Bruce the Blog

I’ve been to more than my share of Super Bowls. There was the 1998 game in San Diego when those of us who wanted to see the Denver Broncos quarterback beat the Green Bay Packers and finally win the big one after three prior losses, including to the N.Y. Giants, chanted “Elway all the way!” And he did just that. I’ll always remember being on the treadmill in the Hotel Del Coronado’s fitness room Super Bowl morning when notoriously irascible Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis walked in. We were the only two there. He asked me, “Gonna be on that long?” I assured him I didn’t have miles to go before I was done, then couldn’t resist asking, “Who do you like in the game?” His reply approximated, “Harumph!” His team wasn’t in it and he could care less.

The next year my late son Harrison accompanied me to Miami to see Denver win two in a row, this time against Atlanta Falcons. We met Joe Morgan, Warren Moon, Steve McNair, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, rapper/actor LL Cool J, Harrison had his photo taken with very nice Hall of Fame Pittsburgh Steelers receiver Lynn Swann and we were standing in an elevator when Magic Johnson walked in and graciously signed Harrison’s hat. At a party where KC and the Sunshine Band played, we got Neil O’Donnell’s autograph (remember him, Jets fans?). We were standing right next to a rather hefty fellow but never asked for his autograph because Harrison’s dad has this rule about not asking without knowing who the person is. It just seems somewhat insincere and hollow. Others we were with didn’t recognize him either, only to find out later that night it was former Dallas Cowboys linebacker Thomas “Hollywood” Henderson.

Two years later, I went to Tampa for the drubbing the Giants took at the hands of the brutish Baltimore Ravens, but at least had the privilege of telling Aerosmith’s Steve Tyler I didn’t have a match when he asked me for one to light his cigar in the hotel lobby as we were waiting for our bus to the airport on Monday.  I have to admit that was a matchless experience.

This past Sunday, though, I had another matchless experience. As a guest of my friends at the Christopher Columbus Society clubhouse on Mahopac Avenue in Yorktown for their Super Bowl party, it was quite a sight to see all those present reflexively rise as the old cathode-ray television showed Carrie Underwood singing the National Anthem. Several of the men placed their right hands over their hearts. I’ve been to other Super Bowl parties over the years, and never remember seeing this heartening display of sacred respect, for a way of life that these people do not take for granted.

As the game transpired, we were deeply engaged in animated conversations. I enjoyed meeting and chatting with recently inducted Columbus Society president Frank Weller and with the more familiar faces of Peekskill Police Chief Gene Tumolo, his son Andy Tumolo (VP of the Columbus Society), Yorktown Parks & Recreation Commision Chair Joe Falcone, Columbus Society treasurer Vince Lemmo, who also is president of Mount Kisco Chamber of Commerce, Alfie Boniello, and Phil and Nunzio Cassese of Cassese & Sons Construction Corp., commemorating its golden anniversary this year. Also on hand was Yorktown civic fixture Bob Giordano, a Yorktown Planning Board member, who’s always ready to lend a hand and move things forward with whatever group he’s involved with, and there’s no shortage of them for him. Bob’s always in the mix.

The game offered a nice backdrop, visual wallpaper if you will, and when the action heated up, we’d crane our necks to pick it up. Otherwise, we were more entertained by each other than by those armored gladiators playing footsie with an oblong object. As for the commercials, when Elyse asked me the next morning what I thought of them, I proudly was able to answer I didn’t pay attention to a one. Much like Al Davis, I could care less. The whole zeitgeist of “Super Bowl Commercials” has lost its romance for me because they’ve become self-parody. More to the point, where they once were genuinely clever and resourceful, they now are shallow and often stultifyingly tasteless.

Of course, one thing I wasn’t about to miss was The Who’s performance, and was surprised by how long it seemed to last, wondering to myself if that was how long the previous halftime shows were.

My most memorable halftime show that I attended was at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, an antiquated arena with cement seats and with entrance tunnels so narrow it took us forever to pass through security and we got to our seats as the National Anthem was playing. The stadium itself is ensconced as if in a cul-de-sac, with only one road in and out, which means the ingress for buses is single lane, so just getting to the parking lot also took an eternity.

