Classic Newsreel of the Month - September 2013

Remember when we got a new Miss America every September?  Well, apparently, that's not all...

Dinner last night:  Dodger dog at the game.

The Mugs of September 2013 - Extreme Pain Edition

"I am stuck on a Band-Aid.  And Band-Aid's stuck on me."

Let's have some real fun.  Who wants to take her to a tennis match and make her sit at center court?

 I don't think that's how you're supposed to use toilet paper?

 Advice to inmates who want to jump this guy.  Sneak up on his right side.

 Were they trying to bandage her nose or keep her from talking?

 Oh, my God!  They've arrested Christopher Walken!

...and they nailed Roseanne Barr at the same time!!!

Thrown in the slammer....and he's got mumps!

 Just one look at this guy and you know his IQ is around 50.

Shot in the head and he's still going.

 John the Baptist will tell you.  Those Jerusalem street fights are a bitch.

Rocky Raccoon.

Dinner last night:  Chinese chicken salad.

When Blogs Attack

Perhaps you saw this entry that I posted last Sunday.  One of my weekly recollections about life the way it used to be.  My memories of entering the ninth grade.  I got a lot of nice comments from some of you.  Thanks so much.

Meanwhile, whenever I do a piece like this which is hometown-Mount-Vernon-New-York-specific, I often post it on Facebook on a page that is not my own.  It's called "I Grew Up in Mount Vernon" and I thought those folks might appreciate the memory jog as well.  From comments I received from people I did not know, I did.

Except for one individual, whose comment on Facebook was so nasty that I subsequently deleted the whole thread.  But it gave me pause to think about this person some more in the context of what I wrote.

You may remember that one of the revelations I discussed in this piece was that, going to a school that wasn't on the South Side of Mount Vernon, I was, for the very first time, exposed to a mainly white student body, which just happened to predominantly Jewish.  I also was, for the very first time, staying on a school campus all day long as opposed to going home for lunch and maybe an hour of television.  This was a big deal to me and a major change in my life.

I thought it all harmless and totally in context of what was happening in Mount Vernon at that time.  And, by the way, I was all of thirteen years old.

Now read what this commenter posted on Facebook.

Growing up in Mt. Vernon, I always embraced the diversity and always had a "United Nations" of friends, I still do. I never labeled people by there religion and made judgements about them because of it. I also never decided not to be friends with someone because they might be better looking. I think you were very shallow and immature. You missed going home for lunch to watch tv in 9th grade......really?

I was completed floored by this response.  Imposing adult reactions on somebody who was barely a teenager in a world that was totally changed for me overnight.

Back in this day, yes, Mount Vernon was a United Nations.  But the city was also completely bi-polar, fatally divided by those New Haven Railroad train tracks that cut the city into two segregated halves.  The South Side was more Black and poorer.  The North Side was more White and richer.  And, indeed, predominantly Jewish.  That was a fact.

Moreover, this was a time and an era where neighborhoods were divided according to class, race, and ethnicity.  Like it or not, there was the Italian section.  There was the Irish section.  There was the poorer home section.  There was the fancier home section.  That was the way it was.  I never made judgments (obviously, this idiot of a commenter can't spell) based on any of those criteria.  Indeed, within the body of the story, you hear about a ninth grade acquaintance I made who became a lifelong friend to this day.  He happens to be Jewish.  Yet, we never discuss it.

This vile response comes from a person who knows nothing about me.   This clown has no clue what my life has been, who I'm friends with, how I've contributed to the world.  She (yes, a woman) makes a knee-jerk assessment of my character and, using her own words, I can't believe that somebody could be that shallow and immature.  

And, if I was that unsettled that I simply wanted to go home for lunch and watch television, well, so be it.

Of course, her comments prompted me to do a little bit of a drill down on her own background.   From what I can see, she's one of those professional "hand wringers."  Eternally pledging a life of tolerance but is totally intolerant of anyone with an opinion that's not her.

But, gee, then I'm making the same type of snap judgment (spelled correctly) that she made.  

So, I'm humbled a bit and I think twice about posting a blog entry on a site full of strangers.  But, at the same time, I'm troubled about a response like this person's.  And her incredible zeal at sharing it on a spot that's supposedly to be nothing more than nostalgic.

Shame, shame on her.  That's not a gut reaction on my part.  And there's something else I know for sure.

From her Facebook photos, she's got a nose that could siphon gasoline out of a Cadillac Escalade.

Yeah, I can be nasty, too.

Dinner last night:  Louisiana sausage at the Dodger game.

  

This Date in History - September 11

Happy birthday, Kristy McNichol.  And didn't you have your special day ruined twelve years ago?

