Street Wise

Among the many things that separate the girls from the boys, besides Brazilian bikini waxes, is the way the genders navigate.

All homo sapiens have a built-in GPS in their noses, in the form of a small magnetite deposit found in the ethmoid bone, located between the eyes and behind the schnozz, that helps them find the North Magnetic Pole. Men, however, seem to have a larger lump than women (in the South Magnetic Pole, too), which is why they have a better overall sense of direction. It also accounts for why, on the occasions they do get hopelessly lost, they’re so damned reluctant to stop at a gas station and ask for directions.

Women, on the other hand, prefer to find their way using landmarks and street signs, which is no easy feat if you’re driving on Long Island, a region that shows an astonishing lack of imagination when it comes to getting creative with location names.

In my neighborhood, there’s a residential street called South Long Beach Avenue which, if taken to its end, brings you to Waterfront Park overlooking Freeport Bay. However, a few miles west is Long Beach Avenue, a heavily-trafficked retail/commercial strip that will eventually lead you to the barrier island of Long Beach, known as “The City By the Sea.” I cannot tell you how many times, during my frequent constitutionals through the 'hood, I’ve been stopped by some hapless driver looking for the “other” Long Beach Avenue. The town fathers have even erected a sign at the first major intersection alerting drivers of the following: “Long Beach Avenue, Oceanside, 2 ½ miles” with an arrow pointing west. Here’s an idea for these bureaucratic big daddies. Why not just rename the bloody street and end the confusion once and for all?

This is not just an aberration. The same scenario plays itself out in the next town over, where two streets named “Grand” (one a residential “boulevard,” the other a main “avenue”) are a mere three blocks apart. Whoever is responsible for this set-up has a less than grand vocabulary.

Unfortunately, this drought of designations is even worse when it comes to Long Island’s towns. The best (or worst) example is the “Islips” which encompass Islip (proper), East Islip, Central Islip, Islip Terrace (huh?) and West Islip, which is divided from its sister burgs by West Bay Shore and Brightwaters. (Brightwaters also divides West Bay Shore from North Bay Shore and all the other Bay Shores. Get the drift?)

Once, when my sister and I were small, we giggled as my Mom drove through an area of that seminal suburban village, Levittown, sporting street names such as Griddle, Saucer and Cotton. A few years later, but this time egged on by “mary jane,” I giggled once again when my cousin drove me through a part of Merrick known as “Tiny Town” because of its Lilliputian-sized domiciles. (Unfortunately, we didn’t see any Munchkins, just normal-sized residents giving our smoke-filled car the stink eye.)

Granted these are silly names, but I’d rather lose my way searching for the wildly creative than the mind-numbingly commonplace.

The X Child is Born

“It’s tradition” are words that usually set my eyes rolling, so you can imagine the workout my peepers get during this holly jolly season. To me, Christmas traditions translate into REM-depriving tasks, just when the winter solstice is begging us to get some solid sack time. Over the years, I’ve perfected a few shortcuts that allow me the double luxury of celebrating and snoozing.

Instead of hauling a Christmas tree through the door and toting boxes of lights, tinsel and bulbs out of the attic (not to mention spending the rest of the winter sweeping up pine needles), I take a Christopher Radko ceramic tree from a closet shelf, place it on a plant stand in my living room, plug it in and, presto, “O Tannenbaum”! The half-dozen cookie varieties that used to turn my kitchen into a flour- and sugar-coated catastrophe have been pared down to one, three-ingredient, no-bake, sure-fire crowd pleaser. (Recipe follows for all you bleary-eyed Santa’s helpers out there.) I do spend a fair amount of time hanging lights outside my humble co-op, but that’s to prevent my fellow residents from shooting me a baleful, “bah humbug” look.

There is one tradition, though, that turns this iconoclast into a curmudgeon when not properly observed, and that’s shortening “Christmas” to “Xmas.” I’m not nutty enough to sport a “Keep Christ in Christmas” bumper sticker on my ride, but I believed the old school spelling upheld the spirit, integrity and intent of the day.

Notice the use of the past tense in that last sentence. Turns out that not only is “Christmas” fairly modern, but that “X” is more reverent than I, or others, thought.

You have to begin with the fact that “Jesus Christ” is not Jesus Christ’s name. (To quote my neighbor, “Ain’t that a bitch?”) “Jesus” is a transliteration from the Hebrew-Aramaic to Greek to Latin to English. Jesus’ full name was Yeshua ben Yoseph, translated in English to “Joshua son of Joseph.” (Mary was a Jewish mother, but even she didn’t have the chutzpah to name her son “Yeshua ben Yahweh.”) “Christ” is an honorific from the Greek, “Christos,” meaning “anointed one” and which, when written in its native language, reads Χριστός.

