Author: ssw15

Statue of Liberty re-opens… (see YC’s Tues. post below).

The post office across the street from World Trade Center finally re-opens (it has been 9/11/01 since the closure/damages).

Bob Murphy, longtime voice of the NY Mets, passed away. Amusing yet poignant note: I listened to parts of the Mets v. Milwaukee Brewers on the radio, wherein the current voices, Gary Cohen and Howie Rose, reminisced about Murph moments. They then realized that every time they relayed on the air a Murph memory, the Mets made hits – and Cohen and Rose wonder if Bob Murphy was lending a hand from up in heaven. Either way, they were impressed that the Mets were playing well. So, the Mets ended today’s game on a happy note: 12-3 victory. A “happy recap” (as Murphy would say) will be in the newspaper or tv or radio. Mets fans need a little cheer, even in these times.

Bill Clinton’s appearance on Letterman’s show was a good watch (I didn’t even realize that he’d be on; I was just channel-changing and there he was. Promoting Kerry and Hilary? Geez, Bill Clinton).

An interesting story on Slate.com about the Citigroup building.

Plus, on a non-related (yet still about Citigroup) note, Slate.com’s latest “Ad Report” grades the latest Citigroup ads. Seth Stevenson notes that these ads, wherein people make huge errors (one woman mistakes her friend’s weight for a pregnancy; a man tries to duck out of his girlfriend’s request to discuss marriage) and then confuse their friends/significant others by just saying, “Thank you” out of nowhere. As Stevenson puts it: “‘Thank you!’ blurts the first woman, in a total non sequitur. Magically, the insult is forgotten. Says the announcer, ‘It’s amazing what a simple “thank you” can do.'” Apparently, the ads are Citigroup’s attempt to get people to join in some bonus points program.

Stevenson gives Citigroup credit for being “honest”; he says, “Maybe Citi thinks they can win our respect with a no-nonsense take on the situation: They’re going to treat us badly—and we know it—so why not at least get some tchotchkes out of the deal?” He gives the ads a D+ because he really doesn’t like it when the big corps rub it in.

Personally, I thought the dumb boyfriend ad was funny (his suddenly saying “thank you” actually thrills his girlfriend; apparently, he lacked good manners, forget the capacity to commit – methinks that relationship will either end soon or else continue in limbo). The ad where the woman bursts into “thanks” after mistakenly thinking her friend was pregnant – that was just plain stupid; it wasn’t entertaining but embarrassing. Where did Citigroup come up with that one?

So it goes…

It’s not a good feeling when you wake up in the morning, thinking, “Oh, I’ll just sleep in; it’s Sunday,” and then – thwack – uh, no, it’s Monday; you have to get to work. Ugh…

More police officers in downtown Manhattan. This is the new normal, I guess.

In a previous post, I referred to this NY Times’ Travel article profiling NYC for the tourists and recommending that people do the Staten Island Yankees since it’s extremely hard to do the Brooklyn Cyclones. It occurred to me that part of the reason why the Cyclones have been tremendously popular as they have been is because of that baseball legacy in Brooklyn, the one cursed (or blessed) upon us by the Dodgers.

But, the real question is, has the Cyclones been that great for Brooklyn, or more particularly, Coney Island? NY Times’ Lydia Polgreen explores the answers (if any) to the question. Apparently, people would come, maybe buy a hotdog at Nathan’s next door, but ultimately leave. They’re not staying to really revitalize the neighborhood. And, all plans to rebuild anything remain plans. The subway terminal is almost done, but the people driving in aren’t going to stick around. Troubling. We can be optimistic, but it’s troubling to me.

NY Times’ James Barron tries out a fascinating experiment: Send a piece of mail to Leonard Bernstein Place (aka West 65th Street) and will it get there? Barron reports that the US Postal Service “says it recognizes the city’s alternate street names, just as it recognizes streets that New Yorkers still call by their older, snappier names, like Sixth Avenue, which became Avenue of the Americas in 1945” and the findings are that the Postal Service sort of does it. Kind of:

To add the slightest trace of scientific methodology to the experiment, letters with the conventional street addresses were mailed at the same time. So two letters went to each addressee. All the letters were mailed from Midtown Manhattan at the same time, on a weekday afternoon. Of the ones that reached their destinations, most arrived two days later.

All the recipients received the letters with conventional addresses. But of the letters with the alternate street names, 4 of the 10 did not reach their destinations.

The Postal Service returned two addressed to people on Josh Rosenthal Way (72nd Street between Columbus Avenue and Central Park West). It marked one “Returned for Better Address.” On the other, it put a yellow sticker with R.T.S. in big letters and, for those who do not know their postal abbreviations, “return to sender” in small letters. Of three options on the sticker, one was checked: “Not deliverable as addressed – unable to forward.”

Nor did the Postal Service deliver letters to people on David Ben-Gurion Place (East 43rd Street between Vanderbilt and Madison Avenues) or Joe Horvath Street (West 52nd Street between 10th and 11th Avenues)…

But letters went through to addressees on Alvin Ailey Place (West 61st Street between West End and Amsterdam Avenues), Leonard Bernstein Place (West 65th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue, beside Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center), Isaac Bashevis Singer Boulevard (West 86th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue) and Edgar Allan Poe Street (West 84th Street between Broadway and Riverside Drive). Nevermind that the envelope misspelled Poe’s middle name with a tell-tale ‘E’ in place of the second ‘A.’

