1-800...

If the evening news shows are dominated by pharmaceutical company ads, then the morning news shows are dominated by personal injury lawyer ads, hawking their expertise in getting you a larger settlement than that offered by the insurance company if only you'll call 1-800...

Not me, but there must be thousands of people who are home watching these shows who are laid up because of a construction accident, a slip and fall, or a motor vehicle accident of some kind—no matter whose fault it is.

The ads generally run for 30 seconds, sometimes back-to-back. I'm a regular viewer watching Good Day New York, a Fox-5 morning news and talk show with Rosanna Scotto and now Curt Menifee. My favorite one of these ads is the guy who walks the streets of New York City and is greeted by everyone recognizing him as 1-800-Pain-Law. He waves back. He chases an ice cream truck. Ice cream for all? He plays chess with a Black guy in a playground. He'd run for office, but it would mean a vast pay cut.

He tells us he knows New York. Does that also mean he knows the law? His implication is that he knows those he can curry favor with and obtain the outsize settlements his ads imply you can get if only you'll call 1-800-Pain-Law.

Pain-Law is hardly alone in this litigious marketplace. We have JM.com for Jacoby and Myers, a firm that I fully suspect has neither a Jacoby or Myers at the helm. But then again, the white shoe firm of Dewey Ballantine has neither a Dewey or a Ballantine at the head of the boardroom table. It's all in the letterhead.

There are more. Sometimes back-to-back commercials aimed at the possibly maimed. There is Morgan & Morgan at 1-844-645-1030: The Fee is Free Unless We Win.

There is the Barnes firm: 1-800-800-0000. The most golden of all 800 numbers. They trumpet this one with ear worm repetition: 1-800-8 Million. Get it? 8 followed by six zeroes. A million dollars is not what it used to be, but it will be plenty to this daytime audience. Multiple millions  is even better.

I don't know which ad I like best, but I do admire Sanford Rubinstein's necktie when the ad for Rubenstein & Rynecki comes on: 1-800-447-HURT. The tie is easily a $300+ necktie from some lofty designer. He wears it well, and I wonder if his survivors will bury him in it. I hope not. It belongs in a personal injury museum.

I love it when the victims of these mishaps appear in the commercials and give testimonials about the law firm they engaged. None of these people seem to have suffered from anything. No one is in a wheelchair, missing a limb, walking with a limp, or look like they were ever incapacitated. They've recovered, and are mucho richer for it because they called 1-800...

Personal injury lawyers are made fun of. They are called ambulance chasers, since accidents are what they gravitate to. They are pejoratively called "shysters," a word I never knew the origin of until Jonny Lee Miller (once married to Angelina Jolie!) in a Sherlock episode in a lawyer's office tells us "shyster" is of German origin and means excrement.

The OED backs the scriptwriters up: 

[Origin uncertain: perh. rel. to German Scheisser worthless person, from Scheisse excrement. Cf. SHICER.]

There might be worse things than being called "a sack of shit,"  but I certainly wouldn't put it on a résumé.

I'm sure all personal injury lawyers are not shysters. I've never needed one. But if I do, I'll just put television on and tune in to the morning news shows.

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The 2024 Travers

If you need to wonder if horse racing can be exciting, you only need to have watched Saratoga's 2024 Travers Stakes, which will go down as one of the most exciting and satisfying races, proving that even finishing second can be a great thing.

The entrants were all three-year-old stars, multiple winners of Grade 1 races at Saratoga. Adding the top three-year-old filly in the land, Thorpedo Anna to the starting gate, only further enhanced the quality of the field and the variety of opinions on who was going to win.

No filly has won the Travers since Lady Rotha in 1915, and Thorpedo Anna's second place finish only extended that drought. But what a second place finish! It was Zenyatta and Blame in the 2010 Breeders' Cup Classic, with Mike Repole's Fierceness playing the role of Blame.

The pre-race hype was all about Thorpedo Anna and would she be able to beat the boys, or even finish with a reasonable effort. Her trainer, Ken McPeek announced after Thorpedo Anna won the Coaching Club American Oaks at Saratoga that her next start would be the Travers.

All conversations leading up to the race included something about her. Her No. 1 post position was going to cost her because she's had a bit of trouble getting out cleanly, and the rail position would bury her with everyone going by her. It didn't happen. She was second at the ¼ pole, one length behind the front running Batten Down.

Fierceness had the best post position, extreme outside in an eight horse field, but was burdened with the opinion that he had yet to turn in two winning efforts back-to-back. Added to that mark against him was the fact that his trainer, Todd Pletcher said after he won the Jim Dandy at Saratoga on July 24, that he thought the horse would need more rest than the interval leading up to the Travers would allow. It was a frank admission from a Hall of Fame trainer, and if Fierceness were a stock, the upcoming quarterly report was not expected to be good.