For at least the past 1,000 years, “Christ" and its compound words, including “Christmas," have been abbreviated using the initial “X" or “XP" in the original Greek. Examples can be found as far back as the “Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" from 1021, in many manuscripts from the 15th century and even in Eastern Orthodox icons of today. The labarum, or the Greek p with the x crossed through its stem, is used in the major Christian religions and is depicted in Paul Ruben’s 1622 painting, “The Labarum," pictured above.

All this historical context is never going to convince the diehard “Christmas-ers" to break out the WD-40 and remove those bumper stickers, but I’ve found a new holiday shortcut that will make writing out all my Christmas…er…Xmas cards even quicker.

And now, for that recipe…

12 ozs of chocolate chips (Semi-sweet or milk. Butterscotch works nicely, too. Your call.)

6 ozs of cocktail peanuts (Don’t try to get all heart healthy by using the lightly-salted or no salt varieties. Save the sacrificing for Lent.)

3 ozs of Chinese noodles (LaChoy or any other brand that looks like short strands of spaghetti.)

Line two small or one large cookie sheet with wax paper. Melt chips in microwave according to package directions. Stir in nuts and noodles until well-covered. Drop onto wax paper-lined sheets using a garden variety teaspoon. Put in fridge for one hour or until set. Place in tightly-covered, wax paper-lined tin. Store in fridge or a cool, dark place.

If you want to get all fancy, you can add a ¼ cup of dried fruit to the mix, such as raisins, cranberries or cherries.

Oddly enough, I don’t have a name for these tasty treats. My original recipe card has “Crunchy Chocolate Drops“ at the top, but that name’s never stuck. A friend thinks they look like nests, so “Noel Nests“ may not be a bad designation. Frankly, you can call them whatever the hell you want. Just make sure you call me after you’ve made a batch.

Merry Xmas one and all!

The Quantity of Mercy

“You are like me. We forgive nothing!”

Followed by the unctuous offer of a cookie, this was the wizened, wicked Don Corrado Prizzi’s proud assessment of his equally Machiavellian granddaughter, Maerose, in John Huston’s darkly funny mafia satire, Prizzi’s Honor, a truly under-appreciated comic gem.

To the Prizzis (and the Corleones, for that matter), forgiveness was for chumps, especially when family honor was at stake. Cross them once, and you could bet the vig that your name would be crossed off the rolls of the living.

When it to comes to the adage, “forgive and forget,” I’m not as absolute in it its rejection as the corrosive Corrado, but I’m not buying it wholesale, either.

So much has been made about the emotional healing power of forgiveness, not one but two annual “Forgiveness Days” are now observed. According to the various organizations that support these days and their mission, forgiveness doesn’t mean to forget, but does afford the offended peace of mind while taking the temptation of retribution off the table.

That’s fine as far as it goes, but my Shakespearean question is, how much is too much of a good thing?

Just as twenty-four of our state courts have adopted the “Three Strikes” law, I have my own scale of justice – “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

Regrettably, I’ve had to invoke this personal code of honor twice this year and, unlike what some forgiveness fans will tell you, my soul is not being eaten up by anger nor do I have any burning desire for revenge. On the contrary, if I had given either party the chance to turn a double dose of the same transgression into a triple, that would have blown whatever peace of mind I can muster these days. Like the popular game show, life is a game of “Survivor.” If I have to vote you out of my tribe to preserve my dignity, guess whose torch is going to get snuffed?

Mae West once embellished the above line from “As You Like It” as follows, “Too much of a good thing is wonderful.”

To put my own spin on The Bard, “Too much forgiveness is unforgivable.”

Think I’ll have a cookie now.

Amazing Academics

Say, what the hell do you parents do, anyway?

Twiddle your thumbs?

Gather wool?

Rest on your laurels?

Anything at all?

That’s the idea I get after reading about Sheldon Karnilow, the Half Hollow Hills’ school superintendent who earns a whopping $351,946.00 a year. According to board president Anne Marie Sorkin, Mr. Karnilow is a “bargain” at that price. Why? Let Ms. Sorkin explain:

“He’s got 10,000 kids that he gets to school every day. He’s in charge of their health, their safety, their welfare, their education.”

Not only should this shame all you lazy-assed Moms and Dads out there, it goes a long way towards explaining why property taxes on the Island of Long (the lion’s share of which go to schools) are some of the highest in the nation. Mr. Karnilow isn’t just a superintendent, he’s freakin’ Superman!

How else to explain his ability to kick 10,000 kids’ cans out of bed every school day, stand over them while they do their morning ablutions, serve up a delicious and nutritious breakfast, wait with them at the bus stop and then manage to be in his office when the first bell rings?

And what about the countless doctor appointments, bike helmets, winter coats and college educations he has to pay for? Why, it’s a wonder the man isn’t a pauper living in a cardboard box!

