Thrilling, right?

I’m absolutely beat, but I wanted to do a comprehensive trip report while the details are fresh in my cruller.

I was here. I stayed here. Ate dinner here. Didn’t go here, because I spent my free time doing this, which I do very badly and this, which I do very well.

There you have it.

I will be away on a bit of a business trip from Wednesday through Friday. This will be the first time that I will be bringing a laptop with me. I normally don’t DO laptop. I rather hate the damned thing.

For openers, the little, nipple-like widget in the middle of the keyboard that is supposed to be the mouse makes me crazy. Try as I might, the little arrow on the screen goes where it damned well pleases. However, I can avoid using the quasi-nipple mouse, because the laptop I will be sporting also has the Magic Slate (are you old enough to know that that is?) type mouse-thing, where you move your finger across a little matchbook-sized piece of plastic to move the cursor. The problem is that I hate that too.

Of course all my mouse bitching will be academic if I cannot figure out how to set the damned thing up (i.e. which wire goes where and all that shit) after I have had a couple cocktails. Assuming I can figure out what plugs in where, I then have to remember a fistful of passwords to dial up and log on.

Assuming that I can set the damned thing up and can remember the damned passwords through an alcohol-induced miasma, I still have to figure out the “working-online” vs. the “working-offline” and synchronizing crapola. Of course, all of the foregoing presumes that I will have any time at all to screw around with dumbass laptop, when I could be drinking.

Finally, assuming that I can set it all up, remember all the passwords, figure out how to “work-offline,” sort out all the synchronizing shit, and that I have time to dork around with it, I still may not have anything worth a shit to say.

Bottom line. I may be offline until Friday night or Saturday. If that happens, you’ll know that Jimbo and Mister Laptop had a falling out, in which case I direct you to Mister Blogroll, paying particular attention to: Twisty, Cousin Jack, Rita, mtpolitics, Sgt. Hook, Da Goddess, Zombyboy, and Acidman.

There may be a quiz.

Later.

Elena Slough, 114 years old, died peacefully in her sleep yesterday in Cape May, New Jersey. She passed away just a few days after the death of her daughter, Wanda Allen, 90 years old. It is not clear whether Elena knew of her daughter’s death.

Elena remained active until approximately six years ago, with her favorite things being Frank Sinatra, ballroom dancing, and ice cream. The best evidence indicates that she was born in a log cabin in Pennsylvania on July 8, 1888, which means that she lived in three centuries and saw seven U.S. wars. Her first husband died in the influenza pandemic of 1918, and her second husband died 67 years ago. She is survived by a son, a grandson and a great-grandson.

Now that Mrs. Slough has died, the oldest Americans are two unidentified people in Ohio who each are 113 years old. The oldest documented living person in the world is Kamoto Hongo of Japan at 116 years old. Even Hongo has a way to go to beat the record of the person considered to be the longest living person on earth, Jeanne Calment of France who died in 1997 at age 122.

One has to wonder if living for 114 years is a good thing.

Ask me when I’m 113.

New York’s Finest seemingly can do it all.

To the sounds of enormous jungle roars, a police sniper rappelled down the side of a Harlem apartment building yesterday and fired tranquilizer darts through an open fifth-floor window to subdue — seat belts, please — a 350-pound Bengal tiger. Link

The tiger was being kept in the New York City apartment along with a five-foot long caiman.

The police responded to an anonymous complaint that a wild animal was being kept at the address. When they arrived at the scene, a neighbor in the apartment “complained of large amounts of urine and a strong smell coming through the ceiling” and that her daughter had actually seen the tiger.

After two well-aimed tranquilizer darts were fired through the apartment window, the police subdued that animal for transport to a local animal shelter, which will arrange ultimately to place the cat in a location in Ohio. The caiman was also taken to a local shelter.

The head veterinarian of the Bronx Zoo was called to the scene, and along with expressing outrage over the conditions in which the animals were being kept, he remarked, “If he [the Tiger] had escaped it would have been a very bad thing.”

Ya think?

Tomorrow, Sunday, we are opening the American Legion Bar for the autumn, winter and spring. We’re only open on Sundays, and we close the place during the summer, as most of the Usual Suspects have other places to go and things to do on summer weekends. I expect that, as in past years, the place will be populated mostly by the Usual Suspects, but others stop by as well, and it’s always great to see everyone. We’re all Post members, and just about all of us are close in age, as the Vietnam War saw to it that we all wound up military service at about the same time. Most of us ended up in the Army, while the rest of the gang is pretty evenly split between the Navy and Air Force. Strange, we have no Marines or Coasties.

Some went to Vietnam and did a fair amount of shooting and getting shot at. Others of us caught a lucky roll of the dice and served elsewhere. What we all have in common is having left home to wear the uniform during an unpopular war, when it would have been much nicer to stay at home, continue our education or begin a career. We all pretty much like the same kind of music, laugh at the same kinds of things, have about the same kinds of ailments, and mercilessly break one another’s horns. In the simplest terms, we’re friends.

