Classic Rant #1,335 (December 4. 2014): No Indictment

Once again, a white police officer has not received an indictment in a case where a black man was killed.

And it happened in my neck of the woods, which brings it up close and personal to myself and everyone who lives in the New York Metropolitan area.

In this case, Eric Garner, another person with a criminal history as long as your arm, was put into a choke hold when he was apprehended for selling cigarettes on a street in the New York City borough of Staten Island.

He had asthma, could not breath, told the five officers who were on top of him that he could not breath, and he died.

All of it was recorded on a cell phone, and honestly, I personally thought that he officer in question would be indicted for reckless endangerment, the lesser of the charges.

He was not.

Some people say that based on the video alone, this was a total miscarriage of justice.

And if you simply take the video alone, it probably was.

However, a jury heard testimony of 22 witnesses, saw other evidence that the public has not seen, heard from the police officer that applied the hold, and came up with no indictment.

What happened?

Again, I am not a lawyer, but it appears that the 22 witnesses may have painted a different picture of what happened to Garner than what the video showed.

And the police officer must have made an extremely compelling argument about why he had to apply such a hold on Garner.

The video showed the last few moments of Garner's life. But what precipitated what happened before the video was shot?

Was there just cause for the police to act the way they did?

Did Garner physically threaten them, either with his words or by actually having a physical altercation with them?

Did he do anything else to make the police act the way they did?

Evidently so, because no indictment was made. The feds are now looking into this situation, but the proof of the pudding can be found in what the witnesses said happened prior to the video being shot.

The police do not go out to kill people, but they will if such an act is necessary.

In this case, unlike the Ferguson case, there was no reason for Garner to have died.

But what were his actions before the video was made that led the policeman to apply such a hold on Garner?

I do believe that that is where we find out what led to this unfortunate situation.

This case is so different than what happened in Ferguson, but it will be lumped together, of course, as situations where police may have not have used their best judgment.

But did they actually use the only judgment that they possibly could, under these circumstances, in each of the cases?

I do believe in Ferguson that the officer was threatened with bodily harm, and he did make the correct choice, the only choice he could make under the circumstances.

In New York, the whole thing from top to bottom was unfortunate, but evidently, the evidence found no reason to indict.

Yes, I was quite surprised that the police officer was not indicted on the lesser charge, but he was not indicted, so the evidence must have pointed in his favor in some way, shape or form.

Let the feds look into it now. I am sure they will find something that the local court could not find.

And that is what scares me, and should scare you, too.

They are going to be under intense pressure to find something, and with that pressure over their heads, you can bet that this case is one that is far, far from over.

[And the one constant in the two cases is again the Rev. Al Sharpton, who feeds off these incidents like the leech that he is.

He is truly the Martin Luther King of the Bizzarro World, and his mere presence makes his ignorant flock seem so righteous.

Please, please, put this tax evader away in jail, where he belongs, not sitting with the President of the United States, who doesn't appear to have a clue that all of this nonsense is going on during his watch, and that makes him somewhat responsible for the lax environment we currently live in.

And if people are calling for New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton's head, how about Mayor Bill deBlasio's head too? The Garner incident happened under his watch. I get the increasing suspicion that deBlasio is being given a bye on matters like this because he married a black woman and has a bi-racial family. He used the race card to perfection to get into office, and I do believe that people are willing to forgive and forget with him because of his living situation. Believe me, I hope that I am wrong, and both Bratton and deBlasio are held to the same level of responsibility in this and other similar matters.]

Rant #2,485: Simply the Best

Tom Seaver was simply the best pitcher I have ever seen on the ball field.

He died on Monday at 75, of dementia and Covid-19, and honestly, he had struggled in recent years ever since he contracted Lyme Disease in the 1980s.

But when he was young, he could do it all, including throwing the ball past batters at a consistent 90-plus miles per hour, and do it consistently for years and years, from the mid-1960s through the 1980s.

But I also hated Tom Seaver.

I hated his talent, his athletic ability, and his verve on the mound.

Let me tell you why I hated him so.

I am a New York Yankees fan, born and bred, and the Yankees are my team, no matter where I am in life, where I live, or where my mind is at.