In fact, these LI school superintendents, who make up nine of the ten highest-paid K-12 school employees in New York State, are such a special breed, they and others like them have spawned the word “educrats.”

What’s an educrat? Since the Amazing Karnilow is busy teaching every subject to every student in his school district, let me enlighten you.

An educrat is, quite simply, an educational bureaucrat who works as an official or administrator in a school district. Used in its more derogatory form, educrats are more interested in the process of learning, and how that process is funded, than learning itself.

I will also add that LI’s superintendents seem to possess a preternatural stamina that mere mortals do not. For instance, Commack Union Free School District’s superintendent, James Feldman, retired in June with two decades’ worth of accrued vacation and sick time. Is this guy an educrat or the Energizer Bunny?

It’s time to get off your backsides slacking parental units! You may be stressed out over whether your job will still be there tomorrow (something these tenured Titans have no worries about) or running yourselves ragged working two jobs to make ends meet, but you should count yourselves lucky that a good chunk of your salary is paying for these educrats super-sized compensations.

Or, as one defender of LI’s superintendents put it, “People would love to spend less, but they would very much like to have someone who is beyond competent.”

Way beyond. In fact, suspiciously almighty.

Ill Will

Readers of this blog may have noticed I’m an avid admirer of alliteration. Not everyone is a fan, as demonstrated by this line spoken by Albert Brooks’ ironically named TV journalist Aaron Altman in James L. Brooks’ “Broadcast News”:

“A lot of alliteration from anxious anchors placed in powerful posts.”

Call me anxious but, more and more these days, I’ve found three alliterative words popping up in my thoughts or out of my mouth – deranged, demented, delusional.

Looks like I’ve inadvertently tapped into the national zeitgeist. A new survey by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration found that 20% of American adults have experienced mental illness in the past year. That adds up to a whopping 45 million crazed citizens.

In an age when federal frisking of innocent airline passengers in the name of fighting terrorism seems sane, this comes as no surprise to me, especially since trying to be all “Que Sera Sera” all the time brought on my own year-long bout with depression exactly a decade ago.

What was alarming about the whole episode – besides the ever-present ennui, vaguely suicidal thoughts and a constant knot between my shoulder blades the size of a baby’s fist – was not recognizing the demon until I was well out of hell. My epiphany came one night several months later, when the symptoms of the disease were listed in a TV commercial touting a miraculous new anti-depressant, followed by those always scarifying drug side effects. So that’s what was eating me. Hmmm.

Turns out I didn’t need a magic bullet like Prozac, Paxil or Zoloft to blow me out of my black hole, but a healthy dose of that always energizing elixir, anger. During an office holiday party at the end of that “lost year”, one of my former company’s muckety-mucks publicly and wrongfully accused me of making slanderous comments against her. After a fitful night’s sleep, I woke up like I was shot out of a cannon, said “piss on this” and set about gathering my advisers and allies to do battle. I was back and loaded for bear.

I think my own experience neatly reflects what’s really ailing Americans – our meek willingness to drink a Kool-Aid that promises to cure our security ills but, instead, inflicts such debilitating side effects as loss of freedom, dignity and control.

Here’s my personal Rx for fighting the forces that have induced this coma of passivity and powerlessness: rationality, reaction and, most of all, rage.

Psyched Out

Funny how you always remember your first time.

Hearing a certain word, that is.

Where I grew up, kids didn’t go to summer camp. Our mothers would shoo us out the back door after breakfast, with instructions to come back when the firehouse whistle blew at noon for lunch, and again when it blasted at six for dinner.

One summer, there must have been a secret meeting among the Moms where it was decided their offspring could be doing something more constructive than tearing up the neighborhood, so we were all herded into a different station wagon every morning and driven to a local park where we took part in arts and sports activities. To this day, I remember the park counselors, a group of college students who probably thought messing around with a bunch of kids in the great outdoors was a pretty sweet gig.

One of them especially stood out, not only for his blonde good looks (he made quite a stir among girls of all ages) and his black belt in the exotic discipline of Ju Jitsu, but also his predilection for the esoteric.

One day, he handed another counselor the astrological profile of a co-worker. She began reading it and exclaimed, “This is uncanny!”

At the time, I had no idea what uncanny meant but it sounded pretty cool so I put it in my back pocket until I could investigate further.

For those needing a primer, “uncanny” is something that’s eerie or mysterious or, more to the point, an instance that is familiar yet foreign at the same time. A great example is the theory of the “Uncanny Valley,” proposed by Japanese roboticist Mashiro Mori in 1978. Mori found that the more humanlike robots became, the more people were attracted to them, but only up to a point. Fifty percent is fine, ninety percent even better, ninety-five percent the ultimate. But tip the scale to ninety-six percent or higher, and humans become repulsed, focusing on the parts of the robot that aren’t human. Think of an animated corpse like Frankenstein’s monster or the zombies in “Night of the Living Dead.”

