Weekly Mail Year in Review Part One

 DECEMBER 2019/JANUARY 2020

December 31 2019

St. John’s just choked. Rangers are getting blown out. Happy New Year New York

I start off this 2020 year in review with a post from New Year's Eve 2019.  As pissed as I was when both the Red Storm and Rangers lost (Rangers were down 6-0 and cut it to 6-5 before losing) at least on December 31, 2019, I HAD games to watch. For a good part of 2020, none of us did. 

January 4, 2020

OMG am I going to be able to actually enjoy the Super Bowl this year?

The Patriots dynasty comes to an end. On a Tom Brady interception nonetheless. 

January 12, 2020

Took the kid to the 112 for old times sake

An unusually balmy Sunday afternoon, Tim and I headed to Rockaway to see OLPH's Niamh McGarvey take on Kate Tubridy of St. Frances De Sales. Then went to visit Mom, Dad and Kate at the apartment.  I also showed Timmy the old block.   So many awesome memories there. Lifetime friends. 

January 22, 2020

In the mascot's defense, I don't think this is against the law in Philadelphia

Philadelphia cops were investigating a complaint that Gritty, the Flyers mascot, punched a 13 year old boy named Brandon Greenwell at a season-ticket holder's meet and greet. Sure enough, on February 2, the cops cleared Gritty of all charges. In this Philadelphia Inquirer article, some Phildelphians agree with my above take. 

https://www.inquirer.com/business/gritty-flyers-assault-philadelphia-13-boy-no-charge-20200203.html

January 26, 2020

Horrible News. RIP Kobe

I hoped this was the worst news we were going to get in 2020. As bad as this was, how wrong was I? And again, I wasn't a Kobe fan, but when I saw this that Sunday afternoon, it shook me to my core. 

FEBRUARY 

February 2, 2020

Wow, that halftime show was a
big a$$ production!

Confession, I stole this line from former Post sports editor Hondo, who wrote in his football column that the reason J-Lo and Ben Affleck called off their nuptials was because the latter decided he didn't want a big ass wedding. HA! In other news that night, the Chiefs won Super Bowl LIV 

February 12, 2020

Whoever invented the Girl Scout's s'mores cookie should be thrown in the jail cell next to El Chapo!

I bought a couple boxes of these from my co-worker Katie Miller. Neither box made it out of my office alive. 

February 23, 2020

So I saw the first two words in the headline and thought, "Well that was fun while it lasted." 

The headline was Cespedes Breaks Silence.. In my typical Met fan the sky is falling attitude, I saw Cespedes Breaks..... and automatically assumed the next word would be arm, leg, neck etc. And while I don't wish injuries on anybody, he probably would have been better off exercising his right to remain silent.  

February 25, 2020

. There has to be a better way to pick a Presidential nominee than having a bunch of 70 year old men and women raising their hands and nearly begging moderators to pick them. -Mike Lupica

I rarely agree with the little guy, but he nailed it there, and this $h-tshow in Charleston is a prime example

Took this from Daily News blowhard Mike Lupica, whose Sunday column I must confess I still read religiously. That he was 100% in this assessment doesn't change the fact that he's a dweeb. 

MARCH- And here is really when 2020 started...

March 3, 2020

Goodbye Super Tuesday

I played the Rolling Stones Ruby Tuesday to mark the end of Super Tuesday, usually the day we start to get an idea of who is going to be each party's Presidential nominee. That night, there were 15 contests. Joe Biden won 10 of them, Bernie Sanders won 4 of them, and Mike Bloomberg, bless his heart, won American Samoa. If only that was the biggest thing to happen in March...

Hello The Coronavirus

On February 23, they announced that the James Bond film No Time to Die, which had been scheduled to open in April, was being pushed back to November. Right then and there, I should have known the shit was about to hit the fan. 

On March 11, Rudy Gobert of the Utah Jazz tested positive for the Coronavirus, and the NBA Suspended their season. The next afternoon, I was leaving the ophthalmologist's office when I heard that the NHL was doing the same, and that the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament was canceled. Now I knew we were screwed. 

My wife and I still had to go into our places of work...

 

which we tried to deal with as humorously as we could. But there was little to make light of. 

We will write more about COVID-19 later, for now, let's go on to April. 

APRIL 

April 2, 2020-

I was really worried he wasn't going to find a place down there....

With the world going to hell in a handbasket, ESPN reported that the Tampa Bay Bucs new QB, one Tom Brady, was going to lease Derek Jeter's Tampa mansion. I wouldn't give a $hit where Tom Brady was going to live in Tampa if there wasn't a global pandemic going on. 

April 5, 2020

Is anyone else watching Wrestlemania? I can't believe I just asked that question.

Timmy is a wrestling fanatic. The next day was supposed to be his 6th grade overnight trip to Frost Valley, but that along with the rest of his last year of grammar school was now over. So I bought him Wrestlemania on PPV.

