1092 How the Marathon Got Cancelled
Phone: rrrrring.
Mike Bloomberg: Hello?
Voice on the phone: Michael, what's the matter with you with the marathon?
Mike: Who IS this?
Voice: It's your mother, Michael. What about the marathon, are you crazy? It’s Friday night. It’s after sunset. I should be in temple, not having to call you about this shanda, this circus.
MB: They have sunsets up there? They have temples?
Voice: Never mind, temples. You're going to have a parade when they're dragging bodies out of the ocean in Rockaway and Staten Island looks like the city dump?
MB: You aren't my mother. She would never talk to me that way.
V: Listen to me! You think it’s easy getting a phone connection to New York with this Sandy thing? Just listen, don’t talk. Get sensible. You can't have a parade with all those dead people piling up.
MB: Mom! Stop it. We have to have this marathon. It'll bring major money into the city and show that we're not going to knuckle under to this hurricane.
V: All you think about is money. Come on, son, cancel the stupid race.
People are risking their lives to help and save people. Pay attention. Live up to your potential!
MB: It will bring joy to the people.
V: It will make you look like an idiot and you're not an idiot. You will make the New York Marathon look like some event for big shots while people my age are stuck on the 15th floor somewhere and can’t get out to buy a quart of milk, a cup of coffee or an hour’s time in the laundromat if it’s even open. You want to be known as "The Mayor who was blind and deaf?" Kill the damned road race. Let the Garbage men and the firemen and the cops work on rescuing people. You want the EMS to stand by to treat some spandex floozie from Colorado who faints because the air down there is heavier than what she’s used to? Or do you want them to be able to get the Espinoza family out of the van they’ve been trapped in on the Cross Bronx Expressway for the last day and a half?
MB: But...
V: Never mind, “but.”
MB: (sighs) Okay, ma. I'll stop the race.
V: Thank you, Michael. You know I only want what's best for you.
Phone: click.
Shrapnel:
--Friday night last, NBC showed us and PBS and NPR and the Muscular Dystrophy Association how to hold a begathon by harnessing the might of its star-quality news men and women, a passel of rock stars and others in raising gazillions for the Red Cross and its efforts to help victims of Sandy. No volunteers sitting at phone banks. Instead, serious storm stories told and shown by Brian Williams, Matt Lauer and Ann Curry among others, interspersed with live performances by such as Sting, Mary J. Blige, Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi and Billy Joel... performances with “message” songs and pitches to contribute easily using cellphone texting services.
I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2012
Monday, November 05, 2012
Friday, November 02, 2012
1091 Sandy and the Elevator Man
1091 Sandy and the Elevator Man
Every once in awhile, it’s good for people from the Homefront, New York, to get a first hand lesson in rural life. It’s unfortunate that it often comes in tragic form as it did with a vengeance this time.
Fires, floods, plagues of who-knows-what-all. And worst of all, you can’t get from here to there, wherever here and there are in your world.
As of this writing, you in New York and New Jersey are living in small towns. Towns, where the electric company and the phone companies are clueless. Towns where the cowpath roads clog with cars and they flood. Towns where mass transit is an oxymoron. Scalping cabbies. Empty store shelves. Keystone Kops.
You will recover because you’re New Yorkers and New Jerseyans. Here, this kind of disruption is a way of life.
As Dianne Stanciel pointed out, Mitt Romney changed his mind about defunding FEMA after he saw what it can do, which, thus far, is nothing short of miraculous. He now will throw a few bucks at it “when elected.”
But Romney further amplified his out-of-touchedness when he recommended churches send cans of soup to the newly homeless. Soup? To cook on... what?
Not diapers, medicines, walking canes, warm coats, waterproof boots, underwear, caulking, window glass. Not even pictures of his idols: Washington, Lincoln, Hamilton, Jackson, Grant and Franklin. You know the pictures... they’re on the dollar, five dollar, ten dollar, 20 dollar, 50 and 100 dollar bills.
Soup, Mitt? Soup?
Meantime, at the height of the tight election contest, President Obama got all kinds of free ads with his new road manager, Chris Christie, the Republican governor of New Jersey.
Memo to Gov. Christie: Please don’t stand in front of the President in those photo ops. We can’t see him unless you step aside.
Away from politics, now, and back to earth.
The commuter trains are starting to run. The subways are coming back. The cabbies will stop scalping and the looters stop looting when things calm down.
Those in the news business have been living in Manhattan hotels for days now. They want to go home. The people sitting next to them at work want them to go home. The people at home want them to come home. All in good time.
This crisis -- and it is indeed a crisis, brought people in the northeast together in ways similar to the attacks of 9/11. It won’t last. That’s an ad hoc kind of thing.