This is where things get weird.

Recently, I was sipping a cocktail in a bar/restaurant, waiting for some friends to join me for dinner, when I saw an advertisement on the wall sporting the face of someone who looked vaguely familiar. Sliding off my stool for a closer look, I read the name that went with the face and realized this was the same great looking, martial arts master who mentored us at the park. The hair had gone gray and the lines had deepened but, no doubt, it was him. Here’s the kicker: The former counselor is now a psychic medium whose extraordinary “gift” allows him to “reconnect with the Other Side.” In other words, one could say he reanimates the dead.

I could call this collision of coincidence “eerie” or “mysterious” but “uncanny” will do it for me.

This is a First

Sometimes, it’s the things you vow never to do that turn out the best.

When I first became one of the great, unwashed unemployed of the Great Recession, many career experts were urging former professionals like me (so that’s what I was) to raise our career profiles by writing a blog. Not only did they cost zero to launch and maintain, the reasoning went, but you can share your expertise with the world, thus garnering potential customers for your small business or impressing future employers with your industry knowledge and expertise.

There’s just one small point they left out – it sure as hell helps if you can write.

I can’t tell you how many networking events I attended where I was handed a business card that featured a dreaded WordPress or, dare I write it, Blogspot address only to have the other party breathlessly announce, “Oh, and that’s my blog.”

Out of sheer curiosity (which, I swear, someday will kill me) and a small streak of masochism (ditto), I checked out a number of these blogs.

If I mixed two parts disgust with one part outrage, added a dash of depression and a twist of Schadenfreude, that’s the cocktail of discontent I’d serve with this sub-par fare. By then, I figured the blogosphere was already cluttered with enough debris and promised myself (and anyone within earshot) that I would never add to the world wide waste of space.

So why, you may wonder, did I?

Certainly the most overriding reason was the sheer act of writing itself. Until the job market picks up, or hangs out a permanent “Gone Fishing” sign, I make my coin through freelance writing, which is a “feast or famine” business even in the best of times. Writing is like any other physical or mental muscle. If you don’t use it, you lose it.

Following a close second was the liberating thought that, for once in 27 years, I could write whatever the hell I wanted without having it vetted by one of the “Eight Types of Bad Creative Critics.” (A future blog article, for sure.)

Resurrecting a name and logo created for a previous freelance venture that went nowhere, the Bite Size Copy blog was born on November 20, 2009.

Although I devote more time thinking, researching and writing for Bite Size than I do for any paid project without getting one thin dime, it’s the most enjoyable gig I’ve ever had. I can only hope my readers get as much of a charge perusing it as I do writing it.

To mark the occasion of Bite Size’s first anniversary, I’ll be imbibing another cocktail, this one made up of two parts appreciation, one part gratitude, a dash of thankfulness and a twist of “ta!”

This one’s for you. Cheers!

Cat(calls) Got Your Tongue?

My Dad was one of eight kids born into a Depression-era family. His youngest brother, Charlie, contracted polio and although it stunted his growth and put him in leg braces for the rest of his life, he was luckier than most victims of that once-dreaded disease.

One day, when my Old Man came out of school and saw the local rich kid on his bicycle (an unheard of luxury in those hard times) trying to run down Charlie, he didn’t hesitate to haul the little bastard off his bike, throw him to the ground, and beat the tar out of him.

Later that evening, during the family meal, “Mrs. Rich” showed up at the Brady back door with her black and blue tyrant in tow demanding an apology. My Grandfather bellowed for my Dad and was ready to take the rod to him, until my Father quickly explained what caused him to deliver the earlier ass-whoopin.’ Without hesitation, my Grandfather grabbed the broom that was always just outside the back door and with it ran both mother and son down the driveway and off his property, swearing a blue streak along the way.

I bring up this bit of family lore because “bullying” is a word that’s recently grabbed national headlines. After several young people have committed suicide because of extreme hounding by their peers, both government and educational institutions have taken steps to stem the tide of what they call an epidemic of childhood abuse.

However, Manhattan’s City Council has decided that bullying ain’t just kid stuff anymore and is considering legislation that would make whistles, cat-calls or lewd come-ons illegal. Apparently, there’s a movement afoot in cities from New York to Cairo to make street harassment a crime. Spearheaded by women’s groups such as Hollaback, their stance is that this is gender-based violence that threatens public safety.

Here’s my stance: Since when have we, the decent members of society, forgotten how to say the words “fuck off”? Or, “You’re an asshole”? How about, “Why don’t you shut the hell up”? Here’s the beauty part – they can be texted, too!

Fact is, bullies aren’t only found in cafeterias or playgrounds, but on street corners, corporate hallways and global corridors of power. You can’t make them back down through legislation, nor can you depend on law enforcement to be there when the baiting takes place.

