Dinner last night: Taylor ham on pretzel bun.
Thursday, January 7, 2021
Wednesday, January 6, 2021
This Date in History - January 6
1066: HAROLD II IS CROWNED KING OF ENGLAND.
That was my father's name. He was not a king. Even in his own home.
1118: ALFONSO THE BATTLER CONQUERS ZARAGOSA.
That sounds like a wrestler's name.
1205: PHILIP OF SWABIA BECOMES KING OF THE ROMANS.
And here we go again.
1322: STEPHEN II IS CROWNED KING OF SERBIA.
And so they come.
1355: CHARLES I OF BOHEMIA IS CROWNED KING OF ITALY.
Well, those are two countries that you don't picture together.
1412: JOAN OF ARC IS BORN.
She wasn't crowned. Only burned.
1449: CONSTANTINE XI IS CROWNED BYZANTINE EMPEROR.
Emperor, king. Tomato, tomatoe.
1540: KING HENRY VIII OF ENGLAND MARRIES ANNE OF CLEVES.
Probably wearing the crown at the ceremony.
1690: JOSEPH BECOMES KING OF THE ROMANS.
You can come back now. This is the last one.
1781: IN THE BATTLE OF JERSEY, THE BRITISH DEFEAT THE LAST ATTEMPT BY FRANCE TO INVADE JERSEY.
Does Chris Christie know about this?
1838: ALFRED VAIL DEMONSTRATES A TELEGRAPH SYSTEM USING DOTS AND DASHES AND THIS IS THE FORERUNNER OF THE MORSE CODE.
.----...-.....--....-.--.
1852: EDUCATOR LOUIS BRAILLE DIES.
.----...-.....--....-.--.
Well, that sucks. The kid never got to the White House.
1893: THE WASHINGTON NATIONAL CATHEDRAL IS CHARTERED BY CONGRESS. THE CHARTER IS SIGNED BY PRESIDENT BENJAMIN HARRISON.
I suppose this was a big deal back in the day.
1907: MARIA MONTESSORI OPENS HER FIRST SCHOOL AND DAYCARE CENTER IN ROME.
I knew a kid who went to one of these schools. He was weird.
1912: NEW MEXICO IS ADMITTED TO THE UNION AS THE 47TH US STATE.
Counting down to Hawaii as Number 50.
1912: ACTOR DANNY THOMAS IS BORN.
Make Womb for Daddy.
1913: ACTRESS LORETTA YOUNG IS BORN.
And so another door opens.
1919: THEODORE ROOSEVELT DIES.
Bully for him.
1926: BASEBALL PITCHER RALPH BRANCA IS BORN.
From my hometown of Mount Vernon, New York.
1929: MOTHER TERESA ARRIVES IN CALCUTTA, INDIA TO BEGIN HER WORK AMONGST THE POOR AND SICK.
She picked a good country to start with.
1941: US PRESIDENT FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT DELIVERS HIS FOUR FREEDOMS SPEECH.
The Four Freedoms? I think they also sang at the Apollo Theater.
1944: ACTRESS BONNIE FRANKLIN IS BORN.
Her first day at a time.
1947: PAN AMERICAN AIRLINES BECOMES THE FIRST AIRLINE TO SCHEDULE A FLIGHT AROUND THE WORLD.
Back when they didn't charge for food.
1960: NATIONAL AIRLINES FLIGHT 2511 IS DESTROYED IN MID-AIR BY A BOMB, WHILE EN ROUTE FROM NEW YORK CITY TO MIAMI.
Wow. Just like the movie with Burt Lancaster and Dean Martin.
1974: IN RESPONSE TO THE 1973 OIL CRISIS, DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME COMMENCES NEARLY FOUR MONTHS EARLY IN THE US.
Spring ahead, winter behind.
1994: SKATER NANCY KERRIGAN IS CLUBBED ON THE KNEE BY TANYA HARDING.
What a ruthless sport.
2005: EDGAR RAY KILLEN IS ARRESTED AS A SUSPECT IN THE 1964 MURDERS OF THREE CIVIL RIGHTS WORKERS.
He got away with this for a long, long time.
2006: SINGER LOU RAWLS DIES.
"You'll never find...."
2016: ACTOR PAT HARRINGTON JR. DIES.
Fellow Fordham alumnus who I met at a function out here. Nice guy.
Dinner last night: Prosciutto, mozzarella, and roasted pepper omelet.
Tuesday, January 5, 2021
Back In The Day...
