FINAL CUT APPROVAL

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (04-26-18)

     I get a haircut about twice every year, once on my 401K when the stock market goes kablooey, and once on my head when my hair starts to transition from its Bon Jovi phase into its Foghat phase. I used to get it cut at a barber shop, but one of my co-workers years ago convinced me to "invest in myself," which as a long-term strategy has shown little return. She browbeat me into going to a Vidal Sassoon shop in the city, and the results were disastrous, when I came out looking like a cross between one of Charlie's Angels (not one known for her great hairstyle) and a Papillon. But I settled on a salon, and now a very nice fellow named JD styles my hair.

     The receptionist there waves me on to the shampoo girl, and it's obvious from her look that she remembers that I didn't tip her last time, so she tries to butter me up. She asks me if I want a drink, and I wonder if they have anything alcoholic besides me. Why should I tip her for washing my hair when it's only going to end up all over the floor anyway? She asks me is the water too hot, how do I like the music, and how am I doing today. All of a sudden I'm on a date with my shampoo girl, and I picture us with clean hair, holding hands, running with scissors.

     I don't even need a shampoo; I just washed my hair last night at the gym. The shampoo they have there is called "green tea and lemongrass." I like the smell, but what weird agricultural accident caused those two ingredients to come together? I can imagine the scene in the R & D department over at the shampoo factory. "Smell this. What do you smell? It's called 'kale and lingonberries.'" "I smell lingonberries." "You don't smell the kale?" "Kale has no smell." "Yes, but it brings out the lingonberries." "You don't need to bring out lingonberries, they're already out. If anything, you need some poisonous mushrooms to rein them back in. Wasn't Schneiderman working on that?" "Yes, well, he passed away...." I don't use hair conditioner at the gym. What if it smells like mint? Then I have to spend the entire rest of my shower joking to myself that my hair is in mint condition, and I have to get on with my life.

     I pass a little time by bantering with my hairstylist. I tell him to cut only the gray hairs, then I tell him to give me the same look as Trump, etc. He laughs in a foreign accent, but I'm careful not to say anything REALLY funny, because if he starts cracking up he might snip off my ear. The same thing happened to Vincent Van Gogh, mystery solved.

     Have you seen these 20-year old kids who are dying their hair gray? It's actually pretty smart, because in 50 years no one is going to know exactly when they got old. If they REALLY want to be brilliant, they should get a hip replacement and start complaining about the loud music and blur the generation gap.

     JD starts rooting around inside my ear with an electric trimmer. "What are you in there for, I don't have any hair there," I complain. "If you say so," he says. I add, "If there's anything in there, it's probably from the cat. That cat hair is all over the house. I even have cat hair on my car seat." "You shouldn't let your cat drive your car," he says in a different accent than before.

     When he's done he asks me if I want any product in my hair, and I tell him it depends on the product. Product 19 is a cereal, for instance, and it's the most boring cereal on the planet. Can you imagine what the other 18 products that they rejected tasted like?

     I can see that my visit has started to put the place on edge. I make a mental note to start tipping everybody. This time I tip the stylist, the receptionist, the shampoo girl, the building security guard and also my cat.
 

SAVING THE PLANET

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (04-19-18)

     April 22nd is Earth Day, and to help kick things off, my friend Margaret will be running the annual Somers Recycling Day on Saturday, the 21st from 9:00AM to 2:00PM at the Somers Intermediate School. Electronics, old appliances and even scrap metal will be accepted. Mike and the boys from City Carting will be there, along with Flo, and my wife will be helping out as well. Supervisor Morrissey may even stop by.

     Your donation of $5.00 per car will help the PTA support school functions like guest speakers, scholarships, programs and trips, so bring your permission slip. Back in my day if you had a permission slip you could do just about anything, and nobody took much notice of you after that thing was signed. I would just cross out "Hayden Planetarium" and write in "McSorley's Ale House" and inform the bus driver of the change in plans. But kids, I'm not recommending that type of behavior, because your parents had a GPS tracking device surgically implanted into you after you were born. Scared you, didn't I?

     Anyway, I bet you have a bunch of stuff lying around your house that you don't use. That iron sitting around in the laundry room? I'm looking at your shirt and it's obvious that it has never seen the light of day. I have this gazebo thing with a bunch of metal poles, and that big nor'easter blew it down and mangled everything up. I'd like to make some kind of artistic piece out of it if I was a sculptor, but then again, NO. So I'm bringing it over on Saturday.

