NEW HOPE FOR AN OLD TRAVELER

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (08-16-18)

     As a public service to my readers I like to go to a place I've never been before, spend a couple days, see the sights and file a full report so you can decide for yourself if you want to go there. And since I'm not there any more, this would be a great opportunity for you to go. This time we visited New Hope, a quaint and historic borough in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, less than three hours away.

     Here, you can cruise Main Street and stop into some of the eclectic shops that feature vintage clothing, books and records. There's an art to this kind of thing, you can't just sell a bunch of peoples' old junk or nobody will come in. You have to curate it, and in case you haven't noticed, everything is curated these days. There are also plenty of great restaurants and of course places to go if you're thirsty and need to curate yourself a cocktail.

     At one bar they had kind of a musical jam going, and you could play with the band if you were willing to swear that you weren't horrible. I sat in on drums. I convinced the guys to play "Little Wing," which is basically a bunch of guitar solos with a couple verses tacked on, so it didn't take that much convincing. After a quick vote we even dispensed with the verses. One guy sitting in on the guitar spent about 23 minutes adjusting the guitar strap, so the total length of the song was about 42 minutes. If it had stretched past 45 minutes it might have seemed self-indulgent.

     New Hope is just a stone's throw from the town where Washington crossed the Delaware. That town is ironically named Washington Crossing. I looked in a history book, and Washington crossed the Delaware so many times they should have put up one of those yellow signs with a black silhouette of him so you would know to watch out in case he's at it again. I'm not really impressed by this as the maneuver of a military genius. He could have come over here to New Hope and walked across the Delaware in hip waders, it doesn't really look that deep. George Washington did a lot of weird stuff, like cutting down a cherry tree for no good reason. I'm not saying he definitely did it, but you never hear anyone else's name come up. If he wants to chop down a banana tree, be my guest because I hate bananas.

     A great thing to do here in New Hope is to bicycle along the Delaware Canal and Tow Path. It's 60 miles long but you don't have to do the whole thing in one day. It is super peaceful except for my constant jabbering, and there are great views of the river and abundant wildlife. Luckily there are no hills to mention, or I would have mentioned them by now. For someone who rides a bicycle every single day, I am deathly afraid of hills, the sight of which result in weeping and the application of smelling salts to both me and my bicycle. Along the way we saw a great blue heron, and also one that was not so great, and if you turn around at the second one you will have ridden about five miles. If you make it to the snapping turtle you went too far.

     You shouldn't miss a show at the Bucks County Playhouse. We took in a production of "42nd Street," and it was so professionally staged that I was wowed, and actually said "wow" several times. Practically the whole cast was singing and tap dancing from curtain to curtain, and even somebody who is not a great lover of musicals was entertained the entire time. It made me think of my Mom, who was always showing off her tap dance training at any opportunity. She was so light on her feet during this demonstration that the floor would shake, and me and my sisters would have to catch the dishes as they fell off the mantel before they hit the ground.

     So take a little visit to New Hope, spend a few days, and sneak out when your family is at breakfast. As you're driving away on Route 202 across the bridge, don't forget to snap an historically accurate picture of yourself crossing the Delaware. It worked pretty nicely for George Washington.

STOPPING THE PRESSES

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (08-09-18)

     Last week it was announced that the Daily News had laid off half its editorial staff. The parent company, the aptly named Tronc, Inc., explained that the layoffs were necessary in order to focus on its online media. If you plan to get all your news online, you probably know by now that the internet is a great place to find cat videos. Do you hear "laurel" or "yanni?" Did you happen to catch Chrissy Teigen's post-baby bikini body? So did I, but I wouldn't call it news.

     It's true, you can find news all over the internet if you search for it. And the more you search for it, the more the news seems to be all about you and your view of the world. And why are ads suddenly popping up for Chrissy Teigen's new post-baby bikini collection? The model that the importance of news is based on hits to a website is inherently flawed. If that remains the model, news will eventually only be about models.