All the doubts and all the opinions kept the odds on Thorpedo Anna and Fierceness fairly high at $3.90 and $3.40 to $1.00 respectively. The public's money aggregated around Sierra Leone, who was made the nearly 2-1 favorite, despite not winning races lately, and not beating anything in this field. There are strange things done in the fading afternoon summer sun.

The Fox 5 telecast didn't extend long after the finish of the race. We didn't get to learn if owner Mike Repole overruled Pletcher's reluctance about the race and pushed for Fierceness to be in it. They've been such a winning combination that it's doubtful there could have been any strong disagreement between the owner and the trainer.

At the stretch call Fierceness had a good looking two length lead and looked like he was going to coast home a winner in easy fashion. But then Thorpedo Anna moved from third to second and starting to eat into what had looked like a comfortable lead for Fierceness.

The eighth pole is 220 yards from the finish, but from there Thorpedo Anna started to shrink Fierceness's lead. Tom Amoss, on of the Fox 5 analysts and a leading trainer himself, said at the end of the race it reminded him of Zenyatta and Blame in the Breeders' Cup classic so many years ago. He was the only one who made the comparison. And it was every bit a valid one.

Thorpedo Anna moved like a torpedo toward a battleship, missing victory by what the chart called a head, but was really half a head. The exacta paid a generous $56 for $2. 

Fierceness's jockey John Velazquez is the East Coast Money Mike. Money Mike being Mike Smith who  doesn't ride often these days, but is called on to be in the big ones, usually on the West Coast on Bob Baffert trained horses. 

Thank goodness for astute TV directors in the truck. We got to see the Repole entourage, which pretty much looks like half the track attendance, jump, tumble and crash into each other so much that they looked like clothes tumbling in a laundromat dryer.

Horse racing is exciting.

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The Poet

The oldest living poet passed away the other day at 117. She wasn't known for poetry, but Maria Branyas Morera left us poetically, when a few days before dying she told her family:

One day I will leave here.
I will not try coffee again,
Or eat yogurt, nor pet my dog.
I will also leave my memories,
My reflections, and I will cease
To exist in this body.
One day I don't know, but it's very close,
This long journey will be over.

Her family posted her sentiments on her X account in her native Catalan language of Spain. Maria passed away in a nursing home in Olot, Spain, from no diminished mental capacity and no chronic illness, but rather pure old age; the oldest living person in the world at the time.

Maria's life incongruously started  started in San Francisco and New Orleans, where her father worked as a journalist. He started a Spanish-language magazine, but when it went bankrupt, the family moved back to Spain when Maria was a young child. Her father passed away from tuberculosis on the voyage back.

The obituary writer Ali Watkins in the NYT tells us in four columns of a 117-year-old life that was basically rather ordinary. Maria married a doctor, lived in Girona, Spain for 40 years, raised three children and stayed home to do it. Maria's daughter Rosa tells us, "she had a quiet life, without work stress." Probably at least one factor contributing to a long life.

Most well written obituaries find a place for the "kicker" at the end, where a final quote from the subject emerges. The writer Pete Hamill famously wrote in a forward to a collection of obituaries, "life is the leading cause of death,"

Mr. Watkins closes the obit with the answer Maria provided when a doctor asked her, "what do you expect from life?"

Maria answered simply: "Death."

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The Spa

You spend a lot of money during a Saratoga vacation over four days at the track in order to win $40. But who's complaining? Not me.

And there's absolutely nothing better than cashing your first bet, in my case, a $2 win bet on Jimmy P in the first race on the card—a hurdle race, no less.

Handicapping a hurdle race requires deep thought and prayer that your horse won't clip the fence and go down and eliminate all chance of even finishing.  If you're of the Catholic faith, rosary beads might help during the running.

Jimmy P exploded on the final far turn and won by over 30 lengths. It was a Secretariat performance, and he paid a nice $15 for $2 to win. We were off to the races. And we did well on the rest of card. The starting $60 voucher only grew in value.

It's always nice to start the second day of wagering with a voucher whose value is greater than the starting $60 from the day before. The second day, Thursday, went even better. 

Watch enough races, on television or at the track, and you'll notice how the crowd of people who get to bask in the winning glory for winning varies greatly.

Some owners have large entourages of friends and relatives. Mike Repole, who gets to be in the winner's circle a fair number of times, comes with a pack pf people who look like that all got off a luxury touring bus. Mike is never alone at the races.