     As a planet I know we can do better. We don't want Earth to turn out like Uranus, now do we? My wife was telling me that she read an article about how just a little thing like drinking straws are cluttering up land fills all over the place. Every time we go to the diner we order a drink, and it comes with a straw that the waitress has conveniently removed part of the wrapper from. My wife takes her straw and blows the rest of the wrapper at me. I take my straw and blow my wrapper at her, which flies over to the next table and lands in the soup of a big biker dude. For the privilege of almost getting beat up, we are mucking up the planet with a bunch of junk that nobody really needs.

     I'm doing my part for Earth Day every day, and so should you. I re-use my razor when I shave at the gym, bring it home and scrape it a couple more times over my pathetic excuse for a beard. That's not recycling, you say, you're just a cheapskate. Yes, but how do you explain the fact that I take my cardboard tray from breakfast all the way across the street and use it for lunch? Is it because I'm cheap AND weird? So was Albert Schweitzer, for all I know, and he was hailed as a modern-day hero. I'm certainly not asking that you hail me as a modern-day hero, but it would be a nice gesture.

     I even recycle my old jokes. I don't think it does anything for the environment, and in fact some of my material is probably poking a hole in the ozone layer as we speak. I would like to recycle the funniest thing I ever said for you right now, but it's definitely not suitable for a family publication. The joke involves me, Marlo Thomas and her plastic surgeon, and the funniest thing about it is that no one but me would think that it's funny, with the possible exception of Marlo Thomas's plastic surgeon. So join us on Saturday, and bring a car full of crap. I'll be there at noon with Gidget, the world's cutest dog. It will cost you $5.00 to clear out your car, $5.25 if you want to hear the joke.

A POCKETFUL OF CHANGE

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (04-12-18)

     So they renovated the locker room at my gym, and switched everything around. Now, I know that might not seem like a big deal to you, but for those of us with CAS, it can be life-threatening. Change-Averse Syndrome is an affliction that makes every little variation in life distasteful. I just made it up, but I would bet you 10 bucks that it really exists. Evidence: I've had the same wife for 30 some-odd years (to be honest, most-odd), I've worked at the same television network for 37 years, belonged to the same gym for decades and had the same hairstyle since the Byzantine Empire. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

     I don't deal well with change, and it's not always my fault. Often the thing the rest of the world is changing to doesn't seem better to me. Those of us with CAS use the word "new-fangled" to describe things that have been updated and modernized, when they were fangled just fine before. I once had 386 computer with 20 MEGS OF HARD DRIVE! This thing was cutting-edge, and just when I finally figured out how to switch it on, the 486 computer came along and I was back to square one. Even now, a pop-up screen flashes onto my computer monitor, telling me that they have upgraded and improved the very program I am trying to use. The major improvement they made is that I don't know how to use it anymore.

     I only drink Coors Light beer. Perhaps you didn't know, but it's made with "Rocky Mountain spring water." Which is among the most polluted water on Earth, due to the strip mining in Colorado. My friends look at me with disdain and disgust because I won't try their IPA. "Why don't you sample my winter-brewed, blueberry, black and tan, limited-edition, double-overhead cam amber ale?" It turns out there was only one of them produced so I can't try it even if I wanted to.

     Anyway, this situation at the gym is messing up my routine. Where did they put the scale? Usually I jump on and check my weight before I hop in the shower so I don't feel tempted to fudge the results. Then I subtract five pounds for my watch and two pounds for the locker key I wear around my neck. The the final tally still seems a little high, but I think the scale is made in a foreign country, and probably measures in kilometers.

     They put in new overhead showers that rain straight down on you, which I find annoying. There's also still the traditional shower, but that overhead thing never turns all the way off. I feel like I'm being water-boarded, and by the end of my shower I'm starting to crack under the pressure. I'm yelling out secrets that never would have come out except under torture. "I LIKE BARRY MANILOW!" I echo through the locker room. Not ALL of the songs that make the whole world cry, of course, but enough to get me kicked out of my rock band if anyone knew.