     A newspaper is a wonder of modern technology. You grab it from your mailbox, open it up, and the news is right there- you don't have to search for it and figure out if the person who wrote the story has half a brain or not. At my house the paper lands halfway up our driveway and I don't even have to go all the way to the mailbox. So few letters are delivered into our mailbox lately that there is a wasp's nest there now. Actually, that might be the reason we get so few letters. I had the last laugh when I put four stamps on the nest, put the flag up then ran like hell into my house, locked all the doors and hid under the couch.

     Reading has always separated the informed from the uninformed. If someone comes along and tells you that they know more than everyone else, but doesn't read, you should be concerned. The people who don't know what they don't know are the most dangerous. "Wow, so let me get this straight- you know more than all the generals, and yet you never read a book? That's impressive sir, but how did you do it?" "I called up a few YouTube videos, and BOOM. There you go. AND I added 4 MPH to my tennis serve."

     Hey, I might not be a military genius but at least I know how to change the windshield wiper blades on my wife's car. How do I know this? From watching YouTube videos of course, but I still had to throw the wiper assembly across the garage to figure out exactly how it disassembles. My point is this: YouTube videos can only get you so far in life.

     A war on information is waged by those who stand to gain if people remain ignorant. In my lifetime I never thought I would hear someone who was not a dictator call the press the "enemy of the people." I always considered that Genghis Khan might be an enemy of the people, or companies that pollute the water supply. Or termites, or Tom Brady. Traffic lights that take forever are an enemy of the people, and products wrapped in plastic that you can't open without a pair of scissors or a pair of pliers, sometimes both. Reality programs that are OBVIOUSLY scripted are the enemy of the people, and produce that you buy from the supermarket that went bad before you even brought it home. Okay, maybe not Tom Brady, but Jesus, can't the guy ever sit down for a few minutes and age? The free press is the enemy of the people who are corrupt, misguided, tyrannical.

     I once got an email from a reader who had mistaken me for a journalist. Far from being a journalist, I'm just a dude who enjoys stringing adjectives together for decorative purposes. But there are people who can literally write, who know not to misuse the word "literally." What they write is important, timely and they have every word they need at their fingertips. I wish I could think of the word for those people.

     If newspapers go away the chances are they are not coming back, and you will be left with people tweeting you what to believe, and they might not necessarily be the world's brightest. "Clapping back" on Twitter isn't enough. Well, it might be enough, since I don't actually know what it means. What you should do is support real news, in a newspaper that hires reporters that go to Afghanistan. Do you think Perez Hilton is going to Afghanistan? I implore you to go to your mailbox right now, and read your newspaper. Watch out because there might be a wasp's nest in there. And if there's any mail addressed to the wasp, don't open it- that's a federal crime and the newspaper will print your name in the police blotter section.

EXIT, STAGE LEFT

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (07-26-18)

     I had such fun being a stagehand last time at the Pleasantville Music Festival, I decided to join Adam and the group again this year. It's a day of music, community, food and a relaxed atmosphere that's conducive to just hanging out with friends, old or new. There were popular headliners, great local bands and vendors of all stripes to visit.

     Parking was a little tight, so I brought my fold-up bicycle. I managed to find a spot somewhere between Thornwood and the Gulf of Mexico, and cycled the rest of the way. My folding bike is getting a little long in the spokes, but it's hard to find a full-sized folding bike so I'm keeping this one around. I'm a 6'2" dude, and I can't be riding around on a clown-sized bike, even if it's a folding clown.

     It's my second year on the crew, so I know the whole lexicon now. If somebody says "Great weather!" It means it's way too hot. "I love the band's new stuff," means "I wish they would have played more of their old stuff." If someone says, "Any good food trucks over there?" It means they want to know if they're allowed to eat at the catering tent. "It looks like the rain is going to hold off" means "We're doomed." It was hot, that's for sure. My VIP wristband allowed me access backstage, and in the food service area, but I really wanted to spend more time in the bathroom, where it was air conditioned, but I was starting to look like I had a digestive disorder.

