Cool, Calm, Collected: Our local newspaper published an article today from the Associated Press about two new books chronicling Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’s near two-decades-long career as a book editor, for Viking Press and Doubleday (http://www.lohud.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2011101020323). Several times during those years I saw Jackie, getting into an out of cabs on Park Avenue. My most memorable sighting was in a restaurant with two of my colleagues from Nation’s Restaurant News, a trade publication I joined in 1977.
One of the perks of the job was being able to dine at some of the classier eating spots in town. One day, I found myself with Liz and Peggy having lunch in an expensive, over the top restaurant off Park Avenue in the mid-East 60s. The décor was gaudy—lots of mirrors and gold accents. As it had recently made its debut, the restaurant had yet to be discovered by the lunchtime crowd of power elites. It was, to be honest, rather thinly patronized that day. Aside from we three, only one other table was occupied. As I looked around I saw two people sitting at the table, a professorial-type man with unruly grey hair and a strikingly composed, thin, raven-haired woman with big glasses, eating a salad.
As Peggy’s back was to the other table, I whispered to her to glance in the mirror to see the reflection of what I thought was Jackie O. Instead, she twisted her body for a full frontal look and then, in no resemblance to a stage whisper, blurted out, “It’s Jackie Kennedy!” I shrank in my seat, but Jackie didn’t bat an eyelash. A perfect example of being cool, calm and collected to what must have been a common occurrence in her lifetime.
Curb the Enthusiasm: Analysts were mostly euphoric about the level of 2010 retail holiday sales. “Americans are splurging as though it’s 2007 again”, the NY Times reported. Sales exceeded $584.3 billion, a 5.5% improvement over the prior year and well above the previous high water mark of $566.3 billion of 2007.
Happy days are here again, for retailers, especially when you consider they tightened their inventory levels. When earnings results start coming in a few weeks from now, there truly will be bells ringing happily along the corridors of commerce.
Except when one thinks longer term. The price of gasoline keeps rising. It has long been thought that for each penny gas rises in price, $1 billion is sucked out of consumer spending on non-fuel purchases. Particularly vulnerable is discretionary spending. Consumers spent lots of money self-gifting in 2010. How long they will continue to do so is linked to the price of gas and, in the Northeast, to the cost of home heating oil.
Futility Bowl: NY Football Giants fans are hoping by the end of today’s games their team will wind up in the playoffs that are the run-up to the Super Bowl. All it will take is a win over the more hapless Washington Redskins and a loss by the Green Bay Packers to the Chicago Bears.
In truth, the Giants have been engaged in playoff-type games for the last two weeks and have been found lacking. So today’s battle with the Skins has all the trimmings of a Futility Bowl. It’s a toss-up as to which team is more undeserving.
Giants fans, among whom I count myself, don’t know which team will show up today. Will it be the team that two weeks ago whipped the Philadelphia Eagles for 52 minutes, or the team that imploded during the game’s last eight minutes, allowing the Eagles to overcome a 21-point deficit and win by seven?
There’s a time-honored saying that on any given Sunday any team, even one with inferior players and coaches, can win a football game. But most respectful fans will privately admit that a Super Bowl winner should be a team that consistently achieves greatness each week. Though the occasional lapse might show up over the course of a 16-game season, consistency speaks volumes. The New Orleans Saints demonstrated that last season. Sadly, the Giants have not shown that this year, one week crushing their opponents, the next week showing devastating vulnerability. Against the Eagles the Giants showed they could play Jekyll and Hyde within the same game. The result has been a 9-6 record going into today’s regular season finale.
They don’t deserve to make the playoffs, but, like I said, I’m a Giants fan, so I’m hoping for the best. My brother Bernie, on the other hand, started out as an avid Giants fan, but in the 41 years he has lived in the Washington, DC, area, he has changed his allegiance. He’ll be at today’s game rooting for the home town Redskins. His team is mired in a decades-long slump and franchise turmoil. Here’s how the NY Times described it a few days ago: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/30/sports/football/30redskins.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=donovan%20mcnabb&st=cse
So let the better team win today. Here’s hoping that means the Giants.
Showing posts with label Washington Redskins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Washington Redskins. Show all posts
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Games People Play
Our temple softball team lost again today. So far this season the team has an ignominious 0-6 record, a sharp turn from the last few seasons as one of the elite squads of the 17-team league. I care, but not as much as when I used to devote almost every spring, summer and early fall Sunday for nearly 30 years to the team. As the starting pitcher for almost all of those seasons, I felt a certain responsibility to show up each week to keep us competitive. It was only after we secured another pitcher, a better pitcher, that I found myself liberated from that responsibility.
