THE REPLACEMENT REFS

They have finally reached a deal to replace the replacement referees in the National Football League, and NO ONE is more upset about this than I am. I was watching the game on Monday night, and the calls by the officiating crew at the end of the contest were so comical that I actually laughed out loud. I was guffawing! I woke up the cat, the dog and the eel, which may have already been awake; it’s hard to tell. Good comedy is hard to come by on network TV, and this was good.

It was the last play of the game, and Seattle was down by 5 points since Green Bay had tried an unsuccessful 2-point conversion earlier. You have two choices in that situation: 1.) you can go for a running play where you combine the games of “Keep Away,” “Hot Potato” and “Kill the Carrier.” The person with the ball waits until he is about to be hurt very badly, then throws the ball at the last minute to someone else who notices that he is also about to suffer bodily harm, and this goes on for ten or fifteen minutes while the team with the ball moves steadily in the wrong direction, since you are not allowed to throw the ball forward, only backward. Or, 2.) try a “Hail Mary” pass, where you throw the ball 50 yards into the end zone, where 20 people have gathered to try to catch the ball, some not even on the team.

If you are a person named “Mary” sitting in the bleachers you stand a statistically equal chance of catching the ball for a touchdown as anyone on the field, given a margin of error of three percentage points.

So the quarterback makes his desperate heave, and everyone queues up in the end zone to try to catch it. Everyone is there except the two replacement officials, one of whom is doing his taxes and the other is watching a cat video. Meanwhile as the ball is in the air, the players are all engaging in bad behavior. There is some name-calling, some pushing, some disorderly conduct, some aggravated assault, and even some on-line bullying and troublesome tweets. NONE of these things are allowed, and at the last minute the Seattle player simply shoves the defender out of the way while one of the referees is busy lining up three beanbags. The offending Seahawk doesn’t even catch the ball with more than one hand and part of his chin. The Green Bay guy has two hands and an ear on it for the apparent interception, and they hit the ground like a pair of Siamese twins. Ten players are on the ground with the twins trying to perform that difficult operation that may save their lives, where they extract the ball without anesthesia.

By this time the zebras have galloped into the area- one referee waves his arms over his head for a touchback, and the other hikes them straight in the air for a touchdown. Even as they are making these signals, they are two feet from one another, looking into each others’ faces and thinking, “YOU A-HOLE! You have just cost me an official’s job that I never officially had had!”

One year at the TV network where I work, the stagehands went on strike, and we management personnel had to fill in and do their jobs. We schlepped scenery, we dressed sets and we adjusted lights. I was told to man the catwalk, and I thought I was going to get to model something. We got yelled at by directors, lighting directors, and goofed on by Connie Chung.

We were useless enough, but I remember thinking, WOW- what a lot of pressure to be management personnel at a hospital during a doctors' strike. I just know I'm going to drop that goddamn gall bladder on the floor and look like a total dipshit. What about when the hookers go on strike? That is NOT going to have a happy ending.

The NFL during this infamous period has taken on the flavor of a high school math class with a substitute teacher. The players were all pushing the envelope of unacceptable conduct, trying to figure out exactly what they can get away with.

They held, they encroached, they ran into the kicker. Why would you run into a kicker? It's almost suicidal unless you run into him with your car on the way out of the stadium. They falsely started, they roughed the passer, and they illegally used their hands. Mind you, these football players aren't just flagged for using their hands against the rules of football; whatever they are doing with them is actually ILLEGAL! God only knows what mischief four fingers and a thumb can get into. They deliberately batted or punched a loose ball. Enough said there.

And they got away with just about all of it.

Whenever my high school had a teacher’s illness they would call upon the ever-vigilant Mrs. Levy, who seemed about 100 years old, but in reality was only 90-something. Usually if there was a substitute teacher you would just skip the class, but you would NEVER skip Mrs. Levy’s entertaining appearances; you might miss something good.