     I saw people walking around with earpieces, and I thought it would make me look a little more important if I had one, too, so I got mine out of the car. "Is that Jeff on that earpiece?" Somebody asked. "I need to get in touch with him." "No," I said, "but the Yankees are up four-nothing."

     One of the core values of the Pleasantville Music Festival is recycling and waste management, and they are pretty serious about it, to put it mildly. The volunteers in the light blue tee shirts must have remembered me from last year. "You're not going to throw that cup in there, are you? That bin is for high and low-density polyethylene ONLY." "Actually," I said, "I'm going to be recycling it by planting tree seeds in it, so HA!" I strolled away victorious, but I turned around quickly and saw a couple blue shirts duck behind a vendor tent, and I think I might have been followed.

     The Psychedelic Furs were winding down their set. They may be older than they used to be, but getting older doesn't mean you forget how to play. Hey, I'm in a band and getting older too, so I guess I'll be needing a different excuse when I forget how to play.

     It was time to strike the stage, and when we were all done I felt like it had struck ME instead. As the last of the risers had un-risen, our crew was released for the evening. I went over to Lucy's for a well-deserved cocktail, since I hadn't had a drop to drink the whole day. If you're not at the top of your game with all those heavy stage pieces flying around, you'll lose a finger faster than you can say, "Has anybody seen my finger?" I've always considered myself pretty level-headed, and I saw no need to let a 40-pound stage monitor drop on my head and make me more so.

     I made my way towards the exit, and a couple of recycling volunteers were still cleaning up. "What are you going to do with all that scrap metal?" "That's just my bicycle," I said, and I put my pedal to the scrap metal. All in all, being a roadie was a lot of work, but a great experience. If this is your first time volunteering, that's code for: "Next time, don't be an idiot and play two sets of tennis before you show up for your shift or you won't be able to lift your coffee cup the next day."

BE-BOP NEAR THE TRAIN STOP

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (07-19-18)

     Last Friday was such a nice day we decided to head down to Tarrytown and take in a some jazz in Pierson Park for the Friday Evening Concert Series. If you're in the mood for it, a little jazz can be just the thing. Much of it is instrumental, so you don't even have to sing along. Every time see a rock band these days, they start the song, get to the chorus and then stick the mike out into the audience and expect us to sing it. NEWSFLASH: that's what we pay YOU for. With jazz, the band handles all the details by themselves, and nobody sticks a saxophone out into the audience expecting me to solo.

     Jazz is pretty free-form, so you don't really have to obsess about playing the right notes all the time. If you play a real clunker, the best thing to do is stop abruptly, take the horn away from your mouth, stare into the crowd, then play the same wrong note twice more, and people will think you're a real artist. Try to look tortured by the banality of playing correct notes all the time. When I make four mistakes in a row playing bass in the rock band, the rest of the guys look at me like I'm an idiot. But if I was in a jazz band I'd be so far ahead of my time that I wasn't even born yet. I just want to take the opportunity to tell those guys right now that in a few years, perhaps they'll understand the significance of the wrong notes I played two years ago.

     Even if you're a singer in a jazz ensemble and don't know the words, you can fake it. Ella Fitzgerald was the best at that. She would sing, "A tisket, a tasket, a brown and yellow basket..." Lose her train of thought, then start singing, "Scoodly-bip bop bap bip doo-WAAAAA!" And everyone thought she was a genius. If she ever got back to finish the tisket and the tasket story, it didn't make a whole lot more sense than "scoodly-bip bop," anyway.

     I was actually in a jazz band with some guys from Katonah a few years ago. We would get together every other Wednesday, and to fit in, I would look sullen and suck on a reed for a half hour before we started, until they reminded me that I was the drummer. "Do you know how to use brushes?" They asked. "Take a look at my hair and decide for yourself." End of conversation.