Not everyone has the physical strength or Irish temper to put a bully in his rightful place which, by the way, is splayed out on the pavement, but administering a loud, angry tongue-lashing is a damned good start.

The Master's Voice

Days before it was published this past Tuesday, Keith Richards’ autobiography, “Life,” topped every book category on amazon.com.

Having contributed my fair share to the Stones’ concert/record/merch coffers over the years and getting diminishing returns on my investment (quick, name the last Stones album that wasn’t a reissue or live disc), I’ve opted to wait until the book hits my library shelves instead of shelling out the publishing price.

Besides, a little googling is all it took to read some of the more semi-salacious (Jagger’s dagger is more like a penknife) and not-so-shocking (the Glimmer Twins are far from joined at the hip) revelations. One nugget I did find surprising is that Richards was a member of his school’s choir. As if the mental image of rock’s “bad boy” as a white-robed cherub singing “Jerusalem” wasn’t bizarre enough, Richards says he signed up because he had “a soprano that worked.”

I once heard it said that if a Marlboro could talk, it would sound like Keith. I have no doubt that pre-nicotine/drugs/booze/formaldehyde he had some sweet pipes, but I’m just as glad all that high livin’ vaporized them. After all, what would such Stones classics as “Happy,” “Before They Make Me Run” and “A Little T&A” be without that voice.

In writing as in music, it’s the voice that separates the masters from the mere technicians. One of my favorite Hunter S. Thompson anecdotes appears in the biography, “Gonzo.” After giving a rambling, coke-fueled speech at “Rolling Stone” magazine’s 25th anniversary party, Thompson was found by the “RS” editorial assistant who was charged with being his keeper “…talking alone with Keith Richards, which was absolutely amazing to hear. It sounded like two dogs barking at one another…”

No doubt The Good Doctor and Keef were also playing the same chord in their respective crafts – rockin’, rollin’ and rabidly debauched. In this same vein, I find it intriguing to pair up my favorite authors with their pitch-worthy counterparts in the music world. For instance, Gore Vidal is literature’s Bryan Ferry – elegant, erudite with a touch of the louche lounge lizard. David Sedaris is definitely in tune with Morrissey, turning the bleakness of family, relationships and, in Sedaris’ case, the holidays, into darkly humorous vignettes. And Marilynne Robinson strikes me as mid-career Joni Mitchell, using inward, impressionistic imagery to mine the spiritual lives of her characters.

Whether or not you appreciate their language or lyrics, there’s no mistaking the intonation of these unique “voices” for lesser artists. And that, my friends, is what true artistry is all about.

Get a Clue

Like caffeine and alcohol, crossword puzzles have become the latest “Jekyll and Hyde” of the medical community. One day, they’re enthusiastically prescribed for improving brain function, the next they’re disparaged as nothing more than mindless entertainment.

Okay, so when my brain practically explodes while attempting to solve Saturday’s notoriously sadistic stumper, on which side of the mental spectrum does that fall, other than going mental?

What’s really pathetic is my once-a-week cerebral meltdown isn’t even caused by the gold standard of daily puzzle publications, “The New York Times,” but a lesser daily paper. Back in the 1920’s, when crosswords first became all the rage in the States, it’s ironic that the “Times” not only refused to run them, but was at the forefront of condemning crosswords as a "sinful waste in the utterly futile finding of words the letters of which will fit into a prearranged pattern, more or less complex.” "The Times" finally gave in and published its first puzzle in 1942 and established the following weekly pattern: Monday and Tuesday (easy-peasy), Wednesday, Thursday, Friday (ummm), and Saturday (arrrgghh!). Sunday‘s is a super-sized version of the Thursday crossword.

Non-puzzlers believe all you need to solve a crossword is a large vocabulary or a head full of trivia. Not true. The key to solving crosswords is in the clues, which have several subsets, such as the straight or quick (C: Queen ______ Boleyn, A: Anne), themes (category, quote, pun, rebus, commemorative) and the sometimes head-scratching indirect (C: Pay addition, A: OLA).

But for sheer pencil-breaking frustration, nothing beats the cryptic crosswords published throughout Great Britain, where the clues are puzzles in themselves. These also have different degrees of difficulty, ranging from maddening to mayhem.

An example of cryptic’s easiest clue, also called “straight," would be:

C: To bring worker into the country may prove significant

A: Important

“Why" you ask? Because “import" means to bring in, the worker is an “ant," and “significant" means “important."

Cake walk, right?

Here’s another example, called the “homophone":

C: A few, we hear, add up

A: Sum

Are you ready for this? The definition is “add up." You, the sorry-assed solver, must deduce that “we hear" is a homophone, so a homophone of “a few" (“SOME") is the answer.

I think anyone who does these cryptics in pen is a crackpot and should be committed to C:______Hospital, A: Bellevue.

