Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Another Round

My friend, who worked for the Bomze family at 'Racing Star Weekly' and 'Winning Points' in the early 70s used to have lunch with Bert Sugar at least three times a week.

Bert was trying to peddle 'Boxing Illustrated' to the Bomzes and had taken up residence in their 8th Avenue office space.

The father, Henry Bomze was not interested in anything Bert was selling with regard to boxing, but Bert did have a basketball magazine they were interested in.

My friend, who likes boxing, but more so college basketball, remembers talking to Bert endlessly about college basketball, of which Bert did know a lot. More than half the boxing events Bert ever claimed to be at he wasn't. He never even mentioned boxing during all those lunches.

Bruce Weber, in today's NYT obituary on Mr. Sugar, gently alludes to Bert's persona of amiable bullshit. Occasionally I'd see Bert in Manhattan, more gassed up than a Getty truck making a delivery. Only a few months ago I was walking through Grand Central Terminal and heading out the Vanderbilt Avenue exit by Michael Jordan's steak house. Even before I was going up the stairs I could see Bert at the bar, smoking his cigar "dry", wearing his hat, and kinetically regaling what looked like a graying middle-aged out-of-town couple something about boxing. Sports for sure.

I shook my head and wondered who bought the last round.


Monday, March 26, 2012

Rush Hour on the Mount

Imagine you've just scaled Mount Everest, started to descend, become deathly ill and unconscious and are left for dead at 28,200 feet by the Sherpa guides who have been instructed to cover you with rocks, only to find yourself rescued the next morning at sunrise by the morning rush hour of climbers going up the mountain. This is basically the sequence of events for Lincoln Hall, who was rescued from Mount Everest in May 2006.

The whole description reminds me of the very old joke I used to hear as a small kid that was told to us by bigger kids, who of course were tremendously smarter because they were two years older than us. A variation goes: A plane goes down right on the border of Canada and the United States. The front of the plane is in Canada, the back is in the United States. Where do you bury the survivors?

Usually with a little head scratching, the younger, unknowing kid will attempt an answer that favors the country he's in, which in my case was the United States.  At this answer the older kid smirks and tells the wet-behind-ears that "they don't bury survivors, stupid." Geez, I can't wait till I'm as smart as Eugene.

And the Sherpas didn't bury Mr. Hall, but only because they couldn't find any rocks nearby, and it was getting late, and there wasn't anything more they could do for guy, so they finished coming down the mountain and perpetuated the news to the family that Mr. Hall was dead.

The entire story of this event, and more, can be read in Mr. Hall's obituary. He just passed away at 56, not from mountaineering, but from exposure to asbestos that he and his father apparently suffered from when they were building playhouses in 1965 and 1966. Mesothelioma is considered the cause of Mr. Hall's death.

Certainly none of this is good news, but it does go to remind the rest of us that unless you do it to yourself, you never really know what's going to get you, and when.


Saturday, March 24, 2012

The Bagel Man

Murray Lender, whose enthusiasm and business skills put Lender's frozen bagels at the top of the national market, passed away on Wednesday at the age of 81, after complications from a fall several weeks ago.

Will Rogers, the depression-era American humorist would claim, "I never met a man I never liked." Mr Lender claimed he never met a bagel he never liked, nor ever met a person who never liked a bagel. Both men traveled extensively. And with 90% of a national market that put the product in at least 30 states, his boast would be hard to refute. The company was sold to Kraft in 1984 for $70 million, with Mr. Lender staying on as national cheerleader.

Is it irony, coincidence, or nothing at all, to admit that I really was thinking of Mr. Lender on Tuesday as I made my way down the breakfast aisle at the local supermarket looking for frozen waffles. I passed the bagel section, gave an acknowledgment left and thought to myself that while I've certainly had Lender's bagels, I always thought they were too small, surely nothing like what you can buy at the local bagel place where you get 18 for the price of 12: maritime lifesavers compared to dissolving lifesavers.

No matter. I've run into a fair share of transplanted New Yorkers who always moan about not getting a good slice of pizza, or a good bagel at wherever they've now relocated. Lender's at least bridged an ethnic food gap when geography got in the way.

