NOT ON MY WHALE WATCH

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (08-19-21)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

 
     Every time I vacation in Provincetown, Massachusetts, I learn the same lesson, and I don't mind learning it over and over because it's so important. The lesson is that no matter how far out there somebody else's lifestyle seems to you, it doesn't seem that way to them. And further, they don't care that you think they're out there. The natives here welcome tourism, they know how to entertain and they don't mind if you stare until the novelty wears off.

     If you come here you're going to see gay men, gay women, people who populate any number of gray areas in between and a whole lot of dogs on a leash. Some people came here to see if they really were what they thought they were (they were), and never left. It's a microcosm of what society can be if it learns the above lesson, because since most of these folks have experienced the same sexual prejudices at some point in their lives (maybe most points), their tolerance for racism, jingoism and other forms of bigotry is very low.

     There's plenty to do. We've been coming here for 40 years and we've never been on a whale watch, so we went on one. The ship cruises about 45 minute north of town into the Stellwagen Bank Marine Sanctuary, a natural shelf rich in diverse forms of ocean life. The crew shares information about the whales they see and collect data about their habits. Humpback whales feed here during the summer, coming from as far away as the Dominican Republic. Known as baleen whales, they take in huge mouthfuls of seawater and express it out through the baleen tissue, which holds the krill and plankton they source as food. If I was a 50-foot whale couldn't I think of something more satisfying to eat, like a 10 foot submarine sandwich? "Mom, when's dinner? It's only two o'clock and I'm STARVING." "Why don't you have a few diatoms? That should tide you over until high tide." Thanks, Mom. 

     We came upon a 48 year-old cow named Freckles, and if you're wondering how she got her name, it's a good idea not to get close enough to find out. I'm not interested in going viral in somebody's selfie video where the whale comes REALLY close to the boat and starts following it and bumping into it, and everyone goes gaga and yells isn't this great, it's trying to make friends with us, let's get closer and BFF the whale, and tell it some intimate details about last year's vacation and perhaps overshare a little bit and then the whale performs the ultimate act of friendship by eating us. Yes folks, whales have a more normal idea of friendship than some of our friends do, which is having us for dinner once in a while. 

     It was a surf-and-turf kind of evening, and back on land, Drag Queen Karaoke is an institution at the Goveronor Bradford Restaurant. You can hear just about anything you want here, but you'll mostly hear things you don't. Karaoke sung by someone who can really sing is a rare gem, and butchered by someone who can't is a train wreck that even the most stringent safety measures cannot prevent from happening over and over again. People have been subjected to countless trials and tribulations through time immemorial, but it's nothing compared to the abject horrors that the bartender here has endured on a daily basis.

     A guy with a pair of wings on his back sauntered in to sing a song, and I meant to ask him if those things really work. I wouldn't ind flying to work once in a while but I have no idea what my wing size is. The introduction to his song was 24 bars, according to the screen, so I could have finished the whole conversation with enough time left over to introduce the song to my mother's entire side of the family, which goes all the way back to Norway. 

     Perhaps humans have evolved while I wasn't paying close attention, but everything I've seen since 2016 tells me we're going in the other direction. We may be crawling back into the sea before too long, so whenever I go to Provincetown I hit the beach and brush up on my swimming skills.

     While there's a 64-bar guitar solo in the song, did you know that whales have not been observed mating, but have been seen engaging in "seductive behavior?" The male blows bubbles underneath the female, and that tickles her fancy in an inappropriate place: Massachusetts Bay. You think that's little weird do you? Well, I've got news for you: whales don't care what we think, and the sooner we all understand that, the better.

CHASING WATERFALLS

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (08-12-21)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     Last Saturday the weather was so nice we decided to take a little motorcycle ride. It's nice to feel the wind lapping at your face, and it's one of the few things I don't mind lapping at my face. Our destination was a day trip to Kent Falls up Route 7 in Connecticut, with a visit to the Eric Sloane Museum along the way. At the end of Dog Tail Corners Road we stopped at the Bulls Covered Bridge for a photo, but you can't see the bridge at all because they built a cover over it. The good news is that if you drive over it in the rain, your car stays dry the whole time. 

