On The Road Again

On Monday, Nov. 23, 2009, the good news was that I did not have to get up to go to work.

For the bad news, see above. Three days earlier, I had joined the ranks of the unemployed, but not having to get up the following Monday was the thing that seemed to make it official.

Then our home computer went down and things really got complicated. Take my word for it -- and this one gets an entry in Mitchell's Handbook of Helpful Hints that Go Largely Ignored -- if you're going to need support service from the company that made your computer, you'll probably lose less hair on your head if it's a model that the company still remembers.

Time marches on and advances in technology wave their magic wand of change, for better or worse. Thankfully, I was able to file my claim for unemployment insurance benefits online before our computer crashed, since an electronic filing through the New York State Department of Labor's website is the way to go.

The last time that I became unemployed, Richard Nixon whupped George McGovern in the presidential election and the first arcade version of a video game to be a commercial hit -- Pong -- was released. I'll leave it to others to decide which of those two events did more to affect life along every Main Street in America.

The year was 1972 and coincidentally, the month was November. Each morning I awake, I hope to learn something by day's end. What I learned during that experience was that job openings tend to be few and far between in November, recession or no recession.

I had left one job to accept an offer that would be withdrawn when the person I was due to replace suddenly did an about-face and decided to stay on. In what amounted to some kind of epiphany, I subsequently discovered that I was in a distinct and dubious minority. For some reason, few people in their right mind leave a job two weeks before Christmas.

"You're a young fellow and you'll have no trouble finding work," my almost-employer concluded in November 1972.

As it turned out, I found another job that began early in the New Year. But my age is only one thing that's different this time around. No longer a licensed X-Ray technician, I've spent the past 20 years in the newspaper business, using the printed word instead of an X-Ray tube to make my living.

I said as much during a recent workshop for job-seeking folks over 40, where the attendees were requested to state their last area of employment. Upon hearing the words "newspaper business," the career coach conducting the session recoiled in horror.

I might just as well have described my work experience as "dinosaur rider."

In November 1972, the classified section of newspapers was the place to look for a job. There was no such thing as Internet job search strategies because there was no Internet; tweaking was something you did to somebody's nose, not a resume; and if the word "networking" was mentioned at all, it likely involved a reference to one of three alphabetical groupings: CBS, NBC or ABC.

But time marches on and 37 years later, I'm on a strange new road now, hoping to find the best way to the middle-aged job seeker's land of milk and honey --- seemingly a vastly different journey since Main Street gave way to the information superhighway.

This Holliday/Halladay Season

If confetti is anything like the pine needles from a real Christmas tree, there's probably some lingering evidence along Broadway, Manhattan's Canyon of Heroes, of last Friday's parade to honor the New York Yankees.

If you, unlike me, were a face in the crowd, I hope you had a grand time among the hundreds of thousands in enhancing your memory of this year's baseball season, one capped by a championship for the Yankees --- the 27th in their history.

Some folks might grouse and grumble over the parade's cost to New York City amid a terrible recession. But opportunities pay no mind to convenience. We only get just so many chances to join in a public party for something that means as much to total strangers as it does to us.

If you love the New York Yankees, this was one of those times.

A few years ago, I wouldn't have been so magnanimous when it comes to the Yankees and the people who live and die with the outcome of their games. There was a time when their reasons to celebrate were the same things that made me want to hurl myself into a dark closet, pound my fists and tear my hair out as I practiced primal screaming for a good hour or two.

Now, with the holiday season almost upon us (retailers working on a shorter calendar would have us believe it's been here since the day after Halloween), what better time than this to admit that Charlie Dickens was right: things can happen that soften a person's view.

For me, the great catharsis took place in 2004, when the Boston Red Sox -- the American League team I've rooted for longer than my favorite National League team, the New York Mets, has been in existence -- finally won a World Series without Babe Ruth. Then, for good measure, they did it again in 2007.

Two Red Sox championships in my lifetime. Imagine that.