Since my employment status has changed check-off boxes, I sometimes find myself in the supermarket. This has allowed me to go out on a morning mission and obtain what I really want, rather than have my wife tell me that six local supermarkets have incredibly just run out of whatever it was I just mentioned that would be nice to have now and then. It's truly amazing what there is nothing of when there is no current coupon that will help you lower the cost.  I have become the master of my gastric fate.

Will Lender's ever make it back into our freezer now that I've been turned loose to roam the American retail grocery system?  I suspect so.

It's going to rain really hard on the day my wife has a Lender's coupon and I'm slow to get out of the house. She'll buy several packages and we'll eat several at one sitting. Murray Lender didn't become the nation's Bagel Man without business sense.


Thursday, March 22, 2012


At the intersection of words, images and imagination is surely Advertising.  I don't know if this is profound, obvious, or if I read it somewhere before. It just strikes me as true when I consider what you might be able to do with a few words I gleaned from a book review in this past Saturday's WSJ.

The book is titled, 'Island of Vice' by Richard Zacks. The review is by David Woodrich, who is credited with a few books of his own.

I love engaging book reviews, especially ones with editorial cartoon illustrations, as this one has of Theodore Roosevelt depicted as trying to 'clean up' New York City. The review is titled 'Teddy's Tough Ride,' and basically tells the reader that while there are current people of good memory who can correctly say things are better now than they have been in their memory, New York City has historically been a place of many textures.

Certain things do seem to have disappeared, but closer analysis reveals they have really only disappeared from open view: air conditioning, electronics, and better building construction has brought certain activities more indoors, and kept them there.

So, when the review opens with a summary of the activities that fall under the definition of "vice"--gambling, prostitution, indecent exposure and selling and consumption of alcohol and drugs at self-regulated times--the nickname for New York as "The City That Never Sleeps" seems quite appropriate when you consider the "amount of things worth staying up for."

And there you have it. "The City That Never Sleeps" because there is certainly a fair amount of things worth staying up for.

Of course, you would want to advertise all the legal things there are to do, but the the message is clear: so long as you're up, enjoy yourself.


Wednesday, March 21, 2012

The Cover

I liked the album and the album cover when it came out nearly 50 years ago, and I still like it. Only now, because of reading obituaries, I know a little something more about the album's cover.

Sometime in the very early 60s, Harry Belafonte released an album called 'Streets I Have Walked.' The subtitle, on the back reads: songs of people, places and traditions.' In those days of course records were not only vinyl, 33 1/3 LPs, they could also be Hi-Fidelity, or Stereo releases. Record stores carried a Hi-Fi and a Stereo version of the same release, with the stereo one being about $1 more. I always bought the Hi-Fi release since I only had monaural equipment, at least until about 1969.

The album is an eclectic mix of American, African, Australian, Israeli, Portuguese, Japanese, South African and West Indian songs. The album's cover is a color, overhead shot of Mr. Belafonte strolling on red brick herringbone patterned pavement with his back to the camera, caught in profile, looking left, with his jacket casually slung over his right shoulder.

The back of the album shows a black and white photo of Mr. Belafonte seated with a group of youngsters with whom he recorded several of the tracks. They comprise a choir from New York City Junior High School No. 59 from  Springfield Gardens, which for the unknowing is located in Queens County, which, if you're The New York Times, is usually described as an outer borough. Hard to believe the youngsters could now be grandparents, but they surely could be, because the purchaser of that vinyl album is now one himself.

Credits. There were always credits given on an album, but in those days nowhere near as many as there are today. Never mind. The cover photo is attributed to Roy De Carava, whose name at the time meant nothing to me, and remained so until just recently when I ordered a CD version of the album and re-explored old ground.

But now, in 2012, the name sounded familiar. Is this the Harlem photographer who fairly recently passed away that I read about, whose obituary showed a photo of his of a young black girl in a very nice dress standing on a rubble strewn street, or lot?

Yes. And now easy to understand why his work was used to create the album's cover.


