Classic Rant 1,167 (March 19, 2014): Phil D Basket

If you grew up in New York City in the 1960s, "Phil D. Basket" was one of the most clever public service commercials of the time.

It spoke about cleaning up after yourself, throwing away garbage and being clean about it.

Do not litter, as the commercials said. Phil D. Basket .... get it?

I looked on YouTube for this commercial, but no, YouTube does not have everything, and I could not find this anywhere, not even an image.

Well, there is a current Phil D. Basket, but it has very little to do with litter, unless you consider to be garbage the performance of the professional basketball team he is going to lead.

Many do.

The New York Knicks, who have had an absolutely horrid season, have signed Phil Jackson as its president.

I know that to the outside world, this means absolutely nothing, but in the world of the NBA, and in my world, this means quite a bit.

The Knicks have probably been the worst run franchise in professional sports history, and this has gone on for decades since their heyday in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

They spend money like it is water on players who aren't worth it, and they have what you can term a losing culture there.

They fill up Madison Square Garden night in and night out corporate types who wouldn't know a basketball from a volleyball.

It is a losing culture, and has been, except for brief spurts, since the Knicks started with the dawn of the NBA in 1948.

Bringing Jackson in hopes to turn that whole thing around.

Jackson began his playing career with the Knicks, and was a member of their lone two championship teams.

Using whatever talent he had, and his smarts, he lasted a number of years as a player in the league, and then moved into coaching.

He paid his dues. He coached in the old CBA, leading the Albany Patroons to two championships in that league.

Then he became an assistant coach for the Chicago Bulls, gravitated to the coaching position, and led them to one championship after another.

He moved onto the Los Angeles Lakers, and the same thing happened.

He has more championship rings than many women have earrings.

The Hall of Famer has been out of the league for a few years, but a guy like this can't sit still very long, and the Knicks snatched him when they need him most.

This was supposed to be a big year for the Knicks. They were supposed to compete for the championship this season.

But, starting with star player Carmelo Anthony opening his mouth and telling the world that he would opt for free agency after the season, this season has gone sour from just about the beginning.

The Knicks have a losing record, they probably will not make the playoffs, and the press here, and the fans, have questioned the integrity of the team through a rash of injuries and bad coaching.

Coach Mike Woodson is probably in his final days in that capacity, and even his own players have questioned him and what he has done.

One player, Raymond Felton, has worse things to worry about, as gun possession charges against him are pending.

The Knicks are bad, but they have currently won six games in a row as they at least make the last few weeks of the season interesting, for what might have been.

Now they have Jackson in tow, looking to the future, to what might be.

As a fan, I am perturbed at the season, but unlike some, I don't look at Jackson as a miracle worker.

It will take a lot of time to fix this organization, and he is signed for five years, and it might take that amount of time, and then some, to bring a positive, winning attitude to a team that always seems to be more of a sideshow than anything else.

I wish him well, but he is being paid well to make this moribund franchise vital again.

Can he do it?

Never having been a "suit" before, it is hard to tell, but I guess this puts the Knicks in the right direction.

There are so many things wrong with this franchise that he has a lot on his plate, but I guess they signed the right guy to fix it.

Personally, in the situation the team is in, they have a real long way to go, but I guess that Jackson is the right guy for the job.

A modern day Phil D. Basket for sure.

(And for the skeptical, including myself, watch and listen to the enclosed clip that I have provided. Keith Olbermann really goes at this whole thing, and it is pretty funny--and true. We Knicks fans have a reason to look at this as just another ho hum Knicks moment, and personally, I hope we are wrong.)

Rant #2,498: Celebrate

This has been a rough stretch for my family.

We have had a lot of ups and downs the past three months or so, whether it is to me, personally, to my parents, and to my sister's family.

But yesterday, we put it all completely aside ... and I mean, completely.

My sister's birthday was December 26, and with all the hubbub of the holiday season and some other things, we were not able to celebrate it until yesterday.

And it was a special birthday, because my sister turned the ripe "old" age of 60.

So being her big brother, I planned a special occasion for her, and we were finally able to see it out yesterday afternoon.