I remember one time we pulled the old “bee swarm” routine, where someone pipes up a subtle buzzing sound, and one-by-one the rest of the class picks up the cue, until an ersatz plague of biblical proportions engulfs the room. That was the day we found out that Mrs. Levy was pretty close to completely deaf. We continued to attempt other minor assaults on her remaining senses, and finally concluded that she was completely senseless. Still, you couldn’t get away with much. She seemed to have eyes in the back of her head, but it turns out her wig was on backwards.

Meanwhile, Green Bay refused to come back for the kicking of the extra point, and had to be coaxed out with a dog biscuit. The crowd was definitely abuzz, but it could have been the old “bee swarm” gag, who knows?

Incidentally, there have been many labor actions that have changed the course of history, and others, not so much. There was an actors’ strike in 2001, where those filling in the roles were only acting actors. In 2008 there was a communications strike in India. For one magic day, people could understand how to fix their computers. The city of Leeds in England saw a refuse workers strike in 2009. The city asked for them to come back to work but they refused.

CRUISING THE HUDSON (part II)

So where was I? Oh yeah- the wife and I went on our annual Fourth of July boat ride to historic Newburgh, New York. The holiday fell on a Wednesday this year, so we went the weekend before. Why can’t we always observe the Fourth of July on that Monday, so that we can take a long weekend and celebrate the birth of our nation the way our forefathers did: drunk?

We packed up the bikes and the Cookie-dog and motored up the river. We passed under the Bear Mountain Bridge, cruised by West Point and lingered near Pollepel Island, where the majestic ruins of Bannerman’s Castle dominate the landscape.

My wife noticed an inordinate amount of mud churning around the back of the boat. “Is that supposed to be there?” she asked. “Beats me- could be something down there causing that disturbance, maybe a flock of eels or something.”

Turns out it was our propeller, looking around for a rock to hit. It found one, our starboard propeller was cooked, and we had to limp into the marina at Newburgh on one engine at about one mile an hour. Finally at the Newburgh Yacht Club, we were told that because it was low tide, we wouldn’t be able to get into the slip. I assured him that whatever was on the bottom of our boat wasn’t there any more, possibly including the bottom of our boat.

By this time my wife and my dog were not speaking to me, so they communicated with me by Morse code, tapping out messages on my head with the fisherman’s gaff. Once in the slip our neighbor, kind enough to lend us the electrical cord we had forgotten, pointed to the side of the boat, where water was cascading out a small hole.

My wife saw him pointing, and, still a little on edge, politely asked, “WHAT! WHAT! WHAT! WHAT?” He said, “Your bilge pump is running.” “Is that good or bad????” “Depends,” he said. “Good that it’s running. Not so good it’s running right now.” “HOLY CRAP WE’RE TAKING ON WATER!” I yelled, and prepared to abandon ship by walking over to the vending machine. My wife accused me of going overboard, and my dog took a crap on the poop deck.

I pictured Gilligan’s boat sitting on the beach with a big hole in the bottom, and cursed myself for not thinking to bring a trunk full of money and a transistor radio. He said, “I think it’s just a puncture in your outdrive bellows- lower your propeller and you should be okay.”

Things were a little tense. I suggested we get some dinner and a few drinks, and possibly smoke some crack, and things would seem a little better with a clearer head. We went to Billy Joes’s Ribworks on Front Street, and after a couple cocktails I tried to lighten the mood with a joke or two. “Billy Joe’s Ribworks,” I said. “That’s more than I can say for our propeller.” That went over like a lead balloon. “Do you think that thing has sunk by now?” My wife asked, hopefully. “No, it’s low tide so it’s probably actually a couple inches higher than it was,” I assured her.

The next day we decided to chance the trip back to Cortlandt. We were in for a four or five-hour ride, chugging along on one engine. Even though it was sunny out, nasty weather was in the forecast, and a humongous barge was behind us. We had about 1/8 of a tank of gas, and now a headwind was picking up. I calculated that we had just enough fuel to make it to the narrowest part of the river just as the barge was positioned to overtake us before we ran out of gas in a thunderstorm.

We made it back to our marina, against the wishes of our marina.