     I'm a rock and roll guy from way back, most of us Baby Boomers are. Jazz wasn't really on my radar until my first year at college, which I spent at the University of Hartford. My roommate Mike was a sax player on scholarship at one of the premier music schools in the country, and rooming with him taught me the first and most valuable lesson I learned at college, which was that I had better open up my eyes and my ears and start absorbing the world, not just Clinical Psych 101. I would sprinkle in some jazz during my shift as a disc jockey at the school radio station. I knew which tune would last exactly the length of time it took to announce the song, "hit the post," visit the restroom, rush back to my chair, drop my headphones on the floor, kick them across the room and still have four seconds left to cue up.

     My Mom wasn't a big jazz fan. She would scrunch up her nose if she heard me playing some Miles Davis. "I don't like that 'cool jazz,'" she would say. "Or is it the 'hot jazz' I don't like?" I never knew what the hell she was talking about, but I told her not to get out that thermometer and check. She was famous for taking your temperature in an impolite place when you had your back turned.

     She thought that every jazz musician looked like they were "on something." Yes, Mom, it's called unemployment. She was an opera nut. Every time I came into the room she had it playing on the radio, and she would wave her arms toward me.

"Mom, what are you doing?" "I'm wafting!" She thought if she fanned it over to where I was sitting that I would be intoxicated by its charms, but I never liked it. Why can't they sing like normal people? Plus the whole thing was in German, and it sounded like a meeting of the Gestapo put to an impossible-to-sing melody, and that was just the love scene.

     With jazz you just absorb it by osmosis, and it's like wallpaper you can tap your toe to. Anyway, down by the train station in Tarrytown on a Friday evening is a great place to plop a couple lawn chairs, open up a little wine and cheese and take in some great views of the Hudson. The music will just make all those things seem a little better. And if anyone plays a few wrong notes, start clapping like crazy and everyone will think you are an aesthete of the highest dimension.
 

TWELVE SCORE AND ONE YEAR AGO

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (07-22-18)

     Last week on the 4th of July America turned 241 years old. Did you bring a birthday present? What do you get for the country that has everything? It has amber waves of grain, it has purple mountain majesties, it has oceans white with foam. Most of these  assets are highly leveraged to the Chinese at the moment, so you'd better get out and see them now because they're planning to turn them into a giant Legoland.

     This year's Independence Day was sitting there independently in the middle of the week, on a Wednesday, which is impossible to make a long weekend out of. Who's with me on this: let's keep Independence Day on July 4th, but observe it from the beach on a Monday, where I can patriotically dip myself into one of those sea-to-shining-seas that I've been hearing so much about. This year we had a quiet little barbecue by the pool, no drinking, no carrying on, and we listened to the fireworks exploding all around us in the evening.

     It's always a great day for the National Anthem. Luckily the copyright is still good, or we could be singing The Star-Spangled Banner to the tune of "Happy Birthday." If you try it in your head you'll see it's not as bad as you thought.

     It's hard to write a good national anthem, because there are a lot of factors involved. Francis Scott Key wrote the poem, "Defence of Fort M'Henry" during the War of 1812, sitting in a jail cell while the fort was being bombarded. He decided to use a conversational tone. He writes, "O, say..." here and there, as if he's just killing some time describing this flag situation until the bombs stop and they can pick up something at the deli. "O, Canada," on the other hand, has no conversational tone, because Canada is a huge place, and there is nobody else around to talk to. Instead, the words speak directly to the country itself, promising to "stand on guard for thee." It's worked pretty well as a national security plan, as long as nobody falls asleep on duty.