But shared misery is shared misery, and that it happens now and then is not all bad.
The shafts are still there, but the elevators are not. And the whole thing is sealed off with the strongest of concrete.
Toscanini wasn’t rich. He was just important. The elevators were a gift from his boss, Gen. David Sarnoff, to mark his value to NBC.
Governor Romney is not, was not and never will be a cultural icon. But as governor, he had a private elevator. Good place to hide out and not have to deal with the peasantry... you know... like legislators and other state employed riffraff.
Maybe not a cultural icon. Maybe private elevators are just a perk of the rich.
Okay, let’s look at that. What rich guys have private elevators? Let’s see. Bill Gates? No. Warren Buffett? No. Mike Bloomberg? No. Fer cryin’ out loud, Bloomberg, worth $25 Billion according to the latest Forbes List, doesn’t even use the Mayor’s Office and works out of a cubicle in the basement of City Hall.
Romney is considerably less rich than Gates, Buffett and Bloomberg.
How about Nelson Rockefeller when he was governor of New York? No private elevator.
What about John D. Rockefeller, America’s first billionaire and in the days when a billion was real money. Nope.
Henry Ford? No.
Andrew Carnegie? No.
J.P. Morgan? No.
Not even George Romney, chairman of American Motors and the candidate’s daddy.
Mitthead no longer has a private elevator, though his cars do. A car elevator? Yeah. There's one of those in one of his houses. Just like every indoor parking garage in New York. Maybe Willard is practicing for his next job... parking lot attendant on 72nd St. and Lexington.
Or maybe he’s just one of those new money wannabes, the kind that buys a fancy car and parks it in front of a fancy house that has no furniture.
Or he’s one of those guys who tries to flaunt a couple of hundred million dollars in a culture where some guys think of his net worth as pocket change.
And while we’re at it, let’s look at another private accommodation: Mitt’s private car-top dog carrier.
Have some soup, Mitthead. It’ll make you feel better about yourself. No gas or electricity where you are? Maybe the ghost of Seamus will bring you some Sterno.
I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2012
I. Sandy
(STATE COLLEGE PA) -- Nestled here in the minor Appalachians and capital of Famous Pedophilia, we were spared most of Superstorm Sandy. Most of us are grateful for that, and we should be.Every once in awhile, it’s good for people from the Homefront, New York, to get a first hand lesson in rural life. It’s unfortunate that it often comes in tragic form as it did with a vengeance this time.
Fires, floods, plagues of who-knows-what-all. And worst of all, you can’t get from here to there, wherever here and there are in your world.
As of this writing, you in New York and New Jersey are living in small towns. Towns, where the electric company and the phone companies are clueless. Towns where the cowpath roads clog with cars and they flood. Towns where mass transit is an oxymoron. Scalping cabbies. Empty store shelves. Keystone Kops.
You will recover because you’re New Yorkers and New Jerseyans. Here, this kind of disruption is a way of life.
As Dianne Stanciel pointed out, Mitt Romney changed his mind about defunding FEMA after he saw what it can do, which, thus far, is nothing short of miraculous. He now will throw a few bucks at it “when elected.”
But Romney further amplified his out-of-touchedness when he recommended churches send cans of soup to the newly homeless. Soup? To cook on... what?
Not diapers, medicines, walking canes, warm coats, waterproof boots, underwear, caulking, window glass. Not even pictures of his idols: Washington, Lincoln, Hamilton, Jackson, Grant and Franklin. You know the pictures... they’re on the dollar, five dollar, ten dollar, 20 dollar, 50 and 100 dollar bills.
Soup, Mitt? Soup?
Meantime, at the height of the tight election contest, President Obama got all kinds of free ads with his new road manager, Chris Christie, the Republican governor of New Jersey.
Memo to Gov. Christie: Please don’t stand in front of the President in those photo ops. We can’t see him unless you step aside.
Away from politics, now, and back to earth.
The commuter trains are starting to run. The subways are coming back. The cabbies will stop scalping and the looters stop looting when things calm down.
Those in the news business have been living in Manhattan hotels for days now. They want to go home. The people sitting next to them at work want them to go home. The people at home want them to come home. All in good time.
This crisis -- and it is indeed a crisis, brought people in the northeast together in ways similar to the attacks of 9/11. It won’t last. That’s an ad hoc kind of thing.
But shared misery is shared misery, and that it happens now and then is not all bad.
II. The Elevator Man
Certain moguls insist on private elevators, reserved for their own use. Such was Mitt Romney as governor of Massachusetts. He had some good company in wanting a private car. Arturo Toscanini had not one but two private elevators in the RCA building. They were reserved for him and for his guests, and were staffed by elevator men before the era of automatic elevators.The shafts are still there, but the elevators are not. And the whole thing is sealed off with the strongest of concrete.