The game highlight of that Dallas Cowboys 52-17 blowout of the Buffalo Bill was the Texans’ defensive tackle Leon Lett picking up a Bills fumble and running it just to the fringe of the end zone, but not breaking the plane, preferring instead to preen, only to have the ball knocked out of his hand, costing the Cowboys a touchdown, which they certainly didn’t need with a huge lead. However, it also cost the holding the record for most Super Bowl points in a single game, which is 55 held by the San Francisco Giants. It endures as one of the most infamous plays in NFL annals, but I say Lett Leon alone already.

But the real highlight of that event didn’t happen as the game clock was ticking. Whereas I couldn’t even tell you right now without Googling it who performed at the three other halftime shows of the aforementioned Super Bowls, there’s no way to forget, between the halves, the sylph-like figurine that appeared first midfield, then magically materialized the next second perched high atop the Rose Bowl’s wall: it was a guy named Michael Jackson.

Oh, come on. Please. Who among you doubted that that the New Orleans Saints Necessarily So would vanquish the Indianoplace Dolts? Well, you can hang your hangdog head in shame, justifiably so. The Saints just ain’t about to be denied.

This arguably was one of the bestest superbowl games in the annals of bestest superbowl games. You wanna fight about it, homie? Bring it on, baby boobie!

Oh, well, the NO Saints only won by two touchdowns, yes? You cain’t have ev’ry thin’, kin you?

 Our family feels infinitely fulfilled after Friday night’s Celebrate Yorktown! awards ceremony and dinner-dance party hosted by Yorktown Chamber of Commerce at Colonial Terrace. Honored were that venue’s owners Sheila + Alan Drogy as Business Persons of the Year, Harrison Apar Field of Dreams Foundation as Service Organization of the Year and Club Fit owners David Swope, Beth Beck, Bill Beck Jr. and Ellen Koelsch as recipients of Chase Media Group’s John W. Chase Award for Business and Community Leadership.

In a Sunday newspaper article about children of Yorktown whose deaths were not the result of natural causes, Jeffrey Veatch, the father of deceased teenager Justin Veatch, remarks that the singular fear of the cohort of parents who lose children is having their progeny forgotten in time.

That explains as well as any observation the motivation that possesses people who cannot help but become self-centered — even narcisstic — parents such as Elyse and I, if only in the interest of keeping the child’s spirit and name alive as long as possible. If such narcissism can be excused or justified, it’s because that’s all you have left of the child.

Seeing others receive proclamations at these events from elected officials is one thing. Actually being the recipient of such parchment, with your son’s name inscribed on each, is quite another feeling. We are thankful to Congressman John Hall, State Senator Vincent Leibell, State Assemblyman Greg Ball, Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino and Chief of Staff George Oros, Westchester County Legislators Michael Kaplowitz and John Testa, Yorktown Supervisor Susan Siegel and the town board, and Cortlandt Supervisor Linda Puglisi and the town board, for issuing proclamations to all the honorees.

Right now, before we shuttle them to Westchester Airport to return to Florida, Harrison’s grandparents, Elyse and I are off to the County Center in White Plains, because after all, thanks to the aforementioned officials of Westchester County, today, February 7, 2010, is Harrison Apar Field of Dreams Foundation Day in Westchester, just as the Drogys and the Club Fit families, as is customary, have been accorded their respective days.  We of course will treasure all the honors forever, in behalf of Harrison and the wonderful community that supports his Foundation’s efforts to make this — even in the smallest way — a wonderful world.

Herewith is what I said to the 300 attendees at the February 5, 2010 Awards Dinner and Party of Yorktown Chamber of Commerce upon receiving our award:

Acceptance Remarks

By Bruce Apar

After Presentation To Harrison Apar Field Of Dreams Foundation

As 2010 Service Organization Of The Year

By Yorktown (N.Y.) Chamber Of Commerce

February 5, 2010

Colonial Terrace

Cortlandt Manor, Westchester County, N.Y.

Thanks to the Yorktown Chamber of Commerce and its president Joe Visconti.

Congratulations of course to my friends Sheila and Alan Drogy of Colonial Terrace, and my friends at Club Fit, the Beck and Koelsch families and David Swope.