1185:  ISAAC II ANGELUS KILLS STEPHANUS HAGIOCHRISTOPHORITES AND THEN APPEALS TO THE PEOPLE, RESULTING IN THE REVOLT THAT DEPOSES ANDRONICUS I COMMENUS.

I guess for people back then, this was their 9/11.

1226:  THE ROMAN CATHOLIC PRACTICE OF PUBLIC ADORATION OF THE BLESSED SACRAMENT OUTSIDE OF MASS SPREADS FROM MONASTERIES TO PARISHES.

So you can do it in private, too, right?

1541:  SANTIAGO, CHILE, IS DESTROYED BY INDIGENOUS WARRIORS, LED BY MICHIMALONCO.  

Michimalonco did not have ties to Al Qiada.

1609:  HENRY HUDSON DISCOVERS MANHATTAN AND THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLE LIVING THERE.

That's twice this week for indigenous.

1776:  BRITISH-AMERICAN PEACE CONFERENCE ON STATEN ISLAND FAILS TO STOP THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

Started by....wait for it...some indigenous soldiers.

1789:  ALEXANDER HAMILTON IS APPOINTED THE US SECRETARY OF TREASURY.  

And that's how you get your face on some paper money.

1792:  THE HOPE DIAMOND IS STOLEN ALONG WITH OTHER FRENCH CROWN JEWELS WHEN SIX MEN BREAK INTO THE HOUSE USED TO STORE THEM.  

Too cheap for a bank vault??

1813:  DURING THE WAR OF 1812, BRITISH TROOPS ARRIVE IN MOUNT VERNON AND PREPARE TO INVADE WASHINGTON, DC.

I assume that's Mount Vernon, Virginia and not my hometown in New York.

1826:  CAPT. WILLIAM MORGAN IS ARRESTED IN NEW YORK FOR DEBT.

I still love his rum.

1847:  STEPHEN FOSTER'S "OH, SUSANNA" IS PERFORMED FOR THE FIRST TIME IN A PITTSBURGH SALOON.  

"Don't you cry for me..."

1862:  AUTHOR O. HENRY IS BORN.

 And the O stands for???

1930:  ACTRESS CATHRYN DAMON IS BORN.

One of the feuding matriarchs on that wonderful "Soap."

1931:  SALVATORE MARANZANO IS MURDERED BY CHARLES LUCIANO'S GANG.

Unlike his slayer, Maranzano was quite unlucky.

1939:  CANADA DECLARES WAR ON GERMANY, THE COUNTRY'S FIRST INDEPENDENT DECLARATION OF WAR.

So much for Munich getting a NHL franchise.

1940:  DIRECTOR BRIAN DE PALMA IS BORN.

I wonder who his senior prom date was.

1941:  GROUND IS BROKEN FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE US PENTAGON.

Talk about your foreshadowing.

1941:  CHARLES LINDBERGH'S DES MOINES SPEECH ACCUSING THE BRITISH, JEWS, AND THE ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION OF PRESSING FOR WAR WITH GERMANY.

Hey, Lucky Lindy, wasn't it a German that killed your baby???

1962:  ACTRESS KRISTY MCNICHOL IS BORN.

I did love that TV show "Family."

1967:  SINGER HARRY CONNICK JR. IS BORN.

Nine months before, When Mr. Connick Met Mrs. Connick.

1972:  THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA RAPID TRANSIT SYSTEM OPENS.

Would you want to be on an underground train in this city???

1972:  ANIMATOR MAX FLEISCHER DIES.

Father of Popeye and Betty Boop.

1978:  US PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER, EGYPT PRESIDENT ANWAR SADAT, AND ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER MENACHEM BEGIN MEET AT CAPE DAVID AND SIGN MIDEAST PEACE ACCORDS.

Yeah, a fat lot of good that did.

1985:  PETE ROSE BREAKS TY COBB'S BASEBALL RECORD FOR MOST CAREER BASE HITS WITH HIS 4,192ND HIT.

Hall of Fame stats.  Or so we thought....

1987:  ACTOR LORNE GREENE DIES.

Off to the big Ponderosa in the sky.

1994:  ACTRESS JESSICA TANDY DIES.

Driving Miss Daisy...to the cemetery.

2001:  FOUR PLANES....

Do I have to finish this?  Still too painful for words.

2002:  FOOTBALL STAR JOHNNY UNITAS DIES.

Thrown for a really, really big loss.

2003:  ACTOR JOHN RITTER DIES.

I remember this like it was yesterday as well.

2004:  SONGWRITER FRED EBB DIES.

