Weekend Update
14 03 2010[EDITOR’S NOTE: ALSO CHECK OUT THE ENGLISH LANGUISH PAGE FOR AN ENTRY ON THE BATTLE OF YORKTOWN FLIER]
Is it possible to pump too much iron? Ask my left upper arm, which is on the DL. But that’s not such a bad thing. The contemporary texts on physical fitness preach “muscle confusion” and the critical interim phase of recovery, when the muscle actually rebuilds itself. In effect, lifting weights tears down the muscle so that it can grow bigger, which happens when it is in repose, not in resistance.
At a Saturday eve St. Patty’s party, someone teased that next I’ll be doing infomercials for the P90X. On Sunday, while channel surfing, I purposefully stopped at that very informercial. Sure enough, it too talks about muscle confusion. That’s all about not falling into a rut of repeating the same exercises in every workout. It’s also about mixing up sets to alternate body parts and to alternate exercises on the same body part.
For example, for the chest, muscle confusion might entail going directly from one set of 12 barbell bench presses to one set of 15 incline-bench dumbbell flyes, as the two exercises work different parts of the pecs. Muscle confusion also is achieved by combining aerobics exercises for the core (abdomen and obliques, mainly) with exercises for isolated body parts like biceps, triceps, calves, quadriceps (thighs).
Seeing the P90X infomercial helped motivate me to shake off having bravely competed in a social triathlon on Saturday — morning-afternoon bat mitzvah in Jersey, Lakeland Education Foundation dinner at Colonial Terrace early evening, Jell-o shots-fueled St. Patty’s party into the wee hours — to drag my sorry self to the gym on Daylight Savings Time Sunday to do an aerobics-centric workout. My left arm (which I brilliantly nicknamed Lefty in a recent rush of creative adrenaline) was content to just hang out while other body parts ran their course.
My plan is to leave the weights at rest for a week or two, or at least until Lefty sends a smoke signal to some synapse or other that it’s ready to resume getting broken down and built back up with regularity.
No doubt my Sunday resilience after going to bed about halfway between midnight and daylight was in part attributable to the legendary restorative power of those Jell-o shots, which I prefer to take orally rather than intravenously. Shopping with Elyse Sunday after my workout, I was at the far end of aisle 12 (give or take a few aisles) when I heard her, at the other end of the aisle, say, “I need Jell-o!” It was all I could do to repress my instinctive squeal of delight. Or maybe, it being the afternoon of the morning after, it would have been a squeal of horror. I guess we’ll never know. Just as well, eh?
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David Brooks, the conservative political op-ed columnist for The New York Times, made a remark on Sunday’s Meet the Press that makes him a man after my own heart, philosophically if not always politically. In chatting with substitute moderator Tom Brokaw about the divisions in Congress between Democrats and Republicans over just about every issue imaginable, Mr. Brooks noted how there are people who have to disagree 180 degrees instead of disagreeing by, say, 30 degrees.
There are people who see things in black-and-white. I’m from the Gray School of Analysis. I don’t see most anything in black-and-white because I think life is forever gray, matter of fact.
It helps explain why 180-degree cable-TV shock jocks like Keith Olbermann and Sean Hannity — who see things in black-and-white and disagree 180-degrees rather than something in between 0 and 180, have zero credibility with the opposition and 100% credibility with those who already see thing their way. So, what’s the point of their commentary? Got me. But they don’t.
Or take Bill O’Reilly, who I find to be the most entertaining and telesavvy of the cable shock jocks. That’s due in no small part to the crafty production values overseen by Fox News Channel chief Roger Ailes, who knows how to make provocative political TV better than anyone currently running a channel or show.
On his Sunday show, Mr. O’Reilly ripped into the destructive influences on adolescents of the escapist diversions like iPods, videgames, mobile phones and the like. My immediate thought was what does Mr. O’Reilly think, then, of the ultimate escapist diversion of our age in which he is an uber-figure? That would be television.
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Overheard in the gym locker room as I got dressed cheek-by-jowl (I know, already too much information) with three teenaged students: I picked up the conversation when one of the three said, “That’s mean.” His friend asked, “What is that, the new word? I keep hearing it.” I thought he meant “mean” was now being used to denote what in other eras would be “cool” or “rad” or, the most ironic usage, “bad” (as in really good).
But they weren’t saying “mean,” but “meme.” The first elucidated for his two friends that it just refers in general “to the latest Internet trend.” If you check out the term in various dictionaries, the kid knew what hewas talking about. It doesn’t denote an Internet trend, but does connote a cultural change that catches on. As Casey Stengel used to say, “You could look it up.”