     I shave right in the shower to save time. I don't need to look in the mirror, because my beard only grows in certain places on my face, and I know just where my face is so I can narrow it down from there. Why I can't get a full beard growing? It looks a little patchy, like my lawn, only with fewer chipmunks. My neighbor Paul thinks I should cut down a couple trees and get more sun, but I'm not sure if he's talking about my lawn or my face.

      So if all this sounds good to you and you're tired of doing different things all the time, and you're looking for a change, why don't you try things my way for a little while? Or forever? Because once you're on my team you won't be going back, fair warning.

STOP THE MADNESS

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (03-29-18)

     March Madness seems to be getting madder and madder each year, and there's going to come a time at which the whole month is given a full mental evaluation and finally committed to psychiatric institution. It's no secret that March is bipolar. One day it's acting like a lion. The next day it's acting like a lamb. Baaa, I say. We celebrated the first day of spring with a nor'easter, so stick that in your generator and smoke it. Add the NCAA tournament into the mix and it's clear that March is off its meds.

     Did you fill out your brackets? This year, in the opening round, for the first time in the tournament's history, a number 16 seed beat a number 1 seed, and 99.9% of everyone in the United States threw their bracket sheet into the garbage can. The other .1% were the Moms of the players on UMBC, a fine academy of learning that I first thought was one of those cable news networks that Trump swears he doesn't watch, then tweets about nonstop on the verge of tears for an entire weekend. 

     The rest of us knew that UMBC would be eliminated the next week. If not in the tournament, then certainly by angry bookies who lost zillions. UMBC was the "Cinderella" team, this year's media darlings. Every year the question looms, "Who will wear the glass slipper?" Without once mentioning how dangerous it is to wear glass slippers if you plan to dance anything more complicated than a minuet. Plus, a glass slipper is REALLY uncomfortable and everyone can see your band-aids right through it.

     Not all of the action is on the court. Some of the more interesting battles in the tournament are contested on the sidelines, between the school mascots. Have you ever seen a Horned Frog get into it with a Gamecock? Neither have I, but it sounds like one of those videos my wife sends me on Youtube. That clip where the wildebeest befriends a baby duck, patting it on the head? What they don't show you is that right after the video ends the wildebeest swallows the baby duck in one gulp, and the patting part was actually him applying salt and pepper.

     CBS network has run into some criticism for training their cameras on children in the stands crying because their team is losing. The executive producer defended this practice in an interview, saying over and over, "We try to strike the right balance." One kid was crying so hard, he looked absolutely balance-stricken. This has led to a whole new trend of over-zealous stage moms stomping on their kids' feet at the end of close games to get them on TV. One kid was bawling his eyes out and his team wasn't even playing that day, turns out the kid is just a whiner.

     You want something to cry about? I'm six-foot two and I can't dunk the basketball. Every time they went to pick teams in middle school I would get picked first because of my height, only to reveal that I while could escort the ball into the general area of the basket, its exact location was kept a secret from me. I would have made all the foul shots if anyone would have made the slightest effort to foul me. By the way, I see this all the time: the kid misses the free throw, and all his teammates slap his hand, thereby rewarding his behavior. I have a dog, and if I gave it a treat every time it bit the mailman I'd never get any mail, and I'd still have a dog with a horrible free throw percentage.

     But in the end, it's all good. The losers are vanquished and the winners are extolled, and they climb up on a ladder and cut down the net, ruining the court for everyone else. In the city they make the nets out of metal, so you have to bring a Milwaukee Sawzall and an extension cord if you want to cut down the net, and if you try that crap in New York, the cops will be waiting to help you celebrate your victory at the arraignment.

THE POWER PLAY

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (03-22-18)

     I got a phone call from George Latimer last week, he is the Westchester County Executive. I wasn't home so he left a lengthy, rambling message, and man, he sounded pissed! Apparently he was angry about all the blackouts, and he must have been right in the middle of making toast or something when his power went out. He was rattling on about how all the top brass at the utility company should step down, which is why you should always have your office in the basement. The next message on my machine was from the lady at NYSEG. "Did Latimer just call? If he calls again, tell him we're working on it as fast as we can."

     My first thought was somebody should get on this RIGHT AWAY. Not the power situation, but the fact that we only have ONE executive. This is a big county, and we should have two or three executives, and maybe a more specific job description. "Executive" sounds more like a pay grade than a job title.

