Hi There:
Fall officially started this past Wednesday, so summer is definitely over. For most of us, summer ended the day after Labor Day. But now it's really in the rear view mirror. I hope that all of you with kids and or all of you who are teachers are settling into the new school year. And I hope you are all enjoying this really nice weather, aside from Thursday night/Friday morning, when the heavens opened and we all got socked with rain.
Anyway, onto the week that was..
UPDATE: Barney the Bull Caught...
It took a little over 2 months and an awful lot of teamwork, but Barney the Bull was finally corralled around 11:30 PM Wednesday night, on a duck farm in Moriches, LI.
The man who caught Barney, Skylands Sanctuary owner Mike Stura, set up a trap using bales of hay to lure Barney. Obviously this worked out a whole lot better than the plan to catch Barney by sending a horny cow after him. Especially since Barney was already fixed.
The way to a man's heart is through his stomach, especially if said man (or cow) is lacking all his "tools".
Thank goodness Mr. Stura was on the case.
Per Newsday....
Dense woods, a river, and the fast-moving, often congested Sunrise Highway were all so close to the area Barney called home that Stura said neither lassos nor tranquilizers could be used. The former could easily get caught in branches or wrap around trees, while tranquilizers would not kick in for nearly half an hour, giving Barney time to run into danger before collapsing.
Can you imagine if Barney had staggered out onto Sunrise Highway? The way us Long Islander's drive? Perish the thought.
And so as Gerald Ford once famously said, our long national nightmare is finally over. And what does Barney get for all his trouble? A one-way ticket to New Jersey. I don't want to offend any of my Garden State readers, so I'll spare you the "He would have been better off on someone's grill" jokes. I'll never understand how the hell this took 2 months to pull off, but the important thing is he's safe and sound and no one got hurt
May he live long and prosper. Thanks for the memories Barney. Enjoy your time in Jersey.
TRANSPORTATION: Bus, Magic Bus!!!
There's few better days in school for students than the days they get to go on a field trip. And the 11th grade students at Brooke Charter School in Boston got an even bigger treat than they bargained for.
Because of a shortage of qualified bus drivers, the kids got to ride to their field trip on a bus equipped with a stripper pole and flashing neon lights.
I would have loved to have seen the permission slip for this trip!
The children will be transported to the museum on the Flesh for Fantasy Party Bus, with a stripper pole, fully stocked bar and all the cheesy dance music they can handle. Please check the box to signify that you are OK with this...
Teacher Jim Mayers wrote in a since deleted tweet..
“It’s a funny story, but there actually is a real bus shortage and it speaks to major flaws in our education system,” “This in no way is a reflection of anyone involved in planning the trip, we were trying to have a fun day with the kids and that’s exactly what happened,” -Masslive.com
I've written this before, but we had a strip bar right around the corner from where I went to Catholic School. (My friends at St. Camillus had Rockaway Playland, we had Nickel's Go Go Girls) but all our trips were on School Buses. No stripper poles for us.
Maybe I shouldn't make light of this, but c'mon, you think these kids won't tell their grandkids about this trip? Most times the trip is the thing, for these folks, getting there was half the fun.
BTW: WM has obtained an exclusive picture of the bus driver assigned to take the Brooke students on their trip...
FOOTBALL: Jets Mess
It's bad enough that poor Zach Wilson had to be told at halftime of the Jets-Patriots game last week that we were the dudes in the white jerseys, but now Sam Darnold has apparently turned into Joe Montana down in Carolina.
OK maybe I'm overreacting a little bit (Me? Overreact?) but Darnold is already 3-0 for the Panthers and has had a pair of 300 yard passing games to boot. Granted, he's not playing behind an offensive line of matadors anymore, and in Christian McCaffery he has a potential All-Pro running back to hand the ball off to, not to mention a coach that has a clue about how to run an offense.
And yes, I'm still preaching patience with Wilson. We have to stop running QB's out of town around here. As much as I can't get excited about the Jets newest head coach and QB, we have to give them a chance.
