "the only ones who are going to be left (there were once 5 shops in his neighborhood) are the ones who own their buildings."

Truer words were never spoken.

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Gape

My mother used the title word once, and I never forgot it.

I was maybe 5 or 6 and the neighbor's wife across the street was being taken out of  the house by ambulance. I knew the neighbor's name, Bill Poppy, but never knew the wife's name, or even what she looked like.

A cluster of neighbors were gathering on the sidewalk in front of the house. I was watching from one of our living room windows which lined up directly with the neighbor's house. I might have asked my mother what was going on, but she gently told me it wasn't polite to "gape" and led me away from the window. My mother didn't go outside to join the cluster.

Because of that lesson I've never been one to stand around and watch someone's distress. Accidents on the road are impossible not to look at because everyone else is rubber-necking and slowing down. You can't very well leave the car and the road and avert your eyes.

When we finally got out of Tower One on that fateful day on 9/11 I was standing on the corner of Fulton and Church Streets with two of my co-workers looking up at what was the unbelievable sight of two buildings burning. Coming down the stairs I figured we'd be back in the office by the end of the week, not having any idea of why we had to leave the building. Looking up I muttered to myself that this was going to take a lot longer than I thought, never yet knowing that no one was ever going back into buildings that would soon no longer exist.

At some point looking up I think someone remarked that someone had jumped and was headed for certain death. I remember thinking I'm not going to stand here and watch people jumping to their death. If I stayed longer no doubt someone would be awarding points on the dive they were taking.

I advised my colleagues to go home. I headed uptown on West Broadway, hoping to get to Penn Station. Cellphones were not as ubiquitous in 2001 as they are now. No doubt those looking up would have whipped out their cellphones if they had them and captured people jumping. Not for me, with or without a cellphone.

You see it everywhere. People reflexively popping out their cellphone to either take a picture, or get videos of some action. The resulting images cannot be great taken from the vantage of even a good seat at a ballpark or a concert. But it's basically harmless, They think they are a news camera and they're going to get something to remind them they were there.

Less playful is the use of a cellphone to record an unfolding crime on the subway, or sidewalk. The instinct is to record, not help.  Admittedly, not helping might be the wiser choice if it puts you in danger. And of course the video might help law enforcement later.

But Friday's use of cellphones held high to capture the flames of someone who has just set himself on fire was nothing short of grotesque and beyond a sense of decent propriety. Of what use were these assholes going to make of their taking images and videos of a troubled soul who has just set himself on fire and who naturally died overnight. Show the video at a cookout? Admittedly no one could do anything unless you had a fire extinguisher, which a news crew did have and put to use.

There were plenty of news cameras around because of their presence for the Trump hush-money trial progressing in Manhattan criminal court nearby. CNN was roundly criticized for continuing to show the immolation and commenting at first that it was an active shooter. The broadcaster, a legal analyst, Laura Coates, was vividly describing the smell of flesh burning and the smell of the vapors from the accelerant Max Azzarello poured on himself and then lit. 

Basically they were in the right place at the wrong time to televise and comment on an active suicide, and not an "active shooter" as they first reported. There were those who thought Ms. Coates should get an award, a pay raise and promotion for her reporting. Why? Just because she happened to be there when a very troubled soul set himself on fire and told us what the scene smelled like?

The mind boggles.

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For Rangers, Team Effort in Season Finale Helped Secure Presidents' Trophy

"Class, is there anything wrong with that headline that appeared on Wednesday in the NYT written by their outsourced sports department The Athletic, a group of likely non-Guild writers who put other Guild writers out of work?" 

"Yes, Matthew"

"How many presidents are there? If there's more than one, then the apostrophe is placed correctly. But I'm thinking there's only one president of the NHL and the people who write the headline and the article are ignorant of where the apostrophe should go."

"Matthew, you're right."

"Extra credit Matthew. Who is the president of the NHL?"

"Long-time Queens lawyer Gary Bettman. Used to be a Canadian Clarence Campbell, but no one knows that anymore except me and my granddad."

"You're a smart young man, Matthew."

"Thank you. Gramps has been muttering a lot to himself these days. He's been Tweeting (X'ing) news shows and news people about how they've got it all wrong."