He's not the only one who puts a crowd in the photographer's viewfinder.  One of the somewhat newer things about racing that's evolved is shared ownership, public stables so to speak. 

A group of people have been tied together, all with fractional ownership of the horse. When the syndicate is big and enough of the owners show up, the winner's circle looks as crowded as a NYC subway car at rush hour.

One such ownership group won the first race on Thursday with an unraced two-year-old trained by Todd Pletcher and ridden by Jose Ortiz. Manhattan Twist put in a nice performance and rewarded all owners with a trip to the winner's circle. The ownership group of My Racehorse and Reeves Thoroughbred Racing looked like the track attendance.

And what a scrum of people! There were more people than even a Mike Repole entourage. A listing of their phone numbers would make a small book, with last names that start with every letter of the alphabet. No one ever has to be asked to smile in the winner's circle.

Friday's card brought the entry of Sizzle in the 5th race. Sizzle is wholly owned by Richie P., a good friend of Bobby G., who of course is one of the Assembled who occasionally get together at Aqueduct and Belmont and try and perfect equine prophesy. 

Richie has owned one or two horses for decades. He's occupied the same owner's box at Saratoga for just as long, and has had some winners at Saratoga.

We were looking forward to Sizzle's start, since the last two times it was entered for the turf and it was rained off, therefore scratched. Friday's weather looked like no rain and the start was anticipated.

Sizzle was scratched early and it wasn't apparent why. The race was going to stay on the turf, and she had a very decent chance of winning the $50,000 claiming race for non-winners of two lifetime. Tyler Gaffalione was slated to ride and that only added to the winning chances.

I caught up to Richie in his box and he explained there was wind in the air that there were people who were going to claim the horse. Richie and his trainer Lisa Lewis didn't want to lose the horse to a claim, so they decided to scratch her. Another race was chosen for early September at Saratoga that would fit her eligibility and surface preference, but would not expose her to being claimed. The game is best played with patience.

Plan to attend the races at Saratoga for four days, and you can bet on rain as well. And did it ever rain on Thursday toward the end of the card. For the past several years our seating preference has been a table in the Fourstardave sports bar on the main floor. There are lots of TVs, and the food service is good with decent prices. A seat with a table for handicapping only adds to the enjoyment.

The seats we choose are on the outer rim, by the New York Mac 'N' Cheese truck. We get unobstructed viewing from any angle from the overhead TVs, plus front row viewing of the parade of people who pass by, most without a Racing Form or program, but nearly all eating and drinking something. These  upstate people never stop eating.

Normally, even on the outer rim, the rain won't blow in, unless of course it rains so hard and so suddenly that you think you're in the tropics. Such is what happened toward the end of Thursday's card, taking the last two races off the turf and handing the Pick Six and Pick 5 players a bonus of an ALL bet in those races. That of course allows more people to win and lowers the payout, but is only fair since when those tickets were created the handicapping called for turf, and now if wasn't going to be turf. But Thursday's rain was a bit of a typhoon, and we had to move inward. At least we remained relatively dry.

I'm old enough to remember when admission to the track was $2 for Grandstand and $5 for Clubhouse, Clubhouse being closer to the finish line with a more desirable view. But the seats weren't reserved seats. You claimed your seat with a newspaper covering which was honored by others.

At some point in the last 20 years Saratoga turned into all reserved seating. The admission price is now $10, with no distinction for Grandstand or Clubhouse. A reserved seat is extra. The only seats that aren't reserved are toilet seats.

Reserved seat pricing is variable based on the day of the week, with the latter part of the week going up, with Saturday being the most expensive. Choice picnic table can be reserved as well. There is a price for everything.

Despite all the prices you encounter, when your voucher at the end of four days of betting is greater than when you started, you forget certain things.

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Da-Fence

The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum: Rise and Fall of An American Organized-Crime Boss by Margalit Fox, is an improbable, but absolutely true story of a rather large German Jewish woman who came to the United States—and specifically New York City's Lower East Side Kleindeutschland neighborhood in the 19th century—and established herself as the go-to person for receiving stolen goods and turning the items into large amounts of cash that allowed her and her family and her stable of thieves to live quite well in the ever growing metropolis.

Ms. Fox is a former senior obituary writer for The New York Times and knows a good subject when he sees one. She of course didn't get to write Frederika Mandelbaum's obituary, since Marm passed away in Canada in 1894, after fleeing from the law in New York and a trial that would have likely landed her in prison for the rest of her life.

Frederika's death was big, world--wide news. The NYT couldn't ignore her death. For the past several years the NYT has embarked on a bit of obituary reparations, publishing the overlooked deaths that didn't get a tribute piece in the paper at the time. Those overlooked were generally women, but Frederika's notoriousness couldn't be overlooked in 1894. 

