A ROYAL FOIL

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (05-24-18)

     Because of my deadline I'm writing this before the fact, but I never received my invitation to the royal nuptials this Saturday. Not even ONE nuptial. Nothing. I was camped out at the mailbox all week, and even had a tip for the mailman, and also one from Christmas, which must have gotten lost in the mail. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle didn't announce the guest list, but Nacho Figueras, an Argentinian polo player, was on it, and I wasn't. Obviously a guy who can sit on a horse and chase a ball around with a stick rated higher with them than a highly regarded citizen of the United States who can do a slam-dunk imitation of a barking dog (you choose the breed).

     I'm over it now. What would I even wear to an event like this? Is it out of line for a man to wear a fascinator? I think I'm fascinating already but it couldn't hurt. What about a kilt? What goes underneath? Do they make a "skort" version, like a "skilt?" Women cannot wear a tiara, but it doesn't say anything about men. Women should not have bare legs. Even underneath your stockings they should not be bare. As a guide, don't dress like the Spice Girls. The Spice Girls will actually attend the Royal Wedding, and they have been instructed not to dress like themselves.

     There are also a lot of rules about interacting with the Queen. The first time you address her she should be called "Your Majesty," which I think is weird because it implies that she is her own majesty. After that you can call her "Ma'am." "Your Highness" should only be used when addressing Cheech or Chong. Don't approach the Queen, wait until she approaches you first. You should let her sniff your hand before petting her, or am I thinking of dogs? Don't monopolise her time with a lot of nonsense, like I'm doing with you. Don't ask her what stocks she's in, or why they spell "monopolize" with an "s" over there. The only interaction I have had so far with a queen is on my chess board, and after my wife captures her I have to ask if I can visit.

     Once you have all the protocol straightened out, the wedding itself should proceed without much fanfare. Except for the actual fanfare, that is. Will they write their own vows? Will they love and cherish each other, in sickness and in health? I know a guy who is divorced, and I asked him exactly how long before his papers were signed did he feel he wasn't being cherished? Because that would be a dead giveaway to start hiding your assets.

     Will there be a band or DJ at the reception? At every wedding I've ever been to they played that song, "Shout." In the middle everybody crouches down, with no regard for my bad knee- that's a one-way ticket for me. It goes on forever because they keep singing "wait a minute!" I finally get all the way back up a few songs later, and I need new shocks at a minimum.

     I guess I'll have to watch the big event on television like the rest of Meghan Markle's family. At my own wedding there were no video cameras allowed. And no, not because they weren't invented yet, wise guy. It's just that I knew that there would be someone who drank too much, removed most of their clothing and did something that would eventually lead to the invention of the taser. And I knew just who that person would be.

     In spite of my absence I'm sure the whole event will be a smashing success and everyone will leave with a smile on their face, except for Doria Ragland, the mother of the bride. The bride's family traditionally pays for the wedding, and I'd love to see the look on her face her face when she gets the bill.

RADIO DAYS

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (05-17-18)

     I've been feeling a bit nostalgic for the bygone era of listening to a baseball game on a crappy-sounding transistor radio. I define nostalgia as the feeling you get when your memory of something is better than that thing actually was. I don't need to bother mustering any warm feelings for the transistor radio, because AM reception is just as crappy-sounding now as it was then.

     In the old days Phil Rizzuto was the color commentator. A color commentator was important, because radio broadcasts were in black and white back then. Phil Rizzuto could think up the oddest things to say. It's like he was living in a parallel universe that existed in a southbound lane of the Major Deegan near the Willets Avenue Bridge. An outfielder would catch a fly ball and Rizzuto would say, "Holy cow, that was a can of corn!" And I would think, "It was? Well maybe it was." He would tell old stories of how he would take his chewing gum out of his mouth and put it on top of his cap when he was in the field. How he could chew it from that far away I'll never know. He could explain the merits of a good cannoli so well that it made you want to trade one of your backup infielders for a cannoli to be named later.