...the Bee Gees were hotter than white hear. In the late...gasp...70s, they would regularly have four or five of the top songs on the music chart at one time. I must sheepishly confess to being a fan then.
And still now.
This new documentary which you can find on HBO Max is a wonderful time travel trip back to those days and before. Amazingly, Barry, Robin, and Maurice conquered several musical genres over their long career together. From being a Beatles-type to moving over to soul and R&B and then, ultimately disco. The latter was their biggest moment and eventually their final moments as performers. When disco records were burned in Comiskey Park circa 1979 on "Disco Sucks Night," it was the Bee Gees' fortunes who went up in smoke.
Almost mystically, they moved into yet another new direction as songwriters for the likes of Barbra Streisand and Dionne Warwick. Essentially, their work together spanned thirty years. Contrast that to the Beatles who really only lasted a decade as a group.
This film by Frank Marshall is painstaking in its linear delivery of the Bee Gees' history and even includes a portion of screen time to the short-lived career and life of the fourth Gibb Andy. There are plenty of talking heads from Eric Clapton to associates of producer Robert Stigwood to Barry himself. Sadly, he is the only one of the family left. The good news is he still performs from time to time and still can hit those falsettoes.
This documentary is also smart not to give just slivers of their hits. Whole chunks of songs are heard and you'll want to ratchet up the volume of your TV. It makes me want to see "Saturday Night Fever" all over again.
Or listen to their music on YouTube or Amazon. Oh, hell, I'll confess. I've got them on auto play right now as I type this.
LEN'S RATING: Three-and-a-half stars.
Dinner last night: Leftover pork tenderloin.
Monday, January 4, 2021
Monday Morning Video Laugh - January 4, 2021
It's that time of year where we get to see television news reporters get theirs.
Dinner last night: Pork tenderloin, red cabbage, and rice.
Sunday, January 3, 2021
The Sunday Memory Drawer - Out With The Old, In With The Old
Puh-leze.
In reality, we changed from Thursday to Friday. That's it. We didn't all wake up on January 1 to find vaccines stashed away in our deep freezers. This is one of those artificial resets that reminds everybody of how they failed the other 364 days.
People suddenly are conscious of their eating habits. Single people impulsively take to dating websites to ensure that they are not alone in case we are all trapped in our homes on December 31, 2021. I have a word for the latter. Don't think all your paired-off friends were home having tons of sex. I'm betting a lot of them were sitting at home in stone silence. Barely saying a word and watching some lame musical acts on that Ryan Seacrest mess.
Speaking of which, as I wandered the channels on New Year's Eve, I couldn't help but see all the reminders that 2021 will be the year of kindness. We had none less than that dumbbell Kelly Ripa and the aforementioned Seacrest telling us so.
Um, every year of our lives should be those of kindness. I know I try to be. Sure, I have lapses, but, for the most part, I am a kind person. I surround myself with the same types. Why is this a thing? Just because the Democrats are replacing the Republicans in Washington?
Puh-leze.
It's all part of the New Year nonsense.
And three days into 2021, you've probably gotten the question already. I have.
"So, did you make any New Year's resolutions?"Yeah. Have you?
Indeed, things I resolve to do in my life are always there. We don't need a stupid holiday to do that. Like I said, the number one day for traffic on dating sites is....wait for it...January 1.
Again, this is silliness beyond compare. If you want to branch out socially, do it. Don't wait for some artificial holiday to make your move. If you are in the right mindset, go for it. But make sure you're doing it for the right reasons. Indeed, I would compare looking for a mate on January 1 the same as getting a puppy for Christmas. Sure, it's a romantic and warm scenario. Until, of course, you have to walk them.
But I digress... After all, this is the Sunday Memory Drawer and I need to share at least one or two of those.
While I do make some resolutions, I look back at my life and realize that there were some occasions in my life where my world did promise to be changing around the first of the year. In some instances, it was just life intervening and prompting the alteration in my course. At one instance, it was all my own doing.
Sunday Memory Alert.
I was a fat kid. No lie. I've written before about the weight struggle in my youth which always seemed to bother me the most whenever my gym class had to that blasted shuttle run for the President's National Fitness Test. You know the drill.
Run down the schoolyard. Pick up an eraser. Bring it back. Run down the schoolyard. Pick up the second eraser. Bring it back. And, as I crossed the finish line, I'd always hear this from whatever dirtbag was my gym teacher at the time.
"Len, you've got the slowest time in the class."
Well, he probably didn't say it out loud. But I knew he was thinking it.
And that's the way I bounced pretty much for the first sixteen years of my life.