I don't know if that helps to explain why I have such good feelings towards Derek Jeter or am glad that Hideki Matsui was named the World Series MVP.

But I do believe that if the Red Sox had been smarter about their plan to sign Mark Teixeira as a free agent during the last off-season, instead of giving the Yankees the opportunity, this year's championship parade would have taken place in another state.

This time around, since they didn't get Teixeira, the Red Sox should find a way to acquire first baseman Adrian Gonzalez from the San Diego Padres. But the lure of another ace pitcher in the form of Toronto's Roy Halladay is just as strong.

Of course, slugging outfielder Matt Holliday is out there as a free agent. So whether or not the holiday season is under way might be a matter of opinion right now, but the Holliday season began the moment after the Phillies' Shane Victorino grounded out to end the 2009 World Series.

Unlike the Red Sox, who have young talent to spare as chips for swapping, the Mets are ill-equipped to be players in any off-season trading game of major significance, which would preclude them from pursuing Halladay. But no question, they can spend some of the money they made this past year in getting the public to buy into an inferior product --- and that's where Matt Holliday comes in.

In truth, the Mets should not only go out and get Holliday, but drop another free agent, pitcher John Lackey, into the shopping cart as well. Or is 2010 the year that Ollie Perez, the $36 Million Man, finally puts it all together? Yeah, right.

Of course, the talk about next year started early for the 2009 Mets. When the highlight of a ball club's season is the firing of an executive, you know it's been a rough year. Okay, maybe that's a bit extreme; rate the ouster of Tony Bernazard as the second-best highlight, after the trade for Jeff Francoeur.

Then again, if I think about the shabby dugout coup that did in my man Willie Randolph, nothing the 2009 Mets did tops the long delayed but always hoped for axing of Bernazard. And at the risk of sounding like the leader of the Willie Randolph Revenge Squad, as much as the Mets could use starting pitching, I ask you: does anyone really want them to re-sign Carlos Delgado and count on him to boost the offense?

So, when next Opening Day rolls around, I want to see Holliday on the Mets and Halladay on the Red Sox.

Meanwhile, should the Yankees get in the way of these things, it's probably a safe bet that I'll be feeling like my feisty old self again before too long. Even for a '60s peacenik, two championships in six years buys only so much harmony.

Candy Land (and in the Air)

Happy Halloween!

I don't know whether any barbarians will be at the gate. But since the occasion has fallen on a Saturday this year, I'm expecting the usual complement of witches, ghosts and goblins at the front door.

As I type this, it's just about noon --- apparently too early for the witching hour as I await the first of the costumed characters making the rounds for loot.

With My Wonderful Wife Peg at work, I've got Halloween duty, which, admittedly, is easier and a lot more fun than any other household chore I can think of among the few that fall to me.

So, I've checked the supply -- an enormous bowl filled with various candies -- and I've manned the station, ready for the onslaught yet to come.

Originally, I wanted to know how much candy we have on hand -- hoping it will be enough -- but in checking it out, I started my own assessment of what we have to offer.

Will we pass muster? If we get rated on some Halloween grapevine, will it be as "HTH" (House To Hit) or "DEB" (Don't Even Bother)?

I believe that when it comes to observing a tradition, some things don't really change, only the methods. Sharing intelligence information was a key part of the Halloween shakedown when I was a kid in Elmhurst, NY and I've got to figure that the only thing that's different now is how the word gets around.

Thanks to modern technology, instead of getting the thumbs-down as one trick-or-treater passes another on the sidewalk, which would require a lot of interaction to have much impact, a single tweet on Twitter can get you shunned by the world.

So, the candy selection is crucial. What do we have? Well, as I inspect the sweet stuff, I see some old friends -- Tootsie Pops and miniatures of the Baby Ruth and Butterfinger bars -- and the ever-popular Kit Kats, smaller sized but sure to please.

Turning those over, I've spotted a sprinkling of Crunch bars; packages of Sour Tarts; Laffy Taffy in multiple flavors (could it possibly be anything like good old Bonomo's Turkish Taffy?); and the timeless classic, Tootsie Rolls.