I retired last year, one year after we finally won the league championship. I brought a bottle of champagne to the game (just in case we won) and celebrated in traditional style after the final out, showering all the players in the bubbly. I kept showing up the following season, but after turning 60 last year just before play began, I decided lounging in bed beat out pitching batting practice, coaching third base and getting into the occasional game. This morning I “managed” to roll out of bed near 11 am, about the time the last out was made in today’s 8-3 loss.
It wasn’t that way during the first 22 or so years of my “career” in the temple softball league. Before I joined the team, we’d lose by double digit scores. That’s what happens when your pitcher in a fast-pitch league lobs the ball over the plate. We continued to lose after I began pitching up to speed, but the scores were much closer.
And then, a few years later, as it does to many sports teams, the players all seemed to mature at the same time and we rose to the top of the league. At one time all our infielders shared the same first name—David. I called them my Magen David (Shield of David) infield. We made it to the championship game against one of the league powerhouses. Over eight innings we outscored them 3-2. Trouble was, in the first inning none of our trusted first basemen was present, one being on the injured list with a broken elbow sustained in a game earlier that summer, another at a wedding in Washington and a third out of town on a business trip. We were forced to play a scrub—Alan—at first.
The first two batters hit ground balls to short. Alan could not handle either throw. By inning’s end we had given up three unearned runs. One of our wayward first basemen arrived before the start of the second inning, we played flawless ball thereafter, but the deficit was too much to overcome against the opposing pitcher, Joel, who, I should note, joined our team about six years ago and pitched us to that first and, so far, only championship season.
“My Team” Wins: The most intense rivalry in sports, or at least in baseball, is generally acknowledged to be between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox. That probably explains why I, a dedicated Yankees fan, care more about how Boston fares than how the Tampa Bay Rays do, despite the fact that the Rays currently are in first place, beat my Yanks twice last week at the Stadium in the Bronx and seem pretty invincible. Maybe it’s also because I can’t get too angry with a Tampa Bay team whose manager looks like a slimmer version of Drew Carey, not that I’m a big Drew Carey fan.
I want to win it all, but if we do fall short of that objective, all I really care about is finishing ahead of Boston. So each night I check the box scores to see Boston’s results. I get very disappointed when they win. I know it doesn’t make any sense, but no one ever accused me of being rational.
I have the same “my team vs. their team” mentality for football. I root for the NY Giants. Since my brother abandoned New York to take up residence in Washington some 40 years ago, and subsequently switched his allegiance to the Washington Redskins, I console myself after any Giants loss if the dreaded Skins also lost. The last few years, I gleefully add, I’ve enjoyed most fall Sundays, Giants win or not.
“Glee”-fully Speaking: The TV show Glee is a sensation, but not one that Gilda or I have marked on our must-see list. We tried watching it one time, but couldn’t get into it. Probably didn’t give it enough time to ferment in our brains.
Equally lost on us is the frenzy over the last episode of Lost. We should have engendered an attachment to that show. It began filming not far from Ellie’s apartment on the North Shore of Oahu while she spent eight months there six years ago.
Ah well, chalk it up to another missed viewing opportunity, along with 24, Six Feet Under, The Wire and lots of other TV shows that one day, one day, we say we will have enough time to view on DVD.
Video Game Challenged: I can trace the beginnings of my decline as a comparatively capable functioning member of society to an exact date, 30 years ago—May 21, 1980. That was the day Pac-Man made its debut and signaled my transition from a generally accomplished person to klutz.
I played Pac-Man, occasionally. I remember taking business trips with some of my publication salesmen. Every free moment they’d be playing Pac-Man. Perhaps because I wasn’t too good at the game, I never developed an obsession with it. Or with Donkey Kong, Mario or any of the other “juvenile” pursuits.
Since video games did not turn me on, I wasn’t too disappointed our children didn’t spend hours upon hours in front of a computer screen zapping away at aliens and assorted bad guys. I was much prouder of Dan’s accomplishments on the playing fields and Ellie’s in the theater.
Speaking of Proud Moments: Ellie won her battle with the NYC Transit Police. You may recall she’d been accused of turnstile jumping, even though she had an unlimited monthly Metro card that would have obviated any need to slip through without paying.
