Jose Cuervo Christmas Cookies

1 juicy lemon
1 cup of water
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup of sugar
1 tsp salt
1 cup of brown sugar
4 large eggs
1 cup nuts
2 cups of dried fruit
1 bottle Jose Cuervo Tequila

Sample the Cuervo to check quality. Take a large bowl, check the Cuervo again, to be sure it is of the highest quality, pour one level cup and drink.

Turn on the electric mixer. Beat one cup of butter in a large fluffy bowl.

Add one peastoon of sugar. Beat again. At this point it's best to make sure the Cuervo is still ok, try another cup just in case.

Turn off the mixer thingy.

Break 2 leggs and add to the bowl and chuck in the cup of dried fruit.

Pick the frigging fruit off the floor.

Mix on the turner.

If the fried druit gets stuck in the beaters just pry it loose with a drewscriver.

Sample the Cuervo to check for tonsisticity.

Next, sift two cups of salt, or something. Who geeves a s....t Check the Jose Cuervo. Now shift the lemon juice and strain your nuts.

Add one table.

Add a spoon of sugar or whatever you can find.

Greash the oven.

Turn the cake tin 360 degrees and try not to fall over.

Don't forget to beat off the turner.

Finally, throw the bowl at someone you love with a spoon, finish the Cose Juervo and make sure to put the stove in the wishdasher.

Cherry Mistmas !

Choosing a Christmas Tree

All marriages and unions have certain arguments in common; with whose parents are we spending the -fill in the blank- holiday? In whose name do we put the car insurance? Do we want a dog or a cat? And, do we want a real or fake tree?

Younger people and men generally want the real tree. Older people and women, who have to take care of the younger people and men, gravitate towards the fake tree.

“Hey Mom, Dad and I agree, we’re getting a real tree. We’re going to the tree farm and chop it down ourselves, you know, a father- son thing.”
“Fine, fine..... take your father’s heart meds with him. Do you know CPR? Remember - if a father drops in a Christmas Tree forest and no one hears him, do you tie him on top of the car with the tree, or bury him where he falls?”
“Mom, he will be FINE! I’ll chop the tree. He can tie it on the car. I’ll help him.”
“That oughta be rich. You can’t tie the garbage bag ties, we have to get the drawstring ones just for you.”
“Why are you such a Grinch? Why do you hate real trees?”
“I love real trees, I hate that I’m the only one who gets under the tree to water it, and I’m always stuck with taking it down and dragging it half out the door.”
“Yeah - and how come you do that? How come you always jam it in the door halfway? Then Dad has to pull it through and take it to the dump.”
“And where are you while Dad is doing all this, huh? Watching from the window inside the house, drinking hot chocolate?”
“I’d help him it he needed it, he likes to do it himself.”
“Right. All parents prefer to do manual labor ourselves, it helps define the existential borders of our existence.”
“I don’t know what you just said, but you’d have no help at all if you didn’t have Brett and me.”
“What? You don’t help now! Everything is a negotiation. You guys don’t voluntarily do anything.”
“Well, maybe it was the way we were raised? Ever think about that?”
“More often than you know.”
“And Dad and I are tired of the same stupid decorations you put on the tree every year. We’re going to get all new ones.”
“Like hell you are! You’ll come home with fishing lures and little crab nets.”
“It’s better than those lame golden noodles that Brett and me made in First Grade that you insist on embarrassing us with every year. It bad enough that you put them on the tree, but you put them where everyone can see them and then you tell the same stupid story over and over about how there was a snow storm that day and our noodles got wet and that’s why some of the gold paint is missing.”
“It doesn’t matter what kind of tree we put up, the golden noodles go on!”
“Dad’s right! You’re impossible to talk to! You always whine about getting new decorations, and when we offer, just because you can’t pick them out, you don’t want them.”
“I cannot trust people who always look like they dressed in the dark to chose decorations that will coordinate with my color scheme.”
“Okay, just tell me the colors you want and we’ll only pick stuff in those colors, okay?”
“Mauve or a soft plum, sage, buff, and medium blue, but not a cool blue, a warm blue.”
“Pink, green, white, blue.... got it.”
“No, not pink, green, white, blue - mauve or a soft plum, sage, buff, and a medium warm blue. You see, you don’t know colors. Just let me get the decorations, all right?”
“Okay, so we have a deal, we get a real tree and you get to pick out new decorations and we burn the golden noodles.”
“The noodles stay.”
“Okay, the noodles stay, but in the back of the tree.....”
“Okay, Golden Noodles in the back of the tree, and you, your father and brother are responsible to water the tree and it goes out of the house the first weekend after New Years.”
“Tree goes out after the Super Bowl.”
“If the tree stays till the Super Bowl, the noodles go in the front, plus you sit next to your grandmother for at least one hour Christmas Day and talk to her, no watching TV from the corner of your eye, you have to make eye contact and conversation.”
“I was wondering why Dad sent me in to negotiate for a real tree. Guess I’m an amateur compared to you, Mom.”
“Honey, I had you at “Hey Mom”.”

When Christmas was Christmas

Well, here it is, a few weeks before Christmas and everyone is in a flurry of activity and anxiety to choose just the right gift. Was it really simpler when I was a child, or has time just eroded my memory?

Men, all men, either got a tie they didn’t want or a bottle of Old Spice. That’s all I recall the women in my family buying for their spouses, except for my Uncle Jimmy who was an Aqua Velva man.

Women got returnable jewelry from their men or some horrible black and red thing from Frederick's of Hollywood (but only if they were still very young). Once, one of my aunts got a football jersey, with her husband’s team on it of course. One Christmas, another aunt received a new iron from her husband for Christmas. I will never forget the look on her face as she opened the box and took out her new Sunbeam iron. It was the same look I’ve seen on the show “America’s Most Wanted”, the look the serial killer has before he reaches for the claw hammer. My uncle, clueless to the last, chimed in, “It has pulse steam.” Well, I know something was steaming that day, and it wasn’t the iron.

Christmas money went for the kids and dinner. We had real game back then that you could play right out of the box, no instructions or batteries needed. We had Rock Em - Sock Em Robots, Skittle Pool, Mystery Date game, and I always loved getting a jigsaw puzzle. Nobody got toys that needed batteries because that was a nuisance toy for the parent.

Naturally, we all wanted our parents to play with us, but by the time Christmas morning came, they were so burned out on us that they would force themselves to play with us for half an hour and then feign death on the couch. You could wrap their heads with paper and they wouldn’t even care. You could hide their cigarettes and they still wouldn’t make one move to stop you, that’s how tired they were.

One of my cousins picked the crumbs off the crumb cake on the coffee table right in front of at least seven adults and lived to tell the tale. That’s how you really knew you had them beaten to a standstill. Under any other circumstances, picking the crumbs off the Entenmann’s Crumb cake would have brought a swift slap to the back of your head. And this was in the day that no other adult would step forward to defend you from the child abuser, matter of fact, they got in line to yell or slap you.

Crumb cake etiquette was, and still is very exact, you may only pick your own crumbs off of your own piece. Crumb poaching is not allowed and has started many fights in many families. You didn’t want to get a reputation as a crumb poacher, because then everyone would keep an eye on you at all times, it was like being a drunk driver today. If you’ve gotten a DWI in the past, people watch what you drink at parties, unless you’re smart enough to drink before the party. Same with crumb poachers, best to eat some Oreo’s or Lorna Doones to take the edge off before the party so you aren’t tempted to poach.

Around noon, food would begin to appear. We had the usual fights about who could sit at the grown up table and who still had to sit at the kids table. The grown ups would eat and talk in code, spelling every other word as they spoke. Deciphering adult spelling codes created a steep learning curve for all of us. I attribute half my vocabulary to time spent trying to figure out what in the h-e-l-l they were trying to say. If they were spelling it, it was a curse word, or a really good piece of gossip, or worst of all - it was about you. There was no texting in those days, you learned to spell, or like a flattened fly, you got crushed between the pages of the dictionary of life. After dinner came the desserts, including whiskey cake and rum balls, and these were not dormant items. Our parents knew that the alcohol burned off in the baking process, so more whiskey was added after the cake came out to maintain it’s flavor. We were all allowed to eat rum balls and whiskey cake after dinner. And after that, I don’t recall anything but waking up the next morning in my pajama’s with a puck from my Skittle Pool game stuck to my face.

Dumb, Dumber, Art Form

Mon. Nov. 9, 2009 LONDON (Reuters) Kylie MacLellan – A British man on the run from police sent a picture of himself to his local paper because he disliked the mug shot they had printed of him as part of a public appeal to track him down. ... It appeared in the South Wales Evening Post, the 23-year-old sent the newspaper a replacement photo of himself standing in front of a police van. They obligingly printed it on the front page. The police thanked him for helping them in their appeal, saying: "Everyone in Swansea will know what he looks like now."