Toscanini wasn’t rich. He was just important. The elevators were a gift from his boss, Gen. David Sarnoff, to mark his value to NBC.
Governor Romney is not, was not and never will be a cultural icon. But as governor, he had a private elevator. Good place to hide out and not have to deal with the peasantry... you know... like legislators and other state employed riffraff.
Maybe not a cultural icon. Maybe private elevators are just a perk of the rich.
Okay, let’s look at that. What rich guys have private elevators? Let’s see. Bill Gates? No. Warren Buffett? No. Mike Bloomberg? No. Fer cryin’ out loud, Bloomberg, worth $25 Billion according to the latest Forbes List, doesn’t even use the Mayor’s Office and works out of a cubicle in the basement of City Hall.
Romney is considerably less rich than Gates, Buffett and Bloomberg.
How about Nelson Rockefeller when he was governor of New York? No private elevator.
What about John D. Rockefeller, America’s first billionaire and in the days when a billion was real money. Nope.
Henry Ford? No.
Andrew Carnegie? No.
J.P. Morgan? No.
Not even George Romney, chairman of American Motors and the candidate’s daddy.
Mitthead no longer has a private elevator, though his cars do. A car elevator? Yeah. There's one of those in one of his houses. Just like every indoor parking garage in New York. Maybe Willard is practicing for his next job... parking lot attendant on 72nd St. and Lexington.
Or maybe he’s just one of those new money wannabes, the kind that buys a fancy car and parks it in front of a fancy house that has no furniture.
Or he’s one of those guys who tries to flaunt a couple of hundred million dollars in a culture where some guys think of his net worth as pocket change.
And while we’re at it, let’s look at another private accommodation: Mitt’s private car-top dog carrier.
Have some soup, Mitthead. It’ll make you feel better about yourself. No gas or electricity where you are? Maybe the ghost of Seamus will bring you some Sterno.
I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2012
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
1090 Freedom of News
What’s all this generosity on the part of the paywall newspapers? Some news has always been free. At least it was if you were in the right place at the right time. You picked up the News or the Post on the train or subway when someone left it behind.
So the great public servants at the Times and the Wall Street Journal have taken down their pay-per-view toll booth and in a stunning show of home town spirit are giving away their storm coverage.
This could start a trend. Two trends, actually.
Trend one: a big story is free. Trend two: People stop reading the details of stories and just look at the headlines.
There’s something to be said for that second one. We are overwhelmed with data. (This space makes an old fashioned distinction between data and information.)
Could cable and satellite TV be far behind? CNN could give you the first five minutes of each hour for free and then put up a screen with other stories from its website. Then for the rest of the hour, it could run ads for sleazy accident lawyers, the companies that buy your long term settlements, class action drug lawsuits and the occasional medicine that will cure your moderate to heavy plaque psoriasis but leave you bald, impotent and with bad kidneys. Unless, of course, you pay.
There is, of course, something to be said for just looking at the headlines and first paragraphs. To discourage this freeloading, many websites have taken drastic steps. They make sure the headlines are sufficiently misleading and then write the first paragraph to say nothing of newsworthiness.
There’s just enough in print or on air to make you want a little bit more, for which, of course, you have to pay. Free news homepages are a gateway drug for news junkies.
What the websites need is a better class of advertiser.
Shrapnel:
--The forecasters apparently got Sandy’s number right. Predictions by meteorologists often fall apart because while you can’t fool mother nature, mother nature can fool you. The storm was horrific on the immediate coast and nothing to shrug off inland. But it looks like early warnings and sane preparedness lessened the damage.
--Do you really want a guy for President who is ready to close FEMA and give its functions to a bunch of doofuses in the states? The states can’t seem to get much of anything right. So why would this be any different?
--Post #1089, an imaginary letter from a corporate CEO to employees about why they should vote for Romney (or you’ll lose your health insurance, your retirement and probably your job,) was a parody. At the time of writing, pointing that out that would seem to have been unnecessary. But response from at least one reader indicates it would have been wise and so the post has been slightly revised.
I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2012
What’s all this generosity on the part of the paywall newspapers? Some news has always been free. At least it was if you were in the right place at the right time. You picked up the News or the Post on the train or subway when someone left it behind.
So the great public servants at the Times and the Wall Street Journal have taken down their pay-per-view toll booth and in a stunning show of home town spirit are giving away their storm coverage.
This could start a trend. Two trends, actually.
Trend one: a big story is free. Trend two: People stop reading the details of stories and just look at the headlines.