     I have to give Francis Scott Key credit, because it's hard to find anything that rhymes with "star-spangled." New-fangled? Right-angled? Hair-tangled? Casey-Stengeled? If you watch peoples' lips when they try to sing the song at a ballpark, you'll see all sorts of unusual things. Nobody knows the order of the bursting, streaming or gleaming, and is it the night that's perilous or the fight?

     The Star-Spangled Banner is actually four verses long, and gets bleaker and gloomier as Key realizes that there is no coffee maker in the jail cell. I would have put a guitar solo in between the first and second verse, and maybe start the song off with some cowbell, but that's just nitpicking. The tune that we chose to go with the poem is a British folk song called "To Anacreon in Heaven", and it's too bad we couldn't come up with something American. Before 1931 when Congress made things official, people were using "My Country 'Tis of Thee" as our national song, which has exactly the same tune as Great Britain's National Anthem. It would have been pretty embarrassing to have a country that 'tis of thee and a national anthem melody that 'tis of somebody else's.

     Yes, the song hard to sing. The trick to singing the Star-Spangled Banner is to start the song as low as you can sing. I recommend going down at least one flight of stairs before you even start. When you get to "the rockets' red glare" you're going to thank me for that advice. I like our National Anthem. It has depth, it has weight. I don't mind that you can't sing it, you can't remember the words and you can't dance to it. They said the same thing about Bohemian Rhapsody, and who's laughing now? As long as I can barbecue to it, and and I live in a land where I am free to use any barbecue sauce I want, we're good.

WORLD CUP BREAKUP

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (07-05-18)

     Ask anyone from any foreign country what their favorite sport is, and they will answer quickly and enthusiastically: FOOTBALL! Unfortunately, they're not talking about real football, they're referring to that silly game Europeans play, where they run from one side of a large field to another, kicking a ball back and forth, aiming it into a small net and not getting it anywhere close most of the time. Statistically, there is only a slightly less chance of catching a tuna with that net than a soccer ball.

     This goes on for an hour and forty-five minutes. That's if we're lucky. But if the referee has late dinner plans, or things aren't going so great at home, or he's having a better than expected time being a referee, he can simply extend the match at his discretion to account for stoppages during the game. All this effort is devoted to a zero-zero tie. If someone does accidentally score a goal, much of the remaining time is taken up by an announcer yelling, "GOOAAALLLLL!" It's about as exciting as watching grass grow, and I'm including artificial grass.

     For all the scoring that is achieved in soccer, you might as well not use your hands OR your feet. Just hit the ball with your head, and if you can think of anything else to hit it with, knock yourself out, if hitting the ball with your head didn't already knock you out. Why not simply increase the size of the net? That goalie gets pretty good money for sitting around back there checking his emails while everyone else is scurrying about like a bunch of kangaroos. Speaking of kangaroos, one hopped onto the field during a match in Australia recently, and it was the most exciting thing that ever happened until someone foolishly chased it away with a pickup truck. The game of soccer would go from 0 to 60 in two seconds if they just made a kangaroo one of the players. Even a pickup truck would be an improvement.

     I prefer baseball. I know, I know. Soccer fans are the same people who say that baseball is the boring sport. They think that way because they don't understand the drama of the game, where one pitch or one swing of the bat can change the fortunes of the contest. The fact that there is a large amount of free time scheduled within the game is an under-appreciated bonus. In between pitches you can get a pedicure, ice a birthday cake, do your taxes.

     People from other countries, baseball is where you want to be. First of all, it's the only professional sport played in a park. Secondly, it is relatively safe. There is a lot of violent contact, but all of it in the stands. Third, I can't think of any other game where foul balls are tolerated with such equanimity.

     I want athletes from other countries to consider playing baseball instead of soccer. Baseball has become a much healthier and more inclusive place. It is the WORLD series, after all, and over the span of more than a century, we've extended the eligibility to include one team from one other country. Also, because of the health risks, ballplayers don't chew tobacco anymore. Instead they crack bird seeds with their teeth and spit the shells out onto the dugout floor. Some say this behavior is less than manly. Now, I don't know how things are at your bird feeder, but you have to be plenty tough to nose out the squirrels in my neighborhood. I'm thinking of putting up a cake of suet to attract more ballplayers. So far I have a few Cardinals, a Blue Jay and an Oriole.

