Weekly Mail September 22, 2019

Hello:




So last week was a rough one in my new hometown. Even though I'll have lived in Oceanside for 10 years come December, I'm still used to calling Woodside/Rockaway my hometown.

But last week, Oceanside was in the news, and for nothing good.

A brawl, apparently over a girl, resulted in the stabbing death of an Oceanside High School student. The alleged killer is a 19 year old NCC student from Lido Beach.

What seems to have turned this into a national story is that much of the crowd that was in the strip mall that day chose to record the fight on their phones rather than help the victim or call the cops. It brings to mind the infamous Kitty Genovese  murder in 1964, which coined the term the "bystander effect."

So I'd like to make a few points here if I may...


1) The superintendent of the Oceanside School District sent a letter out on Friday. In that letter, she claimed that many students that were there during the fight, did in fact run into the stores and asked the store workers to call 911. She went on to say that many of the kids who were recording the brawl were doing so to help the police. She doesn't really provide any proof to back up her claims, and in fact she says that the media doesn't have all the facts. That sound familiar?

But here's the thing... I know a lot of kids in Oceanside, and like the superintendent I feel like the overwhelming majority of them are good, honest and honorable kids. A couple years ago, a young girl was hit by a car and suffered debilitating injuries, and several of our kids put together fund raisers to help her out. While I wonder where she's getting her intel, I tend to believe that there were more people there trying to help than we are being led to believe.


2) My question to those who say that the kids who were there should have done more to break up the brawl is..... Like what? I mean, I'd like to think if I was there and I saw this going on, that I would get in there and try to get the knife away from that punk. But in reality, I probably wouldn't have. And I got news for you, I wouldn't want Timmy or any of his friends to try either.

I mean if you were there, you have to wonder, do any of the other kids brawling have a knife? What if someone had a gun? In this day and age, is that really out of the realm of possibility? If that had happened, we'd be having a whole other conversation wouldn't we? I'm sorry that the young man died, I can't say how sorry I am, but $h-t, it could have been a lot worse.

3) And for all those who did record the fight as if they were watching a UFC match, with the sole purpose of posting to Snap chat or Instagram, and no intention of helping either the victim or the cops? Well, to me you are just as guilty as the stabber and should do time. And if the person in custody is convicted of this crime, they should lock him up and throw away the key. He destroyed a family and gave a great town a bad name.


COMEDY-Shortest SNL Career in history

I have a confession to make... When I first heard that Saturday Night Live fired Shane Gillis, I kind of shook my head. I thought back to some of the classic skits from yesteryear. A friend of mine brought up the legendary Frank Sinatra-Stevie Wonder singing Ebony and Ivory, and I thought back to the Richard Pryor-Chevy Chase job interview. You tried to do those today, and the show would be cancelled.

But that was before I actually saw the routine that Gillis did. And you know what? It wasn't funny. Not at all. It was angry and offensive and had entirely no imagination. Shame on me for rushing to judgment on this one.

I still think we get too offended too easily in this day and age. I still think we can make fun of each other and still care about each other. I still think we can laugh at ourselves and each other.

But that's not what happened here. This was just gratuitous, I don't want to see this guy's career end over this, but SNL did the right thing here.  He needs to get a lot more creative and not offensive for offensive's sake.


And now for some good news....

POLITICS-DeBlasio bows out.

I can't imagine why Bill DeBlasio would end his bid to be the Democrats nominee for President in 2020. Could it be his beyond tiny poll numbers, a war chest that couldn't buy him a Happy Meal, the crowds at his stump speeches that couldn't fill a broom closet, or all of the above?

Look folks, I'm not really someone who wants to kick a man when he's down, I'm really not. Lord knows I've had more than my share of screw ups in my time. But who, besides maybe his wife and kids, thought DeBlasio running for President was a good idea? I sound like a broken record here, but it just blows my mind.