There’s something to be said for that second one. We are overwhelmed with data. (This space makes an old fashioned distinction between data and information.)
Could cable and satellite TV be far behind? CNN could give you the first five minutes of each hour for free and then put up a screen with other stories from its website. Then for the rest of the hour, it could run ads for sleazy accident lawyers, the companies that buy your long term settlements, class action drug lawsuits and the occasional medicine that will cure your moderate to heavy plaque psoriasis but leave you bald, impotent and with bad kidneys. Unless, of course, you pay.
There is, of course, something to be said for just looking at the headlines and first paragraphs. To discourage this freeloading, many websites have taken drastic steps. They make sure the headlines are sufficiently misleading and then write the first paragraph to say nothing of newsworthiness.
There’s just enough in print or on air to make you want a little bit more, for which, of course, you have to pay. Free news homepages are a gateway drug for news junkies.
What the websites need is a better class of advertiser.
Shrapnel:
--The forecasters apparently got Sandy’s number right. Predictions by meteorologists often fall apart because while you can’t fool mother nature, mother nature can fool you. The storm was horrific on the immediate coast and nothing to shrug off inland. But it looks like early warnings and sane preparedness lessened the damage.
--Do you really want a guy for President who is ready to close FEMA and give its functions to a bunch of doofuses in the states? The states can’t seem to get much of anything right. So why would this be any different?
--Post #1089, an imaginary letter from a corporate CEO to employees about why they should vote for Romney (or you’ll lose your health insurance, your retirement and probably your job,) was a parody. At the time of writing, pointing that out that would seem to have been unnecessary. But response from at least one reader indicates it would have been wise and so the post has been slightly revised.
I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2012
Monday, October 29, 2012
1089 A Letter from the Boss
1089 A Letter from the Boss
PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS A PARODY.
Dear Associates,
I want to take this opportunity to speak to all 230,000 of you about the importance of the election coming up in a few days. And thanks to the Supreme Court and its Citizens United decision, I am able to communicate with you all at the same time.
As you know, there is a lot at stake for those of us in banking business, especially among those of us who are considered too big to fail, a terrible misnomer.
While we were happy to have a little hand up from the Obama and Bush administrations in the recent past, we feel that the President is preparing to take away some of our personal and corporate freedoms.
For example, there’s legislation prepared, that if passed would force us to choose between investment banking and securities sales and retail banking. If we were to choose retail, we would be cut off from one of our most lucrative product groups and have to reduce payroll by as many as 100,000 associates.
If we chose investment banking, our ability to contribute to life in the communities we serve in 28 states would be eliminated overnight and we would have to reduce our workforce by about 130,000.
You have a right to job security, and we job creators think you should continue to have that right. But we can’t support it if we have to close half of our business.
As it is, we are forced to prepare alternatives to our group medical coverage that will be too costly to continue should the incumbent win another term. Do you really want those death panels making your decisions for you?
Further, we believe that the Obama administration is preparing to raise our corporate tax rate in order to pay for its ever-growing welfare state.
Please don’t take this as pressure. I cannot control your vote and wouldn’t wish to. But let me remind you that another four years of a black Kenyan Muslim socialist who supports homosexual “marriage,” and the murder of unborn babies can’t benefit anyone but the lazy moochers and panhandlers who sit around in their trailers and on the steps of their public housing projects, smoking dope, drinking booze and increasing the population so their handouts will grow while thousands of you work to support them at your own expense.
So please think carefully when you step into the voting booth next month. And please remember, you have a friend in the chairman’s office. And we know where you live.
Sincerely,
Whitcolm Blain Vanderviscose III
Chairman and CEO
Stately Bank and Trust
Shrapnel:
--Looks like Craig’s List has paced even Wikipedia in the unreliability department. More scams than legit ads, at least in the help wanted section. That wouldn’t be so bad if jobs weren’t as scarce as they are these days.
And from the Facebook page of friend and colleague Dan Thomas:
No mass transit in New York past 7pm. So all the hospital staff, electrical workers, building custodians, journalists, pharmacists, 911 operators, food delivery personnel, hotel staff, and thousands of others on whom we depend in an emergency have no way to get to work. Well ... they can drive in. Yes that's it... thousands of additional cars on the flooded roads. Of course the parking garage attendants can't get to work either, so where you gonna park? On the plus side... at least we won't get fat drinking large soft drinks.
Posted Sunday afternoon 10/28/12
I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com.
© WJR 2012
PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS A PARODY.
Dear Associates,
I want to take this opportunity to speak to all 230,000 of you about the importance of the election coming up in a few days. And thanks to the Supreme Court and its Citizens United decision, I am able to communicate with you all at the same time.