Sunday, March 18, 2012

The Parade

Paddy Moloney, leader of The Chieftains, plays the tin whistle and uilleann pipes, but last night, in addition to those accomplishments he played traffic cop when he basically diverted a huge portion of yesterday's New York City
St. Patrick's Day Parade onto the stage at Carnegie Hall for a thunderous finale of Irish song, dance, bagpipes and drums.  Being a bit of a wee fellow himself, when it was over he just disappeared into the crowd he had created to hopefully plan it again.

Mr. Moloney and The Chieftans have been at this type of entertainment for 50 years, but last night be might have topped anything he has done before. He created such an air of joy that it might well have been impossible to comment with regret about the audience that was Conga-lined onto the stage, with one overweight ham--in an solid orange sweater no less--thinking he was the center of attention. For some people, he might have been.

It's easy to understand how Paddy and his band have been around for so long. He does some of the work himself, but delegates well to the very accomplished, assembled musicians, singers and dancers, who last night included the core of the band, Kevin Conneff, Sean Keane and Matt Malloy, along with Jon Pilatzke, Triona Marchall, Jeff White, Deanie Richardson, Alyth McCormack, Cara Butler, Nathan Pilatzke, along with the group, The Low Anthem.

After 50 years, does one Chieftans' concert resemble another? Sure, but you'll never care.


Saturday, March 17, 2012

Where the Boys and Girls Are

Spring break in Antarctica.


Friday, March 16, 2012

A Picture is Worth...

There is a well-worn saying that goes, "You're one in a million." Somewhat easy to understand: You're unique; there' no one else like you; you're a treasure.

To a mathematician, the "uniqueness" of one-in-a million will be repeated 2,000 times if the pool is two billion.

So, in China, where there at least two billion people,
"one-on-a million" means there are 1,999 more people just like you.

Mathematicians love proofs. Pictured about is not an mirror image, but rather an area full of prospective flight attendants for Hainan Airlines, a China based airline.

A picture worth 2,000 names.


Thursday, March 15, 2012

The Brooklyn Bridge

You have to be close to my age and background to remember when it was a standing joke in New York City that someone from out-of-town would be offered a chance to buy the Brooklyn Bridge from a stranger that just happened to bump into them and make them an offer they should surely refuse.

I really have no way of knowing if anyone ever forked over any money to this ruse. I never knew anyone in the Bunko Squad who might have known for sure.  Realistically, it was always a bad offer, even if legitimate. There have never been any tolls collected on it, so you'd surely be stuck with perpetual maintenance expenses, and no income. And even the powers that do own it have never been able to put tolls on it and help make it pay for itself.

But trying to take advantage of out-of-towners is nothing new, has taken many forms. and still continues. Taking advantage of people is universal, as any read of a given day's paper will reveal.

'Taking' and 'trying' are two different things, and it would seem it's hard to sell the 85 year-old restaurant reviewer from Grand Forks, North Dakota, Marilyn Hagerty, something she doesn't want.

For anyone whose remote hasn't been working, Ms. Hagerty gained media fame over a review she wrote about the Grand Forks Olive Garden restaurant.  It's literally amazing how fast she made it to New York, even given the use of planes. But word of our mild winter must have gotten out, because Marilyn has been seen everywhere, and been on everything since arriving. 

Ms. Hagerty's son even wrote about her in a recent 'A-Head' piece in this week's Wall Street Journal. Being a reporter runs in the family.

It seems everyone has had their time in the sun with Ms. Hagerty as she does New York. The NYT apparently had her in at their 8th Avenue headquarters building, hard by the Port Authority Bus Terminal, where out-of-towners are sometimes first spotted and seized upon as they get off buses from distant places.  In no time, the reporter, Andy Newman, realized it would be a great idea to have Marilyn review the quintessential New York fast food: a street vendor frank.

Ms. Hagerty apparently asked the vendor a question first, that went along the lines of asking for a recommendation. The vendor, Abdelalim Abdelbaky, either knowing nothing about the Brooklyn Bridge, or wisely figuring she might not be in the market for it, replied that his recommendation was: "Two hot dogs."