This was the recent exchange in Miss Hagerty's third grade elementary school class yesterday morning as the class was going over current events.

Normally I just cringe a bit and feel slightly superior when I encounter a misplaced apostrophe. The correct placement of an apostrophe is probably the most perplexing rule of all punctuation. The deli that tells us they have Heroes' is but one example of misuse.

I have sympathy. But until the Pooh-Bahs of punctuation change the rules, we're stuck with what is confusing. You don't pronounce an apostrophe, so therefore the placement of it, correct or otherwise, does nothing to how you say something. Trying to get people to get it right writing it is like pissing in the ocean.

If any team other than the New York Rangers were to have won the President's Cup, signifying finishing the regular season with the most points in the standings, I wouldn't have been assaulted with Presidents' Trophy.

But since we're in New York and all the New York nightly news shows show a backdrop of PRESIDENTS' TROPHY when telling us that the Rangers have secured this rather meaningless title. Only the Stanley Cup counts, and it's 30 years now for the Rangers since they last won it.

Matthew is right. Gramps has been Tweeting all the networks, the NYT and The Athletic and The Athletic reporter who wrote the story about the Rangers, Peter Baugh (@Peter_Baugh), a youthful looking writer who Gramps sarcastically asked, what J-school did he attend. 

Lynn Truss, Benjamin Dreyer, Mary Norris and William Strunk with E.B. White have all written guides on correct punctuation, none of which seem to have reached Mr. Baugh's desk and that of others in the media business.

It's the sheer number of people who are misusing the apostrophe with regard to President's Cup that has got me crazy. How can so many screw it up?

Go to Google on President's Cup and you see it both ways, correct and otherwise. The incorrect  use is the most frequently one found.

Once the playoffs start, winning the President's Trophy will no longer be New York Ranger news. The only Ranger news that any fan wants to read is that after 30 years they win the Stanley Cup. 

If the Vegas Golden Knights can win one after being in the league less than 10 years, the Rangers should be able to do it this year.

We'll see, won't we?

Bibliography:

https://onofframp.blogspot.com/2022/03/the-four-apostrophes-of-apocalypse.html
https://onofframp.blogspot.com/2019/02/verbal-punctuation.html
https://onofframp.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-infernal-apostrophe.html
https://onofframp.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-grammar-lady.html
https://onofframp.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-vote-is-in.html
https://onofframp.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-what.html
https://onofframp.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-disappearing-apostrophe.html
https://onofframp.blogspot.com/2017/07/eats-shoots-and-leaves.html
https://onofframp.blogspot.com/2017/02/presidents-day.html

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Untrapunctual

Live long enough, and you get to experience some things twice. First it was the famous Heidi game in 1968 that pre-empted a New York Jets-Oakland Raider game that turned into a late-scoring barnburner. And then it was last night when CBS couldn't shoe horn in the Masters golf tournament, the Masters Green Jacket ceremony for Scottie Scheffler, this year's winner, 60 Minutes, some cop show and local news in the waning hours of a Sunday evening. 

CBS was attempting to defy gravity and squeeze in way more than they had minutes left in the evening. They needed a 26 hour day, and no astrophysicist came to their aid.

Even professional golf at the highest level is played at a glacial pace. The Masters broadcast was set to end at 7:00 EDT. My guess is CBS thought that by then the winner would have finished playing, signed his card and stood around in Butler Cabin to have someone drape a green jacket over their shoulders that hardly looks good on the wearer, considering the colors a golfer wears when heading to the first tee on a Sunday. But, it's the Masters tradition.

I gave up watching grass grow when Scotty Scheffler had a four stroke lead with two holes to play. I was hungry and dinner was ready. I don't need to stick around and hear Jim Nantz intone that we've just witnessed a Biblical event. It's golf Jim.  You're lucky any of us watch it at all.

Of course 60 Minutes, the network's marquee news show, has to be shown in its entirety. The clock has now pushed past 7:00 and 60 Minutes, takes, well 60 minutes, otherwise also known as an hour.

I did tune in to enough of 60 Minutes to catch the piece on the Tazmanian Tiger. Back from extinction, or not? I love Australian accents.

