IN EVERYBODY'S BUSINESS

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (10-04-18)

     Local business is the economic driver that keeps most towns moving. Entrepreneur Magazine says that small businesses provide 60 to 80 percent of all U.S. jobs. And last Saturday they got a chance to meet their customers at Celebrate Somers Day, set up by the Chamber of Commerce. The Towne Center was closed to traffic, and booths were set up so that proprietors and staff could schmooze a little and explain what they do. You think Jeff Bezos is going to set up an Amazon booth for you to wander up to him and complain that the banana slicer you ordered doesn't work, even though it got four stars?

     That reminds me, I wonder if Somers is in the running for this Amazon second headquarters that I've heard so much about. I'm not sure why you need two headquarters unless you have two heads. Even actual quarters only have one head. If they must have a second headquarters, I suppose they could order one on Amazon. Nevertheless, mayors all over the country have been making videos that show them groveling and whining that their city should be the one to host the new facility, even though they seem unable to operate a camcorder. Why not have the second headquarters in the Amazon Jungle itself? I guess it might not be a good idea, especially if I order a package and a poisonous frog or some damn thing jumps out and bites me while I'm trying to get that banana slicer to work. If Somers does become the second headquarters for Amazon it would be SUPER convenient to order something, then just go over and pick it up. It would be like having local businesses, right HERE in town!

     Well, we already have them, and they were on display amid a record turnout. Gidget, the self-proclaimed Cutest Dog in the World, accompanied me as we walked around and enjoyed the beautiful sunny afternoon. You can't get too far with Gidget without a little girl coming up to pet her. "Does she bite?" I always ask their Moms, but the kids are pretty well-behaved.

     The Somers Boosters were there, as well as the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. I was never a Boy Scout OR a Girl Scout, and as a result I fell behind on a lot of basic skills. For example, when it came time for me to get married it took me ten years to tie the knot, because I didn't have any training in it. Near the DJ there was an adorable group of really tiny cheerleaders running a pretty complicated routine. The football team that went with them was apparently so small they weren't even visible to the naked eye. Then the Irish step dancers performed, and I couldn't see them over the crowd so I asked the Somers Boosters to give me a lift up. Then somebody came over collecting for a 50/50 raffle, but they stalked off when I wanted them to pay for 50 percent of the ticket.

     Somers Pediatric Dentistry was there, as well as Somers Smiles. There was a loose tooth walking around, and I thought it might be mine, because I lost one when I was six and I never found it. I tried to catch it because I never got my twenty-five cents from the tooth fairy, but I was a whole lot faster at age six.

     Arnie from the Somers Historical Society was there with a 1917 Model T Ford from the Wright Reis Collection. It's amazing to study the car and see that everything that a car has now, this car had then, except you didn't have to wade through a half hour of touch screens to get to it. I don't get along too well with Fords right now anyway. My wife has one, and if you put your foot under the rear tailgate it lifts up automatically, and automatically hits you in the face. While you are putting in the groceries, it automatically shuts six inches and hits you in the back of the head. It's a real time-saver once you clear concussion protocols. Anyway, the Model T was impressive, but the parking space was even more impressive; I had to park over at Fireman's Field.

     I thought I heard some rumbling from the rumble-seat, but it turned out to be my stomach. Fratelli's had a pizza stand going, Mama Rosa's was serving some samples and there was a Road Grub truck and some other food vendors around. DiCicco's had a booth set up, and they said they'd be up and running mid-December or so. I can't wait, because every time my wife buys chicken from the supermarket, there's always one or two pieces that have a rubbery taste to them. Rubber chickens may work well in comedy, but not in francese.

     The Somers Democrats were there, as were the Somers Republicans. If it was up to me, I would have located the pizza stand right between the two, so all of a sudden two ends of the political spectrum are talking again and BOOM- the Nobel Peace Prize goes to: Rick Melén. I'd like to thank the Nobel committee for this prize. No purchase is required, right? I understand that some of the world's problems are too tough to solve with an ordinary slice of pizza, and for those you need to order extra cheese.
 

WHY DID THE CHICKEN X THE ROAD?

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (09-27-18)

      This is the kind of thing that runs through my mind on a daily basis, and FYI, I am not proud of it: I was thinking the other day that somewhere in a glass office in the Googleplex, there's a guy in the Self-Driving Car Division who heads a department that oversees the development of an algorithm that determines what the largest animal is that their car can decide to run over.