I'm feeling less anxious now --- relieved, almost confident in our certainty of winning approval, as the assessment continues. As always, My Wonderful Wife Peg has seen to what's really important around here.

There are miniature boxes, too. Junior Mints and Dots, the ammunition of my youth. Those were the ones that many of us bought at the candy counter of the Elmwood Theatre, loading up before taking our seats -- position was everything -- for the Saturday matinee. Some opted for Whoppers, the malted milk balls, or Goobers, the chocolate-covered peanuts, which were the hard stuff.

In truth, there were two kinds of movie theater candy: what you ate and what you threw. An experienced moviegoer knew the ones that served a dual purpose.

In those days, at the Elmwood or the even more raucous Maspeth, you didn't want to be sitting too close to the screen, for reasons that had nothing to do with risking a stiff neck or not being able to fully appreciate the beauty of Cinemascope.

Soon after those lights went out, the firing from the rear commenced, first with the carefully spaced rounds discharged by snipers, possibly acting on their own.

But before long, the hostile activity began in earnest, triggering some combined fire in coordinated attacks. Thus, a single hit was merely a prelude to the repeated volleys by packs of enemy forces. With the launching of mint missiles and gummy grenades being tossed seemingly from every side, a dead-center seat was a far more perilous place than a spot in the first few rows.

By sitting in the front, you put yourself at a disadvantage to return fire. But at least you had the hope, desperate though it might be, of being out of range. Remember, position was everything.

Just for the record, my favorite candy to munch on was the Powerhouse bar, which disappeared maybe 20 years ago. But when it counted most, I packed Jujubes --- the ideal ammo for a spray shooter in the dark.

Now please excuse me while I slip on my Jason Voorhees hockey mask and go answer the door. Junior Mints, anyone?

Just One of the Guys

When John F. Kennedy was assassinated, I thought it was the end of the world as I knew it.

When John Lennon was murdered, I walked around for two weeks and felt, on an emotional level, as though I had blown a tire.

When Lou Albano died, I thought: well, there goes another one.

Of the three, Albano was the only one I had shared some space under a ceiling with and on more than one occasion.

The room was Sunnyside Garden, that glorious, smoke-filled arena of my youth, on Queens Boulevard at 45th Street. Like countless other things in New York City that I thought would last forever -- or, at least, outlive me -- it's gone, so gone that you could drive past the spot now and not glimpse a hint that it ever existed. Like a story that's meant to be funny but has a conditional punchline, you had to be there.

From the age of 10 and for several years thereafter, I was there more often than not, starting with that night in 1959 when my grandfather took me to see the wrestling matches. The very first bout was the much-ballyhooed "dark match" --- unlike the rest of the card, it wouldn't be on TV, meaning you couldn't get it for free. Back then, TV and free were synonymous.

The only way to see Johnny Valentine vs. Bearcat Wright was to be there. We were and with that, I was hooked. The match ended in a draw, but that night, Johnny Valentine began the long line of bad guy wrestlers that I'd root for over the next few years.

Besides Valentine, the group included "Nature Boy" Buddy Rogers and the Graham Bros. -- Dr. Jerry, purported to have a Ph.D in hypnotism, and younger brother Eddie -- who weren't related in the real world. Then there was Chet Wallach, who looked mean enough to rip your head off, but silently autographed my program after I'd shown more courage than in my previous 10 years on Earth by asking him.

I cheered, clapped and craved to see those wrestlers who strutted into the ring with their blond hair (rarely the color they came into the world with), greased into a duck's-ass style, either oblivious to the resounding boos or invigorated by them. Those were my guys.

They weren't the only villains, of course, and that's where Lou Albano comes in. Today, he is recalled by most as "Captain Lou," a wild and crazy cartoon character in Hawaiian shirts who pierced his bearded face with dangling rubber bands and talked like there was no tomorrow when he was being interviewed.