As you know, there is a lot at stake for those of us in banking business, especially among those of us who are considered too big to fail, a terrible misnomer.
While we were happy to have a little hand up from the Obama and Bush administrations in the recent past, we feel that the President is preparing to take away some of our personal and corporate freedoms.
For example, there’s legislation prepared, that if passed would force us to choose between investment banking and securities sales and retail banking. If we were to choose retail, we would be cut off from one of our most lucrative product groups and have to reduce payroll by as many as 100,000 associates.
If we chose investment banking, our ability to contribute to life in the communities we serve in 28 states would be eliminated overnight and we would have to reduce our workforce by about 130,000.
You have a right to job security, and we job creators think you should continue to have that right. But we can’t support it if we have to close half of our business.
As it is, we are forced to prepare alternatives to our group medical coverage that will be too costly to continue should the incumbent win another term. Do you really want those death panels making your decisions for you?
Further, we believe that the Obama administration is preparing to raise our corporate tax rate in order to pay for its ever-growing welfare state.
Please don’t take this as pressure. I cannot control your vote and wouldn’t wish to. But let me remind you that another four years of a black Kenyan Muslim socialist who supports homosexual “marriage,” and the murder of unborn babies can’t benefit anyone but the lazy moochers and panhandlers who sit around in their trailers and on the steps of their public housing projects, smoking dope, drinking booze and increasing the population so their handouts will grow while thousands of you work to support them at your own expense.
So please think carefully when you step into the voting booth next month. And please remember, you have a friend in the chairman’s office. And we know where you live.
Sincerely,
Whitcolm Blain Vanderviscose III
Chairman and CEO
Stately Bank and Trust
Shrapnel:
--Looks like Craig’s List has paced even Wikipedia in the unreliability department. More scams than legit ads, at least in the help wanted section. That wouldn’t be so bad if jobs weren’t as scarce as they are these days.
And from the Facebook page of friend and colleague Dan Thomas:
No mass transit in New York past 7pm. So all the hospital staff, electrical workers, building custodians, journalists, pharmacists, 911 operators, food delivery personnel, hotel staff, and thousands of others on whom we depend in an emergency have no way to get to work. Well ... they can drive in. Yes that's it... thousands of additional cars on the flooded roads. Of course the parking garage attendants can't get to work either, so where you gonna park? On the plus side... at least we won't get fat drinking large soft drinks.
Posted Sunday afternoon 10/28/12
I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com.
© WJR 2012
Friday, October 26, 2012
1088 Go Islanders!
1088 Go Islanders!
Nassau County, New York has always been the poster child for inept. And multimillionaire Charles Wang is more Boris Badinov than Dudley Do-Right. Put these things together in a room and what do you get? Nothing.
Wang has owned the hapless New York Islanders of the National Hockey League since 2000. And for most of that time, he has been trying to (a) restore the team to its serial Stanley Cup glory days and (b) fix or replace its home, the shabby and deteriorating Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum. Nothing.
Wang proposed a mammoth building project on the former Mitchel Air Force Base, now home to part of Hofstra University, Nassau Community College and said Coliseum. This got knocked down by officials of the county and its dominant internal Town of Hempstead. Next came a proposed bond issue for an updated Coliseum. The voters rightly handed what passes for leadership a strong message: “we’re already pedal to the metal on the highway to bankruptcy -- forget about it.”
As the brilliant minds of Nassau and Hempstead rested to get ready for their next screwup, Wang took his puck and went to Brooklyn. So the Isles will play in the new Barclay’s Center starting with the 2015-16 season, joining the New York-then-New Jersey-now Brooklyn Nets of the NBA in a small but snazzy venue.
How much revenue is this going to cost cash-strapped Nassau? Estimates run as high as $250 million a year. Plus a loss of jobs. Plenty of jobs.
And assuming that the NHL doesn’t go out of business, which is not impossible, the Islanders may be getting the shot in the arm they need to remember the long-forgotten first rule of hockey: Get that funny-looking, round black thing on the ice into that great big net. It’s not that complicated, boys.
Shrapnel:
--Chinese lesson: The “a” in “Wang” is pronounced like the “a” in “what,” but sounds like “Wong” to most American ears. The “o” in “Wong” is pronounced like the “o” in “Wong,” but the sound comes from farther back on the hard palate, giving it a slightly different tone for which there is no English notation.
--The original Islanders were formed from a core of players from the Long Island Ducks of the Eastern Hockey League, which played in the corrugated sheet metal ice box called the Long Island Arena in Commack. Guys like Brophy and Actimachuck used to hang out at Kelly’s Saloon on Vets Highway. The Ducks were fun. And generous.