I have the dubious distinction of being the Bar Chairman (i.e. the guy who gets the complaints), but in truth I have lots of help. No one gets paid, and we all take a turn tending bar. The other homey tradition we have is that whoever has the bar on Sunday, cooks up, buys or brings a bunch of food for everyone, so that no one has to make Sunday dinner. It can be as simple as treating everyone to pizza, or sandwiches, or it can get pretty elaborate, which most often happens when Rich, the current Post commander, has the bar. He served as a cook in the 101st Airborne Division. It works out well for us, because he only knows how to make LARGE QUANTITIES of food!

Sundays at the Post is not just for the guys, as spouses are always in attendance, although they typically pull a couple tables together and leave the bar for the guys. It’s a family deal, as children (young and old), and even some grandchildren come in tow.

We have a couple televisions, so people can watch the sporting events of the day. Often, however, the sound is turned off the televisions so that we can play the ever-present sixties music and other stuff as well. We also have the usual dartboard and pool table that one often finds in American Legion Posts. Last year, one of the Post members donated a completely refurbished (he did it himself over several years) nickelodeon that really plays and doesn’t even require a nickel.

Tending bar there used to be a complete no-brainer, because the most complicated thing you had to do was take caps off beer bottles, or in the extreme case, mix “X” with “Y” (e.g. scotch with soda). Now, however, as everyone’s tastes have become a bit more refined, we find ourselves making martinis (several kinds), manhattans (bourbon or Southern Comfort are the faves), and the Sea breeze, Bay breeze variety of drinks.

Some of the strictly Budweiser guys, when it their turn to tend bar, still get flummoxed when asked for anything more complicated than a shot and a beer. Even the shot has Paulie scratching his head, but he’s a Navy guy, so no one is surprised. Even then, there is always someone there, who is a bit more civilized, to hop on the other side of the bar to whip up the requested drink.

The bar provides a place where everyone can get together once a week to laugh and share stories of the past week that run the gamu, from family to job, to God-knows-what. We often joke that, if you miss a week, you miss a lot. No one stays too late, and when the Sopranos are on, staying late is absolutely out of the question.

It really is a place where everybody knows your name.

The news today was a veritable barge-load of blather about Rush Limbaugh. I am sure that others have a good deal more to say about this than I, but I am, after all, the reigning monarch of this microscopic piece of cyberspace, and because I cannot resist saying a couple words about it, I shall.

Rush a Racist?
The racist charge is one hundred percent pure bullshit. His statement on ESPN breaks down into two parts. First, he gave his opinion about the athletic prowess of Donovan McNabb (a name unknown to me before yesterday), and he then opined that the press might be cutting this man a break because he is black.

As for the first part of Limbaugh’s statement, it may well be that he was all wrong about Mr. McNabb’s prowess. I don’t pretend to know. However, all one needs to do is listen for ten minutes to one of those awful sports call-in programs or watch one of those dipshit pre-game football shows to see that opinions about sports and about athletes are as common as shit and often about as interesting.

Assuming for the moment that Rush was factually wrong about the man’s ability as a quarterback, so what? It was his opinion. Sports fans could (and seemingly do) argue forever about McNabb’s or any other quarterback’s relative merits. Limbaugh never said anything even remotely suggesting that there is something about blacks that prevents them from successfully playing quarterback. That, sports fans, would be a racist statement, but Limbaugh never said anything like that.

As for the second part of Limbaugh’s statement, give me a break, for Chrissake. He said (rather inarticulately), “What we have here is a little social concern in the N.F.L. The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback can do well — black coaches and black quarterbacks doing well.”

What’s the basis for the outrage? Where is the racism?

What I see is a charge that the media is overly concerned about political correctness and is condescending to black players (condescension being something that is perhaps even more sickening, pernicious and harmful than out-in-the-open racism). That is also his opinion, and if the media disputes his opinion, that is something between him and the media to slug out. Neither Donovan McNabb nor blacks in general have a dog in that fight.

The NFL has apparently expressed its outrage at Limbaugh’s statement as well. More hypocritical horseshit. The NFL expressly plays the race game by requiring NFL teams to interview at least one minority candidate for a coaching position before hiring anyone for the spot. This is a practice that is profoundly dumb, and one that is supremely condescending to worthy black candidates who will always be left to wonder whether they got a real or a token interview. So, for the NFL to bristle at the statement that the media “has been very desirous that a black quarterback [and black coaches] … do well” is nonsensical and downright laughable.

Finally, I get kick out of the New York Times tut-tutting about suggestions that the media might, just might cut a black athlete a special break. Wasn’t it the New York Times that, in the name of giving a minority reporter extra breaks, tolerated Jason Blair’s known plagiarism and shoddy reporting, conduct that would have gotten anyone else fired?

Whether you like Limbaugh or not, using his most uninteresting statement as a basis for concluding he is a racist is crap.

Rush an Illegal User and Purchaser of Legal Drugs?
Holding aside the partisan motives of those responsible for breaking this story, and holding aside the skuzzy tactics used to obtain the story, and holding aside the stench surrounding the story’s timing, these allegations, if true, are sad and serious.

Notably Mr. Limbaugh has not denied any of the allegations, and indeed his posture thus far bespeaks a person who has been well counseled to say nothing, at least until the government tips its hand. In this regard, it has been reported that Limbaugh has retained Roy Black, the well-known defense attorney.