People do many stupid things in life, and we have all committed our share of stupid acts, but their are some people, such as the example above, whose stupidity is so profound, so unbelievable, so unimaginable to the average person, that we must regard it as an art form. For none, other than a true artist of the genre, could achieve it.

A man in New Jersey went into a drug store, pulled a gun, announced a robbery, and pulled a Hefty-bag face mask over his head - and realized that he'd forgotten to cut eye holes in the mask...

There was a woman in Virginia who was concerned that the cocaine she bought wasn’t real. So, she took it to her local police station to have it tested, and lo and behold, it was real. They promptly arrested her. She later sued the department for wrongful arrest claiming they didn’t have probable cause, because they probably didn’t know she had cocaine.

A guy going into a courthouse put his bag of marijuana into the pocket bowl before walking through the metal detector, according to the Abliene Reporter News.

In Rome, GA., A convenience-store thief broke into the store overnight, and tried to cover his tracks by burning the place down. He threw charcoal lighter fluid around and ignited a display and (bonus) set himself on fire! While in flames, he grabbed a roll of lottery tickets and fled. At the time of the story, police were looking for a man on fire, or smoldering, with facial, neck, and wrist burns.

A holdup man in Minnesota thought that if he smeared mercury ointment on his face, it would make him invisible to the cameras. Actually, it accentuated his features, giving authorities a much clearer picture.

ASHLAND, KY Police say Kasey Kazee entered Shamrock Liquors and attempted to rob the store. Employees were astonished that he had disguised his face by wrapping it in duct tape! The store manager chased him out with a baseball bat and an employee held him in the parking lot until police arrived. Police removed the duct tape after taking pictures...

Sao Paulo, CA: A psychiatrist was listening to a patient talk about her sex life when he pulled out a gun and shot her to death. As he explained to the court, "I just couldn't take those nut cases anymore."

Of course, nothing dumb has ever been done on the Island. Except for the time I backed up over my suitcase maybe. Or the time I hooked a swimmer by his shorts and kept reeling him in. It’s true I’ve done some dumb things, but it’s just me because here, all the men are brilliant, all the women are beautiful, and all the children are gifted. That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it...

Fat Chance...

No Thanks, I’ll Take the Chance

It seems like everything we do is unsafe, fattening or illegal.

How did my generation ever survive? We, the Flower Power generation, grew up in extreme danger compared to kids today. We didn’t even have seatbelts. Our mothers developed strong upper chest and arm muscles as they slammed us up against the car seat when they hit the brakes. Babies rode on your lap. Toddlers stood between the driver and passenger with a bottle hanging out of their mouths. Everyone smoked, and if you sat in the back seat, you always stood a chance of being hit by hot cigarette embers being flicked out the car window by someone in the front seat. When seatbelts first started appearing, we ignored them. It wasn’t until it was made into a law, which I still disagree with by the way because I think it’s an invasion of privacy, that we used them. Now, if you’re short, you get sawed off at the neck by the cross strap, and if you’re bosomy, you get to have one boob sawed off as you drive. Ahhh, I miss the days when we lived on the edge...

Water? I remember we had clean water all the time. We drank from the tap and the garden hose if we were outside. Nobody carried around bottles of water, only themos’s of coffee or tomato soup. Now, we carry water around with us all the time like we’re nomads in a desert and we can’t be sure of when we’ll hit the next oasis! And how did we get conned into buying water? People bring water to work. Why? Isn’t there a faucet somewhere in the workplace where you can get a cup of water? How much plastic and labor is used to make a bottle of water? For a society that wants to go green, it’s nuts. Somewhere along the way we bought the concept that we have to have eight glasses of water a day or some body part will shrivel and fall off I guess. I grew up in a time when we drank water only when we were thirsty.

We survived without warning labels on everything and nobody got hysterical and passed a law based on singular occurrances. Did you know that after 9/11, a law was passed that all cell phones and laptop computers have a gps chip in them now - allegedly so that you can be found in the event you are missing. Another invasion of privacy wrapped in the “it’s for your own good” banner. Suppose I’m on the run from the law? I’ll have to use payphones, which aren’t a common sight anymore, and carry around a desktop iMac, that’s a damn inconvenience for life on the lam.

On-Star navigation can be a blessing, the cops can find you in the event of an accident. They can also find you whenever they please. I predict within five years, having an On-Star type of connection in your car will be law. It will be ‘”for your own good”. Won’t it feel good to know the authorities can locate anywhere, anytime? I’m sure that it won’t ever be abused. Men in authority wouldn’t ever abuse it to track their girlfriends movements, or other abuses like that, nah, that’ll never happen.

The invention I want to see is a gps with a small explosive charge put into men’s wedding rings. I’d pay good money for that. After all, I could track his movements - for his own good - and send him a little electric shock if he’s in a bar he shouldn’t be in. And if I located him at motel he should not be in, I could activate the explosive charge and blow off his finger, which I believe would derail him from any planned immoral activity.

Drumming

Fri. Oct. 16, 9:10 pm ET
SAN ANTONIO – San Antonio police are investigating the wounding of a man after his elderly father allegedly opened fire when the victim refused to stop drumming. Police said the son, in his 50s, suffered a non-life threatening head wound early Friday while at the home the men share. Police said his 83-year-old father was detained on an aggravated assault charge. Police said the son, who was grazed in the head, ran down the block to call for help. San Antonio police did not immediately provide further details Friday to The Associated Press.

I see that the Associated Press has put a negative slant on this story. I would like to speak up for this 83 year old father. I look at it this way; for twenty years this man raised this son and put up with God knows what.

You bring a kid home fresh from the hospital. He's cute and not mobile. You can swaddle them and prop them up anywhere. They fit neatly in the corner of any chair or couch and if you're traveling, they can fit in the overhead bin. That lasts for six months and then the little terrors learn to crawl. They get into everything and you can't punish them for whatever they break or ruin because don't comprehend that they've done anything wrong. You can swat them with a rolled up newspaper, and they still won't get it. So, you child proof your home as much as you can, making it difficult to get into your own cabinets and drawers and requiring you to unlock your own toilet every time you need to go. Okay, you survive that. I won't even discuss what you've paid in diapers, the sleepless nights of colic, or the fact that everything you own has been thrown up on; clothes, furniture, bedding, pets, babies don't miss anything.

Around one year they start walking. You can slow them down for awhile by pushing them down whenever they try to stand up, but eventually, they pop up and start furniture walking. Tying their feet together effectively keeps them from walking, but people get upset and make a big deal. Once they can walk, they are not only mobile, but fast! They get behind you all the time and you wrench your back trying not to step back on them. They have no concept of safety or respect for any property. Anything you value must be keep four feet above ground level at all times.

Soon they turn two, terribly two. Two is a year of tantrums, defiance, and diabolical plotting. They rely on the fact that they are adorable and they calculate how far they can push you before you try to trade them in for a nice beagle. They make big screaming scenes in store for things they want and you can't smack them without someone, who is not stuck with this little monster, taking umbrage and reporting you to the authorities. The authorities will give you a big lecture and threaten to take your child, however, that might not be such a bad offer depending on the kid.
Ages three, four and five are precious. They are a joy and in the euphoria of parental love you forget everything they've done to you. These few years lock you in for the next levels of hell to come.

From age eight to twelve, they are brats. Tons of attitude, nothing makes them happy, they don't want to be seen with you, they pretend they don't know you when you yell, "I love you, hunny, have a good day!" from the car as you drop them off at school. You get lots of reports about how their peers have nice parents who do things for them, as opposed to you, who does nothing for them.

Then, thirteen. At age thirteen, an alien entity sneaks into your house at night and takes away your child and leaves a teenage android, a teenoid, in their place. The teenoid drains you of all your money. They don't communicate with you at all, but blame you because you don't understand them. You look at them and wonder where your precious little child went. The teenoid ate them. There's no question in my mind that the son in San Antonio was a teenoid monster who probably hammered at his parents until he go everything he wanted, including a drum set. I believe that poor father listened to bad drumming for hours on end. And when he swore he was gonna kill the kid, the mother, threw herself in harms way to save the self centered teenoid from certain death.

Finally, the teenoid leaves their human body and around 21, your child reappears! It's so nice to see them again. And you spend your time and money helping them get started in life in the hope that they will remember your sacrifices and choose a nice nursing home for you someday.

But sometimes, the children, in adult form, return to the nest. This 50 year old son had come back home. And he was going to drum, just like when he was a teenoid. And mooch, I'll bet anything this 50 year old son is unemployed and he's mooching off the old man. Drumming, mooching, eating all the food, borrowing money again, no wonder the old man lost it...

The moral of this story is, if you march to the beat of a different drummer, keep marching and take your damn drums with you.