It sounds dumb, but this was the first well, entertainment event, usually performed in front of many thousands of people, that I saw in front of absolutely nobody. If you are old enough to remember Hulk Hogan-Andre the Giant at the Pontiac Silverdome, to see these guys wrestle in a ring with nobody there to watch was jarring. They didn't even have the sense to pump in fake crowd noise. It was weird, and the weirdest was yet to come. 

April 24, 2020

I’m sitting here waiting for the Jets to draft, and they go and trade the damn pick? Screw this, time to watch MacGyver.

The Jets never disappoint do they? And in fact that wasn't even their first round pick, I was watching the 2nd round of the NFL Draft, and that should tell you right there about the dearth of programming during these times.

MAY

May 6, 2020 

Our Rebecca's story has been featured in the first ever American Heart Association Community Teams Newsletter.

Missing you always, Becks! Please continue to watch over all of us!

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10100503393272912&set=pcb.10100503393362732

May 15, 2020

Dad and Katie are in a NY Mets ad! With

Bill Gallagher

and

Katie Gal

21Steve El, Ray McGarvey and 19 others

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I was just browsing through FB one day when I saw the above ad. At first I thought it was just something my sister posted, till I saw it was posted by the Mets themselves. Good for them, they are as loyal a fan as any team should have. 

May 20, 2020

I’m gonna watch Game 3 of the 1986 World Series now, since I had to miss the beginning of it when it actually happened.

Hard to imagine anything good coming out of not having live sports to watch, but this was close. Game 3 of the 1986 World Series took place on October 21, 1986, the night I made my Confirmation. I had never seen the first inning of that game. For almost 34 years. SNY replayed all the Mets postseason games. (Yankee fans, save your comments.) 

May 27, 2020

There is an actual professional frisbee league? I’m watching an old playoff game on FS2 right now. This is insane!

As I said, not a lot to watch during this pandemic...

JUNE 

June 10

Our buddy is done with grammar school and is on his way to middle school. Congratulations Timmy, we’re proud of you and we love you.

I've said it before, my heart breaks first for the families that lost someone, second for the front line workers. Then for the kids who are losing out on the things we took for granted. Graduations, proms class trips etc. Tim's school did the best they could, but the graduation celebration was subdued. Still, onward and upward for our man!. And for everyone who graduated during these strange times. 

June 13

Well this sux....

Director Peter Jackson is taking never before seen footage from the Beatles Let It Be film sessions and making a brand new movie, called The Beatles Get Back. It was supposed to open September 4, 2020, but will now open August 2021, another pandemic setback. Hopefully, this and James Bond will be able to open. 

June 19

And we're off!

3.5 miles in the books! We love you Becks!

Running for Rebecca, usually takes place downtown. Instead Team Rebecca walked or ran wherever they might have been. Timmy and I went to Oceanside School 6 and did our 14 laps around the track for a total of 3.5 miles. We did it in an hour and twenty minutes or so. 

June 20

A guy I worked with at OTB used to say of the guys yelling at the TV’s “They think the f-cking horses can hear them”

Today, they probably could.

I was told in no uncertain terms that what went on behind the counter at OTB stayed there. I've worked for lawyers (attorney-client privilege) and doctors (HIPPA)  so I know the importance of confidentiality. I also had a front row seat for a couple of things at the Post I've never told anybody. One day when I'm old and I'm sure the principals are no longer with us, I may write about some OTB Stuff. The guy who said the above was one of the funniest people I ever met. 

I wrote this watching the Belmont Stakes, on a day where the place that usually holds over 100,000 was empty, save for horses, jockeys and trainers. 

NEXT WEEK: JULY-DECEMBER 

Weekly Mail December 20, 2020

 

Hello:

So this will be our fall finale. I don't think I'm going to have a Christmas Eve Special this year, because in the immortal words of Randy Jackson, I'm not feeling it dawg.

I don't know what it is, I'm sure the majority of it is the pandemic, and the fact that I'm not going to get to see most of my family (at least not in the traditional sense) for Christmas. Maybe it's the fact that the numbers are going back up and I'm afraid that we will be back in crisis mode at our hospitals again. Whatever it is, I'm having a real hard time getting into the Christmas spirit this year. And I'm plum out of ideas for something fun and interesting to write about on Christmas Eve.

The Christmas Eve spectacular was born out of having to work at the Post Christmas Eve 2016. With the office half empty and nothing shaking in the city that night, I basically amused myself by ranking my favorite holiday songs, and creating one of my own. I also found a clip of Paul McCartney playing Who Wants to be a Millionaire that aired Christmas Eve 2004. 

I haven’t even felt like I’ve been inundated with Christmas Music. Mariah’s insipid All I Want For Christmas is You, is once again the Number one song on the Billboard Hot 100, but I haven’t even heard it that much. Maybe I’m doing a better job of tuning it out. 