The best way for me to describe it was that I went over her early years with her, before we moved to Long Island, the years that we shared a room together.

Yes, from her birth to the age of 11 or so, my sister and I had the same room, divided into two separate--but equal pieces.

Going over those early years of her life with her was fun, and it was highlighted by actual props from those years, which I found and purchased way before I lost my job. All of this added to the fun that I had describing those years--and those props--to the assembled audience, which included our two families, our parents, and our aunt, who herself was a major part of our younger years.

I put up the video of these shenanigans on Facebook, but as I write this, it is still being processed. I will furnish the link when it is available. My son took the video, and although I have not watched it yet myself, I am sure he did a great job recording the goings-on. He cut off the video too soon, but what we have is good enough!

My sister was astonished by the stuff that I remembered. Having such a good memory, I do remember so many different things that she had forgotten, so that was probably the most fun of the entire presentation.

And it was just all such fun. As I said, we have all been through a pretty rough time lately, and for a least a couple of minutes, we could all laugh and laugh and laugh some more.

We all have our peculiarities, and heaven knows that I had them too when growing up. My sister did too, and I highlighted them as well, in a really funny way.

My sister grew up and became an educator, handing children with disabilities, She is a tireless worker, and also runs a home with her husband of nearly 40 years. She has three sons, one living on the West Coast.

We don't often see eye to eye on everything, but the one thing that my sister and I share is the rule that family comes first. Family comes before everything else, and family matters are of the utmost importance. Nothing else matters if the family is in disarray. That is how we were brought up, and that is the one thing we definitely share.

She has not had an easy time, nor have I, juggling so many things at once. But who knew when we were sharing our room that the baseball bats and dolls would give way to marriages and kids and everything that went with these things?

Such is life. My sister and I were the true All-American kids, and we have tried to be All-American adults too. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

But the road to get there has certainly been interesting and fun, and it had to start somewhere, and this is what I spoke about yesterday.

My sister enjoyed it immensely. She is not one for her own birthday. and certainly not for milestone birthdays. But I "warned" her that this one would be fun, and it turned out to be just that.

Family is family. There are no two ways about it.

And I do love my sister.

So here's to her, and I haven't yet planned anything for No. 65 ... I've got five years to worry about that.

(The videos were finally posted! They are at https://www.facebook.com/LarryLapka/videos/pcb.10221523626178326/10221523614258028/?type=3&theater and part two is at https://www.facebook.com/LarryLapka/videos/10221524082389731/.)

Classic Rant #1,166 (March 18, 2014): Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On

Yesterday, Los Angeles had a minor earthquake, or major, depending on whether you are there or are where I am.

California had not broken off from the rest of the continental United States, so I guess they will survive this one, as they have survived the other numbers of shakers they've received over the past x amount of years.

Admittedly, earthquakes are not funny things, but if you live in California, you have to be prepared for them every once in a while.

Johnny Carson used to talk about them all the time on "The Tonight Show." They became fodder for jokes on that show for decades, as ubiquitous as the famous Slawson Cutoff.

We had a very mild earthquake sometime during 2012, I think it was, in my neck of the woods.

It happened during lunchtime while I was at work, shook us for a second or two, and that was that.

Since it was such a rare occurrence, we heard about it on the news for days and days.

But that is my only experience with an earthquake. I am sure my counterparts in California have many, many, many more stories about their own encounters with the shakes.

Let it stay over there. Once was enough for me.

We have had other situations here--like nor'easters and hurricanes--that quite frankly scared the heck out of me.

We don't need earthquakes to give us something else to worry about.

Earthquakes have been so ubiquitous on the West Coast that there have been songs written about them, and I posted one that I remember at the end of this Rant.

That's how commonplace they are 3,000 miles away from where I am.

And hopefully, that is where they'll stay.

Rant #2,497: Fun, Fun, Fun

My time off from regular work hit a milestone yesterday.

January 2 marked three months since I have been employed.

Three months is really nothing, when you look at it.

It is less than 100 days.

It is just one-quarter of a year.

And based on my prior experiences--once being off for four months, and the other time, being out of work for 18 months--three months is nothing.

But it is three months, 12 weeks of drudgery.

