HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (01-03-19)

      My birthday is Christmas day, and this year is a big one. I won't mention the number, but suffice it to say that I am easing comfortably into middle age, provided that I live to be 120 years old. It's already bad enough having your birthday on Christmas, when people are concentrating on giving gifts to everyone else. I don't recall being traumatized by this when I was growing up, and I suppose I was as valued and loved as any one kid in a family of six children could be, meaning that if my parents forgot me at the supermarket for a couple days they always came by to pick me up eventually.

     Yes, I share my birthday with a famous person. If you guessed Rickey Henderson you are correct. The Hall of Fame baseball player and I are the same age. He ran so often and was thrown out so seldom that when he retired they gave him a gold replica of second base. If I was a thief I would break into his house and take it, just so I could say I stole one more base than Rickey Henderson.

      And of course, Jesus was a Christmas baby, that goes without saying. Jesus doesn't have as many stolen bases as Rickey Henderson, because thou shalt not steal, DUH. Jesus and I are both Capricorns, so we have certain things in common. We were born under the sign of the goat, and I'll tell you right now, if you are a goat and you were not born between December 22nd and January 19th you're never going to hear the end of it. Jesus was born in a manger, so it's possible that he was born under an actual goat. I was born in Queens, so that's where the similarity ends. Capricorn is an Earth sign and is ruled by the planet Saturn. I say, if I'm going to be ruled by a planet, put a ring on it. And thank god it's not Uranus.

      Capricorns have certain personality traits, if you believe in that stuff. They say that Capricorns are stubborn. I disagree, and you'll never, ever, ever get me to change my mind. Capricorns are
known for their sarcasm. I don't notice that in myself, but listen to this quote by Jesus from the book of Matthew, 10:40: "He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives the one who sent me." You have to admit that one is pretty sweet. It is also said that Capricorns give good advice. There's a lot of great advice in the Bible, naturally. I give great advice myself, all the time, although it may take years before it gets recognized as great. I just made this proverb up, but it shows my facility for wisdom of this type, so you can take this advice, and if it works, let me know: "You shall go forth, and if anything happens to the first three, get the hell out of there."

      I actually don't mind getting older, and I'm trying to age naturally. I remember back when I was 6 months old and people used to tell me how adorable I was. Then age caught up with me and when I was two, people were asking me if I had had any work done. At around 50 my hair started turning what most people call gray, but I refer to as ultra-blonde highlights. Now I have a very distinguished "salt and pepper" look, although I think I need to put my hair on a low-sodium diet, and every time a waiter comes around with the pepper shaker I ask him to grind a little onto my head to even things out.

      There are actually some things that get better as you age. For instance, I've become more patient over the years. Well, not me personally, but I've heard that people become more patient over the years. I can't even seem to tolerate children in hospitals and mistreated animals anymore on lengthy television commercials. I feel very guilty about that, but perhaps when I'm older and more patient I'll feel otherwise. Another great thing about this time of life is that people look to youfor wisdom. Someone said to me just the other day that I am more of a wise guy now than I ever was. I've also learned to take life slower. For instance, it takes me about five minutes to get up out of a chair. The downside is that maybe I'm not as quick on the uptake as I used to be. I find myself thinking only of things that are no-brainers these days. But you have to take the good with the bad, and that's what I'm going to do.

      So Mom and Dad, if you're out there and you have a Christmas baby, take a little time away from your gift giving to give an extra birthday gift to that special child. And if you have a Thanksgiving baby, take a little time away from giving thanks to give some extra birthday thanks. And if you have a Valentine's Day baby, take a little time away from, well, never mind, just get around to the birthday celebration whenever you can, and we'll see you next November for the baby shower.
 

THE OFFICE CHRISTMAS PARTY

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (12-27-18)

      I went to the office Christmas party last week in Studio 41 at the television network where I work. They had the room all dolled up with intricate lighting and a sound system. There was a nice crowd there, many sporting Christmas sweaters depicting ugly reindeer, ugly Santas and ugly snowmen, none having their finest moments. I made the rounds with my crew from the Operations 

department, and we infiltrated other tables, hijacked small talk and expropriated conversations. 