The car companies as usual are running their tone deaf TV ads. Buick has an especially obnoxious one with folks gifting themselves new cars. Great idea in the middle of an economy crushing pandemic. 

Maybe I’ll come up with something before Thursday, but right now, I’m tapped out. 

************************************************************************************

A couple of people asked me if I’d  be interested in having my picture taken getting the vaccine in order to promote getting vaccinated. I'm all for the vaccine, and I'll go on record saying that here. 

But taking a picture of me getting a shot is not going to help that endeavor, I can tell you that. What the world doesn't need is a picture of Wild Bill getting a shot in his left arm while turning his head all the way to the right. I have nothing against the vaccine, I'm just a complete wimp when it comes to needles. That's why I could never be a smack addict. Closing in on 50, I can tell you I have never done an illegal drug in my life. The closest I've come to illegal drug use is underage drinking, (and the statute of limitations is expired on that-thank you WM legal dept.)

But even if I was so inclined, I couldn't do anything that involves a needle. Forget it. When I get my annual flu shot, I look the other way. About the only time I could tolerate a needle was when I was having my heart issues. Needles don't bother you when your chest feels like an elephant is doing the Macarena on it. 

No, someone else is going to have to be the poster child for the COVID-19 vaccine. Someone braver and tougher than yours truly. That shouldn't be too hard to find. 

Speaking of freaking out, remember a couple of years ago, I took Timmy to see Wonderama? One of the games they sometimes play is called Snake in a Can. The following story is called Snake in THE Can

SNAKE IN THE CAN:

The Post reported last week that a restaurant worker in Thailand was taking a bathroom when an 8 foot python crashed through the ceiling. It then tried to slither back through the hole it came into. 

The worker, 35 year old Nop Powin was interviewed by London's Daily Sun, and provided the Sun with some photos of the incident. How this dude had the presence of mind to take these pics mid-deuce is beyond me. I'd have been out of there with my pants at my ankles. 

Last September someone had a peck taken out of his pecker by a python while he was sitting on the toilet, this also happened in Thailand. 

I'm not planning any trips to Thailand anytime soon, but if I do, I may have to hold it in for the duration of my stay. Failing that, I'll have to set new speed records for Potty trips. Either way, the simple pleasure of reading on the can is a no-go in Thailand. 

FOOTBALL: Can’t Lose for Winning

I’ve been going back and forth on this all day.

I honest to God did not want the Jets to go 0-16. That’s a blemish that doesn’t ever go away. The 1-15 record from 1996 still is a sore spot for me. 

But after that monstrosity, Bill Parcells came in and got the Jets to 9-7 the very next year and a shot at the playoffs in the season’s final game. The year after that, they were in the AFC Championship Game.

The so-called light at the end of the tunnel for the Jets had they gone 0-16 was that they could draft Clemson QB Trevor Lawrence who I got to watch carve up my beloved Fighting Irish on Saturday afternoon in the ACC Title game 

So because the Jets Despite their best efforts to do otherwise, beat the heavily favored Los Angeles Rams on Sunday, and the Jacksonville Jaguars lost to the Baltimore Ravens, and the Jags have a softer schedule then does the Jets, if the season ended today it would be Jacksonville picking first in the draft and not Gang Green. 

The more I thought about it, the more it ate at me. My college team had a chance to run the table and go undefeated, my pro football team had a chance to run the table and go winless and secure the top pick in the draft. And they both spit the bit. 

So now, I have to hear about how Norte Dame is overrated, how they inflate their record by playing crappy teams, especially when they no doubt get their doors blown off by Alabama and that scuzzball coach of theirs Nick Saban on New Year's Day. 

And the Jets? Well, look, hopefully somehow, someway the Jags can go out and beat the Bears this week, and the Jets lose their next two games and we can get the number 1 pick. The more likely scenario? Jacksonville lays down in their last two games, the Jets come close but lose their last two games, and Trevor Lawrence becomes the hero in Northeast Florida. 

It never ends. 

All right, sorry again for the delay. Had to get the Jets stuff off my chest. If anyone has any ideas for a Christmas Eve blog, feel free to make suggestions. Otherwise if we don’t post  have yourselves a Merry Christmas. 

Stay Safe 

Weekly Mail December 13, 2020

 

Hi Everyone:

We're just about halfway through the last month of 2020, believe it or not. So the game plan here is one more WM after this one, then possibly a Christmas Eve special, (if I can come up with a good idea for one) and then the Year in Review, which we may tinker around with this year. 

This would have normally been the weekend for Santa-Con, and like many of the Santa-Con's in the past few years, it would have been another abnormally warm December Saturday. How anyone can walk around Manhattan dressed like Santa in 60 degree weather amazes me. I'm sure the multiple libations help, if only psychologically. 

