Bruce the Blog

Last Friday, I roved over to The Terrace Club on Route 6N in Mahopac to catch Class Action, a popular Yorktown rock ‘n’ roll cover band fronted by Gary Cusano, a lawyer by day and fierce rocker by night. Gary and Company have been very generous and kind to our Harrison Apar Field of Dreams Foundation, twice donating their services to help us raise money.

I like to support those who support our efforts and it helps that I really like to “lounge” around on a Friday night to chill after the work week, socialize, and listen to thumping music. Class Action does justice to Lynyrd Skynyrd, Billy Joel, The Rolling Stones and the like.

On Friday night, The Terrace Club was packed for the 10:00 p.m. performance. Before I left home, Elyse asked if I expected to see anyone I knew. “Probably Rob Reiss,” I told her, referring to a Yorktown physical therapist who is a friend of the band’s and with whom I played some pocket billiards when Class Action played a few months ago at O’Malley’s in Mount Kisco. Sure enough, Rob WAS there with wife Margot.

Asking the bartendress to start a tab for me, she asked my name. “First or last,” I asked, as if it mattered. There’s not too many Bruces, so that would have worked without my tab going to another Bruce down the mahogany or vice versa. But I chose my surname. “Apar,” I recalled it was.

At that moment, the gentleman occupying the stool to my left (I was standing, my preferred position when I’m hanging out — and there were no stools left anyhow) turned, looked at me, and fairly blurted, “Bruce Apar!”

When you’re in the news business, you’re not sure if that shock of recognition will be followed by an embrace or a sucker punch. Fortunately, in this case, I was embraceable.

It was someone I hung out with in Westhampton Beach 30 years ago as a half-shareholder in his summer house. He has a video of me he’s been wanting to give me for a couple years. I can guess what’s on it, and so can Elyse, who happened to be dating this person when she met me. I think the video I can wait to see involves a swimming pool, a raft, and a snorkel. Ankles aweigh!

This person was at The Terrace Club with someone other than his spouse. Later, another person I know entered the restaurant with two persons other than his spouse, but that’s because she is his ex.

It was then I realized we must all have happened upon a secret meeting of the Mid Life Crisis Men’s Club to which we were subliminally invited. I must have RSVPed without knowing it. My own MLC includes entertaining thoughts — serious, almost-ticketing thoughts — of traveling solo to Santa Fe to stay at the vacation home of a Syracuse U. frat brother who’s invited me several times. It seemed a good opportunity for early April, when Elyse and Elissa (with college friend in tow) and I are scheduled to be in Vero Beach at her parents. I figured “Lucy” (my nickname for Elissa since the day she was born — with red hair) would be otherwise occupied with her pal, as would Elyse with her folks, so I wouldn’t be very missed.

I was getting pretty excited about bacheloring it with my friend Norm in stunning Santa Fe, where his backyard views go on forever, and the days are filled with leisurely hiking, museum-going and soaking in Mother Nature in all her glory.

I found cheap airfares, surfed online for events we could attend and — then it hit me. What am I doing? Why am I doing it? Lucy will be out of college in two years, off on a life of her own, and how many family vacations do we have left?

How many more times will I be playing golf with my father-in-law Buddy, an octogenarian who shoots his age. His love of golf is manifest in his and Roz’s backyard, which looks out over their golf community’s 14th fairway.

Then there’s the painfully obvious missing piece of our family that my absence would only magnify. And so it was Tuesday morning getting ready for work that I reversed course, calling Elyse to tell her it was ixnay on the Santa Fe. I spoke about my wanting to be there for her, for Lucy and for her parents. “You mean because they would think it’s wrong if you weren’t,” asked Elyse. “I think it’s wrong” was my reply, fairly boasting that I had figured something out for myself and felt the conviction deep inside me without compromise. It was a character building moment that was virtually tangible, excuse the oxymoron.

“I have to say I’m happy,” she told me. She had not objected one iota to my previous plan to go west, middle-aged man, part of her ethos to “not tell you what you should do.” Hmmm. Can I have that declaration etched in marble perhaps and cemented to our front porch for all to see? I’ll get back to you on that. I said that I knew she wasn’t very sanguine about my solo act and knew she was muting that dismay. I was happy to hear her say she was happy about my paternalistic decision to be a family man at the right moment.