      The week before the party the company released a training module about sexual harassment that everyone had to complete. The timing was interesting, for what office party of yesteryear could live in infamy without deplorable conduct? It's not the kind of idea that I would ever entertain, although I can be quite entertaining to all sorts of other ideas. And thankfully I haven't noticed a whole lot of sexual harassment in my 38-year career at the network, despite its popularity at the moment. Aside from actual crimes, revisiting entire past histories of behavior that existed in a different social context may not be a productive way to spend our time, when we could be deciding whether dirty jokes are still acceptable. My guess is that it depends on how funny the joke is. Probably the saltiest thing anyone ever said in my presence at work came out of a small anchorwoman whose name you'd probably know. But I wonder if those training modules offer a how-to course for people who otherwise might not have had any working skills at all on the subject. "Jason continued to insinuate that a one-on-one meeting in his hot tub could advance Dawn's career, even though she had made it obvious that she wasn't interested by saying, 'Seriously????' Should she have a.) Reported him to a Human Resources representative; b.) Told her supervisor about it; or c.) Said 'Seriously????' louder, so the whole room could hear it?" I completed the training module but I didn't get all the questions right, so I guess we all have some work to do.

 

      As titillating as all the recent salacious allegations are- and if I even use the word "titillating" I'm taking a chance- I have more important issues at the office Christmas party. I'm trying to find the chicken Francaise at the steam tables. I know it's got to be here somewhere. The food looks pretty good in the low light where you can't analyze things too carefully. Someone mentions that there is a carving station in the corner. I went over there to see for myself, but it was just one of the cafeteria ladies slicing a roast beef. I guess I was expecting something more, like maybe scrimshaw or a totem pole.

      I walk past the sushi table, and I can't imagine sushi at a Christmas party for some reason. My wife recently said that she had a sushi sandwich, which I found fascinating. You could make a sandwich out of anything, I guess. Could you make a pizza sandwich? Could you make a soup sandwich? A salad sandwich? What about a sandwich with another sandwich inside? I finally found the chicken Francaise, and then I had to go to the other side of the studio to get a drink. On the way I wondered if I could make a sandwich out of my chicken Francaise.

      If you hang around the bar long enough, you can get a good idea of what's in store for the rest of the party and from whom. On the other hand, if you hang around the bar long enough your own reputation may suffer. I don't drink a drop during the week, not even a tiny drop, so I start to place bets with myself on who's going to dominate the conversation tomorrow.

     They have a guy who sings old Bobby Darin songs and other stuff from the 50s and 60s, and he was in fine form. He's got a lounge-singer routine with a lot of pointing, clapping, finger snapping and yelling "HEY!" in the middle of a verse if the verse starts to dull up on you. He's got a whole stage rap that revolves around his cousin, who allegedly played with Frankie Valle or something back in the day. The music wasn't overly loud but his jacket was. After 10 or 12 songs that sounded like "Runaround Sue" he turned things over to the DJ, who announced that he had a karaoke machine. 

     People were starting to get a little bolder, and employees who never knew they could sing gave the rest of us the opportunity to never know it also. A gal from Audience Services got up and sang a Salt-N-Pepa song, not too bad. She didn't sound like Salt, and she didn't sound like Pepa, but she did sound like N, I guess. Then a group of about 15 IT workers got up and sang what must have been the Indian version of "Paradise By the Dashboard Light." They were really working it and having a great old time, and I wondered if, a.) the karaoke machine actually knew Hindi, and if, b.) this wouldn't be a great time to hack into the payroll department.

 

     There was a photo booth with a lot of props and costume items available so that you could really dress up a future extortion attempt. These days you have to be careful and take ownership of your own content, including which photos are taken of you. One Halloween I went to three parties dressed as "Miss Universe," with a blue dress (size 16 in case you're wondering- Christmas is coming up), big boobs and a sash and tiara, only I was from another planet in the Universe, not from Earth, so I had antennae and other alien accessories. Everybody took a picture with me. But fast-forwarding ahead, what if I turn out to be the last candidate left to be Trump's Chief of Staff, and these photos come out in the Globe and my political career is ruined because Trump insists that I was not born in the United States or even on Earth? So I didn't take any snapshots in the photo booth with a pirate hat and oversize glasses, although I do need new glasses. 