Yesterday, I continued to do what I have been doing since Day One, meaning that I got up early, looked at all the job notices, and actually over the course of the day, applied for four or five positions.

I also went on to Linked In, which I have found to be a major part of the drudgery.

If you have ever used Linked In, there is a clear divide in people who love it, and people who hate it.

Count me in the latter group. I think it is a big heap of nothing, a professional Facebook, and if you want to sit there and try to connect with as many people as possible, please, be my guest.

But it is the "go-to" point for professionals today, so you almost have to be on it, in particular if you are looking for work.

In fact, most applications that I have filled out ask me for my Linked In address, to my dismay, as if my profile there is even more important than my resume or my cover letter.

I guess that in today's world, the profile is golden.

Anyway, I decided to have some fun with Linked In yesterday,

People post all the time about their achivements in the workplace, things like "Celebrating 30 years at my company" or "Celebrating reaching my sales goal at my company for the fifth year" or things like that, so I decided to turn the tables on that stuff, which reeks of the stuff you find on Facebook when people proclaim where they are and what they are doing (yes, I have done this myself).

So what I did is simply send out this message to all of my connections, which I thought was a fun way to accomplish several things:

"NOT celebrating three months of unemployment today."

Yes, I wanted to see who actually read these things, and how they would respond to his "negative" post, but there was a method to my madness, if that is what you want to call it.

Yes, I wanted to see if people actually read these announcements. I remember that when I changed my "position" in my profile to "Editor in Transition - Seeking New Job Opportunities" from what it had been "Associate Editor," I actually got congratulations from many people, who obviously simply didn't get it. I actually had people message me, "Congratulations on the new job."

Well this time, happily, I didn't get any of those--or at least as of about 9 p.m. last night, the last time I looked--and I did get a number of nice messages back, trying to give me some encouragement, and I appreciated each and every one of them. I even got some positive tips for using Linked In that I might soon employ.

But my reasons for putting up such a message were a bit more involved than they might appear to be on the surface.

Here is what I wrote back to those who responded to me with kind words:

"It is tough, but I am surviving. I sent the message for two reasons: 1) to keep current with my contacts, and 2) as a somewhat humorous swipe at some of the messages I receive on Linked In. People celebrate so many things here, and many don't read closely whatever messages they receive, so I wanted to see if anyone is going to blindly congratulate me. The third reason should be to help me find a job, but I have just about given up on that, on Linked In or wherever. It does not appear in the cards for me. No real surprise there, to be honest with you. Stuff like this keeps me occupied, I guess. Thanks for the good words!"

And I would tailor that basic message to the person I sent it to if necessary.

I don't think I shot myself in the foot for doing this, because I received dozens and dozens of positive messages as a result of my little joke.

Will I do it again when this nonsense reaches six months? No, because by that time, early retirement will be right before me, and I will be too busy preparing for that to get into such a thing again.

I won't have time for such nonsense, and that includes Linked In.

Have a great weekend, and I will speak to you again on Monday.

Classic Rant #1,165 (March 17, 2014): Last Laugh

In the midst of the hustle and bustle of the weekend, many of you might have missed the Obituary section this weekend.

There was one passing that I really did a double-take on.

Comedian David Brenner died after losing his bout with cancer.

He was 78, and this is the thing that got me, his age.

He was one of the young lions of comedy that came up in the early 1970s, guys like Robert Klein and David Steinberg.

They were the next wave of comics, looked at life a different way than their more staid comedic brothers, had longer hair, wore chains as opposed to ties around their necks, and due to shows like "The Tonight Show," became household names for quite a spell.

I just didn't realize that Brenner, a native of Philadelphia and one more in the long line of Jewish comics, was older than most of his contemporaries when he hit it big. Heck, he was just five years younger than my parents.

Brenner was a popular comic, but I don't think he had the cache of many of his peers, from Klein to Jay Leno. He didn't have that one standout schtick that made him instantly recognizable, even though through the early 1990s, he was as ubiquitous on television as any comedian of the day.

He also had his cable TV specials, but I don't think he embraced that as much as a Robert Klein or George Carlin did.