Now I've heard theories that he did this just to raise his national profile, but to me all he did was make himself a laughingstock. Also, I still hold to me theory that he thought that by having Trump slinging mud at him all the time, the free publicity would boost his street cred, if not his poll numbers. And Trump bless his heart took the bait.

But to no avail for the Mayor of New York City. His run for the White House ended on Friday. Probably a good thing for America, not such a good thing for New Yorkers, and one less thing for me to write about.



RANDOM THOUGHTS-

Daniel Jones couldn't have asked for a better start to his NFL career, leading the Giants to a come from behind win against the Bucs. Still, I felt bad for Eli Manning. There was going to be no easy way to make the switch. But he will go down as an all time great Giant, and while I consider him a borderline Hall of Famer, (his non Super Bowl years were pretty mediocre if we are being honest) the two wins over Brady/Bellichick will probably be enough to get him a bust in Canton.


Speaking of those scumbags from Foxborough, I saw they released Antonio Brown this week. Apparently we now know what the line in the sand is for recidivist behaviour is. I'd like to know if they would have been so quick to drop Brown if they were playing a team that was any good this week, instead of a team starting their third string QB.

The highlight of the Jets game last Monday for me, was Joe Namath doing the introduction. When the face of your franchise is a man who hasn't thrown a pass for you since Gerald Ford was President, that is what we call a sad state of affairs. And hey, at least they covered the 23 point spread against the aforementioned Pats this week. Hey, sometimes you have to look real hard for the silver lining.

The Mets season will end next Sunday and for all the kvetching I did this year, I'm really going to miss them. I'll write more about that next week.


For this week, I think that's all we got.

Have a Great Week

Weekly Mail September 15, 2019 (Season Premiere)

Hello Friends:

I hope everybody had a wonderful and relaxing summer. Also I hope anyone who suffers from the September blues like I do are starting to come out of it a bit. A couple of weeks ago, Timmy started 6th grade, two of my nieces started kindergarten and my nephew started in a new school. They rolled with it like it was no big deal, meanwhile I was the one up half the night worrying.

Such is life.

This is actually starting the 5th year since I brought Weekly Mail back. Can you believe it? Sometime in November, we will have a special to commemorate our 200th post. At least that's the plan.


BASEBALL: Stayin Alive...

When last we spoke on August 11, the Mets were 61-57 and had just taken 2 out of 3 from the Nationals. They have since gone 15-14, the textbook definition of mediocre. The highlight for me was August 21, a walk off win against the Indians that I got to see live with my dad, sister, brother in law and goddaughter.

The lowlight (and to be honest, when I officially threw in the proverbial towel) was when they blew that 10-4 lead against the Nationals and lost 11-10 on September 3. I figured at that point hoping to make the wild card was a fool's errand. With a bullpen like that?

Still, they fight on. They are still mathematically alive, they even closed the gap back to 2 games out after a sweep of the D'Backs. But again, I can't see it.

I'm still watching because I want them to finish strong, and because I want to see Pete Alonso get to 50 homers (if he doesn't catch Aaron Judge) I'd like to see Jeff McNeil get his Average back into batting crown contention, and I want to see the deGrominator's ERA continue to shrink as his strikeouts go up. Going into this weekend's series with the Dodgers, the Mets had a football season's worth of games left. A 10-6 finish, would get them to 86 wins. Playoffs or not, I can live with that. I'll lay the blame on poor managing and a lousy bullpen.

The other interesting factor involving the Mets is this issue with Noah Syndergaard and his request for a personal catcher. To review, according to my friends at the NY Post, Thor went to management and requested that he pitch to either Tomas (positively) Nido, or Renee Rivera as opposed to Wilson Ramos, who only had a 26 game hitting streak for himself.

I'm not a big fan of pitchers having personal catchers, but in some cases I can go along with it. Steve Carlton back in the 70's had Tim McCarver as his guy, and when I was a kid, Doc Gooden would pitch exclusively to Charlie O'Brien.