      Before I even got around to that, I thought about how miserable it would be to work in a glass office. There is all kinds of research that proves that taking a nap increases productivity and creativity. The CDC says that not sleeping in 24 hours is like having a .10 blood-alcohol level. So if you're not getting any rest you're probably staggering around the workplace like a tourist at Mardi Gras, especially if you're a work-aholic. I'd like to de-stigmatize taking a nap at work, but do I really want to be in a glass office showing everybody how efficiently I'm increasing my productivity, snoring with my mouth open? Plus, the boss can peek in and see that I have NEVER cleaned my computer keyboard, which contains particles of dust from when the universe was first formed.

      Anyway, my self-driving vehicle is going to have to learn to decide between swerving out of the way of a stray animal and possibly causing an accident with an oncoming self-driving vehicle which is also swerving to avoid the same animal, or sacrificing its poor little life. If you're a bug and you have some sort of urgent business on the opposite side of the street, you'd better ask yourself if it's worth your life, because nobody's going to miss you when fail to make your appointment. Sometimes I see a tiny mouse scoot across the road, and I don't even see its feet moving, so it looks like a toy mouse. I've never actually checked to see if it IS a toy mouse or not, so if anyone out there has lost a toy mouse that they just put new batteries in, I've seen it. My advice is to put new batteries in your toy cat and tell him to get right on it.

      I was driving on the Taconic the other night, and at the last second I see that this frog is jumping really high leaps across the road like a cartoon frog, and it's too late to safely adjust my course, and I couldn't help thinking, wow- it's just like that video game "Frogger" from the '80s. It would have been worth sinking another two quarters in just to find out which one of us won.

      Fifteen minutes later I ran over a skunk that somebody else ran over first. Stunk up the whole car, so I hit the "recirculate" button on my dashboard, thereby trapping all the skunk-related air in my car. Then I opened the window to let it out, and more skunk-stunk drifted in. There's an old wives tale that if you get sprayed by a skunk you can bathe in tomato juice to alleviate the smell. Who was the old wife experimenting with this idea, and was there vodka and a huge stalk of celery involved? You'd have to actually own stock in the Sacramento Company to come up with thirty gallons of tomato juice to fill up your tub. Just save some money and bathe the skunk in the tomato juice before hitting him with your car.

     An opossum is an endearing creature that I would not like to run over, despite the fact that it looks a little like Georgie Jessel. If you're old enough to know who Georgie Jessel you should be taking vitamin supplements, and there's not a moment to lose. Georgie Jessel was a comedian back in the olden days, when humor was first invented. Actually, I remember the very first joke, which was a big riot in the Jurassic era, and it goes like this: Question: Why do iguanodons have small balls? Answer: Because so few of them know how to dance! The caveman who told that joke howled his head off, but nobody else got it until fifteen minutes later, then they hit him with a rock.

     Some animals have their own crossing signs, with a picture of a moose or a duck and the word "XING" under it. Sometimes it's just a picture of a prancing deer, alerting you to the fact that deer are around, not necessarily XING, but just working on their prance routines. A deer once came out of nowhere (not to habitat-shame it or anything) and hit my car. I was rattled by the collision, but the deer seemed only mildly inconvenienced, and wandered off, leaving my fender to fend for itself.

      If the shoe is on the other hoof, you could be driving around in a jeep in the Veldt, and a rhinoceros could run YOU over. So remember to treat every living creature with respect, and stock up on your karma. Don't kill any animals you don't absolutely have to, and try not to put yourself into a situation where you absolutely have to. And that means YOU, idiots who pose on Instagram with a simpering grin and a dead giraffe that they shot with a twenty-millimeter anti-aircraft gun for "sport." If the giraffe was just pretending to be dead, wakes up and eats you for "sport," it will probably serve you right. And if anyone out there works for Google, feel free to circulate this article, in case you're working on a self-driving rhinoceros.
 

COOKIES AND HOOKY

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (09-20-18)

     There's a chill in the air, a tart briskness that seems like you could shatter it with a hammer. Most people would reach for a pullover, but that chill causes me to break into a sweat. Even after all these years, the first time I feel Jack Frost nipping at my nose, an abject panic sets in and I start trying to think up excuses for why I didn't do homework that was due 44 years ago. It's just a physical response, my body trying to prepare me for possible blood loss from the piercing stares of my teachers.

