The Write Angle
Miscellaneous Musings on Myriad Things
Tuesday, November 12, 2024
Mr. Collins Mr. O'Brien, and Sacco and Vanzetti
Monday, November 11, 2024
Powerless
A major electrical problem that would take at least three to four days to remedy took twice as long. Courtesy of a generous neighbor of mine from across the way, who provided me with an extension cord and some power, I was able to hook up my computer and modem and maintain some semblance of a normal life while otherwise in the dark. I could at least do some work, post on Facebook, and Google all sorts of unimportant things. After one evening of this borrowed power, however, the electrician—if you can call him that—cut my cable wire by mistake. In fact, he cut three cable wires by mistake. The cable company said it could not be repaired until the electricity was restored.
I know that a whole lot of people have been without power for a whole lot longer than nine days after natural disasters and such. Still, this stubborn fact of life provided me with little solace as things were being ripped off the wall just outside my door and brick residue saturated the air and tenaciously clung to everything in its path. And then came the drilling of holes through the same brick wall—more noise and more dust. The so-called electrician could be heard alternately crying and laughing while doing the job.
I’ve noticed through the years that contractor types presume every adult male has at least a working knowledge of their trade and lingo. Other than it comes on when I plug things in, flick switches, and push certain buttons, I know next to nothing about electricity. Nevertheless, I said I understood things I really didn’t and, when asked, nobly assisted as a bona fide electrician's assistant. Trust me: This was the electrician from hell. I found empty beer cans in his wake.
Life lessons learned from being powerless: Foremost, I like electricity. Living in the Big Valley, on the Ponderosa, or in Walnut Grove really isn't all that it's cracked up to be. And when push comes to shove, I can take ice cold showers. Granted, had all of this transpired in January, it would have been more of a challenge. Most important of all—and a life lesson—don't run with the first name that comes up in a Google search of "electrician," even if it's an emergency and the company sends a body over within an hour. In this instance: a body in his own jalopy with fewer tools on him than in a kid's play set. First impressions were bad, I can tell you, and it went downhill from there.
Sunday, November 10, 2024
Yada…Yada…Yada…The No Learning Curve
Sometime during my youth in the colorful 1970s, a friend and I offered a running commentary on the classic black-and-white, must-see Popeye cartoons from the 1930s. “That couldn’t happen,” we would say and say again. In real life that is: Like Popeye confronting a raging bull with a spinach-powered punch, turning the menacing animal into a fully stocked, open-for-business meat market with Depression-era price markers. Those were the days, my friend, we thought they would never end—when hamburger meat was twelve cents a pound, geometry was race-neutral, and higher education was more Horse Feathers than horse manure. With all the conspiracy theories floating around—on the right and the left—I submit that running them through the Popeye calculation would be prudent before taking them to heart.
Moving right along to the It Could Happen Because It Did file: In every presidential election from 1984 to 2020, I cast my vote for either the Democrat nominee or the Republican nominee. This year, however, I couldn’t bring myself to pick the lesser of two evils—politically, not personally, speaking—because I couldn’t quite figure out who was who. So, I cast a write-in for a former presidential candidate—a decent, intelligent man whom I passed on in 2012.
Yada, yada, yada: Democracy was on the ballot this year. I had been told that ad nauseum by countless talking heads, including historian Michael Beschloss, whom I once held in high regard. But a couple of years ago, the guy warned us that the 2022 midterms could well be the last free elections we ever had. And, just last week, Beschloss speculated on MSNBC that Trump 2.0 might spell the end of independent publishing as we know it. A prerequisite for being a contributor to that network is making ludicrous and sensational prognostications, I guess. After all, host Rachel Maddow suggested that she—very possibly—was destined for an internment camp if You Know Who beat Democracy’s Defender.