If I stood here all night, I couldn’t thank all the folks I want to. But I have to acknowledge Liz Marques of BOCES, the wonderful human being who produced that video, over many hours, late into the night, on her own time.

And thank you for sitting patiently through the video. We wanted the video to show that the one person more than any other responsible for Harrison Apar Field of Dreams Foundation working as well as it does is not me, or Elyse, or Elissa but … Harrison Apar.

The reason Harrison became the person he is standing next to me. No child could have a better parent, and no father could have a better partner, than I have in my wife Elyse. 

We never have been prouder of Harrison than we are at this moment. And it’s very meaningful for us that with us tonight are his grandparents Roz and Dr. Leonard Middleman, who live in Florida, as well as his Uncle Marc, his Aunt Linda and his cousin Lauren. [ASK THEM TO STAND]

I believe that Harrison was put on this earth – for 15 years — for a beneficent purpose. I believe his purpose was to teach those around him to make the best of the gifts we are given and not to complain about the gifts we are not given. I believe Harrison made me a better person while he was here, and continues to make me a better person wherever he may be. I believe that when it was Harrison’s time to go — when we lost our son — we were given in return the responsibility to do the work with his Foundation that we so love to do.

Every night since March 21, 2003 — for the last 2,511 days — before I go to bed, I go to Harrison’s room. I flick on the light switch, and flick it off. That’s my way of letting Harrison know that his light still shines.

Thank you for letting his light shine tonight one more time for all to see.

Kudos to the Yorktown Board of Education and Superintendent Dr. Ralph Napolitano for making the decision to “rest” one of that district’s grade schools — French Hill.

With Albany-mandated cuts in school budgets rising up the radar of taxpayers and media alike, it raises the specter in Yorktown of the elephant in the classroom that now is past due for discourse: why does Yorktown need two school districts, with all the attendant costs inherent in such redundancy.

Broaching the much more complex matter of assessing the necessity of continuing to maintain two school districts with little or no synergistic cost efficiencies between them presents an Alfonse and Gaston conundrum. Who brings it up first? The Yorktown Board of Education or the Lakeland Board of Education.

We don’t know, so we’re bringing it up.

Another budgetary ramification is fundraising. More than ever, it behooves school districts to embrace, encourage and fully support the efforts of non-school organizations who raise private funding to supplement public monies because the latter is shrinking, not growing.

We look forward to boards of education working more closely and cooperatively with fundraising entities. In the interest of full disclosure, this writer is president of a 501(c)(3) called the Harrison Apar Field of Dreams Foundation that in the past seven years has raised more than $200,000 that is invested in school and town programs, facilities and constitutents. That makes my comments on this topic self-serving to some extent, but I’d be surprised if other 501(c)(3) organizations like us didn’t fully agree with the above sentiments.

Ever notice there’s something about the Internot, I mean Internut, I mean Internitwit, I mean Intertwit that is akin to a full moon in its transformative effect on some people, who turn suddenly into brave souls when in the flesh they are more likely to turn tail when confronted by the objects of their scorn.

The following email crossed my desktop late this afternoon from a loyal reader …

I received an email from two residents this morning about a new Croton site, allegedly started by a local boy with issues; they were sufficiently misled by the first posting from a “bruceapart” to think you had posted there. I thought you might want to know.http://watchcroton.com/about/·  bruceapart permalink I have high hopes for this site. The other “Croton” site is doing a fine job of a community billboard, listing events and answering questions about overall functions of Village life. What we DO NOT have is a place for a lively exchange of ideas. Maybe that can happen here.Reply
 

