A SCARE IN THE AIR NEAR WASHINGTON SQUARE

SPECIAL TO THE SOMERS RECORD (11-12-15)  

A scant 20 miles from Somers, a legend was told of a headless horseman who haunted one of the townspeople in a fictional place called Sleepy Hollow. Was he the ghost of a soldier who lost his head to a Revolutionary War cannonball? Impossible to say, since if you have no head you have to hold your tongue. If you can find someone who's all ears you can probably work it out.

It is said that the specter of the headless horseman rides every Halloween night terrorizing all who find themselves in his path. Myself, my wife and friends Carmel and Charley decided to recreate our own version of the story, 25 miles south of the real Sleepy Hollow, in New York City. Instead of horses we used bicycles, and rode the beautiful Hudson River Greenway toward the West Village.

You can see just about anything bicycling along the Hudson. Once I saw a plane land in the river, and I thought two things: One, that it was astounding that everyone got out alive, and Two, that I bet you 10 bucks they actually got their luggage faster than usual.

On Halloween you can see even more things you never saw before, and frankly had no desire to. In order not to get costume-shamed we wore some nominal scare gear. I had on a Rastafarian wig, thinking I might get away with more because of my religion. I figured it would caught in my spokes within the first five minutes. Every time I ride a bicycle, something gets caught in my spokes- my pants cuffs, my jacket, a pizza, a rhododendren. My wife had on a pair of cat ears. I told her she had put them on backwards, and she said, "What did you say?"

You think of Manhattan as a diverse place, but it's actually a city full of aspiring rappers who drive for Uber. But on Halloween everyone has a new job, if only for one day. It's a great chance to try out an occupation you think you might be interested in and see how you like it. Also, you can see other peoples' reactions to your new career choice.

A four foot-eleven girl who weighs 91 pounds can be an NFL quarterback, and even with the odds stacked against her, I can almost guarantee she won't get flagged for as many delay-of-game penalties as some people I can think of.

A burly construction worker can be transformed into a beautiful girl in a gorgeous gown for one magical day. I always wonder how many lifestyle transitions start on Halloween night.

You can also see how you look with a tail. I once read that a cat uses his tail for balance, but I can tell you this: from what I saw on this Saturday night Halloween, the presence of a tail did not help anyone's balance very much.

The whole thing looked like a logistical nightmare for police, who were allegedly using high-tech facial scanning equipment to keep track of the crowd. FYI: if the police point the scanner at somebody wearing a Frankenstein mask, and your name pops up in the database, you need to start making some serious changes.

But in reality the police had so much help, they could pretty much take the night off. On duty this night in the Village were 324 Supermen, 439 Spidermen, 610 Batmen and a guy who looked like Gene Hackman. There were also 932 extra police in uniform, although most of those were costumes. My wife said she recognized some of them from a bachelorette party she went to, and yet I bet some of them still put in for overtime.

MAKING THE CUT

SPECIAL TO THE SOMERS RECORD (11-05-15)   

     So I was in the self check-out line at CVS the other day, and when I was done I realized two things: One, that I hadn't  had a haircut in about a year, and Two, it turns out that the self-checkout line is for purchasing items, not checking yourself out, who knew.

     I secured an appointment at a salon on 57th Street near where I work to have my tresses shortened. I'm much more comfortable in a saloon than a salon, and I'm not used to having a guy wash my hair. He offered me a drink. There was soft music, sensual video, scalp massaging, there was shampooing, there was conditioning... It seemed like I might be dating the guy. I told him, "Why are we spending so much time on this hair? It's going to be sitting on the floor over there in ten minutes."

     Am I supposed to tip him? I decide against it- I never tipped anybody I went on a date with. Well, except once, but that was a special occasion. All this attention was starting to make me feel a little bit girly, but maybe it was just hormones.

     If I was feeling girly, cutting my hair was against my Rule No. 98, which says that 85% of all women look best with shoulder-length hair. I've done several studies on this matter, and I'm pretty confident in these numbers. 10% wear long hair best, and about 3% can get away with short hair. That leaves a couple percent for the wildcard factor, which includes Sinead O'Connor with her bald look, Princess Leia with the reverse snail shell situation, or Bo Derek with those dreadlocks.

     Every once in a while one of those 85 percenters goes haywire and cuts her hair short, and her hairdresser is practically slobbering over her telling her how great she looks, and she either has to believe what he is telling her or admit to herself that she wasted $120 bucks. So she shows up at work beaming, asking everybody, "So? What do you think???" And before any of the guys can chime in and say they kind of liked it better before, another girl in the office vaults herself onto her lap and gushes, "OMIGOD!! I LOVE it!" And the guys have to hold their tongues or risk office disharmony.

     "It's so low maintenance!" She raves, as if she was a 2010 Toyota Corolla. The hairstyle is called a "bob," and I wonder how it got its name. It's possible that some model in the 1960s (who no doubt looked better with shoulder-length hair) chopped her hair off in a fashion-forward frenzy, and a guy at the agency chimed in: "You know who you look like now? Bob!" (And he points over at Bob, who doesn't look so happy about the comparison either.)

     Anyway, my stylist combed all my hair forward so that I looked like Cousin Itt, then started snipping away. Soon I looked more and more like Wednesday Addams, but on the negative side, as the hair was falling in front of my face I inhaled most of it. I like to think my hair even looks great inside me, because inner beauty is most important to me.

     I told him that he could contribute my hair to Locks of Love, the wonderful charity that makes hairpieces for children who have suffered medical conditions that cause them to lose their hair. He said he could not, because you need ten inches to make a donation. I told him that ten inches seems like a tall order. I didn't think it was necessary for him to add that not that many children would look great with my gray hair.