What followed 60 Minutes I have no idea. I timed myself to tune in at 9:00 and catch some Billy. It's not like I've never heard the guy before. Been to a MSG concert; have probably every recording of his, starting  with vinyl.

I'm 75 and don't stay up too late. I like to read before going to sleep. So what the hell was the scene of someone driving car to some waterfront location, and looking like every part of every cop show there is? I don't even know the show's name.

The INFO button gives me the chyron that Billy's show starts at 9:00. Clearly not. Rain delay? Some lame announcement that Billy is coming up next. Yeah, when, when this cop crap is over?

There's no need for me to stick around for a televised concert that's already been taped and one I've already seen. Live performances can add some nuances to the music, but in general, they could be lip synching too.

Thee aren't that many of us alive today who can compare the pre-empting of the Billy Joel concert to the pre-empting that NBC pulled when broadcasting a New York Jets-Oakland Raiders game in 1968. I can. I was 19 at he time and was leaving the house with my father with the conviction that the Jets had the game solidly won.

Only later when the final score was announced did we learn that no one saw the full game because NBC pre-empted the game for a telecast of a show about the story of Heidi, the orphaned 5-year-old Swiss girl who grows up with her grandfather. That's where the "Heidi" game comes from.

The firestorm from that one became legend. Even in 1968 the TV audience for an A.F.L football game would have vastly exceeded the Billy Joel faithful who were ticked off at the telecast cutting Billy off while singing Piano Man, his signature sone.

No one didn't know how their bets were going to come out watching football, as even a 1968 audience had a vested interest in the game,

Will heads roll at CBS? Will some poor technician take the fall for following the manual? Not likely if they're in the union. Was someone unavailable to make a command decision because they were in Nantucket waiting for their flight back to New York from their weekend home? My bet is no one at CBS was past 10 years-of-age in 1968.

The Heidi game got an unexpected sterling revisit in an obituary—of all places—when the director for the Heidi telecast, Delbert Mann, passed away in 2007. His obituary in the NYT was written by the peerless Margalit Fox who laid out the circumstances on the widespread kerfuffle over Mr. Mann's production being started at the "ultrapunctual" time of 7:00.

It's not likely the pre-empting of Billy's concert on CBS will ever crawl into someone's obituary, unless of course the schmuck who gave the order to pull the plug and head to the affiliates' 11:00 news is publicly identified and given lifetime industry pariah status.

Executives can be noted in their obituaries for accomplishments that we understand. Take Frank A. Olson who has just passed away at 91, on the same day as O.J. Simpson. They were otherwise linked in that Mr. Olson, as an executive at Hertz, put O.J. in the driver's seat in those Hertz commercials that had O.J. doing broken field running through airports. Go O.J. Go.

Decades ago on the show Laugh In, Dan Rowan and Dick Martin awarded a Fickle Finger of Fate to that week's numbskull. If the person responsible for pulling the lug were publicly known then they'd get the FFF award, or better named The Heidi trophy.

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Dishwashers

Leave it to the eclectic topics of the A-Hed pieces in the Wall Street Journal to land on a story of how people load their dishwashers and the friction that differing ways of loading one infect domestic relationships.

The partner frustration over who left the cap off the toothpaste tube has been eliminated by the manufactures now attaching the cap to the tube. Loading a dishwasher has replaced the verbal tussles.

A-Hed pieces are the gems of the WSJ. Rupert Murdoch once considered eliminating them. Was he nuts? Consider that recently they have touched on hotel rooms and Murphy beds; Matzos; an April Fool prankster at Citibank in the executive suite.

I have to say my wife and I really do not disagree on how to load the dishwasher and I have to say the dishwasher is never a cause of disagreements. Fox News causes more friction than the best way to keep the plates and spoons clean.

We would have never made the cut to be interviewed by the reporter on how we might differ on loading the dishwasher.

Consider that the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak of the United Kingdom, and his wife Akshata Murty are asked who does the job of loading the dishwasher, and who does it best? A prime minister!

The reporter, Natasha Khan, takes us on a trip of all the highly educated people and their equally highly educated partners who share their dishwasher loading stories and preferences.

Ms. Khan lifts an interview the Sunaks gave fashion magazine Grazia in which basically Rishi tells the world his wife makes an effort, but he makes the effort better. Read: he rearranges things without rancor. They do look happy.