So, let me get this straight, I only had one choice vis-à-vis saving democracy and that was to vote for a woman who never competed in a primary or caucus this year, renounced most of her past positions on issues, and made Sarah Palin appear like a nimble-on-her-feet, spellbinding orator. Granted, I know she ran a “flawless campaign” and wisely spent the billion dollars raised on her behalf. But in the good old days, I faithfully watched Hardball with Chris Matthews. Chris would begin each show with the call: “Let’s play hardball!” Kamala Harris’s chief problem was she hadn’t mastered softball, let alone hardball.
Columnist Jonah Goldberg wrote this week: “Don’t outsource your intellect, your principles, or conscience to one man or party. When you do that, you are making your partisan identity your actual identity.” Truer words have never been spoken in 2024. It’s sad that there are so many people willing to jettison relationships—family, friends, et al—based solely on politics. As a window into our collective spleens, I give you exhibit A: Facebook. The social media platform has been a veritable killing field these past few months. I’ve witnessed demagoguery, sanctimonious elitism, and outright nastiness end relationships—some flimsy Facebook friendships, yes, but other more longstanding ones, I suspect. Worth it?
That said: I can fully appreciate why someone voted for Kamala for one reason and one reason only: She wasn’t Donald Trump. I contemplated that path myself. The latter, after all, would not have conceded the election had he lost fair and square like he did in 2020. Likewise, I can understand a vote for Trump that was—foremost—a repudiation of all that Kamala stood for—or did four years ago. Defund the police and other such nonsense. She also stood by her man. And I don’t mean the slap-happy one. I’m speaking of the addled geriatric and his policy trail, which included a porous border, runaway inflation, and a help-yourself-to-whatever-you-want retail crime wave. Sorry, but I blame the blameworthy for the mess we are in.
I fear, though, that the preponderance of the Democratic ruling and pundit classes are incapable of learning—just like Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer. They have already doubled down on the reasons they believe the party suffered a shellacking at the hands of an undisciplined, aged headbanger with more baggage than a bag lady’s purloined shopping cart. Let’s blame it on racism, sexism, and the folly of the uneducated. Yawn! And let’s sit around our cable TV roundtables and yell, literally cry, and whine to one another about the stupid, bigoted, uninformed voters more concerned about the off-the charts prices of eggs, bread, and butter than respecting a person’s chosen pronouns.
An aside here that underscores the moment: Whoopi
Goldberg—no relation to Jonah—makes a reported $8 million a year and has a net
worth of $60 million. On her show, The View, this week, she said:
“Your pocketbook is bad, not because the Bidens did anything. Not because the
economy is bad. Your grocery bills are what they are because the folks that own
the groceries are pigs.” Thank you, economist Whoopi! And what with the "Bidens" plural? Can we compare salaries
and net worth now: Whoopi versus the grocery store owners?
What will tomorrow bring? A bull in a China shop, perhaps? God only knows. I pray, though, that the normies are rewarded in the coming years and the crazies are sidelined. I’m not holding my breath on that one, but democracy will survive, come hell or high water, because of our Constitution and checks and balances. They are stronger than any one person—or president. And Rachel Maddow won’t land in any gruel-for-supper camp; Michael Beschloss will publish his next book without any interference; and the cast of The View will continue to say ignorant and moronic things. It’s the American way. Let freedom ring!
Wednesday, October 30, 2024
Deathman, Do Not Follow Me
Tuesday, October 22, 2024
The "Usually" Suspects
(Photo from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)
Sunday, October 20, 2024
Mr. McMahon and Friends
Recently, I watched the six-part Netflix documentary Mr. McMahon. It was at once compelling and something of a slog. Add to the mix a cringeworthy element, a grossness, and— undeniably —there’s a story to tell here. My recollection of Vince McMahon, the documentary’s subject, was as a wrestling announcer in the 1970s, when—as kids—my older brother and I dutifully watched the sport on local TV station WOR, Channel 9.
McMahon excelled as a put-upon presence and straight-man
foil for a colorful cast of bad guys: wrestlers and, in many instances,
their bombastic managers. Witnessing the man get harangued by “Classy” Fred
Blassie, Captain Lou Albano, and—my personal favorite—the Grand Wizard of
Wrestling was a youthful thrill. Typically, the proteges of Blassie, Albano, and
the Grand Wizard were “heels,” rotten to the core, and boo-worthy. Who
can forget Nikolai Volkoff, the Wild Samoans, and Sergeant Slaughter?