[Back to Bruce the Blog, the one written by the Bruce who doesn’t have ”t” when he arrives at the end of his name, although a crumpet right now would be fairly brilliant]Apparently, the “boy with issues”’s idea of “a lively exchange of ideas” is to post sophomoric blather under false pretenses of another person, not that it’s outside the realm of possibility that there is someone in Croton by the unlikely, even icky, name of Bruce Apart. I hope that is, in fact, a person’s actual moniker because, with apologies (make that profuse apologies with sugar and bodyguards on top) to, appropriately enough, Mr. T, I pity the poor fool whose life is so bereft that he has to stoop to impersonate the likes of me in the guise of giving his own site an endorsement. It’s so convoluted and dysfunctional, I can’t even follow what I’m writing here myself. Okay, I get it now. It’s supposed to be parody. I probably should be flattered but what do I know. Excuse me for not mistaking the cyberian missing link behind this courageously anonymous site as Stephen Colbert. I must be overtired from working 14-hour days. By the way, Stephen, you can be excused for lapsing into a catatonically unfunny state when creating Watch Croton (although I do appreciate the pun on the Croton-brand timepiece of the cable infomercials), because I thought you were hilarious last night opening the Grammys at the Staples Singers Center in la-la land. Quite fitting, because Watch Croton looks like it was conceived in la-la land as well.After what the Watch Croton cretin did to my name in the name of stupendously stupid self-aggrandizement, let’s all be thankful he didn’t try to plagiarize Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, or we’d be reading Sydney Carton intone, “‘Tis a fart, fart better thing I do than I have ever done before.” Thank goodness for small favorts.

Playing with great relish the role of truculent network TV executive Arthur Jensen, actor Ned Beatty bellows across a forbidding boardroom slab of wood at posthumously-awarded Best Actor Peter Finch in the film classic “Network”: “You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won’t have it!! Is that clear?!” Later in his show-stopping diatribe, he says, “That is the natural order of things today.”

I have my own natural order of things, except I insist they also apply to others, not just to me. They include being a sensible, mature, well-mannered motorist who parks where there are parking spaces and puts on headlights when necessary so other cars can see mine because that’s one good reason God gave us headlights.

I don’t deny it’s an Obsessive Compulsion I possess — or am possessed by — one of several (”My name is Bruce and I’m an OCaholic”). It’s when people step outside of MY norm, which can mean something as seemingly inconsequential as parking outside of the yellow lines or parking inside the blue disabled parking lines without the requisite permit. This stuff, I am sorry to say, drives me batty. I’m sorry, that is, for the objects of my scorn, not for myself. I’m sorry they are Rudimentary People, to paraphrase the title of Judith Guest’s bestselling 1970s novel-into-film that won Oscars for Best Picture, for director Robert Redford, for supporting actor Timothy Hutton and for writer Alvin Sargent.

Rudimentary denotes something simple in the extreme, or in the first stages of development. It also can be seen as a slightly euphemistic, softer way to say, “rude.” That’s how I view the inconsiderates who park in the middle of driveways at public buildings, like the Starbucks in Yorktown, where I recently jawed at whom I don’t doubt was a very nice woman behind the wheel but whom thought nothing of planting her SUV in the driveway to effectively block those entering and prevent two cars from passing in opposite directions, as the driveway is designed to allow.

Such folks, without meaning to ostensibly, create disorder.

My disorder disorder includes cryptic voicemail messages that say nothing except, “call me,” or that, instead of telling me the topic of the call, waste the caller’s breath and my aural cavity on superfluous, gratuitous, hypothetical reasons about why I might be excused for not calling back (”deathbed,” anyone?).

Gee, thanks for the cheery thought, as well as for proscribing the acceptable limits of my behavior. Of course, I know the caller was jesting about the deathbed remark, but don’t forget, I’m talking about a disorder here on both ends, wherein humor is in the mind of the phoneholder.

My response to such rudimentary behavior as cryptic calls is simple: none. Am I being a big baby about it? That’s a definite probably. That’s what happens when an immovable brat meets an irresistible baby: stasis.

I ran into a rudimentary person of the third kind at food boutique Iron Tomato on Mamaroneck Avenue in White Plains Friday afternoon. My bosses Carla Chase, Frank Rich and I had just finished a very productive meeting with a Westchester County government official and went to grab lunch.

At cafeteria-style Iron Tomato, you first get your food, either from a deli counter or a shelf, pay for it, then find a table. There is no wait service. It was 1:00 p.m., high lunch time, and so three open seats together were scarce at first. When I spotted a couple of tables-for-four with only one person seated, I told Carla I would grab one of them while she finished the transaction and Frank was parking the car.

I approach a window-side table where a lovely young knitted-capped woman is reading a paperback and thoughtfully has her boots perched on the seat directly across from her and her coat draped on the chair next to her. As I quickly discovered, they really were symbological signs that read, “Stay Away.” That’s usually my cue to invade the space of someone so presumptuous to think they own a public space that is readily capacious and available to others as well.

