DID YOU GET YOUR FLU SHOT

SPECIAL TO THE SOMERS RECORD (10-15-15)

     Last year I went to the doctor and I asked him what's new, and he says with a frown, "The bird flu." I ask him, "Where did it go?" And he says, "where did what go?" He looked at me like I was crazy and I looked at him like he was nuts, then he said, "Did you already have a shot or would you like a shot?" And I said, "It's a little early in the day but the idea is growing on me." He took out a little rubber mallet and started hitting me with it.

     He told me that influenza deaths are on the rise this year. I said, "Oh my god, they should be concentrating on that instead of the flu!" Then he frowned again, and looked in both of my ears with that microscope-looking device. He said he didn't see anything, I assume he was looking for my brain.

     I got my flu shot last year, but I'm a year older now, and I heard that the symptoms of the flu are exacerbated by aging. Now I'm not one to sit around exacerbating all day, so I went to get my flu shot.

     They were offering them where I work, so I stood on line, and they gave me a form to fill out as I waited, which had a bunch of questions on it. The first question should have been: Did you bring your glasses with you? Answer: NO. The form asked if I had a condition known as Guillain-Barre Syndrome, but if I had something known as that I certainly didn't know it.

     There are people at work who think I'm crazy for getting the flu shot, because they think that the flu shot gives you the flu. These are the same people who think you can catch a cold from being cold. They probably also think you can catch whooping cough from a whooping crane, or chicken pox from a chicken. Actually, I'm not sure you can't.

     So I sat down next to my nurse. There was this whole flap about a Miss America contestant using the fact that she was a nurse as her talent. She walked out with a stethoscope around her neck, and I thought she was going to do something cool with it, like use it as a yo-yo or slingshoot something with it or something, but instead she just started yakking about being a nurse. And people on the internet who don't have any hobbies started asking why she had a stethoscope if she's not a doctor. Well of course she has a stethoscope, so she can count the number of steths coming out of my chest, although I could swear I can hear Kings of Leon coming out of the earpieces.

     I asked her if it was going to hurt, and she said not too much.
"Not too much? What do you consider too much? On a scale of one to ten, what is the pain between?"
"It's between your shoulder and your elbow," she deadpanned.
"Would you say it's like somebody stomping on your foot if they did it on your arm?"
She said, "I would say it's more than a tiny prick but less than getting run over by a car, although I wouldn't know anything about getting run over by a car."
She told me to roll up my sleeve, the shot goes right in the upper arm.
"Don't you think it might be too muscular up there? You might not be able to insert the needle because of my biceps?"
"No, not at all,"she said.
"You didn't have to say  the 'not at all' part." I offered. "Isn't there somewhere else you can give me the shot, like Aruba?"
But before she could answer she was assaulting my arm, and I yelled out in surprise.
"That was just the cotton swab with the alcohol on it."
"Could you put some into my coffee cup?" I was going to stall for a little while, maybe ask to see her credentials, where she went to school, ask if she knew any yo-yo tricks with the stethoscope, etc., but she said she was already done.
"Wow, I didn't feel any pain at all!" I exclaimed.
"I can keep trying." She said.

ONE MAN'S TREASURE

SPECIAL TO THE SOMERS RECORD (10-08-15)

     My friend Bill has been a Somers resident for about a decade or so, and like me, grew up in Chappaqua. There he became involved in something that has become a community institution. It's called Take It Or Leave It, and it's part swap meet, part recycling center, part museum and part block party.

     It happens every Saturday morning from 9:00AM to 12:00PM from May to November. People show up with things that have been lying around their house or garage for so long the original patent has expired. For example, a wife might come by with a VCR that has been flashing 12:00 ever since a power failure in 2007. Town residents rummage through the articles, and almost always find something they need, even if it's not what they came for. For instance, a husband might find a VCR similar to one that went missing a week ago, which was working just fine as far as he knew.

     Bill told me it was a win-win situation, so I went over there expecting to win something. Which I didn't, thank you very much, but I did find a thriving, bustling circle of people who each had something to gain from what started as a nifty idea and has grown into a social happening.

     There were all kinds, shapes and colors of people there, and all sorts of merchandise. Sports equipment- there were lots of balls. There were more balls than debutante season in Savannah, Georgia, and this sentence could have come out way worse.

     There was a wake board, which was good because 9:00AM on a Saturday is awfully early. There was a huge children's Busy Box that kept me occupied for a little longer than is prudent to say. There were cassettes, there were record albums. Did you know that Yo-yo Ma put out a record with Bobby Mcferrin? I can make up a lot of stuff but I couldn't make THAT up.