The Captain managed wrestlers (including Johnny Valentine's son, Greg) and was more colorful than any of them. That's how he really made his mark on popular culture, long before he played Cyndi Lauper's dad on her music video for "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" and went on to some other things that had nothing to do with the ring. He managed the rock band NRBQ, who wrote a song about him, and even showed up on TV's "Miami Vice" and "Hollywood Squares."

But there was a time when Lou Albano was a wrestler himself, a notch or two below the Johnny Valentines in likelihood to leave the ring with a victory, as part of the bad guy bunch -- Tony Altamore, Tiger Jack Vanski and Angelo Savoldi belonged to this same fraternity -- who served as foils for the likes of Antonino Rocca, Eduardo Carpentier and Haystacks Calhoun.

Back then, there were no rubber bands, no scraggly beard and no interviews for him; he simply played his part, gave the good guy all he could handle and usually lost, as I recall.

In reading this past week of Lou Albano's death at age 76, I was surprised but pleased to learn that he and Tony Altamore had been the tag team champs in 1967. I vaguely remember them teamed as The Sicilians, but didn't know about their holding any title.

By then, my interest in wrestling and Sunnyside Garden had left the building, having moved on to chasing females and singing in a rock band. But I do remember a time when watching wrestlers was my game.

They're gone now --- Johnny Valentine, Buddy Rogers, the Grahams and the one who started the whole thing, my grandfather. Sunnyside Garden became a Wendy's hamburger joint. I don't know about Chet Wallach; he may still be around. The autographed program got separated from me somewhere along the way, but at least I can remember my one night of courage in getting it.

If the songs we sang, played on a jukebox or simply waited to hear on the radio are the soundtrack for the times of our lives, then I guess the celebrities of any given period -- the ones who made some kind of impression -- are faces to go with the music.

Lou Albano didn't have that greased-blond D.A. look; as a wrestler, his hair was dark and short-cropped. But he was one of my guys, even if I didn't know it at the time.

Here's to you, Lou.

Public Service

Math is hardly my strong suit. But I'm guessing that if the number of abused people were one tenth the number of abused words, you could double the total of victims assistance programs and there wouldn't be enough to handle half the cases.

Some assault stories turn out worse than others, which points out a key difference: you can't kill a word, although you certainly can beat the tar out of it.

No doubt the recently departed William Safire and professional lexicographers would have a more definitive short list of abused words in the English language. But this one, in no particular order, is mine: friend, expert and genius.

I can't think of another that takes the daily beatings endured by those three. The good news is that no two of them are likely to get hitched as a compound word any time soon, since they don't work particularly well when kept separate by a single space like some other pairings.

Like public service.

That's a good one, especially since it can mean different things to different people. After all, the more meanings that two words have when used together, the less likely you'll sound wrong in using them. Right?

When it comes to public service, probably the first meaning that would pop into anyone's head is anything that does the public a favor --- like a public service announcement that actually is more of a public service reminder, since it involves information that you already should know. Like stay in school, don't drive drunk, just say no and save the manatee.

Then there's the kind of public service that is even less likely to do the public any favors, except for the friends and families of those individuals who choose it as a career --- like politicians. Read the obituary for one and somewhere it will tell you, "after which he entered a life of public service," as though the guy had gone to the theater.

Somewhere in between the two, there may be some other kinds of public service. Like the kind that David Letterman performed recently, after he entered the theater that is the studio for his TV show. Looking out at the people in the seats and the cameras for the folks at home, the funnyman talked vaguely about his troubles --- the alleged extortion attempt, the fooling around with female staffers -- in a way that gave the audience the payoff it wanted: lots of laughs.

Better than that, though, Letterman did something for a throng that can't be measured by the Nielsen ratings that went up after his on-camera confession. That night and over the days that immediately followed, as the news media's bright light turned upon him with an intensity unknown by any bulb in a TV studio, he gave every desperate and damaged person a reason to think that as bad they have it, things could always be worse. The temperature of the soup they're in could be even higher. They could be Letterman.

