Weekly Mail April 24, 2016

       One of the criticisms I received before I went on my long writing hiatus was that the tone of my writing had turned somewhat dark. Whereas my old e-mails were recaps of wild weekends of drinking and dancing (so to speak), I was now strictly writing of politics and sports, and since my sports teams and politicians were both perennial losers, much of the good humor had been sucked right out my stories.

        I am going to do my best to put a humorous spin on this past week, but I have to tell you it won't be easy. A lot of bad $h-t went down last week.

Monday- Actually Monday was OK. Work was busy but no major disasters, Timmy didn't clobber anyone at school, the Mets beat the Phillies, and I had a real nice conversation with my Mom. Yeah, Monday was all right. Except Doris Roberts died. The Mom from Everybody Loves Raymond, and a favorite show of mine from the late 70's Angie, died at age 90. In addition to Doris, this classic one year wonder sitcom starred crazy Annette from Saturday Night Fever, Ted Striker from Airplane!, and Hotsy Totsy from Welcome Back Kotter. Here is the theme song, you're welcome that you won't get it out of your head for the rest of the day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roEOCNPeALA&index=17&list=PL_-

But it will be as Marie Barrone, the pain in the a$$ mother, wife and mother in law from Everybody Loves Raymond that will cement her legacy.


Tuesday- OK so here's where stuff started to go south.

The primary was held in New York on Tuesday. The good news is we went and voted without a hitch. We got the correct ballot, made our choice no issues whatsoever. Timmy pointed out that the last time I voted, I was having trouble putting my ballot through the scanner and one of the volunteers was giving me grief about it. This was two days after the World Series ended, so I was in no mood to have my chops busted that day. I can't believe I had forgotten about that but my son is beginning to look like he's going to remember all the goofy shit that I remember too. Oh, well.

But other precincts reported having issues. In Brooklyn, over 100,000 eligible voters were accidentally purged from the voting rolls and were unable to cast ballots. Queens had multiple complaints of faulty voting machines. Would it have made a difference? I don't know, but they left themselves open for questioning that's for sure.

The results themselves of course didn't turn out good for yours truly. Donald Trump won nearly 60% of the vote, meaning he's most likely going to be the Republican nominee. My guy, John Kasich finished a distant second and Ted Cruz finished in third. That there were 126,000 people in NY willing to vote for this guy is mind boggling.

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton won big. Ray asked me if I heard that when Hillary thanked her home state of NY she cackled. I didn't, but really that's the beauty of Hillary isn't it? She's full of $hit, she knows she's full of $hit, she knows we know she's full of $hit, and so on and so on and scooby dooby doo,

There was a bit of an uproar because independent voters were shut out. NY is a closed primary and has been for a long time. Also, if you wanted to switch up your party affiliation, you had to do so in October.  I'm not sure how long that rule has been in place, but I suspect it has been in force for a while.

Should the rules be changed? Probably. But my point is that it's not unique to this situation. It just made news because Bernie Sanders has relied so heavily on independent voters, and had they been able to vote, it might have made the results closer. There's a lot of shenanigans being pulled by the DNC to secure the nomination for Hillary, this isn't one of them.

Meanwhile at the Garden, the Rangers were laying another egg against the Penguins. More aggravating was that an intentional slash by Penguins forward Kris Letang on Ranger Victor Stalberg was uncalled and then no suspension given out by the NHL. If the same thing had been done to Sidney Crosby, the offending Rangers would have been suspended at least two games, if not the remainder of the series. Selective justice.

Meanwhile, the Mets blew out the Phillies 11-1.


Wednesday- Mets lose to the Phillies. The Phillies suck this year.

Also at soccer practice, Timmy thought it would be a good idea to pour the bottle of Fruit20 grape water over his head. That was bad enough, but then he gave out to me and Tara when I told him he needed to take a shower. "It's just water" he said. He's the greatest kid in the world, IMHO, but man does he know how to push my buttons.



Thursday-Mercy Hospital plays KJOY-98.3 over it's speaker system, and as I was getting ready to go to lunch, the news came over that Prince had died at the age of 57.

As a kid, I have to admit, I wasn't too keen on admitting how much I liked Prince's music because, well, I thought he was strange. I remember seeing the cover of his album Lovesexy, and thinking, who would put themselves on an album cover looking like that?

But as I got older, and started heading out, and Let's Go Crazy would come on the jukebox, that's exactly what we all did, didn't we? And we got to party like it was 1999, in 1999! How lucky were we?

The most mind blowing thing about Prince was the number of songs he wrote for other people. Nothing Compares 2 U, I was surprised to learn, but then I never knew Manic Monday by the Bangles was his!.

His guitar playing was amongst the best of all time. His songwriting too. The outpouring of grief upon learning of his death was really amazing. What a shame. Gone too soon.

For the record, here is my favorite Prince song...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Lmq6RDn5O8

Just as the Ranger game was about to start I had to go pick Tara up from work. In the time it took me to walk from the house to the car and to turn on the radio, it was 1-0 Pens. I stopped at the store for 5 minutes, got back in, 2-0. Went and grabbed a quick dinner with Tara, in the restaurant, a guy who saw me in my Ranger jersey shook his head at me. I asked him how bad, and he held up 4 fingers. Losing is one thing, not showing up? That's another story.


Friday-It's the end of the week. Hillary and Trump are going to be our choices for President. Doris Roberts and Prince are dead. The 2015-16 Rangers are about to join them. Timmy's been giving me lip, work has been a pain. It looks like I picked the wrong week to quit drinkin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iAYhQsQhSY


So Tara and I left Tim with our Islander fan baby-sitter and went to Phat Daddy's on Long Beach Road. We walked down, despite the threat of rain.

Now, Phat Daddy's is one of my favorite places since I moved to LI. I'm not going to compare it to Donovan's in terms of decor, in fact, it's a bit of a dive. John Taffer would have an anyerism if he walked in there. But the people in there are really nice, they treat Tara and I (and Timmy when we bring him) like royalty. And it's the best burger in Oceanside, if not Long Island. Obviously, I can't go there that often, because pub grub was no small contributor to my heart woes, but after a week like this, it was just what the doctor ordered.

So I washed down a Phat Daddy's burger with a couple of pints of Coors Light, and since I'm such a lightweight, (I hadn't had a beer since early December) I had a nice buzz going for the walk home. We got home so our sitter could go watch her beloved Islanders and then I went and bought a 6 pack of Coors to watch Hawaii Five-0 with.

So at least the week ended on a good note.

Of course the Rangers put us all out of our misery on Saturday, but I had my pity party on Friday so f them right?

Primaries on Tuesday night in CT, Delaware,Maryland, PA, and Rhode Island. For what it's worth.

Have a Great Week