      Looking around, I was reminded of the time my wife tried to throw out a garbage can. It's not as easy as you'd think it would be, and I thought I noticed smoke coming out of the ears of the trash collector. Could they refuse our refuse?

     While I was there, one woman showed up with a stroller and no baby, another woman had a baby and no stroller. They both left happy. Let me clarify that they exchanged the stroller, not the baby.

     Someone left a Kaypro II, which was the first transportable computer ever made, from the early 1980s (I looked it up). It looked like it might have been transported from the Smithsonian, but don't you know? Somebody took it. Probably someone who had a Kaypro I and was looking to upgrade.

     Take It Or Leave It is like a tag sale, only with a slightly smaller profit margin. Then again they don't have to pay for the tags. I held a tag sale when my mother died and found the experience slightly demeaning. You could be selling a set of King Louis XV chairs for a dollar, and people will dicker with you.
"Will you take eighty cents for these? The yard sale down the road has them for 60 cents, but I'm already here."
"These are original Louis XV chairs!"
"If they're so great why is he getting rid of them?"

     I asked Bill what was the weirdest thing they had ever accepted, and he said without hesitation, a cow inseminator, used for the purpose of fertilizing cow eggs. Which does answer the age-old question of which came first, the cow or the egg, but doesn't answer the question, "Am I going to need larger toast with this breakfast???"

     Bill (and I and probably plenty of others) would love to see a version of Take It Or Leave It in Somers, and he would love to hear from anyone who is interested in this idea- it runs with about six dedicated volunteers and the good graces of the town. You can reach him at wihaku@gmail.com. I waited around a little while longer hoping that someone had a pizza they were no longer using, and possibly the unused portion of a Coors Light 12-pack.

BEAUTY IS IN THE EYE OF MY COFFEE GUY

SPECIAL TO THE SOMERS RECORD (10-01-15)

     Being a suburban commuter can result in some of the darndest sights, and this is certainly one of the darnder ones, and I swear to god the first two paragraphs are true: I was grabbing some coffee before work at the coffee cart on 57th Street, when my coffee guy picked up his iphone and started videotaping me. I was very flattered, but I realized that I hadn't been into hair and makeup yet, or done any preparation in the green room or anything. But I was about to give it my best until he put up his hand and waved me to the side. When I looked behind me, I saw that an endless parade of beauty queens was streaming out the door of my building, complete with sashes and tiaras.

     They came down the steps in single file and boarded three buses, although I would swear they went out the back of the bus and back into the building through a side door, because they just kept on coming. Don't we have only 50 states? Or 51 or something? Was this the beauty pageant where they include Guam? Does Puerto Rico have a Miss, too? I didn't see Trinidad and Tobago, but I heard they were no longer together. I saw Tobago out with Caicos recently, which is no longer speaking to Turks.

     Thank god the buses didn't park next to a subway grate, or all of them would have left Manhattan without their heels, a rookie mistake. I noticed that one of the girls had a sash that said, "Washington, DC." Is that a state now? That would mean we had TWO Washingtons, which is confusing, unless one is a sequel with Bruce Willis in it.

     I didn't know which pageant they were from, so I yelled out to one of them, "Miss America?" And she said, "No! I live here and I don't miss it at all!" I wanted to ask them each a question: "If you could choose any single issue that presidential

candidates today are are discussing in their platforms, what would it be, and why?" I wanted to get a jump on picking the winner, maybe place a bet or two with my bookie. I tried it out on Miss California, and she said, "Presidential candidates are wearing platforms? That's hot." I couldn't repeat the question fast enough to all the others before they got on the bus, and I actually didn't know the answer myself.

     I knew it wasn't Miss Universe, because all the candidates looked like they were from Earth. One girl was very short, so she may have been from a dwarf planet.

     Things have certainly changed since the pageants of yesteryear. For instance, some of the ladies looked like they may have had some work done. I detected a nose job, several bust enhancements, a new rear fender, and one of the contestants admitted she had her kitchen remodeled. My coffee guy also had a nose job by the way.

     They all have handlers now, who tell them what to do and say during the pageant. I think that would be the perfect job for me. The first thing I would say is, let's see the face you're going to make when they announce the winner, and it's YOU. You burst into tears with this UGLY face of surprise and abject weeping as if they didn't cut the thorns off of the roses, and everyone in America looks at you in horror and says, "WHOA! THAT'S not the face we voted for!" So you need to come up with an expression that says, "Check this out! I just won Miss America, yet one second later I am still gorgeous!"