After several appearances at Transit Court, the last with the policeman who cited her testifying, Ellie won. The judge dismissed all charges.
I retired last year, one year after we finally won the league championship. I brought a bottle of champagne to the game (just in case we won) and celebrated in traditional style after the final out, showering all the players in the bubbly. I kept showing up the following season, but after turning 60 last year just before play began, I decided lounging in bed beat out pitching batting practice, coaching third base and getting into the occasional game. This morning I “managed” to roll out of bed near 11 am, about the time the last out was made in today’s 8-3 loss.
It wasn’t that way during the first 22 or so years of my “career” in the temple softball league. Before I joined the team, we’d lose by double digit scores. That’s what happens when your pitcher in a fast-pitch league lobs the ball over the plate. We continued to lose after I began pitching up to speed, but the scores were much closer.
And then, a few years later, as it does to many sports teams, the players all seemed to mature at the same time and we rose to the top of the league. At one time all our infielders shared the same first name—David. I called them my Magen David (Shield of David) infield. We made it to the championship game against one of the league powerhouses. Over eight innings we outscored them 3-2. Trouble was, in the first inning none of our trusted first basemen was present, one being on the injured list with a broken elbow sustained in a game earlier that summer, another at a wedding in Washington and a third out of town on a business trip. We were forced to play a scrub—Alan—at first.
The first two batters hit ground balls to short. Alan could not handle either throw. By inning’s end we had given up three unearned runs. One of our wayward first basemen arrived before the start of the second inning, we played flawless ball thereafter, but the deficit was too much to overcome against the opposing pitcher, Joel, who, I should note, joined our team about six years ago and pitched us to that first and, so far, only championship season.
“My Team” Wins: The most intense rivalry in sports, or at least in baseball, is generally acknowledged to be between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox. That probably explains why I, a dedicated Yankees fan, care more about how Boston fares than how the Tampa Bay Rays do, despite the fact that the Rays currently are in first place, beat my Yanks twice last week at the Stadium in the Bronx and seem pretty invincible. Maybe it’s also because I can’t get too angry with a Tampa Bay team whose manager looks like a slimmer version of Drew Carey, not that I’m a big Drew Carey fan.
I want to win it all, but if we do fall short of that objective, all I really care about is finishing ahead of Boston. So each night I check the box scores to see Boston’s results. I get very disappointed when they win. I know it doesn’t make any sense, but no one ever accused me of being rational.
I have the same “my team vs. their team” mentality for football. I root for the NY Giants. Since my brother abandoned New York to take up residence in Washington some 40 years ago, and subsequently switched his allegiance to the Washington Redskins, I console myself after any Giants loss if the dreaded Skins also lost. The last few years, I gleefully add, I’ve enjoyed most fall Sundays, Giants win or not.
“Glee”-fully Speaking: The TV show Glee is a sensation, but not one that Gilda or I have marked on our must-see list. We tried watching it one time, but couldn’t get into it. Probably didn’t give it enough time to ferment in our brains.
Equally lost on us is the frenzy over the last episode of Lost. We should have engendered an attachment to that show. It began filming not far from Ellie’s apartment on the North Shore of Oahu while she spent eight months there six years ago.
Ah well, chalk it up to another missed viewing opportunity, along with 24, Six Feet Under, The Wire and lots of other TV shows that one day, one day, we say we will have enough time to view on DVD.
Video Game Challenged: I can trace the beginnings of my decline as a comparatively capable functioning member of society to an exact date, 30 years ago—May 21, 1980. That was the day Pac-Man made its debut and signaled my transition from a generally accomplished person to klutz.
I played Pac-Man, occasionally. I remember taking business trips with some of my publication salesmen. Every free moment they’d be playing Pac-Man. Perhaps because I wasn’t too good at the game, I never developed an obsession with it. Or with Donkey Kong, Mario or any of the other “juvenile” pursuits.
Since video games did not turn me on, I wasn’t too disappointed our children didn’t spend hours upon hours in front of a computer screen zapping away at aliens and assorted bad guys. I was much prouder of Dan’s accomplishments on the playing fields and Ellie’s in the theater.
Speaking of Proud Moments: Ellie won her battle with the NYC Transit Police. You may recall she’d been accused of turnstile jumping, even though she had an unlimited monthly Metro card that would have obviated any need to slip through without paying.
After several appearances at Transit Court, the last with the policeman who cited her testifying, Ellie won. The judge dismissed all charges.
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