     I'd like to wish everyone a very Happy Holiday!

YULETIDE RIPTIDE

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (12-20-18)

      Last Friday we went to the taping of NPR's "Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!" radio quiz program at Carnegie Hall. We eventually made it to the show, which was very funny as always. But of course we first had to go see the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center. There were so many people around, I just knew it was going to be a madhouse.

     We stop for coffee, and I pour it from their cardboard cup into my plastic travel cup, which I brought with me from home. You're probably thinking, well I couldn't begin to guess what you're thinking, but I hate drinking coffee out of a cardboard or styrofoam cup for some reason. A ceramic mug would be even better, and I like my coffee SO hot that I have to open my mouth during the tongue-burning process and fan cooler air into it before I swallow. Every other day a study comes out that says coffee is the best thing for you, and on the other days a different study says you'll drop dead if you have more than two cups. So I risk third degree burns and possible heart disease before I even get to the artificial sweetener, which probably causes cancer. If it doesn't, they'll have to re-think their packaging. Try fitting "Sweet 'N Low 'N Non-Carcinogenic" onto a 2 3/8-inch packet.

      I wait a few moments to make sure I've survived the coffee, then we proceed towards the tree, enjoying the busy rhythms of the City during this most festive of all seasons. We can't get close enough to Sak's Fifth Avenue to check out the holiday window scenes, so I told my wife to just enjoy some of the other decorative windows on display. For instance, at the Verizon Store, they had a colorful diorama depicting a reindeer with a very good data plan. When we got to 50th Street it was SO crowded in Rockefeller Center you could hardly get near the tree. We should have gone to see it wherever it was before they cut it down, but for some reason it didn't seem important then. We're herded into the designated tree-viewing area by a combination of traffic barriers, crowd-control police and a border collie.

      I saw an unattended knapsack cable-locked to a signpost. I gazed at it suspiciously. What were its intentions? Am I seeing something? Should I be saying something? There were three cops in riot gear ten feet away from it, so I assumed they had seen it, scanned it, sniffed it, Mirandized it and released it. I thought about pouring my cold coffee on it to disable it in case it was a bomb, but if it contained the cops' spare helmets or something, I'd have some explaining to do downtown. By the way, it would be convenient if they had another police station uptown so I could do my explaining a little closer.

      I told my wife to be careful of pickpockets. I don't carry a whole lot of cash around with me, for the good reason that I don't have a lot of cash. So pickpockets, if you're out there, you could pick a better pocket to pick. But I lost my wallet once and it was a big pain in the neck to replace all the stuff I keep in there- as every guy knows, your wallet is like having a small filing cabinet in your pants. It's much more convenient than having a large filing cabinet in your pants, so if somebody makes off with it, I've got to get it back. First, we identify the pickpocket. I yell, "OMIGOD SOMEBODY STOLE MY WALLET!" And then quickly look around- the person who seems unsurprised by this is the thief. Well, it turns out EVERYONE in New York City is unsurprised by this.

     Once we find the guy, we have to reverse-pick his pocket. I'll create a diversion and you get the wallet back. What could be the diversion? I know how to play "Flight of the Bumble Bee" by tapping my cheeks really fast. I don't think it's a diverse enough diversion, but I do it anyway just to show you I can. I'll keep things simple- I'm going to trip over the curb right at the guy and he's going to have to use both hands to catch me, and you snatch the wallet back. Just as I'm getting ready to go, two people trip over the curb, and it throws off my timing. What if he's got more than one wallet in his pocket? Whatever wallet I end up with is likely to have more cash, a better credit limit and nicer wallet-sized photos, so I'm not too worried about it.

      Finally we're close enough to get a selfie. I have long arms, so I take the selfie phone and try to get a picture of us in front of the tree. Every position I hold the phone in presses a different button on the side. First, I've turned the lens around so it's facing the back of a busker in a Santa suit who looks like he might be trying to dodge a stack of warrants with the disguise. Then I launch an app that puts fluffy ears and cat whiskers onto the back of crackhead Santa's head. Next, I hack into the Equifax database by mistake. Meanwhile people are paused politely waiting for us to take the damned selfie. Finally a young girl comes over and grabs the phone. "Give me that, I'm a Millennial." And she snaps three perfect photos without any further ado. Then a fat guy enters the crowd three blocks away, and when the ripple effect reaches us we're forced out onto Sixth Avenue. Just as we're leaving two more people trip over that curb at the pickpocket area, and I wonder if maybe crime really does pay.
 

