Weekly Mail July 24, 2016

Hey Guess What????


According to my blog service, this will be the 50th blog post I'll be making. The 50th Weekly Mail on Facebook. I hope you have enjoyed reading them as much as I enjoy writing them. Some days are harder than others. Some days there is plenty to write about, others not so much. This week for example, we have a lot to discuss. Donald Trump gave his acceptance speech and Hillary Clinton jumped on the Kaine train, One of these days maybe I'll go there and try to provide some pearls of wisdom as to why the world has turned into the OK Corral as of late, but I'm really trying to keep this light. But to start things off, I do have some bad news out of Oceanside.

Remember in our May 1 edition  I told you guys about Phat Daddy's on Long Beach Road? How we had made it our burger joint only to have it catch fire? Well, it has since reopened and last Thursday, we decided to take a stroll down for one of their signature sandwiches. It would be our first trip there since the fire.

Well, we get in there and are warmly greeting by Kathy, the bartender/waitress who tell us that the menu has changed. "No more burgers or chicken" she said.

Saywhatnow?

A second later, an older gentleman gets up from the bar and comes over. He shakes our hands and introduces himself as the new owner. He had a heavy Italian accent. "Please asit down. I makea you dinner. You can hava the chicken parmigiana over pasta, the eggaplant parmigiana over pasta, or the veal parmigiana over pasta."

I was devastated. I am telling you, the Phat Albert and the Phat chick (the burger and chicken sandwich respectively) were the best in Oceanside, if not Southern Nassau. Still as Tara said, it would be rude to walk out (even though we were probably within our rights to do so). So I asked if we could see a menu. The owner smiled and said "Uhh we don't hava de menu yet. They no deliver it yet. We hava  the chicken parmigiana over pasta, the eggaplant parmigiana over pasta, or the veal parmigiana over pasta. I maka it for you."

We decide to order drinks and mull it over. A wine for Tara, a Sprite for Tim-Tim, and water for me. "You want to see if they can make a meatball hero?' Tara asks. So when the guy comes back, I ask if can make us meatball heroes. "I no hava da meatballs" He says, before repeating You can havea the chicken parmigiana over pasta, the eggaplant parmigiana over pasta, or the veal parmigiana over pasta."

I wanted to scream at this guy from the top of my lungs..."What the f-ck kind of Italian place doesn't have meatballs?".... . It reminded me of the famous John Belushi skit from SNL, when the poor guy is trying to order something and Belushi keeps yelling "Cheeseburger!"The irony being that a cheeseburger is exactly what I was there for.

 Ever the diplomat, Tara just orders two chicken parms over ziti, of which we will each share some with Timmy (Who for the record, didn't want to come here in the first place)

I can feel the smoke coming out of my ears. Tara meanwhile is chatting with Kathy. The place was apparently up for sale before the fire, but after they were closed for three weeks post-fire, they sold. The new owner is determined to make this an Italian lounge The old chef who made those awesome burgers and chicken sandwiches, up and quit, and is nowhere to be found. Kathy herself is probably going to skip town soon enough.

There are two things Oceanside doesn't need. One is another bagel store. There are two that are equal walking distance north and south of our house, another one just opened a few blocks away. And there is one near my in-laws on Atlantic Avenue and one near Lincoln Avenue and Long Beach Road (Timmy refers to that one as Ethan's bagel store) And then there is Brower bagel not to far from South Nassau Hospital. Too many.

The other thing we don't need is another Italian restaurant. Again, we have Gigante's, which is right next to one of the bagel stores, DiCocco's across the street from us (which was the only place open for business on October 30, 2012, the day after Sandy) Pizza Iola about a 1/4 mile down LBR. Lia's which is our favorite pizza/pasta place, on Atlantic Avenue, and Bonbino's on Lawson Boulevard.

Look, I understand if I was half as smart as I think I am, that I would have opened my own business years ago and been rolling in money, instead of ranting on about stuff on my blog for nothing. But I just can't see how this place can possibly make a go of it. For one thing, it's the same old bar, with the same old clientele, sitting there watching TV and drinking beer. It's still called Phat Daddy's not Il Grasso Papa. It doesn't look or feel like an Italian place. I realize that its a work in progress, but still. What Oceanside needs is a burger joint that's not a chain, like Burger Fi, and Buffalo Wild Wings.

Phat Daddy's was that place.

It took them a half hour to put some Italian bread in front of us and 40 minutes to serve our dinner. Now, for all my bitching and moaning, I must say that the chicken parm was really good. They even brought Timmy out his own, and he liked it. (Kind of.) The owner kept saying "Itsa fresh, itsa fresh". I freakin hope it was fresh, it took you 45 minutes to make it.

I realize with all the bad stuff going on in the world, that losing your neighborhood's best burger joint shouldn't cause this much heartache. But this was tough to swallow. (No pun intended)

Onto the RNC...


NEWS ITEM: The Republican Convention.