     Our lights went out the day before we were supposed to leave for our little getaway trip to the Dominican Republic. I was praying that our generator would start, we hadn't used it in a while. I recall my neighbor Paul telling me that I should pour some kind of additive into the gas so it wouldn't go bad, but was it every year or every ten years? I was going to split the difference and add something in five years when I could be sure that I wouldn't remember.

     Was it too late to add it now? I looked around the garage for something to add to the gas, but all I found was a gallon container of a fluid that looked like an avocado margarita. I didn't want to waste that on the gas, so I just started the generator and hoped for the best.

     I felt a little guilty for those who don't have a generator. My friend Margaret texted us and said, "I guess getting a price on a generator is not exactly the same as getting a generator...." These are the unfortunate people, the ones who say, "We are doing GREAT! It's forcing us to enjoy some family time TOGETHER!" It's family time where everyone gathers together in the living room near the fireplace, sullen and silently seething that they can't log on to their computers. What if Katy Perry and Marilyn Manson showed up to the iheartradio awards wearing the same gaudy yet understated Valentino gown? How in the name of all that is holy are we going to know who wore it better? What if something very deeply private and personal happens to Kim Kardashian that she doesn't want to share with anyone, and because we have no power, she is unable to share it with everyone?

     Uh-oh, just as I was going to write something about Trump my light bulb started to dim. That means, among other things, that the generator is running out of gas. I'm a little embarrassed to say this, but I don't know how to operate the gas can. It used to be that you would unscrew the top of the can, and inside would be a spout that you would transfer to the outside and re-screw the cap, and you could get on with spilling gas all over the place. But it's not that simple anymore, due to all the innovations in the gas can industry. Now there is all this bizarre infrastructure built into the inside of the spout to prevent you from mistakenly getting the gas from the can, where it is safe, to the generator, where who knows what could happen? Somewhere buried in the text on the side of the can, written in 6-point type, are instructions on how to break into the gas can and extract the gas.

     Instead, I take a 1/2-inch spade bit and drill a hole into the spout with my power drill, after first throwing it across the garage. I re-screw it onto the can, and fill up the generator. Gas spills all over the place from my new modified gas can spout, and it seems like things are back to normal; I shouldn't have gotten so angry at an innocent gas can.

     Feeling better, I left a phone message for Latimer to get a grip on himself and try to calm down. Maybe do some breathing exercises. My Mom used to tell me to count to ten before doing anything rash, and because of that simple rule my skin has stayed relatively clear. It's something I've always lived by. Sometimes my wife asks me, "Why do you always count to three before you do something rash?"

STRANGER THAN PARADISE

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (03-15-18)

     I don't want to sound like I'm gloating, but while you were wondering when your power was going to return, I was gallivanting off to the beach in the Dominican Republic. Right now I don't want to make light of a situation where people have no lights. But I heard there was a bombogenesis coming, and that Phil Collins wasn't touring with it, so I hightailed it out of there. We landed in Punta Cana and checked into a beautiful, all-inclusive island resort.

     Our first stop was the beach. I was nursing a drink, just what the doctor ordered. You can't drink the water in Punta Cana, a situation that didn't come up once at the tiki bar.
     I'm not very good with Spanish, but I do speak some rudimentary English. When I was in the fourth grade, my teacher, Mrs. Fritschler made us learn how to count from one to ten in Spanish. So even though I can't tell you what anything is in the Dominican Republic, I can tell you how many of them there are. For everything else I just added an "o" to the end of it and hoped for the best. "Food-o American-o?"

     When I couldn't figure out how to say something I launched into an impromptu game of "charades." I wanted to find out where the coffee was, so I tried to mime the act of picking the coffee beans during the harvest, getting the best price for them amid an ever-changing commodities market. The whole thing took about a half an hour, and at the end of my presentation I couldn't remember what it was I wanted.

     The buffet was great, although the food was rarely hot. Ironically, the sun, the music and the women were all hot. If they had only left the food near the sun, the music and the women I would have nothing to complain about, which is probably not true.

     I guess I didn't look at the calendar before booking the trip, and it fell smack in the middle of Spring Break. All of a sudden a bus rolled up and there were about a hundred 20 year-old girls. They had gathered at the bar to enjoy each others' company, which they did by not looking up once from their cellphones. Then they started snapping pictures of their drinks. Since the line was so long to get them, I guess they could enjoy them for a few minutes more this way. A lot of them were wearing sunsuits, and my wife and I had an argument about whether this look was flattering or not. I only saw the sunsuits at night, when the chances of the sun coming out were greatly diminished.