I thought it was bush league BS when Greg Maddox would pitch to any catcher besides Javy Lopez,back in the 90's and 2000's, so I'd be a hypocrite if I let Thor slide on this. The situations are eerily similar. Like Ramos, Lopez was a good hit/lousy defender. Unlike the situation with Carlton, both Maddox and Thor are singling one catcher out that they don't want. I'd rather Thor say, "Let me have Nido rather than him saying anybody but Ramos. I just think that's a sure fire way to hurt team morale.

And yet...

The numbers that Thor has put up while throwing to Nido or Rivera have been vastly better than when he throws to Ramos. Part of the issue is that Thor can't hold any runners on, and Ramos reminds me of a line Imus had about Gary Carter many years ago, about how Gary Carter couldn't throw out Nell Carter trying to steal second. It might just be to the team benefit if Syndergaard gets his wish.

I'm really torn on it. On principle I say tell Thor to suck it up (it appears the Mets are taking this approach) But I have to admit, part of me thinks the Mets should have him pitch to Nido. If it makes that much of a difference, and keeps the likes of Edwin Diaz and Jeruys Familia on the bench where they belong.


WEEKLY MAIL AT YANKEE STADIUM

WHEN: August 30
WHAT: Yankees vs. A's
with WHO:Tara and Timmy (for Timmy's 11th birthday)

This was Tara's idea. It was also Tara's idea to suit me up in a Yankee t-shirt. So to keep the peace, I went along with the program.

Of course, once we got off the LIRR and onto the D Train, I came to regret that decision. Three or four people came up to me and asked me for directions (are we on the right train? How many stops? Can we transfer to an express?) When I told one guy I wasn't sure when he asked me one of those questions, he said "I'm from Florida, where are you from? I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs FLUSHING!, but I said Long Island. How embarrassing.

Another woman came up to me and asked "What's our record?" I said "First place." I should have said "Beatles White Album" I had no clue what the Yankees' record was, I barely knew what the Mets record was that night.

I've taken the train to Yankee Stadium before, but not since I moved to the burbs. From Woodside it was simple, 7 to Grand Central, 4 to 161 Street. What a pain in the ass to get there from Nassau County.

And when we got there it was chaos. There was no set line anywhere. I chalked it up to not being used to going there, but figuring out what gate and more importantly where the back of the line was just made this very frustrating.

The Stadium itself of course is beautiful and it was a beautiful night too. There was a nice breeze coming in. We were way up in no man's land, but for baseball, that's great because you can see just about everything. The seats were comfortable and had fairly good leg room.

We got hot dogs and drinks in the first inning, which was relatively incident free. It was around the 5th inning when we went for secondary snacks (pretzels, ice cream etc) Timmy and I got on a line that didn't seem to move. There was two people ahead of us, and the guy getting served was up at the counter for what seemed like forever. (It took up most of the 5 inning.) I don't like to get on people who are serving the public because I know what that's like, but I felt myself doing a slow burn. Either the customer was ordering a million things, or the girl behind the counter was a moron. In either case by the time it was our turn, I was fuming, but like I said, I turned it down a notch.

I ordered ice cream for Timmy and was told that was a different line. But the different line was for Ben and Jerry's which was another long line. Timmy said no, he just wanted an Ice cream bar,. She went to her manager and came back and said there were no more bars. I said OK, how about a pretzel, no more pretzels. I said how about a hot dog, she said only footlongs. We asked for popcorn and she said they didn't sell that there. Finally Timmy looked at the menu and asked for Mike and Ike candy and she said We don't have those..

At that point I lost it.

"Why the f-ck are you still open then?  If you are all sold out, why don't you close?  You think you are going to sell foot long hot dogs all night?" The girl walked away probably to get a manager of even security. I just stormed off.

I guess the figuring goes, if the team on the field is winning, you don't need good customer service. The play on the field is in direct opposition to the service in the stands. The Mets are usually mediocre to bad, but you can always get something good to eat there. The Yankees have their 27 rings, but you better eat before the game.

