Weekly Mail, March 5, 2017

Hi Everybody!!!


Sorry we took last week off. Not to watch the Oscars, which apparently we missed a major faux pas.


But before we get to that, time to bore you stories of our week off.


On Tuesday, I took Tim into the Post to meet some of the crew. He got to meet many of the editors and some of my colleagues. He had a blast. Then we headed to Madam Tussaud's Wax Museum on 42nd Street.

Years ago, my uncle took me and my cousin into the city to see A Christmas Story in the theater. Yes folks I'm old enough to have seen the Christmas classic in the theater. This was 1983. when Times Square was well Times Square. Back in those days, if you were going to see Madam Tussaud, you were probably paying her by the hour.

But in this post Guiliani/Bloomberg, Disneyfication of Times Square, you have the family friendly wax museum of all your favorites. Timmy and I got pictures of ourselves with amongst others,  Tony Bennett, John Wayne, Judy Garland (Circa the Wizard of Oz), Albert Einstein, President and Mrs. Obama, President and Not President Clinton, President Trump, the royal family and the female Ghostbusters. Tim had a good time, but was pissed off because he was convinced that I didn't take him to the James Bond section. He didn't understand that they rotate the statues in and out. He would get over it though.

To complete the Postie experience, I took him to Langan's for lunch. This is what we call a work in progress. Our man went to an Irish pub and ordered a pizza. An Irish pub in Manhattan and ordered a pizza. Like I said, we're working on it.


On Thursday, Timmy and myself joined his buddy Ethan, Ethan's dad, my good friend Dan (No Shot) Unverzagt, and their friend KK, for a trip snow tubing to Mountain Creek Resort in Vernon NJ.

I love to snow tube. We did it last year as well, in Connecticut and it's a great little workout, not to mention an adrenaline rush. Dan's in good shape, me not so much, but between the two of us, there's about 400 lbs + of torque flying down the slopes. So when they let the 5 of us link our tubes together, with Danny and I as the anchors, we were setting all sorts of speed and distance records.

Now one factor working against us was the weather.. it was beautiful. Beautiful, if you were going to the park, or sailing on the bay. For snow tubing, not so much. It was warm. Close to 70 degrees, and the man made snow was quickly turning to slush.  There were a bunch of runs that were closed, they looked like they had a good pack of snow on them and Dan was determined to get us on those runs. Dan is a bit like the great Ed "Auggie" DePuy in the sense that he will 1) literally talk to ANYONE and 2) can sell ice to an Eskimo, and if he didn't damn near get those folks to open up those runs. As it was, he got them to let us keep going on a 5 man run, while the crew at Mountain Creek was demanding we go three at a time max. On our last run, I promised them if they looked the other way, I'd make sure they wouldn't see the likes of us again.

Of course our last run, we went about 90 MPH and we may have ended up on the NJ Turnpike if the snow had been better. With all that, it was still a hell of a day.

We laid low the other days, but those two days alone made the whole week off worthwhile.


HOLLYWOOD: Oscars screw up.

I didn't bother watching the Oscars. I had no interest.

Not only did I not see any of the films up for Best Picture, I had no desire to see any of them. La La Land sounded an awful lot like Moulin Rouge, which may have been one of the worst movies I've ever seen, though thankfully I didn't see it in the theater.

Actually,  several years back,  I compiled a list of the 5 worst movies I ever paid to see. If I recall correctly, they were {and not necessarily in this order}, Point Break, Sleepy Hollow, The Man from Elysian Fields, The Abyss, and Showgirls. Point Break had surfers disguised as ex President's robbing banks, Sleepy Hollow had a child get his head cut off, The Man from Elysian Fields had Mick Jagger in it {sans Keith, Charlie and Ronnie-and they wouldn't have been able to save this disaster either} the Abyss I honestly don't remember what that was even about, and Showgirls wasn't even saved by perhaps the greatest quote in the history of cinema "I have a problem with p-ssy."

But I digress...

Of course, it's when I don't tune in that something deliciously nasty happens, and what happened last Sunday was pretty classic.