     In the evening they had a show at the theater. They choose four or five couples from the audience, a good cross-section: old, young, crabby, nice, skinny, round. Then they try to get you to do something embarrassing with the other couple's spouse. We used to have a name for that, it was called the '70s.

     The disco didn't even open until 11:30, but I already had my nap so I was good to go. Latin music has a lot of percussion in it, and the beat is infectious, so I brought along some antibiotics. Also, the car horn is an actual instrument, so what passes for a traffic jam at home is just a jam here. One song was playing everywhere we went, you couldn't escape it. From what I could gather, the plot involved a Ford Pinto, a senorita, a pinata and a mojito. I can't imagine that it had a happy ending. The DJ played a number called "The Roof is On Fire," and in the Caribbean, that is considered an official Fire Department notification.

     All too soon, our little getaway was over. As the plane home was taxiing toward the runway, the glow of our trip was still with me. I would always have fond memories of our trip to Punta Cana, but because alcohol was included with the package, I'm damned if I can remember what any of them were.

CALLING ALL PITCHERS AND CATCHERS

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (03-08-18)

    In early February, from somewhere deep in Florida, near the principal's office, a call comes out over the PA system: "Pitchers and catchers please report as soon as possible!" And from all over the land, they drop what they're doing and head to the Sunshine State, the only people under 50 to arrive in large numbers without their grandparents first complaining that they don't visit enough. The long baseball season has begun.

    I see this annual event as a more significant weather harbinger than Groundhog Day. When I hear that pitchers and catchers have reported for spring training I feel that warm weather is truly on its way. I start to picture myself lying in the sun on the beautiful black beaches of Santorini. I'm not sure why I was lying that day, I should have simply told the truth. By the way, have you ever been on the beautiful black beaches of Santorini? The Aegean Sea looks so inviting that you kick off your sandals and stroll toward the gently lapping waves. Then you smell something burning, and you realize that it's your feet. The black volcanic stones have absorbed most of the sun's heat. With no fire extinguisher handy, you sprint the remaining 15 yards in three steps, and steam billows out of the water. As a team-building exercise this coal-walking was a failure, since the rest of my team was laughing at me from the beach chair.

    The second day of spring training the Northeast gets three feet of snow and I'm jolted back into the reality of  6 more weeks of winter. The weatherman was kind enough to say that the snow blanketed the area, which made it seem a little cozier and preserved my little fantasy.

    This year, as in every other year, they are trying to speed up the game to make it more palatable for younger viewers, who only go to a baseball game so that they can Snapchat themselves at a baseball game. Since the most interesting thing for them is the Snapchatting part, if they really wanted to be honest with themselves they would Snapchat themselves Snapchatting and make all their friends jealous.

    To make the game go faster, starting last year you only had to tell the umpire that you were intentionally walking somebody and POOF, they were on first base. If they want to save even more time, they can institute a rule proclaiming that any Yankee batter with a 3-and-0 count is automatically out. It happens every time: the pitcher throws three straight balls, and I get all excited that something is going to happen. Then the manager calls a "take" on the next pitch, which is an automatic strike. The 3-1 pitch is fouled off, and the next pitch is a called strike three. I've already predicted the whole sequence to my wife, who looks amazed, not at my prognostication skills, but that she's still married to me.

    You can put a backwards "K" on your score sheet for the strikeout. If you're scoring at home, congratulations, especially at your age. You used to get a scorecard when you bought a program, if they even still have programs. Your Dad would teach you how to write in the outcome of each at-bat for each player. Thus, you were able to miss the entire game while your Dad ate most of the Cracker Jacks.

    If you have a calculator, and you don't feel like actually watching the game, you can crunch the numbers and figure out if your players are any good or not. RBIs, ERA? No one cares about them any more. What is his OPS? That's his on-base percentage plus slugging average. What is his RISP? Runners In Scoring Position. These don't seem like "vital statistics." I can take them or leave them. Kate Upton has vital statistics. Baseball players just have a bunch of numbers that only add up to something meaningful a third of the time, and that's if he's a Hall-of-Famer. Someone asked me if I had seen Sonny Gray's WHIP. I said I hadn't seen it but he may have left it in the dungeon. Actually, it's none of my business.