The Deer Hunter

Reuters / Thu Oct 22, 3:15 pm ET
PALERMO, Sicily (Reuters) – A Sicilian builder transferred from prison to house arrest tried to get himself locked up again to escape arguments with his wife at home, Italian media reported Thursday. Santo Gambino, 30, did time for dumping hazardous waste before being moved to house arrest in Villabate, outside the Sicilian capital, Palermo, Italian news agencies reported. Gambino went to the police station and asked to be put away again to avoid arguing with his wife, who accused him of failing to pay for the upkeep of their two children. Police charged him with violating the conditions of his sentence and made him go home and patch things up with his wife. (Writing by Stephen Brown; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

This is the kind of thing that would never happen on Shelter Island; imagine, a man preferring to be put in jail rather than be home with his wife....

Joe: "Roger, did you see this article? This guy gets himself put in jail rather than hear his wife yammer on and on about nothin'."
Roger: "Yeah , I saw that. Jeannie is already bitching about me waking her up at 4 AM when I go deer hunting."
Joe: "Do you make a lot of noise?"
Roger: "Never. I tiptoe around, get my gear, guns, it's not me, it's Terry, he wakes her up when he pulls up to get me and the top lights on his truck cab shine into our bedroom. Then he comes in for coffee. He's not noisy, but sometimes we have to wake her up to find the filters, y'know..."
Joe: "Well, that's not unreasonable, she can go right back to sleep."
Roger: "She says the smell of the coffee wakes her up. I thought it would have been the bacon, but I guess it's the coffee. She always wakes up for some reason. Then she starts in about not leaving egg dishes all over and she's over at the sink rinsing dishes and complaining that it's now five in the morning and there's no sense going back to sleep since she has to get up at seven with the kids. Man, I can't want to get out of that house in the morning."
Joe: "We all put up with it, man. You think they'd be appreciative that we're bring home free venison. Jennie always rags on about how the venison is actually about $116 a pound. She does this weird calculation thing, adds up the cost of my gear, guns, bullets, boots, knives, gas, everything."
Roger: "You don't tell her the truth do you? You always trim off 25% of the price of anything you tell your wife you bought."
Joe; "I know that. I never tell her what the guns and gear really cost, then the venison would come out to about $182 a pound, and I'd NEVER hear the end of that!"
Roger: You know, if we could work out something, we could get arrested together after deer season and share the cell in the jail, there's only two."
Joe: "You know, that's not as crazy as it sounds. We could do something to get jailed for about two months, get three hots and a cot, no complaining about how much money we spent or how much time we spent away from the family..."
Roger: "No lectures on not letting the baby play with the empty rifle..."
Joe: "No complaints about washing clothes with deer blood on them."
Roger: "No one yelling at you not to throw your bowie knife at the shed door because someone might open the door at that exact moment and get a knife in the head."
Joe: "Women worry about the most trivial stuff, y'know...."
Roger: "I know, I always lock the shed door before I throw my knives."
Joe: "What about the time you nearly clipped Tom when he opened the door?"
Roger: "That was two years ago. Besides, Tom is a big guy, the knife couldn't have gone in far enough to do much harm."
Joe: "So what can we get arrested for?"
Roger: "We're a coupla bright guys, lets bring a six pack and we'll figure something out in the deer blind."

CANNONBALL!

What’s a Little Zoning Variance Between Neighbors?

AP Friday, Oct. 16, 2009
UNIONTOWN, PA. – A Pennsylvania Civil War buff faces a felony charge for accidentally firing a 2-pound cannonball through the wall of his neighbor's home. Fifty-four-year-old William Maser had been charged with reckless endangerment, criminal mischief and disorderly conduct. Authorities on Thursday added a felony count of discharging a firearm into an occupied structure. ... Maser has acknowledged firing a homemade cannon outside his house in George's Township..... The cannonball, about two inches in diameter, ricocheted and hit the neighbor's home about 400 yards away, smashing through a window and a wall before landing in a closet. Police say nobody was hurt.

“Hello, is Mrs. Lowry there?”
“Hi, Mrs. Lowry? It’s Sharon the babysitter. Um, there’s a problem. You know your neighbor, Mr. Maser, the man who you were saying just moved to the Island from Pennsylvania after he got into some kind of trouble?
......Yeah, that’s him. Well, he’s a Civil War buff and he likes to do that reenactment stuff......the police just told me.....
They told me just now, when they got here.... no, they’re all busy with him right now, but I can tell you what happened.
Okay, we were all sitting and watching Wall-E on the kids’ TV when, BOOM! There was this huge explosion. I jumped up and there was this big hole in the kitchen over the counter and.....
It was a cannonball, Mrs. Lowry.... no, a real cannonball. Please don’t scream, Mrs. Lowry. I heard the man tell the police he makes them himself. But wait, there’s more.....hello? Mrs. Lowry?
Oh, hi Mr. Lowry. Yes, the man next door, he shot off a cannon.... yes, I’m sure a cannon is against some Island ordinance, but I don’t know about that stuff. Anyway, the cannonball came through the wall in the kitchen....no, none of the appliances got shot... but wait, it kept going you see....it went through the wall on the opposite side and into yours’ and Mrs. Lowry’s bathroom....yea, through the tile, I know it was new, it was very pretty, maybe you can tell Mrs.’ Lowry about that later.....it was pretty loud the kids got really scarred. No, all the police are busy with the guy and they’re all over the house taking pictures of the damage, they said to tell you they’ll talk to you in just a little bit. Yeah, but wait a minute Mr. Lowry, it gets worse....please don’t yell at me, Mr. Lowry, I’m just trying to tell you....
Oh, hi again, Mrs. Lowry. You took a Xanex? That’s good. Do you have any you can give Mr. Lowry?.... yea, well, he’ll need them soon. So, after the cannonball went through the kitchen and through the wall to your bathroom, it landed in Mr. Lowry’s closet....no, the gun closet. I know he has that new gun for deer this year. Well, I don’t know one gun from another Mrs. Lowry, two of them are busted in pieces and two are all right. Maybe you shouldn’t tell him until you get home....
Hello Mr. Lowry..... Yes, it landed in your gun closet. I just told Mrs. Lowry, I don’t know one from another, but one of the police said, you were gonna be really upset when you got home and they should take the other guns out of the house as a precaution so you don’t shoot the guy. The cop said your permit got shot too. Well, I don’t know if it was in your lucky hunting vest, Mr. Lowry, I just heard the cop laugh and said, “Damn, he got the permit too!”
......okay, you’re on your way, I’ll tell the police. Oh, and Mr. Lowry, the kids and I are all right, just in case anyone asks.”

So, we lost the 2016 Olympic bid to Brazil, to Rio de Janeiro, the ultimate party town. All they know how to do is parades, very decorative, elaborate, parades. The official opening parade where all the athletes march into the stadium will take forever. We'll have all the teams wearing sequined team outfits with giant feather headdresses to match. Having the Olympics come to their town gives them justification for another five parades next year alone. They'll have to improve all the roads, build a stadium, hire top notch party planners from all over the world to prepare for the international parties. No point in hiring extra security, can't hide much in g-string. Body waxers will open up shops everywhere. You'll go out for a cup of coffee, stumble into Juan's Brazilian Coffee and Wax Works, and come back to the hotel hairless and wired on high octane coffee. I can just see the athletes doing the broad jump in thongs and with the Olympic rings symbol in sequins glued on their chests.

I don't understand why the Olympic Committee didn't choose Chicago. It has all the charm and excitement of New York, but with double the crime. Oprah lives there. You'd think the Committee would have taken that into consideration. She would have done countless shows on Olympians preparing for the big event from all over the world. The Olympic Committee can't buy the publicity that Oprah could give them, but, their loss. I'm not holding a grudge.

Of course, the East End could have bid and gotten the Olympics if we really wanted them. The course for Potato Hampton could have made a perfect course for any of the long distance running events, plus, running through towns, people would have run along side them and given them Evian water or Dunkin' Donuts Coffee Coolata's which is the heroin of iced coffees. Every one here is way too cool to be caught in public in a Brazilian Feathered outfit made of two ounces of lycra and three hundred dyed feathers. Everyone on the East End has beach chairs, we could line any highway and cheer the athletes on, in suitable dignified clothing. They could temporarily rename the Montauk Highway, the LLBeanWay. We have hundreds of beautiful estates to host teams from foreign lands. They have parties at these estate anyway, so why not party in service to your country. Initially you might think that the owners of these big estates might object to hosting teams. But you forget, hosting an Olympic team provides justification for redecorating the whole house, and that would employ thousands. Brazilians look for any reason to party, but Hamptonites look for reasons to redecorate. Parties only last a day or week at most, whereas redecoration lasts for months.

Since Shelter Island has a bonafide Olympian, Amanda Clark, we might be willing to rent her out to the East End Olympic Extortion and Facilitation Committee as the Master of Ceremonies. We'd be reasonable really. Since we have no fast food restaurants here, we would accept tributes of fast food from anyone who uses the ferries. Bic Macs, KFC Family Buckets, Taco Bell, any Chinese food, anything like that would be suitable. Just pay your ticket and hand over the bag and no one will get hurt.

