728 Long Island Pigeons

728 Long Island Pigeons

(MOUNT TANTAMOUNT PA) -- This is a known fact. There is something both gravitational and anti-gravitational about Long Island, New York, a 110 mile sand bar that sticks into the Atlantic and looks like Pinocchio's nose after a long day of lying. It has a population of over seven million, most of which don't count in this context because technically, they're residents of two boroughs in New York City. The remaining two counties have about three million people, give or take.

And this, too, is a known fact: Long Islanders are everywhere. This first came to light in the mid 1960s when there was an avalanche on a mountain in Japan and the lone survivor was some yutz from Seaford. Further investigation shows that while many people emigrate to the island, at least as many scatter to the winds. So, gravitationala and anti gravitational.

Even here in Mount Tantamount we get 'em. Your correspondent (LI from 1952 to 2006) had a shopping cart collision here with Miranda from Baldwin the other day. No one was injured. The guy who lived across the street until recently was from Bellmore. But it's not just here. You run into us in Washington and California and Texas and Tennessee and Taipei. What is it about the Great Sand Dump that drives so many people away but still provokes them to mention their origins?

We're like pigeons on a park bench. Few mistake us for falcons, eagles or canaries. Or even seagulls.

Book Look:

"Capture," by Robert K. Tanenbaum, Pocket Books 2009

This is the 20-somethingth book in the series about District Attorney Butch Karp, and the most far fetched to date. While the first few were great crime novels, the later additions are getting more phantasmagoric by the page. This one pits Butch and wife Marlene Ciampi against a bunch of international Islamic terrorists, and features all the Standard Tanenbaum characters we've come to know and love or hate. But its premise, daughter Lucy involved in a secret agency, and a sewer-dwelling leader of the homeless and a seemingly invincible Russian woman spymaster-terrorist just don't add up. If you like the Karp family, stick with the first ten or so novels. This one takes a bunch of disparate people and events and ties them into a stew of nonsense, and boring nonsense at that.

Richards Readometer Rating: 5.
===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:

--The drug companies keep telling us to stay away from Canadian pharmacies and pharmaceuticals from India and Canada and Dogbonistan because they may not be safe. But that's better than buying domestic pharmaceuticals (like Tylenol) which, according to the same Big Pharma sources we KNOW are not safe. J&J, which set the standard for doing it right in the early 1980s is setting the standards for doing it wrong today.

--If Nevada elects Sharron Angle to the Senate instead of majority leader Harry Reid, they deserve her. The latest outrageousness is advice to pregnant teen rape victims: "raise the baby, make lemonade out of lemons." Can anyone take these Tea Potty candidates seriously?

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

©WJR 2010