Topics Today: Giants, Titanic, Blue Ivy, Dieting, Europe, January 15

I won’t keep you in suspense any longer—I watched the NY Giants defeat the Green Bay Packers on the wall-mounted 52-inch LCD, High Definition Sharp Aquos television in my bedroom, thus shattering the superstition that my team needed me to view its success on the 35-inch Mitsubishi TV in our den.

One superstition down, one more to go. Can the Giants beat a Ryan-less team? Over the last four weeks the Giants have vanquished four teams with Ryans on their roster of either players or coaches: They thumped coach Rex Ryan’s NY Jets, his brother and defensive coordinator Rob Ryan’s Dallas Cowboys, quarterback Matt Ryan’s Atlanta Falcons and running back Ryan Grant’s Packers. I checked. There are no Ryans on the San Francisco 49ers squad, their next opponent, unless someone is hiding a middle name.

I’m never confident going into any game, and I also have a logistics issue, now that I no longer fear watching the game in my bedroom. You see, we DVR two shows at 9 pm (Downton Abbey on PBS and CBS’s The Good Wife) on the bedroom TV, meaning the technology wouldn't permit me to concurrently watch the game on that set. Should I start the game in the bedroom before shifting to the den and hope the Giants are sufficiently ahead to hold onto a lead on the TV in the den, or should I maintain consistency throughout by starting and finishing in the den? For those wondering, there is absolutely no option of staying in the bedroom.

Who knew football was such a baffling, complicated sport?


The Hand of James Cameron? Surely anyone following the tragic capsizing of the Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia had to think back to the sinking of the Titanic after it struck an iceberg in the Atlantic 100 years ago this April 15.

Perhaps their thoughts also locked onto James Cameron’s epic film recreation of the disaster. How could they not if they read a NY Daily News article on survivors’ stories with the following account of a British dancer’s posting on her Facebook page:

“My name is Rose, it’s Friday the 13th and I’m one of the last survivors still on board the sinking cruise ship off the coast of Italy. Pray for us to be rescued.”

Rose Metcalf was saved, “plucked off the slanted deck by a rescuer hanging from a helicopter,” the Daily News reported. In Cameron’s version of Titanic history, Rose DeWitt Bukater was plucked out of the icy Atlantic waters after her love, Jack Dawson, sank beneath them.


How should Beyoncé feel? Not worthy enough, apparently, to have persuaded rapper-husband Jay-Z to stop calling women bitches. It took the birth of their daughter, Blue Ivy, to elicit a promise from the music and media mogul to disdain from slurring women in the future, at least when it comes to using the “b”-word. Here’s an excerpt from a poem he wrote eight days after Blue Ivy arrived on the scene:

Before I got in the game,
made a change,
and got rich
I didn’t think hard about using the word bitch.
I rapped, I flipped it, I sold it, I lived it
Now with my daughter in this world
I curse those that give it.
I never realized while on the fast track
that I’d give riddance to the word bitch,
to leave her innocence in tact.

Let’s hope Jay-Z stops his misogynous attacks and that he influences fellow rappers to see the light. Let’s also hope he realizes he dissed Beyoncé by waiting until Blue Ivy showed up. She, and all women, deserved better.


Suggestion of the Day: Not sure what the over-under betting line is on how many days it will take Beyoncé to regain her pre-Blue Ivy shape, but here’s a dieting suggestion I heard this morning on WCBS 880 news radio—one way to eat less is to switch your fork to your less dominant hand.

Seems your dominant hand works without your thinking too hard so it mindlessly shovels food into your mouth. Switching to your other hand will slow down your intake and make you think if you really want to clean every last morsel from your plate, or, heaven forbid, go back for seconds.


Hackergate: I think The NY Times has hacked into my notebook. No, not my computer notebook (actually, my Mac), but rather the spiral notebook I carry in my back pocket in which I jot down story ideas and even occasionally long-hand blogs.

I have no other explanation for the fact The Times once again printed an article I intended to write but never got around to inputting. This one I had tentatively titled, “What’s So Wrong About Europe”, meant to compare economic, educational, health and social indices for the United States vs. Germany as a counterpoint to incessant Republican accusations that president Obama and the Democrats want to turn our country into Europe.

I had dated the entry in my notebook January 12, 2012. Three days later, just three days!, an Op-Ed piece by Nicholas Kristof titled, “Why Is Europe a Dirty Word”, appeared. He gets paid a lot more than I do, so here’s his commentary to read: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/opinion/sunday/kristof-why-is-europe-a-dirty-word.html?_r=1


Coincidence? Here’s another interesting coincidence from January 15.

Perhaps no current sport is more identified with the Afro-American experience than basketball. Isn’t it fascinating that January 15 is the birthday of Martin Luther King, one of, if not, the greatest Afro-American leaders, and the date in 1892 Dr. James Naismith published the rules of the game he invented, basketball? I think so.