Plus we have Tim Gunn here and we might be induced to let him redesign the East End for an East End Olympics, for the right price of course. He'll have to have carte blanche from all the stores and no limit to his budget. All Shelter Island will ask is that no one let any of the Olympic visitors know that Shelter Island exists and that no one else moves here for a moratorium of ten years. I think for that arrangement, we could "make it work".

For music, I think we can coerce Montauk into giving over Paul Simon. As far as living on the East End, there none Easter than Montaukers. Paul has pretty good experience, his resume isn't too bad. There's a few performers here and there, like Billy Joel, he can recruit.

And of course, we have the newly officially recognized tribe of the Shinnecocks. Let's give them their permits and get that casino in place! We'll give those Olympic tourists a place to spend their money, it's only right, it's the American way. The Shinnecock Rock 'Em and Roll 'Em Olympic Lodge.... works for me.

I'm telling you, we need to get the Olympics here. I think Dan's Papers might even devote a special insert into the paper for the Olympics. If that doesn't tip the scale, then I give up.

Caller ID, I Love You!

Caller I.D.

One of my favorite developments of this new tech era is Caller Identification on the telephone.

When I was a kid, we didn’t Caller ID.  No Call Waiting, not even answering machines. If the phone rang, you answered it. It was a pure crap shoot whether you got a friend, foe, bill collector or beau.

We had rotary phones in those ancient times.  They only had one ring sound, a bell - because there was a real bell inside the phone - and one volume - piercing. You could hear the phone ring from anywhere in the house. That bell could go through any wall.  If you wanted to put your phone on “silent” you put it in a desk drawer or under a pillow. I had an uncle who worked nights and put his phone in the refrigerator during the day. If you were handy, you could unscrew the plate underneath the phone and wrap a piece of tape around the little clacker between the bells, and that was your “soft” setting.

It was just awful on days when you were eagerly waiting for a calll from a boyfriend, hoping for a call from a good friend, dreading a call from your boss, and fearing a calll from Sears because your payment was late, all at the same time.

You’d wait and wait for the phone to ring and hours would go by.  I learned that the only sure way to get the phone to ring was to move out of answering range.  There were no cordless or portable phones then. The phone was either the desk model on a ten foot cord, or a wall model which was bolted to the wall in the kitchen with a 25 foot curly cord from the phone to the receiver. A watched pot never boils and an attended phone never rings. You’d have to be clever to get the phone to ring. You had to walk just far enough away that the phone would think you couldn’t get back to it in time to get the call, or use the bathroom. As soon as the phone was certain that you were out of range, it rang. 

There are stories people of my generation can tell you about taking a flight of stairs in three leaps, high jumping over furniture, tripping over cats and dogs, stepping on Barbie shoes or Army men in our bare feet, hurtling our bodies through space by any means possible to reach the receiver before the ringing stopped. There was no “Star 69” either because these were not the days of touch tone. You either got that ringing phone and took a chance on talking with whomever was calling, or you had to wait for their next try - if there was one.

That’s why I love Caller ID so much. If I can’t get the phone in time, I can see who tried to call me and call them or ignore them.  And I can even hold the ringing phone in my hand as they call and look at their name for a moment or two and decide if I feel like talking to them today or not.... oh the power!  Plus, I can give my own names to any callers. I have “Too Talky” as a name for a very chatty neighbor of mine, I have “Elvis” for my friend who is an Elvis  impersonator, and lot of special names that only I know.

I was visiting a friend of mine once and my mother called there from my home phone to talk to me.  It never occurred to me that it occurred to other people to have code names for their regular callers too.  I picked up the phone and saw my number with the ID “NY Mouth”.  Ooooooohhh!
    “Kathy, how come my number says NY Mouth on your phone?”
    “Because you talk forever.”
    “Oh yeah? Well next time I call, I’m just going to use three sentences. I have self control you know. And how come it says NY? You live here too.”
    “It says NY Mouth to distinguish you from my sister-in-law, NJ Mouth.”

Now I was intrigued. I scrolled through her saved IDs to see what nicknames she had.
    “Kathy, who’s  “Deadbeat”?”
    “My daughter’s ex.”
    “Who’s “Schizo?”
    “My Aunt Jerri. You can tell right away what she wants when you say hello. If she’s nice, she needs money, if she’s screaming she’s drunk, she’s got, like, 30 personalities. I named her Schizo because if I let the Caller ID try to figure out who she is on its own, the phone would explode every time she calls.” 

I just love Caller ID.   

Location, Location, Location

The Daily Telegraph,  September 16, 2009 10:11AM
A couple making love in a dumpster have been robbed of their clothes and personal possessions at knifepoint during an embarrassing hold-up.
The pair, aged in their forties, had crawled inside the dumpster so they could be alone.  But while they were engaged in what Wichita police described as "an intimate moment," they were robbed by a man armed with a pocket knife.  It all unfolded shortly after 6 pm Saturday in Kansas, police said, when the man and woman, both 44, crawled into a dumpster for privacy.  A short time later, a 59-year-old man and his 64-year-old companion interrupted the couple inside the dumpster.  With the older man encouraging him, the 59-year-old man pulled out a pocket knife and took shoes, jewelry and the 44-year-old man's wallet.

Every have one of those days when just everything seems to go wrong?
Billy Crystal said, "Women need a reason to have sex, men just need a place."  I never fully realized the truth of this statement until I read this story. Now, I have been talked into having sex in some odd places in my lifetime, as has every woman.  We've all been attacked in cars, we all get attacked while doing dishes in the kitchen, and if the sands surrounded Shelter Island could talk, we'd all be in a lot of trouble. But never, never, never, have I heard of a woman in any state of inebriation, but still conscious, consenting to sex in a dumpster.  We all have genetic coding, attached to the 'x' chromosome that prevents us from doing certain sexcapades.  I'm not sure where consenting to sex in a dumpster falls, but my guess is it's pretty high on the list, right after 'I will not have sex in a portapotty' and before 'I will not have sex in the middle of the field at the SuperBowl during halftime'.  This woman, whoever she is, needs to come to the Island for therapy.

"Now Betty, tell us what he said that made you agree to sex in a dumpster."
"He said he knew of a nice quiet place. He said he hosed the place down earlier that day, I thought he was making a joke, you know.  It was dark and I didn't really realize he was taking me to a dumpster."
"Didn't the situation smell a little suspicious to you?"
"Not at first, it was a breezy night."
"So when did you start to catch on?"
"He got down on one knee, and for a minute I thought he was going to propose to me or something. But he was just getting down to give me a leg up and help me flip over the side."
"Did he offer you any money at all Betty? For sex in a dumpster, you should have gotten $100,000 at least. I mean, if Eliot Spitzer can pay $5000 for an hour in a nice hotel, sex in a dumpster should have gotten you a down payment for a house."
"No, no money. I'm sorry. I guess I'm an embarrassment to my gender."
"I'm afraid it's true, Betty, you have set us back a hundred years. Now every man will think a rinsed out dumpster counts as a private room and they do as little as they can to get access to us anyway."
"He put down fresh cardboard - does that count for anything?'
"No Betty, it doesn't count, he could have put down a new mattress with satin sheets, it wouldn't matter, as anyone on the Island knows, location is everything.  I think you need to stay here awhile and learn to know your "No Zones" '.
"No Zones?"
"Yes, the No Zones are born into every woman, but apparently you're some kind of throw back to a stupider time.  We will have to teach you the No Zones from scratch.  For example, anything that smells of sewage or garbage is a No Zone.  Anyplace within one hundred feet of any in-law or potential in-law is a No Zone, Ferry lines are a No Zone unless you're in a limo and the driver can move the car forward. Parking lots are No Zones during business hours. Beaches are always No Zone because no matter how romantic it looks on a movie screen, sand gets everywhere and ants crawl on your head."
"Gosh, I guess I have a lot to learn.  Are there any exceptions to No Zones?"
"Of course, any No Zone can become a Yes Zone contingent on the long term benefit."
"You mean, like if he swears he'll love you forever?"
"No, Betty, that's not a long term benefit. "I love you" only lasts until they want the next thing.  A long term benefit would be a house, a car, a boat, an insurance policy, you know, a little something tangible that a girl can hold on to, for that you can endure fifteen minutes of anything."
"Okay, I'm starting to get it now. I just have to remember, location, location, location."
"You'll do fine, Betty, you'll do just fine."