     September came each year like clockwork no matter how vigorously I tried to put the brakes on August, and the specter of school would loom before me like a reverse shadow. Would my teachers accept me for the slacker I was? Would I like the kids in my class? Would I be able to learn enough about "the three R's" to figure out why only one of them starts with the letter "R?" It didn't start out all bad. I had a nice relationship with an older woman. We went around together for a whole year, holding hands whenever we could, going on romantic walks at recess. Her name was Jean but she liked me to call her Miss Franz. I was eight, and she had twenty or thirty years on me, but I was pretty mature for a third grader and I thought I handled our age difference pretty well. I figured that when I was eighty-eight and she was a hundred and eight, it wouldn't seem like a big deal.

     My sisters and I used to walk through the woods for twenty minutes to get to elementary school. Can you imagine parents of today allowing that? My Mom just pointed us in the general direction of the school and handed us a lunch. Apparently, she had never read "Little Red Riding Hood." "If a bear eats you take off that jacket first, it's new." These days the kids are chauffeured to school in the SUV, and if for some reason they need to take the bus, mom drives them to the end of the driveway, in case there is a dangerous squirrel in the area. Everyone is on guard against any possible threat, real or imagined. "Look at that car- was that there before?" "Mom, that's OUR car." "Hmmmm... it needs a wash."

     When I got to high school things took a turn for the worse. It became apparent that I was not good in math or science, and it became harder and harder to focus on the lesson. I used to sit in the back of the class and lean my chair against the wall so I could take a little nap. In our school the desk was attached to the chair, so when I woke up I had to pick up my books and my lunch from the floor. What are the odds that such behavior would be tolerated in my Probability and Statistics class? The other students could have figured it out pretty easily. And so I was charged with insubordination and instructed to bake two dozen cookies, because my teacher was a slave driver with a sweet tooth. If I had remained awake during Home Economics, I would have learned how to bake cookies, which may have prevented me from getting kicked out of the math class.

     But the teachers didn't give up. They kept teaching, and occasionally in my spare time, I attended class. I discovered that I like to write. I started out with creative writing- forged permission slips, excuses from my parents about why I missed class, that sort of thing. After a while I didn't need to miss class anymore, because I found something I was interested in.

     So kids, if you're out there, get off your phone for a little while and listen to somebody who knows something. The most useful thing a teacher can teach you is how to learn. And the most useful thing you can teach yourself is how to want to learn. If those two things happen, success can be coaxed from even the most meager excuse for a student. Without learning, brain matter doesn't matter very much. Until something like "E=MC2" pops into it, a brain is just a stagnant bunch of cells waiting for a party. Who knows? You may become the genius that invents the #3 pencil. And teachers, like my retired reader friend Judy, keep teaching. As for myself, I owe a lot to my education, and since graduating Syracuse University I have become a highly functioning member of society, depending on the function of course. I've learned how to bake cookies. I might even finish that homework from 44 years ago and turn it in, better late than never.

BACTERIA OVER BROADWAY

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (09-13-18)

      We went to see a musical comedy at the Belasco Theater last Thursday, and I want to give it a shout out because it was nonstop fun, and it's called "Gettin' the Band Back Together." I won't give too much of the plot away, even though when we saw the play they gave the whole plot away anyway by the time it was over. It involves a middle-aged do-over of a long-standing feud that began with a high school battle of the bands.

      Somewhere in the middle of the first number, which was nothing to sneeze at,  I notice that there's a kid next to me coughing up a storm. An actual storm- you could almost see the germs in the air, with their little faces, looking around for the nearest theater patron to rain down on. Which was me. His dad kept reaching over to cover his mouth with a handkerchief after he had already finished coughing. Aren't you supposed to put your arm over your face and cough into the inside of your elbow? This kid was laughing and hacking at the same time, and his elbow was lounging around on the armrest, healthy as an ox. The only thing he was using to treat this possibly life-threatening malady was a huge Kit Kat bar.

      I'm trying to enjoy the show, and we're leaving to go out of town for a long weekend the next day, and now I have this kid next to me with consumption or the croup or something, and my attention is focused on getting the hell out of there without attracting too much attention. I was pushed up against my wife so hard she had a dent in her shoulder for an hour after the show from my nose pressing into it. I wish I had brought some disinfectant so I could have hosed him down. This miasmic moppet was the most dangerous thing I've seen at the theater since John Wilkes Booth. We stood up to make our getaway, and just then the leading lady broke into this dramatic ballad of love lost. It's so quiet you could hear a pin drop if this kid wasn't coughing so loud, and angry people are looking up at us in the balcony, so we quickly sat back down.