The next day Dave and I went over to the boat to assess the damage. Ours is a “twin-screw” boat, which sounds like a hell of a lot more fun than it actually is. I said, “Dave, I think one of our twin-screws is screwed, so we’re going to need at least a screwdriver.” Dave sits in the engine compartment and looks over the motors. He calls out the names of tools and I hand them to him, like a nurse, only with more attractive shoes. “Pliers…. Phillips-head…. Hemostat….” If he asks for suction, I wonder what I would do.

The propeller was cleaned completely free of all three blades. Dave looked at the forlorn-looking item as if it was a dinosaur bone, muttering “I have never seen anything remotely like this….” Which I assume was a tribute to my thoroughness. All I could think was, thank god I wasn’t piloting a plane.



Incidentally, George Washington’s headquarters was located in Newburgh, at the Hasbrouck House, during the last days of the Revolutionary War. He announced the “cessation of hostilities,” which sounds kind of smelly, but actually just meant that the war was over. It was here also that George Washington received a letter from the officers of the army suggesting that he be installed as king of an American monarchy. Washington felt that this letter needed to be addressed, why, I don’t know, since it got to him. He quickly dispelled any such notion, replying that it would be one of “the greatest mischiefs that can befall my Country.” Plus he could make zillions of dollars on a speaking tour, and each one would have his picture on it.

OLYMPIC RECAP

I hope you are enjoying the Olympics as much as I am- I wish you could watch it here on my sofa with me. Sometimes I get so excited I can hardly contain myself, and I have to put some of myself into a different container.

From the opening ceremony I was hooked. The spectacle of the lighting of the torch, the pageantry of the parade of nations, (warning: any time you hear the word "pageantry," you can hit the snooze alarm....).

If I was the President, which would be the best thing for this country, believe me, I would rename the country AAAmerica. That way, you're the first into the stadium and boom: you get a great seat right next to the third base dugout. Make yourself comfortable, fire up the grill, and let all the other nations parade around like idiots while you make a hot dog. By the time Vanuatu strolls in you'll be eating a Chipwich from the cooler for dessert.

Some of these countries- are they really legitimate countries when there is no Olympics? Djibouti, for instance, is only in it because people like saying the name out loud. Togo sounds less like a country than a dinner order. Micronesia is too small to be seen by the naked eye. Saudi Arabia had one athlete- shooting of course. The Syrians had a guy in the torture medley event. Trinidad never goes anywhere without Tobago- it’s embarrassing.

I got engrossed in the swimming, and I really wanted to root for this Ryan Lochte- fantastic athlete, huge dimple, seemed nice. Then he puts in these diamond dentures, and I thought to myself: INSTANT DOUCHEBAG! My sisters had shit like that in their mouths for two years and couldn't wait to get it out! The more I thought it through, I figured out that a bunch of diamonds in my mouth cut at sharp angles? You could devour a whole Angus steer carcass in 15 minutes, even medium well. You could puree a pesto on the side, and make crushed ice on demand for a margarita. Then I pictured a peanut butter sandwich, and the deal was off.

In the swimming events they just dive right in and no one says "Jesus Christ that is goddamn freezing!" Would the rest of the swimmers wait for me while I wade in a little at a time from the shallow end? I guess you are allowed to run by the pool all you want in the Olympics, I never once heard the lifeguard bust anybody's balls about it.

I was watching women’s weightlifting at a bar. I turned to a girl next to me and said, “Those Chinese girls have some snatch, don’t they?” Guess she didn’t think so.

The women’s track events had Muslim contestants for the first time, covered from head to toe. It's not really fair; these women are from countries where if you hear a gun go off you run REALLY fast just from habit.

I got sucked into the synchronized swimming again. I like the legs, but the smiles are disturbing. It’s the kind of pasted-on smile that bespeaks of a serious lack of oxygen. I swear it looks like these girls had to be heavily medicated to get them to do this. Whenever I see somebody wearing a smile THAT disingenuous, I usually have to shell out thousands for a new car. Which I cannot afford, since it’s only been four years since the last Olympics.

Someone told me that water polo is played on a seahorse, don't know if that's true or not. They didn't mention anything about Marco Polo.