Indeed, 1970s wrestling was engagingly benign. The good guys included a stellar cast: champion Bruno Sammartino, Haystacks Calhoun, and Chief Jay Strongbow, who—I just discovered—was an Italian American. But then, so was Iron Eyes Cody, who canoed through polluted waters throughout the 1970s, logging many miles and shedding many tears along the way.
I recall being surprised—twenty or so years later—to
learn that Vince McMahon, the geek announcer from my boyhood, initially worked
for his father, purchased the World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWWF) from him,
and built—along with his wife—a mega-enterprise now known as World Wrestling
Entertainment (WWE). Adding his two cents throughout the documentary, McMahon absolutely
established the fact that he was a business wunderkind and all-around sleaze as
well. Also, the guy has had one too many face-lifts and sounds like he smokes
ten packs a day—or is it a whiskey voice? In his final appearance in the mini-series, the empresario
almost-seemed AI generated sporting a new Clark Gable mustache and dyed jet-black hair. The weirdness just kept on coming.
What amazed me most about the documentary, I think, was modern-day wrestling’s cult following and uber-popularity. WrestleMania has been big—really big—through the years. But it’s still scripted entertainment with a mishmash of realism thrown in, albeit of a more adult variety now than I experienced when Jerry Ford and Jimmy Carter lived in the White House. The contrived feuds—and real ones—are just not my cup of tea, but countless others can’t get enough of the brew.
Mr. McMahon,
the documentary title, is derivative of Mr. McMahon, the wrestler, a creation
of Vince McMahon, who entered the ring in the late 1990s. All bulked up by
then, he fought, among others, Donald Trump. The stakes: Loser
gets his head shaved by the winner. Guess who won the match? Upon seeing clips
of this nuttiness—par for the course in this milieu—it dawned on me that contemporary
politics has devolved into an offshoot of the WWE: vulgar, no holds barred, with
the blurring of fact versus fiction.
In this corner: Orange Crush, managed by Lindsey “Bats**t Crazy” Graham. And in that corner: Kamala, Queen of the Ciphers, managed by Chuck “the Schmuck” Schumer. Okay, now I understand. I get it. It’s not really real.
Tuesday, October 15, 2024
Mourning and Memories
In this culinary cathedral, my faithful dinner companions and I had nicknames for certain regulars—men and women whom we didn’t know by name but nonetheless needed to identify on occasion—and I suppose some of them had nicknames for us. And, if they did, more power to them! There was, for instance, the “Mean Old Man,” whom I saw collapse on a sidewalk not too far from the diner during a winter snowstorm. I don’t know what happened to him after that night, but I never saw him again in the diner, or walking the local streets. And whatever happened to those two old sisters who always dined together? At least I think they were sisters. The seasons changed but the pair never did. They were perpetually glum—winter, spring, summer, and fall. Thus, their richly earned “Glower Champions” moniker. When they suddenly vanished without so much as a goodbye, I surmised they had moved to Florida and warmer climes to run out the clock of their saturnine existence. Gone, yes, but not forgotten.
And then there was this fellow named Lenny. Here was an example of actually knowing the man’s real first name but running with a nickname instead. What always struck us about Lenny was that he never—ever—paid for his lunch or dinner. A little diner detective work on our parts concluded he had, perhaps, won a bet of some sort from the owner, who was not averse to gambling. This could at least explain the free meals. Apparently, though, there was nothing in the terms of the bet that compelled the diner owner to treat him civilly while he was collecting his winnings. And so, this middle-aged, hangdog bachelor named Lenny had to endure more than a little teasing. Asked about his love life at one point, Lenny, rather pathetically, said something to the effect that he was dating “several people,” which set himself up for a major slap down from the individual indebted to him, who roared, “You jerk-off!” And from that moment forward, Lenny was no longer Lenny to us, but “Jerk-off” forevermore. Eventually, Jerk-off, too, disappeared from the diner scene—perhaps when the terms of the bet were fulfilled—and was last seen in the area looking worse for wear. Jerk-off was obviously very ill and, it seemed, not long for this earth.