     I have a healthy respect for the theater, and I'd like to keep it that way. Next time I'm going to bring a thermometer, a stethoscope and a tongue depressor so I can perform a few quick medical tests on the people sitting around me. It's not like I'm a germophobe or anything, either. Rene at work used to wipe the telephone down for cooties and spray it with Lysol. It seemed like she was afraid that the cooties might actually call her up and give her an earful. I used to tease her mercilessly that she missed a cootie and I saw it crawl into her purse to lay eggs. I read somewhere that the sponge in your kitchen has more bacteria on it than anything else in your house, so that thing you're using to wipe your counter is actually spreading germs all over the place. Maybe you should clean your sponge with another sponge before you tidy up.

      Anyway, the show was really light and funny, and I would have been rolling in the aisles if I could only make it out of my seat. Marilu Henner was in it, who I had a real crush on back in the day. She has this weird medical condition called hyperthymesia, which enables her to remember what she did on any given day in her past. You could ask her what happened on March 28, 1977, and she would tell you she was wearing a blue dress, watching the Oscars that day. If you asked why in the world "Rocky" won instead of "Taxi Driver," she wouldn't be able to tell you that. So when you go on a date with her, don't do anything stupid because she'll remember that you spilled spaghetti sauce on her sweater for the rest of her life, and she won't ever let you forget it. That's the number two reason I would never go out with her. The number one reason is that she would never agree to it. But twenty years from now, if you ask her what she did on August 30th, 2018, she will have no choice but to say that she was at a Broadway show with ME!

      Finally we got up and found an empty pair of seats- right next to two teenage girls who were howling so loud I couldn't hear the play. Admittedly their laughter was infectious, but HOW infectious? I thought, here we go again....

DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (09-06-18)

     It's becoming harder and harder to keep your kids entertained today. Even taking them to a major league baseball game can mean a serious cash outlay, and it'll cost you even more if you bring them back. I read on the internet that if you factor in ticket prices, parking, scorecards, food, drinks and a hat, the average price for a family of four was one million dollars. Here's an affordable alternative: take your son and daughter to a minor league game. I know what you're going to say, Junior is a die-hard Yankee fan and doesn't want to settle for an afternoon with the Batavia Muckdogs. This is a teachable moment, so don't waste it trying to teach them something. Trick your kids by explaining to them that someday soon they'll be seeing that exact same pitcher out there at Yankee Stadium, parking cars in the 153rd Street lot, which is by far the best one.

     We went to a Hudson Valley Renegades game at Dutchess Stadium and had a really nice time. At an A-ball game kids run the show, and it's best just to get the hell out of the way. Youngsters can really relate because the players aren't a whole lot older than they are. The shortstop at our game had braces and acne, and looked like he joined the team as a summer job only because it payed slightly more than mowing the neighbor's lawn.

     In between innings they sometimes have a contest with some boys and girls from the crowd involving water balloons or super-soakers. "Hey that kid should be careful of his wallet," I cautioned. "I got my wallet wet once and it was a big nightmare. And if he's wearing expensive shoes his mother's going to kill him." "He's wearing sneakers!" My wife said. "Those are the most expensive shoes on the planet these days!" I read that Adidas Pharrell Hu NMD Trails are going for $240 bucks, and you can only get them in left feet. If you're a lousy dancer things should work out fine. For that kind of dough I don't want to ruin my sneakers when I play tennis, so I wear dress shoes that I get from Kohl's for $25 bucks. Plus I get ten dollars in Kohl's Cash that I can redeem if I happen to go to Kohl's again in the next 20 minutes.

     We sat in the nosebleed seats- they weren't far away from the field, but we were sitting right next to a kid with a corn dog and he almost hit me in the nose with it. The stadium is small and intimate. So intimate that you could bring a bottle of wine and a book of poetry and share it with the first base coach.