If that isn't public service, I don't know what is.

Summer Games

I like to play games.

Not the kind that would benefit my waist size or cardiovascular system, you understand. No, my sneakers are for strolling, my fingers have outgrown my bowling ball and my golf game is restricted to courses with a windmill.

My workout is all in the wrist --- with cards, dice, game pieces and a board.

But let's back up for a moment. I don't remember exactly how old I was when I got my first taste of game action, but I do know that the introduction did not involve "Chutes and Ladders" or "Candy Land."

No, my first time involved a game of strategy called "Pinky Lee and the Runaway Frankfurters" --- and if you're old enough to remember when it seemed that Pinky Lee. as the host of a TV show for children, was second only to "Howdy Doody," you're my kind of gamer. Only in America could a former burlesque comic become the idol of millions of kiddies.

But I digress. From Pinky, I grew and moved on to other, largely forgettable board games before the journey put me on a road that eventually led to the El Dorado of the industry --- the magical land otherwise known as "Monopoly."

Ah, "Monopoly." They call it a "board game," but that gives no credit to its wonderful game tokens, deeds, play money, houses and hotels, and -- of course -- cards and dice. The various playing pieces -- and their quality -- have changed over the years, but I learned on a friend's vintage set in which many of the items were wooden.

Sometime before "Monopoly," I learned to play checkers and sometime later, I grasped the basics of chess. The former was the game that got me through CYO Day Camp and the latter seemingly hit its peak around the same time as my 15 minutes as a martini drinker (extra dry, straight up, with a twist of lemon) and student of the French cinema.

But neither produced a match that stuck itself in my memory. "Monopoly," on the other hand, was special.

As a kid on summer vacation (the ones without day camp), I spent a lot of mornings playing that game with friends on the stoop, in the driveway or in the backyard. It was our own floating crap game, as we would meet on a daily basis, determined to financially ruin one another --- or, at least, be the first one to land on "Free Parking" when it was stuffed with fake cash.

The games went on for hours, interrupted only by the arrival of enough other kids to warrant a stickball choose-up or by a mother's call to come in for lunch --- whichever came first.

I don't recall any of those games ever being decided with a clear-cut winner. Mostly, I remember giving the business to the kid who picked up a "Community Chest" card and learned he had won second prize in a beauty contest or, better yet, been sentenced to jail by a "Chance" card.

I remember, too, the fear and loathing of leaving the yellows, coming around the bend to the greens and ending in a space that left me staring at what waited up ahead --- the dreaded hotel hell of Park Place and Boardwalk, either a more likely landing place than "Go" (and $200) on my next roll. Each now owned and fully developed by the same kid I had given the business to a few rounds earlier, after he had rolled himself into jail. Who knew?

Over the years, I've played my share of dealer's-choice poker and at different times, have been part of groups that would meet semi-regularly for evenings of low-stakes cards and good company.

Thankfully, none was more intense than that one summer morning when I sat in the driveway and stared down the barrel of blue bankruptcy --- and survived to roll again.

Dead Men Tell No Tales But Still Do Ads

Not knowing very much about how commercials work, I'm left to wonder about the manner in which their shelf life is determined.

I mean, is there a contract in a drawer somewhere that says a commercial has to run "x" number of times, no matter what?

The first time that I got to thinking about this was fairly recently, after a second principal player in a New York State Lottery commercial -- Ed McMahon -- passed from this earth and the damn thing kept airing.

Now the commercial makes great use of three announcers whose voices/trademark expressions are easily recognizable, even if their names (with the exception of McMahon) are not.

But there may be a matter of gross stupidity, if not simple poor taste, to consider.

Months earlier, Don LaFontaine (of "In a world where..." movie trailer fame) had preceded McMahon in death. Yet the commercial kept showing up.

No doubt the same people who like curses, conspiracy theories and real reasons why the Chicago Cubs will never win another World Series have an explanation.