I remember, too, very old and very loud Mark, who had a most interesting indentation on his skull, which I christened a “skin-dentation." He very abruptly disappeared from sight and sound. The great greasy spoon in the sky? Probably. And then, of course, there was the ubiquitous Seymour, a taxi driver. He was diagnosed with lung cancer while at the top of his game on the diner stage. Trooper that he was, he continued to appear during his chemo treatments, looking—sadly—like his days were numbered, which they were.
Call it life...as seen through the lens of a favorite diner, where not everybody knows your name.
Monday, October 14, 2024
A Very First Time
It was about 10:30 a.m. when I landed in this subterranean “mezzanine,” a word I typically associate with sports stadiums. While I’ve walked these meandering thoroughfares before and encountered various closed doors along the way, they were invariably marked as “employee only” entrances for transit workers. But, lo and behold, this go-round I detected an apparent civilian—a fellow rider—exiting one of those doors, which prompted me to more closely examine the placard attached to it. The sign indicated he had emerged from a public bathroom—a rare find down under—that would, in all likelihood, be locked tight during the overnight hours.
While I had to go thanks to my breakfast cup of Joe, I really could have held it in for a bit. But then, I thought, where would I go when my time came—the Barnes & Noble at Union Square? No, certainly not yesterday—a Saturday on a Columbus Day weekend with Wall Street protesters in the area undoubtedly heeding nature’s call there. So, I decided to take my chances with this subway bathroom. While I don’t recall ever frequenting one—since most of them are padlocked shut, with reputations that, even when open for business, suggest looking elsewhere—I decided to live dangerously and take the plunge.
Happily, I was all by my lonesome when I entered this realm of the unknown and accomplished what I set out to do. Still, I must admit, the subway bathroom milieu didn’t disappoint. It reeked pretty badly and looked appropriately grungy—but it wasn’t completely hellish. And while the urinal readily flushed, it didn’t flush away any of the urine stench wafting in the rarefied air, which evidently was ingrained in the floor and wall tiles. But at least now I can say: Been there and done that…another New York experience for this New Yorker in the books.
Sunday, October 13, 2024
No Dogma in this Fight
Attention Surplus Disorders
Tuesday, September 17, 2024
The Man We Called Cream Donut
Monday, September 16, 2024
Ode to the Neighborhood Diner
I am fortunate to still have a snug and welcoming nook to go to when I feel a hankering for bacon, eggs over easy, and home fries for breakfast, or burgers and French fries for lunch. I rarely deviate from my usual when I get there because the usual is a big deal in the diner milieu. It's a comforting constant in a sea-changing world. But here's the real rub: It’s not really about the food, although I must admit that the truly bottomless cup of coffee—and a flavorful and aromatic one at that—is other-worldly.
This holy place that I speak of has been around for decades. The original two Greek giants still loom like Colossus over the dining space. And, yes, like a microcosm of life itself, the diner has had its ups and downs through the years. Its owners, too, have witnessed a mother lode of changes in the neighborhood and, naturally, their clientele as well. The men at grill's edge have watched countless customers grow old and battle all kinds of infirmities. They’ve seen tragedy befall a cross-section of their bread and butter without so much as fair warning. Not too long ago, the diner's alpha male said to me: “When I don’t see people for a while…I worry.” He didn’t see me for a while...and he worried. I fortuitously returned for another act. Others have not been so lucky. Indeed, a fair share of the restaurant’s regulars have quietly slipped away with the passage of time and gone to that Great Greasy Spoon in the Sky. You know the place with its lemon meringue clouds and celestial rivers of rice pudding and Jell-O....