There is a Facebook group (of course there is) Extreme Dishwasher Loading which saw a jump in its membership to top 31,000 members after the couple's remarks.

YouGov Omnibus claims that 65% of Americans believe there is a right and wrong way to load a dishwasher, rather than "just my way and your way" which seems less combative.

Another poll  claims there are 18 arguments a month! amongst Americana households over dishwasher loading. This seems incredible. Where do these numbers come from? Are reports filed? How many lead to domestic violence and 911 calls was not disclosed. 

After the prime minister and wife have weighed in, we meet Nina and Stephen Edwards who describe approaches that diverge in the woods. Stephen is a is a professor of computer science at Columbia and admits to making a "mental map" of how things should go in the dishwasher  Don't we all? Nina, an illustrator and adjunct professor at Pratt institute, admits to "just making things fit." Way to go Nina.

It's obvious from the photo of the couple touching hands atop the appliance battlefield without knives in their hands, that whatever divergent stacking methods they advocate they still love each other. How many couples can say that?

Does anyone really take the task of dishwasher loading seriously? There is nothing that cannot be elevated to seriousness.

There is a Proctor and Gamble "dish-science center" on the outskirts of the corporation's headquarters in Cincinnati that is staffed by scientists! who recreate kitchen dishwasher scenarios of scorched food and dirty plates to answer the question that many have on their minds, "to pre-rinse or not."

One of the scientists, Martin Eberhard, at the facility (you wonder how heavily guarded the place might me) tells Ms. Khan that he never pre-rinses because dishes that are too clean fool the sensors which are trained to detect food remnants and make the dishwasher work less efficiently.

Is he nuts?. What dishwasher does he have? One with sensors? I don't remember that being a feature on our dishwasher. I see nothing that looks like an electric eye.

For ourselves, my wife and I easily co-exist. Sometimes she rearranges how I've stacked it, but it's usually an improvement. We both agree where the dinner plates, smaller plates, bowls and glasses go. She places the silverware in the basket; I place it in the top rack. 

We do differ on how close the plates are to each other. I go with the spaces designed by the manufacturer, therefore getting more plates lined up. She leaves an extra gap if she can. She tells me with no extra gap the dishes don't come out as clean. I've never tested this. I don't believe her, but don't argue either. There's just her way, and my way, not the highway.

As for pre-rinsing, that is done if necessary, but I clean my plate so well there is no need to pre-rinse. And when I clear the table, as I always do ever since I once wore an apron selling hot dogs at Coney Island in the summer after graduating high school for a money hungry Greek, I've always considered myself to be a Greek busboy. I scrape the plates over the garbage can quite well. For some reason I like to do this.

Thus, plates do not enter our dishwasher with food stuck to them. My wife is always proud of the dishwasher repairman who once had to come over and made her day when he said she was very clean about her dishwasher. The drain wasn't clogged with foodstuffs. Apparently, in his experience, he encounters those who he describes as using their dishwasher as a garbage disposal.

One couple, the Freemans, he a fitness trainer and she a fitness influencer, made a clip that was viewed by 21 million people on their dishwashing techniques. They provided a soundtrack to their loading. He, waltz music to show off perfectly spaced plates, and she, AC/DC to accompany her zero technique that she describers as "a racoon on meth."  

People will do anything for attention these days. And people will watch.

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Now You See It, Now You Don't

We've gotten very good at metrological and astrological predictions.

Weather predictions are highly accurate these days. They weren't always that way when we were watching Uncle Weatherby and Carol Reed telling us to "have a happy" on local TV channels.

Weather is so big now there is a cable channel dedicated to bringing us the weather 24/7. It's a brave new world.

Radar, Doppler Radar, computer models all aid the weather  people in telling us what we can expect today, and probably in the next 5 days. Storm brewing off the coast? Will it hit us or not? Stay tuned.

We're way past the weather surprise that hit Galveston, Texas in 1900 when an unpredicted hurricane came ashore and killed 8,000 people. That doesn't happen today.

Weather is sexy these days. It's got its own wording. Temperature is shortened to "temps." Rain, a.k.a. precipitation, is shortened to "precip" measured in tenths of an inch! TV weather personalities create ratings. AccuWeather Alerts galore.

