Babysitter Memories and a Walk Down Memory Lane

Funny how two seemingly disparate events come together to evoke a memory.  Last Saturday afternoon Turner Classic Movies aired The Long Long Trailer,  the madcap adventure of newlyweds, played by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnez, riding around in an oversized house trailer pulled by their convertible. The 1954 comedy was among the first films I saw in a movie theater. 

My brother, sister and I were probably taken there by our babysitter Maddie who lived next door to our family on Avenue W in Brooklyn. Maddie would often take us to the movies. I seem to recall her also taking us to see The Trouble with Harry, a 1955 Alfred Hitchcock humorous mystery starring Shirley MacLaine and John Forsythe. 

A few weeks ago one of Gilda’s patients said he knew her in-laws, my parents. With a family name like Forseter he easily figured out who her in-laws were. He wasn’t from Brooklyn but he was Maddie’s cousin and used to visit her all the time, and, by extension, our family as well. I don’t recall him at all. 

His reminiscences about those 1950s years ended with some sad news. Maddie passed away a few years ago. I remember how sad I was, how sad my sister and brother were, when Maddie went away to college and was no longer available to babysit. I can’t remember having any other sitter. 

When our kids were little, a babysitter of theirs was Leah. The daughter of one of our friends, Leah highlighted her long brown hair with blue dye. Ellie couldn’t resist asking her why. Because, she explained, she wanted to be different. Good babysitters leave indelible impressions on their charges. Leah didn’t need blue dye to be a good babysitter, but, like Maddie, she will always be remembered.

Memory Lane: I walked up Park Avenue two Fridays ago, starting at East 45th Street, through Helmsley Walk East to my old office at 425 Park between 55th and 56th Streets. I retraced the path I took nearly 7,000 times during my 32-year career at Lebhar-Friedman, almost all on Chain Store Age. 

This walk was different. It probably would be the last of its kind as L-F must vacate its home of 38 years. All tenants must be out by May 1, 2015. The building is coming down, to be replaced by a 60-story or so office tower, nearly double the size of the current structure, but still dwarfed by the 90-story, pencil thin, residential skyscraper going up diagonally across East 56th Street.

Park Avenue has not changed much since I began my daily treks to and from Grand Central Terminal in March 1977. For sure, there are more banks along the divided esplanade. But it’s still an oasis of refined elegance compared to the hurly-burly of most major avenues in Manhattan. 

I stopped off at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. For old time’s sake I used the bathroom. The attendant who proffers a towel to dry your hands has changed. Younger. Hispanic, not Armenian (at least I think he was Armenian). I tipped him a dollar. 

I made another stop at the main Citibank branch at 53rd Street. The lobby has been mostly transformed into self-service ATMs. I had a teller cash a check, the same way I did 37 years ago when I opened a checking account at that branch the day I started working at Lebhar-Friedman.

I couldn’t believe the Walter Steiger shoe store at East 55th Street had installed two outdoor red neon signs proclaiming its name. I always thought it was one of the classier shoe stores. No more.

After a warm visit with my friends still at L-F, I walked back down Park Avenue to a luncheon of some 25 L-F alumni. We get together every December, to update our status and reminisce about our days (make that years, often decades) at not the biggest family-owned publisher but surely one of the most impressionable companies any of us ever worked for. 

The Jackie Robinson Story vs. 42

Having just seen 42, the biopic of Jackie Robinson’s struggle to break the color barrier in major league baseball in 1947, last Sunday, I was intrigued to watch the 1950 film The Jackie Robinson Story starring Jackie Robinson that was aired on Turner Classic Movies Friday afternoon. 

Biopics are usually quite syrupy. They play loose with some facts. Comparing two cinema treatments of the same story left me perplexed as to which one was more accurate. In some instances, both films produced shoddy history.

Take, for example, the simple facts of when, how and where the Brooklyn Dodgers clinched the pennant in 1947. In The Jackie Robinson Story, the Dodgers clinched in front of their home fans at Ebbets Field. With two outs in the bottom of the eighth inning and a man on second base, Robinson tied the score with a double. He scored the deciding run when the next batter singled him home. 

In 42, the Dodgers were shown playing the Pirates in Pittsburgh. Robinson hit a late inning home run to win the game. General manager Branch Rickey, the driving force behind baseball integration, was not at the game. He was depicted back in Brooklyn listening to a broadcast as he never played in or watched a baseball game on a Sunday, a promise he had made to his mother, a devout Methodist, as was Rickey. 