The cow tipping point came in senior year of high school. On the very first gym class of the year, my right knee gave out and started a lifetime of hobbles for me. With me on the Autumn disabled list, the little activity and exercise I usually endured had dwindled down to zero. I would come home from school, plant myself in front of the television, and open the wrapper of something. And then something else. And then something else. Years later, this is how Rosie O'Donnell got her own talk show. I wouldn't be so lucky.
By December, I would scrape both the walls on both sides of any hallway.
For some inexplicable reason, I resolved to make a change on January 1.
I'm not sure what propelled me to venture onto a diet. At the time, there was this doctor Dr. Irwin Stillman schlepping from one talk show to another hawking his water diet. Of course, since he was on television a lot, I got to see him a lot.
Hmmmm? Drink eight glasses of water a day? I can do that.
Hmmmm? And watch your portions of food? Can I do that?
As soon as January 1 passed, I announced my plans to flush out my system. And pretty much have to hit the bathroom between every single class of my school day. I dictated to my parents what I would need to achieve my goal of losing fifty pounds. Low calorie this. Sugar free that. To their credit, they got behind me. And, frankly, if they were behind me at this point, you really couldn't see them.
Rim shot.
Along with the Stillman Diet, I started to exercise. Every night at 7PM for thirty minutes, I would close the door to my room and do as many exercises as I could come up with. Sit-ups, push-ups, twists, turns. I had no clue what I was doing, but it sounded and felt right.
By April, I had lost it all.
It's a fight to this day. Now I have a personal trainer who is behind me every step of the way. And, yes, sometimes you really can see her.
As I wrote above, there were other calendar and year flips that gave me cause to reflect on what the future was going to bring.
Two days before Christmas one year in my adulthood, I learned that my dad had probably six months to live. When you're standing next to somebody's hospital bed on Christmas Day and know that these will be the very last holidays you will spend together, it provides an unsettling portent to the next year.
And I've written before about my mother, several years later, in the hospital for a broken hip on New Year's Eve and suffering a heart attack that evening. They brought her back because there was no DNR, but she was really gone. Indeed, my very first act of that new year was to sign paperwork to basically let her go. Again, another sweeping change that was occurring "conveniently" as the year was moving on.
In both these cases, it wasn't time for any silly resolutions. It was really a time for reflect on the future. And pick myself up to move on.
Two years later on New Year's Day in my Westchester apartment, I stared at the small artificial Christmas tree that had followed me from my childhood home with my parents all the way to my own place. I thought about the new year and the change that was coming with it. My writing partner and I had an agent and would be moving to Los Angeles in February. A new beginning with all the hopes and dreams and fears attached. This would be a move that I never would regret, regardless of what happened.
I thought about all those Christmas memories on the East Coast. Good ones. Bad ones. I found that the latter was overriding the former. Sensory perception has kept me away from spending the holidays in New York ever since. I did not know that as I stared at my mother's long time ornaments that day. After packing them away in the box in the closet, I did not know that I would not open them ever again.
They're still there. I'm still here. Reflecting on the good years and the not-so-good years. But, always looking forward to what the new year will bring. Not in terms of weight loss or other inane barometers. Friends, it's all about the big picture.
Of course, as I promised, there are a few resolutions I make. Most of them simply carry over from one year to the next.
Read more.
Eat at least two meals a week that are meatless. I told you the diet is still a struggle. This is a promise I made to my personal trainer.
Go on a cruise with some friends. It's on my list and has been for years. It will happen. Some day.
Spend more time with friends that are long in tenure. I gravitate now to enjoy more frequently those that have shared histories with me. If you knew my parents back when, even better.
Engage with friends more in a "one-on-one" basis. Groups of five or more intimidate me. Less is more.
Of course, I suppose I resolve to be less intimidated in larger groups. Duh.
Launch our digital sitcom. Oh, this is an easy one. We've already finished shooting it. Watch your computers in February. By the way, none of that would have been possible without the pandemic.
I was a fat kid. No lie. I've written before about the weight struggle in my youth which always seemed to bother me the most whenever my gym class had to that blasted shuttle run for the President's National Fitness Test. You know the drill.
Run down the schoolyard. Pick up an eraser. Bring it back. Run down the schoolyard. Pick up the second eraser. Bring it back. And, as I crossed the finish line, I'd always hear this from whatever dirtbag was my gym teacher at the time.
"Len, you've got the slowest time in the class."
Well, he probably didn't say it out loud. But I knew he was thinking it.
And that's the way I bounced pretty much for the first sixteen years of my life.