But it's not only the diner’s never-ending story of ravenous patrons—looking for both food and ears to chew on—who are growing old. I had a full head of hair when I ordered my first hamburger there. Its proprietors, too, are not immune to the inexorable and remorseless sands of time. And when they exit center stage for good, this little diner in my hometown, with its old-style hospitality and unique urban ambiance, will sadly go with them. And we will never see their likes again....
Tuesday, August 27, 2024
The Stickball Boys of Summer...in Autumn
In this decidedly different age—simpler times, for sure—I included a “Saying of the Day” option on some of our primitively photocopied scorecards. "Sayings" ranged far and wide from a local pizza man named "George" to controversial and colorful Alabama Governor George Wallace. It seems that one member of our stickball entourage relished mimicking the latter’s distinctive southern drawl. A “Making of the President 1968” documentary, or some such program, aired on PBS at the time, because every single one of us knew where he was coming from when he impersonated Wallace shouting down an unkempt hippie heckler, imploring him to “Geeeeet a heeeeercut.” We were a unique and interesting brood of Bronx stickball players.
Courtesy of a pronounced rooftop clock and digital thermometer on the Exxon gas station just to the north of our playing field, both game-time temperatures—in Fahrenheit—and game durations were recorded for posterity as well. Let the record show that we played in temperatures ranging from forty-five to ninety-nine degrees. On one set of scorecards, I, for some reason, included “Hero” and “Goat” of the game blank spaces. Most of them were, in fact, left blank. Despite occasional unsolicited commentaries on the scorecards that were sometimes caustic and mocking, we generally opted not to underscore and offend individual games’ goats. While were a competitive lot, we had caring hearts, I suppose. And besides, we exchanged teammates from one game to the next. Sure, I scribbled at one point on a scorecard that “RC is a jerk,” and he responded in kind that I was meekly “sweating” under the pressure, but that was all in good fun.
Final season tallies found each and every one of us coming to the plate over one thousand times and pitching more than two hundred innings. Looking back, this heavy workload explains why I was often sore on Cardinal Spellman High School Monday mornings in springtime. There were no stickball spring training sessions for us. When winters turned into springs, we commenced to playing—up to the hilt and end of story.
Ah, but here we were all these years later, in the flesh, and having experienced lives after stickball—physical and emotional odysseys that have taken us a long, long way from the reassuring terra firma of a neighborhood high school with those crude home plate boxes on a graffiti-laden brick wall . Funny, but to a man, we recalled what was—very clearly as a matter a fact—but not so much the intricate details of the three decades that followed and that led us far afield of stickball in the Bronx. Why, exactly, I wanted to "assassinate" my longtime friend RC on a pleasant summer morning when Jimmy Carter was president, I've long since forgotten. I'd hazard a guess I really didn’t want to do that. And although stickball is now a relic of all our pasts—warm and fuzzy memories—we nonetheless continue to play ball with what we've got left in the autumn years.
(Photo from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)
Zach’s 1250
Sunday, August 11, 2024
The Waning Agog Factor
Thirty-seven years ago on this day, I was at once in Boston and agog. The adult impresario of this Bronx to Beantown adventure was a neighbor and friend named Richie. My brother Joe and I—two teenagers absent as-yet-invented iPads or flip video cameras—accompanied him to what then seemed like a very faraway and even exotic destination.
While we were out of town the “Son of Sam” was captured. A Boston Globe headline in a sidewalk newspaper machine alerted us that the fiend was in police custody. We were pleasantly surprised when we dropped a dime in the slot and the machine’s front door pulled open, permitting each of us to grab a paper. Evidently, man and boys alike had never purchased one from an inanimate object. I guess we thought it would be dispensed like a bottle of soda or a candy bar. Still, we felt like we were a long way from home when we read the details about this serial killer, a man who had been in our midst during that especially hot summer and the summer before.
We had seen the Red Sox at Fenway Park the night before and also peed in a communal urinal there, which was yet another first for us. I sat beside a gangly grandfather and his grandson, I surmised, because the latter called the former “Pops.” Pops was pretty old and, when nature called, had more than a little difficulty navigating the ballpark’s steep steps and cramped aisles. He was a dead ringer for Our Gang's Old Cap. The Red Sox beat the Angels 11-10 that night in a back and forth slugfest. The Globe deemed it one of the most exciting games ever played. Richie, however, noted how “dilapidated” the environs were, and obviously liked the sound of the word, branding countless Boston edifices and nearby locales with the same unflattering moniker.