Ms. Fox in her book described Frederika as being as physically large as her reputation. Marm Mandelbaum  is described as: 

An imposing figure who in her own time fairly loomed over New York. About six feet tall and of Falstaffian girth (she was said to have weighed between 250 and 300 pounds), pouchy-faced, apple-cheeked and beetle-browed, she resembled the product of a congenial liaison between a dumpling and a mountain.  

She dressed in expensive clothes and wore enough jewelry—earrings, necklaces, brooches, rings and bracelets—that it was estimated that she was wearing $40,000 worth  of gems on her body at any one time.

The book is heavily footnoted, with sometimes three entries on a page. But they are informative, and Ms. Fox never fails to tells us what the value of things in the 19th century is in today's dollars. In Marm's case, the conversion to today's dollars is staggering.

Her $40,000 worth of jewelry accessories is pegged at $1.3 million dollars. She was a walking mark who was never mugged. It had to take her a long time to get dressed.

The book is perfect for New York City history junkies like myself. There are extensive pages of references on the sources and endnotes that take up tens of pages. There is a full index.

As already mentioned, the footnotes are informative. I like to think that through my flower delivery days growing up, I knew nearly every named street in the City. Not so.

I came across a footnote that informs that "...Cross Street is now Mosco Street." I surely never heard of Cross Street, and didn't know there is a Mosco Street on which mail is currently delivered six days a week.

Google Maps shows me Mosco Street sits between Mott and Mulberry Streets in Chinatown, just north of Worth Street. No one who ever came into The Royal Flower Shop ever sent flowers to anyone living on Mosco Street.

Better than Google Maps, Google Earth shows me Mosco Street is a narrow, one way, somewhat surprising hilly street, with Chinese and American lettering on the few storefronts. Blink and you miss it. One shop stands out with Chinese and English lettering that tells us you've reached Fook On Sing Funeral Supplies Inc. emporium.  There isn't anything in New York that you can't find a place to buy something from.

There is one delightfully described piece on how to steal a piece of jewelry from Tiffany's. It involves chewing gum and two people working in concert with each other. I'd love to know when was the last time Tiffany's fell prey to that one.

So take up the story of Frederika "Marm" Mandelbaum and journey to a Jack Finney and Caleb Carr New York City that no longer exists, but once held Marm and all her corrupt associates.

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Choppers

Not that the chance ever came up, or that I ever tried to make it happen, but I could never be an on-air personality.  My smile is not white enough, straight, or so encompassing that it fills my face when I grin, preen, laugh, or otherwise just take every opportunity there is to show off my choppers. My smile is meant for radio.

And I don't really mind. Never having the chance to be on-air, I don't miss it. Somewhere in my youth my parents—principally my mother—stopped taking me to the dentist. The dentist that saw me through my baby teeth and incoming molars moved. My mother took me to a new dentist who wanted to start me off with dental x-rays.

I never had x-rays, and maybe my mother never did either, although she was a nurse in the Army during WW II. But as soon as they were recommended, I was out of the chair and never brought back.

By the time I was a teen-ager and needed a dental exam every six months for gym class in public high school, it was too late to straighten out my teeth. No tin grin for me. I made my own dental appointments with a dentist a block from the flower shop, and ever since then have always kept up visits.

I don't think my father ever saw a dentist beyond what they might have examined when he was in the Army during WW 11. His teeth were a mess, and never got any attention until he was in his 70s and needed heart surgery. 

It was determined that rotting teeth were infecting his mitral valve. They needed to be pulled. Seventeen of them before the surgery, which was a success, but left him with a pair of false teeth, which he occasionally put it.

Whenever I watch a news show or see talk show hosts I can't help but realize that if it wasn't for their pearly. straight whites (and many of them) they would have never been considered for the job.

No one sitting behind a desk, in front of a weather map, or perched on a couch has a bad set of teeth. I really don't know how they keep them so white.

One on-air personality has probably lead me to write this—Tina Cervasio of Fox News—whose ear-to-ear grin can resemble the white keys of a Steinway. She does seem to have 52 of them, as she never seems to stop flashing them. 

She is the sports reporter and appears regularly in segments as part of Good Day New York, Fox's early morning talk and news show. Occasionally she fills in for a vacationing Rosanna Scotto, the principal host of the three-hour telecast. 

Frankly, I get the biggest kick of watching Tina flash her dental grin. I've never stooped to count how many times she grins per minute, but it's at least as many outfits as Lesley Stahl wears when she does a 60 Minutes segment.

I don't know what piece of bad news it would take to wipe the grin off Tina's face.

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