TREE WISHES

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (12-13-18)

      Last Sunday we strolled into town for the lighting of the Somers Christmas tree. The weather outside was frightful. It was dark and rainy, so any light at all would have been welcome, but we had to wait until 5:00PM before the tree was illuminated, and we had an hour and a half to sing some Christmas songs and poke around accompanied by Gidget, the world's cutest dog. Due to the rain, songsters Rich and Harry Egnor were holed up inside the lobby of the Elephant Hotel, so we found ourselves a seat just in time for the chorus of Silent Night. The Bing Crosby version is reputed to be the third best-selling single of all time, but I bet an Eric Clapton lead break after the second  verse would vault it right into first place.

      Santa was available for photos, which seemed pretty safe compared to some of these vacation selfies that have been popping up lately on Instagram. Santa, thanks for letting me take my photo with you! Would you mind standing over here with me on the precipice of the Grand Canyon? A little closer. Closer. Closer. Oops, not that close. Can Santa fly or is it just the reindeer? I should have asked beforehand.

      The Girl Scouts were in attendance, leading some Christmas carols and distributing hot chocolate to the less fortunate (me). As a journalist and someone who has never been a Girl Scout, I wanted to infiltrate the inner workings of this fascinating group and find out what makes them tick. I found three representatives in full dress uniform that were willing to talk to me on the record. "Which merit badge was the hardest to get?" I asked, getting right to the tough issues with an incisive question. "I don't know," all three said in unison, and I jotted down the answer in shorthand, meaning that I scrawled some of the letters of each word in handwriting so bad only my wife can read it. By the time I looked up they were gone, but I feel that my reporting laid some important groundwork for a future exposé on the subject.

      We caught up with town councilman Anthony Cirieco and chatted about some of the new developments in Somers. DeCicco's is running a little behind schedule, they had anticipated an opening sometime this month, but I hope it happens soon. Every time we cook chicken breasts at least two of the pieces taste like they were cloned from a sofa cushion. Are they on antibiotics? If so, I hope they finished the whole bottle as directed. And the fruit we get from the supermarket these days seems like it's made from something synthetic that has too many isotopes in it. I swear that grapes these days are as tasteless as some of my jokes. That reminds me of a joke but I can't tell you here. We talked about the proposed Somers Academy that is poised to repurpose the IBM campus into an 1800-student STEM school. It seems that I am much more in favor of schools now that I don't have to go to them. Somers Crossing is the 65-unit condominium construction that is underway nearby on Route 100. All these projects seem like good additions to the prosperity and growth of Somers, as long as I don't have to stop at any more traffic lights. I don't want to stop at red lights coming from one way, and I don't want to stop at them coming from the other way. I propose that they reduce the duration of the red lights and increase the duration of the yellow lights, so I can proceed with caution without slowing down. And for those of you who wanted Somers to be the new second headquarters for Amazon, cheer up- at least we're not the hindquarters for Amazon.

      We sang a few more tunes from the Chamber of Commerce songbook, where some poor soul had to type "Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la" about a hundred and twenty times, before they invented "cut and paste." We sang Jingle Bells, and if you stick it out through three or four verses, the song gets darker and darker, the guy falls out of the sleigh, somebody comes along and laughs at him but doesn't help. It's a mess, but to cheer things up, right as everyone sings "laughing all the way," I tell my worst joke, and then everyone says, "ha ha ha!" and the joke's on them. Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer is even worse- she forgets her medication and ventures out into the snow on Christmas Eve, no one's sure exactly why. Apparently, Grandma had some egg nog and was lit up like a Christmas tree.