Meanwhile, back at The Terrace Club, I was single too, for the simple reason, as I told someone who inquired, “Where’s Elyse,” that our body clocks seem to run counterclockwise to one another, so “I come alive at night when she’s ready for bed.”

Just to prove my point, on Saturday night, after a full day of reading Curious George to preschoolers at the Jefferson Valley Mall Book Blast, then rushing to a special meeting of the Yorktown Athletic Club board, on which I sit, Elyse and I were two of 300 laughing our assets off at a five-temple comedy night at Yorktown Jewish Center that featured three very funny standup acts.

It was over about 11:00 p.m., and my evening was only getting started. I headed for one of my several homes away from home, Colonial Terrace in Cortlandt Manor (Travelers Rest being another), where The Foundation for Excellence in Yorktown Schools was holding its annual casino night fundraiser, with a late night after-party that seemed tailor made for my nocturnal schedule’s event hopping. I got there 11:30 and most of the crowd was still enjoying the evening.

On Sunday afternoon, Elyse and I enjoyed the off-center comedy Kimberly Akimbo at The Schoolhouse Theater in Croton Falls (which I reviewed in this week’s North County News).

It’s been a quiet week so far, which is fine by me because I could use the break, but the fun resumes Friday with a Rocky Patel open house at Doc James Cigars in Shrub Oak, where owner Adam DeSiena is hosting Rocky himself to promote some new smokes. Then it’s on to the grand opening in Peekskill of Birdsall House, a highly anticipated brewery.

Saturday we’re off to New Jersey for the bat mitzvah of another Syracuse U frat brother’s daughter, then to the Lakeland Education Foundation Casino Night at Colonial Terrace, honoring my pal Chuck Newman, where a record crowd of 320+ is expected. That’s some turnout. No surprise, cause Chuck is some kind of special guy. I’d love to stay for the dinner, but a St. Patty’s Day biennial house party is waiting in Yorktown, and it’s a doozy.

But first some personal grooming to attend to. Thursday night I’m trying a new place to get my head handled, Michael Robert Salon on Lexington Avenue at Route 6 in Mohegan Lake, next to Augie’s Restaurant, then I’ll swing by to say hello to “Augie” herself — Audrey Hochroth — and husband Sal Barone.

Maybe they’ll even let me sneak in a private audition for their Augie’s Idol Season 2, which begins April 13-14. Oh, you mean judges don’t have to audition? Never mind then.

I’m working out in gym Monday night, iPod plugged firmly in ears, as ever.  I take occasional peer at bank of TVs to see on Snooze 12 a clip of skit from Saturday Night Live, then next thing I know, on screen is Peekskill Mayor Mary Foster. What the —?! I wonder to myself. What a weird juxtaposition if only because us local yokels aren’t used to seeing our reflection cheek by jowl with the likes of Manhattan’s elite show biz icons like SNL.It’s only later I learn the SNL writers made sport of “Peekskill” — tossing around epithets like “hellhole” and “rockeaters” — in a recurring skit that makes sport of beleaguered, suddenly buffoonish N.Y.S. Governor David Paterson. The man’s undeniably very smart intellectually, which makes his odd actions and attitudes more puzzling, and ripe fodder for the warped minds who write comedy for money.

Mayor Foster was interviewed for her reaction to the Peekskill slights by the TV types who push mikes in people’s faces for money, and she was not amused. Then SHE was made sport of Tuesday night by a commentator on MSNBC who mocked her for taking solemn umbrage with a fake news conference featuring a fake Governor on the planet’s longest-running satirical series. Ouch! As the commentator pointed out with high-handed disdain, about the only reason Peekskill was mentioned was because it fulfills the comedic standard for funny-sounding names of having both a P and a K. You know, like poppycock, or, more to the point, that other New York State city that was used, for the same reason: Poughkeepsie.