My wife will find a way to time her viewing that catches all three network weather reports after 6 o'clock. Our kitchen TV can look like TV sets in P.C. Richard's. almost simultaneously showing her the weather. She's a master at what Lee, Jeff and Nick have to say, all before dinner.

The latest, and most long lasting celestial prediction of course has been that of the total solar eclipse that swept across North America yesterday, April 8.

The photo at the top shows what a total eclipse of the sun looks like. There were areas of the country that did see something that resembled that photo. Not so in the New York Metropolitan area. It was predicted that we'd get a 90% totality. False advertising. I've seen a darker sky with thunderstorms rolling in. Yesterday looked like the glow from a 40 watt lightbulb. For us, it was the failure of the Comet Kahoutek in 1973 to be seen. That resembled the letdown of another New York Jets season.

Never mind. TV news was not to be outdone. They sent their top personalities to parts of the country that were in line to see a real total eclipse. Throngs of people who might otherwise be in school or work were looking up through their special glasses. New York upstate schools were closed.

I didn't bother to get special glasses, and I didn't even go outdoors. Decades ago as a kid I remember taking a piece of window glass and getting it sooty from candle smoke and trying to see a total eclipse from the backyard in Flushing, NY. Or maybe it was a partial eclipse. I don't remember.

I read in yesterday's NYT that back then ophthalmologists said looking through smoked glass was not good.  Yeah, now you tell me. I suffered no ill effect from my viewing because there was nothing to see. It must have been cloudy, because I was certainly not impressed.

In 2017 I was at Saratoga racetrack when an afternoon solar eclipse was going to go through the area. They extended the interval between races when the eclipse was due to come through. They weren't sure how the horses would react. It was hardly spectacular.

The morning news show Good Day New York seconded the opinion that the eclipse here was a bust. Their poll said that 4 out of 5 people said the eclipse hardly lived up to the hype. There is nothing that cannot be overhyped. Think of how well the Mets were predicted to be last year with Justin Verlander and Jacob deGrom as starting pitchers. Yeah, how did that work out? 

Knowing when an eclipse will come is very helpful, especially if you've been transported back in time like the character Hank Morgan (The Boss)  in Mark Twain's tale of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.

I'm certainly not surprised that no one remembers this tale.  It was made into 1931 and 1949 movies starring the likes of Will Rogers and Bing Crosby. Hank's memory of an upcoming eclipse in 528 A.D. saved him from being cremated alive at the stake. He out-Merlined Merlin. Thus, it is always good to know what the future holds. You never know how it might save your life.

What to do with those now pretty much worthless glasses? Throw them away like what you did with those 2024 New Year's Eve glasses? You can donate them through Astronomers without Borders. Most people got them for free at libraries or Moynihan Station, but surely there were those who paid for them. It seems there is nothing that can't be reused. And maybe tax deductible.

With all the news about the heavens and Space X rockets there was a news story a few days ago that President Biden wants NASA to devote resources to determine what time it is on the moon. It is not clear why. Also not clear is who is going to change the moon's clock when we go back and forth with Daylight and Standard time. Hmmm. 

And what was the weather prediction for today in the Metropolitan area? Sunny, mild, 60° Spot on.

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All Shook Up

No, Jerry Lee Lewis or Elvis didn't reappear from the grave.

The last time I was in a building that shook I was in Tower One of the World Trade Center on the 29th floor, thankfully not higher up. My day ended with no injuries to anyone I knew, but of course not to thousands of others. It's history what happened on September 11, 2001.

I remember once in early April 1982 it snowed in New York City. Our second daughter had just been born, and I distinctly remember my wife holding her up at the storm door to watch me shovel the snow that wasn't going to be around for too long. I waved.

I don't remember the exact date, and I wonder if I'll remember the exact date when the earthquake is mentioned in subsequent years. I remember the months and years of major blackouts in NYC, but not the dates. (There were three.) I won't be buying an "I Survived" T-shirt just to remember the date of an earthquake.