Before I get to the Donald, and his coma inducing speech, I want to take a minute to tip my cap to the cops in Cleveland. What with all the protests going on both pro and anti Donald Trump, they were talking about Cleveland 2016 making Chicago 1968 look like a love in. I was fairly certain that there were going to be riots and fights and all sorts of $h-t going down. Fortunately, not much seemed to happen. Maybe everyone decided to behave themselves, I choose to credit the Cleveland PD and whatever federal law enforcement was on the scene. Bravo!

The convention itself got off to a rough start. A group of states attempted to force a roll call to change the convention rules. I apologize that I don't know enough about the convention rules to explain why this wasn't a good development for Trump, but it wasn't.

Then at the end of the first night, Melania Trump gave what on the surface, seemed to be a solid, non offensive speech extolling the virtues of her husband. But it was later revealed that some lines were lifted from Michelle Obama'a 2008 DNC speech. Look, people lift lines from speeches all the time, but for crissakes, the speech given by the candidate's wife is supposed to be the least controversial of the whole shebang. If you screw that up, it usually doesn't bode well for the rest of the convention.

Tuesday they had the formal roll call, and they did it when only a few of us die-hards were watching. I remember when they did the roll call for Bill Clinton, how cool that was. If I'm not mistaken, they did the roll call for him right before he accepted the nomination. I could be way off on that, but it was 24 years ago, so..

The roll call also reminds me of one of my favorite moments from the Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. You know how they say The great state of New York, the Empire State, the home of the 27 Time Champion Yankees etc.?  Well, I was watching Carson during the 1988 election season, and he handed state signs to people in the audience. An Asian lady was holding the sign for North Dakota. So Johnny says "Madam Secretary we the people of North Dakota, the home of the really bad Chinese Restaurants....." Well, Johnny sat at his desk and laughed his a$$ off for about 5 minutes, and that poor lady was so embarrassed, standing there holding the sign. I can't remember the last time I watched the roll call, but when I do I always think of Johnny Carson.

Tiffany Trump and Donald Jr also gave speeches. Nothing earth shattering, but no plagiarism either.

More controversy ensued on Wednesday, when Lying Ted Cruz gave a speech and didn't endorse Trump. He later admitted this was no accident, that he had no desire to endorse a man who made fun of his wife and suggested his father was involved in the Kennedy assassination. I can't say I blame him, but then stay the hell home. I mean John Kasich is the governor of the state that was holding the convention and he didn't set foot into Quicken Loans Arena.

Thursday came and I stayed up to watch Trump's speech. At least I tried to.

You had to figure, since this has been like no other campaign, that this was going to be like no other speech. Would he try to tone down his rhetoric, or would he go full on Andrew Dice Clay and just diss everybody?

The truth is, he really did neither. He basically rehashed his old campaign promises. He offered nothing substantial and many of the threads I was following chided him for being short on specifics. I didn't expect much detail, I mean, Barack Obama didn't offer any specifics in his 2008 speech either. The difference between Trump and Obama was that Obama kept his speech to a mere 43 minutes or so, Trump rambled on for over an hour. By the end I was passed out on my couch. For a guy who love him or hate him, kept things interesting, this was a total snooze fest.

I realize this post is becoming as long as Trump's speech, so let me wrap it up with a movie review.


MOVIE REVIEW*****MOVIE REVIEW*****MOVIE REVIEW*****MOVIE REVIEW*****

Movie: Ghostbusters
Starring: Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones.
Saw it at AMC Rockville Centre
Saw it With: Tara and Timmy

The long awaited female reboot of the 1984 classic. Dr. Erin Gilbert (Wiig) is up for tenure at Columbia University, when a long ago written book co authored by her and her old friend Abby Yates (McCarthy) pops up on Amazon. When Erin goes to the high school where Abby works to confront her about re releasing the book (correctly fearing it will affect her tenure) she meets Abby and her assistant Jillian Holtzman (McKinnon) who goes simply by Holtzman or Holtz. Abby and Holtz try to show Erin what they are up to but Erin's not buying it till a gentleman comes in and says that a museum is haunted. Abby agress to pull back the book if erin at least comes to check out the museum.
Meanwhile token booth clerk Patty Tolan (Jones) chases a weirdo into the subway tunnel, then comes face to face with a ghost of her own. She contacts the other three and hilarity ensues.

There is no crazy plot twists here, if you saw any of the Bill Murray/Dan Aykroyd  versions, you've seen this one too. I consider Wiig to be the most overrated SNL cast member of all time, but she's been pretty good in the few movies I've seen her in and she was excellent here. Her chemistry with McCarthy is well known and was on full display here. The show stealers though were McKinnon and Jones. McKinnon who does an ever better Hillary than Amy Poehler (which is saying something because Poehler was awesome) was a riot, and Jones had the best lines in the movie. Some folks really panned this movie, and yes it's not really original, but I thought it was really well done.

4 aces.

I also saw The Secret Life of Pets, but I will give you my review of that next week, as I feel like I've taken enough of your time already.

Also next week, we'll break down the DNC in Philadelphia.

Thank you so much everyone!!!

Have a Great Week