     At the Eric Sloane Museum, an enthusiastic docent told us about his life and accomplishments. He was a prolific painter, author and lover of Americana. His collection of antique hand tools is on display there, because he viewed them as a utilitarian art form. If you've often wondered what a picaroon was, or a winnowing machine or a bark spud, this is the place to find out. There was something called a "flail with eelsking thong," which if I'm not mistaken was also the title of a Kim Kardashian Instagram post.

     Eric Sloane had a lifelong fascination with weather, clouds and the atmosphere, and he was commissioned to paint the 7 storey-high mural that is on display in the lobby of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. 

     You can tour his studio, recreated with the tools he used and the books he found inspiration in all sitting there as if he just got up for a beer. I pictured myself painting in the studio, trying to figure out how so much paint got in my hair, and how I might get it out, and I end up trying to actually use my hair to paint something, and my wife walks in and sees it, makes a noise that I am well used to and walks quickly out again without further comment. I realized it was time to go before I pictured anything else.

     Kent Falls is a nice place to have a picnic or get a good selfie or take your kids. If you want to bring them back home again that's up to you. We watched one girl set up an entire portable selfie studio with a light ring and a tripod, and she clearly had invested some time in hair and make-up. Perhaps she was an influencer, and I hear that crayfish are easily influenced, so I just hope that she was using her powers for good instead of evil.

     You're not allowed to scale the falls themselves, but there's a precarious path you can walk up near the side of the water if you want to get a nice view from the top. I'm guessing it's the place where Kent actually fell from when they named the place after him, because going back down wasn't that much easier than climbing up.

     My grandmother used to take me to Kent Falls when I was a little kid. I remember catching crayfish in the brook, a fact that my wife did not believe. "No way you did that," she said, but it's not like they run all that fast. Neither my Grandmother nor the crayfish are around to corroborate the story, though. "What did you do with them?" She asked. I said, "I roasted them on the spit and made crayfish thermidor out of them. It's like lobster thermidor only smaller." She didn't believe me anyway so why not.

     Our final stop was a chocolate shop in the town of Kent, where they peremptorily apologized for the chocolate shortage, another unfortunate by-product of the pandemic. Most of the good stuff was already taken: fudge was sold out, no chocolate chip cookies or tree bark. All that was left were chocolates made by people who tried to ruin them by putting stuff in them that was clearly not chocolate, like coconuts or fruit syrups or even liquor, which is where the term "chocoholic" probably comes from. Folks, the way you can improve my chocolate experience is by leaving a little more of it for me.

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (08-05-21)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     This August marks my anniversary at the company I started my career with 41 years ago. I could have been a brain surgeontist, or a rocket scientologist, or a quantum physician- In America I could be anything I wanted to be. All I needed was the will to do it and hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition costs. And a brain transplant. But instead, I've been a part of bringing you your favorite shows for over half the period of time that my television network has been in existence. When a show says, "brought to you by so-and-so," I'm actually the so-and-so they're talking about. They say it's unheard of for people to spend this many years at one company. I don't know where I heard that, but it's true I had to listen very closely. These days, employees want to leave their jobs after a short time and move on. I'd like to leave at about 2PM myself, but I guess I'll stick it out.

     In some ways working for a major television network today bears little resemblence to what it was like 41 years ago. In other respects, not much has changed. "60 Minutes" is still on the air, for instance, but back when I started you could only watch it through the "air," received on a television set through an antenna. Now only butterflies have antennas, so they can watch TV whenever they want.