I was born in Brooklyn in 1957, and the Dodgers were still playing in the borough when I was a baby. When they and the Giants moved to the West Coast, that left a void in baseball, as the National League had no New York representative team.

And people with deep pockets knew it, and they threatened to start a new league with a New York team, and Major League Baseball was scared, so scared that they decided to expand in 1962, and the Metropolitans and the Houston Colt 45s were the new National League teams, quashing any attempt to create a new league.

In those days, the Mets were absolutely terrible, fielding a collection of New York-related has beens and never weres, while the Yankees continued their dominance, going to the World Series in the Mets' first three years of existence.

1965 happened, the Yankees also became a collection of has beens and never weres, but somehow, they weren't as warm and fuzzy as the Mets were.

The Mets had Casey Stengel as manager, and other players who were once really good, but at that time, were basically hanging on by a thread. Even Yogi Berra played a few games for the Mets during this period, but honestly, while the fans loved the team, the team was awful.

But through a twist of fate, the Mets were able to pick up somebody by the name of Tom Seaver over two other teams, and the fate of the franchise turned once Seaver became a Met.

In 1967, and with another horrid team, he won the Rookie of the Year award, and suddenly, all eyes were turning to the Mets, at least when he was on the mound. The Yankees were totally broken during this period, and while players like Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford were still around, their best years were behind them, and the Mets were starting to pick up fans.

I lived in Rochdale Village, South Jamaica, Queens, during this era, and we lived just a few miles away from Shea Stadium. As a kid, those horrid Yankees teams were MY teams, and as a kid, we constantly compared our own young age, Mel Stottlemyre, with Seaver.

Stottlemyre was an excellent pitcher, but he was no Seaver, no way, no how.

And then 1969 happened, and the world was set on its ear by several events, including the Mets' improbable run to the World Series.

Seaver was nearly unhittable that year, winning 25 games and eventually, the Cy Young Award as the National League's best pitcher. People forget that he actually lost the first game of the World Series, but he and his team went on to beat the Baltimore Orioles four games to one for the title.

And the Yankees continued to be also rans.

The early 1970s brought greater fame to Seaver and the Mets, and Seaver solidified himself as the game's best pitcher.

Mel Stottlemyre was good, but he was not Tom Seaver.

Fortunes turned in the mid 1970s, and the great Yankees teams of that era brought the franchise back to greatness. The Mets foundered, but they still had Tom Seave go to the mound every fourth day, and that continued to be a reason to watch them, even when their fortunes had dipped so.

And in 1977, the Mets had the audacity to trade Seaver, get rid of him during the dawn of free agency. No, he was not the Seaver of the mid 1960s or early 1970s, but he still had plenty in the tank.

As a member of the Cincinnati Reds and later the Chicago White Sox, Seaver continued to be a pitcher to be dealt with, a marvel on the mound who could still get batters out and threw 90 miles per hour on a consistent basis.

During this period, he threw his only no-hitter, and in an instance which riled people like me to no end, he won his 300th game at Yankee Stadium as a member of the Whtie Sox on Phil Rizzuto Day, a day designated by the team to honor their former shortstop and who was then a popular announcer who had as many retirement ceremonies as Cher has had.

It just added to my hate of Seaver.

And yes, the Mets did bring him back for a cup of coffee when he couldn't do it anymore, and yes, he did eventually play for the Yankees' heated rival the Boston Red Sox, but this just added to my hate for this guy.

Seaver would retire in the mid 1980s, and somehow, he wound up as a Yankees announcer for a couple of years, forever getting Rizzuto's goat--yes, he still was there after about 20 reitrements--about winning his 300th game on Phil Rizzuto Day.

During this period, you could see that Seaver--who was as sharp a talker as he was a pticher--was not up to his old standards. We later found out that he had contracted Lyme Disease, perhaps getting it while working on his vineyard in California, and he soon left the broadcast booth full time, although he did some broadcasting for the Mets while he still could.

And then Seaver literally vanished off the scene.

We later found out that he had never really recovered from Lyme Disease, and that while he kept himself busy on his vineyard, he was not right, and was never right again.

He did throw out the ceremonial first pitches during the last game at Shea Stadium and the first game at CitiField, but during both events, he went quietly.