If indeed he became addicted to prescription opiates and similar pain-killing drugs, he dealt with it in exactly the wrong (and reckless) way. If truly addicted, he would have been much wiser to deal with his addiction publicly, rather than, as charged, to enter the netherworld of buying drugs illicitly. I think that most people, based on personal experience or based on knowledge of others who have managed to become addicted to pain-killers, would have given him enormous amounts of slack, and his fans would have found his forthrightness to be something else to love about him.

Unfortunately for him, he could well be in legal soup over this one. Time will tell.

It’s Rita’s birthday today. Stop by to wish her a MAHvelous day.

She’s an interesting, well-balanced, even-tempered, judicious, charming and intelligent LIBRAN. We’re all that way.

Television was a relatively new thing, and in our house it was a large, brown, wooden box with a 10-inch screen. There were, at most, five or six working channels, and to change stations, you actually had to get out of the chair and turn the dial.

I remember sitting in a little rocking chair (which I still have) about three feet from the screen of that 10-inch television and watching the Howdy Doody Show every night. (Check out the site. It’s great). The show was named for the “star,” Howdy Doody, a marionette, who appeared each night with his pal Buffalo Bob Smith, who served as the master of ceremonies. Howdy lived in Doodyville with his friends Dilly Dally, Flub a Dub (a creature that was an amalgam of eight separate animals), and the grumpy mayor of Doodyville, Phineas T. Bluster.

Also appearing was Clarabell the (gasp!) Clown, who only spoke by way of tooting horns on the peanut box he wore around his waist. The original Clarabell was Bob Keeshan, who later went on to become Captain Kangaroo (although he spent time an apprentice undertaker between his Clarabell and Captain Kangaroo gigs). Other humans appearing on the show were Chief Thunderthud (who invented the exclamation, “Kowabonga!”), and the Indian Princess Summerfall Winterspring.

The program ran for thirteen years, for a total of 2,343 episodes and was broadcast live before approximately 40 children, who sat in the “Peanut Gallery.” Without calling itself “educational television,” the program always contained valuable lessons for young children, which were cleverly hidden in stories, songs and sketches that kept us spellbound each and every night.

I also remember being a regular viewer of the Rootie Kazootie Show. It starred Rootie Kazootie (a puppet rather than a marionette) and his dog Gala Poochie the pup (whose original name was “Nipper,” but had to be changed because that was the name of the RCA Victor Dog). Also appearing were Rootie’s girlfriend, Polka Dottie, who, not surprisingly, always wore a polka dotted dress, and the villain, “Poison Zoomack,” whose goal in life was to steal Polka Dottie’s polka dots.

It was great stuff.

Newark Airport, recently renamed “Newark Liberty International Airport,” (although it will always be “Newark Airport” to the locals) is seventy-five years old today. When it opened on October 1, 1928 on a piece of swampy marshland at the behest of the City of Newark, it was called “Newark Municipal Airport.”

When it opened, the airport was primarily used for transporting mail. In addition to transporting New Jersey’s airmail, it also handled mail that was trucked in from Manhattan, totaling five million pounds of mail per year by 1938. However, the then Mayor of New York, Fiorello LaGuardia, wrested the airmail business from New Jersey and brought it to the New York’s “new” airport in Queens, which is now better known as LaGuardia Airport.

Even though its primary mission was the transport of mail, soon after it opened the airport became the worlds busiest. It served 90,000 passengers in 1931 and by 1938, 350,000 travelers passed through it’s passenger terminal, which had been built in 1935. During World War II, the airport was taken over by the U.S. Army Air Corps, and in 1948 the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey took over its control, and it has remained in control of the airport until today.

Newark Airport is known for having some famous “firsts,” such as the first air control tower, the first paved runways, and the first passenger terminal. The original passenger terminal and control tower now house administrative offices.

Unfortunately, it also has the dubious distinction of being the departure point for flight 93 destined for San Francisco on September 11, 2001 (a flight I had taken many times before September 11th), which ultimately crashed in the fields of Pennsylvania.

Passenger traffic peaked in 2000, with 34.2 million travelers, but since September 11th, the number of passengers has decreased. Last year 29.2 million travelers passed through the airport.

When I was a young boy, it was not uncommon for my parents to take me on Sunday drives to the airport just to watch the planes come and go. Today, with air travel being so commonplace, a Sunday outing to the airport must seem silly, if not downright crazy. However, back then (in the early fifties) it made for an exciting day, and it didn’t cost anything. The entire airport consisted of only the single original terminal, and visitors could walk out on the roof of the building (known as the “observation deck”) to watch the noisy propeller-driven planes pick up and discharge their passengers directly on the tarmac fifty feet from the observation deck.

The observation deck was always well populated not only with curious visitors, but also with people who were there either to see their friends and family off (and no one would leave until the plane was actually airborne) or those who were picking up family and friends, who would wave at those of us on the observation deck as they exited the plane. It was a small, personal, and friendly place – nothing like today.

The airport has grown and changed a great deal since then, but then again, so have I