But it appears Santa-Con is another victim of COVID-19, obviously about 1000 times less important than most of what else has been lost due to this pandemic. The numbers once again these past couple of weeks have been nothing short of staggering. 

After the FDA voted on Friday to authorize the Pfizer vaccine for emergency use, Pfizer announced that the first shipments of the COVID-19 vaccines would be put on trucks at the company's Michigan lab. There is going to be more aerial coverage of those trucks hitting the road than there was of AC Cowlings leading the LAPD on that chase in 1994.  

But  hopefully these vaccines mark the beginning of the end of this nightmare. 

Onto the rest of the news. 

END OF THE YEAR AWARDS: Biden/Harris win Time Magazine's People of the Year..

There was a bit of an uproar this week when Time Magazine gave it's Person of the Year to President-Elect Joe Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris. And it wasn't just coming from those poor souls who still think Donald Trump won on November 3.  No, much of it was also coming from those who felt that because of the pandemic, consideration should have been given elsewhere.

Such as to the frontline workers. The nurses and doctors and other medical staff members. Or the food service workers, grocers, anybody who kept things going while the world was shut down. 

Or someone like Dr. Anthony Fauci who was the point man on this whole thing, as our nation's infectious disease expert.  

Obviously, if I had a vote it would be for the nurses. Especially my favorite nurse, who was on those front lines when things were first really bad.*

I honestly thought that Time almost always gave their person of the year award to whoever won that year's Presidential Election, or in the years where a VP had to take over after the death of a sitting President. Since the first award in 1927, (aviator Charles Lindbergh), that has happened twice. In 1945, Harry Truman won after taking over for a fallen Franklin Roosevelt. In 1963, when Lyndon Johnson took over after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the award went to Martin Luther King.  (LBJ would win it the following year after being re-elected) 

But the truth of the matter is, the President-Elect doesn't always win. 

1932- Franklin D. Roosevelt

1945 Harry Truman (took office after the death of FDR)

1952- Queen Elizabeth II-who had just become Queen of England-a title she still holds 68 years later.

1956-The Hungarian Freedom Fighter (Dwight Eisenhower would win it in 1959)

1960-US Scientists (JFK would win in 1961) 

1963-Martin Luther King (Lyndon Johnson would win it in 1964)

1964-LBJ (see?) 

1968-Apollo 8 Astronauts (Richard Nixon would win in in 1972)

1972-Richard Nixon/Henry Kissinger 

1976-Jimmy Carter

1980-Ronald Reagan 

1984-Peter Ueberroth  -who ran the 1984 Summer Olympics in LA and became commissioner of MLB.

1988-The Endangered Earth  (George HW Bush would win in 1990)

1992-Bill Clinton

1996-David Ho-a AIDS research pioneer 

2000- George W. Bush

2004-George W. Bush

2008- Barack Obama

2012-Barack Obama

2016-Donald Trump

2020 Joe Biden/Kamala Harris

So the last time a new President didn't win Person of the Year was 1988. Every President elected this century has won Person of the Year the year they were elected. I tend to agree with those who say that maybe they could have given this year's award to the frontline workers. But I also can't argue too much with the logic. 

COME ON JOIN THE JOYRIDE - Roxette 1990

This story blew my mind.

Two kids from Ozone Park were picked up by the cops on the New Jersey-Delaware border after the older of the two, a 12 year old boy took the family SUV on a joyride.  

The 12 year old waited till his mom to take a shower, then, along with his 7 year old female cousin, took his family's Range Rover on a 5 hour joyride.

The kids had made it all the way to Staten Island before the cops began to track them using EZ Pass info. The cops had caught up to them, but when they went to lights and sirens, the boy took off. The cops chose to track the car rather than chase it down. 

The gig was up apparently when they 12 year old tried to buy cookies at the Clara Barton Rest Station with his dad's credit card. 

How a 12 year old could get out of Queens, never mind all the way to Delaware without getting a scratch on the car is mind-boggling. This really could have been a much more tragic story. Instead it's just a head scratcher. I mean I wouldn't give the little bugger a license now, but can you imagine when he goes for his road test?  I mean he drove over 100 miles, one lap around Juniper Valley Park is going to be a breeze for this kid right? 

*****************************************************************************

Last Tuesday marked the 40th anniversary of the murder of John Lennon. I've read a couple of books on the subject the past couple of weeks.

1) December 8, 1980-The Day John Lennon Died-By: Keith Elliot Greenberg:

This book goes into Lennon's killer (whose name I will not mention) activties leading up to december 8, and some of what John and Yoko were doing. But to me the strength of this book is how it describes New York City that night. 

Though it was relatively quiet, there were a few things going on. One was the lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree. I'm not sure that was as big a deal then as it is now, I'm certain it wasn't the two hour production it is now, but there was a good size crowd for it. 