     We were were down the third base line, and I reminded my wife to look alive when a left-handed batter comes up, in case a foul ball comes our way. I was going through my instructions on how to catch the ball. "You mean like last time?" She interrupted. There was a little incident in Scranton where a guy hit a foul pop-up that must have soared a hundred feet into the sky. It looked like it was coming our way so I prepared myself mentally, physically and spiritually to make the catch. I didn't want some little brat to elbow me out of the way and snatch it- he's only going to grow up to be my age anyway, so what's the point of letting him catch it just because he's a kid? The ball was still in the air, so I did some breathing exercises, ate two Clif Bars, recited the prayer of the Apostles' Creed and did some readings from the Torah just to be on the safe side. Then I held my hands aloft as the ball drifted gently into my hands. Unfortunately it had so much English on it that even I, who scored a 590 on the verbal section of my SAT, could not make heads nor tails of it. It caromed out of my hands, hit me in the face, knocked my sunglasses off and bounced under my wife's foot, to the audible gasps of the crowd, who had paused to watch the drama. Without implying that she knew me in any way, my wife picked up the elusive orb and handed it to me, whereupon I handed the ball to the kid with some sage words of advice which I won't repeat here.

     Other than that it's a very casual and inviting atmosphere. There are no plaques or retire
d numbers or anything like that. If you hang around the minor leagues long enough to have your number retired, it's unlikely you'd brag about it. There's a scoreboard above left field that they update once in a while, if they remember. The players' photos on the screen looked like their drivers license pictures, except for those not old enough to drive. There were only two umpires, one at home plate, and a first base umpire who had to run around the field anytime somebody got on base. If there was triple play the poor guy would have had to take oxygen in the trainer's room. The best part of the day was that everything is much cheaper here than at the big-league ballpark- I even paid for our hamburgers with Kohl's Cash.
 

FIRE ESCAPE

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (08-30-18)

     Fire Island is one of the three barrier islands that run parallel to the southern Long Island shore. Our friends Jenn and Jeff have been going there since childhood, and they arranged an awesome summer rental right on the ocean. We were about 75 feet from the water, so you didn't even need directions to the beach. If you did, for once it wasn't the beach's fault.

      We were in the Davis Park area, and there are no cars there, not even any bicycles. Most people arrive by ferry, so you can only bring what you can haul with you. We packed as if we might be cast away on an uncharted desert isle after a three-hour tour. I've been on several three-hour tours, and after spending that much time with me, the casting away idea has come up fairly often. In case we got marooned I thought it might be a good idea to bring a professor with us, like on Gilligan's Island, someone who could fashion a transistor radio out of some sticks and berries. The only professor I know is an English professor who wouldn't know how to correctly harness the hydroelectric power from freely flowing cocktails, but could save my life if a participle was dangling right over my head. Instead we just brought a handcart full of provisions, mostly Coors Light. I know what you're going to say: Coors Light? Why, that's not an IPA. If there is a Movie Star or somebody named Mary Ann on this island, don't expect to impress them with that.

     In case I needed to impress them, I brought an actual transistor radio. I like to listen to the ballgame at the beach. You probably think that the last transistor radio transisted its last broadcast decades ago, but you'd be wrong. Somewhere in the Pacific Rim is a country whose name I can't pronounce that is on the cutting edge of vintage technology. I hear that they're inventing an 8-track cassette player for your car. I can't wait!

     When we got to the beach there was a guy digging a huge hole in the sand. It wasn't a hole so much as an excavation, and this guy was digging for hours. I never found out what the hole was for, and I had a funny thought that he had a supervisor at work who didn't care for him too much. I would have gone over there to ask him if he had a variance for this project, if I hadn't seen the shallow grave scene in "Casino" so many times. You can survive a lot longer in life by doing the exact opposite of anything Joe Pesci does in a movie.

     The water was fantastic- perfect temperature, fairly calm, waves not too big and not breaking too close or too far. I'm not a bad swimmer, but my style is just a hybrid of backstrokes designed to keep my sunglasses from falling off. That way I can check out the scenery while I keep an eye out for sharks. A shark doesn't really want to eat a human- humans are chewy, bland and you might have to spit out a belly-button ring. My friend's kid Harrison said that what they really want to eat is a seal, so don't act like a seal. He's right, and you have nobody to blame but yourself if you balance a ball on your nose and a shark attacks you while you're still in the parking lot.