It's been a while since I've taken in a dirty-water, or street-grilled frank, but I never remember anyone ever trying to SuperSize me. Whether Ms. Hagerty realized it or not, she beat back the sales pitch, and politely asked for one hot dog.

The news story carries a picture of Ms. Hagerty on the sidewalk, staring at what she's just taken a bite of. She does render an opinion, and that can be found via the story's newspaper link.

Say what you will about anything, but New York does have it all this year.  Someone from North Dakota is eating a hot dog on the sidewalk in the middle of March while not wearing a coat, ear muffs, a scarf, hat or gloves.

She's already made it here.


Wednesday, March 14, 2012

A Day in the Life of Obituaries

Anyone who knows even a little about newspapers and obituaries, probably already knows the larger newspapers keep a 'morgue' or file on people of all types of notoriety so that when then do shuffle off, the paper has a bit of a head start on the background for what will likely be a news item obituary. The NYT admits to keeping perhaps 1,400 sketches of people on file. They don't share this with anyone outside the paper, and don't share the files with the subjects. You're going to have to find you're own way of knowing what is being said about you after you're declared dead.

The categories of the types of people in this file is however a bit known. Major political figures, entertainers, sport figures, academics, artists, writers, Nobel Prize winners, significant military people, and people who have been awarded the Medal of Honor all qualify to have something on file before they go. The file can be updated periodically, particularly if they're active. It's polished off with the final details when needed.

The depth of this file can be rather amazing. Consider yesterday's NYT obituary page. There were four news item obituaries. Basically three of these were slam dunks to be included as news items, and a fourth, that while it might be a surprise, does show off the work the editors put into delivering end-of-life short stories on quite a variety of subjects.

Working left to right, top to bottom, brings us one of the slam dunks, someone who was an automatic to the news item obituary: Albert Abramson, 94 Dies, Holocaust Museum Backer. Major influential figure in getting the Holocaust Museum built in Washington, D.C. Presidents are quoted, lots of column inches.

Next is someone from the automatic berth category of Nobel Prize winners. F. Sherwood Rowland, 84, Dies; Cited Aerosols' Danger.

If your life is somewhat congruent with mine, then you will no doubt remember the fuss that was made when it was claimed that the chlorofluorocarbon, CFC, propellant in aerosol cans was burning a hole in the ozone layer and we were eventually all going to be well-tanned and dead: burnt to a crisp by the sun's harmful ultraviolet rays that were now going to be allowed to enter into our atmosphere and fry us.

This was hard to grasp. Gillette's Right Guard spray deodorant and graffiti artists in train yards were going to end civilization. As hard as that was to grasp was also the proof of this theory when after many years it was shown there was a hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica. How CFCs from countless bathrooms, locker rooms and train yards came to punch a hole over the South Pole probably earned someone else a Nobel Prize. It's easily the furthest anything ever traveled from a bathroom, a metropolitan train yard, or anything Amtrak without derailing.

The absolute win-lose news for all is that we could still have aerosol sprays-just remove the CFC-but we'd still have graffiti, because they found a way to keep paint coming out of a can without CFCs. Oh well.

Skipping to the bottom obituary on the second page we come to what I'll call an "imported" one. Norman St. John- Stevas, 82, Tory Dissident. Many clues right there that this one is about a Brit: "Saint" in a hypenated name; Tory.

Lord St. John actually passed away last week, but my theory is there was conference call with the London Times office when it became apparent that the domestic deceased didn't take up all the space they had.

I first heard of the Lord St. John's passing last week when @obitsman Tweeted a reference to his British obit. It's a lively piece about a lively character, who no doubt rankled and entertained British sensibilities for years. Over here he would just be a pain-in-ass. Over there, we was a Lord.

Lord St. John became known for having a tart-tongue, who apparently liked to verbally make fun of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. He did this to the grocer's daughter and Iron Lady for several years, despite first ascending to offices based on her appointments. He is certainly described as being as well educated and groomed as one of those 'CH,' champion four legged terriers at the Westminster Dog Show. Iron Maggie finally got tired of him and sacked him and stuffed him in a vase. His life apparently hardly suffered.