They also talk to current Q-104.3 DJ Ken Dashow, who was a production assistant for a TV show back in 1980. He was driving on Amsterdam Avenue when he saw a large group of people running towards Central Park. He had no idea what was going on till much later.

But my favorite story was what was happening at MSG on 12/8/1980. No Knicks, no Rangers, no St. John's.  Nope, that night, the WWF was at the Garden. The Main Event was a tag team title match between Rick Martel/Tony Gurea vs The Wild Samoans. Afa and Sika (Sika= Roman Reigns father).

Martel describes leaving MSG that night and hearing everyone in the street talking about John Lennon. When he got to the Americana Hotel, he saw all the WWF bad guys sitting at the bar watching the news coverage. The McMahon's had a strict rule about the good guys not being seen with the bad guys in public, but with everyone in shock, the rules went out the door. Martel sat next to Afa and Sika, and Afa asked him "Did you hear what happened to John Lennon?"  

2) John Lennon 1980- The Last Days in the Life by Kenneth Womack.

As the title suggests, this book goes in depth about John's activities in 1980. But it actually does a nice job of describing John's life from the time he "retired" from the biz in 1975 to care for his son Sean, right up until the night he was killed.

John apparently spent a good amount of time living in Cold Spring Harbor. The book describes how John and his assistant were cruising up and down Jericho Turnpike, when he heard a song on the car radio, a familiar voice. "F-ck a pig! That's Paul!"  he yelled as he was listening to McCartney's "Coming Up." 

John also rented a sailboat to sail from Newport, RI down to Bermuda. When everyone else got seasick during a storm, John took over and guided the boat. Cool stuff.

The third book I'm reading now is by James Patterson. Called The Last Days of John Lennon. The title is a bit misleading. It pretty much goes through John's entire life, while also going through the life and mindset of his killer. This book was only released last Monday so, I'm about halfway through it. I'll give more of a review when I finish it. 

As I've said many times before, I often think of John Lennon's murder as the first big news story I remember. The fact is, that's not really true. What I actually remember was how the murder knocked everything else that was going on in 1980 to the backburner. Remember, we just had an Presidential Election, and that transition was happening. Also, we had the 52 hostages still in Iran, about to spend their 2nd Christmas in captivity. The Russians were still fighting in Afghanistan, there was the solidarity movement in Poland, and we heard about all this night after night.

Until December 9. 

It wasn't until years later thanks to You Tube, that I was able to see how Walter Cronkite opened the CBS Evening News on December 9, 1980. "The death of a man who sang and played the guitar overshadows the news from Poland, Iran and Washington tonight."  Uncle Walter who was about to retire, and myself who was 7 at the time, were thinking along the same lines. 

We always had December 8th off from school because it's a Catholic holy day, so I ended up having lunch at the old Cadallac Restaurant on Queens Blvd on december 8, 1981, with a friend of mine, his grandmother and her friend. The grandmother's friend said she did understand why they "made such a fuss over him."  When I repeated that statement to my mother later on that day, well, let's just say, she explained it to me.

With all these TV specials, books and of course with the internet, you can see very clearly why its a big deal and why those of us who were around 40 years ago, and even some of us who weren't are so affected by it.  40 years later, it still resonates. 

******************************************************************************

It looks like the Mets finally got themselves a GM, and also signed catcher James McCann. 

Jared Porter, the assistant GM of the Diamondbacks, was hired to replace Brodie Van Wagenen. He worked with Theo Epstein, both with the Red Sox and the Cubs. He’s young (41) and according to s in sports) I like the connection to Theo and his relative youth. Hopefully he can figure out how to restock the farm system, while Steve Cohen and Sandy Alderson worry about bringing in a couple more free agents. 

The signing of McCann, while an upgrade over what we had, isn’t the guy I wanted. I was hoping for JT Realmuto. Rumor has it he wanted no part of the Mets. So he can go kick rocks if that’s the case. If Cohen can make this a model franchise like I’m hoping he can, players will want to come here. And Realmuto will look foolish.

On Sunday our parish put together a Christmas drive by for some folks in our neighborhood. About 50 cars participated and it was a blast. It served a couple of purposes, most importantly, it made us feel we were spreading the Christmas spirit to our neighbors and contributing to society in a positive way. 

Also, because it took place from 4  to 6 PM, it made me miss most of that monstrosity in Seattle courtesy of our NY Jets. You know, I said last week I’d rather get blown out than lose how they did to the Raiders. They must have been listening to me. 

To my friends who celebrate, a very happy and healthy Chanukah to you.  

Everyone else, stay safe, wear a mask

and Have a Great Week

*I used to give out an award called Woman of the Year. When Tara and I started dating in 2004, someone told her about that, and she said to me "Look don't be giving me any awards OK?" So I gave the award that year to Joann Hili and named it the Tara Connors Woman of the Year Award. I did away with it in 2007. The last winner of Woman of the Year? My niece, Becky. 