I felt sorry that the guy with no legs didn't win his race, but they had him in the wrong events. I picture him on the trampoline, or maybe diving. Instant medal. It was the first time a guy from the Paralympics competed with prosthetic devices. The closest thing before that was a sprinter with fake boobs. She didn't win a medal, even though she had a great time. I think next year you will see a horse with those prosthetic legs in the jumping competition.

Those badasses of badminton were caught cheating by intentionally losing. Hey- if Chris or Jonas wants to throw me a match here and there at tennis, I promise no charges will be filed.

Watching the medal ceremonies made me so proud that we had a National Anthem that nobody knew all the words to. I can read lips, and athletes were "twilight's last gleaming" where they should have been "gallantly streaming." It got worse when I thought I saw some of the Lord's Prayer. One gal looked like she was singing the second verse to "Rocky Raccoon," and another guy, bits of "the Thong Song."

In a flash it was all over, and the closing ceremonies were upon us, meaning that I would have to go back to watching "The People's Court" every damn day. The highlight of the party was the reuniting of the Spice Girls. When I look back at all the great British rock & roll acts that might be reunited, the Spice Girls were right there on the list tied with Milli Vanilli.

Incidentally, the first Olympics in Greece was thought to take place in the year 776 BC. The pentathlon that year consisted of the broad jump, where the contestants leaped over several women from the audience; wrestling; foot race; javelin; and discus throw. The discovery of marijuana resulted in the invention of "ultimate discus." In the interest of reviving the games centuries later, Baron Pierre de Coubertin formed the International Olympic Committee in 1890, and the first modern Olympics were held in Athens in 1896. French and English are the official languages of the Olympic Games although extensive cursing can be done in German, Russian and Braille. The International Language of Love may also be used if rooming next to the Swedish volleyball team.

CRUISING THE HUDSON (part I)

Is there anything more relaxing than cruising your own boat up the majestic Hudson River? Yes: sitting inside a bunker in the mountains of Tora Bora as concussion bombs rain down around you.

There is an old adage that quips that the two best days of a boat-owner’s life are the day he buys the boat and the day he sells it. But what about all the magical days in between, when he has narrowly escaped death? Every day that I cheat the Grim Reaper (which happens more often than you might think, especially if we play Scrabble) is the best day of my life.

My friend Dave and I have co-owned this boat for 11 or 12 years. It’s a 1988 27-foot Carver yacht. Dave is an engineer, he knows about motors, systems, boating safety and rules of the sea. I bring to the table the skill of explaining to the insurance company why there is an uncharted shallow coral reef in the middle of the Hudson River.

My mental picture of a yacht is one of a large, pristine vessel with portholes and a small helicopter pad, a guy with a mustache and a captain’s hat at the helm (the fake helm; the real captain is piloting the boat from the bridge), with eight supermodels basking on the bow. These are girls who have had their actual bodies airbrushed free of any imperfections, and go “WOO-HOO!!!” while they shake their outstretched thumb and pinkie at me.

In real life, our boat leaks a little from the bottom and a lot from the top. Basking on the bow is mold. The craft is extremely sleek and streamlined, the result of me breaking off everything that stuck out even a little bit, over the years.

Yes, of course I saw the episode of Dick Van Dyke where Rob and his neighbor, Jerry the dentist, buy a boat together. Of course, Rob knows NOTHING about boats and screws everything up, and they crash the boat and he and Jerry the dentist have a falling out (don’t have a falling out while on a yacht by the way), and even Millie Helper has some disparaging words for Rob.

In real life I play the part of Rob, and Dave plays the part of Jerry. My actual neighbor, even though not involved in any way, insists on making a few comments about my nautical skills.

Learning to dock the thing was an experience in itself. In teaching me Dave was so patient, I wondered how he was able to remain calm. Looking back, I realize now that he was attracted to the comedy of the situation. There are no brakes on a boat, not even a friggin’ parking brake. As soon as the other boat owners could recognize my face at the controls they quickly abandoned what they were doing to take up their defense positions next to their boats. People who might have thought that they wouldn’t touch our boat with a ten-foot pole were forced to reconsider just to keep our vessel from broad-siding them. I could sense that Dave wished that we had purchased a submarine instead, where people couldn’t see me approaching without SONAR.