      That reminded me- it was time to light up the Christmas tree. First, Santa made his way to the exit, back to the North Pole, amid a phalanx of security and a bunch of Hos. Then we assembled by the tree, which seemed quite a bit taller this year. I went over and pinched its cheek and said, "Wow, look how you've grown!" Like my grandmother used to do to me, even if I hadn't grown and she was just getting smaller. Then it was five, four, three, two, one, and presto! The tree lit up and I was now officially behind in my Christmas shopping. We filtered into the parking lot, and took it easy on the way home. I didn't want any more incidents with Grandma, in case she's been dipping into the egg nog again.

TO MY HEALTH

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (12-06-18)

      I went to the Health Fair at work a couple weeks ago, where all the medical plan insurance companies get together and fight over me. They are so friendly when I am healthy, I just don't have the heart to tell them that even though I seem like a mess on the exterior, the interior is probably worse. But we both seem to enjoy this game nevertheless. They offer me free pens and keychains to get me interested in their brochures, and I pretend to be interested in their brochures because I love free pens and keychains. One vendor had small blankets with their logo, and I had to pretend to be REALLY interested and REALLY cold at the same time, but it turns out I am a great actor: "Best Performance in a Vendor-Related Situation." If the reviews are a little frosty, what do I care, I have my blanket.

      Another company was giving away thermometers, and I had to have one of those because I broke our meat thermometer by putting it in my fish tank. I had no idea fish hate thermometers so much, but now I can see why they sometimes contain mercury. My wife has been looking all over for the meat thermometer, I guess she doesn't want to eat a chicken that was running a temperature. Another table had some sandwiches, so I grabbed one, although later I heard someone say, "Did anyone see who took my lunch?"

      Also at the Health Fair they have some tests to help gauge your general wellness, and I always participate because at the medical group, my doctor is backed up two years for my yearly physical. It's crazy over there, so this time I'm going to do two years at once. Back at the Health Fair I have to sign a liability disclosure form. I couldn't read the first question, but when I put on my glasses, it asked if I needed glasses. I said 'no,' I already have them. Do I have diabetes? Nope, not even one diabete. Do I have a history of heart disease? No, but if I had to guess I would say it started back in the stone age, when fire was first invented and people inhaled second hand smoke because they couldn't afford to buy it new. But I ran out of space. How about some easier questions, like did I watch the season premiere of "Dr. Pimple Popper?"

      The questions got harder. It asked if I was pregnant, and I must say that I was pretty insulted by that. Sure, I might have gained five or six pounds over the holidays, but who doesn't overeat on Guy Fawkes Day? Did I get a vaccination for influenza? Not yet, but I'm not one of those anti-vaccination knuckleheads who are nostalgic about how much fun it was when we had polio. I've heard people say that they caught the flu from the vaccine, which is not true, they caught it in SPITE of the vaccine, because it is not 100 percent effective. Even medical experts like Donald J. Trump have come out against vaccinations. Who knows, maybe he's more brilliant than he sounds, but I'm not going to get too close to him, just the same. After all, the guy IS orange.

     Do you drink? The form wanted to know. Only on social occasions, such as when I'm by myself. Have I ever taken a HbA1c test? No, but if it's multiple choice I'll wing it. I'm in perfect health when I'm sitting down and when I'm standing up, but in between I'm a hot mess. To combat old age I have embraced a careful regimen of physical fitness- you certainly don't want your J-lo to turn to Jell-o.

     I stood on the stadiometer- did you know that the thing that measures your height has a name? I used to just rely on the marker next to the roller coaster that said, "You have to be THIS tall to ride this ride!" I was tall at a pretty early age, but there was no measurement next to the roller coaster to measure how sick I was going to get riding it. The nurse at the Health Fair wrote down my height and weight. She told me I was six-foot-one and a half, 192 pounds.But I know for a fact that I am six-foot-two and a quarter, 185 pounds. I said, "Look, I know you're just trying to do your job, but we can do this the easy way, or we can do it the hard way. I can hit myself over the head with a ball peen hammer, and with the bump I'm going to be six-foot-two and a quarter, or you can write down 6-2 and you won't have to test out that nursing degree on my head bump. And by the way, this watch weighs five pounds, so it's 187 and that's my final offer." She said, "I guess so, but I need to take a waist measurement." "If it's a waste, then why bother," I said, and I grabbed the clipboard and stalked off, although I had to creep back and snatch my shoes when her back was turned.