Weekly Mail December 6, 2020

Hey: 

Sorry we didn’t publish last week and that we were late this week. 

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving

Gotta start off with the Jets...

So against my better judgement, I watched the Jets-Raiders showdown on Sunday. You all know the dilemma I face with my beloved Gang Green; I can’t watch them and root against them, even though about the only hope they have is to lose out and get the number one pick. 

Watching them play the second half on Sunday, I didn’t know what team I was watching. They seemed to run at will on the Raider defense, and while no one would confuse their defense Sunday with the 70’s Steel Curtain, they didn’t look like the matadors they usually look like either. I remarked on social media that if they were going to remain perfectly imperfect they were going to have to pull something special.

Alas, they didn’t disappoint.

The Raiders had 4th and 3 deep in Jets territory and were unable o get the first down, giving the ball back to the Jets with 1:42 left and the Jets up by 4. At that point, I figured all the Jets had to do was run out the clock and we’d have our first victory of the year, against a team with a winning record nonetheless. So I went to the kitchen to have dinner. Figuring even with the win, we still might have a shot at Trevor Lawrence.

Silly me.

For starters the Raiders still had all their timeouts, just one example of which team actually has a coaching staff who knows what they are doing. (More on that to follow) So unless the Jets got themselves a first down, the Raiders could still get the ball back. The way the Jets had been running the ball, I figured they could get at least one first down.

But nothing doing. The Jets went three and out, and punted back to the silver and black. Not a great punt either. Still there was 35 seconds left. 

After spiking the ball to stop the clock and an incomplete pass, Raiders QB Derrick Carr put up a wing and a prayer to a wide open Henry Ruggs III for the game winning TD.

And why pray tell, was Mr. Ruggs III wide open? Well remember a paragraph or two back when I discussed how much better coached the Raiders are? Well here is exhibit number 2. 

Jet defensive coordinator Gregg Williams decided it would be a great idea to blitz his safeties, instead of what every other coach in football would have done and had the safety guard against the long pass. 

Carr described himself as “thankful” when he saw the blitz coming. I bet he was. 

I only got to see this monstrosity thanks to the power of the DVR, because I was eating a deliciously cooked dinner while all this was going on. When I was finishing dinner I saw the Raiders celebrating. “I’m not seeing this am I” I asked out loud. Assured that I was, all I could do was shake my head.

I was pissed off. I know I had no right to be, a loss is better in the long run, and shame on me for leaving the TV before the game was over. But still, this was a hard pill to swallow. An old friend of mine from high school (a Steelers fan) took an informal poll asking if us Jets fans were laughing or crying. I told him I’d rather have lost the way the Chargers lost to the Patriots (45-0) than to lose like that. 

I’ve heard so may stories about another Jets-Raiders game that took place a little more than 52 years ago. Another game the Jets had in the bag, but blew it at the end. That game took place in Oakland, and nobody in NY got to see the end because at 7PM EST, NBC left the game to show the movie Heidi. 

The teams were the same, the location was different and unless you were a dope like me and went to get food, you got to watch the whole debacle. 

One other difference: After the Heidi game in 1968, the Jets went on to win the Super Bowl. This year we are hoping to go 0-16 in the hopes of drafting a franchise QB who still might go back to college for another year. 

Sad state of affairs. 

Then to top it off, I got to watch the Giants, with their backup QB go into Seattle and knock off the heavily favored Seahawks.  I mean I have nothing against Big Blue, I think it’s another sign of these crazy times that a team could be 5-7 after 13 weeks and lead their division. It just made the Jets loss sting a bit more.

That said, am I the only one around here who thinks Colt McCoy is an awesome name for a quarterback? Nothing against Daniel Jones, but someone named Daniel Jones should be heading up Joe Biden’s economic team or teaching physics at Harvard. 

Colt McCoy? That sounds like someone who should go out and  beat the Seahawks, then strap on a holster, pin a badge to his chest, and then go rescue a young lady tied to the railroad tracks.  

Enough football.

COVID-19  Swing and a Miss

Last Saturday night/Sunday morning, the NYC Sheriff’s Office shut down a Swingers party at an Astoria nightclub. 

Caligula New York, a private social club, was busted with over 80 people in da club, drinking and well, swinging. Indeed, amongst those arrested according to Patch.com were three couples were getting it on in a small room.  Presumably nobody was wearing a mask. Hell, it sounds like they weren’t wearing clothes either. 

The location does not have a liquor license, hence the violation for booze.  

They also had a buffet table there, which I found both disgusting and hilarious. 

The Post interviewed one of the patrons who was fined and received a summons for disorderly conduct. She claimed she was only there to dance and listen to the DJ. “There are no other options, you can’t go anywhere.”  she told the Post reporter. 