So here’s the truth—Robinson had little to do with winning the pennant-clinching game. Actually, no Dodger deserves credit. The Dodgers captured the National League flag that year after the second place team, the St. Louis Cardinals, lost a night game at home on September 22 to the Chicago Cubs. For good measure, the Dodgers went out and won their game the next day against the New York Giants. The score was 6-1. Robinson played only part of the game. He went hitless in two at bats. He had no runs batted in. He was removed from the game after batting in the fourth inning, with the Dodgers leading 2-1. 

September 23 was a Tuesday. Rickey would have been at the game. It was, after all, a home game, at Ebbets Field. 

FYI, Dan Bankhead picked up a four-inning save for the Dodgers on September 23. Bankhead was an Afro-American teammate of Robinson. 

In The Jackie Robinson Story, a spring training exhibition game between the Dodgers and their farm team, The Montreal Royals, had to be cancelled because the city of Sanford, Fla., would not permit white and Negro players to be on a field at the same time. In case you’re a little startled, yes, that’s the same Sanford, Fla., that George Zimmerman hails from. I’ll let you draw any conclusions as to how prejudices have changed, if at all, in the ensuing 66 years.  

A Stark Morning, A Night Without Pain, A Message from Beyond

It was a Stark morning ...

No, that is not the opening line of my Great American Novel. Rather, it was how I spent the better part of the waning hours of the a.m. on Friday. As is my custom in semi-retirement, when I wake up most mornings I turn on the TV to see what’s playing on Turner Classic Movies. Programmers had set aside today as a tribute to Joanne Dru, not an actress I have followed but she did appear in some notable films. First up for me was All the King’s Men, the 1949 movie adaptation of Robert Penn Warren’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel of the same name, a not so veiled telling of the rise and assassination of Huey Long, the 1930s populist governor of Louisiana. 

Broderick Crawford played Willie Stark, a hick who takes on the corrupt establishment, but in his ascension to governor becomes as corrupt as those he displaced. It’s a portrayal that earned Crawford an Academy Award and reminded me that the late James Gandolfini’s portrayal of Tony Soprano shared many of the same acting traits as Crawford’s Stark, an ability to show ruthlessness and a vulnerable side. Both actors also scored leading man’s roles despite their portly shapes and less than glamorous profiles.  

(Spoiler alert) After Stark was whacked at the end of All the King’s Men (a fate we are uncertain befell Tony Soprano), I wandered down for breakfast and decided to watch TCM’s next feature, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. I get nostalgic watching westerns as they were my father’s favorite movie genre. I’ve probably seen She Wore a Yellow Ribbon a dozen times, but it’s a great John Ford movie, with perhaps the best John Wayne performance as U.S. Cavalry Captain Nathan Brittles serving the last days of his 40-year military career on an army post in the Southwest. About two-thirds of the way through the movie the location was identified—Fort Stark! 

Joanne Dru might have been the featured ingenue in both movies, but to me it was a Stark morning.

The Great Experiment Begins Saturday Night: That’s when Gilda and I will end the day on a new Sleep Number bed that can adjust each side to the firmness desired. 

Five years ago Gilda’s back ached. Our bed was too soft for her. We bought a Tempurpedic foam mattress. Her back pain went away. Mine started. Some days I couldn’t get out of bed without hoisting myself aloft on the frame of our iron bed. Gilda attributed my lower back pain to lack of exercise. A reasonable hypothesis, except that my back rarely hurt when we’d travel and slept on non-Tempurpedic beds.

My constant, constant, nagging finally paid off. Two weeks ago she agreed to try out the Sleep Number (it didn’t hurt my case that my brother and his wife have been sleeping on such a bed for the last 10 years). The bed comes with a 100-day trial period. I’m really hopeful a softer bed will alleviate much if not all of my pain, while Gilda can keep her side of the bed as firm as she desires. Without back pain I might even be enticed to exercise more, though let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Message from the Beyond: Another inanimate object signaled me the other evening, but I didn’t pick up the cue. I’ll spare you details of the issue under consideration, but it was provocative enough for me to want to send an immediate complaining e-mail to the members of a synagogue committee with whom I serve. Each time I hit “send” on the iPad the transmission failed to go through. One of the email addresses was wrong, or so the iPad said. 

