714 Rosebud & Book Look

714 Rosebud & Book Look

Here's to Rosebud Butts. Who? Just one of the greatest inventors of the 20th century and an unsung and often unknown hero to millions, a guy who could have gotten a patent but didn't. Robert Rosebud Butts invented Long Island Iced Tea in 1976 at the Oak Beach Inn, a thorn in the side of many a neighbor and a gathering spot -- later several gathering spots -- for Long Islanders who couldn't or didn't or wouldn't make it to the Hamptons.

Long Island Iced Tea is a worldwide phenomenon, now more than 30 years after its invention, which may have been an accident. 1976, it was. The drink has vodka, rum, tequila, gin, a little cola and a lemon. There are variations, of course. But it's a powerhouse which when poured into a tall glass looks like iced tea. Goes down like a coke, kicks like an NFL player.

But like so much else these days, it is deteriorating. People put all kinds of junk in it. Bitters in Britain, sour mix in New Zealand. It's the kind of thing you think of when you look at your liquor cabinet and realize that every bottle is down to the end. What to do? Throw it all in together and see what happens. After two of them, no one cares anyway. Except where they replace the tequila with peach schnapps. Yech!

The OBI is gone now, paved to make a highway, to the relief of area people who didn't want a road but wanted the OBI less. Rosebud's gone, too.

In its purest form, it is the most significant Long Island agricultural product since the potato.


Book Look

What Hath Bush Wrought? John Wydra (Infinity Publishing)

Friend and former colleague John Wydra is one of those guys with a basso that fills a room and is the envy of us mere baritones in radio. Unfortunately, when we get to meet some guys who sound like that, they often to turn out more Ted Baxter than Ed Murrow. Not this time. An actual working brain pilots John's solid And sound knowledge of what's right and what's wrong. And a respect for facts. The book, published in 2009, came across the desk recently and the first reaction was "can't we get over Bush?" After reading it, the only possible answer is "No, we can't and we shouldn't." Why? Maybe in knowing about what the guy did will prevent us from a repeat performance by someone else.

Wydra wrote this thing as if it were an ongoing news story and that's what it is. In it you will find a huge, well indexed, well attributed and sourced collection of the combination Three Stooges-Dracula administration we labored through for eight years. Every known mis or mal deed we know of is here.

Iraq, the war on terror, the cover-ups, the corruption in great detail. Of particular interest was what went on and didn't go on during with the various financial, consumer and environmental watchdogs, which in large part explains where America is these days. There's a bit about Bush's relationship to the Enron scandal. There's Katrina. And there's a long chapter giving historical perspective. You'll find more than you want to know written in a serious grown up manner by a serious grownup.

Amazon has it. So does the publisher. You can get a preview on John's Website which well worth checking out for a "wyde" ranging look at the world around us.

Richards Readometer Rating: 1. No question (But it's already a paperback.)
===Readometer Key:
1 - Buy it.
2 - Wait for the paperback.
3 - Take it out of the Library.
4. Flip through it at the book store.
5. Forget it.

Shrapnel:

--There's rarely anything good to say about Big Pharma, but here's a one-time exception for Bristol-Myers Squibb. They've come up with a drug (ipilimumbab) that fights tumors and apparently can dramatically increase the survival rate for people with melanoma, which kills 50-thousand people worldwide each year. It's on fast track approval testing at the FDA and may be available by December, 2010.

--Antioch University is like the weather in Taiwan and in central Pennsylvania -- if you don't like it, hang in there, it'll change in a short time. The school has renamed its adult distance learning school "Antioch Midwest," according to new president Michael Fishbein. This is the fifth name change since the division's founding in the 1970s.

I'm Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you're welcome to them.®

©WJR 2010