     To give you an idea of how long I've been there, my first job was to sit in front of the screen for an entire eight-hour shift and write down the start and end time for each commercial, as a legal record that the spot aired as scheduled. Most people would have folded under the demands of such a job, but TV and me were made for each other. I know the words to every jingle that aired in the year 1980, and I'll sing them for you just before you hit me over the head with a ball-peen hammer. In 1981 the company discovered the VCR and I moved on down the hall. Every year or so I moved down the hall to a different position, and all of a sudden I was at the end of the hall. And that's where I've been ever since. 

     People often ask me if I'm in "production," and I usually say yes, since it's harder to describe what I actually do. My job is to help compile the Operations Schedule, an assemblage of every element that airs during the day across the broadcast network. Programs, promos, interstitials and most importantly, commercials, are all filtered through facilities that my department schedules. And when football season rolls around, I create a document that tells everyone in the building the outgoing paths for each game, and what the facilities are used for the programming that follows it. It may sound complicated, but I usually describe my work as something that a monkey could do, provided he's been in the position for 40 years or so and can type just a little bit.

     Maybe the thing that's changed the most since I started is me. Back then I was known for roaming the Broadcast Center after hours with my shoes off, and wearing my glasses askew on my nose so that I could read close up. When I walked into my first NFL meeting and the Vice President of Sports Operations took a look at the long-haired, non-corporate-looking specimen who was taking over the network switching, he looked vaguely suicidal, and then vaguely homicidal. But we soon bonded at the diner over our love of pancakes. I guess when I graduated from communications school with a degree in television, I thought I might land in an industry where I could be myself, and when they hired me they probably were hoping myself was somebody else. Maybe I only assumed I've changed because so much time has passed. After all, the new Vice President of Sports Operations refers to me as "Darth," convinced I came from the "dark side."

      I'm aware that what I do doesn't save lives or discover new galaxies. But being part of a team that brings the work of talented people to the public is good enough for me, and during a pandemic when people can't get out a whole lot, maybe a little "Price is Right" can save a life here and there. I've had a long and satisfying career, and it ain't over yet. I'm not a great fan of change, but it's the reality of my industry. In 1980, who would have guessed that the world would come this far, only to wish it was back where it was then. But then again in those days the phrase, "Do you accept cookies?" would have been just another dumb question.

SECONDHAND SMOKE

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (07-29-21)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     On the way back from tennis today I looked up and saw a beautiful pink moon hanging in the sky and I couldn't take my eyes off it. Usually if I see in the news that it's going to be a rare "blood-red harvest mariner's blue guacamole-with-cheese moon," I get all excited and put on my pajamas and go outside to see, and when I look up it's the same color it always is. But I've never seen a pink moon- I guess maybe it was just going through a phase. Well, it turns out that it wasn't the moon at all, it was the sun, filtered through the haze of an atmosphere filled with smoke from wildfires in Oregon, about 3,000 miles away.

     If this doesn't prove that we're all sitting here on one planet at the vulnerable mercy of what each other does, I don't know what will. In the grand scheme of things it's not that much different than me sitting next to the campfire toasting marshmallows, and then the smoke blows my way and I move, and it manages to find me wherever I go, and it's so frustrating that I have to take drastic measures and my wife comes out of the tent looking for me and asks me what I'm doing in the car with the windows rolled up holding a marshmallow on a stick? I don't even bother to say that there's a reasonable explanation for it.

     I can't think of anything scarier than wildfires, nor anyone braver than the people who fight them. What does it take in a person to sign up for that? A lot more than I have, and I've looked all over. Whoever it was that said, "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen" was amazing, because how did they know I started a fire there underneath my Jennair grill the other night? I know you're thinking that I was pretty brave, running towards the fire while some of my cats were running away from it, and fighting it with the plant mister. Within a matter of minutes I had the fire 30% contained.

     The Oregon fire, by the time I read more about it, had scorched an area half the size of Rhode Island, and thwarted the usual strategies of the professionals fighting it. I felt sorry for the people affected by it. I also felt a little sorry for Rhode Island, because every time something bad happens, Rhode Island gets dragged into it. Remember that huge pile of garbage floating around the Pacific Ocean? It was twice the size of Rhode Island, and remember that BP oil spill? It left a scummy ring the size of Rhode Island. When people think of Rhode Island, I hope they don't think of an oily garbage patch that is on fire. I met a guy who said he came from a place that had enough nuts in it to fill the state of Rhode Island. Turns out he was from Rhode Island.