Love Never Dies

"Life is a series of meetings and partings." A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

My uncle, Master Sargeant and Green Beret, Jack C. Flynn, "went home" last Thursday, Sept 24th. He loved and visited the family on Long Island whenever he could. He loved standing waist deep in the waters of the Great South Bay off Sayville or Blue Point, or Shelter Island, with a peck (small) basket buoyed by kiddie tube while he dug clams with his feet. He loved boating and fishing. He was a favorite uncle with easy going, carefree ways. When he was a kid, my grandmother took him to see a psychiatrist because he would put his clothes on inside out or backwards. Once he grabbed the wrong paper bag from the kitchen table and ate six plain Kaiser roles for lunch because it never occurred to him that he grabbed the bakery bag and not his lunch bag. The psychiatrist told his mother, "This boy is fine. He doesn't have a nerve in his body. Nothing bothers him, he'll outlive us all."

So the boy without a nerve in his body went on to become one of the small heroes in the Viet Nam War, there are so many. He was a combat Medic with the 82nd Airborne Division. A combat tour in Viet Nam lasted one year, if you survived, you went home. Jack is the only Viet Vet I know who voluntarily did a second tour in Nam. He was decorated many times, but his favorite accomplishment was written up in the Daily News when he organized the first Boy Scout Troop in Viet Nam. He said there were many half American children who had been rejected by their families and were beggers in the streets, he wanted to do something for them. With the help of a local Catholic Mission, he organized a Boy Scout Troop, and with some other soldiers, taught the boys how to help each other as a group in order to survive.

His highest decoration was won when he was in a Huey gunship, They spotted a troop of Viet Cong escorting six captured Americans through a rice paddy. The prisoners hands were in bound in front of them and they were all tied closely together with a rope from one waist to the next to make it nearly impossible to escape; two men tied together might have a chance at a run, but not six. The gunship lowered over the men, and the VC ran for cover where they could turn and fire at the gunship. Jack jumped out. He always carried a small axe. He said it came in handy many times. One this day, as they pulled in one man, the rope between he and the next man would pull tight over the landing rail on the helicopter and Jack hacked off the rope in one chop. One by one, with bullets flying, they got five of the men in. At that point, someone spotted a shouldered bazooka pointing at the ship. One well landed grenade would disable the helicopter. Jack looped his arm through the still tied hands of the last man and grabbed onto the landing rail with both of his hands and one leg. The Huey lifted with the last man looped around Jack's arm. Two soldiers inside leaned out and reinforced Jack's hold on the rail. In two minutes they cleared the immediate danger enough to land for a minute and get Jack and the last man safely inside. Jack had been grazed by three bullets. His shoulder had been dislocated from the weight of the soldier, but they all made it back. He only told that story to us once, and I never heard him ever speak of his combat experiences again.

During his second tour, he served with his cousin, Maj. Neil Sheehan, an RN. Officer and enlisted men aren't supposed to socialize, but it was useless trying to keep them apart despite the efforts of one of the commanding officers, a Lt. Colonel, on their post. Uncle Neilly told us that one time Jack and he were driving off base to Saigon for a three day leave. Jack was driving when the LTC saw them at the gate. He ordered the jeep stopped and Jack dutifully got out and stood at attention. The LTC was a "Point Man" (West Point Grad) and a stickler for formality. The LTC saw that the back of the jeep was lined with two Army blankets and a third blanket had been folded into a pillow. The LTC asked, "What's the hell is this?" Jack responded, "Mobile sleeping quarters for Maj. Sheehan, sir." To which the LTC yelled back, "You think the back of jeep is appropriate sleeping quarters for an officer?" Uncle Neilly said he was already trying not to laugh, when Jackie said, "No, sir. I'll fix it right now." Then, he reached into Neil's knapsack, pulled out a bottle of good whiskey - that Neil had been saving for leave, placed it gently next to the makeshift pillow, turned back to the LTC and said, "I think Maj Sheehan will validate this as appropriate now, sir." To which the LTC replied, "You're killin' me Flynn, your fuckin' killin' me," and dismissed them. The story ends that Maj. Sheehan returned to base in his mobile sleeping quarters driven by Staff Sgt. Flynn all safe and sound, the whiskey however, became another casualty of war.

He will be buried with honors near his beloved Fort Bragg, home of the 82nd Airborne. The bad news is we'll miss him terribly. The good news is, he's back with his parents, Audrey and Ervin Flynn. But the really bad news is "Big Erv" is probably still mad at him for never fixing the hood latch on his car when he was seventeen, and every time Pop drove the car over the nearby railroad tracks, the hood flew up forcing Pop to open the door and lean half his body out to find a place to pull over. The stream of profanities that issued forth from his mouth are probably still hanging in the air where the railroad tracks cross Lincoln Ave in Sayville, New York.

Pidgeon Is Faster Than Internet In Some Places

Pigeon transfers data faster than South Africa's Telkom Thu Sep 10, 5:05 pm ET
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – A South African information technology company on Wednesday proved it was faster for them to transmit data with a carrier pigeon than to send it using Telkom , the country's leading internet service provider.
Internet speed and connectivity in Africa's largest economy are poor because of a bandwidth shortage... Local news agency SAPA reported the 11-month-old pigeon, Winston, took one hour and eight minutes to fly the 50 miles from Unlimited IT's offices near Pietermaritzburg to the coastal city of Durban with a data card was strapped to his leg. Including downloading, the transfer took two hours, six minutes and 57 seconds -- the time it took for only four percent of the data to be transferred using a Telkom line. Unlimited IT performed the stunt after becoming frustrated with slow internet transmission times. ...Telkom could not immediately be reached for comment.

Is it time for me to go a little greener and pioneer a new way to blend old and new technology? I write from anywhere I happen to be. Sometimes I can’t always get the internet connection I need to send in reports. I could start a whole new trend and maybe others would follow, it would be very Al Gore of me to try anyway...

At an event on a Long Island Beach:
“Who's the big lady with the laptop and the pigeon cage?”
“Oh, that’s Ms Flynn. She writes for newspapers you know.”
“Is she donating the bird? Is it a sacrifice? She's not going to put on a hibachi and eat it is she?”
“Ms F. can’t always get her wireless internet to transmit her articles from her laptop out here in the wild. She writes things right out here in the field you know. She loves to rough it, a real pioneer. So now she brings one of her Flynn's Flyer’s with her to these events. The pigeons have a little suitcase velcroed to one ankle. Ms F. puts in her memory card and releases the bird. Her office gets the bird in five to eight minutes. She has two birds she likes to use, Paddy and Delilah. I think she brought Delilah today. We’ll know if he gives her Perrier water in her little cup, she’s a Hampton born pidgeon, she only drinks Perrier.”
“You’re kidding me.... and what does Paddy drink?”
“Well, that's the problem. Birds love alcohol and Paddy is a pigeon raised by someone in Ms. Flynn's own family. She just found out that Paddy has a bit of a drinking problem. Paddy got a sip from somebody's screwdriver at the last event and delivered Ms. F.’s card to Al Gore’s house. Fortunately, Al is trying out this green transfer concept and sent a new bird to her office. Then he got Paddy into a new little aviary rehab, The Pickled Pigeon in the Hamptons. It’s very private. Decorated the gayest available decorators. It has a nice park and statue theme, very tasteful, and no cat statues.”
“Yeah, I can see where that would mess with a bird’s brain.”
“Definitely, you don’t want to have the DT’s around images of things that can eat you.”
“So where do you buy these birds?”
“East Hampton store, Feathers Go Farther; Giving You the Bird From Manhattan to Montauk.”

Ring Right Through Your Nosey

Aug 20, 2009 WELLINGTON (Reuters) – A New Zealand man has been dubbed the Lord of the Ring after he searched and found his wedding ring more than a year after it slipped off his finger and sank to the sea floor. The ring was lost for 16 months in the harbor of the country's capital city, Wellington, before Aleki Taumoepeau found it shining on the sea floor, the Dominion Post newspaper reported Thursday. Taumoepeau, an ecologist, said... he lost the wedding ring while conducting an environmental sweep of the harbor. He roughly marked the spot where the ring had flown from his finger, but was unable to find it despite returning to the area many times....pledging to find the ring (and)..equipped with new global satellite based coordinates and offering up a quick prayer, he found the ring after an hour's search.