--The Brooklyn Nets of the NBA had been the New Jersey Nets and before that the New York Nets of the ABA and played in a quonset hut in West Hempstead. They were no fancier than the Ducks but for the presence of one Julius Erving. And no one froze at a Nets game, then or ever after.
I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2012
Nassau County, New York has always been the poster child for inept. And multimillionaire Charles Wang is more Boris Badinov than Dudley Do-Right. Put these things together in a room and what do you get? Nothing.
Wang has owned the hapless New York Islanders of the National Hockey League since 2000. And for most of that time, he has been trying to (a) restore the team to its serial Stanley Cup glory days and (b) fix or replace its home, the shabby and deteriorating Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum. Nothing.
Wang proposed a mammoth building project on the former Mitchel Air Force Base, now home to part of Hofstra University, Nassau Community College and said Coliseum. This got knocked down by officials of the county and its dominant internal Town of Hempstead. Next came a proposed bond issue for an updated Coliseum. The voters rightly handed what passes for leadership a strong message: “we’re already pedal to the metal on the highway to bankruptcy -- forget about it.”
As the brilliant minds of Nassau and Hempstead rested to get ready for their next screwup, Wang took his puck and went to Brooklyn. So the Isles will play in the new Barclay’s Center starting with the 2015-16 season, joining the New York-then-New Jersey-now Brooklyn Nets of the NBA in a small but snazzy venue.
How much revenue is this going to cost cash-strapped Nassau? Estimates run as high as $250 million a year. Plus a loss of jobs. Plenty of jobs.
And assuming that the NHL doesn’t go out of business, which is not impossible, the Islanders may be getting the shot in the arm they need to remember the long-forgotten first rule of hockey: Get that funny-looking, round black thing on the ice into that great big net. It’s not that complicated, boys.
Shrapnel:
--Chinese lesson: The “a” in “Wang” is pronounced like the “a” in “what,” but sounds like “Wong” to most American ears. The “o” in “Wong” is pronounced like the “o” in “Wong,” but the sound comes from farther back on the hard palate, giving it a slightly different tone for which there is no English notation.
--The original Islanders were formed from a core of players from the Long Island Ducks of the Eastern Hockey League, which played in the corrugated sheet metal ice box called the Long Island Arena in Commack. Guys like Brophy and Actimachuck used to hang out at Kelly’s Saloon on Vets Highway. The Ducks were fun. And generous.
--The Brooklyn Nets of the NBA had been the New Jersey Nets and before that the New York Nets of the ABA and played in a quonset hut in West Hempstead. They were no fancier than the Ducks but for the presence of one Julius Erving. And no one froze at a Nets game, then or ever after.
I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2012
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
1087 Another Magazine Bites the Dust
1087 Another Magazine Bites the Dust
Tina Brown is a wrecking ball and her aim is excellent. Now that she’s had at it at Vanity Fair, the New Yorker and Talk Magazine, she’s taken a swing at Newsweek which will end print publication as of 12/31/12.
The death of Newsweek is not entirely her fault. But she’s the one tethered to a crane smacking the thing at high speed and making sure the lights were turned out first.
The weekly news magazines have become irrelevant. US News & World Report went digital-only a long time ago. And a long time after its then- president John Sweet made the commercial in which he said US News “...spares our readers unimportant news and spares our advertisers unimportant readers.”
US News, all digital now except occasionally, has found its niche, reporting on the best colleges, and other best these and thats.
Time Magazine still limps along, straw thin and with an emphysematous cough.
But Newsweek, as part of the Daily Beast website is soon to be but a memory and the left over slick paper doesn’t even make for good fish wrapping.
Tina’s Big Contribution to the New Yorker was to shed everything about it that made it the New Yorker. Talk magazine served no purpose. Her Big Contribution to Newsweek was odd covers that didn’t “sell the book” to use magazine industry jargon.
Blame it on the internet? Blame it on the impending death of ink and paper? No. Sorry. Not this time. Other magazines (“The Week,” “The Economist” and some others are flourishing.) Content. That’s what readers want. Not weird covers and stupidly screaming headlines.
Newsweek has become a magazine with nothing to say and an unattractive way of not saying it.
Where are the Jonathan Alters and Alan Sloans and Peter Boyers? And who replaced them? No one, really. But some of the abandoned slots they occupied have been filled with... who? (Alter went to Bloomberg View, Sloan has been with Fortune for a long time, Boyer is at Fox News.)
Riveting articles like “How Many Facebook Friends Do You Need?” and “Full Figured Models” isn’t exactly stuff that sells magazines.