My first earthquake memory was the one in Vermont. It  was early in the morning on October 7, 1983 and woke us up. I heard a very loud bang at the cottage back door. I thought a deer had kicked it, and went back to sleep. Nothing rattled, and nothing fell off any shelves. We never even looked out the window at the lake

It wasn't until listening to the very local radio station that was housed in a tiny brown building up the road on Route 30 (Seth Warner Memorial highway, commemorating a very successful rear guard action during the Revolutionary War by Seth Warner) that we heard we had experienced an earthquake. Holy cow. Really?

A very cooperative soul at the Lake St. Catherine Association, Jerremy Jones, kindly answered my inquiry about the radio station.. He identified it as WVNR, a station that played classic country music. It was only a 1,000 watt AM station at 1340 on the dial, owned by Loud Media, that served the towns surrounding Lake St. Catherine, principally Poultney.

I remember that morning's radio personality making a joke of the earthquake with imagined dialogue between Sally Field and Burt Reynolds, who at the time were a very hot item, with Burt asking Sally if she felt the earth move.

I thought is was hilarious. I imagined a young DJ hoping to make it to a stand up comedy club in a major city, maybe New York, or getting a job at a bigger wattage radio station. I have no idea if there were many listeners who got the illusion between an earthquake and Burt really making Sally happy in the morning with earth moving sex. 

Shortly after when the newest earthquake shook through New York and the tristate area I was on the phone with someone from Manhattan. I learned that they too felt the movement.

I could tell I was talking to a young female. Surely she and I were raised watching different movies. I repeated the Vermont experience and the DJ's joke. No reaction. Zip. Nada. My guess is she knew nothing of Burt Reynolds and Sally Field, and didn't associate great sex with feeling like the earth moved. Oh well, forty years later the same story doesn't hold up well.

As for the experience here at my Long Island home my computer monitor shook for a good 10-15 seconds. I felt the house shake and heard the window behind me rattle. I was nervous. I opened the front door to see if anyone was in the street wondering what happened. I saw our cat Socks racing past me outdoors. 

I went upstairs to ask my wife if we just had an earthquake. She of course felt it too. Nothing yet on the TV but morning talk shows and yapping. After a few minutes my wife said that the news online was confirming an earthquake. The TV news soon caught up.

No damage, other than to the mind that something happened that could have been much worse. Someone posted a photo of an upended backyard chair on Long Island as evidence of the earthquake's power—which wasn't much compared to ones we've heard about in other countries that topple buildings and twist roadways, like the recent one in Taiwan.

When the Trade Center was smacked by a hijacked 767 the building shook, and swayed a bit, but then stopped swaying quickly. I was pushed forward on my office chair and drawers opened up. A sky full of debris started falling. We were on the southern side. The place hit the northern side. I had a friend who was a conference room on the north side who heard the whine of something approaching. Then smack!

No one really knew what had happened. I said to my manager it was either a bomb, a construction accident, or an earthquake. And I didn't think it was an earthquake. Only when we finally emerged from the building did we know what happened.

The Richter scale reading of Friday's earthquake was 4.8, experienced by an estimated 44 million people. That's a lot of people with a common experience. Way more than Woodstock. Look it up if you have to.

The Vermont quake in 1983 was 5,2, and in the NYT story a geophysicist, Dr. Jack Oliver from Cornell University said the measured strength at 5.2 was, "a very substantial one for an Eastern earthquake."

What I know about Richter readings is that there are expressed exponentially. Thus, 5.2 is not just .4 greater than 4.8. So imagine when the number hits 7.0. That's when the buildings start to fall.

Tomorrow's eclipse will of course eclipse that number of people who share a common event. If we all survive.

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You're a Millionaire? Yeah, So

I have a first cousin who is a millionaire, probably the first in the family of middle-class descendants of Greek, Polish and German heritage. He is a retired career naval officer, a Commander, who likely invested in real estate in San Diego and Hawaii, two places he was stationed at during his career. I never see him, but he seems quite ordinary to me since I've known him when he was a kid.

A millionaire is no big deal. There are probably people living on my suburban block of Levitt homes who could be millionaires. It's not me though.

Along with my morning delivery of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal I've added the New York Post. I've done this since the NYT has outsourced their sports department to some outfit called The Athletic, which I think the NYT owns. I only wish I had realized sooner how much I would enjoy the New York Post.