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I like watching ESPN’s The Sports Reporters on Sunday mornings, and was somewhat relieved this Sunday morning to see Mike Lupica not on the set, and to see NBA Hall of Famer Len Elmore, an ESPN Analyst, as a new face. Lupica knows his stuff, but as a TV presence, his manners leave a tad to be desired, tending to interrupt others, and stammering because his motor mouth can’t move fast enough to spit out all the words collecting in his larynx. It’s been said television is a cool medium, and Lupica is like a toy terrier in heat.
As a Syracuse U. alumnus and Orange basketball partisan, I was dismayed to see Elmore, Bob Ryan (Boston Globe) and William C. Rhoden (N.Y. Times) join with host John Saunders in dismissing Syracuse altogether in a conversation about the NCAA Tournament teams to beat. Their exchange focused solely on No. 1 Kansas and on John Calipari’s Kentucky.
I couldn’t help but think how flakey sports commentators sometimes tend to be. Less than two weeks ago, after Syracuse played with Villanova in its home Carrier Dome, Syracuse was being hailed as a lock for a No. 1 regional seed in the tournament, and the nation’s new No. 1, which it subsequently was named in the polls. Then it lost to Louisville for the second time this season (out of three losses at that point), and was rudely ousted from the Big East tourney in its first game, against nemesis Georgetown.
Now, Syracuse wasn’t even part of the conversation. We’ll see come tournament time if they’re right. Syracuse is reliably unpredictable in its basketball program, this year perhaps more than ever.
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Lakeland Education Foundation, led by its current “president-for-life” Mike Sitzer, successor to previous “president-for-life” Charles (Chuck) Newman, knows how to put on a high-energy, high-profile fundraising gala, as it proved once again Saturday night at Colonial Terrace, with a crowd of 330 to prove the point.
Honorees were Mr. Newman, a role model for community volunteerism and fundraising, and Dr. Lois Favre, Assistant Superintendent for Instruction and Curriculum (and no relation, as far as she knows, to that on-again, off-again NFL quarterback, who doesn’t pronounce his name “favor,” as she does).
LEF does a lot of things right and other district foundations would do well to emulate its best practices. Those practices include, as was the case with Mr. Newman’s honor, selecting both a staff and a service honoree.
My own philosophy of community awards — which our Harrison Apar Field of Dreams Foundation presents jointly with Yorktown Athletic Club each year at our Golf Classic dinner — is that not enough of them are presented to people who are out of the limelight day-to-day, and don’t hold fixed positions within an institution, but who do a lot of heavy lifting. Like Chuck Newman. LEF manages to have it both ways with its staff and service awards, which is a good way to bridge the gap.
A nice surprise of the evening, especially to Chuck Newman, was the unscheduled appearance of his and wife Carol’s daughter Sarah, singing “Someone to Watch Over Me” in a beautiful rendition. Beaming the whole time was Chuck’s mom Roshi Newman, a well-known artist in this region who donated one of her works to the silent auction.
Among the large turnout were County Legislators Mike Kaplowitz and John Testa, Yorktown Councilman Vishnu Patel, and former Southeast Town Justice and Putnam special prosecutor Jim Borkowski, who is nearing an announcement on which possibly statewide elected office he will seek this year. Mr. Borkowski was on hand in part to represent N.Y. State Senator Vincent Leibell, whose annual St. Patrick’s Day brunch is set for Sunday, March 21, at Villa Barone in Mahopac, a change of venue from the Sheetmetal Workers Union hall in Patterson, where it’s been held in years past.
Unlike similar events at which elected officials are present, the public officials at LEF were not acknowledged from the podium, nor were proclamations publicly presented by the dignitaries to the honorees, which always is a nice touch.
But that was about the only nit to pick, because everything else was thought of and handled extremely well at this casino night fundraiser.
Taking it all in was a contingent from the Yorktown Chamber of Commerce that included Chairman Aaron Bock, President Joe Visconti and partner Roxanne Innerfield of RGI Properties, Past Chamber President James Stropoli of Club Fit, and Marketing Committee Chair Andrea Wagner of Wagner Web Designs.
Aaron told me something I never knew about him: his father was superintendent of Lakeland School District in the 1980s and before that principal of Walter Panas High School. Joe Visconti, Aaron and I engaged in a brief discussion about how it to came to be that Yorktown has — or needs — two separate school districts, especially in the new reality of downsized state education budgets.
Joe said he had heard an anecdotal story that Mildred Strang and Walter Panas — the human beings, not the bricks-and-mortar named for them — didn’t get along and that led to a division of districts. A good story, that. But not necessarily true.
Aaron said once upon a time, there were Yorktown, Mohegan Lake and Shrub Oak school districts. In the interest of consolidation, the latter two decided to combine and instead of battling over which name would prevail, the Solomon-like decision was to select a neutral name that didn’t refer to either hamlet. Hence, Lakeland. The time has come that, in a repeat of history, another look be given to consolidating the remaining two school districts.
Categories : Politricks, Yorktown



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