Sometimes it’s not the clue but how the solver reads it. Asked what was the most difficult clue he ever featured in a crossword, current “New York Times" puzzle editor Will Shortz replied “Tower," which called for a three word answer.

When the puzzle’s answers were published, Shortz received an avalanche of angry letters and e-mails from stricken solvers who read the clue as “tower," as in “leaning _______ of Pisa" instead of “tow-er" (A: AAA).

Cross words indeed!

The Gang's All Here

I was taking a civil service exam several months ago when, turning the page of the test booklet, I was confronted with a table featuring numbers, blank spaces and the dreaded, lower case v and y.

Dropping my No. 2 pencil in disgust, I thought, “Algebra, this is no place for you!”

Those “of a certain age” will remember that line from the one, the only “Little Rascals” TV show or, as they were originally called in the theatrical one-and two-reelers produced from the early 1920s to the mid 1940s, “Our Gang.”

Dub the pint-sized posse of Spanky, Alfalfa, Darla, Buckwheat, Farina, Stymie, Chubby, Wheezer, Scotty, Butch, Woim, Pete the Pup, Dinah the Mule (aka the above referenced “Algebra”) and too many others to mention what you will. I’ll just call them hilarious and some of the most quotable characters ever to hit the large and then small screen.

The antic appeal of the “Rascals” is thanks to producer Hal Roach, who was turned off by child actors groomed to be “mini adults” and wanted the most down-to-earth squirts he could find to portray a gang of poor neighborhood kids. Since they were too young to read, the director would explain the scene and let them go at it, so who knows if the bon mots the kids mouthed were their own or dreamed up by Roach’s comedy writers.

Over time, some of the lines became code in my family for situations both comic and calamitous:

“Don’t drink the milk. It’s spoiled.” (Mom’s dinner stinks.)

“Yum, yum, eat ‘em up!” (Mom’s dinner is pretty good.)

“Well, well, well. Jack fell in the well.” (Na! Na! You got yours!)

“I have to stay home and grease Wheezer.” (I’m stuck doing chores.)

“Learn that poem. Learn that poem.” (I’m stuck doing homework.)

“And you’ll make hundreds of thousands of dollars.” (Oh sure, that scheme will pay off.)

“John Brown. Ask me again, and I’ll knock you down.” (Listen the first time, ya putz.)

“We want the Flory Dorys!” (Bring on the entertainment!)

And let’s not forget such random words as “Chubsy Ubsy” (fat kid), “wee-wah” (sucker) and “remarkable!” (uttered either sincerely or sarcastically).

There’s another reason I’ll always revere the “Rascals.” For a kid growing up in a white bread and mayonnaise suburb where bigotry was always just below the surface (and sometimes right in plain sight), the spectacle of these multi-ethnic mischief makers getting along while getting in trouble was a real eye-opener. Hey, they even played with girls like me! (Except, of course, for the members of “The He-Man Woman Haters’ Club.")

In later years, the series came under fire for its supposedly racist overtones, but cast members such as Matthew “Stymie” Beard and Allen “Farina” Hoskins put that viewpoint to rest, arguing that all the performers played “a type.” “We were just a group of kids who were having fun,” Beard said.

Finally, let’s put another scurrilous belief to rest. Contrary to a widely-circulated rumor, comedian Bill Cosby did not buy up the rights to the “Rascals” to keep racial stereotypes off television. Even though they’re scattered to the four winds like the gang after another fine fiasco, some episodes are available on DVD and others turn up on Turner Classic Movies.

O-tay? O-tay!

The Smoking Gun

Whenever my former boss wanted to find out the real story behind some particularly juicy piece of office scuttlebutt, he’d call me into his office and say, “Hey kiddo, go outside and have a cigarette.”

The “fearless leader” wasn’t trying to kill me by small degrees. He simply knew that corporate hierarchy had no place among nicotine fiends. From lowly customer service reps to highly-placed VPs, we were all branded as pariah and it was this bond that allowed the gossip to flow as freely as the smoke.

One of the more interesting folks who shared my addiction to the demon weed was a lawyer named Cat, who threw your image of the buttoned-down, buttoned-lipped attorney right out of court. Always smiling, always chatty, Cat could talk about any subject under the sun, but I remember a particularly striking conversation we had when I mentioned a “Vanity Fair” article I’d read about female war correspondents. Turns out her older sister, Marie Colvin, was one of the women profiled in the article.

A hometown girl born and raised in Oyster Bay, Colvin is a lauded reporter for the “Sunday Times of London” who has hidden in the hills with Chechen rebels, dodged Serb sniper fire in Sarajevo and lost her left eye covering the civil war in Sri Lanka. “Was I stupid?” she has written. “Stupid I would feel writing a column about the dinner party I went to last night.”