When the Mets celebrated the 50th anniversary of their first championship in 2019, Seaver politely declined an invitation to appear, and it was apparent that he was not well.

And then early today, we found out that he had left us on Monday, another victim of the coronavirus.

Yes, I hated Tom Seaver, I really did.

But I respected him as much as I hated him.

He, and Bob Gibson, were the best pitchers that I ever saw, the best at their craft, the best at ruling the strike zone while on the mound, just the best and most talented pitchers I have ever seen.

And since most of Seaver's playing time was in New York, I will give him a very slight edge over Gibson.

To this day, even non-sports fans know Seaver, they know the nicknames "Tom Terrific" and "The Franchise," and while they may not know his clubhouse nickname "Boy Scout," all one has to do is put them all together, and you will know that this guy was something special.

R.I.P. ... even from this guy who hated you.

Classic Rant #1,334 (December 3, 2014): The Email Blues

I don't know about you, but my email has kind of morphed over the years from a true message center to what is akin to an electronic garbage pail.

I used to get messages from friends, people who belonged to my groups, from groups I belonged to, and others, with interesting tidbits about this and that.

I always enjoyed getting regular mail, now known as snail mail, so I was sort of in a mail "nirvana" with my email.

However, over the years, those interesting messages have lessened to a few a week, and now, my email is overrun with ads ...

Ads mainly cajoling me to buy things I don't need, ads for organizations hoping to engage me, and ads from department stores and online entities, all looking for my interest.

Well, I have to tell you, I am not interested one bit.

Maybe not one bit, maybe extremely slightly, at best.

Every day, I go through my email, and I have to tell you, I immediately delete between 10 and 30 messages each day, all pertaining to some sort of advertising.

And since we are in the holiday season, it is getting even worse.

I have to say that once in a while, there is one of these advertising emails that does engage me, and I did use one coupon when I did my holiday shopping, which ended up saving me about $30 on something that I bought, so I am not immune to using these things to my advantage.

But honestly, those types of emails are few and far between. If I am deleting between 10 and 30 messages a day, that equals out to between 3,650 and over 10,000 messages a year. If I get two or three that interest me over the course of a year ... well, as you can see, the percentage of "good" advertising emails is very, very low.

But those that send these things--which to me are almost "legal" spam--are banking on it that you will use what they have to sell you, and I guess if I am using one during the holiday season, millions of others are using one, two, and it all ads up to big business for these entities.

I don't even worry about "real" spam anymore--I might get one or two of these a year now. It is the advertising emails that I really have to think about.

Happily, just about every one that I get is from a legitimate organization, whether it is a retailer, a charity, or some online presence.

I don't have to worry about that, but I do hate the proliferation of these things.

And for Black Friday ... don't ask. I was getting rid of emails left and right.

Look, I understand that this is the latest way to advertise your goods and trumpet issues that you back.

But there are just so many of them, that whatever the sender is trying to do is getting lost in the email fog, to a certain extent.

Heck, some entities send three or four such messages out to me each day.

Enough already!

I get the message, literally, and it generally goes right where it belongs ...

In the trash.

Rant #2,484: Changes

There is a new commercial on television about something--I don't remember what exactly--that shows a nice-looking woman getting all gussied up for the day with her clothes and makeup, and then, when she is ready to put on her lipstick, she looks in the mirror for a second, and then pulls up her mask without applying this part of her makeup regimen.

I guess she figures that why should she put on the lipstick if it is only going to be covered up with a mask?

I have found that over the past nearly 11 months, my early morning regimen has changed, too, and I think for a lot of people, they can say the same.

In particular, with so many people at home for one reason or another--unemployment, furlough, or simply working from home--the regimen we have followed, perhaps for decades, has had to change, in one way or another.

I used to get up at 4 a.m. in the morning, get dressed with my work clothes--business casual--and go about my business, but that certainly has changed as a result of my situation.

Now, I get up from bed between 5:45 a.m. and 6 a.m., take s shower, and during the summer at least, when getting dressed, I put on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt rather than a nice shirt and slacks.

Shoes? No way! I haven't put on a pair of shoes since my last in-person interview in I guess it was February. Sneakers have been my choice of footwear since then.

I also don't shave as much as I did when I was working, which has been the only benefit I can see of such a length of unemployment.