     In the evening we played wiffle-ball on the beach, since no one had thought to bring any bowling shoes. I suggested that we situate the field so that that big hole was between third base and home, to make the game more interesting and to prevent anyone from scoring on a throwing error. When the game broke up we sang songs on the deck as the sun went down. All of a sudden bolts of lightning blazed across the water, and the few remaining swimmers hit the beach. My mother told me never be in the water during a thunderstorm, but I never saw one mother fish tell all the little fishlings to get out of the ocean during the storm, so how dangerous could it be?

     After a long day at the beach, I could understand why Jenn and Jeff have such wonderful memories of the place. As I drifted off to sleep I could hear the sound of the waves lapping at the shore, and it reminded me of my own childhood. We never lived near the sea, but if you didn't jiggle the handle on the toilet you could hear the tide rolling in all night long.
 

BREWS AND BRUISES IN BREWSTER

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (08-23-18)

      Yesterday evening I worked up quite a thirst and had a hankering to visit the local watering hole. There's a saloon right up Route 22 that has a country feel to it, so I saddled up and went on over. The first thing I do when I walk into a place like that is look up and check out the chandeliers. Oddly enough, this place has several, but the kind I'm looking for is a large, metal one about four to six feet in diameter. That way, if a bunch of rustlers waltz in and start a brawl, I shoot the chandelier down with my six-gun and it falls right on top of four of them, incapacitating them for the remainder of the fight. If you thought I was going to work myself into the fray, I'm a frayed not- I have learned one or two things over the years.

     If I was born way back in yonder times, I would have won the West quicker than a greased hog at a librarian's convention. How? I would have invented the seven-gun. That's right, it holds seven bullets, and when the guy with the black hat shoots you six times, and you shoot him six times, he's busy reloading while you have an extra shot, and BOOM. He's pushing up daffodils faster than a racehorse in a toupee factory.

      They have a mechanical bull at this place who goes by the name of Ferdinand. It reminded me of the time I went to Gilley's in Dallas, Texas, where I strolled up to that infamous bogus bovine with a cow chip on my shoulder. Sitting atop of the saddle at the time was a one year-old baby, taking a leisurely ride as his dad held him in place. After he was done, I mounted the fearsome beast, one hand on the rein and one arm akimbo. I whispered to the operator to set the speed one notch slower than the baby, and called over to my wife to set the camera shutter to slow, so I would look blurry in the photographs, as if I was flailing away even more hopelessly than I actually was.

     The minute I got on top of the bull I was busy trying to come up with an exit strategy, which took some of my concentration away from holding on to the rope. I should have packed a parachute, or brought a bungee cord, or worn two pairs of pants at least. I've had a couple knee surgeries, and I had a feeling this thing could pitch me over near the rest rooms before I even had a chance to deploy my parachute. The operator was wearing a ten-gallon hat and a twenty-gallon smirk, and I knew that reasoning, threats or even begging would be useless. It seemed like it took forever, but I was thrown off the bucking thing faster than a wet hen at a pajama party. I had a screwdriver in the car and I felt like going back there and disassembling its servo motor.

     Here they have mostly country music playing, and although I assume it was from this country, no one specified. Country music consists of songs about, in no particular order, dogs, beer, women, trucks, The South and guns. There are no songs about cats, "The Bachelor," gluten-free dining or gardening. In case you've been out of the country for a while, there are all different kinds of country music now, so I'll catch you up to speed. In addition to traditional country, there is alternative country, where the dog is a Bichon Frise, the beer is an IPO and the women are lesbians. There is also country blues, where the dog is a Basset Hound, the beer store is closed and the women are unhappy in their relationships. Outlaw country has songs where the dog is an unleashed Pit Bull, the beer is stolen and the women are recent parolees.    

     The shadows were starting to lengthen, a shot of whiskey had emboldened the crowd, and a couple of dauntless damsels decided to try their luck on Ferdinand. If you've ever seen the movie "Urban Cowboy," you'll remember sultry Debra Winger making moves on top of that mechanical bull that would make you think that they had been dating exclusively. But reality is a different animal, and the first cowgirl got the blues right away when, try as she might, she failed to mount the faux furry brute. Her friend wasn't in much better shape but she was quite a comely lass, and the operator thought she might be good for business. I don't even think he turned the thing on, and she eventually slid off the back and tipped the bull, thinking that her Uber had arrived.

     It was time for last call quicker than a pickle poacher in a pumpkin patch. I went to settle my tab but it was so dark I could hardly see the bill. "I know," said the bartender, "Some idiot shot down the chandelier."