Right, the whole pandemic thing. 

Going to a swingers club to listen to music sounds an awful lot like the dude who only reads Playboy for the articles and watches porn for the plots and storylines. 

With the numbers going back up to where they were when things were really bad back in the late winter/early spring, I really don’t mean to make light of this.  I just tended to avoid swinger clubs even when there was no global pandemics going on. 

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Channel 11 here in NY shows Barney Miller re-runs on Saturday nights at 8. For my money it’s the best cop show of all time.

This past Saturday, I don’t know if this was planned or if someone had a brainstorm, but they showed an episode that had a kid arrested for selling pot at NYU. The actor playing the pot dealer? None other than David L. Lander, who had passed away the day before at age 73.

Lander, was best known as Andrew “Squiggy” Squiggman from Laverne and Shirley, one half of Lenny and Squiggy, the title characters neighbors in Milwaukee. My all time favorite episode involving Lenny and Squiggy was when the two of them went on The Dating Game, with Jim Lange. The girl asking the questions asked “When you make love, what kind of machine do you think you are” and Squiggy answered “A Lawn Mower” I was about 7 or 8 when I saw that and had no idea about sex, yet that made me laugh so hard. They were a pisser.

RIP.

Monday marks the 79th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Let us never forget the brave people we lost that day. 

OK, sorry again for the delays on this. Hopefully we’ll have two good posts before Christmas.

Stay  Safe, Wear a Mask

and Have a Great Week  

Weekly Mail November 22, 2020

 Hi Everyone:

According to my records, this is my 250 blogpost since we relaunched WM back in 2015. So happy that I have been able to keep this going through all the ups and downs. Just taking it one week at a time. Hopefully in 5 years or so, we'll be closing in on 500. 

Onto the week that was..

BASKETBALL: Knicks pick. 

It's rare that I have good news to report about our New York Knickerbockers, but this week they drafted the player I really wanted them to draft, Obi Toppin from my wife's very own University of Dayton Flyers. 

I sound like a broken record here, but it's getting harder and harder to get excited about guys who are drafted, when it seems like NY leads the world in draft pick busts the last 10 years or so. The Jets are obviously the most notorious, are they are attempting to draft their second franchise QB in the past 4 years. But the Knicks aren't that far behind. You start with the night IN 1999 they decided that Fredric Weis was a better idea than drafting local star Ron Artest (Meta World Peace) and go from there. 

It's ugly man. Real ugly. 

On the rare chance that they actually drafted someone decent, they usually traded them away. Wilson Chandler, Kristaps Porzingis.  All the other picks were disasters... Mike Sweetney, Renoldo Balkman, Jordan Hill etc. 

But I actually cheered when the commissioner announced the Knicks selected Toppin. First I was surprised he lasted all the way to the 8th pick. Then relieved that as he sat there at 8, that the Knicks chose him. 

Yes I'm biased because he went to Dayton, and is a native New Yorker. Yes, I know that I've been thrilled on draft day only to see these guys fade like flowers many times in my life. I have a good feeling this pick is going to work out. If last year's pick, RJ Barrett, reaches his potential and Kevin Knox a high draft pick from a couple years ago, can somehow find is game, the Knicks may be on to something here. 

Free Agents still don't want to come to the Knicks. The good ones, if they want to play in NY are going to Brooklyn. Gordon Hayward who opted out of his deal with the Celtics, signed with the Hornets on Saturday, and Fred VanVleet, a PG the Knicks were thinking of signing, resigned with the Raptors. I want no part of trading for Russell Westbrook either. He makes too much money and he's on the back 9. 

No the Knicks have to build a core from within. That's the only way. I believe they made a big step forward the other night when they drafted Obi Toppin. 

RIP Alex Trebek:

He was the host of Jeopardy for 36 years, that is just amazing. Needless to say it's almst impossible to imagine anyone else hosting the show, he WAS that show. 

I have to say that I was impressed by the outpouring from so many Jeopardy fans, and also by those who participated. It used to bug me that when someone got an answer wrong, that he would give the correct answer in a way that made it sound like the contesant was asked what was William Howard Taft's middle name.  The first episode I ever saw of The View was the morning of the Mets 1999 home opener, and Jo Behar said to Trebek, "I know you don't know all the answers to those questions. You have them in front of you." He was pretty annoyed about that. 

But almost all the contestants I heard said he was nothing like that, he was kind of encouraging and was able to put them at ease. If so, that's good to hear. And like I said, anybody who can produce a host a show as successfully as he did for that long a period of time has got to be someone special. Nobody can dispute that. We may never see the likes of him again.

RIP

Speaking of Alex Trebek..

I'LL TAKE COLUMNS I'D LIKE TO HAVE BACK FOR $1,000 ALEX....