“Anybody else sitting here,” I ask rhetorically and with a modicum of patience evident in my tone because I know her type, who also can be found on Metro North trains where a certain kind of rudimentary passenger thinks nothing of putting a briefcase on the seat next to him even during rush hour when seats are scarce, or doing the same with a piece of clothing, both of which belong on the overhead rack. That’s another case where I purposefully would take the seat occupied by a briefcase to make my point that such a person was not going to passively intimidate me into not sitting there. I’m not sure I ever said it, but I know I used to think to say to one of these beauts, “Maybe I should try to sit on the overhead rack so you can keep your briefcase on the seat.”

Miss Iron Tomato Paperback already is not suffering my presence gladly, to say the least. She fixes a kind of stare on my visage and actually says to me, “What do you want me to do about it?” The subsequent exchange was not at all pretty, but also not loud, although I peripherally noticed some patrons enjoying our ultimate bickering contest. She says I’m rude not to ask her permission to sit there. I reply, “I don’t think so.” She says she didn’t realize it was a “community table” (when in fact at a cafeteria, that’s exactly what it is). I ask if one person like her controls all four seats at the table and tell her I don’t need her permission to sit there. She says she sits there every day. I resist the urge to say, “Well, you’re the most convincing undercover security guard I’ve ever seen” and instead say, “Good for you.” She moves to another table rather than bearing to sit across from yours truly the rest of the time.

Both she and I make a mutual point of glaring at one another for good measure, both of us (I am convinced) trying strenuously not to let the inevitable subcutaneous smirk surface, because we both realize how ridiculous is the entire episode that just transpired.

As I take momentary leave of our newfound acquisition (being the table) to get some condiments, I see my new best friend going over to chat a bit with Carla, no doubt assuring her I’m the only one in our party she thinks is rude. Well, thank goodness for small favors.

When Paperback Polly is leaving, she says to Carla, “Nice talking with you.” I turn to her and say, “Have a nice day!” I was not being facetious. She understandably ignores me. I would too if I were her, but I’m not. I’m an old(er) guy who has learned once I vent, even to a stranger, life is too short not to quickly put it aside and get on with the niceties of existence, precious as they are. One day, I’m sure she’ll feel the same way. At least I hope she does. And I hope that day is today.

Please go to The English Languish page for today’s blog entry. Thank you for turning the page on Bruce the Blog.

Please go to the “It’s Enough to Make You Sixty” page for today’s Bruce the Blog. Thank you and have a nicer day than yesterday but not as nice as tomorrow.

Wall Street. Sixth Avenue. Easy Street. Main Street. Which one doesn’t fit?

Hmmm. Let’s see.

Wall Street is where investment banking treasury mints like Goldman Sachs of Moolah deem it a hardship when, as it just announced, its impoverished workers will just have to make do with only half-million-dollar annual bonuses. Oops. There goes the country club membership, Cougar Plum, at least the backup country club membership when we’re in West Palm. How will we break it to the kiddies when they’re back from their study abroad program at the Etoile d’ Bratwurst in Fleur de Lis?

Sixth Avenue is where wiseacre mediocre media monkeys dispense tens of millions of dollars to middling TV personalities who actually refuse job offers and whose appeal to begin and end with is 90% time and place and booking agent and production values, and 10% personality.  

As a talk show host, Leno is a world-class stand-up comic. As a talk show host, O’Brien is a world-class comedy writer. They both embody The Peter Principle of performing talent, which is to keep rising past your skill set’s glass ceiling until cracks appear in your smooth facade, much as when a TV actor releases an album to cash in on his or her celebrity in the hopes the gullible audience won’t notice they don’t have much of a voice.

But don’t mind me, because I don’t fully get Will Ferrell either. He’s parlayed extremely broad humor and a recyclable shtick of familiar frat-house shenanigans into a blockbuster film career. Only in Hollywood.

Have you ever seen Craig Ferguson on CBS at 11:30. Have you ever been able to stomach him for more than 30 seconds? If you have, I’d like your recipe for Pepto Bismol, because it must work wonders. This guy mugs so shamelessly, broadly and relentlessly, if he were a blogger, he would be me, but probably would have enough sense not to admit it. If success on these amnesia-lovers’ plugathons were dependent on more than a 10% personality quotient, Ferguson would have been canceled before his opening show’s opening monologue.