Last, and not least, is the fourth obituary that doesn't seem like a slam dunk, until you read it and realize the editors must have had some background on even this individual: Frisner Augustin, 63, Haitian Voodoo Drummer. Depth.

A drummer who summons up to 100 spirits by distinctive rhythms is not someone you might put on any list for a potential news item obituary. Voodoo is what you might think of, and not a Nobel Prize in Voodoo economics. But Mr. Augustin was famous for what he did, ultimately doing it in Manhattan, where for sure he caught the attention of the bylined writer, Jon Pareles, who writes about jazz and contemporary music.

Mr. Augustin was so good at what he did it was reported he increased the attendance at some of his performances with non-paying spirits. iTunes carries his work.

So there you have it. Day is done. Gone the sun. Until tomorrow.


Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Attendance Might Go Up If You Can Stay Anonymous

This was plucked off a WSJ home page this afternoon. It's the kind of news item that should spawn several jokes, perhaps even some that make it to late-night television. If you can't figure one out for yourself, you're not trying.

Five people face civil insider-trading charges after they allegedly made more than $1.8 million in profits on tips gleaned after an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.


Sunday, March 11, 2012

The Millionaire

One of the favorite stories I love to retell is the one Ralph Kiner, the Hall-of-Fame Pittsburgh Pirate and longtime Met broadcaster told--and might even still tell--about Stan-"The-Man"- Musial, the Hall-of-Fame St. Louis Cardinal slugger, and the financial advice Stan had for his fellow players.

Stan, being a relatively well-paid legend, liked to tell the other players that he knew how to make a million dollars and was willing to share the secret. In Stan's era, a $1 million was nothing to sneeze at, and along with owning a convertible and pulling out of your house's circular driveway while entertaining a Marilyn Monroe-type blonde in the passenger seat, was all part of the American dream--at least the male American dream.

Once Stan figured he had as many players listening to him as he was going to get, he revealed his secret formula.  He told them: "Fellas, the best way to make a million dollars is to first start with $2 million dollars, then open a restaurant." He had their attention.

Obviously, there are many permutations that can be spun from this story and its recognition of the difficulty in holding onto money in the face of so many other financial advisers.

One of the best ones I heard since that goes along the same lines of the slippery slope, is the one I just read in a story about Marty Reisman, an 82 year-old former champion ping-pong player (table tennis) and hustler who remarked he had been a millionaire three times in the past, and on three occasions became a former millionaire, the most recent occasion being now.

What a club.


Saturday, March 10, 2012

Thinking Heads

It's one of the larger front page NYT pictures I've seen lately. Today, centered, at the very top, it stretches four columns wide and runs a little over five inches deep. In color, or course.

For a change, Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel is not seen with France's president Nicolas Sarkozy, but rather with Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund. Both gazes are thoughful and serious, and might well be poses for the sculptor creating a female version of Mount Rushmore for the IMF. Name whoever else you might, Angela's the anchor.

Angela Merkel. She's bigger than Wal-Mart.


Friday, March 9, 2012

The Uptown Girl

There are many obvious reasons why someone's passing might be a worthwhile news item. But basically, they became famous at some point in their life for something, either good or bad.

Take Florence Wolfson Howitt, who has just passed away at 96, but who at 92 became famous for a diary she had kept as a teenager. Apparently nothing very special about that, except that she wrote a four-line entry every day for five years in a leather-covered book that eventually came to be found in a steamer trunk in an apartment house Dumpster that caught the attention of an apartment worker, who passed it on to a NYT news assistant who was living in the building at the time.

Ms. Howitt was definitely an Uptown Girl, whose father was a physician and whose mother owned an upscale dress shop.  Depending on how you look at, she either did, or didn't advance herself socially by marrying a dentist, but did enjoy 68 years of marriage to him. No questioning that.