Colvin has been popping up in my memory bank of late now that journalism has become a most deadly profession. Last year alone, 110 journalists and media staff were killed, a disturbing 40% increase over 2008. This year looks like it’s on track to meet or beat that number, with 52 journalists already killed from January through August.

Surprisingly, only three of those murdered in 2009 were war correspondents like Colvin. The rest were local journalists covering their own turf, most killed in retaliation for their work and not for getting caught in the crossfire. Among the most Fourth Estate unfriendly nations are Pakistan, Russia, Sri Lanka and, topping the list for 2009, the Phllippines, where 31 reporters were wiped out in a single massacre.

But in the drug cartel-riddled country of Mexico, journalism itself has become the victim. On September 19th, “El Diario de Juarez,” the largest newspaper in the country’s most violent city of Ciudad Juarez, ran a front page editorial directly addressing the warring factions: “We ask you to explain what you want from us, what we should try to publish or not publish, so we know what to expect.” After having two of his staff gunned down within two years, the paper’s editor told a reporter for the AP, "We don't want to continue to be used as cannon fodder in this war because we're tired." Since “El Diario” was one of the last media outlets in Mexico willing to cover the drug wars, the fact that they’re giving up rings the death knell for freedom of the press.

While newspapers scramble to shore up their free-falling circulations and debate whether or not to pay wall their sites, perhaps the larger problem they should be tackling is how to keep their global brethren safe while putting governments’ feet to the fire in the prosecution of these crimes.

Smoking out the story shouldn’t mean that the reporter gets smoked.

Unpunctual Punctuation

Sentence me to ten lashes with a wet exclamation point! September 24th was National Punctuation Day and I let it slip by without even pausing (like a comma) to mark the occasion.

How does one celebrate such a festive event? According to the “National Punctuation Day” web site, you start by getting up late, taking a long shower, going out for coffee and bagels then reading the paper and circling all the punctuation errors you find. Too late for me to do that, but I did take them up on one of their tips and had a leisurely stroll past my town’s storefronts, noting all the signs with incorrect punctuation. Here are two I found at a single fish shop:

“Todays Special: Buy 2lbs. Shrimp, Get 1lb. Free”

“Voted Best on Long Island by News 12 and The New York Times Thank You! Long Island”

They also recommend you stop in the store and correct the owner. Er, no. I’ve seen the guy who runs that shop and I’d rather not find myself sleeping with the fishes.

Frankly, once the age of texting and tweeting dawned, I gave up correcting people’s punctuation, or lack thereof. It’s too exhausting. If people want to pile up words like bricks, without the structural cement of periods, commas, colons and the like, I’m not going to waste my time helping them turn rubble into writing.

I do have one punctilious pet peeve and that’s the overuse of exclamation points and question marks. Exclamation points are like cayenne pepper and should be used not only sparingly but one pinch at a time. It’s “Congratulations!” never “Congratulations!!!!!” The same restraint holds true for question marks. Typing several of these symbols doesn’t make you appear more excited or quizzical, just a hot mess.

For those of you who think the subject of punctuation is as dry as day-old toast, the book “Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation” should change your mind. Written by Lynn Truss, an English author whose style is ruthlessly funny, this tome became a surprising sensation in the publishing world, spending weeks on bestseller lists. In fact, the title itself is based on a cheeky story about bad punctuation:

A panda walks into a cafe, orders a sandwich, eats it, then pulls out a gun and unloads it on the other patrons. When the horrified owner asks “Why?” as the panda heads towards the exit, he tosses a badly written wildlife brochure over his shoulder. It reads, “Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.”

Ta da!

Next year, I won’t be so remiss and plan to whoop it up on “National Punctuation Day” by wearing something dashing, scheduling a colonoscopy, hanging a pair of wall brackets, watching a lunar ellipsis then falling into a deep comma. Period.

Shooting Down Safety

Two years ago when my first great nephew was born, my sister (his Grammy) told me about the rigamarole my niece and her husband went through to get their little bundle out of the hospital, including an inspection of the child safety seat. I laughed and drew her a verbal picture of what went down in our parents’ day. After forking over 150 bucks to the cashier (babies were cheaper by the pound then), my Dad slid into the driver’s seat of our seatbelt-less station wagon, my Mom took the passenger side (aka “The Death Seat”), cradling us in one arm like a potential human projectile while sporting a lit cigarette in her free hand. I imagine the words “I could really use a highball” were uttered more than once.

This came to mind when I ran across the latest Toyota ad in the current issue of “Vanity Fair.” Featuring a picture of a fresh-faced young mother holding her chubby toddler son, the headline reads, “Everyone deserves to be safe.”

Putting aside the irony of the recall-riddled Toyota running such malarkey, it strikes me that “safe” is beginning to rank right up there with “green” as the feel good words of our age. But the more I looked at the ad, the more I realized it was the word “safe” coupled with “deserve” that, perversely, was causing my unease.