In a bar on the east coast:

“Joe, did you read about this guy who says he lost his wedding ring in the water and then found it again using g.p.s. and a prayer?”
“Yeah, what a crock. You know how many guys have tried using that story - losing their wedding ring in the water? “Honest hunny, I lost it when I was clammin’”, or “it got caught in a fish’s mouth when I was trying to get the hook out.” But I give the guy credit for originality - adding the g.p.s. locater concept, nice detail. Oh yeah, and the prayer, g.p.s. and a prayer.”
“Like he had one.”
“Not a prayer of finding a ring once it goes in the water, unless you happen to be sitting underwater with scuba and a net just looking up and seeing if anything happens to drop in.”
“So how do you think he found the ring, Joe?”
“He didn’t find that ring. He did what any intelligent cheating slob would do, he bought a new ring.”
“A new ring - geez, I never thought of that.”
“That’s why when you get married, you can get her a fancy ring, but you gotta stay with the plain band, very important. That way, if you lose that ring anytime for any reason, you can replace it before she knows it’s gone if you have to.”
“Did you ever lose your ring that year you were cheating on Carol?”
“Nope. I never took it off. I just bought a set of golf clubs and told Carol I was taking up golf.”
“You lost me, Joe. How does golf cover cheating on your wife?”
“Simple. I’d pick up my girlfriend at lunchtime and later, just before I left for home, I’d go outside, run her outside hose to make a puddle in the grass, then I’d jump around in the puddle and get grass bits all splashed up on my pants. Then I’d go home and Carol would yell at me as soon as I got in the door, “Where you been all afternoon? I called work twice, they said you never came back from lunch.” And then I’d tell her the truth.”
“The truth? Joe, man, there’s no way you told her the truth.”
“Everytime, I swear. I said, “Carol, you know what I did? I left at lunch time, picked up my girlfriend, we went to her house and we made mad passionate love all afternoon. How do you like that?” And she’d say, “Don’t lie to me you son of a bitch! Look at your pants! You blew off work to go golfing again!”
“Whoa.....great cover Joe. Beats the hell outta g.p.s. and a prayer.”
“Thank you, I thought it was rather creative if I do say so myself.”

Justifiable Homocide

You have to ask youself, "Do I feel lucky today?"

I caught the tail end of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" the other night. The young male attorney, married with a baby, had just answered this question: "Whose death was reported on the front page the first day of publication of USA Today?" The potential answers were one of the following actresses: Greta Garbo, Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, and Ida Lupino. The contestant took a guest and was right, it was Grace Kelly and he won $500,000. Let me be clear, he won one half of a million dollars guaranteed. He was asked if he'd like to answer to next question for one million dollars, or leave now with the paltry sum of $500,000. His wife shook her head violently in the negative from the gallery. But, nooooooooo, he was feeling lucky...

The Million dollar question was: "President Lyndon Johnson had four buttons installed on his desk to summon drinks he wanted. Three of the buttons were: coffee, tea, coke. What was the fourth button? Potential answers: Fresca, Yoo-Hoo, A&W Root Beer, and V-8. There's no way to logically deduce this, you would know it or not. I guessed A&W. The right answer was Fresca.

What do you think that car ride home was like?

I'm betting not a word was said. I bet his wife won't even be ready to talk to him till next May at the earliest. Sex isn't gonna happen for ten years at least. She has to go through the five stages of grief after the death of all her dreams.

The first stage is denial. She has to deny she married a moron who had a half a mil in his hands and tossed it for a 25% chance of winning a whole million. Because only a moron would realize that along with the 25% chance of winning a million was a 75% chance of winning bupkus, nada, nothing.

The second stage is anger. I tried very hard to imagine the amount of anger I would feel. I can only say that I have a stupidity limit, past which homocide or exile, are justified. I would calmly go to a boat supply store and purchase a new graphite fishing rod and a boat buoy. Returning home, I'd walk up behind him in his lounger and proceed to to alternatively whip him with the rod and beat him with the bouy. If he had me arrested for assault, it wouldn't do any good because if he stood before a female judge, once she heard the story, it would take half a police force to pull the judge off of him because she'd be finishing the job with her gavel. If he stood before a male judge, he'd only be granted a restraining order against his wife, and every other woman in the country who would beat him in a show of solidarity and as an example to the other men not to even think of being what I call "Black Hole stupid". This is when a man is so inexplicably dense that light bends around him.

The third stage is bargaining. She has to think of what redeeming qualities her moron has that compensate for his little lapses in judgment here and there. Maybe he doesn't complain when asked to take out the garbage. Maybe he puts his dirty socks in the laundry. Maybe he doesn't make a face when she asks him to lift his legs while she vacuums - which she would have a maid to do if he had bothered to research favorite drinks of US Presidents during the 60's before betting half a million on the infinite knowledge in his brain. But lets not go there, because there's no way back.

The fourth stage is depression. His wife will be depressed for a very long time. But she'll only think of his mistake whenever she writes the mortgage check, or has to budget groceries, or wants a new blouse, or calls a plumber or electrician for any repairs, or has any medical expenses, or has thoughts of affording a higher education for her children, or any number or those little thoughts that creep into our consciousness from time to time.

The fifth stage is acceptance. In about twenty years, she'll stop thinking about what could have been; a house, a new car, education, a boat, new underwear once a year, those small things that make life a little easier. She'll take what little money she can scrounge up and find a divorce attorney. Her two criteria for hire will be 1. Are you a licensed attorney? and 2. How do you feel about Fresca?

Big Game Hunter

I got a lot of fun feedback on the article I wrote about the fights that break out while playing Monopoly. Apparently my family is not alone in its inability to play a game peacefully. Here's some other complaints people have. The names are withheld to prevent violence and grudge keeping.

Chess: The biggest complaint seems to be that people take too much time to make a move. Everyone wants to appear to be a brilliant strategist, but there is no true correlation between how long it takes you to make a move and how brilliant you are. It seems that half the people who play chess know this and half don't and somehow one person from each side of this divide manages to pair up every time to play chess, creating a miserable evening for both. Drinking while playing this game makes things worse. One Islander told me that his brother, who thought thinkin' and drinkin' went together, got so angry when he lost that he lined up all the chess pieces on a rail and shot them all with a BB gun, well, he missed most actually, but it's the thought that counts. Perhaps Chess is best off when it's used as a designer piece, like on a movie set. You know, you buy an expensive Chess set and set it up so everyone can see it, and just for a special effect, you move one piece...

Life: The game of Life is fun. You sit in a little car and fill it with pegs as you go through life's passages. Everyone seems to like this game, in part because you can share all your personal experiences as you go. When you hit 'marriage' it costs you nearly nothing to get married. But when you hit 'divorce', it costs you a small fortune and you can end up in the 'poor house', just like real life. I think it's a kick that the game has gone high tech and done away with paper money, you get a reloadable debit card for money now.

Yahtzee: Poker with dice. Simple and still a favorite game by all reports. Can be played drunk or sober by all reports. Simple math, such as adding the totals on the dice required. Complex math, such as adding all the totals in all the columns to find out who won required. Multiple math, such as having more than one player add the totals because you cant trust the first person also required. Not recommended for those who imbibe in herbal cigarettes because there seems to be a lot of trouble adding even the dice totals and no one can remember if they're taking turns by going to the right or left.

Parcheesi: An old favorite of mine and really fun if you play by the rules inside the top of the box. Game strategy is important, so play sober and no one will get hurt.

Go: The ancient Japanese game that I think all strategy games are based on. A simple painted grid on a wooden board and two bowls of black and white round pieces, minutes to learn, forever to master. Not too popular in the US except for the a group of enthusiasts like me. I agree with one man who says the problem is the pieces slide on the board too easily. One bump and they all slide all over. I never saw that as a problem, it was my way of getting out of losing game. One accidentally well placed knock from my knee and I was spared humiliation.

Othello: A very popular small variation of Go. Othello is easy to learn, lots of fun, can be played sober, drunk or high since the question of who's winning is apparent all the time, either there are more black pieces showing or more white. No need to worry about whose turn it is since it's a two person game. Even a very high person, by process of elimination, can deduce whose turn it is next. Bonus; if the loser gets mad and tosses the game, the pieces are the size of quarter and very easy to find not that that has ever happened of course.

Cards: I never met a card game I didn't like. Card games are still very popular; mostly variations of Poker, and many enjoy Spades and Hearts. I didn't hear anyone talk about Bridge or Canasta or any of the more complicated games. Cards are still best for game with company and playing on a boat. I always wished I could master one of those fancy impressive shuffle. I'm a hacksaw shuffler. I just slush them together until someone makes a comment about how long it's taking me to shuffle. One thing to remember, if you lose a few cards and replace them with cards from another partial deck, check the backs to make sure the designs are the same. I had three blue Bicycle brand cards mixed in with a pack of red Bicycle cards and it didn't seem to take long for everyone to memorize what three cards those were, putting players at a distinct advantage or disadvantage depending on the deal. But hey... it's just a game.

Get Out Of Jail Free

" Assc Press Thu Jul 30, 9:04 pm ET
FRASER, Mich. – A game of Monopoly has landed a Michigan man in jail. WDIV-TV reported a 54-year-old man was playing the board game Saturday night with a female friend when he tried to buy Park Place and Boardwalk from her. When she refused, Fraser police Lt. Dan Kolke told WWJ-AM he hit her in the head, breaking her glasses. The man was arrested and charged with misdemeanor assault and battery."

The poet Maya Angelou said, "You can tell a lot about a person by the way they handle three things: a rainy day, lost luggage and tangled Christmas tree lights." I would like to add to this list; waiting in lines, getting the wrong order from a fast food place, and playing board games - in particular playing Monopoly.