     I read that the Oregon "Bootleg" fire is so large that it created a pyrocumulus cloud that generated its own lightning. This is unusual, and not nearly as helpful as creating a cloud that could make its own rain. Officials are trying to get scores of people to evacuate the area, but people who recall other, smaller wildfires in the past are reluctant to leave and want to "ride it out." Folks, my Mom's parallel parking is something you "ride out." A million-plus-acre wildfire is not. I know it seems far away at the moment, but I may just evacuate myself to be on the safe side.

     Did I ever tell you about the time I burnt down kitchen at my family's home in Chappaqua? The rest of the clan was on a nine-hour cruise up the Hudson, and just me and my father were there. I was cooking some French fries when my sister called from college, and me and my Dad were chatting away blissfully unaware that my French fries' patience was wearing thin. They burst into flames, which spread around the wood cabinetry of the kitchen in short order. The fire department came and quickly extinguished the flames, and my father elected to use the insurance money to send one of my sisters to college and repair the kitchen himself.

     This led to several revelations, 1.) You should keep at least three working fire extinguishers in your home and know how to use them, as we sort of did. 2.) French fries are not fire-retardant. 3.) A nine-hour cruise up the Hudson is WAY too long. 4.) If you're thinking of making French fries at your own home, you should know that it costs much more to send a kid to college today than it did in 1980.

     No, nothing about fire is funny, but trying to excavate a smile in a desolate area is what I do. It also gives me a chance to say thank you to those who keep us safe from people like me who underestimate the combustible nature of food. So, thank you.
 

 

 

 

SEARCHING FOR SAND

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (07-22-21)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     When summer rolls around I love to have a couple places that we go to every year, because that way you don't have to waste any time thinking of new and different things to keep you entertained. If you know the drill and you like the drill, it puts holes in the theory that you need a new drill. We head out to the Hamptons every year to visit our friends Mark and Laurie, and it's such a comfortable feeling to fall into the routine.

     I'm not an expert on the Hamptons, but I know it has a reputation for being somewhat la-di-dah, and I only say that because I don't know the words. But I've never had the feeling that the people who live there thought they were better than me, although they would have said "better than I," which would have been better. It's just a nice, clean section of the universe where people don't feel the need for too many tattoos. The friends who have invited me out there over the years have always been a kind and patient breed of humans, so maybe they are better than me. I'm learning to be patient, because in the summer any trip to Long Island is long.

     Should we take the Throggs or the Whitestone? The three of us disagree. My wife says we ALWAYS take the Throggs and it's ALWAYS a nightmare. I say yes, but that's only because everyone is trying to avoid the Whitestone, which is a worse nightmare. If we sneak up on the Throggs pretending to look like we secretly wanted the Whitestone, we should be fine. The GPS doesn't believe we should attempt the trip at all, and thinks we should go where we went last weekend. I guess I forgot to type in the new destination.

     There's a huge queue in the exit lane to get onto the Cross Island Parkway. "This is why they call it a parkway, we've been parked here for 15 minutes," I say. "Everyone's passing us in the weasel lane only to cut in front of us right before the exit." I feel I should treat the entire highway as an exit, so we're all on a level playing field. I politely cut in front of someone and wave a "thank you" to make it look like his idea. Meanwhile, the GPS says "At the next available opportunity, make a legal U-turn," but it sounds like she's saying, "make illegal U-turn," and I have to rely on my inner compass.

     To avoid the constant jockeying for position on the LIE, I head into the HOV lane. How many occupants does it take to make your vehicle "high occupancy?" Any of them now that marijuana is legal in New York.