Over the summer, I signed up for a Newspapers.com account. I got it for a discount because I subscribed to an on-line newspaper, and I have to say, it is so easy to get lost in a series of old newspapers. 

When I first stated at the Post, I helped to put together a special about Pope John Paul II. It was near the end of his life, and I had to transcribe some Post articles that covered the Pope's 1979 visit to NY. I had to type in the 1979 articles of the Post into our processors. The old editions were bound together in large volumes. When I was done with the data entry, I'd read the old sports sections, all the predictions gone wrong from 1979. 

The Post isn't on Newspapers.com, but the Daily News is. 

I went back to the June 16, 1977 edition of the News, the day after Tom Seaver was traded to the Reds. The story started on the back page, and then continued on the top of another page. On the bottom of the page was the story about the 1977 NHL Draft. The Rangers had two picks that year in the top 15. The selected Lucien DeBlois with the 8th pick and Ron Duguay with the 13th. The Islanders picked 15th. They picked Mike Bossy

DOH! Talk about bad news on the doorstep. 

Anyway the other night I was perusing some of Mike Lupica's old Shooting From the Lip Columns. I was in the summer of 1986, August 3 to be exact, and Lupica wrote a column basically destroying Wellington Mara, the owner of the Giants. 

The Giants would end up winning the Super Bowl that season, but as Lupica pointed out, the Giants to that point had never won a Super Bowl and before that, hadn't won an NFL Championship since 1956, a 30 year drought. (Which relatively speaking is like last week for my 4 teams-but I digress). And there had been many lean years for Big Blue, including an 18 year playoff layoff. 

Part of the problem was that Wellington Mara co-owned the team with his nephew Tim, and the two of them did not get along. It had gotten so bad, that NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle stepped in and mediated the hiring of George Young, who amongst other things, drafted Phil Simms and Lawrence Taylor, and hired Bill Parcells. More importantly, he didn't fire Parcells after he went  3-12-1 in his first season.

Now, when Wellington Mara died in 2005, the Giants had won 2 Super Bowls and played in another. He was considered football royalty here in NY. All the writers including and especially Lupica talked about how classy he was. And he was was all that and then some. 

But it wasn't just that Lupica was bashing Wellington Mara in that 1986 column, he was also lavishing praise on someone else you all may have heard of. 

It all came to mind this week because Well Mara, noted football man, had tough things to say about not only Daily News writers, but Al Davis and Donald Trump. Of course were you Mara, you would be a bit touchy about the likes of Davis and Trump too. .... Trump has a job, knows how to run a business, and wants to have a pro football team in New York City.  -Daily News, August 3, 1986

If you read Jeff Pearlman's book about the USFL, or Sean Devaney's book about New York in the 1980's, you know one thing: Trump's plan to put an NFL team in NYC was basically to get the USFL to move from the spring to the fall, have the USFL fold and then have his team, the Generals merge with the NFL. Then he'd get the city to build him a domed stadium in Queens. 

I realize that I may be coming off as unfair to Lupica. A lot of people thought Trump was the bees knees in the 1980's. And again, when your team loses the way the Giants did from 1964-1981, the owner is the easy target. 

But I wonder if Lupica would look back a column like that and shake his head. I look back at things I said in my blogs and wish I could take it back. Do sports columnists, even the really great ones, do the same? 

He was the last great sportsman. Others have won more than the Giants. Certainly others have made more money. There was never a better owner than this because there was never a better man even in bad times. He honored his team and his league. 

That was from Mike Lupica's column, the day after Wellington Mara, or Mr. Mara as Lupica referred to him, passed away in 2005. 

Right now, the toast of the town in New York sports is Steve Cohen, the Mets new owner. I'm not gonna lie, I wanted him to buy the Mets, and I believe he could do great things.

I just hope 10 years from now, we're not looking back at old newspaper clips or old blogposts and shaking our heads saying "How could we write that?" 

FAST FOOD- Long time to get In and get Out

I've never been to California. In 2007, Tara's cousin got married in El Paso, TX, and if I recall correctly, someone made a run to the local Jack in the Box while we hung out at the hotel pool the day of the wedding. The day after the wedding, Tara and I headed to Arizona with a stop in Silver City, NM. Whilst in AZ, we hit Jack in the Box again. Those were some good burgers.

This came to mind as I heard about what was going on in Colorado on Friday. 

Two In N Out Burger joints opened in Colorado this week. The one that opened in Aurora, CO, was reported to have lines up to 2 miles long, and wait times of up to 14 hours. 

Not exactly fast food as it were. 

I mean 14 hours for a burger? I wouldn't wait 14 hours for a steak at Lugers, how good could this burger be? Like I said those Jack in the Box burgers we had were really good. But I'm not camping out like I'm waiting for Van Halen tickets to get one. 

I know this is going to be a tough Thanksgiving for many of us, but please have a safe and happy one. 

Stay safe

and Have a Great Week