Much more predictable in its response to the Mayor was the even more laughable, self-loathing whatchamacallit that every so often crawls out from under a rock to throw stones of its own in and around Peekskill. It’s hardly mentioning the name of this unmentionable mutant media wannabe, or hardly worth repeating the blather spewed by the nameless, lost soul behind that vapid form of venting. Let’s just say someone who targets another person by name yet remains anonymous got seriously short-changed in the human values of character, chops, and credibility, but — oh! — did they ever come up big in the creepy categories of cipher and cowardice. Hey, whatever turns you on.

Last week was not a good one for my lofty claim that I write a daily blog. Posted Tuesday, then not again until past midnight Thursday, then skipped the weekend altogether. Clearly, I gotta get this blog thing down pat. Speaking of Richard Nixon, my pal and NCN’s political columnist Andy Bazzo, a loyal Bruce the Blog reader, saw me Thursday in the NCN office and had to make a smart-alecky remark about my new glassless look that he learned about — where else — on my blog.

“You know,” said Andy, as we stood in a room other than the newsroom, “from the side, without your glasses, you look like Richard Nixon — you have his nose.” Well, I hope the statute of limitations is up on my purloining a U.S. President’s proboscis. Shades of the memorably hysterical scene in Woody Allen’s “Sleeper,” when he points a gun at a disembodied nose he is stealing in order to clone it into a full-fledged person.

Adding insult to injury, the Amazing Bazzo then left me a voicemail on Friday feigning umbrage that I didn’t mention his — ahem — Nixonian compliment in my post time-stamped March 5 (even though I wrote it Thursday night, tapping away well past midnight). Sorry, Andy, but being compared physiognomically to our esteemed 37th President is more noxious than Nixonian.

Richard Milhous Nixon, in the view of many, has paradoxically been treated kindly by the footsteps of history, and not without good reason. The stage play turned acclaimed Hollywood film, Frost/Nixon, has helped elicit retrospective sympathy for his Shakespearean-size tragic descent as the only U.S. President to resign from office in disgrace as the self-inflicted victim of hubris more elevated than Mount Olympus.

Couple the evolutionary forgiveness burnished by the sands of time with his rising reputation as a visionary internationalist for his famed relationship building with China long before the rest of the world caught up to that enlightened collaboration, and — voila! — you have one of the two or three most fascinating, intellectual and complex Presidents of the 20th Century.

Come to think of it, Andy, thanks for invoking Richard Nixon’s name in the same breath as mine. I’ll take my presidential comparisons wherever I can get them.
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In the 15th month of my bodily reincarnation, now I get comments to stop getting so skinny, or that I’m getting as thin as Elyse. Hardly. Don’t worry about me. I used to say, about 15 years ago, that my cholesterol level could win the American League batting title because it was 330. (Today’s it’s below 200.) Well, my body fat percentage is well into double digits.

Since lots of people still ask me what I did to lose the 40-plus pounds that went thataway, and think I’m still losing weight, the answer is I’m not. I’ve stabilized at about 186, from a high of 230 in January 2009.

The further answer is that diet is only the half of it. Regular exercise — combining cardio and weight exercises — is the other all-important half. I’ve been trying to lose those stubborn love handles and flatten the tummy and all that stuff that is exceedingly difficult to do when you’re in the second half-century of this thing called life. Doing three sets of 15-20 leg lifts on the Captain’s Chair helps, as does high-intensity interval training on the treadmill, where I alternate jogging easily for two minutes at 3.5 mph, then sprinting — or my version of it, at 6-8 mph — for 90 seconds to two minutes, for a total of 17-20 minutes two to three times a week. It does seem to slim down the silhouette even without shedding more poundage. But if it looks like I’ve lost more weight, who am I to complain?

I’ve heard tell that people get contact lenses so they don’t have wear to glasses all the time, thus dispensing with all those old, lame jokes about “Four Eyes,” which nobody ever really hears anymore anyhow, but we’re talking here about seeing, not hearing.

Well, I’m not those people. I’m people who just got contact lenses for the first time ever (see Blog Entry 03.02.10, “Lens Me Your Eyes”) within a hair’s breadth of my big birthday that isn’t 50. When people my age negotiate a mid-life crisis by going the “I don’t need no stinkin’ bifocals anymore” route, it’s not such a simple event. It’s more of a drawn-out process.