I used to shave religiously on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday, a procedure that I went through not for years, but for decades. It kept me pretty well groomed for work, and I rarely veered off of that schedule, a schedule that I hated because I simply hate to shave.

Now, not going to work has radically changed that decades-old schedule, as I now shave only twice a week, on Sunday and on Thursday.

Yes, Tuesday I go shaveless.

So by today, Wednesday, I have a few days' growth of beard, but honestly, there is absolutely no reason to shave three times a week anymore. My faces itches a bit, but it all comes off tomorrow morning, so I can handle it.

A couple of times over the past 11 months I have actually shaved on a Saturday--seeing relatives on that day--so I have actually gone four days without shaving on occasion during this span.

Going onto Facebook, nothing appears to be sacred, and many women have posted that during their own bouts of inactivity, they don't dress like they normally do, and the first piece of clothing that isn't a necessity anymore for a lot of them have been their bras.

Being a red-blooded American male, I guess that is fine with me, but I guess since they are not at work, there is no "bounce" factor, no one to glare at them when they walk around the office flaunting gravity.

I am sure that when and if they get back to the grind, they will find their bras and wear them, but right now, they are free to do and dress in whatever fashion they want, and the bra is the first thing to go.

And I will bet like that woman in the commercial, makeup might also not be a necessity anymore.

But then again, if you are on a video conference at home--I know my sister, a teacher, has been on many of these during the past few months, with the turmoil around how to teach our kids in complete and utter turmoil--you have to look your work-beast at least from the top down to your stomach, so I guess for women the bras and makeup go back on, and the nicer clothes go back on, at least on the top.

I will bet that below the top, people on these calls continue to wear shorts and sneakers like me.

I know that our changes in lifestyle have impacted what is known as softlines, mainly involving clothing.

Since the pandemic hit, sales of more formal clothing, like suits and ties, have gone way down while sales in leisureware, like pajama pants and shorts, have gone way up, and that is both on the men's and the women's side.

Certain makeup sales are also down, because quite frankly, if you are home, you don't have to make up your face as much as you do when you are at work.

In a way, it is so funny have things have turned regarding what we wear at home during the past several decades.

Look at old TV shows. If those reflected the times, women wore dresses in and around the house on a regular basis, and how they did housework in these dresses, I will never know.

Men generally still kept on their ties while relaxing at home, even without the suit jackets. They just replaced the jackets with a sweater and they were set for reading the newspaper or doing the family bills in their study.

It is simply not like that anymore, and actually, it probably was not that way back then either, but who said what we see on TV has to be real?

And that goes back to that pretty lady with the lipstick that I mentioned at the beginning of this Rant.

If you are a woman, are you forgoing the lipstick because you don't need it by being home and.or it is going to be covered up by a face mask anyway?

Is this the usual TV "reality," or is it actually happening?

As the old saying goes, only your hairdresser knows for sure.

Or is it real, or is it Memorex?

I can't decide which ending to this Rant I like better, so I will let you decide for yourselves.

Classic Rant #1,333 (December 2, 2014): Record Store Day

As I mentioned yesterday, the only shopping I did on Black Friday was for myself, at my local record store.

Record Store Day has been around for the past couple of years, and it highlights local record stores, which had been a dying breed until recently.

Yes, digital downloads have knocked out many of the record stores that proliferated the planet since the 1950s, and even larger chains have gone under because of this, including Tower Records and Virgin Records.

But the local record stores live on, because there are many, many people, like myself, who are serious record collectors, and quite frankly, the only place to get "serious" records--mainly vinyl--are at these local stores.

Sure, you have eBay, but who wants to go through the hassle of bidding on an item?

Yes, we also have GEMM, but like all shopping on the Internet, you can't hold, feel and look at what you want right before you when you order from this site.

Yes, you need an actual store, and that is what Record Store Day is all about.

And various record labels have noticed, and they put out special edition records just for the occasion.

This year, when I visited my local record store on Record Store Day, I was looking specifically for two special edition records to add to my collection.

One was a Beatles' extended play record, a re-released disk on heavier vinyl. One can't pass up a Beatles record during this special day, and being a 1960s music lover, I certainly wasn't going to let it get by me.