Living up to that last name.

2005:  SPORTSCASTER CHRIS SCHENKEL DIES.

The Wide World of Nothingness.

2006:  ACTOR PAT CORLEY DIES.

Phil on TV's "Murphy Brown."

2009:  WRITER LARRY GELBART DIES.

G*E*N*I*U*S*.

2010:  ACTOR HAROLD GOULD DIES.

Rhoda Morgenstern's Pop.

2010:  ACTOR KEVIN MCCARTHY DIES.

The Real Invasion of the Bodysnatchers.

2012:  THE US EMBASSY IN BENGHAZI IS ATTACKED, RESULTING IN FOUR DEATHS, INCLUDING AMBASSADOR J. CHRISTOPHER STEVENS.

One year later and we still know nothing about this.

Dinner last night:  Assorted Thai dishes at Emporium.

Everything Old is Old Again

Regular visitors here know fully well that I am a huge fan of the "Mary Tyler Moore Show."  I went as far as starting a book on the program.  We don't need to rehash this.

Naturally, the recent MTM reunion on "Hot in Cleveland" was going to be a hot commodity on my plasma TV.  The episode was filmed last April 5 right on the heels of Valerie Harper's very public announcement that she had terminal brain cancer.  I am guessing that the Cleveland folks rushed this together quickly in order to capture all the MTM gals one last time.  When I heard they weren't going to run it until September, I figured we'd see the airing with one of those title cards at the end.  "In Loving Memory."

Well, not so, Harper has come close to an amazing remission and is back to work.  She's even one of this upcoming season's contestants on "Dancing with the Stars."  If that doesn't kill Rhoda, nothing can.  Good for her!

But, meanwhile back at the TV Land ranch, I watched this episode with some trepidation.  I have long since given up on "Hot in Cleveland."  When it premiered, it was incredibly retro and a breath of fresh television air.  Once it got popular, the program suddenly morphed into a show you could easily find on any other network.  Dull, unclever, and a preponderance of sex gags.  Overnight, it became "Three and a Half Women."  If I tuned in, it was simply to stare longingly at Valerie Bertinelli for a minute or two.

Watching the MTM reunion, I realized that I have missed nothing as far as the Cleveland ladies are concerned.  They're all treating each other like punching bags as they meander from one bad date to another.  I see that Georgia Engel has popped up as Betty White's buddy and she's still playing the same character she did as Ted Baxter's girlfriend years ago.  I note that Betty is now wearing glasses in most scenes, which says to me that she might be resorting to cue cards.  Heck, if I'm 92 on a sitcom, I would, too.

But it was the MTM grand dames I was really there to see.  The writers devised a clever plot of Betty and Georgia reuniting their old ladies bowling team, which was a big unbeatable champion years ago when they used to play...wink wink...every Saturday night.  So in comes Valerie Harper, who looks healthy but sounds a lot like Brenda Vaccaro these days.  Cloris Leachman is spotted at another table and is reunited with the wrong ladies.  A wonderfully, spacey performance quite reminiscent of her glory days as Phyllis.  

Of course, the Mary character appears to be not coming.  But, lo and behold, she's seated at a back table.  Surprise.  Betty notes "look's like she made it after all."  My guess is that the entire episode was devised just to use that one line.

The ladies banter and argue.  Georgia is ditzy.  Betty is ribald.  Cloris is nuts.  Valerie is reliably witty.  And Mary, sadly looking very frail from her recent illnesses, valiantly keeps up as only as Mary can.  There were laughs.  There was tenderness.  There was nostalgia.  It was spaghetti and meat balls being warmed up as leftovers and everybody knows it tastes as good as the first day.

Meanwhile, the writers crammed a lot of plot into 22 minutes as the Cleveland ladies had to be serviced as well.  At the end, the entire cast combined for a few moments of dialogue and then the camera panned up to a window where a small kitten was seated.

Yes, folks, meow.

We have such a fascination with shows of this ilk.  Looking back at what was.  Seeing what those folks look like now.  Admittedly, this was all cooked up because of Valerie Harper's illness.  But, we look to remember what was.  And I thought that, in today's media society, the "Mary Tyler Moore Show" might not even get on the air.  Whole chunks of an audience base are ignored because TV programmers focus on getting the younger demographic.  And, PS, those folks aren't watching the tube anyway.  And if they are, the attention span is thirteen seconds and no more.

At its inception, "Hot in Cleveland" had the right idea.  An old formula updated.  Even they have gotten lost at the fair.  But, they bring back those MTM ladies for one more bow and you're reminded how good television used to be.

And how old we and they have all gotten.