I thought, in my “It’s Enough to Make You Sixty” naivete, that acquiring contacts meant losing eyeglasses for the most part. But, as the inimitable John Belushi might say, nooooooooooooooooooo, not in my special needs case.

I’m nearsighted, and wear glasses to see distances. Although nine out of 10 doctors say I could read or do close work sans glasses, I never take them off because the lower portion of the lens is ground to clarify very short distances .

My new contacts, contrariwise (one of my favorite obscure words), are not bifocals. While they have done wonders for the totally blurry world I know without glasses, which now is in high definition with my contacts, but any object that comes within about four feet of my face is now a blur because the unifocal contacts don’t compute that distance. That’s the problem. The solution? Don’t ask.

But before we get there, let me bore you to tears with the trivial news that on Day 4 of becoming a contact lens addict, I achieved the Olympian Gold Medal nirvana of removing the contacts from each orb in a single try. That compares with the dozen or more attempts it took me on Day 1 to both put in and remove the contacts from each eye. Keep in mind that the technique I was shown for removing the soft lens was to pinch it as it sat on my cornea. Sounds like fun, huh? Miraculously, now that I’m with the program, the contact lens removal procedure seems easy and, more important, it works pretty well! I’m starting to master installing them as well.

My opthalmologist — apparently following the similar advice of my wife Elyse, a lifelong contact lens wearer — recommended I buy what Elyse calls “Cheaters,” but what the drugstore displays drily label “Reading Glasses.” They are about 20 bucks, unless they have a fancy brand name like Gel, in which case they cost more than twice as much.

Dr. Dieck wrote on a piece of paper that I should get 1.75-power cheaters when working at a computer terminal (about 2-3 feet from my face) and 2.50-power glasses for extremely close-up reading. Elyse scoffed at the seemingly absurd notion of having to obtain two sets of reading glasses. She surmised if I split the difference and got 2.0-power glasses, it would suit me just as well.

Being her husband, I of course didn’t listen to that reasonably sage advice. I went with the guy with the medical degree. Oh, I also needed non-prescription sunglasses, he told me, to put over my contacts, then I’d really have it made in the shades.

Shopping in A&P, I espied an endcap display of attractively-packaged “High Definition” sunglasses. And to think they’re not even made with plasma or LCD! When I found out they cost 10 bucks … SOLD! Then, upon donning them, I realized they revealed the anatomical asymmetry I never before noticed of one ear being much lower on my head than the other. Either that or the El Cheapo glasses are so poorly mass manufactured they don’t sit squarely on my noggin. Back to A&P they will go. I’ll upgrade to a pair from CVS maybe.

So, to sum up, my lifelong dream of having contact lenses that would rid me of those unsightly spectacles once and for all has resulted in my owning and variously using the following inventory of eyeball enhancements:

1 pair prescription contact lenses (prescribed by doctor to wear maximum 6 hours a day until acclimated)
1 pair prescription eyeglasses to wear when not wearing contacts
1 pair prescription sunglasses that clip on over the eyeglasses
1 pair 1.75 reading glasses for computer terminal work
1 pair 2.50 reading glasses for extreme close-up work like reading
1 pair off-the-shelf El Cheapo sunglasses to wear over the prescription contact lenses
1 huge headache trying to keep all the above organized and within easy reach
1 huge lanyard on which all the above can hang to keep within easy reach and which I conveniently can use to hang myself with if I ever decide to end it all instead of contending with the quintuplet-lenses monster that my contacts have created

Do the math. Contact lenses x 5 pair of lenses = 10 eyes. How did that happen?

When I mentioned the angle for this blog to Elyse, she started laughing heartily. She’s my reliable one-woman focus group. Then she added, “I can see [our late son] Harrison laughing his head off at you with the contacts. He’d be making jokes right and left.” Her invocation of Harrison’s soaring sense of humor started me crying my head off.