Sure, the media world is changing. And fast. Magazines are expensive to produce and often out of date by the time they leave the printing plant. But there’s still room for the printed word as recent startups and some old favorites are proving.
So here’s a question: If Newsweek continued to print and nobody read it, would it still exist?
Tina would do us all a favor if she would assume responsibility for the preposterous direction in which she’s taken Newsweek. And she should go back to writing books. There’s still an audience for stuff like “Life as a Party” and the “Diana Chronicles,” especially for those who reflexively consider anything British as “reading up.”
Meantime, if you need something demolished... you know who to call.
Shrapnel:
--The third debate: Romney reminded me of my 1959 Rambler, built by his father’s company, AMC. It lurched and sputtered and coughed and parts fell off, including the drive shaft and the trunk lid. Note to the picky... I posted this on facebook before posting it here.
--RIP Jerome Karpf, Jr., aka Jerry Carr, former program director of WHLI radio, Hempstead, who passed away recently at the age of 93. A second generation newspaperman turned broadcaster, a herder of cats and a man who oozed competence, stability and natural culture and who commanded respect without trying. Only a few months ago, Jerry’s lights were as bright as ever, and he was engaged, aware and sharp in 2012 as he was in 1960.
I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments and invitations to celebrity parties in London to wesrichards@gmail.com.
© WJR 2012
Tina Brown is a wrecking ball and her aim is excellent. Now that she’s had at it at Vanity Fair, the New Yorker and Talk Magazine, she’s taken a swing at Newsweek which will end print publication as of 12/31/12.
The death of Newsweek is not entirely her fault. But she’s the one tethered to a crane smacking the thing at high speed and making sure the lights were turned out first.
The weekly news magazines have become irrelevant. US News & World Report went digital-only a long time ago. And a long time after its then- president John Sweet made the commercial in which he said US News “...spares our readers unimportant news and spares our advertisers unimportant readers.”
US News, all digital now except occasionally, has found its niche, reporting on the best colleges, and other best these and thats.
Time Magazine still limps along, straw thin and with an emphysematous cough.
But Newsweek, as part of the Daily Beast website is soon to be but a memory and the left over slick paper doesn’t even make for good fish wrapping.
Tina’s Big Contribution to the New Yorker was to shed everything about it that made it the New Yorker. Talk magazine served no purpose. Her Big Contribution to Newsweek was odd covers that didn’t “sell the book” to use magazine industry jargon.
Blame it on the internet? Blame it on the impending death of ink and paper? No. Sorry. Not this time. Other magazines (“The Week,” “The Economist” and some others are flourishing.) Content. That’s what readers want. Not weird covers and stupidly screaming headlines.
Newsweek has become a magazine with nothing to say and an unattractive way of not saying it.
Where are the Jonathan Alters and Alan Sloans and Peter Boyers? And who replaced them? No one, really. But some of the abandoned slots they occupied have been filled with... who? (Alter went to Bloomberg View, Sloan has been with Fortune for a long time, Boyer is at Fox News.)
Riveting articles like “How Many Facebook Friends Do You Need?” and “Full Figured Models” isn’t exactly stuff that sells magazines.
Sure, the media world is changing. And fast. Magazines are expensive to produce and often out of date by the time they leave the printing plant. But there’s still room for the printed word as recent startups and some old favorites are proving.
So here’s a question: If Newsweek continued to print and nobody read it, would it still exist?
Tina would do us all a favor if she would assume responsibility for the preposterous direction in which she’s taken Newsweek. And she should go back to writing books. There’s still an audience for stuff like “Life as a Party” and the “Diana Chronicles,” especially for those who reflexively consider anything British as “reading up.”
Meantime, if you need something demolished... you know who to call.
Shrapnel:
--The third debate: Romney reminded me of my 1959 Rambler, built by his father’s company, AMC. It lurched and sputtered and coughed and parts fell off, including the drive shaft and the trunk lid. Note to the picky... I posted this on facebook before posting it here.
--RIP Jerome Karpf, Jr., aka Jerry Carr, former program director of WHLI radio, Hempstead, who passed away recently at the age of 93. A second generation newspaperman turned broadcaster, a herder of cats and a man who oozed competence, stability and natural culture and who commanded respect without trying. Only a few months ago, Jerry’s lights were as bright as ever, and he was engaged, aware and sharp in 2012 as he was in 1960.
I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments and invitations to celebrity parties in London to wesrichards@gmail.com.
© WJR 2012
Monday, October 22, 2012
1086 E-Prayers
1086 E-Prayers
We all know how busy God is, especially in the age of phone texts and the internet. Chat rooms abound. Instant messages. Tablets (not the kind Moses had.)