It would help of course, if he actually had someone to throw the ball to, and as I may have mentioned before, was not constantly running for his life on every pass play. This monstrosity against the Broncos today wasn’t all on Wilson not even close. He threw one bad pick towards the end of the game, otherwise he was the victim of bad drops by his receivers and a couple of asinine penalties. We had a 56 yard FG called back because of delay of game, and one knucklehead got a 15 yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty for taunting! Which begs the question what exactly do the Jets have to brag about that we can taunt anybody???
Having said that, I would have rather lost like the Jets did than how the Giants did. On the day they sent Eli Manning’s jersey to the rafters nonetheless.
BOOK REVIEW: Glory Days: The Summer of 1984 and the Summer That Changed Sports and Culture Forever
By: L. Jon Wertheim
A couple months back, I read a book that tried to make the argument that Los Angeles in 1974 was some sort of cultural turning point. I enjoy books like that, but I'm less and less interested in the point that the author is trying to make than I am in the stories that they tell.
I was a baby in 1974. In 1984 I turned 11 during the summer. The author was 14 or 15 years old in 1984, but some of the things he discusses in this book I remember as clear as day.
He starts off the the Olympic Basketball tryouts that were held in the author's hometown of Bloomington, Indiana. The reason? Indiana University coach Bobby Knight was in charge and that's where he wanted it. And yes, you had to tryout, even if you were Michael Jordan or Patrick Ewing or Chris Mullin. And wait till you see who Knight cut!
He discusses the 1984 Stanley Cup Finals (my Islander fan friends may want to skip this chapter) and the 1984 NBA Finals, of which I can honestly say is one of the things I'm most grateful for from my childhood: That I got to watch the Celtics and Lakers play in 3 NBA Finals in the 1980's. This was the first one.
In case you want to read it I won't get too much into it, but I will tell you one story from this book that made me laugh..
The US had boycotted the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. In turn, the Soviets and many of the Soviet bloc countries boycotted the Games in 1984 that were held in Los Angeles.
McDonald's had decided to do a promotion where they gave out scratch offs. If the US won a gold medal in the event you scratched off, you got free food. With all those teams out of the competition and the US having home field advantage, we cleaned up the gold medals.
And my friends in Rockaway cleaned up at McDonalds on Beach 92nd Street, namely Richie and Billy Benn, who lived two doors down from me on 112 Street. One day, Richie went to McDonalds on his bike with a stickball bat. He came back about a half hour later, with three bags full of McDonalds burgers, fries etc. He put the bat across his handlebars attached the bags to the bat. He had enough food to feed an army, and if he spent 10 bucks on all of it, that was a lot. He used all those Olympic game cards. At the time, I thought it was the coolest thing I had ever seen.
The author talks about the promotion in the book. Remarkably as much $$$ as McDonalds lost in 1984, they brought it back 4 years later.
It was a really good book. Both because of the things I remembered and the things I had forgotten about (or learned for the first time). 1984 was a fun summer for me, and this made me remember why.
4.5 Auggies.
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I got an alert on my phone from ESPN on Saturday afternoon that someone named Oleksandr Usyk won Boxing's Heavyweight Championship of the World, defeating Anthony Joshua with a unanimous decision in London. I have never heard of either fighter, nor was I aware the heavyweight title was being contested. There was a time where you knew who the heavyweight champion of the world was just like you knew who the President of the United States was. And if the title was on the line, it was a big deal.
And there are few things more annoying on a Saturday night than getting a Breaking News alert on my phone from ESPN telling me who won that night’s UFC match. I couldn’t possibly care less.
The Mets were officially eliminated from playoff contention on Saturday. It will either be the Braves or the Phillies who will win the NL East. Next week, as the regular season comes to an end, I'll have my rant against them and all the BS that took place since we went on break. If the Yanks make it to the play-in game, as it appears they will, we'll preview that as well.
That’s all I got folks
Stay Safe
and Have a Great Week
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