I told her the burst of emotion also been pent up. I had thought since the weekend about how in his glory Harrison would be with my alma mater, and his fave college, Syracuse now Number 1 in the NCAA basketball rankings. Can’t remember the last time, if ever, that happened. How I wish he was here to enjoy that with me. Two weeks after we lost Harrison in March 2003, two weeks after he had filled in his NCAA bracket with Syracuse in the Final Four, the Orange for the first time won the NCAA Championship.

It didn’t exactly help keep my tear ducts dry that just last night was the Jewish anniversary of his passing, known as his yahrzeit, and we still tonight had the ritualistic 24-hour candle burning to commemorate the solemn occasion.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my new contacts. The question really, though, is whether my eyeglass solution is half empty or half full? I’m sure Harrison would have the answer. And I’m sure it would be funny as all heck and he’d have me doubled over, laughing so hard I’d be crying. Like now.

There is a page elsewhere in this blogosphere of mine titled “It’s Enough to Make You Sixty.”It’s enough to make you sixty to decide a decade past your half-century mark that contact lenses might be a good idea. I acquired eye lamination for the first time in my life yesterday, to be exact.

I remember like it was yesterday when I first found out I needed four eyes instead of two. My spouse — who happened not to be the same person that proudly carries that mantle today, but enough about either of them — was getting on my case (some things don’t change even when spouses do) in the motor vehicle I was driving that I didn’t see the exit sign in time. I don’t understand what her problem was with me traversing three lanes, from the passing lane (which apparently is news to those slow-witted types who sit there without a clue they are in a passing lane, not a sitting lane, and are supposed to get back to the middle lane after passing cars in the middle lane), to the slow lane in one not-so-smooth move.

So Wife 1 — ahem — “sugggested” I get an eye exam. This was probably some 35 years ago. Wouldn’t you know it. She was right. I needed glasses.

I’ve had ‘em ever since, but after 35 years of gazing at the world with my cranium under pressure, I thought it was about time I escaped from the plastic prison. It’s not as if I didn’t get the focal point a long time ago.

Wife 2 wondered aloud why somebody of my — ahem — maturity (or maybe she said age) would first want contacts at this stage of existence. It was then I realized she didn’t get the memo about the mid-life crisis that visits men of a certain age. Somebody could make a fortune sending email blasts about men’s mid-life crisis to women, charging a premium for addressing it to their wives, or at least to their current wives. Their former wives likely would just laugh upon receiving it, relieved that they missed that milestone.

So March 1, 59 years 346 days after I arrived on earth, my eyeballs lost their virginity to Bausch & Lomb soft lenses. Let it be recorded that this fateful fall from grace occurred in the Mt. Kisco office of Dr. William Dieck. It was quite a learning curve enduring the tutorial of taking the contacts out and then putting them in. As Brenda, the affable lab technician, told me, some people can’t wear contacts simply because they can’t stand to have anybody touch their eyeballs, not even with their own hands.

When Brenda first put them in, she told me to cool my heels (not in those words) in the waiting room for about 10 minutes to adjust to the new sensation. I ambled around the eyeglass store that abuts the doctor’s office and of course immediately and impatiently hightailed over to the nearest looking glass to eyeball my newly naked visage. Whoa! To me, it seemed, jeepers, creepers, what a pair of peepers you  have, grandma.  My eyes seemed notably larger, like I had the lead in a high school production of Mr. Magoo Goes to the Opthalmologist, except without his glasses. (You know, high school shows can’t always afford all the props.)

I must have tried putting the lens in and removing it a dozen times in each eye. The same fiasco recurred that evening at home as I tried taking the lenses out. Then again in the office Tuesday as I endeavored to put them in at about 3:30, timing it to follow the good doctor’s direction that I try not wearing them more than six hours a day for the first week to acclimate myself.

Once the contacts were in at the doctor’s office, though, I quickly liked the liberation, as I told Dr. Dieck, who chuckled in a way that seemed to say, “OK, pal, whatever you say.”  No sooner was I in my car, calling Elyse to tell her mission accomplished, than I reflexively went to adjust the glasses that no longer were bridging my nose.

I was off to find drugstore reading glasses the doctor said I’d need now to do close work, which is part and parcel of my profession.  Plus I’d need a pair of cheapo sunglasses when wearing the contacts.