Dilapidated or not, the three of us were generally agog throughout the trip, blissfully going about the business of exploring foreign terrain before anything called e-mail or Twitter existed. Joe had a hand-me-down, fold-up camera with him that took blurry pictures. Richie wore a strap around his neck attached to an over-sized instant camera during our sightseeing. His photos developed a bit on the green side, including shots at Harvard University and of the Charles River. No flash meant no pictures could be taken of the Green Monster by night. On our way home, we naturally couldn’t pass up America’s most historical rock in Plymouth. This rather pedestrian boulder had at some point cracked in two and been cemented together—not a particularly compelling visual and even less so in shades of instant-picture green.
There were no digital cameras or iPhones in existence, so thus no capacity to post our pictures on Facebook, which wasn’t around either. We were merely content with being agog as we climbed the Bunker Hill Monument and toured Old Ironsides. The dilapidated surroundings all around us actually astounded us. We called home from pay phones. In the present age of instant gratification, with all too many people engrossed in their Blackberries or some such technological device—and walking the streets like oblivious automatons—I fear that the Agog Factor just ain't what it used to be…can’t be what it used to be…and that’s really kind of sad.
(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)
Thursday, July 25, 2024
Who Took the Clown Pictures Down?
As a boy, I loved visiting this basement just up the street. It had a bar, too, on the premises, which was loaded with adult beverages and assorted bric-a-brac and memorabilia. The latter was of more interest to me. I recall the basement’s matriarch opening up a thirty-two-ounce aluminum can of Hi-C, pouring it into a sixty-four-ounce plastic pitcher, and filling the remainder up with tap water and a full tray of ice on top of that. I’d never before witnessed the watering down of a Hi-C drink, but it wasn’t half-bad. It was the power of the clown pictures, perhaps, that made everything in the basement look and taste good.
Indeed, nobody cared that the family cat slept on the dinner table and everywhere else for that matter. It was the basement after all. And the cat was yet another intriguing basement player. It was the only housecat without a name. The neighbors across the alleyway had a cat named “Sniffles.” Maybe “Cat” was actually the cat’s name. It remains a mystery to this day. Cat could often be spotted on a perch in the basement’s front window. One chilly afternoon an interior window in the basement was shut with Cat in between it and the exterior one. The family went on a frantic search throughout the neighborhood for Cat, when all the time he was resting comfortably on his favorite roost in the front window.
Like so many other things in life, the basement as I once knew it is no more. Cat is no longer roaming the place, nor are their clown pictures on its walls. The fashionable contact paper that was all the rage in the 1960s and 1970s, and that was supposed to resemble wood paneling, has, too, been stripped away. However, the memories linger.
There was a man named Lou who rented the basement resident’s garage. He used to thank basement son Richard—profusely as a matter of fact—for opening the garage for him when fate brought the two of them together. “Sank you, Reeechard!” he’d say both loudly and sincerely. He spoke with some sort of accent, which I enjoyed mimicking as a young teen. It was okay to do that kind of thing back then. In fact for a spell, I must have uttered, “Sank you, Reeechard!” a few hundred times. Then one day, I decided to put some words into Lou’s limited lexicon—ones I had never heard him utter.
“Reeechard, who took the clown pictures down?” I asked. And so, with Reechard’s blessing, we snapped a photograph of a clown picture being taken down—by the devil no less. But it was not in our youthful, living-in-the-moment brains to press the fast-forward button and contemplate that the clown pictures were not, in fact, eternal and would one day come down. Perhaps they’re hanging up in other people’s homes as I write these words. I'd like to think so. Maybe, though, they weren’t thought as worth saving and put out with the trash. Such is the duality of life and everything that we value.
(Photo from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)