I had a choice. Either wait till the next day to inquire about the right address or simply strike the offending address from the list of recipients. I chose the latter, only to find out a short while later I had misinterpreted the issue. I wasted no time sending my apologies to the committee, also explaining that “perhaps my iPad was being protective and suggesting I shouldn't send it (the first e-mail) out to anyone. As someone who believes inanimate objects have sent messages to me in the past I apologize for missing the signal.”

For those not familiar with my belief in inanimate object communication, here are a few examples: 

The day I was giving my Chevy Vega to my brother-in-law after 13 years of loyal service, the muffler fell off and the car barely trudged a few blocks without stalling out; 

On my last day of work, as I walked up Park Avenue under the protective cover of a large umbrella given to me by one of the hotels we used for our large retail conference, a wind gust blew the canopy inside out. As I struggled to right the umbrella, the metal shaft broke in two, leaving me the handle and about three inches of shaft. The decapitated handle hangs above my desk at home, a constant reminder that even if people sometimes don’t know when to say goodbye, inanimate objects do;

As I was considering a temporary position in Cleveland shortly after retiring from my employer of 32 years, Gilda handed me an article from The NY Times, “36 Hours in Cleveland”. Was the article telling me to go after the three-month position, or was it saying that 36 hours was more than enough time to spend in the lakefront city. One thing is certain, however. Another inanimate object was sending a message.

Superman Is Missing

Did you look up in the sky yesterday? Did you see a bird, or maybe a plane? Did you know Thursday was Superman’s 75th birthday, or, to be more precise, the 75th anniversary of his appearance in the first Superman comic book? 

For those of us of a certain age, and by that I mean those who were around for the first run of the Adventures of Superman TV show (1952-1958), yesterday was a day to engage in reverie about our youth, of dreaming about milk mixed with Bosco or Ovaltine (ok, the latter was Captain Midnight’s sponsor, but you get the picture), and eating Kellogg’s cereal, Superman’s actual sponsor. 

Superman took flight in 1938 and quickly captured the nation’s fancy at a time when evil seemed to be erupting around the world, especially after the United States entered the second world war. Just how pervasive Superman became was demonstrated to me by two films Turner Classic Movies aired last week. In the first, 1943’s So Proudly We Hail, about nurses tending to soldiers in the Philippines before their surrender to the Japanese, Paulette Goddard tells Filipino children a story about Superman. Ironically, the male lead in the movie was played by George Reeves who a decade later went on to play Superman/Clark Kent in the TV series. 

In the second movie, 1944’s Since You Went Away, the character played by Monty Woolley, noting that his morning newspaper was missing pages 9-12, complained, “Where is Superman?”.

It’s a legitimate question given the actions of U.S. senators Wednesday. Instead of showing the type of profile in courage exalted by John F. Kennedy in his book about politicians who took stands for the country rather than their own political gain, four Democratic senators—Mark Begich of Alaska, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Max Baucus of Montana and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota—chose to kowtow to the National Rifle Association in lieu of voting for the best interests of their constituents and the nation. They rejected the idea of expanding background checks before the sale of firearms at gun shows or through the Internet. By comparison, four Republicans stood out for their courage in supporting the expansion—Susan Collins of Maine, Mark Kirk of Illinois, John McCain of Arizona and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. 

Had the four Democrats voted for the measure, the amendment still would have failed. It would have had support of just 59 senators, one vote shy of the 60 needed to beat a filibuster. How shameful that the Senate turned its back on the victims of multiple shootings and their survivors. The clock is ticking. How long will it be before another unstable person kills and maims innocents?

I’m thinking of going postal. Not really. Just thought I’d get your attention to a flyer that came in the mail from the United States Postal Service seeking city carrier assistants in post offices in Westchester County to collect and deliver mail by foot or by vehicle. Don’t you think it would be fun riding around in a postal truck, steering wheel on the right side, or walking a route dressed in shorts with a pith helmet to keep sunstroke at bay? 

As much as I’m intrigued by the notions, I don’t think I’m cut out anymore for disciplined clockwork. I’m afraid I really might go postal if I had to punch a time clock or take abuse from a nasty supervisor or customer. 