I asked my good friend Djinn from the Bronx, the co-author of the planned MTM book, if she had watched the MTM reunion.  She had not.

"I prefer to remember them as they were."

Yes, that, too.

Dinner last night:  Leftover ravioli.



  

Monday Morning Video Laugh - September 9, 2013

Who doesn't miss those Dean Martin roasts....and Foster Brooks?

Dinner last night:  Ravioli and meatballs.

The Sunday Memory Drawer - The Ninth Grade

Schools are opening all over our country and kids are perhaps reluctantly trudging back to their tedious lessons and forced gym classses.  That scary sensation probably has transcended the decades.  Regardless of when you grew up, you dreaded September and that freakin' first period bell.

As I headed from the comfy eight grade at Washington Junior High School in Mount Vernon, New York to the new grown-up ninth grade at the building shown above, I had more fears than usual.  This was a new world and, unlike what Aldous Huxley thought, not a brave one as far as I was concerned.  This was the first official game changer of my life.

From kindergarten to the eighth grade, I was snug as a bug in the school system sequestered in my local neighborhood.  Up to the sixth grade at Grimes School, four blocks from my house.  The seventh and eighth grade at the aforementioned Washington Junior High, nine blocks from my house.  All within walking distance.  You generally went home for lunch, giving you a sandwich and an hour of television that broke up the dreary day.  It was all so carefree and easy.

Even better, I had classmates that had traveled with me all through those years.  Some of became good friends.  Our mothers got chummy.  Lots of nighttime phone calls trading gossip and homework assignments.  Bonding together against the teaching pain-in-the-ass-de-jour.  Like it or not, we had all fallen into a wonderfully comfortable warm sweater of a lifestyle. 

On the eighth grade day we donned those caps and gowns and marched around to "Pomp and Circumstance," I doubt that any of us realized how our lives would hit the reset button in just two short months.  Because we were leaving our cocoon.  Back then, all the elementary and junior high schools in Mount Vernon would siphon directly into one big silo.  

The high school.

Indeed, we were thrown an even sharper curveball with this prospect.  Back in that day, they were building a new Mount Vernon High School way over on the far side of the moon.  Except they finished this construction in spurts and, for a while, they only had enough room for grades ten through twelve.  No worries, said the schmucks at the Board of Education.  Temporarily, we can host the ninth grades at the old high school facilities, which was formerly A.B. Davis High School.  They renamed it the High School Annex and that was our home for the ninth grade.

An old building with no bells and few whistles, the Annex was not as far away as the new high school.  But, for me, it was far enough.  A very, very long walk away.  Certainly there would be no more lunch hours at home.  Out the window went my daily Taylor Ham sandwich and the Hollywood Squares.  I would be in school from beginning of the day to the very end.  Gee, even prisoners at Sing Sing got more perks.

I dreaded the oncoming Annex for all those reasons.  And more.

On the very first day, I crawled up those never-ending stairs (see above) to the fortress on a hill as high as Mount Fuji.  I walked into my homeroom and looked around.

All strangers to me.

My grade school pals and I had been thrown into a human-being mix master and now we were all on our own.  And forced to socialize with people we had never met before.  All this and goddamn geometry, too.  Do these Annex windows open and can I throw myself out one of them?

To make matters even horrid, our class schedules were not as a group, but an individual.  Each student was his or her own island.  You travel around by yourself from appointed subject to appointed subject.  There was no longer safety in numbers.  

You were on your own.

Gasp.

I remember that my very first class in the AM was Social Studies.   Because of my grades, I was in the upper echelon of students and usually in what they called "Level 1."  As I arrived for my daily hour with Mr. Crews, I looked around at these people I didn't know.  For the first time in my entire school life to date, my entire class was...White.

I had grown up on the South Side of Mount Vernon.  It was predominantly Black but that's where I went to school because that's where I lived.  I had heard rumors that the North Side of Mount Vernon was very different.  This was complete validation.

Those kids were all White.

And, in another new phenomenon to me, mostly all Jewish.

From my vantage point, the North Side of Mount Vernon might as well have been Mars.

I mean, up to this point in my life, I probably knew no more than two Jewish kids.  Of course, back at home, we had Jewish neighbors.  But they were all senior citizens and likely crossed the sea with Moses.  My mom had a Jewish friend with two children.  But that was it.

Now I finally figured out why the Mount Vernon School System always gave us those September High Holy Days off.  It was a big deal for those kids on the tonier side of the train tracks.

Wandering around the school premises from aimless class to aimless class, I felt incredibly alone.  Every so often, I would run into an old grade school friend in passing through the hallways.  I had the urge to hug and/or kiss them.  But this huge melting pot would force me to branch out and...horrors...make some new friends.  