So I brushed up. I boned up. I honed my skills. I got a captain’s hat. The first thing I learned was how to tie a decent knot. A bowline knot makes an ironclad loop that will not slip. I practiced it everywhere in the house. It’s a great knot to know, but now I can’t lower the blinds. A fellow boater called out to me the other day and said it looked like we could do about 25 knots. I replied that I could do four, including both my shoes.

I learned where the life vests are located, under the driver’s seat. How they knew that I would be hiding there at the first sign of adversity is a mystery.

I learned what horn signals mean: three short blasts means you are going into reverse. Five short honks is a warning, meaning stay clear, you may not be sure what the danger is. Five short honks followed by a loud crash means: “Yup, just found out what the danger was.”

I learned what the flags on the boat mean. We keep a pirate flag ready in case we need to commandeer and board a jet ski, which looks like fun.

I learned what the buoys signify. The old saw, “red, right, return” means that the red buoys numbering higher should be on your right as you return to the harbor. This makes the liberal assumption that you will eventually return to the harbor.



Incidentally, a cabin cruiser is a vessel usually 24 to 40 feet long, with at least one sleeping area below and an area on the bow for sunbathing. Sometimes a larger one carries with it a small dinghy, a light craft for going ashore. Often the girl sunning herself on the bow is a little dinghy also.

THE BEAR IN THE GARAGE

I was sitting with the wife, cat on my lap, ranting about people with excessive tattoos trying to attract a disproportionate amount of attention to themselves without really doing anything intelligent or creative to earn it, or like bikers who ride extremely loud Harleys, or teenagers who blast the bass in their cars so that you can hear it three blocks away trying to make people look at them without providing any good reason to do so, and that’s why you should NEVER look, when I noticed that the cat was looking at me with rapt attention, as if I had a bunch of tattoos or a loud car stereo. The cat seemed to be thinking, “Yes! Right! You nailed it!”

This is the same cat who normally spends its time trying to create puncture wounds in hard to reach places, such as behind the couch. I looked back at it and it winked at me, so I realized that it might be yanking my crank. Humans are transparent; my wife she did a slight eye roll then “Yes, deared” me. But cats are an inscrutable lot, and my crank is much more easily yanked by them.

I enjoy playing with the cat; he likes strategic board games with a lot of game pieces. Sometimes we play a simple game where I just annoy the crap out of it, and it tries to bite the fleshy area between my thumb and forefinger, where it’s the most painful. Where did it learn this- are there a lot of animals out in the wild with a fleshy area there? I thought most animals don’t even have a thumb. This cat, angry that it does not itself have opposable thumbs, vehemently opposes mine. It is purring loudly when we play this game, which leads me to believe that a cat is happiest when it is trying to kill you.

Unlike a cat, other animals don’t want to hurt you, they just want to eat you. For instance, a snake doesn’t go for the fleshy area between your thumb and forefinger, it just kicks you in the balls and then swallows you whole. You know exactly what a snake just ate because it takes so long to digest. If you’re looking for that roast beef sandwich with a coke that you just bought at the deli, check the snake. There he is, looking up at the ceiling trying to avoid your eyes, with a big bulge in EXACTLY the shape of a roast beef sandwich and coke, traveling slowly down his body.

When I was looking for the possible Mountain Lion in my back yard that time, I never thought once that it would lunge at the fleshy area between my thumb and forefinger. I thought of the old adage, that the wild animal is more frightened of YOUR thumb and forefinger than you are of ITS thumb and forefinger.

I read that if you encounter a wild animal in the wild, you are supposed to open your jacket and hold it out by the sides, widening your profile so you can look more threatening. In my case I was wearing only swim shorts, but I figured that when I held the shorts open to widen my profile, the sound coming from me enduring a major-league wedgie would scare the thing off even before it looked at me.

The one thing you are not supposed to do is run, because the tiger will immediately think that you are going to get THE LAST piece of wildebeest at the cafeteria, and wants to get in the line before you.