Then there was another record by an artist who really isn't much of a singer and is better known for another craft.

His name is Mick Foley, and if you know anything about pro wrestling, you know that Foley, who lives right on Long Island, is one of the all-time greats. Beyond the ring, he is a best-selling author, a comedian, and most importantly, a family man, and I just had to get his Christmas record, which will allow my son and myself to meet him at an in-store appearance later this month.

So I bought those two records, and a bit more.

The store I went to is the type of store that I can get buried in, going through all the aisles, and seemingly miles and miles of records that they have.

I bought some singles that I needed--with picture sleeves, no less--and a few LPs, and I didn't really spend very much money doing it.

And it made me happy, because serious record collectors know that the best way to listen to music is not on CD, not through digital files, but on vinyl.

Sure, I do copy them over to MP3s via my turntable/computer setup, but I do this to listen to what I have on my car radio.

Otherwise, the greatest listening experience is truly via vinyl. Rock and roll was made for that format, and vinyl sales are rising each year, because the younger generation--kids between 18 and 25--are rediscovering vinyl, which I think is great.

There is hope for this world!

I almost forgot to mention that a sidelight of the day was actually quite important--the store I went to donated a percentage of its sales to various local charities.

So all in all, while I missed the hustle and bustle of Black Friday, I really enjoyed myself on that day, shopping in a different, less frenzied way.

To me, there is nothing more relaxing than going through hundreds upon hundreds of records at my local record store.

If you haven't done so, brush off your turntable and go to your local record store.

Vinyl lives!

Rant #2,483: The Final Countdown

It is Tuesday, September 1, the 245th of this horrific 2020, and it is a milestone day for me, a day that I was forced into and never looked forward to like so many others do.

Today I am officially retired.

I put in for retirement on July 1 after months and months of being unemployed, of being unwanted, of being forced out of the market because at the ripe old age of 63, I was looked at as being too old to handle a job in both my chosen profession and other areas that I applied to for full-time positions.

I banged my head against the wall from October 10, 2019--the day my place of business for the past 23 and a half years closed after years of teetering--till that date, and with no job prospects at all, I felt I had to protect myself and my family for the future, so I filed for early unemployment.

I had my phone interview a few weeks later, was approved, and as of today, I am officially, legally retired.

The problem is that although my retirement begins today, the government pretty much doesn't start your payments right then and there. You have to wait at least a month for payments, and it has to do with when your birthday falls out on the calendar as to when you get them.

So for me, since I was born April 28, I will not get any payments from the government until October 28. That is when my monthly Social Security payments will begin.

If my mother could have held out a few more days until, let's say May 1, I would get my payments exactly one month after I was officially retired. Since she couldn't hold out those three extra days, I have to go roughly two months without getting a dime for my retirement.

Yup, that is how ridiculous the way this thing works, and with Social Security forever teetering itself, I just hope it works for me until my time is up.

According to the government, I believe I have about 19 years left in my life, and I will be getting payments based on my life expectancy.

So even though I was forced to check in earlier than I would have liked--I wanted to work full time until I was 70, which is the optimum time to retire--my total dollar payments will equal out to the same amount as those who retired at 70, because although my monthly payments will be smaller, I will get more actual payments retiring at an earlier age.

But retiring at age 63 puts me in a bind, because I cannot collect Medicare until I am age 65.

It does not matter now, because I am on my wife's health plan, but she is slightly older than me--five months--and thus, she will turn 65 a few months before me. When she retires--and she plans to do just that next year--she will get Medicare, as she retires at age 65, but I am going to have to wait a few months to get it.

I guess I will have to get a short-term plan when she retires, so I am covered in the case of any eventualities related to health.

Yes, the whole thing is horrid. I look back on the past nearly 11 months, and at least I can say that I did my best, never wavered, worked hard to get a full-time job, but I failed miserably.

As I look back on these past nearly 11 months of unemployment, I know that I had too many walls in my way to succeed.

First, I had the age stigma, the belief that anyone over a certain age--like 45 to 50 or so, and especially over 55 years of age--is washed up, cannot be retrained or learn anything new,and is useless in the marketplace.