News You Might Have Missed: What with all the important news of the last two weeks, including the Korean crisis, the gun law debate, the bombings at the Boston Marathon and the subsequent dragnet for the perpetrators, the explosion of the fertilizer plant in West, Texas, the death of Margaret Thatcher, some stories of import, depending on your point of view, might have escaped your news net. So here’s a couple of items that, regrettably, show the gender gap is narrowing, at least as far as retaliatory behavior is concerned.

Shades of Lorena Bobbitt, a California woman took matters into her own hands and cut off her estranged husband’s penis with a 10-inch kitchen knife. She outdid Lorena’s revenge by throwing the severed member down the garbage disposal. According to the Associated Press, “Catherine Kieu, 50, is accused of drugging her estranged husband's tofu with sleeping pills and tying him to a bed before the attack, the Orange County Register reported.” During her trial which began earlier this week, “The prosecution alleges that Kieu was motivated by jealousy, and that she was angry about her husband's plans to divorce her because he was seeing his ex-girlfriend.”

Okay, that might be an extreme example of a woman behaving badly. But how would you explain this episode? In a confrontation reminiscent of fathers behaving badly at Little League games, two mothers got into it during an Easter egg hunt in Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo. Once again, we turn to the Associated Press for details: 

According to the Seattle Police Department blotter “one woman reportedly pushed a child aside as her own child was scrambling toward some brightly colored eggs. Police say the two mothers began fighting and had to be separated three or four times. The fisticuffs left one woman with a bloody nose.”

Makes me kinda glad our children never played Little League baseball or went searching for Easter eggs. 

Are New York voters more forgiving or more discriminating than South Carolinians? We’ll learn the answer to that question should disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner choose to throw his hat, and hopefully only his hat, into the mayoral race. 

Will the “junk” tweeter be given another chance, as South Carolina voters have given disgraced former governor Mark Sanford? Sanford won a Republican primary to run for Congress. By the way, in the general election he’s running against Stephen Colbert’s sister. 

A Pair of Classics: Westerns and Drinking

TCM Turns into the NRA Channel: I’d like to think there was nothing political about the programming decision Turner Classic Movies made for Monday, one day before the Senate starts debate on a bi-partisan amendment to expand background checks for purchases of firearms at gun shows and over the Internet. 

After a morning and afternoon of Clint Eastwood-Sergio Leone westerns, TCM got down to business—movies with names that would make even National Rifle Association head Wayne LaPierre mist over in delight: Winchester ‘73, Colt .45, Springfield Rifle, The Gun That Won The West, The Fastest Gun Alive and The Quick Gun. I’m a big fan of westerns, but really, all these shoot-em-ups on the eve of the Senate debate was a little bit of overkill.

By the way, I’m a little confused or maybe just in the dark about the NRA’s objections to background checks and forms of gun registries. I understand opposition to any lists that could be compiled of people who purchase guns. But I wonder, do purchasers pay cash for their weapons or do they use credit cards? Some of these pistols and assault rifles are expensive, so I presume credit cards are used. If that’s the case, data houses such as Acxiom, probably have in their information warehouses the names and addresses of gun buyers along with all the other bits and bytes collected when a transaction is processed electronically with a credit or debit card. If I’m wrong about this, let me know. 

I Used To Be Able To Run Fast, fast enough to beat out ground balls chopped to the infield in our temple softball league. But that was many seasons ago. The new season began Sunday. Despite not practicing during the pre-season, I pitched five strong innings. But when I hit two ground balls I easily could have beat out in my younger days, I barely made it down the first base line. No explosiveness at all, unless you count the pain in my back. 

For the record, we had one bad inning (not while I was pitching). We lost, 9-3, but it was fun, the guys are a good bunch and some have shown marked improvement over a year ago. 

Hey, Get Yer Cold One Here: My desire for ice cold drinks, especially when traveling abroad, apparently has some ancient pedigree. Reading A History of the World in Six Glasses by Tom Standage, I discovered that Romans around the year 70 CE liked to chill their white wine during the summer with snow brought down from the mountains, a taste for cold drinks Pliny the Elder found detestable. No doubt Italians who sneered at my request for ice for my Coca-Cola are soul mates of Pliny the Elder.

Rowdy fraternity parties draw condemnation from most even-keeled modern adults, but Standage pointed out that getting together for wine parties was acceptable behavior for ancient Greeks. Indeed, being a teetotaler was frowned upon, according to Standage. Just as today, drinking parties, called symposia, could get out of hand. 