I felt bad because I know how badly Tara wanted to take Timmy to Yankee Stadium, and I was glad we did it. Even though the Stadium is new (10 years old) you can see the old buildings that dot the Bronx skyline, the same ones that were there when Reggie hit his three home runs in Game Six, or when Don Larsen tossed his perfect game, or Roger Maris hitting his 61st home run. I'm a baseball history buff, for that alone I'd respect Yankee Stadium.

Which is why the highlight of the night was when we went to the Yankee museum.

That's where Thurman Munson's locker was moved to, that's where they have baseballs signed by hundreds of former Yankees, where they had all of their rings and many of their World Series trophies. The people working in there were super friendly and they all knew their stuff. My late cousin Tom Finn would have been perfect working there. Nobody knew more about the Yankees than he did.

                                                   Tim and I at the Yankee Museum



That we ended our night in the Bronx at the museum made it a memorable night. That and the quality time with the family. Otherwise, their fan relations need a lot of work. IMHO.



WEATHER: The 19th annual storm of the century

Another summer, another Storm of the Century. This time it was Hurricane Dorian, which did most of it's damage in the Bahamas.

While I didn't hear anyone call it The Storm of the Century, I did hear many meteorologists say it was the strongest storm ever formed in the Atlantic. I have a strange feeling that record is not going to last very long. Like I say every year, it's getting much harder to deny climate change. Much harder.

And for the first time in my 46 years on earth, I've seen a President get into a tussle with the National Weather Service.

As I've said before when it comes to our 45th President, the truth is much stranger than fiction.

Look, anyone who reads this blog faithfully knows how much I like to break the chops of meteorologists. Those winter days where they say it's going to snow 3 feet and we don't even get 3 inches? How many of those have we have lately?

Trump may or may not have seen a weather model that said Hurricane Dorian was going to hit Alabama. Most models had the storm hitting Florida and the Carolinas while missing Alabama. But because he doesn't like to admit he was wrong and 2) likes to beat up on he media, he took a sharpie and extended a storm track on a map so that it looked like the storm would touch parts of Alabama.

“The President of the United States altered a National Hurricane Center map with a sharpie to falsely extend the official forecast toward Alabama so he didn’t have to admit he was wrong in a tweet.”Dennis Merserau- North Carolina Weather Reporter-via Twitter. 

I probably shouldn't have wasted ink on this story, but someday someone might read this and think I was making this $h-t up. You are all my witnesses.


CRIME: Up the Creek for two Weeks

Actress Felicity Huffman was sentenced to two weeks in the slammer for her involvement in the college entrance fixing scandal. Most of the reaction that I saw suggests that Huffman got off easy, the Daily Snooze headline read Two Weak Vacation.

Maybe I'm getting soft in my old age, but I still think she should have been spared the clink. Fine the $h-t out of her, make her pay restitution through the nose, give her house arrest. But no jail time.

I'm not condoning what she did, not at all. In fact, if Lori Loughlin is found guilty of the same crime, I have no problem with her being sent away for a while.

Huffman took a plea, saved all of us a sensational trial. Admitted what she did. Yeah, I'm sure it was a carefully written attorney statement, but still. To me, the fact that Huffman plead should have meant more. I know I'm probably in the minority on this, and I know two weeks doesn't sound like a lot. There are people who have done far worse who got far less.


Couple of random thoughts...

I don't like the new Jets uniforms, I like the vintage 1968 Super Bowl helmets and jerseys better. These uniforms bring back bad memories of the late 70's and early 90's. But they also played plenty of crappy football in the uniforms I liked so I guess you can't go by me.

 Last week, WFAN let go of Chris Carlin, thus ending one of the biggest screw jobs in the history of radio. They brought Carlin in along with Maggie Gray and Bart Scott to replace the "retiring" Mike Francesa, only to have the lying scumbag come back 4 months later.

Through it all, Carlin was a pro, handling what amounted to a demotion with as much class as one could expect, given the circumstances. Carlin gets canned even though his ratings are solid, meanwhile Francesa is barely holding off fellow blowhard Michael Kay. How is that right?