So, technically, while God is off on Mondays and Tuesdays, except for early Mass, Jewish morning prayers where he’s often the tenth guy in the minyan, and the five-a-day Muslim rites, he still puts in some time. Wednesdays are occupied with after-dinner hour Bible classes. These run into Thursday because of time zones. Friday, Muslims and Jews. Saturday Jews and 7th Day Adventists. Sunday, a gazillion Christian churches.
Busy, busy.
So, Monday and Tuesday, he’d play 18 holes in the morning and then start answering -- or not answering -- prayers.
At some point, the volume got so, well, voluminous, that he had to put on extra help. Changed his email address, gave the old one to the heavenly filter-ers and addressed only the issues that they thought he would want to and passed along.
That didn’t work out because even his most experienced assistants sometimes put through wrong ones or failed to put through right ones. Plus a lot of them started to confuse themselves with him and started playing God.
But with volume at its present level and everyone agitating for face time, he has to spend at least a couple of hours between gigs on the computer.
Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobil and Sprint are all busy erecting cell towers in heaven. Good idea because there’s an awful lot of phone traffic with earth now. The new 4-G system (that’s “For God”) is due to be ready for use by the spring 2014... barring failure to win regulatory approval and if the installers don’t strike when their contract is up next year.
And that’s going to make things even tougher, what with texting exploding into the next world instead of dribbling in as now.
There’s not too much you can do about God’s personal clutter. But if your e-prayers aren’t being answered now, there are steps you can take to raise your profile.
If God doesn’t have you in his e-mail address book, your prayers go straight to his spam folder, where they have but a 30 day lifespan. So add him to your contacts. That’ll improve your chances of being heard.
Shrapnel:
--Michael Savage returns to the air tomorrow, 10/23/12, re-starting the program he ended abruptly by suing his former syndicator and -- at least temporarily -- with far fewer stations. Savage is the craziest of the crazy right wing talkers, but always entertaining if only to see whether there will be a “Dan Rather Moment,” where he really goes off the deep end and implodes. A reminder of the times when we sat around grandma’s huge dining table in the Bronx and listened to the uncles try to kill and outshout one another with the same regional accent that Savage has never been able to lose or wanted to.
I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2012
We all know how busy God is, especially in the age of phone texts and the internet. Chat rooms abound. Instant messages. Tablets (not the kind Moses had.)
So, technically, while God is off on Mondays and Tuesdays, except for early Mass, Jewish morning prayers where he’s often the tenth guy in the minyan, and the five-a-day Muslim rites, he still puts in some time. Wednesdays are occupied with after-dinner hour Bible classes. These run into Thursday because of time zones. Friday, Muslims and Jews. Saturday Jews and 7th Day Adventists. Sunday, a gazillion Christian churches.
Busy, busy.
So, Monday and Tuesday, he’d play 18 holes in the morning and then start answering -- or not answering -- prayers.
At some point, the volume got so, well, voluminous, that he had to put on extra help. Changed his email address, gave the old one to the heavenly filter-ers and addressed only the issues that they thought he would want to and passed along.
That didn’t work out because even his most experienced assistants sometimes put through wrong ones or failed to put through right ones. Plus a lot of them started to confuse themselves with him and started playing God.
But with volume at its present level and everyone agitating for face time, he has to spend at least a couple of hours between gigs on the computer.
Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobil and Sprint are all busy erecting cell towers in heaven. Good idea because there’s an awful lot of phone traffic with earth now. The new 4-G system (that’s “For God”) is due to be ready for use by the spring 2014... barring failure to win regulatory approval and if the installers don’t strike when their contract is up next year.
And that’s going to make things even tougher, what with texting exploding into the next world instead of dribbling in as now.
There’s not too much you can do about God’s personal clutter. But if your e-prayers aren’t being answered now, there are steps you can take to raise your profile.
If God doesn’t have you in his e-mail address book, your prayers go straight to his spam folder, where they have but a 30 day lifespan. So add him to your contacts. That’ll improve your chances of being heard.
Shrapnel:
--Michael Savage returns to the air tomorrow, 10/23/12, re-starting the program he ended abruptly by suing his former syndicator and -- at least temporarily -- with far fewer stations. Savage is the craziest of the crazy right wing talkers, but always entertaining if only to see whether there will be a “Dan Rather Moment,” where he really goes off the deep end and implodes. A reminder of the times when we sat around grandma’s huge dining table in the Bronx and listened to the uncles try to kill and outshout one another with the same regional accent that Savage has never been able to lose or wanted to.
I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2012
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4759 The Supreme Court
C’mon, guys, we all know what you’re doing. You’re hiding behind nonsense so a black woman is not the next Associate Justice of the U.S....