“As one krater (a large, urn-shaped bowl) succeeded another, some symposia descended into orgies, and others into violence, as drinkers issued challenges to each other to demonstrate loyalty to their drinking group, or hetaireia. The symposion was sometimes followed by the komos, a form of ritual exhibitionism in which members of the hetaireia would course through the streets in nocturnal revelry to emphasize the strength and unity of their group. The komos could be good-natured but could also lead to violence or vandalism, depending on the state of the participants,” Standage reported. Sounds a lot like Animal House, no?

Of course, Greek symposia revolved around wine, not beer. Beer was considered too déclassé for anyone of any stature, though at one time in ancient civilizations beer was the preferred drink of kings; the quality of one’s beer reflected a person’s wealth. Beer often was part of one’s wages. For example, written records show the Egyptians who built the pyramids were state employees whose wages included rations of beer. Sorry, fellow Hebrews, our ancestors did not build the pyramids.

Bertha 2: Gilda’s named her new car Bertha 2. She let me drive it over the weekend. I must say, I was impressed. We’ve put on more than 100 miles since picking up the Ford C-Max Thursday and have used perhaps two gallons of gas. Not bad. Not bad at all. 

From St. Francis to Diesel Fuel to Summer Camp

Prophetic or Just Lucky? When the programmers at Turner Classic Movies put together their list of flicks for March, do you think they had advance word about the name to be chosen by the yet-to-be-elected pope? 

Tonight at 9:30 the cable channel will air Flowers of St. Francis, an 87-minute paean to St. Francis of Assisi, what TV Guide calls a “lighthearted episodic account of the life of the Italian monk” whose name has been taken by the newly installed pontiff.  

In truth, the coincidence is just fortuitous serendipity. TCM is running a month-long salute to Italian director Roberto Rossellini. Flowers of St. Francis is just one of 14 of his films airing this month. However, one cannot help but wonder if there was some higher authority that guided the selection process.

Fill ‘er Up: Did you hear about the trouble President Obama had in Israel with his armored presidential limousine? Seems someone filled the diesel tank with gasoline. For those not familiar with what happens to a diesel engine filled with the wrong fuel, it shortly stops working. Lucky for the president and his Israeli hosts, a second limo was procured from storage in nearby Jordan. 

The incident reminded me of when my boss about 20 years ago visited Italy with his wife. They stopped for lunch at a quaint hillside village after gassing up their rental car, only to find it dead as a doornail when they returned from their delicious meal. He called the rental company which agreed to send a replacement vehicle. It would take several hours, an inconvenience John was more than willing to endure when he realized he had put regular gasoline into the diesel car.  

Parallel Parking: Last Sunday I pulled up next to a late model Ford on South 5th Street in Philadelphia. Just a block away from the National Museum of American Jewish History we wanted to visit, the spot was a tight one for my Toyota Avalon. The others in the car thought it was too small, but I chose to give it a try. After all, last year when I taught in-car Driver’s Education, I told my students the only time they needed to pull off a perfect park was on their road tests. After you pass, you can hit the curb or the cars in front or behind you as often as you like, I told them. Nobody's going to take your license away.

The young couple that had emerged from the Ford as we pulled up lingered across the street, watching my every move, ready to pounce should I nudge their car. I slid in perfectly. When I got out of my car I couldn't resist shouting across the street triumphantly, “I taught Driver’s Ed.” They didn't hear me, but I felt good all the same.

Inside the museum I spent a goodly amount of time at a film display of 30 influential Jewish Americans, people like Sandy Koufax, Albert Einstein, Steven Spielberg, Irving Berlin, Golda Meir, Jonas Salk, and Louis Brandeis. I don't know why the museum chose the 30 they did, why they left off some pretty important people, luminaries such as Robert Oppenheimer, Louis B. Mayer, Howard Schultz, Marvin Traub, Philip Roth, William Paley. The list can go on and on, from almost every human endeavor. 

Sitting there watching those videographies I missed seeing the second floor exhibit on Jewish cultural life in America. When Gilda asked if I'd seen the pictures of Camp Massad I raced up the stairs for a quick run through of the camp I attended from ages 7-11, from 1956 to 1960. For some reason I was disappointed my picture wasn’t among the few on the wall, though why it would have been there I cannot imagine. 