As the vignette about my first homecoming demonstrates, we used to do a lot of things that are now considered not only unsafe but illegal. From tearing around town on our Stingrays without bike helmets to hanging around the local saloon when our Dads felt the need for a beer, childhood’s past were, statistically, more fraught with pitfalls than today but, in my unscientific opinion, not nearly as much fun. In fact, it seems that the pendulum has swung so far to over-protection that immunologists are raising the alarm that children haven’t been exposed to enough of the run-of-the-mill germs that will build up their immune systems.

My musings about the high price we pay for being safe were brought into sharp relief by a non-fiction book entitled “War” that I finished reading a few days ago. Written by Sebastian Junger, author of “A Perfect Storm,” it chronicles the fifteen months he spent with a platoon stationed in a remote outpost in Afghanistan, the most combat-heavy spot in the whole country. If you’ve ever wondered why young American men would deliberately live in a God-forsaken shithole with no running water, no electricity, no cooked food and, worst of all, no women, while putting their asses directly in the line of fire, this book has the answers, and some you may not care to hear. This edited excerpt is one that really jumped out at me:

“War is a lot of things and it’s useless to pretend that exciting isn’t one of them. It’s insanely exciting. The machinery of war and the sound it makes and the urgency of its use and the consequences of almost everything about it are the most exciting things anyone engaged in war will ever know. War is supposed to feel bad because undeniably bad things happen in it, but for a nineteen-year-old at the working end of a .50 cal during a firefight that everyone comes out of okay, war is life multiplied by some number that no one has ever heard of. In some ways twenty minutes of combat is more life than you could scrape together in a lifetime of doing something else.”

And that includes being safe, whether it’s deserved or not.

Sacred Cowed

The town I live in has a tourist trap on the water known as “The Nautical Mile.” Among its bars, restaurants, souvenir shops and mini golf course, there’s a large gambling boat that cruises out to international waters so players can stuff their faces at the buffet table and lose their shirts at the craps table.

I was walking past it on a recent Sunday morning when I caught the unmistakable aroma of bacon and eggs wafting from its interior. Much like Proust’s madeleines, this sensory stimulus transported me back to the Sunday mornings of my youth, when 7am mass was followed by a trip to the bakery for a dozen Kaiser rolls and then home, where my Protestant-raised mother would be frying up heaping helpings of pork fat and cholesterol for us to feast on.

It’s the only really good memory I have of my Catholic-centric childhood. Not only was Sunday mass compulsory, I endured twelve years of parochial school education. Some people believe private schools are superior to public schools and I think, for the most part, they’re right. God knows the nuns ruled with an iron crucifix, keeping perfect order in classes that ranged in size from 40 to 50 kids. The lay teachers were no slackers, either, but along with the three R’s came the fourth, religion. Honestly, how many times can you discuss the Sermon on the Mount or the Beatitudes before you go mad? By the time I hit high school, I wanted to raise my hand and say, “I get it. I got it. I’m gone.” One day I did go, skipping out on mass at the age of 14, and never looked back.

In the intervening years, I’ve taken a very hard line about keeping The Church and The State at opposite ends of the dancehall. This being America, you think that would be understood, but with the rise, once again, of the Far Right and their never-ending nattering about “Christian values,” it seems that God and Uncle Sam are tangoing ever closer to a very unholy union.

One hallowed word that keeps popping up in two hotly contested political debates is “sacred.”

The opponents of gay marriage refer to the union between a man and woman as “sacred” and prohibited to couples of the same sex. The last time I looked, city hall was not a cathedral, synagogue or mosque. If a marriage ceremony is performed in one of these pious places it is, in fact, sacred. But a marriage license issued by the state is nothing more nor less than a legal contract. If it weren’t, we wouldn’t need lawyers to dissolve it. Since there’s no danger of hierophants from the three major religions condoning, no less performing, gay marriages anytime soon, the “anti” camp needs to come up with another word to make their case unless, of course, they want to equate a fishing license with a papal edict.

The other controversy that depends almightily on the word “sacred” is the building of a mosque a few blocks from Ground Zero. The opponents of this Islamic house of worship refer to the site of the former World Trade Center as “sacred ground” and make the argument that erecting a mosque so close to where thousands of innocents were slaughtered by a pack of Muslim mad dogs would desecrate their memory.

I think we’re all missing the bigger picture. If Ground Zero is “sacred” (and I believe it is), then why did we condone the building of a corporate skyscraper on top of what is – essentially, horribly – a crematorium? What’s next, a W Hotel on the grounds of Auschwitz? A KFC next to the graves at Arlington?

Condemning a group of moderate Muslims for wanting to build a mosque while a Monument to Mammon slowly takes shape over the remains of the sacrificed is like pointing out the speck in your brother’s eye while ignoring the steel I-beam in your own.

It makes a mosque seem not just sacred, but downright small potatoes.