It's the one paper my wife will read. She's a tabloid newspaper woman, likes flipping those pages filled with crime, kidnappings and politicians who are jerks. In fact, "jerk" is one of her favorite four-letter words. I won't go into the others. Guess.

The New York Post headlines are legendary. They should make a coffee table book of them. I'd buy it. Their most famous still might be, HEADLESS BODY FOUND IN TOPLESS BAR. If there were a Hall of Fame for headlines, that should be the first one inducted.

The paper turns events of the day into entertaining headlines. Take the M.T.A.'s recent stupid utterance that they wanted to charge the Road Runners Club $750,000 for lost revenue for money lost on the Verrazzano Bridge due to the NYC Marathon's start there gobbling up the upper and lower levels, for not even the whole day! And the Road Runners have had that start there for decades. No money asked. Until now. Why? To buy more mosaic tiles?

If the M.T.A. loses $750,000 in tolls for a few hours on a November Sunday morning due to people using the bridge for the start of a marathon that attracts 50,000 people from all over the world, they are obviously making too much money in tolls. Are they shitting us?

The current toll for the crossing, if you use E-Z Pass, is  $6.55. Of course that's one way. It's $8.36 for non-EZ Pass drivers

Yesterday the Post treated that piece of news in their inimitable fashion: THE SH!T HITS THE SPAN. You gotta live that paper.

The news shows were full of WTF! Last night I said the governor has to put a stop to that idea. And Governor Hochul did just that, as recorded in a New York Post headline on Friday: VERAZZA-NO! Hochul nixes MTA's $750K NYC Marathon bridge fee. I've lately been saying you may not like someone, but you're eventually going to like something they did.

So who does a photo of the world's most famous entertainer at the top of this posting have to do with the New Yok Post headlines?

Well, it  wasn't full headline across the front page, but on Wednesday the Post showed a photo of Taylor Swift on the left side sharing space with another story, and declared: That was $wift, How Taylor became a billionaire.

The story inside on Page 3 describes the sources that have contributed to her wealth: $400M music catalog; $160M streaming; $80M record sales; $370M touring; $150M real estate; unspecified amount from endorsement deals. One wonders what Bruce Springsteen is worth. Or, are his financial people less savvy than Taylor's?

For anyone who might remember, there is a New Yorker cartoon years ago that shows a fellow in an office standing behind a desk, answering a phone and saying..."A billion is a thousand millions? Why wasn't I told that?"

Of course, millions has long been supplanted by billions. But decades ago millions had real meaning in terms of quantifying an enormous sum. When Senator Everett Dirksen from Illinois was talking about proposed federal government spending on developing a supersonic jet in the '60s, the good senator from Illinois intoned, as only he could, "A million here and a million there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money."

And if a billion is a thousand millions, what is a thousand billions? Why a trillion. How high do the numbers go?

Well, I looked it up. Trillion of course has crept into the consciousness since the federal budget and NYC budget have topped that number. Writing exponentially, a million is 10 to the sixth (6), meaning there are 6 zeroes after the one.

So, if a billion is a thousand millions, it is 10 to the ninth (9), meaning 9 zeroes after the one. Logically, a trillion is a thousand billions (who knew?) and would be scientifically written 10 to the 12th power.

Are there more? You betcha.

Quadrillion, quintillion, sextillion, all exponentially written by increasing the exponent for a trillion by 3; 10 to the 15th, etc. Had enough? What the hell. How high do the numbers go? Well, infinity, but here is the progressive definition of size, culminating in a gazillion.

A little hard to read, but the link will give you an idea that the naming of large numbers has not been ignored.

You've head people say gazillion? But it's not listed in the table. That's because—wait for it— it is defined by some nerd as 10 to the 28,810 power. Why is that? Because 28,810 is the circumference of earth.

How many zeros is in a gazillion?

A guy named greg actually provides a definition for a gazillion. He claims that "gaz" is actually latin for earthly edge. Assuming this to mean the earths circumference in greek miles, which he claims to be 28,810, he defines a gazillion as 1 followed by 28,810 sets of zeroes.

I kid you not. Are you ready for Jeopardy now? Take the online test now.

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