Craig the Fungus, Conan the Barber and Jay-Won’t-Lay-Low are the avatars of 1960s broadcasting executive Paul Klein’s watershed theory of audience indiscretion that posited couch potatoes slouch towards their LOP as much as their lap: that is, we channel surf like boob-tube zombies until we alight on the Least Objectionable Program. Although I always found him to be more a MOP.

Easy Street is where all the above dwell.

Main Street is where they pave their way to stardom and riches and neuroses when the first falters and the second stagnates because the first falters and the latter sends them into a downward spiral of unproductive maturation.

Main Street is where some of us don’t get the fascination with the people who live on Easy Street. That includes me, by the way. I don’t get my own, albeit dwindling, fascination, with people in “The Show Business.”

Modernity has brainwashed us into seeing that locution as awkward, yet it’s wholly in keeping with how we still converse about every other business, isn’t it?

We don’t go around talking about “auto industry” but about “the auto industry.” We refer to “the banking business,” not “banking business.” Although we do say “consumer electonics” rather than “the consumer electronics.”

In yesteryear, the show business was no business archetypically ambitious immigrants wanted their children to mess with, a la seminal talking motion picture The Jazz Singer with Al Jolson, which was autobiographical.

Today, people will sell their souls to be rich and famous the Hollywood Way. Or, as in Conan O’Brien’s case, the show business bossman will sell his soul to give his employee a windfall so there are no hard feelings after the employee has upped and told the bossman to go shove his offer of a high-profile TV show five nights a week.

It’s times like this I thank my lucky stars that someone like Conan O’Brien likes little old me so much he wants to entertain me a half-hour earlier, and was even willing to lower himself by accepting tens of millions of dollars to free himself up to practice his craft somewhere that would pay him even more than that to have his way.

What did we do to deserve this? I shudder to think.

Sure, Peyton Manning’s a legend in his own time. Shades of Joe Montana and John Elway the way he can close out games, gets cooler the hotter the pressure. Dares you to stop him. Picks apart defenses with the ease and clarity of a speed-reading Rhodes Scholar deciphering Dr. Seuss.

But Peyton’s already won a Stupor Bowl (most of them are; the rare-in-a-while exception lives up to the Supermania).  So has his little bro Eli. Two Super Bowl rings is more than enough for any one family, let alone a set of siblings who didn’t even bother sharing them across the generation gap. Today’s kids are so darned spoiled, especially when they’re sinfully talented quarterbacks dancing behind a bevy of behemoths who feast on raw meat smothered in helmets and padding.

Let’s cut to the chase. How can you on Feb. 7, 2010, NOT root for N’awlins, for saint’s sake? It’s not just the double-entendred “romance” of balconied, bumptious, rococo Bourbon Street, with its “thou swill” allure, or those powdered, fat-friendly beignets, or those hurricanes (a really bad double-entendre), or the French Quarter, or all that jazz.

We’ve just been terribly reminded anew of the real meaning of the oft-corrupted word “enormity,” which means not merely huge but unspeakably huge horror, as in Holocaust or Sept. 11 or tsunami or Katrina hurricane or Haitian earthquake.

Those of us living in relative paradise, geologically speaking, can’t begin to fathom life under water, under rubble, under ground, under unlivable circumstances. Back a couple years, I sat comfortably on a bus as it “toured” the notoriously disfigured Lower Ninth Ward, where front stoops stooped to nowhere because the house foundation formerly attached had been swept down the block and knocked on its side. It wasn’t like a war zone; it was a war zone.

Yes, the New Orleans Saints, NFC Champions for the first time in their history, are sentimental favorites to win the Super Bowl. Even the team’s stadium name is prophetic: Superdome.

On Sunday, after watching on Friday the star-studded Hope for Haiti Now telecast organized by the reinarnation of Cary Grant named George Clooney, I spent the best eight bucks imaginable by downloading the telethon’s commemorative album of today’s top recording artists who performed on the special. It’s good music for a great cause: humanity.