     They gave me a PSA test for prostate health- just a tiny prick in my finger, the nurse said. She turned me over to the flu shot nurse- "You'll feel a tiny prick," she said. Then it was off to the cholesterol table, and, you guessed it, another tiny prick. How many tiny pricks must one man endure? Now, I know you were expecting more from this next sentence, but I just couldn't narrow down the possibilities. Besides, I don't want to say something that will set a bad example for my good cholesterol. They needed my address to send me the results of my PSA test, but I lost my pen already. Now I had to go back into the other room and suck up to the guy from Aetna again.

A RIVER OF GIVERS

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (11-29-18)

      Last Sunday we went on a fundraising cruise in support of the Sing Sing Prison Museum, a project which is starting to take shape on the site of the legendary correctional facility in Ossining. It will tell stories from many different sides, the ones you've heard and the ones you haven't. "Old Sparky" will be there, Jimmy Cagney will be there, "Son of Sam" will be there. But so will the victims, the corrections officers, the community living alongside it. They've already built one of the exhibits. It was finished in 1828, and the prisoners built it themselves. It was their own cell block, a third again longer than a football field, hewn from limestone quarried nearby.

      There are a million stories, a million legends. Did the lights really dim when someone was electrocuted by "Old Sparky?" Probably not, but the first electric lights to shine in Ossining were powered by the prison generator. Did warden Lewis Lawes' daughter paint her pony in zebra stripes and ride it around as a mascot during prison football games in the 1930s? The pony never talked, he may have been a zebra but he was no rat. Did anyone ever bake a file into a cake and smuggle it into prison? Most of my files are on computer now, but they do contain some half-baked ideas.

      The challenges of running a museum on the site of an actual maximum security prison are daunting. If you've ever been to Sing Sing you know that getting in is almost as hard as getting out. You can't just bake yourself into a cake, so there are clearly details to be worked out, even though I'd love to talk more about cake.

      Philanthropy always makes me hungry, but the food they usually serve at fundraisers is for "foodies." I am not a foodie. If I see the word "compote" anywhere I start to get nervous that I might starve to death. There are very few child philanthropists, so I can't pull my usual trick of ordering from the kids' menu. There are some things I won't eat just because they sound disgusting. The word "haggis" came up in a crossword puzzle the other day, and I told my wife right off the bat I am never eating it. "You don't even know what it is," she said. "I know I'm never eating it, and I'm not eating curds or tripe. And I'm not eating gusset." "Gusset is a piece of material." "See? Why would I want to eat that?"

      I needn't have worried, the food was great. I had the Yankee pot roast, and I beamed with pride that my baseball team has a dish named after it. What kind of dish do the Red Sox have? Socks and fine cuisine rarely go together. Not to get off the track, but is one player from the Boston team known as a Red Sock? Or do they travel in pairs? How many teammates have been lost in the laundry?

     Anyway, we learned a bit more about the Prison Museum as we motored up the Hudson. We heard about the historic significance of the prison, and its relationship with the community. So many movies were filmed at Sing Sing that Warner Brothers donated a prison gymnasium. The cells in the original dormitory were no bigger than a yoga mat, and they had one laid out to illustrate. It was small and inhumane by today's standards, but at least incarceration would not interfere with your yoga. If you were brave enough to stay in a downward dog pose long enough to finish your kibble you could become a prison legend.

     Things are a little different now, and you can't make the prisoners go out and build their own museum, I already asked. Jailbirds ain't thrown in the joint anymore, inmates are incarcerated into correctional facilities. They have a lot more rights, and a lot more syllables. What was really bad once may not be as bad anymore. People currently serving time for marijuana possession will live to see its widespread legalization. Some things haven't changed: there are people who do bad things, and they will and should pay a steep price, some would say not steep enough. But those who thought they could lock them up and throw away the key fail to understand that 90 percent will be back out, and we'll be sharing a society with them. That time they spent in prison is a stepping stone to your neighborhood, a learning experience. Whom do you want as their faculty?