Bonnie and Clyde themselves, Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty, were tapped to read the nominees and winner for Best Picture. Beatty opened the envelope and looked like he had just seen a ghost. Dunaway wondering what the hell had Beatty's tongue, looked at the card and announced La La Land as the winner.

Up came the cast and crew to celebrate. Being that they were the odds on favorite, nobody was surprised and nothing seemed amiss. But two minutes later, Jordan Horowitz, the producer of La La Land, interrupted producer Fred Berger to say " I'm sorry, there's a mistake. Moonlight, you guys won best picture. This is not a joke."

Or was it?

Lets face it, the Oscars run way too long, to celebrate a bunch of movies most of us haven't seen. If you are going to stay up late on a Sunday night, you want to have something to gossip with your fellow sleep deprived co-workers on Monday, right? What could inspire more water cooler chat than a screw up of epic proportion like that?  Sacheen Littlefeather announcing Marlon Brando's refusal of his Best Oscar award in 1973?  Robert Niven commenting on streaker Robert Opel's "shortcomings after Opel's nekked run across the Oscar's stage in 1974? Host Chevy Chase dropping through the stage floor in 1987? Jack Palance doing one handed push-ups in 1992? Before this mixup, what was going to be the memorable moment from this broadcast? I'm sorry, the whole thing smacks of a set up from where I'm sitting.

And I heard more than one talking head say that this is going to ruin Warren Beatty's career.

How?

Beatty is 80 years old, and has a black book that even Derek Jeter would be envious of. I once heard Howard Stern interview Paul McCartney and Stern marveled at how when he was a kid every girl in his class had a crush on the cute Beatle, so Stern asked McCartney how many famous ladies he banged. McCartney answered "I didn't BANG anyone!"

Warren Beatty did. He banged them all! According to Peter Biskind's biography of Beatty, the Hollywood Horndog bedded close to 13,000 babes. Among them, Madonna, Joan Collins, Michelle Phillips, Jane Fonda (hey to each their own) Carly Simon, Julie Christie and current wife Annette Benning. Those are Wilt Chamberlain numbers.

My point is that it's going to take more than this to ruin Warren Beatty. Besides,of the two of them, wasn't Dunaway the one who actually read the wrong movie? At least Beatty had the presence of mind to see something was wrong.

In any event two accountants from Price Waterhouse Coopers ended up taking the fall They gave Beatty/Dunaway the envelope for best actress. . I betacha they got big a$$ severance packages because again, I'm pretty sure this whole thing was staged. They'll probably end up working for the WWE.


SPORTS: NHL Replay Rule Beef

So I'm watching my Rangers playing the best in the league Washington Capitals the other night. The Rangers struck first and then Washington tied it up. Early in the second, it looked like the Rangers took a 2-1 lead on a goal by Michael Grabner.

But not so fast.

Caps coach Barry Trotz called for a replay challenge, saying the Rangers were offside. OK fair enough, if he loses the challenge he loses his timeout.

So the refs go to look at the replay and consult with the replay officials in Toronto. For what seemed like forever they looked and they looked and they looked. Finally they overruled the call on the ice and said it was no goal.

I don't know if it was offside or not, it didn't look like it to me, but admittedly I was looking at it through home field glasses. But the fact that it took that long to come to the conclusion, to me by the very definition of the replay rule, the goal should have counted. Evidence has to be clear to overturn a call on the field/court/ice. If you can't determine it after one or two looks, you can't determine it.
Case closed.

Of course the fact that the Caps came back for a 4-1 win made me even more apoplectic. But it bugged me to no end that the repaly rule was abused in that manner. It made me feel like the NHL is just jonesing for Alex Ovechkin to finally get to the Stanley Cup Finals, or at the very least an Eastern Conference Final against the Penguins. I wouldn't put that past them, especially since right now, it looks like you could have a Columbus-Minnesota SCF. What a ratings bonanza that would be!


I joined Instagram on Friday night, but please don't be offended if I don't accept your follow request. I joined in order to vote for my friend's daughter in a sales contest, and I'm not sure I'm going to keep the account or shut it down. I spend way too much time on Facebook and I don't want to take any more time away from my loved ones. (Not that I don't have loved ones on FB, but may two main loved ones, are not FB members, so).


I think that's all we got this week my friends.

Have a Great Week!