Plus, a very interesting article on what it means to be Japanese-American, when the children of the nissei (second generation) are now sansei (third generation) yonsei (fourth) and gosei (fifth)? One becomes more identified as American, culturally at least, considering the drive for assimilation during the years after World War II; and has to recognize the need for instilling cultural education of the hapas (because, if you don’t count the hapas, the idea of “Japanese-American” gets harder to count).

So glad to have finally gotten “Entertainment Weekly” today. EW thought well of “Harold and Kumar” as it transcends stereotypes while still doing the pothead thing. EW also rated the dvd release of the 1st season of… Knight Rider. (oh, geez, there goes the flashbacks of watching mucho Knight Rider and each instance of KITT driving at faster speeds to rescue the day). But, EW was behind on the news on James Bond – so I understood it, Eric Bana is the new Bond (or really close to it). Personally, I still liked Clive Owen, but at least he can go do other projects. Eric Bana is not as chiseled looking, or as famous (“Troy,” “Hulk”), so I guess the folks behind Bond thought that made him a great pick. Plus, a very cute EW interview with Anderson Cooper (EW happily notes that he’s a Celebrity Jeopardy winner who ought to go up against perpetual Jeopardy winner Ken Jennings). Ah…

This past week’s “Doonesbury” and today’s edition (wherein B.D. continues his recovery (if there’s such a thing as “recovery”) in losing his leg) – has been great stuff. B.D.’s young daughter doesn’t quite understand what happened to her dad, the leg and helmet gone. Even B.D. wonders – geez, what did happen to the helmet? 😉

(my previous comments on the B.D. storyline)

I do think that Garry Trudeau has done a nice job showing how B.D.’s progress – or the fact that B.D. is still just trying to deal with it – like today’s instance, where the occupational therapist is running B.D. through a model kitchen to get used to living life again.

Therapist asks: “For example, what if your wife asks you to remove the trash can from under the counter? What’s your strategy?”

B.D.: “I say, ‘You do it. I lost a leg in Iraq.'”

Deadpanned Therapist: “No, I mean bio-mechanically.”

Ok, B.D. needs a little work here. But, he’ll get there.

I don’t like what’s happening to the “Annie” comic strip – and this has been going on the past four years now. Annie back in her 1970’s to 1990’s incarnation under comic strip artist Leonard Starr was fascinating. Starr didn’t have the libertarian/conservative/nationalist bent that Annie’s original creator Harold Gray had, but Starr knew how to craft characters and stories. Annie would wander the country trying to look for Daddy Warbucks; Warbucks would be obviously missing his daughter, but was caught up in protecting her or dealing with his multi-billion company; their poignancy was strikingly apparent.

During the final years of Starr’s work, Annie was trying to catch up on her education and recognizing that her dad has some seriously unresolved love affairs (Angela, who had her naternal feelings for Annie but had to get over her abusive husband, and that Russian spy, who saved Warbucks’ life from hypothermia using her… um… body warmth); Punjab, Warbucks’ sidekick/bodyguard/wise man, was passing the duties to his teenager nephew, Punjee – who was dealing with the burden of those duties (which meant sacrificing a love interest and a mainstream life); and even the Asp, the other bodyguard/wise man, had to deal with the fact that his niece, Stella Han, was a serious villain (putting aside that Han was the stereotyped Asian Dragon Woman, who was hardly attractive and had issues about her uncle). Stuff like that.

The new cartoonists (or at least the writer, a Daily News writer who has new cartoonists working with him every year) aren’t quite as good. Annie hasn’t been her vibrant self in so long – it’s this fake version of her (Annie was a tough but not stupid kid; these days, she’s just… I just don’t get it). Warbucks has been reduced to being a seriously absent dad who’s only goal is to serve the War Against Terrorism. In fact, the writers of the comic strip’s current incarnation are back in the political commentary mode (I mean, please, spare me the not-very-veiled political stance about the terrorism problems; villains say their lines like “We will not be able to hurt the Americans, no thanks to Warbucks. Curses!”). And, while it’s nice that Annie now has an ethnic female role model/guardian, Amelia Santiago (a Cuban-American pilot), I do miss Punjee and other characters. If the Asp and Punjab make any appearances these days, they’re Noble Minority Characters/Warriors, Serving The War Against Terrorism. There’s no mention of recurring characters like Huff, Warbucks’ gruff lookalike bodyguard, who was a softy to Annie underneath his gruff demeanor; Ezra Eon, the genius professor who still talked like a hick; Dermot, the cute young man (who Annie may or may not have had a crush on) who was too busy with the computer programming stuff to get a love life; etc. The absolute crime for a comic strip is to have average or even bad writing. The guys behind the current Annie should actually go back and read the past 20 years of Annie and figure it out. (and one of these days, I’ll write to the Daily News and tell them to do so). “Annie” is missing the richness she used to have.

I’ll stop now. Enjoy the work week.