     When we get to the beach club the next day, the weather is iffy but it doesn't matter. In the Hamptons you just bend everything into a shape you can use to your advantage. "This crappy weather is the best idea we've had all day. Without a little light rain we would have waited a half hour for a menu at the cafe." The umbrella we brought to the beach finally gets a chance to show what it's made of.

     Saturday night is game night. I found a couple board games on the internet, and they're supposed to teach you something about each other and something about yourself, by trying to make you guess the answer that you thought the other person would say to a question that they are obviously answering differently than they normally would because they know you are trying to think of the answer they think you thought they would say. The thing we learned about ourselves is that the smallest amount of cocktails can make the instructions sound like that last sentence. So we changed the rules to make the game remarkably like charades. Everyone told me not to say one word out loud while I was giving my clues, and to try to cut down on them in between, also.

     At the end of a fabulous weekend I realize I've come to terms with not having a second home. It might have been Diogenes who said, “He who has the most is the most content with the least.” I think that's what he said, it was a while ago and I'm not sure I heard him correctly. The point is, I may not have a house in the Hamptons, but I have three things that are just as good: my ability to find fun wherever I am, and two friends who have a house in the Hamptons.

RUNNING FOR THE HILLS

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (07-15-21)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

 
     My friend Margaret is running for town council. She is a gregarious, honest, caring, passionate and hard-working individual who would be an asset to any organization, and certainly my town. It takes a special kind of person to espouse politics at even the most local level. At a small get-together to introduce her candidacy, some current members of the Town Board said a few words about what they do.

     They spoke about new ideas, and how not every idea is a great idea just because it's new, but what IS great is having them, welcoming them and considering them. They spoke of how diversity is something not to be feared, but to be embraced as a way to keep a town from stagnating. They talked about what a nice place we live in, and ideas to make it even better.

     I wondered what it would be like to be in that world for just a moment. That's how long it would take for people to say, "I wouldn't vote for you if you were the LAST politician on Earth!" But what if I WAS the last politician on Earth? I have a couple of questions before I agree to run: 1.) Is anything boring going to come before the Board? I'm not sure I want to have to read a bunch of legal-sounding stuff like, "all abuttals will be accepted ab initio as absolute according to accounts accumulated by the acquittal of adjudication administrated by the aforementioned, ad valorem. And that's just the boring stuff that begins with "A." 2.) Do I have to kiss any babies? Most interactions I have with babies result in one of us being disappointed in the others' behavior. Maybe the baby wouldn't be offended by a solemn bow like in Japan. 3.) Will I be expected to know the answers to peoples' questions? If the baby asks me something I can probably answer it without having to look it up in a YouTube video, otherwise I'll have to get back to you.

     I don't want to get caught in a lie, but the truth is sometimes painful, so I have to obfuscate it by saying things that sound like I made them up, like "obfuscate." Why do I use a word like "ubiquitously?" It's difficult to say. "That bum Rick Melén said in a speech that my taxes would always almost never not hesitate to sometimes every time not go the opposite of down, and yet they always almost never hesitated to sometimes the opposite of not did!" I wouldn't have said something like that unless I meant it.

     You have to be good at posing for photos. "Would you mind a photo?" Someone at my rally asks. "Sure, but what's my hair look like?" I reply. "An endangered species habitat," they say, "but I meant for you to take a picture of US." You have to make sure someone is photographing you every time you're doing something good, like rescuing someone who is about to eat haggis, or delivering great oratory about why "F Troop" is better than "The Brady Bunch."

     You have to be willing to compromise. If you're not, just get out of the game now, I'm not budging on that.

     I'm not sure if there are any skeletons in my closet. There's a weird smell coming from in there, but it could be that broken toaster oven that I can't bear to throw away because at some point it might be less broken than the one I have now. What if someone from the opposing party hires a private detective to dig up some "dirt" on me? The first thing he's going to do is check my internet browser history, and his eyes will pop out of his head. Not for the reason you might think, but because when he sees queries like, "legal terms that start with 'A'" or "what exactly is haggis," he'll automatically assume that I'm unfit for office.