     You could hear the sounds of the stadium right through the radio. Eddie Layton used to tickle some noodlings out of the organ in between innings. He'd play the "Charge!" theme, and everybody would yell "CHARGE!" After all this time there is still nothing new written for the organ. Thankfully no one really charged, although many were overcharged at the concession stand.

     Today a baseball game is something they pass the time with between drop-in ads. "This walk was brought to you by Ford!" That walk didn't need to be brought to me by a Ford, it could have walked to me all by itself. "The last three seconds were brought to you by Celino & Barnes," Although it should be noted that Celino carried it most of the way and Barnes just sat there like a lox. If I had ever known how annoying it was to have all this stuff brought to me, I would have gone out there and gotten it myself. If you're starting a new company, just go ahead and name it "Strike Three, Inc." And someone will be obligated to plug you 9.4 times every game.

     The Yankees announcer is John Sterling, whom I like, but he has an annoying habit of guessing what the outcome of the play is going to be before it actually happens, and being wrong an astounding amount of the time. "That ball is HIGH, it is FAR, it is... caught in shallow center field." Turns out it wasn't that high and it wasn't that far. Does this guy realize that we can't actually see what's going on, so he could wait until the play has been decided, and then describe what happened much more accurately? If he wanted to he could watch the game on TV and broadcast it from his bathtub, and we wouldn't know the difference.

     When one of the Yankee players hits a home run, Sterling spouts forth with a couple of nifty rhymes extolling the player, making a play on words from his name. He has a different call for each player, and he uses the same one every time. It's the kind of thing that society has passed by without our even knowing it. People think it's corny, people think it's goofy, and so do I. And I wish there was more of it going around. That's what nostalgia does to you, I guess.\

     "This broadcast may not be reproduced or re-transmitted in any form without express written consent." We'll see about that. I plan to reproduce it in gaseous form and see if anyone notices. Or maybe liquid form, and as long as we're on the subject of liquid forms, I'm going to crack myself a beer- there's a game on.

LAWN ORDER

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (05-10-18)

      The weather finally lightened up enough for me to plant this damn grapevine seedling that I got from Home Depot two months ago. "That thing's dead," my wife said. "They've been saying the same thing about Abe Vigoda for the last ten years, and who's having the last laugh now?" I countered. "Yeah, well, he's dead, too," she said. "Really?" I said. "He still looks the same as he always did."

      This is the time of year when I suffer from "greenish envy" from looking around at everybody's lawn on my street, and realizing that mine looks like an abandoned excavation area that may eventually become a Superfund site. And every year I foolishly think things are going to be different this time. I don't want to sound like an idiot when my neighbor Paul strolls over to get a look at my lawn, so I've been researching some cutting edge technology to impress him, starting with the fertilizer. I heard of a young couple raving about in vitro fertilization, so I've got my eye on that. 

      Last year I was pulling weeds from my lawn, the ones that look like tiny bouquets with a single white flower that comes out of the top. "You gotta wack that with the 'weed and feed,' Paul said. "You're gonna be there all day." "You don't understand," I answered. "This time it's personal. I want each of them to see the look on my face when I do what must be done" I hate this particular weed more than any other. When the coroner's report came back it turned out that I had strangled each one of those weeds to death and then stabbed it 17 times in a classic case of overkill.

      Two weeks later I had a free Saturday, and I re-seeded the lawn, spread the fertilizer and did everything all in one shot. I figured this would bring my front yard right into line with everybody else's, and I would be the hero of the neighborhood, the Lawn Ranger. "You didn't put down 'weed and feed,' did you? You're going to kill the grass seeds." Instead I'm a landscapegoat. I'm like human Agent Orange.

      I went back to the yard store. "Isn't there something something that can kill just the weeds without harming my grass seedlings?" I asked the guy with the overalls. If there's anyone who would know what to do with my lawn, it's a guy wearing overalls. "You mean 'SMART weed and feed?' That can eliminate the broadleaf weed, like your chickweed, your clovers, your spurges but not the grasses, like your fescue or your bluegrass?" "YES!" I screamed. "That's what I want!" "Oh I don't know of any product like that."