There was a picture of the arts and crafts building, named after Bezalel, the biblical artisan who crafted the desert tabernacle. My first year crafts project reflected the mores of the time—I made ashtrays for each of my parents, a brown one for my father, a sandstone one for my mother. 

Another camp photo was of the man-made lake, Kinerret, the Hebrew name for the Sea of Galilee. I didn’t learn to swim there, as long-time readers know. I remember being cold, standing waist-deep in the water, a thin reed of a boy unable to stay afloat when putting my head in the water, flailing my arms, kicking my legs. How I dreaded going to Kinerret twice a day, once for general swim, once for instruction. I loved everything about Camp Massad except swimming.

Movie Years

As most of you will, I’ll be watching the Academy Awards tonight. I can’t say I have any favorites among the contenders for best picture, best actor/actress, or best director. In truth, I think 2011 was a rather mediocre film year, perhaps one reason moviegoing attendance hit a 16 year low.

Contrast last year’s menu with that of 1939, considered by many to be the penultimate movie year, a period that gave us such classics as Gone With the Wind, Gunga Din and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Here’s my list of 22 exceptional movies from 1939. I could have easily added another dozen. If you haven’t seen any of these flicks, do yourself a favor and order them from Netflix, or see them on Turner Classic Movies when they appear:

Destry Rides Again
Drums Along the Mohawk
Each Dawn I Die
The Four Feathers
Gone with the Wind
Goodbye, Mr. Chips
Gunga Din
The Hound of the Baskervilles
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
The Little Princess
Love Affair
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Ninotchka
Of Mice and Men
Only Angels Have Wings
The Roaring Twenties
Stagecoach
The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle
The Wizard of Oz
The Women
Wuthering Heights
Young Mr. Lincoln

As good as 1939 was, a case can be made that 1962 provided equally engrossing film fare.

Here are 19 must-see films from 1962:

Advise and Consent
Birdman of Alcatraz
Cape Fear
David and Lisa
Days of Wine and Roses
Gypsy
Lawrence of Arabia
Lolita
Lonely Are the Brave
The Longest Day
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
The Manchurian Candidate
The Miracle Worker
The Music Man
Mutiny on the Bounty
Requiem for a Heavyweight
Ride the High Country
To Kill a Mockingbird
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

The pageantry of tonight’s Oscars telecast, red carpet walk and the coverage of the after-parties might be far superior to 1939 and 1962, but any objective view of filmmaking would find 2011 a mediocre year, not, to borrow the name of a film from 1982, my favorite year.

Picture This

Over breakfast most mornings I scan the Turner Classic Movies listings in the newspaper to see if there are any old time flicks that interest me. This morning I noticed The Blob was to be shown tonight at 8. Starring Steve McQueen, the 1958 movie is far from a classic sci-fi thriller. But as an impressionable 9-year-old sitting in a darkened theater, I was forever frightened by its coming attractions, never to see this flick, not then, not now.

The trailer aired before two movies I distinctly remember, Run Silent, Run Deep, and The Decks Ran Red. I had tagged along with my older brother, Bernie, and his friend, Jerry, for an afternoon of celluloid entertainment. Other than being scared out of my wits (there was a preview of another even scarier sci-fi film, but its title escapes me), the double-bill features did not disappoint. Run Silent, Run Deep starred Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster as officers of a WWII submarine. James Mason received top billing in The Decks Ran Red, a story about a mutiny aboard a freighter.

I don’t know why, but certain movies from my childhood have stayed with me, not because I have seen them time and again on television (though mostly I have), but because I remember the circumstances of when and where I saw them as a youngster.

In 1956, our mother took my brother, sister Lee and me to see The Ten Commandments at Radio City Music Hall. First, we had lunch at Schrafft’s. A day of spectacle any 7-year-old would remember.

That same year, while my brother attended a bar-mitzvah party, my father took Lee and me to a screening of Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer, the first feature film produced in Israel. It told the story (mostly in English) of a group of four Israeli soldiers assigned to hold a strategic hill near Jerusalem during the War of Independence. As the title implies, they did not survive their mission.

I remember seeing what should have been a most forgettable double bill, Pocketful of Miracles, a less than fulfilling 1961 remake of the delightful Lady for a Day (both, incidentally, directed by Frank Capra), and Party Girl, a story about mobsters and molls in early 1930s Chicago.

Two of the earliest movies I saw were Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) and The Trouble With Harry (1955). Both times our babysitter, Madeline, took us to the theater, most probably because she wanted to see them herself.