Animals in general are becoming less fearful of humans. Did you see the video of the bear cub climbing around in someone’s garage? It scared the hell out of me, because there is so much crap in my garage, how would I even know if there are bears in there? My brother-in-law Jeff encountered a bear while napping in a hammock at his house in the Poconos. The bear gave him a look like, “Dude, you’re in my hammock,” but Jeff had already run into the house so fast that now there is a hole in the wall shaped exactly like him.



Incidentally, you should NOT try to suck the poison out of a snake bite. Because then it’s in YOUR mouth, and when the guy you sucked it out of slaps you on the back to thank you, you’re screwed. Instead, apply a tourniquet above the bite so that the poison does not spread through the bloodstream. If you must suck poison, suck the poison out of the snake itself- that would be a public service.

A REPORT FROM THE MOTHERLAND

On our recent trip to London I came to the realization that it would be much easier to point out all the differences between our two countries, but more rewarding to revel in our similarities. I choose the former, of course, since I don’t have all day over here.

The first thing is the language. I consider myself a student of English, about a C- average. Over there they have a different word for just about everything, so any knowledge of English is a waste of time. “Water closet” means the bathroom, and as a reminder, everything is smaller over there, so it may not be a walk-in closet. “Pissed” means drunk, not angry. Once I ran into an angry drunk and I had no idea how to describe him. “Fanny” means vagina- they don’t know whether they’re coming or going over there, enough said. Enough except for this: “bangers” means sausage, first sensible thing they said all day.

Currency is another tricky issue- the British pound cost us about a dollar sixty-five, not very friendly. The money itself is actually that much bigger, so it doesn’t fit into your wallet. The coins are fairly easy, a two pound coin is bigger than a one-pound coin, but all those little ounces or whatever they’re called don’t have any logical rhyme or reason, so you have to look closely to make sure you aren’t over-tipping. The bills all have a picture of either Queen Elizabeth or Harpo Marx, it’s tough to tell which without my glasses.

Of course driving on the right side of the road is something I missed very much over there, since I wasn’t in a car. There they drive on the WRONG side of the road, and almost ran me over about 50 times. Sometimes they actually had to chase me onto the curb to make it a close call. Spray painted onto the pavement at all pedestrian crossings is a sign that says, “LOOK RIGHT.” I tried about 10 different looks and settled on one that made me look witty, urbane and continental but I still was almost killed daily.

Fashion: girls here wear high heels, four to five inches, even if they are out jogging (no one jogs in London). Women are the same height standing or sitting down. Contrast with America, where people are often the same size lying down as standing up. All the men were wearing horn-rimmed glasses, and I have to say they did look smarter. I often see NBA athletes wearing fake glasses now at their press conferences, and it does NOT make them seem smarter, since you can still hear what they’re saying.

People don’t seem to have their noses buried in their electronic devices as much in London as they do here. I will never forget when I went to a New York bar one time and there were four girls sitting around a table, each one attentive only to her phone. I fantasized that they were texting each other: “Isn’t it great that we FINALLY got together?????”

People in London will come up to you and say something. I was startled by this odd practice, and it took me a while to get the hang of it. In New York if someone talks to you, it is often to ask if they can squeegee your windshield, even if you are walking. I’m used to being in my own little world. Even when I had just finished a major temper-tantrum at Heathrow Airport because there was NOT ONE sign telling us where to go when we got off the shuttle, and I was sulking in the corner, no less than THREE people came up to me and asked me if I was all right. Which made me feel even worse.

Mass transit in general was much cleaner and well-organized, other than Heathrow. The subway seats are cloth, something you couldn’t get away with here, because people need a place to put their gum. You can’t have any nice public furniture here in the U.S., because people draw penises on them. Americans will draw a penis on just about anything, and a person who is apt to draw a penis is never the same person who is great at art. Thousands of years from now when people are trying to decipher hieroglyphics in subway cars they will ask themselves, “Who is this guy with the big nose?”