Gray and Scott will stay on for now, but how soon till they are sent packing? It seems inevitable now that Francesa is going to come all the way back and reclaim the 1-6 spot. He and the FAN deserve each other. What a disgrace.




Other than that, everything else is all right.

Thank you for reading, it's good to be back

and Have a Great Week

Weekly Mail September 11 Special 2019

                                 September 11, 2019



18 years on, this is what comes to mind as we remember that horrible day....



The 2019 Wall Street Run and Heart Walk to benefit the American Heart Association was held this past May 16. My sisters and brother in law put together Team Running for Rebecca in honor of Becky.

The walk started down by the Hudson River near the World Trade Center. Timmy and I took the subway to Chambers Street and then had to figure out how to get to the meet up spot. It was the first time I had been down near the WTC since about a year after the 9/11 attacks.

I had never been to the memorial; I hadn't been close to the Freedom Tower. I hadn't seen all the work that had been done.

Tim and I went to the memorial and looked at the fountains and read some of the names. There were a couple of people whose names I recognized. One was the dad of the young woman whose wedding I went to in Italy last year. The other was the brother of a former co-worker.

You couldn't help being down there, especially if you remember what it looked like when the Twin Towers were standing, or if you saw what it was like when it was called Ground Zero, to be amazed by how much it has come back. I remember seeing the artists plans for Reflecting Absence, the plan that was chosen as the memorial, and how true to the rendering the actual memorial was. It seemed to take forever to get the project started, and there is still much to do, but what has gotten done is nothing short of brilliant.

In many ways, this was the most appropriate place to have something like Running for Rebecca.

One of Becky's best friends came up to Timmy and said, "I haven't seen you since the worst day of my life." For many, September 11th, 2001 was the worst day of their lives. It had always been for me, thinking back to those first moments that day, when nobody was quite sure what was going on. When the radio reports I was listening to said that there were more hijacked planes in the air, when I spoke to my dad and he said they were locking down his building, which was just blocks from the WTC. Wondering if I'd ever see him again. Wondering if one of those planes still in the air was heading for the UN, or the Empire State Building, or the Met Life Building which would take out Grand Central Terminal.

As it ended up, although I knew some people who died that day, none of my relatives were amongst the victims.  Dad, Katie and myself all made it home from Manhattan that afternoon. But there were close to 3,000 people whose families weren't as fortunate.

And my heart broke for all of them. All of America's hearts broke that day.

In the days to come though, I tried to turn the sorrow and heartache into hope (when I wasn't turning it into anger) . I tried to focus on all the people that were rescued. I tried to focus on the response, all the volunteers that went down to help out, the fact that blood banks were turning people away because they had more than enough supply. I thought about the staging areas, specifically the Shea Stadium parking lot. How America had come together, in a way I had never seen, and sadly in a way I haven't seen since.

But still, there were those young kids who lost their parents that day. Older parents who lost young adult children. Wives who lost husbands and vice versa. I prayed that those people would find happiness someday again.

Many of them have.

Some have not.

But I would imagine for most, there are good days and bad.There are days that you wonder how the hell you are going to put one foot in front of the other. There are songs that come on the radio and it's all you can do to keep it together.

I know. I've been there. I still am. We all are.

But walking through the 9/11 memorial, and seeing all the new buildings, I was reminded of what's possible. It wasn't easy, and the pain didn't go away, but the country moved on in spite of it. Downtown was rebuilt. The Freedom Tower rose, the memorial is breathtaking.

In the shadows of America's darkest day, where the spirit of our nation created brilliance out of rubble, where pain and sorrow  gave way to hope, that's where Running for Rebecca took place that night in May.

That's where we took our pain and sorrow over our loss and tried to make something special. It was the most appropriate place to have it.


It was where we were supposed to be.




God Bless those we lost that day, and those they left behind.
God Bless those who are dealing with loss and heartbreak.
and God Bless America.




Weekly Mail returns on Sunday