Monopoly is a board game patented by Charles Darrow in 1935 and published by Parker Brothers. The game is named after the economic concept of monopoly, the domination of a market by a single entity. He modeled the game after the market crash in 1929 which brought on the Great Depression. Monopoly is the most commercially-successful board game in United States history, with 485 million players worldwide.

Frankly, I can't understand why the police would arrest someone for assault as a result of playing Monopoly. Anyone who has ever played the game by it's real rules knows that all players risk being assaulted or being the assaulter with every nerve grating turn trying to get past Park Place and Boardwalk and make it to Go / Payday. Especially if someone has managed to get a few houses on the one of those spots or worst of all, if they've gotten a hotel on Boardwalk. No one who lands on Boardwalk with a hotel gets out alive. It usually means the financial ruin and ultimate downfall of the player who has landed there. The ruined person usually throws their top hat, shoe, or car, at the s.o.b. who owns Boardwalk and then throws what few white ones and pink fives they have left, into the face of the bloodletting, money hungry Scrooge who has forced them out of the game. Naturally there are fights, assaults, and homocides, associated with Monopoly.

Some people make the argument that forcing other players out by creating Monopoly empires is the whole point of the game, that the last player with the most money wins. These are the people who want to play by the actual rules printed on the inside of the cover of the box. These are the people who, as long as they are winning, say, "It's just a game, why are you getting all upset?" But, if they are losing, they scream, "You're cheating! That's not the way the game is played, give me the rules, I'll show you!" Then they re-interpret the rules to their advantage. That's right, Republicans.

When my family plays Monopoly, we add a few rules. 1. If you run out of Monopoly money, you can use real money. No joke, we have all used real ones, fives, tens and twenties till we got to Paypay to get our Monopoly $200. 2. Personal loans are allowed. The Republicans in the game vehemently object to this concept, but only until THEY need a loan.
3. The rules say if you land in Jail you have to stay there for three turns or pay $50 to get out. We allow prorating. You can serve a one or two turn sentence and pay $18 per day if you're short on cash, or you can take a personal loan from another player. If you're the poorest player in the game and you land in jail, you can get out after a one turn sentence and a one dollar fine under our Early Release Program for the underprivileged. 4. We take a Sharpie marker and change one of the Beauty Contest Opportunity Knocks cards into a Get Over Boardwalk or Park Place Free card.

When my family plays the game, no one is forced out. Which is nice, but then the game never ends. Usually after about three hours we just all agree to stop, because some of us have other things to do in our lives, or the beer and pizza is all gone. The person with the most in money and assets wins. Any gloating by the winner will definitely end in assault, a real assault, not just the normal pinching and slapping and threatening that occurs naturally during the course of the game, but a real, bounce beer bottles off the winners head, assault.

When a journalist friend of mine left for a new position, I gave her a wallet with a genuine Monopoly "Get Out Of Jail Free" card in it. Why? Because she's a journalist and in case she ever got in trouble and held in contempt for refusing to reveal her sources, I wanted her to know she had something to fall back on.

It's pretty clear to me that the officer who arrested that man for a Monopoly assault either has never played the game, or is a Republican who never won the game.

Your Place, or Twine?

I thought the coverage of Michael Jackson's death would never leave the airwaves! But the next most important event has already taken over. As I'm sure many of you have seen in the papers and on all the news, my birthday is coming on July 31st. I share my birthday with Jackie Kennedy and Mae West. Three great women on one day. I've asked everyone not to overspend on me this year. It is not necessary to mortgage your house to buy me a gift when selling your vehicle will suffice. I'm short on ruby jewelry, I need a villa in Tuscany, and a boat.

This next birthday is a big one. The kind that makes you wonder where the hell has all the time gone? Days are long, but years are short. It also makes me reflect on what, if any, wisdom have I attained? What pearls can I impart to the younger people? I had to think a very long time, but I came up with a list, some of them are my own thoughts and some are borrowed.

1. "Don't run with scissors." I received this advice from my Kindergarten teacher, Miss Ross, and it has applied throughout my life. Don't run with scissors. I also found, "Don't Poke Other People With Your Fork" and "Don't Pop Your Lunch Bag" to be useful during my youth.
2. "Life is a series of meetings and partings. " (A Christmas Carol). How true this is. The Greeks said, "When man plans tomorrow, the gods laugh." The next person you meet, the phone call you get, can change your life. Be flexible, be prepared. Be ready to help someone, be ready to have a good time, be ready to sit with a sick or grieving friend. Half of life is just showing up.
3. "Sometimes it's time to leave, even if there's nowhere to go." (Oscar Wilde). Leave when it's time for you to go. Sometimes you have to leave a person, sometimes a place, sometimes a job. You always have that funny feeling when it's time to go and if you ignore it, it usually ends badly and you regret not having followed your intuition. You should only ignore your intuition if you're sure you're going to get something really nice, like a house, or a lot of money. For that, you can put up with any odious person or situation until you get the payoff and then you can afford therapy in your lovely new surroundings in case you have any guilt feelings.
4. A man with a boat is worth two men with trucks. A man with a house is worth two men with boats. A man with a house on Ram Island is worth hiring the men with trucks and boats to set up a blackmail scenario where the only solution is to marry you without a pre-nup.
5. There is no such thing as "enough jewelry." If a man says that to you, ask him if he has "enough tools."
6. The natural look is for women who can't handle their cosmetics.
7. Don't go overboard with hairdye. There comes a time in life when your gray is conspicuous by its absence. My mother, who is older than me, still dyes her hair dark brown. I did an experiment this year and let my hair grow in naturally. I admit it is a frightening sight. But since I stopped dying it, it has gotten thicker. I now bear a strong resemblance to Albert Einstein, but that will lessen as soon as I have my moustache waxed.
8. Get to the water. There is no problem I've ever had that wasn't helped by spending time looking out over the water. It clears my mind, which I admit is a small job in my case, but still, it helps you think. In addition to clearing your mind, the water can also hide the bodies of your enemies, always a handy piece of information to know.
9. Boomerang gossip via twiner. Common here on the Island. Boomerang gossip is when you say something that comes back around and hits you in the ass the next day. Twitter is the newest way to share information on the internet. On the Island, we have Twiner. Go hang out at the Dumps, the IGA parking lot or the school parking lot and all the information/news/gossip you need will roll past you like an unwinding ball of twine on a mission to ensnare, entangle and otherwise entwine fascinating tidbits of information; some will be true, some not, but twiner, like twitter, goes for speed, not accuracy.
10. Be nice. It takes as much time to be rude as to be nice, so be nice. Oh, and of course, don't run with scissors.

1969, the Best of Times, the Worst of Times...

MCMLXIX: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

1969

As July 20th, 1969, approaches, the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, I think those of us who were there are reflecting on what an incredible year of highs and lows it was. George Carlin said, "If you can remember the sixties, you weren't there." I remember rampant experimental drug use. I could get LSD in high school - yes, even on Shelter Island. I recall violent anti-war protests and civil rights protests. It seemed like you barely processed one horrific event on the news before you were hit with a new one.
Still, my memory of where I was when I saw the moon landing is crystal clear. Like when Kennedy was shot. I recall every detail. I was at my boyfriends house and everyone was glued to the television. The feeling of fear we all had. So much could go wrong. What if something happened and they couldn't get back? Were their calculations right? How deep was the moon dust? That was a big question. Was it a few inches deep or would they sink into a quicksand of grey dust? The poor quality black and white transmission was fuzzy and stark at the same time. America watched every second of this historic event, the whole world watched.
I feel privledged to be one of the people to have witness the event. But I envied my grandmothers generation. Her generation witnessed the invention of the car, airplane and telephone, and were still present to see the moon landing. She saw more "firsts" than I ever will.

I don't think any years were more jam packed with events than 1968 and 1969. We had such extremes. In '69 we had the moon landing and the Manson murders. Here's a little stroll down memory lane.

Some More Firsts:
* Golda Meir became the first female Prime Minister in Israel. * The first Boeing 747 appeared. * Monty Python's Flying Circus first airs in the United Kingdom. * Dave Thomas opens his first restaurant in a former steakhouse on a cold, snowy Saturday in downtown Columbus, Ohio. He names the chain Wendy's after his 8-year-old daughter Melinda Lou (nicknamed Wendy by her siblings). * The Stonewall riots in New York City mark the start of the modern gay rights movement in the U.S. * Sesame Street premieres on the National Educational Television (NET) network. *The first Gap store opens, in San Francisco. * Reported as being the year the first strain of the AIDS virus (HIV) migrated to the United States via Haiti.