History itself is something that Europe does awfully well. We visited the Tower of London, which was originally built in the 11th century when the Normans conquered England (there were many more people named Norman back then, so it wasn’t as embarrassing as it seems now). The Yeomen Warders (known as Beefeaters for no discernable reason) recount the comings and goings of various notorious kings & queens. I learned about King Henry VIII; my previous knowledge of his life was limited to the fact that he married the widow next door (she had been married seven times before). It’s a great place to take children, since the focus is on torture and death.

At the British Museum they celebrate centuries of British colonization resulting in the amassing of untold treasures of history. The exhibit on Mesopotamia was an eye-opener, especially since they apparently had the iPhone in 150 BC, eons ahead of their time. Ironically, they still do not have the iPhone II.

The weather wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. We went to Kew Gardens with our friend Mike, who is celebrating (if that’s the word) his and Jess’ first year anniversary living abroad. He is an expatriate now, just like Gertrude Stein, only taller. She was a broad too, obviously. Kew Gardens is in Queens in the States, and ironically it is the Queen’s in England, since it is a Royal Botanical Garden. There were more people saying the word “blooming” than there were plants actually blooming; instead it was like a really nice park. But since it is always cloudy and chilly they built a place called the Temperate House. It’s all glass and was probably sponsored by Windex. The indoor habitat gardens were also really neat, with some wonderful succulents. I just like saying that word, and I urge you to try it also. There was also a man-eating plant exhibit, and I tried to stick Mike’s finger down a pitcher plant. He almost took the bait, thinking there might be beer in it. There was a sign by the Venus fly traps that said, “Unless you are a slow-moving fly please stay away from me.” The same could be said by Nick Swisher in the outfield.

Everything is smaller in Europe. When our hotel room was discovered, during the Elizabethan Era, people were only four feet tall, having just finished evolving from cats. By the way, what an idiotic theory that is, that evolution. If people evolved from bugs, why are there still bugs? And why are there so many of them in our kitchen? And why did God consider it an improvement to have only two legs instead of six or a thousand, or not to be able to fly? I’m still angry about it. Hey at least we get to walk around erect.



Incidentally, the British Empire once reigned over one-fifth of the world’s population at the time, and at its height was over 70 feet tall. Begun in the late 1600s, the Empire had territories on six continents, with important colonies in India, America, Australia, Hong Kong, the Caribbean and many other locations around the world. After the end of World War II, Britain realized that it had spread itself too thin, and could not adequately defend all its holdings against internal and external pressures. In 1947 India was granted its independence, and throughout the next half-century Britain divested most of its peripheral interests, concluding with the independence of Hong Kong in 1997.

FOLLOW THE BOUNCING BALL

We are always looking for something different and interesting to do for a date on a Saturday night, a practice which I am ending right now. Why do you need to do something different all the time? Every time we go out to eat, as I am ordering my veal francese, someone invariably says to me, “Why don’t you have something different for a change?” Sometimes it’s even the busboy or someone from another table who says it. And I say, “Because I LIKE veal francese!” And the busboy says, “Well good luck because this is a Chinese restaurant.” Only he says it in Spanish.

Anyway Courtney & Bob from our double-date foursome had the bright idea to check out the new ping-pong place in Pleasantville, since they had a coupon. I don’t use a whole lot of coupons unless I’m on vacation and get one of those coupon books at the hotel. “10% off every large pizza.” Then I get the pizza and there is half a slice missing. You don’t usually get a coupon for anything good, like a home, or a Rolex, but in this case we jumped on the idea, since a night of ping-pong sounded like fun, and in all the years that I have visited Pleasantville, nothing unpleasant has ever happened to me there. Except I did get kicked out of a bar once, but since I was drunk even that was pleasant. This ping-pong place is co-owned by Will Shortz, who edits the New York Times crossword puzzle, so we figured we could be in for a celebrity sighting also.

What I did not realize until I got there was that this is NOT a ping-pong place. This is a Table Tennis Facility. Any time you walk into a Facility, you know they mean business. We saw a bunch of guys (there were no women) who looked extremely serious about Table Tennis. As we looked around at the tables, laughing and smiling, they looked upon us with disdain and scorn, and stuck us in the “dipshit area,” which is where they put the players who look like their balls might disrupt the other players, and you can stick your own joke here. My wife was wearing heels, which was a dead giveaway. The only sport played in high heels is women’s beach volleyball. Or did I just imagine that??