In the hands of someone who recognized a story, as well as writing that opened a window to perhaps Manhattan's version of  Downton Abbey and Lady Mary's thoughts while approaching womanhood, the diary became a 2008 book by the NYT news assistant, Lily Koppel, 'The Red Leather Diary: Reclaiming a Life Through the Pages of a Lost Journal.'

The book was preceded by a 2006 story in the NYT by Ms. Koppel that gives an account of the diary's discovery and several of the entries from 1929 to 1934 that reveal a very literary, musical, arty girl who acquainted herself with male and female lovers.

We don't really know if Ms. Howitt stopped writing any more diary entries after turning nineteen. All we really know is she filled up the book that was found in the streamer trunk that was found in the Dumpster. The existence of other volumes is not disclosed.

At least not yet.


Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Nick and Angela

There is absolutely no end to the ways Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel and France's President Nicolas Sarkozy can find to show affection for each other in public.

The above picture was taken from a February 29th WSJ story about the change in the Chancellor's plan to openly campaign for the French President during his campaign for re-election.

Paparazzi however were able to follow the pair to Iceland's capital city of Reykjavik where they were caught in an Icelandic cuddle outside a roadside lodging near the gas pumps after discussing reindeer meat imports and the Euro.

They are of course, just friends.


Friday, March 2, 2012

Typos as Brain Teasers

The other day, @obitsman Tweeted a reference to a NYT story on their process and experience of making corrections to articles they've published. This can also be known as acknowledging their boo-boos.

It's a big paper, with lots of words and references, so mistakes are bound to creep in. Any steady reader has, I'm sure, spotted some over the years. For myself, it's been in the Sports section that I've encountered most errors, some of them real "beauts", as New York City's long-time-ago mayor, Fiorello La Guardia said about some of his mistakes.

One of the best ones I ever read was the sportswriter who claimed the horses went into the Clubhouse turn during the running of the Metropolitan Mile at Belmont. Since Belmont is a large track, the start for the mile is on the backstretch, with no involvement of the clubhouse turn. My theory was the poor fellow was watching the race while standing on his head and looking in a mirror. It's the same reporter who claimed the Kentucky Derby was run at a mile and an eighth, when even non-horse racing fans might know it's run at a testing mile and a quarter. The fellow's byline at the paper seems to have survived, however.

The Times reports in their correction story that most of the corrections that wind up being needed occur because of mistakes in the obituaries. Lots of names, dates, places and relationships go into those pieces, so this is not surprising. One recent obituary I read didn't have a factual error, but rather what I guess was a plain typo. But the typo was so subtle, it actually became a brain teaser. It turned out to be sort of fun.

The lengthy obituary was on Ken Price, a sculptor whose ceramic pieces apparently elevated ceramics into more of an art form. Toward the end of the piece is the following sentence, reproduced as it appears in column format:

"...He also continued tore-
sist explaining his work's mean-
ing. As he said..."

Some may quickly see the intended spacing, but what I thought was the word "toresist" sent me on a two dictionary chase, plus search engine lookup, that yielded no such word. I rescanned the entire story, looking for a technique that might be called "toresist" that he developed.

One search engine did ask me something about "to resist." And of course, sure enough, the parsing should be "to resist..."

So, Mr. Price was doing what lots of us do when asked to explain something. We resist telling the questioner an answer they'd like to hear. Artists in particular, are like that.

Take Mary Chapin Carpenter and her early career song 'Heroes and Heroines.' It's easy to know she's singing about Charles Lindbergh as the hero, but who is the heroine? I've guessed Annie Oakley, or maybe Calamity Jane, maybe even Mary's great-grandmother?

To resist. Mary's not telling.


Thursday, March 1, 2012

An Anniversary

Today marks the 44th anniversary of a job I started that lead to 43 years of continuous work, basically within the insurance industry, for two employers.

Any number of historically-minded people could tell you what has changed since March 1, 1968 and today. And because they can provide a longer list, I won't bother to duplicate it. But I will point out the office world I entered then and the office world now are different in two huge aspects.

All the men now type. All the men now answer phones.

To borrow a tag line from a long ago ad: "You've come a long way Johnny."