* Richard Nixon succeeded Lyndon Johnson as the 37th President of the U.S.
* The last issue of the Saturday Evening Post, famous for it's covers by Norman Rockwell, hit the stands. It is the end of a publishing era. * Super Bowl III; NY Jets play the Baltimore Colts. * Chappaquiddick > Senator Ted Kennedy’s car accident, which took the life of Mary Jo Kopechne, ended any chance of a shot at the Presidency for him. * U.S. President Richard Nixon and South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu meet at Midway Island. Nixon announces that 25,000 U.S. troops will be withdrawn by September. * ( I love this one) The New York Times publicly takes back the ridicule of the rocket scientist Robert H. Goddard published in 13 Jan 1920 that spaceflight is impossible. * The Harvard University Administration Building is seized by close to 300 students, mostly members of the Students for a Democratic Society. Before the takeover ends, 45 will be injured and 184 arrested. * March on Washington to protest Viet Nam, estimated half a million marchers. * VP Spiro Agnew called the protesters "effete snobs". Later he resigned his office for tax evasion. * The "miracle" New York Mets win the World Series, beating the heavily favored Baltimore Orioles 4 games to 1. * Black Panther Party members Fred Hampton and Mark Clark are shot dead in their sleep during a raid by 14 Chicago police officers. * Vietnam War: The first draft lottery in the United States is held since World War II (on January 4, 1970, the New York Times will run a long article, "Statisticians Charge Draft Lottery Was Not Random"). * An army platoon is said to have raided a Vietnamese village and then allegedly following the orders of Lieutenant William Kelly shot down every villager; men, women and children. The Pentagon is investigating the matter, and Lieutenant Kelly charged with murder will go on trial in early 1970. * My Lai Massacre: Lieutenant William Calley is charged with 6 counts of premeditated murder, for the deaths of 109 Vietnamese civilians in My Lai. The death of Ho Chi Minh, the ineffectiveness of the peace talks, and the withdrawal of American troops seemed to have little effect on the war.
* 1969 was a year of airplane hijacks, most of them to Cuba. Over 50 times, planes have been diverted to a destination other than the one they started out for. *Woodstock - the defining event of my generation. *Jan 30, the Beatles perform for the last time as a group; Soon after Paul marries Linda Eastman and they form the band Wings. *John Lennon marries Yoko Ono, they later host a televised "bed-in" for peace. *Charles Manson's "family murder the eight months pregnant actress Sharon Tate and others. *Diana Ross leaves the Supremes. * Simon and Garfunkel air TV special Songs Of America, an hour-long show that is anti-war and anti-poverty featuring live footage from their 1969 tour. *1776 is a hit show on Braodway

And the next generation arrived on the heels of love beads, burned draft cards and the sound of a Green Tamborine.
Brian McKnight, Ice Cube, Marc Anthony, Sean Combs, Gwen Stefani, Bobby Brown, Jason Bateman, Jennifer Anniston, Javier Bardem, Chastity Bono, Rodney Atkins, Renee Zellweger, Cate Blanchett Tracey Gold, Steffi Graf, Josh Holloway, Jennifer Lopez, Midori Ito, Edward Norton, Christian Slater, Matthew Perry, Diane Farr, Catharine Zeta-Jones, Hal Sparks, Brett Farve, Nancy Kerrigan, Gerard Butler, Ken Griffey, Jr., , are among those born in 1969

Shell Beach, Paradise Lost

Shell Beach has re-opened after road repairs (as much as you can repair a dirt road), hallejah! Shell Beach, where many an Island teen couple has done unbelievable things in cars. Ahhhhh, the men, the memories, if only I had that flexibility now... I could be in Cirque de Soleis!

Shell Beach has an unmarked hidden access road that only locals and summer people know. Knowing the secret entrance is like knowing how to get into the Bat Cave.
"You go down here and turn between the maple trees."
"Yea, but Alice, the whole street has maple trees, how do you know where to turn?"
"I know. Like a blind person knows their kitchen, I just know..."
"Ah, you're relying on Divine Intervention."
"No, Divine Direction. It practically takes an Act of God to find the road."

For as long as I can remember, the road was half the fun of going to Shell Beach. The huge dips and hills were a stress test for the shocks on any car. It's actually the only spot on Long Island where a Hummer or Land Rover is warranted as a vehicle of choice. It was especially challenging after a rain. How deep was the puddle? Up to the rims? Up to the car handle? You never knew. Slamming up and down in the car with the seat belt cutting into your neck and hot coffee flying. What fun.

It was always interesting and often educational to search for an unoccupied spot along the road. The road is flanked with little pockets of half hidden mini-beaches that are often clothes optional. I tried sun bathing au natural once, but an Island guy in a truck pulled up and threw a big tarp over me. It wouldn't have been that insulting except for him driving the tent pegs in all around me to hold the tarp down. Sun bathing is terribly over rated. Sand gets in places you didn't know you had and didn't especially want to discover. When I was fifteen, I saw my first nude men there. They didn't look anything like my younger brothers. They required hours of study, assisted by a few of my school friends. Thinking back, I can't believe they didn't hear a gaggle of giggling girls hiding in the beach grass.

At the end of the road is Shell Beach with a 360 degree view of the water. My favorite days are when Mom and I grab some big delicious sandwiches and drinks from Fedi's and go sit on that beach chatting away - but carefully. Sound carries in strange ways there and you often hear entire conversations taking place. It's involuntary eavesdropping.

On graduation night, the Seniors go to Shell Beach and the local police just put a car at the end of the road so that no one can enter or exit without them knowing and no booze can get on the beach. That's why we had to go there the day before and bury all the beer in the sand ahead of time....the only problem would be most of the cops are locals and they know that trick. In which case, it's best to bury the beer two or three days ahead of the planned inebriation.

The beach is good for wading, but not swimming. There's no lifeguard. Strong currents swirl around the little Island peninsula and you can be on your way inbound to Coecles Harbor or outbound to Montauk or Orient Point in just a few minutes. But if you have some company you'd like to be rid of, it's a good place to tell them to swim. When my children we young and irritating, especially when my daughter was in the brat stage, from age 8 to 21, I took her there to swim many times. But she's always been such a good swimmer, she always made it back to the beach.

It will be strange now, driving on the road without risking overturning the car. I'm not sure if it will still be popular as a lovers lane. With the advent of cell phones that can take and email pictures to other people or straight to the internet, illicit romance just won't be as fun as it used to be. There's nothing that will kill the mood like sixty people showing up and peering in the windows of the car. I just hate it when that happens...

English Made Easy

Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries

Linguists report that English is the most difficult language to learn. It has more words than any other language and it is the only language that has exceptions to every single rule. To be proficient, a new speaker has to learn all the rules and all the exceptions. English is primarily based in latin, with about a third of our words derived from French origins and another portion from germanic languages. You can learn english the right way, or the short way.
I believe the fastest way to learn conversational English is to just study all the food references. It makes learning English a cakewalk. Let me exemplify...

Liver lips Louie was a fishfaced, meathead, with cauliflower ears, butterfingers, and egg on his face half the time. He was in love with Lil McGill, she was the apple of his eye, a real sweet girl with a peaches and cream complexion. She wore her hair in cornrows. The two of them were like peas in a pod.

Louie could be a little rough sometimes, especially when he was in his cups and the whiskey started talking. He'd get beer muscles and get all stirred up over nothing. Somebody might yell, "Hey, who cut the cheese?" And Louie would whip the guy to a standstill. Louie always seemed to be in a jam, which is not the same as being in a pickle. It takes a little longer to get out of a jam, but all Louie had to do was simmer down and be prepared to eat a little humble pie.

Louie loved Lil, but she was a little light in the bulb department, a few sandwiches short of a picnic some might say. But she knew which side her bread was buttered on. Louie was the breadwinner. He brought home the bacon and together their lives were a piece of cake.

Until Tony came along. Tony was Lil's brother, a real couch potato. He was a big talking cowardly turkey, but too chicken to admit it. Tony would mooch off of them whenever he could. He was always in hot water with Louie. Tony would provoke Louie and always manage to bite off more than he could chew. Louie was always cool as a cucumber around Tony, but when Louie had enough, he'd launch Tony through the air and out the front door like a hot knife through butter. Tony would scream a protest as he flew over, but Louie would yell back, "That's the way the cookie crumbles!" Tony knew his goose was cooked and it was time for him to mooch on.

Lil would always feel terrible about her brother the mooch, but Louie told her, "No use crying over spilt milk, baby."
"Ahhh Louie," she'd respond, "whoever said we wasn't meant to be together don't know we're happy as clams."
"You're the only one for me, Lil. I'm sorry I gotta throw your brother out, but if he's gonna dish it, he'd better learn to take it!"
"Yeah, if he can't take the heat, he should go to the living room."
"You mean get outta the kitchen."
"Who's in the kitchen?"
"It's an expression, Lil, like saying 'he got toasted'".
"Tony was drinking in my kitchen?"
"No, honeybun, never mind."
"Speaking of buns, Louie, you'll never guess what's in the oven..."
"Oh Lil! A little quarter pounder?"
"Yep. I wanna name him Kale."
"I'm so happy, Lil! Poke me with a fork, I am done!"