      My wife tells me we should just hire a guy to do the landscaping, but there is a certain satisfaction in doing it yourself. Whenever I see my neighbors out at their pool while some stranger mows their lawn, I think of what an empty, shallow life they lead. At least maybe I should get a riding mower, but I know that I'm the one that's going to get taken for a ride in the showroom. If I hear the phrase "cockpit" just ONCE, I'm out of there. And do I seriously need a GPS?

      There's something burrowing around in the yard. There are all these tunnels, and they seem interconnected. I think there might be a subway system down there that didn't go through the proper channels of approval. Is it a mole? I need someone who can go down there infiltrate the underground and secretly try to gather information. What I need is a mole.

      I get the feeling that the neighbors are embarrassed by my lawn, but they've never said anything to my face. It's unlikely that I'll hear anything through the grapevine- I think that thing is dead.

BETWEEN THE COVERS

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (05-03-18)

     Last weekend the Somers Library held a used book sale, and the reason I mention it is because I never want to see the day when people say, "Wow! A used book sale! I wonder what they used them for?" I truly believe that a book is by far the best value of any commodity in history. In every novel there is art, culture, entertainment and history. If you're a lover of the arts you could buy Jackson Pollack's "No. 5, 1948" for about 150 million bucks. OR, you could let my dog produce something similar for free by drinking her water too fast, then spend one dollar at the book fair on "To Kill a Mockingbird," and change your life forever.

     Someone once told me that I seem to know very little about a lot of subjects. I took this as a compliment, and It's true that I do read a lot. I only read fiction, however, so I know a lot of things that other people made up. Which is better than nothing. My love for reading blossomed in the fifth grade, and I directly blame Mrs. Moyantshef, my teacher, for getting me interested in this time-consuming hobby. Every day she read out loud to us from the book, "The Phantom Tollbooth." It captured my imagination, which is still held hostage to this day, tied up in the basement, barely subsisting on a diet of nouns, verbs and adjectives. And now my den is a library of over 1500 titles, and I have read them all. The titles, not the books.

     I'm kind of a slow reader. My mind wanders, and it doesn't always tell me where it went. Sometimes I read the same page two or three times, to see if anything has changed. But eventually I get through the book, and that experience is a partnership between the writer and myself. The writer does the easy part, putting down a bunch of words on a page. I'm the one who does the casting, direction, wardrobe, lighting and set decoration. It's a lot of work but a labor of love.

     For those of you who e-read e-books on an e-reader, you're e-missing out on something. We live in a fast-paced society, one of instant gratification and short attention spans. Reading a book seems like an archaic waste of time by modern standards. But there are very few achievements in life that are as gratifying as the ones you have to work for. I once saw a picture of Michelangelo's mural on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The picture was nice, but when I finally braved the traffic and the lines to see the Sistine Chapel in person, it was totally different than what I expected. The scene was smaller and more intimate, and there was complete reverential silence, except for a security guard screaming at the top of his lungs every four seconds, "NO PHOTO! NO VIDEO!" Whoever snapped that picture that I saw must have done it in three seconds flat and then ran like hell.

     But I can read the writing on the wall, because it's the one time I don't need my glasses. The future's going to start slowly, insidiously: the e-reader is going to offer you a dictionary definition of words that it predicts that you might not know. You'll click on the word, and BOOM, through the magic of the internet, you now know the meaning of "life," or whatever word you clicked on. Maybe there will be a picture there too. Maybe a video, or an ad. All of a sudden you're online, just like always, algorithms telling you things you already know. And the raw experience of reading has been cheapened and homogenized by the erosion of your mind's ingenuity (Snow White and Sleeping Beauty showed up in the same gown! Who wore it better??). You will become the passive spectator of this amazing experience instead of its architect.

     So keep reading, read an actual book, read an actual newspaper, support real creativity wherever it lies. And if you come across a word that is abstruse, you can look it up in the dictionary the old-fashioned way, like I just had to.