The cow tipping point came in senior year of high school. On the very first gym class of the year, my right knee gave out and started a lifetime of hobbles for me. With me on the Autumn disabled list, the little activity and exercise I usually endured had dwindled down to zero. I would come home from school, plant myself in front of the television, and open the wrapper of something. And then something else. And then something else. Years later, this is how Rosie O'Donnell got her own talk show. I wouldn't be so lucky.
By December, I would scrape both the walls on both sides of any hallway.
For some inexplicable reason, I resolved to make a change on January 1.
I'm not sure what propelled me to venture onto a diet. At the time, there was this doctor Dr. Irwin Stillman schlepping from one talk show to another hawking his water diet. Of course, since he was on television a lot, I got to see him a lot.
Hmmmm? Drink eight glasses of water a day? I can do that.
Hmmmm? And watch your portions of food? Can I do that?
As soon as January 1 passed, I announced my plans to flush out my system. And pretty much have to hit the bathroom between every single class of my school day. I dictated to my parents what I would need to achieve my goal of losing fifty pounds. Low calorie this. Sugar free that. To their credit, they got behind me. And, frankly, if they were behind me at this point, you really couldn't see them.
Rim shot.
Along with the Stillman Diet, I started to exercise. Every night at 7PM for thirty minutes, I would close the door to my room and do as many exercises as I could come up with. Sit-ups, push-ups, twists, turns. I had no clue what I was doing, but it sounded and felt right.
By April, I had lost it all.
It's a fight to this day. Now I have a personal trainer who is behind me every step of the way. And, yes, sometimes you really can see her.
As I wrote above, there were other calendar and year flips that gave me cause to reflect on what the future was going to bring.
Two days before Christmas one year in my adulthood, I learned that my dad had probably six months to live. When you're standing next to somebody's hospital bed on Christmas Day and know that these will be the very last holidays you will spend together, it provides an unsettling portent to the next year.
And I've written before about my mother, several years later, in the hospital for a broken hip on New Year's Eve and suffering a heart attack that evening. They brought her back because there was no DNR, but she was really gone. Indeed, my very first act of that new year was to sign paperwork to basically let her go. Again, another sweeping change that was occurring "conveniently" as the year was moving on.
In both these cases, it wasn't time for any silly resolutions. It was really a time for reflect on the future. And pick myself up to move on.
Two years later on New Year's Day in my Westchester apartment, I stared at the small artificial Christmas tree that had followed me from my childhood home with my parents all the way to my own place. I thought about the new year and the change that was coming with it. My writing partner and I had an agent and would be moving to Los Angeles in February. A new beginning with all the hopes and dreams and fears attached. This would be a move that I never would regret, regardless of what happened.
I thought about all those Christmas memories on the East Coast. Good ones. Bad ones. I found that the latter was overriding the former. Sensory perception has kept me away from spending the holidays in New York ever since. I did not know that as I stared at my mother's long time ornaments that day. After packing them away in the box in the closet, I did not know that I would not open them ever again.
They're still there. I'm still here. Reflecting on the good years and the not-so-good years. But, always looking forward to what the new year will bring. Not in terms of weight loss or other inane barometers. Friends, it's all about the big picture.
Of course, as I promised, there are a few resolutions I make. Most of them simply carry over from one year to the next.
Read more.
Eat at least two meals a week that are meatless. I told you the diet is still a struggle. This is a promise I made to my personal trainer.
Go on a cruise with some friends. It's on my list and has been for years. It will happen. Some day.
Spend more time with friends that are long in tenure. I gravitate now to enjoy more frequently those that have shared histories with me. If you knew my parents back when, even better.
Engage with friends more in a "one-on-one" basis. Groups of five or more intimidate me. Less is more.
Of course, I suppose I resolve to be less intimidated in larger groups. Duh.
Launch our digital sitcom. Oh, this is an easy one. We've already finished shooting it. Watch your computers in February. By the way, none of that would have been possible without the pandemic.
So, you might say I have a little soft spot for 2020 because of that very reason.
Of course, we should all have the same resolution at the top of our collective lists.
Get the hell out of the house!
I was talking to a friend on January 1. He said that, at least, I could be happy in 2020 because the Dodgers won the World Series.
My response?
That was last year.
Dinner last night: The last of challah so the last of French toast dinner for a while.
Saturday, January 2, 2021
Classic TV Commercial of the Month - January 2021
Come see the building from which they drop that damn ball every New Year's Eve.
Dinner last night: Leftover braciole and rigatoni.
Friday, January 1, 2021
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