     Other countries, I read the newspaper, and I know some of you aren't our BFFs right now. But us Yankees need your best athletes. Forget soccer, it's boring with a capital Z. You play ball with us, and we'll play ball with you, if you know what I mean, and if you do you'll be the first one. America welcomes you with open arms. Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Give us anyone you might have lying around who can throw a baseball 98 miles an hour. Give us somebody who can hit .300, with a slugging percentage of say, .450. We can smooth out the details later.

CLUELESS IN NEW JERSEY

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (06-28-18)

     My sisters and I get together every year for a weekend at the Jersey Shore, with their kids and spouses, and this year we decided to do something a little different. We signed up for one of those "escape rooms," where they put a group of you into a room and you have to figure your way out using only your wits, your guile and the clues that are provided to you. I thought it might speed things up if we were able to figure our way out using only our wits, our guile and a Milwaukee Sawzall, but I went along for the ride.

     We were all over it in the car on the way back from the restaurant, full of confidence and brio. We had a dynamic group: Dan is a math whiz, Erica has great organizational skills, Guthrie sees the big picture, Deb knows how to make connections, Anne is a communicator and Sky is good at management. Everyone brought something to the table. My expertise is that I know every episode of "Get Smart" backwards and forwards, which don't be surprised if it comes in handy. With that kind of brainpower, we could break out of Leavenworth. Our enthusiasm was slightly tempered when all the car doors locked automatically and we had to ask Paul to let us out from the driver's seat.

     Once we were inside the room, the moderator explained that we were in Nazi Germany, and we had to figure out how to open the jail cell door where a bomb sat, ticking away. We had 30 minutes to access it and disarm it. Why couldn't I have watched more "Hogan's Heroes" instead of "Get Smart?" He left through the back access door and the game was on. Deb turned the access doorknob and it opened right up. "Let's get the hell out of here," she said, and started to make a break for it. We dragged her back inside and began to look for clues. There was not a moment to waste.

     I saw a burlap bag with words on it that said, "THIS IS NOT A CLUE!" Was that a clue? Somebody found a some fuses and a fuse box. We put them in and the cell door opened. Now we needed four numbers to punch into the control panel. Something started beeping- MORSE CODE! The legend gave us the answer in German and also a translation- a one and a nine. Was it one-nine or nine-one? Nine-one or one-nine? One-nine or nine-one? A message flashed on the video screen: "Jesus, it's 1-9. I have another group coming in at 8:30, so let's get moving on the bomb."

     I picked up an army helmet and looked inside: "SEVEN! Its says seven!" Well, it turns out that was just the hat size, but on the plus side it fit me perfectly, just in case we couldn't defuse the bomb. "Why do we want to open that cell door in the first place? What if the bomb gets out?" Another number came from a map on the wall that we transferred to coordinates on a grid.

     We punched in the numbers and.... We did it! We disabled the bomb and saved the free world. I asked the group if they wouldn't mind coming over to help me figure out how to work my new coffee maker. There are several clues buried in the instructions, but I'm having a hard time getting them out.

     The experience brought to mind some ideas for other escape rooms. How about "Escape from the Bathroom," where the clues are buried in a book that you NEVER finish? Or an escape room where you have to put together a shelving unit from IKEA in order to get out, for instance. What about an "Escape from the White House," using clues that you'd have to be an idiot not to see before you went in?

     In the end, it was a group of people, using their own special skills, finding common ground, working together towards a shared goal. If you extrapolate that idea out to other walks of life, you can almost see the way forward. I'd like to think we can get there one day, but I'm going to keep that Milwaukee Sawzall handy just in case.