But if I'm the third (and last) of The Three Announcers left standing -- Johnny Gilbert of "Jeopardy!" -- I'm suddenly Mr. Mum, checking out the ice fishing in Greenland and waaay too busy to take notice.

And if somebody wearing mukluks, gloves and a parka comes up and taps me on the shoulder as I'm waiting for a bite, I've already got my story and I'm sticking to it: "Gilbert who? Never heard of the guy."

Happily, the commercial seems to have run its course. Or maybe somebody got to wondering why LaFontaine and McMahon hadn't cashed their residual checks in a while and launched an investigation.

Whatever the reason, at long last The Three Announcers commercial seems to have gone away.

Now if the Ministry of Good Taste would just do something about that radio spot with the guy who sounds too much like Phil Hartman insisting "men get what men want," I could almost feel comfortable again.

Not Always in the Cards

My father died suddenly 20 years ago this month and I still get the twinges.

One will hit me if I hear a certain song that I know he liked or played as a musician. Most often, though, I risk a twinge when I'm in a card store, trying to find one with a message that works for the intended recipient, and I happen to spot the card-stuffed slots marked "Father."

Nope. Not for me. Not anymore.

For all the things that changed the day my father died, my buying of greeting cards was altered forever in a way that conjures up that old song "There's Always Something There to Remind Me" (the Sandie Shaw version).

So, there I'll stand, with a twinge of remembrance and regret.

I have some great memories of my father. I remember being a little kid and sometimes waiting on Queens Boulevard by the subway station in the evening until he surfaced, so that we could walk home together.

One of my favorite father-and-son memories has to do with baseball --- the night in 1969 when we were at Shea Stadium as the Mets beat the St. Louis Cardinals to clinch the division title on their way to winning the National League pennant and, ultimately, the World Series. Amazin'!

I remember, too, my dad's side job as the tuxedo-wearing leader of the Bob Mitchell Orchestra, playing weddings and church affairs. As one of the kids who picked up a guitar (didn't everyone?) after the Beatles hit it big, I was in a rock group. And since my father refused to play rock, he'd bring us along to play while his band was on its break.

But my dad and I did not always get along and some disagreements were worse than others. In particular, there were those bitter arguments at the dinner table, during the height of the Vietnam War.

We were on opposite sides, followers of different leaders: My father had served under General Patton in World War II; I sat in the street behind Shirley MacLaine in a quest for peace.

As might be expected, there was never a winner in our war of words --- only the knowledge that we made a good team in bringing my mother to tears.

"Can't we just have dinner once without an argument?" she would cry.

Of course, that would shut us up --- until the next time.

Fortunately, my father and I grew to become more agreeable, even if it wasn't an easy process. My last memory of him is that we had just spent a good time together at a wedding reception. When it ended, we parted with a handshake, a hug and a sincere "I'll talk to you," even if we didn't.

I have known people who were on the outs with a parent or sibling when the harsh truth that we all get to answer to mortality suddenly hit them upside the head. Well, if I am grateful for anything, it's that I've missed out on that kind of haunting.

Knowing that wasn't in the cards, I've learned to live with the twinges.

Re: Leftovers as an Opening Act

As a professional writer (i.e., somebody who has collected a paycheck by stringing words together for a community newsweekly in New York City's borough of Queens the past 20 years), I've sometimes -- okay, often -- wondered about engaging in outside projects and possible conflicts of interest.

The first time that I got to thinking about the subject, I think, was upon learning that one of my favorite sports columnists would be making regular appearances on sports talk radio. And I wondered: who's going to get the leftovers?

To put it another way, I wondered who would be getting this particular scribe's best stuff. If he were lucky enough to have a scoop on his hands, which audience would get it first --- his readers or his listeners?

It's safe to say that his respective bosses probably wondered, too.

So, as I join the rest of the world on a blogging stage, for an opening act, I promise no scoops or even tasty leftovers; just some musings, and hopefully, a reason to visit every once in a while.