Getting the little suckers in and out isn’t my idea of the jollies, but once they’re in place, so far, so good.

I’m trying my darnedest to conjure some contact lens humor. It’s slow going, but I envision light at the end of the tunnel. I have a penchant for puns and, let’s face it, my jokes don’t get any cornea than that.

[A photo gallery of the William Gerstenzang Brunch at Murphy’s Grill on Feb. 28 hosted by Yorktown Republican Town Committee can be viewed at <a href=”http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=148732&id=178555436935&saved#!/NCNLocal”>

The Yorktown Republican Town Committee is a collegial bunch that always is reaching out to let people like me know what they are up to, even inviting me to celebratory events other than news conferences as working press (which is a significant distinction in that it means the media is not expected to pay for admission because it is a conflict of interest for us to give any money to any political group, whether it is in the form of admission to a fundraiser or a campaign contribution.)

Other parties’ local leadership might borrow some pages from the playbook of Yorktown Republicans, who are both savvy and pleasant to deal with, a demeanor and professionalism that predated their handily winning election to a town council seat and the supervisor’s office. They are neither fair-weather fawners nor bad-weather blamers. They are even-handed and civil.

None of the above has anything to do with my own political preferences or for whom I vote, which I keep private. There’s nothing so presumptuous in my world as people who think they know how I vote or what are my politics based on who I might play golf with or hang around. (Besides which, I have a funny thing about not going where I’m not invited.) The presumptuous ones — who often as not get it wrong — only tell me I’ve succeeded in keeping a poker face where my politics are concerned (but if you wanted to get rich quick, just invite me to play poker and bring a saddlebag to haul home your winnings).

Chatting with recently departed Town Justice Bill Gerstenzang at the well-attended brunch in his honor Sunday, Feb. 28 at Murphy’s, I learned more about that position in a few minutes than I had ever known.

He first was elected in 1997, and so served in that capacity 12 years. With corporate clients for his patent law practice based in Europe, such as Bayer, he is abed at 8:30 and out of bed at 4:30 a.m. to be in his Manhattan office by 7:00 a.m. That way, he can be more in synchronization with the Euro business day that is five hours ahead. Mr. Gerstenzang then can leave his office mid-afternoon and thus miss the crush of rush hour both ways.

Except for one niggling detail. If law enforcement makes an arrest late at night and the collar has to be arraigned, the town justice is alerted to handle the arraignment immediately. With two part-time town justices in Yorktown, there is a tag team dynamic at work where each jurist alternates such tasks, typically a month at a time.

So, after Justice Gerstenzang was fast asleep many a night, he could be rousted at 10 or 11 or even in the middle of the night if a warrant was needed to consummate a drug bust or a perpetrator in stir was especially unruly and the YPD wanted to ship said person that night to the County jail. Such work makes for fitful sleeps, to say the least.

It might technically be part-time, but in practice, “it’s a 24-hour job,” he allowed. That lifestyle hiccup notwithstanding, he found his time on the bench to be rewarding in bringing situations to a resolution and helping young people find the straight and narrow path back to lawful behavior. He also said there is more stress in his day job as patent attorney than he had handing down sentences, even though he suffered a heart attack a couple years ago, and now looks fit as a fiddle.

It’s no wonder, though, that he summed up his new state of being, with Justice Sal Lagonia and Justice Ilan Gilbert holding forth in Town Court, as a “good change; good for the Sal, good for me, and good for the town.”

Along with others at the brunch, we wish The Ever Honorable William Gerstenzang and his family all good things as he returns to a wholly private life after serving the public with high distinction.

As an aside, after soaking up lots of gossip about the assortment of hopefuls looking to nab the Republican nomination for Greg Ball’s 99th Assembly District seat as he seeks new worlds to conquer in the New York State Senate, we couldn’t resist sidling up to Yorktown Councilman Terrence Murphy, who was chatting with Yorktown Republican honcho Larry Cassidy and Yorktowner Gary Raniolo, an attorney I’ve known for many years since his son Gary Jr. and my late son Harrison were boyhood pals.