Brenner was a true comic, but he seemed to be the one out of that group who had one foot in the old type of comedy--the really funny, just everyday type of stuff, and the new, where he wanted you to laugh as well as think.

His comedy started to take a nosedive on television, at least, when he made headlines by a protracted battle to win custody of his son.

If I remember correctly, he had had a relationship with a woman, she became pregnant, had the child, but refused Brenner's desire to be a father to his kid.

She was into drugs and that sort of lifestyle, and after years of battles that made headlines, he came out the victor.

At the time of his death, he had married another woman, and I believe that he had children with her.

Even though that battle was very public, his other family was very low-profile, which I think was a situation he desired after the nonsense he went through on a public stage about his first child.

Anyway, Brenner was still all over the place to his dying day.

Although his type of more cerebral comedy was somewhat passe--heck, you don't have to think much when comedy is splattered with more four-letter words than clean words --he was still pretty ubiquitous in just about all media.

You would often hear him on Mark Simone's old "Saturday Night Oldies" show on WABC, and he was still doing standup and appearing on several of cable's political and news channels here and there.

That is why when I opened up the paper on Saturday--a truly dead day for newspapers during the week--I was really startled to hear of his death, and in particular, his age when he passed.

R.I.P., and just know this guy is making people laugh--and think--where he is now.

Rant #2,496: Jam Up and Jelly Tight

How was your New Year's Eve and Day?

Mine was as quiet as it has ever been, and honestly, that was OK with me.

We celebrated on New Year's Eve by having Chinese food with my parents, and the meal was just so good. We had food left over, and had it all for dinner on New Year's Day.

Then, my wife and I watched "The Twilight Zone" marathon on the SyFy channel, a few hours of it at least. Name me one show on the current TV schedule that even approaches this series ... nope, you can't.

Admittedly, my wife and I fell asleep during the marathon, around 10 p.m. or so, but I awoke at a little before 11 p.m. to watch WWE Backstage show on Fox Sports I with my son. Funny, I mentioned to him that the show came on a bit early--at about 10:59 or so--and since it was obviously taped, when they did their countdown to 2020, they were off by a few seconds. And lo and behold, their countdown was off, so we turned on that Dick Clark travesty on ABC, and watched the actual countdown to the new year.

(The less said about that show, hosted by Ryan Seacrest, the better. What it was with Dick Clark at the helm, and what it has turned in to, defies description, and I won't waste any further mention of it here.)

I spent some time looking at the job postings on Wednesday, and actually applied for a few jobs on New Year's Day. Then. my wife and I had nothing to do during the day, so we ventured out to a local supermarket--Stew Leonard's, not your typical supermarket by any stretch of the imagination--picked up a few things, and that was that with that.

Yesterday afternoon, in between digitizing some LPs that I wanted to put into that format and listen to in the car, I watched a few movies, or actually, about one and a half movies, both off of YouTube. Both weren't very good, but are of interest because of their links to other things that are actually pretty interesting.

The first one, the one I watched all the way through, was called "Johnny Doughboy" and it is a 1942 film that I had heard about, always wanted to see with my own eyes, and I finally got to see it when a mention of the film on Facebook sparked my curiosity once again.

Let me try to summarize this film ... it stars Jane Withers, who was "Josephine the Plumber" in all of those Comet cleanser commercials from the 1960s to the 1990s. Anyway, people forget that she was a top kid actor in the 1930s and 1940s, and in this film, her character, also a top kid actor, wants to break away from the young roles and be taken seriously as an older female of 16 or so. Her agent--who just happens to be William Demarest, yes, "Uncle Charley" on "My Three Sons" two decades later, warns her against this, and she storms out on her own vacation from being a kid, driving--yes, at 16 years old--away from her estate and having her car run out of gas, leading her to another estate with a maid and an older, wealthy man.

In between all of this, a contest winner for the closest lookalike to Withers' character arrives at the star's mansion, all starry eyed about meeting her doppleganger. Anyway, one thing leads to another, and this young girl ends up subbing for the real thing for awhile, most notably in her dealings with a group of former child actors of some note, who want to put on a show to demonstrate both how patriotic they are and also, how available they are to a Hollywood that has shunned them and labeled them as has beens.