     The "Swimsuit Competition" is now called "Lifestyle and Fitness," I guess to judge how well the bathing suit fits. For those of you scoring at home, it counts for ten percent of her composite grade, even if it only covers five percent of her body. By the way, if you're scoring at home, turn of the television for goodness sakes.

THE DOG DAYS OF SUMMER

SPECIAL TO THE SOMERS RECORD (09-24-15)

     August is behind us, and we are now in the dog days of summer, when Sirius the "Dog Star" rises with the sun, wreaking mischief and mayhem. Or so the legend goes (I looked all this up). In our house the dog star rises with the sun, barks incessantly and then makes a whimper like an expiring Pac-Man until you let her out of her crate. That's when the mischief and mayhem begins. Gidget the dog is now seven months old, and her training is going along great. She has us doing exactly what she wants at just about all times.

     We've entered an era of general lawlessness. She is like a supermodel let loose in Europe with a drinking problem and no chaperone. The dog hangs around looking cute, waiting for opportunity. When we let down our guard, she strikes quickly, stealing whatever she thinks she can sell on eBay. Now I understand why dogs chase cars.

     Gidget seems to favor underwear, and so far she is at least waiting until we have removed it. If she is secretly trying it on, I'm happy it's a secret. She has been on more panty raids than the 1956 graduating class out of Sigma Tau.

     Another canine pastime is pulling paper products out of the garbage and chewing them up into thousands of pieces. So far we've been able to make good use of her talents by shredding my columns, all of our tax documents and Hillary Clinton's emails, which by the way consist mostly of links to cat videos. Once she chewed up an entire novel and scattered it all over the floor, and I'm talking about the dog here, not Hillary Clinton, although she might have also done that. She seems a little gun-shy these days.

     Gidget has the "Here!" command down, as long as I accept that "here" is usually somewhere over "there." And if she ever gets lost she has a micro-chip embedded into her. I don't know how many bytes it is, but I do know that she mega-bit me about a hundred times before we got around to it in the training.

     But the real test is housebreaking. During the time it takes to get everyone onto the same schedule, your dog is a ticking time bomb and your house is a minefield. So we take the dog out to do her business about every ten minutes, and let me tell you, she is quite a businesswoman. She could be a member of the Small Businesswoman's Association, but for the fact that some of the business is not that small.

     To make things even more complicated, When the dog is not creating poops, she is looking for snacks from the cat litter box, which by the way resemble chocolates covered with chopped nuts. You may ask why would a dog want to eat a cat poop? The answer is it's a real time-saver on your dog's digestive system. The input equals the output. It's kind of like the "got-a-penny-leave-a-penny, need-a-penny-take-a-penny" situation at the deli.

     So we are still trying to figure out which behaviors are signaling that she has to go to the bathroom. Sometimes she runs around in a circuitous mania about forty-two times in a row, so afterwards we take her outside. She doesn't go to the bathroom but instead runs around another forty-two times outside. Then we bring her in, and BOOM-landmine. Afterward she gives me a look as if to say, "what did you expect- I just ran around the property EIGHTY-FOUR TIMES!"

     We have a book called "Dog Training for Dummies," but it doesn't say which one of us is the dummy. The good news is that I think the housebreaking period is finally over. Which only means that there is nothing left to break in our house.

SATURDAY IN THE PARK

SPECIAL TO THE SOMERS RECORD (9/17/15)

A couple weeks ago I was at Reis Park for their Saturday Summer Concert Series, where my old friends Andrea and the Armenian Rug Riders were playing.

     Lovely weather meant a nice turnout, and everyone was there with their folding chairs and kids. I didn't mean to imply that people have folding kids, but it would be a space saver if they did. Actually, I saw parents there who bought a HUGE octagonal playpen, and there were two kids in it. From far away it looked like a tiny Ultimate Fighting contest, but the tots were quite peaceful so I would have been mad if I spent a lot for it on pay-per-view.     

     We brought our little pooch Gidget with us, and immediately got in trouble with the law, as no dogs are allowed in the park. I tried to pass her off as a service dog. She was pulling up grass and spitting it out, so I implied that she was part of the landscaping crew. She is a purebred dog, a member of the non-working, non-sporting, non-herding, non-sitting, non-staying, non-obeying group. She had to listen to the concert from the car.     

     Some people looked like they were tail-gating as if they were at a Jets game. They had coolers, some wine, some cheese. The only thing they didn't have was a tailgate. There's no such thing as "hatchbacking," but everyone was in a good mood because the Jets were not there to disappoint them.     