“Terrence,” I asked, “can you do me a favor and point out the people here who are NOT running for Assembly because that would be easier than telling me who is.”

At last count, there were no less than six, and we suppose there’ll be even more. That’s a good thing, we think. Our long-held tongue-in-cheek observation is that there are two types of people in this world, and especially in local activities: those who volunteer and those who complain. A surge in people seeking public office may bode well that one day, the volunteers will outnumber the complainers.

But, we won’t hold our breath right now on that one. Not until counting the people in a room who aren’t running for office is quicker than counting those who are.

Up at 7:20. Clock flashing 2:35. We lost power, my powers of deductive reasoning tell me. We regained power, ditto the deduction, kiddo. Yippee. Out bedroom window. Wow, it’s weally white out there, wifey. Wifey: “Yes, I know, you wuss, where were YOU at 6:00a when you shoulda been shoveling snow instead of shoveling the shoot last night at your computer doing whatever it is you do on that dagnabit demonic device.” (Disclosure: All previous dialogue is purely figment of my imagination. Never said. Never happened. But this is a blog, which means half of what is writ is true. Like the famous advertising axiom, you just don’t know which half, unless the blogger tells you, and even then, who knows? As for anonymous bloggers, that creepy crawly species of digital devolution, you can’t believe anything those gutless wonders write. They blog for therapy when they should be IN therapy, but I can’t help them there because I’m not a licensed practitioner.) How’s THAT for a protracted parenthetical aside? Send your answers to bapar@ncnlocal.com if you don’t want to win a prize because I got nuttin’ to give.

Like the little kid I never stopped being, the profusion of snow excites me. I can’t wait to get outside and get to the office. I’m assuming there will be few of us there, mainly those like myself who live within a coupla miles, within the Yorktown town limits.

It may sound flakey, but even though on days like this a person can feel adrift, I have ice in my veins, and perhaps water on the brain. But I say, bring on the snow, man.

Open the garage door. There’s a curvature of snow rising up to where the door just was before retracting on its creaky pulley contraption. I pick up a shovel to push some of the snow away from the portal, all the while thinking this may not be the best idea because my back has been bothering me since bowling those three games Sunday night with my YAC brethren in support of Yorktown High baseball coach Sean Kennedy’s fundraiser for the team. Let’s just say after a long layoff, I found bowling currently is not right up my alley, and it didn’t help that my back was infirm before the ball got rolling (which explains why my game from the get-go was in the gutter until I found my graceless form).

I pulled my 1998 RAV 4 ragtop out and immediately had the sensation of hydroplaning, except on frozen instead of liquid water. It was kinda fun, actually.

At the end of our hammerhead driveway, the car stopped as the wheels kept spinning. I couple of jukes back and forth let me burst through the street-plowed embankment forming a barricade between the publicly-owned street and our bank-owned paved path destined to end in a garage.

I picked up the yellow plastic bag containing the 20th Century artifact that still arrives daily and brought it inside like the once-in-a-while thoughtful husband I oughta be more often-in-a-while. The wife peered outside the warmth of the kitchen and what passes for a virtual mud foyer and declared after eyeballing the snow by the garage entrance that it looked like 18 inches. After I regained my composure from being doubled over laughing at the hyperbolic assessment, I said it was a drift, not fallen snow, and that it probably was less than a foot deep at that.

Elyse produced one of those math-class three-sided rulers with markings on two sides I didn’t understand in trig and still don’t, and sure enough, the snow stopped at about 10 inches. Case closed.

It was now about 8:35 as I proceeded to the office, snapping white-out vignettes with my phone along the way (Verizon can’t offer the iPhone soon enough for my money, and it will take a lot of that for me to change my fruit diet, but I like apples more than blackberries anyhoo.)

The only vehicles I espied between my house and where Route 35 meets Broad Street right past Brookside Elementary were snow plows and that of my neighbor, Yorktown Board of Ed trustee Mark Drexel, who rolled down his window while making the turn from town to Broad as I sat at the Stop sign to ask what I was doing on the road in these conditions. Me: “I’m crazy.” Mark: “Me too.”