Like it or not.

Generally, you'd wind up talking to the kids sitting in class around you.  Because we were often seated alphabetically, you suddenly found that your social world orbited around last names with letters that were four or five away from your own last name.  How limiting was that?  In this manner, it was very unlikely for me to be friends with somebody named either Anderson or Williams.

You, of course, got tossed into a lunch period and, once again, I was lost.  I knew no one in my lunch period and was forced to make snap judgments on the accessibility of people I barely knew.  I noticed that a lot of the Jewish kids from the North Side were incredibly good looking.  And, sadly, they knew it.  And that's one of a thousand reasons why I would take my lunch tray of a Sloppy Joe sandwich with a side of lime Jell-O and move on.  

I had to pick a lunch table carefully.  You wanted to find kids who were nerdy enough looking to accept you, but not nerdy enough looking to get laughed at by everybody else.  

I spotted a group of three guys.  Acne, glasses, and horrible color coordination of wardrobe.  Perfect.  And they let me right in.  One of the kids was in my social studies class.  We had some sort of feeble connection.  I looked around at them.  All had brought their lunch from home.  I started to do so as well.  A daily sandwich of Taylor Ham and mustard on a roll.  Plus a piece of fruit.

I had made friends.  Well, lunch table acquaintances.

Meanwhile, as I wandered aimlessly from class to class, I tried to cope with this new all-day-at-school phenomenon.  There was an English class with Mrs. Taylor, who looked sixty but probably was no more than 30.  She professed that her life was made richer by not having a television at home.  Despite this lunacy, I thoroughly enjoyed the tour she led through great American literature.  I read some classics.

Geometry class was led by some bearded, young hippie who liked to flirt with the girls.  I have heard since that he did more than flirt and he apparently liked to get some of the prettier students into some of his own obtuse angles.  While I had always been good at math, I had no feel for these rhomboids and tangents.  I barely squeaked by.

In our ninth grade world, you had to take some electives to fill out your already torturous day.  I took a Current Events class and we all had to read the New York Times every morning.  The teacher instructed us on how to fold the newspaper so you could read it easily on the subway.  Huh?

To appease my dad, I took a typing class with Miss Flynn who might have been there the day the first Smith Corona rolled off the assembly line.  My father wanted to know that I learned something worthwhile in school.  He even made me type in front of him at home.  I got an A plus from Miss Flynn and a B minus from Dad.

Much to my chagrin, you still had to take gym class in high school.  But, since the classes were much bigger, you could easily lose yourself under the bleachers on those days when they were doing dreaded gymnastics.  I'd keep moving to the end of the line and then, if I timed it right, the bell would ring and I'd never have to do a forward roll.   All achieved without the usual note from the school nurse.

In the now more racially-balanced gym class at the Annex, I discovered one benefit from this new mix of students.  Prior to this year, most of the kids in my gym class were Black.  While I'm not subscribing to a stereotype here, they were all terrific athletes.  And I always looked spastic.  The last to be picked for any team of any sport.

But at the Annex, there were more White and Jewish guys.  And I discovered that I was not the only clod in Mount Vernon, New York.  There were kids who sucked equally on the North Side.  I remember one dude in particular.  He threw like a girl and I think he later became one.  Suddenly, I was the one on the sidelines giggling at somebody's ineptitude.  Thanks to him, I was now the next-to-last to be picked for any team of any sport.  Success!

When the day ended and the final bell rang, I'd crawl down that big staircase which never seemed to be cleared of snow or ice during the winter.  I would walk down to the church on the corner and wait for the city bus that would wind its way around downtown Mount Vernon until it eventually hit my home street corner.

Sitting there on the church steps with my book bag, I would think back about my schooling prior to the ninth grade.  Why had that been so easy and wonderful while the Annex was so hard and rigorous?  Every afternoon, I would lose myself in the past and detest the future.  It was depression that arrived on time every day just like that bus I was waiting for.

During the spring of that ninth grade, I was still there waiting for that bus every day.  But I noticed my lunch room/social studies acquaintance also passed on his walk home.  We'd always have a comment or a funny line ready for each other.  We discovered that we were both Met fans.  As baseball began, our bus stop dialogue usually included a reference to last night's game or the one scheduled for that night.  It all became very seamless as we wandered our way into a friendship.

Who knew that, decades later, he would remain as one of my very closest of friends?

So, despite all the angst and drama of an uncertain ninth grade, there was one singular benefit of it all.  

A lifelong friend.

Dinner last night:  Turkey burger at the Pig N' Whistle.