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?
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Saturday, October 17, 2009
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.
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.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
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.
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.
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