This group includes former Our Gang stars George "Spanky" McFarland and Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer, and the group wants Withers to headline this show. One thing leads to another and she does do just that, but their constant complaining and moaning and singing about how they are has beens really was kind of true by 1942, wasn't it?

Yes, this film is a curiosity in itself, and it is nice to see Alfalfa and Spanky in roles other than the ones they played in The Little Rascals. And as for Withers and Demarest, they ended up having long, long careers in Hollywood, albeit on television.

The second film which I have only partially watched is "Hot Blooded Woman" from 1965, although it looks like it was made a bit earlier. The black and white film has no notable stars, although the female star of this "roughie" movie--films that pushed the envelope way back when about what was permissible to be shown on screen, such as violence and sexual themes--became somewhat notorious a few years after starring in this movie.

The film chronicles the unhappy marriage between two young people, one who was a country girl who wasn't worldly and the other a gentleman who knew the ways of the world. Once they were married, the situations are reversed, and the woman becomes very worldly in certain matters (I will leave it to you to figure that out), while the man wants little or nothing to do with her.

That is pretty much it, and as I said, I have not finished the film, so hopefully, there is more than that.

But the interesting thing is that the female lead, Beverly Oliver, later became a footnote in history.

In the footage of the John F. Kennedy assassination from November 1963, there is a blond woman with her hair tied up in a scarf that can be seen, and it appears she is carrying a camera. Up until 197- or so, she was unknown, but Oliver proclaimed that SHE was the woman, and some believed her, some did not.

"The Babushka Lady" did have some credence to her story. She was an associate of Jack Ruby, the strip club owner who became famous as the killer of Lee Harvey Oswald. Oliver was a dancer who was friends with the top stripper at Ruby's strip club, so there was some validity to what she was claiming to be.

Since nobody else has ever stepped forward to claiming to be this woman, perhaps she is telling the truth. In fact, in addition to appearing in a few other films during her short movie career, Oliver made a cameo in Oliver Stone's "JFK" film.

Anyway, so there you have it. That is what I did during New Year's. Nothing too exciting.

And yes, I mourn the loss of the NBA's David Stern and baseball's Don Larsen. I heard about their passings yesterday afternoon. Very said indeed.

Speak to you tomorrow.

Classic /rant #1,164 (March 14, 2014): The Countdown Begins

We received a letter in the mail from my son's high school yesterday that really signaled the fact that the countdown to his graduation has started.

It had to do with caps and gowns, and that he had to pay for them later this month.

We had to measure his head size and we had to weigh him because he needs to be fitted properly.

Graduation time is approaching, and for my son, this is really it for him.

He has a learning disability, so he won't be going to college, at least not right now.

He has done as well as he could with his high school courses. He has managed to pass them all, probably a lot of the time through the good graces of his teachers, who quantify his passing not necessarily by test scores, but by preparedness and effort.

He has taken numerous courses to help get him ready for life after high school, and he seems ready to go out into the world and begin to start his career.

He has a great resume, having worked as a volunteer counselor at a summer program run by the school district for two years, and he actually made some money last year working for a summer camp.

He is a good kid, but like most of us at that age, he is bright eyed and bushy tailed, and not that knowledgeable about the outside world.

But my wife and I are very proud of him for that level that he is about the reach, against all odds.

I was equally proud of my daughter when she graduated high school, and later college, and now, as a member of the workforce.

She had some obstacles of her own to jump over, but she did what she had to do and did it well.

But this appears to be it educationally for my son, who will further his education on the job, whatever that job is.

So when we received the material in the mail for his cap and gown, it gave us time to pause and think about his 18 years, and the strides he has made to leap over his disability and make something of himself.

That road is still full of lots of hurdles, but he has done pretty well this far, and I have no reason to think he can't continue to defy the odds.

We will really know that "this is it" when his yearbook comes. Funny, that didn't have the weight that the cap and gown thing did, because we paid for the yearbook months ago.

But when he finally gets that, well, that will really be it.

And then, graduation, and finally, he will be out in the wide blue yonder.

I just hope the road ahead is a good and fair one for him, and that he makes his way as seamlessly as he can.