Look, I know that we treat our elderly very poorly in many areas to begin with, and it stretches to the job. Older workers are looked at as gold diggers, looking to take the cash and run when the time comes. yet when it comes down to brass tacks, the older worker is looked at as the one to get the job done.

Yet ageism certainly exists in the job market, and it is the last stigma in that market that has yet to be addressed. And it has yet to be addressed because proving discrimination related to your age in this job arena is almost an impossible thing to do, unless it is direct, like, "I can't hire you because you are too old." I haven't experienced that, but let's face it, after applying for more than 1,000 positions over my unemployment span, and getting just a handful of interviews as a result, you just know that I am a victim of job discrimination related to my age.

Also, my contacts could not help me find a full-time job. Look, full-time workers themselves are in a precarious position today, so unless you have really prime contacts that can really open the door for you, you are sunk in job quicksand.

I had none of these, and I give many of them credit, they said flat out that they could not help me, and I understood that. Others tried to help, but for one reason or another, it did not pan out.

And finally, I had to contend with the coronavirus and everything that it has brought--or removed--from the table. Even though my family and I never were infected with this virus, it has infected us in so many other ways, and one of them certainly was that it closed off the job market for so many people, myself included.

Full-time jobs have become scarce during the pandemic, and with so many people being forced out of work, every job I applied for probably had at least 100 others applying for the same exact job, so my chance of landing a new full-time job during the pandemic was probably less than nil.

So here I am, newly retired, and no, I am not going to have a party or a celebration of any kind.

I did not choose to be in this position, so what's to celebrate?

But at age 63, I believe I still have a lot of life in me, and I am not going to let my situation deter me from living it.

Life is for the living, and I am alive!

Let me go with that, and proceed straight ahead for at least the next 19 years, and hopefully, well beyond that.

Let's go ... let's go ... let's go!

Classic Rant #1,332 (December 1, 2014): "Potpourri"

Funny, I was thinking of this word last night when I was deciding what I was going to write about today.

Remember on the old "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In" show, where Dick Martin would have fun with this word with Dan Rowan?

Dick would say "POT-pourri," with the emphasis on the "Pot" part of the word, and we would all laugh?

And I am not talking about that smelly stuff called Potpourri, either.

Well, today's Rant--the first one since Thanksgiving--has nothing to do with "POT," or really anything much.

It is just a conglomeration of some thoughts about stuff that has happened over the past few days, a virtual "potpourri" of thoughts and actions that have taken place during the past few days..

As has become a personal tradition, I did my holiday shopping on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

I like it that way. Nobody is in the stores, and you can pretty much do everything you need to do in a relatively short time.

So I didn't wrestle with either Thanksgiving Day or Black Friday or Black Friday weekend crowds, and I won't bother today, on Cyber Monday, to shop.

Thanksgiving Day could have been better, could have been worse.

My sister got pneumonia right before the holiday, so the brood that we were expecting at our home for the holiday never materialized.

At first, we thought we would only have my family and my parents, but two of my nephews did come on the holiday, one with his girlfriend, so it was kind of a subdued feast.

My wife had to work Friday and Saturday, and I was off on Friday, so on those days, I did pretty much absolutely nothing.

I did food shopping, and yes, I went to my local record store for Record Store Day, which is on Black Friday, so I did do some shopping--admittedly for myself.

I did get some bargains, or what I think are bargains, but that was pretty much that.

Even with my wife home yesterday, we just took it easy, watching TV and I never really even ventured out of the house.

Yesterday was my father's 83rd birthday, so we gave him his gifts, wished him well.

And before we knew it, everything went back to normal today.

We are in the stretch run of the year, basically 90 feet away from home plate.

To me, December is the longest month on the calendar. It seems to take twice as long for this month to end, with all the holidays we are looking forward to just a stone's throw away.

It is a busy month, and we are almost there.

Honestly, with such a lousy 11 months behind myself and my family, I simply hope that December just comes, and goes, pretty quickly.

And you don't know the half of it.

I tell you a lot here, but I don't tell you everything.

This has just been a very poor year for myself and my family, in all honesty, and I just hope that December flies by.

I have to be an optimist, and I have to believe that 2015 will be better.

But at least one hurdle in the stretch run has been jumped over, and that is Thanksgiving.

I hope you had a good one.