When I was 10 years old in 1959, I encountered my first example of censorship, and how to beat it. Twelve-year-old Lee and I went to see Cary Grant and Tony Curtis in Operation Petticoat. Because of the “raciness” of the script, we were barred from entering the movie house on Coney Island Avenue and Avenue U without an adult. Not to be deterred, we made our way to the theater at Kings Highway and Coney Island Avenue where they were more than glad to take our money.

Public Service Announcements

History Lesson: For those who didn’t see it the first time it ran, there’s a great documentary series on Turner Classic Movies this week. The hour-long segments air 7 pm daily through Sunday and are entitled “Moguls and Movie Stars: A History of Hollywood.” Tonight is Episode 2 (sorry, but I didn’t realize the series started yesterday).

Anyone who has ever been to the movies will find this documentary fascinating and illuminating. Have fun watching it.


Healthy Diet: Gilda and I recently committed to eating more healthy, not that we weren’t already doing so, but we agreed we’d eat more fish, at least two or three times a week.

Last Friday night my gourmet-cooking wife prepared a delicious feast of roasted tilapia with herbs, one of the recipes Mark Bittman recently promoted in the NY Times Magazine section. Delicious. And healthy, too. Or so I thought.

Imagine my consternation when I opened Monday’s Times and came across “Another Side of Tilapia, the Perfect Factory Fish” (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/02/science/earth/02tilapia.html?scp=1&sq=tilapia&st=cse). Tilapia offered the lowest amount of omega-3 fatty acids per 100 grams of fish than any of the 19 varieties studied by the National Fisheries Institute, according to the article. It was lowest by far, providing just 135 mgs vs. roughly 2,000 mgs for farm-raised salmon. Moreover, farm raised tilapia can be detrimental to the life of a lake.

We’ll still eat tilapia, as it still is healthier than eating meat or chicken, but it sure is disappointing to know even when I try to do the right thing someone, in this case, Mother Nature, is not very supportive.


Drink Up: Here’s another of my dietary dilemmas. Drinking too much Coca-Cola the first four decades of life elevated my blood sugar levels, so I switched to Diet Coke. Trust me, Diet Coke has gotten much better. No more aftertaste. I’ve managed to keep my sugar levels in check, but there still is some uncertainty about the long-term healthiness of sugar substitutes. Oh well...

Anyway, I bring this up because of Mayor Bloomberg’s campaign to receive federal government permission to restrict the use of food stamps to purchase sugar-sweetened beverages in New York City. Mayor Mike believes they contribute to obesity and diabetes (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/30/us/politics/30food.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Food%20Marketing%20Institute&st=cse).

I support him. Yes, I know this is another example of government getting into our pantries, but just as Bloomberg championed no smoking in restaurants, plus less salt and fat in fast food fare, it is proper for government to mandate behavior when the population at large (and getting larger) won’t take care of itself.

This is not a classic example of Big Brother telling us what to do, or not do. If you want to spend your own money to buy sugared drinks, fine. But don’t spend my money, my government money. Not when our collective health care system is overburdened by the overweight and the diabetic. We all wind up paying higher insurance premiums, and waiting longer in emergency rooms, because of it. We need to begin controlling the root causes of the health care crisis. Prevention should be paramount. Stopping the flow of sweetened liquid down our gullets is one of the quickest ways to have an impact on our collective waist line, blood line and bottom line.


Matza Meal II: My experiment giving birds leftover egg and whole wheat matza has produced less than spectacular results. A few birds, some grackles and even some cardinals, have nibbled at it. But by and large, the birds have ignored the religious offering.


Warm Feet: On the other hand, or foot, so to speak, I am thoroughly enjoying a toasty bed, thanks to the electric mattress pad installed last week. Normally, spring weather would have negated the need for a bed warmer. But this has been anything but a normal spring. I can favorably report my endorsement of this product.


Picture Perfect: Some people ask me why I never include pictures with my blogs. Here’s a reason why: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/03/business/media/03righthaven.html?src=rechp. I surely do not need to become penpals with copyright lawyers.


Dead, Again: Does it matter that the description of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden has been officially revised to say he was not armed when shot, but was still resisting capture? To me, no. He showed no mercy to the innocents he murdered here and around the world. I have no problem with his execution, with targeted assassinations. Let's get the next guy on the list!