     I'll run over the songs they did in case you weren't there, and it will be almost as good. Let's see, they did "You're So Vain," the Carly Simon song. Carly Simon won't reveal whom the song is about. The whole point is that he's so vain he THINKS the song is about him. Once she reveals who it was, and he knows the song really WAS about him, then he wasn't just being vain, was he? Some weird lyrics in this one, something about clowns in my coffee, an underworld spy and the wife of a clothespin. I'm not so good with lyrics.     

     They did "Mustang Sally," Wilson Picket cover. I guess the song was about the first American woman in space, Sally Ride. It doesn't seem too flattering, considering all you have to go through to get picked to go on a space mission: "All you want to do is ride around, Sally...." She's an astronaut, for god's sake.

     "One Way or Another," the Blondie tune, they always do that one good. I have a feeling it was written about my GPS, which is an older model, to put it nicely. Recently it took me on a wild goose chase up this mountain near Route 9W, and I followed along stupidly, because you couldn't make this route up if you tried. I must have made about forty left turns, and one right turn, and finally ended up back where I started about 20 minutes later. I swear this really happened, and I thought I heard the sound of electronic laughter. Sometimes the GPS says, "make a legal U-turn," which I learned the hard way, because I used to think it said, "make illegal U-turn."     

     They played "Highway to Hell," I guess that one was also about my GPS. They did "I Got You Babe," by Sonny and Cher. I read someplace recently that when she first heard Sonny sing her that song, she didn't want to record it. How would she have even known what the tune was? Sonny Bono couldn't sing to save his life, although I don't think that had anything to do with his death.
    
     "Southbound," by the Allman Brothers- maybe One Direction should cover that song? They also played "White Room," the Cream song. A white room with black curtains.... Eric Clapton is a great guitarist and all, but I wouldn't look to him for interior decorating advice, that's for sure.   
 
     "Mystery Achievement" was another one, by the Pretenders. Why all the mystery? Just tell us what the achievement was. In my case it was graduating High School. They did "Feel Like Makin' Love," the Bad Company tune. They don't mention in the song whether the other half also feels like it, so that's another mystery.      I hope this has been helpful. They did some more songs, too, but when I thought I heard the band do "Who Let the Dogs Out," I realized it was Gidget barking from inside the car....

THE LAST CHANCE POWER DRIVE

SPECIAL TO THE SOMERS RECORD (9/03/15)

     The sun is starting to plant itself lower in the Somers sky. There are only a couple weekends left before the chill in the air tells you that autumn is approaching, and also that you left your air conditioner on "hold." Before the leaves start piling up and I have to figure out how to work the lawn blower, it was off to Belmar, New Jersey for a weekend at the shore. After a beautiful day at the beach I like to hop on the bicycle and explore the sights, smells and sounds that have made the Jersey Shore a favorite destination of mine.

     I ride up Ocean Avenue by the Shark River Inlet. I did see some fins, but it was just a '64 El Dorado. I pass through Avon-by-the-Sea, which is pronounced "Ahhhvahhn." They're pretty particular about this, and if you're asking for directions and say it wrong I'm sure the police will give you a ticket. Just for kicks I always say the "Avon" part correctly, but butcher the "by-the-Sea" part. Why are you asking directions anyway? Just travel east until you get to the-Sea, and Avon is by-it. We have the same thing in Westchester, and I say a quick prayer for those poor people who drowned tragically looking for Croton-on-Hudson, not realizing that Croton is BY-the-Hudson, not ON-it.

     Walking my bike along the boardwalk at Asbury Park, I stop to watch a five-on-five beach volleyball game. It's nine guys and one girl, and every time the ball comes her way, a guy jumps in front of her to save the day in a sandstorm of glory. Never once does any of them make the play. America invested a lot of money in Title IX, guys- it's time to reap the benefits.

     I wallk a little farther and there is a jazz band set up at an outdoor tiki bar, with a great guitarist and a mean trombone player. No he really was mean- he almost knocked over a drink every time he hit a low note.

     Back on my bike I head north to Deal. When the name of your own town tells you to get a grip, you'd better re-examine your life. While I was getting an ice cream I heard a clamor erupting from the church across the street- it was a drum circle. I'm a drummer, so I went over to investigate. Drum circles remind me of the first grade, where they gave everyone a hat and something to bang on, and we paraded around the room until recess. I got a little egg to shake, and I remember thinking that when it comes time to hatch this thing, there's going to be a lot of finger-pointing. I'm not much of a church guy, but everyone was having fun, so during the break I asked the timbale player if they knew, "Smoke on the Water." "That's the one we just did," he said. "I thought we played that two songs ago," the conga guy offers. I turned to a guy with a tambourine and said, "Hey, Mr. tambourine man, play a song for me."  He said, "How about 'Mr. Tambourine Man?'" But when he started playing it, it
sounded a lot like "Smoke on the Water."