Immediately I could see that nothing I know about the game of tennis would translate to ping-pong. The net seemed ridiculously low for one thing, until the security guy came over and told me to get the hell off the table. We played mixed doubles, and it felt like good-natured fun for a while, one couple against the other. Then things started to get serious, and I got down to arguing every line call, like I do in tennis. Since we didn’t have instant replay I suggested we play the exact same point over, really slowly, and get another look at it.

I dusted off my famous “no-look” serve, where I cagily pretend to look off to the side where there is no earthly reason to look, and fire a ridiculously fast serve that barely clears the net and sails effortlessly past the opponents paddle. I banged the first five tries off the side of the table whereupon they bounced backwards and hit me in the nuts. This is the kind of harmless fun that always results in injury to me, and I knew I should have worn a cup or at the very least a bicycle helmet.

At that point who should walk over but Will Shortz. My wife recognized him immediately which impressed me for a few moments, until I realized that his photo does not actually appear anywhere in the New York Times, and she would have no reason to know what he looks like, other than that she might be stalking him. Guess what he was wearing? That’s right! Shorts! And a Sudoku tee shirt. Which led me to believe that he may be starting a clothing line. Shortz’ Shorts!

By force of habit I almost called him “Will Shortz, that Son-of-a-Bitch,” since I have never mentioned his name without the qualifying phrase. This is a guy who has made my life miserable every day for years, trying to stump me with his abstruse clues. Does the question mark at the end of the clue mean he is making a joke or is it part of the puzzle’s theme?

Before I could stop myself I asked him if he knew a four-letter word for Scandinavian goose. He made a face to Bob and Courtney as if to say, “No, but I know a four-letter word for ‘idiot.’” At least I refrained from asking him if Brian Eno has ever thanked him personally, and unless you do the Times puzzle every week you won’t know what I mean by that. He actually seemed willing to hang out and chat, and he played a few points with us. I wanted him to teach me how to put topspin on the ball, and he said that the pips on our paddles were not up to snuff. I hadn’t even considered the paddle pips before, and wasn’t sure if he was just yanking my crank. He told us that they were facing inward instead of outward, like the Gladys Night variety.

I gave him a gander at my patented “no-look” serve. “Ha!” I whispered to Courtney. “He didn’t even get a paddle on that one!” “It never hit the table!” She pointed out. “Even on YOUR side! You almost broke the fluorescent light!” After he blew about twenty past me I started with the name-calling, and he finally left.

We were late for our dinner reservation, but on the way out Bob noticed a ping-pong serving machine. We went over to check it out. Bob set it to “20,” not knowing what the number referred to. We switched it on, and it turns out the “20” meant “20 zillion MPH.” Before he could pick up a paddle the thing hit him five times in the forehead. He spent the next ten minutes hitting balls as fast as he could move the paddle, just in self-defense. They were coming so fast he couldn’t finish the sentence, “TURN THE GODDAMN THING OFF!” All he could get out was, “TURN…” so I kept turning around in 90 degree increments as I laughed my ass off. Finally I regained my senses and unplugged the thing, since I didn’t want to get too close to it. Everyone who had been playing before was at the front desk as we were leaving. They couldn’t have been nicer, wishing us a pleasant evening and inviting us to return any time, by which I could tell that they really meant, “Don’t ever come back here, at least without a pair of shorts and a Sudoku tee shirt. The heels can stay.”

Incidentally, ping-pong was originally played in England at the end of the Victorian Era, when people had a lot of time on their hands, and little to use them for. It was originally called “whiff whaff”, but since that sounded dumb they changed the name to the much more sophisticated-sounding “ping pong.” Europeans dominated the game in the early 1900s, but in the 1960s, Japan became the world champions, followed by the Chinese in the 1980s through to today. That started to change in 1988 with the introduction of table tennis as an Olympic game. The Olympic Committee is now also considering tag and see-saw.