MUCH PAIN, NO GAIN

SPECIAL TO THE SOMERS RECORD (10-29-15)

     I have a rule, Rule No. 67, that states, "What doesn't kill you, usually really, really hurts." This was certainly true a couple weeks ago when I ended up in the emergency room at Northern Westchester Hospital. I will spare you the sordid details of how I ended up there, but if I had started there, it would have saved me a lot of time.

     I had sustained a laceration to the proximal phalanx of my digitus minimus manus. Okay, I cut my pinkie finger on a beer glass. The EMT told me it couldn't be saved- my beer, not the pinkie. I was whisked away by ambulance, and if you've never been whisked, you don't know what you're missing. Since it wasn't that serious, they didn't use the siren and considered stopping at 7-11 for some snacks.

     Let me tell you that a real E.R. is nothing like the television drama. For one thing, my nurse did not look like Julianna Margulies. My nurse was a dude, and he looked like he knew his way around a Harley pretty good. Also, no one yelled "Suction!" during my visit, although I did yell "This sucks!" a number of times. My vital signs never flat-lined, although some of my jokes did. I thought I heard the doctor say "Stat!" But it turned out he said "What's that?" (the nurse had the new iphone).

     The doctor explained that he was going to use a local anesthesia, and that it was going to hurt. Well what's the point of that? I told him to use the express, and let's get it over with. He said he could knock me out using his shoe, it was all the same to him.

     When he stuck that Lidocaine needle into my finger, I screamed like a seven year-old girl. A seven year-old girl who, very mature for her age, knew a LOT of disturbing words that say pretty much the same thing. A seven year-old girl who was not going to earn a merit badge in bravery.

     I know the E.R. doctor has heard everything there is to be heard, and I know that he did not take all the things I screamed about his immediate relatives personally, because his expression did not change. If he did take them personally, he did not seem to particularly disagree with them.

     He spent a good long time stitching me up. I thought to myself (I never think to anyone else) that this guy must have spent hundreds of hours in a classroom training for this moment. He probably spent some time in medical school, but I'm talking about home economics courses here. This guy could really sew. I could swear he put a hem in my pinkie.

     Now, there are some things in life that look best with a minimum of dressing. The Miss America swimsuit competition, for instance, or a really expensive salad. But a laceration is not one of them. He was goint to stick a couple band-aids on the thing, but I made him doll it up a couple of gauze pads short of "The Invisible Man." I am okay with wearing white after Labor Day.

     I had some minor nerve damage, and I was referred to a plastic surgeon who could fix it. The doctor told me that I would have a scar, and when he saw the look on my face, he said that on the bright side, he could do a procedure to take fat out of my butt cheeks and put it near my eyes that would make me look happy about it. Luckily, I have enough back there to put a happy face on every man, woman and child in the state of Rhode Island.

SEEING THE LIGHT

SPECIAL TO THE SOMERS RECORD (10-22-15)

     So I was reading a couple pages west of here that due to the amount of traffic on Route 139, the town has voted to erect a traffic light near the Somers High School. We had the same problem when I was growing up, and in order to help alleviate the situation, I generously opted not to show up at my High School all that often. This resulted in me graduating with a 1.7 grade point average. In my defense I think that number was on a scale of 100, not 1,000 like you were thinking.

     The New York Department of Transportation decided that a traffic light would be the best option, better than redesigning the entrance to the school, better than constructing a roundabout on Route 139, and better than unleashing a bunch of teenagers with a 1.7 GPA.

     They discussed the rotary for a while at the town meetings, and they went around in circles on that . The Fire Department said that it would hamper its ability to respond to calls quickly, and I would have to agree with them. The fire engine is so long that if it missed the exit the first time around, the front end might pass the back end and the truck could end up at two different locations.

     If they do put a signal 139, I hope they will have enough sense to run it as a flashing yellow light when school is not in session. There are so many annoying traffic lights now it makes me want to pull my hair out. Well, not mine but yours. The worst is the traffic signal on Route 100 at Route 134. You could drive up to that light at 4:00 in the morning, and it waits until you take your eyes off it to adjust the radio, then turns red before you can do anything about it. I try to pull up to it quickly so that it will "see" me, turn green and let's all get on with our lives. But no, it's busy making all its nowhere plans for nobody. I have to wait for a green arrow on the other side, where no one has made a left turn since 1956. By this time even raccoons are laughing at me, and one of them even made a left turn to mock me.

     Now is a good time to go over the responsibilities of the driver when approaching a traffic signal. If the light is green, proceed at normal speed. I do not recommend that you speed up on the off-chance that the light might turn yellow. If the light is yellow, slow down and prepare to stop. Do not speed up even faster than you were going when you sped up at the green light, on the off-chance that the light might turn red. If it's a red light, come to a stop. Don't roll slowly up to the intersection preparing for the off-chance that the light will turn green, then have to suddenly jam on the brakes if it doesn't. I guarantee this will cause an even bigger fight with your wife than refusing to stop for directions.

     By the way, if your wife is always mad at you for not stopping for directions, I offer this compromise that I sometimes use. I roll down the window and ask a local resident for directions, but I don't actually stop the car, so I can usually hear the first couple of turns before the voice drifts off into the rear-view mirror, then I repeat the process a few times so I don't have to ever admit I broke the long-standing male code of ethics.

     If you're ever behind me on my way to the train station, you'll notice that I slow down six different times in order to let stopped cars through ahead of me. This is not because I am extremely polite, although I did hold the door open for a lady recently. It was a revolving door and it resulted in minor injury, but the thought was there. It's for self-preservation. If we don't band together and let each other through, we will end up with a traffic light at the end of EVERY STREET.

     There will be a speed bump in your garage and a four-way stop sign at the end of your driveway. And if that doesn't work maybe a FIVE-way stop sign. I only know one way to stop, so don't get me started.

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.