     So good luck to you, Margaret. I guess you just have to be true to yourself and hope for the best. I said to my wife that the one thing I could do was write a speech. I'd open with a joke and close with a joke, not the same joke. "What goes in the middle?" She asked. I'd put a couple funny stories in there and a gag, I said. "What kind of politician would you be with that speech?" She asked. "I don't know," I said, "but I'd feel funny trying not to be."

IF THEY DON'T WIN IT'S A SHAME

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (07-08-21)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     Now that it's safe to come out of the house, you might be looking for things to do that don't cost an arm and a leg, aren't too far away and can't be done via Zoom. My wife thought we might go someplace for a walk in the woods, but I said that seems like a hike. So instead we got tickets to a Hudson Valley Renegades game at Dutchess Stadium in Wappingers Falls. The team is the "High-A" affiliate of the Yankees, so you can see up-and-coming players, as well as those that are down-and-going.

     I anticipated a long wait for parking, so I pulled my usual trick that I do at a Giants game, which is to park as far away from the stadium as you possibly can and when the game is over, by the time you walk the 45 minutes back to your car, everyone's gone home and you say to your passengers, "See? Beat the traffic." I would have parked off exit 12 on I-84 but they re-numbered the exits and I couldn't do the math quick enough.

     The cuisine is not diverse as in the big leagues. At Yankee Stadium you can order sushi parmesan if you want, but minor league food is pretty basic: hot dogs, hamburgers, pizza. I couldn't even buy you some peanuts and Cracker Jacks if I wanted, but making concessions is what you do at concession stands. You might miss a few innings standing on line- food service workers are working from home these days, but on something other than food service. But that doesn't mean you have to miss the action. As I was waiting for the wine steward, a foul ball came hurtling over the roof, bounced off the facade and almost landed on some lady's hamburger. I would have ordered mine the same way if I thought it would get here any quicker.

     There was no program available, no scorecard and no player roster, so you couldn't really be sure if all of the members were even on the team. I'm used to seeing a long list of their statistics: batting average, home runs, RBIs, height, weight, circumference, favorite recipe, Mary Ann, Ginger, Jeannie or Samantha and the three-digit security code on the back of their credit card. I had to make do with a severely un-Photoshopped photo on the scoreboard.

     The P.A. announcer has the hardest job of anyone in the place. He was part sports commentator, part babysitter and part cruise ship activities director. He referred your attention to the top of each dugout for various enterprises and contests between innings, and after a while the baseball game just grew to be a distraction.

     As all this was going on there was something that looked like a large yellow throw pillow roaming around the stands, which I am told was Pikachu, a Japanese animated character. I'm not sure if it had anything to with the game or if it just wandered in from Times Square, but I thought it safer to tip it just in case. I did find out later that Pikachu has powerful electrical abilities, which is more than I learned about any of the players.

     Since there was no scorecard, the chance of me scoring at the stadium rose to 0. I tried keeping a scorecard at a ballgame once, and it was a lot like when I watch a movie with my wife: "What just happened?" I ask. "Pay attention and you'll find out," she says. I say, "I was trying to write a backwards 'K' but it kept coming out forwards." She asks why are you writing a backwards 'K' when we're trying to watch a movie?

     You do have to pay attention once in a while because there is no instant replay at the stadium. I realize it's expensive, but I usually have my attention somewhere else, like looking for the glasses that are already up on my forehead but since I'm nearsighted I can't see them there without my glasses. Would it be too much trouble just to re-enact the important plays over again, a little slower? If you want to add a bad break-up or a chase scene, so much the better.

     After the game they covered the outfield with a tarp and set off fireworks. A splendid finale to an eventful 11-9 victory. We enjoyed the bombs bursting in air, because my town won't be hosting fireworks, as we wait for covid-19 to finally be swept out to sea. Instead, maybe I'll just start a loud argument this year, as my dog is used to hiding under the couch on July 4th.