     I realized I had no feeling from my waist down, due to my uncomfortable bicycle seat, so I make a U-turn onto E Street and head back. Bruce Springsteen permeates the air at the Jersey Shore like a kind of musical smog. His presence is everywhere- even a bus parked at the senior's center had a sticker on it announcing that it was paid for by Bruce. By the time I pointed my car back onto the Garden State I knew every word to every Springsteen song every written, and a few that he was still working on. I was cruising along until I got to somewhere around Matawan, and then all of a sudden the highway was jammed with broken heroes and there was no place left to hide. I made that noise that Bruce makes right before the saxophone solo, and just like that, the summer was almost over....

WELCOME TO PARADISE

SPECIAL TO THE SOMERS RECORD (8/27/15)

     I've lived in Westchester County all my life, and I've never taken a plane to go on vacation between the months of June and September. There's no need to- the summer is when the Northeast blossoms with activity. Somers is within striking distance of the Jersey Shore, Cape Cod and the beaches of Maine. And then there's The Hamptons. I've never been to The Hamptons by myself, because I'm afraid that somebody on a neighborhood watch patrol would take one look at me and know that I had no business being there. So I wait until I'm invited to someone's home, and if we go out they pretend I'm the recipient of a charity fundraiser.

     I usually spend the entire time thinking that everyone I see is a celebrity. "Isn't that Robert De Niro?" I ask my friends as we are shopping for snacks at the deli. Five eyes are peering at the poor guy from behind a bag of potato chips (one of my friends is only halfway interested). "Nah, De Niro has a big ugly beauty-mark on his cheek- that one looks like a pimple," my friend insists. "And he has a tattoo on his calf I think," one-eye offers. I'll settle it once and for all. "Excuse me, sir, can you lift up your pants leg? And also, is that a pimple or an ugly beauty-mark on your cheek?" Turns out it wasn't him.

     Every summer we take a trip out to Eastern Long Island to visit with some High School friends. They have a house that straddles the line of propriety perfectly, but you don't have to go too far to experience palatial gaudiness, and if your property has a Chinese opera theater on it, and you don't live in China, you've crossed the line. The Hamptons is like a whole different world, where different rules apply, and people just travel from restaurant to restaurant, ordering cocktails until a major tragedy befalls them, like they run out of ice and the store is closed.

     The only thing that seems to get people excited is feuding with their neighbors. Everyone out there has a beef with the property next door: The "new money" people resent the "old money" people, the "old money" people disdain the "new money" people, and everyone hates the "no money" people. If you buy a house in The Hamptons, chances are good that your neighbors are going to hate your noise, hate your landscaping, hate your dust, hate your friends, hate your house and eventually hate you. And you seem like a nice enough person, except for that landscaping.

      Madonna bought this horse meadow, and all the neighbors are up in arms because she pulled some fancy footwork and had it assessed as a farm or something, so she and her horse would pay less taxes. The townspeople are more angry that they didn't think of it themselves, and of course they started calling her "Material Girl," and they probably called her horse "Material Horse."

     It's no surprise that everyone seems nuts out there, if you think about it. When you're on the L.I.E., crawling along, and a slug passes you on the side of the road, you say to yourself, "You'd have to be CRAZY to go through this every weekend!"

     And if people aren't fighting with their neighbors, they have an active feud going with at least one or more animal species invading their property. Even when the town mandates that hedges should be maintained at a certain height, deer believe that they should be lower, and set out to immediately remedy the situation. Do they even realize that they are dining in such an exclusive area? 
"Dahhhhling, DO be a deer and hand me that rhododendron branch, puhleeze...." My friends have these little burrow hills all over their lawn, so they got an animal informant to find out who the culprit was. After they hired this mole, the problem got worse, go figure.

     By the end of the weekend I've had enough. I'd like to eat something that DOESN'T have any chipotle or dill sauce. Or somebody's kid that isn't named Hunter or Parker.

     And every road sign in The Hamptons says "Old Sag This," and "Old Sag That." Thanks for the reminder. When I get to Gray Wrinkly Osteoporosis Road I turn back onto 27 and go home. And on the way, mired in two hours of traffic, I have some choice words about Madonna, her landscaping, and the horse she rode in on.