     The Sing Sing Prison Museum will also house a criminal justice center, where education and dialogue will increase the awareness of the issues. We motored on, and Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks played big band swing music as we passed by Sing Sing, and the singer sang sang as we dance danced and the flappers flapped. People had come in the costumes of the days when Hollywood made "The Big House" seem vaguely glamorous. We finished our drinks as we docked back in Yonkers. Society has a lot of thinking to do about crime and punishment, but it's free thinking that will keep us free.

A WORD ABOUT A MOCKINGBIRD

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (11-22-18)

     We went to see a fine production of Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird" at the Shubert Theater last week. The show was adapted fairly faithfully by Aaron Sorkin, directed by Bartlett Sher and featured a capable cast led by Jeff Daniels. I had read the book when I was a wee lad but didn't remember too much about it, other than that there are a whole lot more Finches and surprisingly fewer mockingbirds than you'd expect, and I thought the whole thing was for the birds. But now it's a different story. Seems like there might be a few lessons in there that people didn't quite learn the first time around. It's amazing how many lessons you're willing to learn when you get older, when you probably thought you'd be teaching them instead.

      Our seats were in whatever is above the balcony but below the ionosphere, in the actual last row of the theater. We walked up about 10 flights of stairs, and the air was getting thinner, and I was thinking that this is probably what killed the mockingbird. When we made it up there, the guy onstage was just finishing up his announcement about the perils of cellphone use during a Broadway show. The seats were stacked at about a 60-degree angle, so steep that if a cellphone did ring, it could set off a landslide and I would be pitched off the balcony into the orchestra section. And the guy onstage would say, "You SEE, people? THAT'S what can happen if you don't turn your cellphone off."

      The action centers around the trial of an innocent black man in the south accused of a serious crime. The play is at times narrated by the young Finch brother and sister, who shed an alternate perspective on the proceedings inside and outside the courtroom. If anything important ever happened in my young life, I'm glad my brother and sister did not get a chance to narrate it. There is no way they would have made the story flattering to me.

      Two hours and fifty minutes is a long time, so a good portion of my theater experience was taken up by calculating exactly when I should go to the bathroom. That's the way it works at my age. I know I have an intermission, should I try to get two visits in? I do some quick calculations based on how much I've had to drink and how many people I could manage to inconvenience by getting up during the show. I went through that same routine at the comedy club once. The show had a two drink minimum, And after three or four comedians we were on our way towards the maximum, and I had to go. I had put it off for quite a while now, and I didn't want to give the headliner a chance to reverse-heckle me. But duty called, so I tried to slink out the back exit, and I was almost at the curtain, so close I could touch it, and the guy points to me and yells, "HEY! YOU IN THE BACK! THE '80S CALLED AND THEY WANT THEIR HAIR BACK!" And everyone had a good laugh at my expense, and it was pretty expensive.

      The themes of "Mockingbird" are weighty. Sometimes justice is blind, sometimes those who administer it are blind. It's a study of how far we've come in such a short time, and in how little has changed over these long years. In between the study of racism in the South and the question of what constitutes moral integrity, I realize that I should not have had that milkshake after dinner. I am adamantly lactose intolerant, even though my New Year's resolution this year was to be more tolerant of it. My stomach starts gurgling loudly during the dramatic passages, and I am hoping against all hope that people will think that it's the air conditioning system making that noise, even though it's the middle of November, and I can't think of any air conditioners that sound like my stomach.

     Jeff Daniels was fantastic as Atticus Finch. Could anyone really memorize all those lines? There has to be a secret transmitter in his ear or something, and a guy in a helicopter flying above the theater who tells him what to say. I saw it on "Mission: Impossible" once. As for myself, I can't even remember why I got up and came into this room. What was I looking for again? I remember it was something dumb, which doesn't narrow it down very much in my case. Even so, I think I would be great in a play, as long as I had only one or two lines, and those lines should be something I would normally say, like: "Why can't car manufacturers make a button on the dashboard that activates the defroster and the car vent at the same time, so when it rains in the summer I can see out my windshield AND not boil to death?" I bet you could work that line into "Phantom of the Opera," and the Phantom would say, "EXACTLY!" Maybe I could even be in "To Kill a Mockingbird." Atticus Finch would be a nice part for me, but I think I could bypass that, and step right into the title role.