Oh, yeah, and there was one other private vehicle, driven by someone who, in this of all conditions, didn’t have his headlights on. He’s of course our Maddening Motorist Award winner of the day, and one only can hope the dunderhead doesn’t cause damage to someone else who knows enough that it’s both common sense and state law to have headlights on in inclement weather so other motorists can more easily see you coming. I barely saw him barreling down Broad Street as I waited to exit our development. Nice going, Slick.

Then, at the intersection of Ridge Street and Route 202, a power line was down, hovering not far above the roof of my car, with Yorktown Police Officer Mike Kahn on the scene. I continued snapping away (photos will be posted at Facebook.com/NCNLocal).

In the middle of town, I could continue to count other cars on one hand. Pulled into Starbucks closed. Edwin’s open. 7-Eleven open. Those business operators should get some kind of prize for customer service beyond the call of duty. Let’s hear it, folks, for neighborhood owned-and-operated businesses. Last time there was a lot less snow falling one afternoon, Panera closed its doors at 4:00 p.m. What’s with these chain operations? Hardly hardy stock. Guess which businesses I’ll be sure to patronize more in the future? The ones who are there when you need them most, that’s who. Local businesses, that’s who.

This is the kind of weather and these are the kinds of times that cause some of us to fret for the future of civilization. Believe it or not, that’s not meant to be either facetious or an exaggeration. A day like Friday, Feb. 26 separates those in the snow from those who don’t want to know what it takes to get the job done.

What does one make of workers who arrive at their Yorktown office at 7:30 a.m. from an hour’s drive away in a different state — none the worse for wear — or who determinedly push ahead from Poughkeepsie to report to work. Or a worker whose husband is shoveling the snowplow-created wall of snow blocking the cul-de-sac driveway so she can get to work on time? These are folks made of sterner stuff when the white stuff causes others to act like the sky is falling.

For an employer, a day like today is a no-win. You can’t exactly expect people to push ahead to get to work under such conditions, but the truth of the matter is I am no mountain man and am far from fearless and not exactly wreckless when it comes to my personal safety and well-being, and I don’t see that this is exactly a record-making meteorological event. The main roads are very passable if you drive with due caution at sensible speeds.

My friend Ahmad Bash, owner of Yorktown’s 7-Eleven, told me this morning that a customer told him, “This is the worst I’ve seen.” Both Ahmad and I concurred it’s far, far from that. “He hasn’t seen much then,” I cracked. Ahmad recalled the storm of 1996 that was appreciably more precipitous than this occurrence. This is no walk in the park, but it’s also not a walk through Central Park at night in the 1970s and ’80s, which in that era was downright foolhardy, if not death-defying. Maybe it still is, but Mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg have done yeomans’ work reducing NYC crime in general, so hats off to them both. The only folks who still think NYC is the nation’s crime capital are those who never visited it but hate it nonetheless. I’ve encountered the type in my Left Coast travels especially, like the time one wit advised a friend not to go near Yankee Stadium because it’s in … The South Bronx! (ominous melodramatic music swells here). Of course, the immediate periphery of The Stadium is eminently safe because it has more cops patrolling than a precinct stationhouse.

Weather like this also tests the resourcefulness and sheer competency of TV news. One field reporter described a town where power had gone off and on and off again, labeling that chronic problem “concurrent,” which was as close to “recurring” as he could manage but made no sense. Something tells me he’s not into crossword puzzles. Comic books, maybe. It’s no joke, though. These are professional, very well-paid public presenters and information agents who struggle to speak with authority or lucidity. And you thought Ted Knight’s character on The Mary Tyler Moore Show or William Hurt’s airhead anchor in “Broadcast News” were pure fiction?

When the going gets tough out there, the tough in general don’t seem to be producing TV news coverage, which quickly begins to play like the movie “Groundhog Day.” Every “package,” as those who make TV call it, is a cookie-cutter version of the one before it and after it. How many B rolls of snow plows and salt trucks do we need to see, or motorists whining, or a reporter standing waist-deep in a snowdrift. We get it. It snowed. A lot. Thanks for the incisive reportage.

My opthalmologist’s office is closed today, so my experiment in wearing contacts for the first time in my life will have to wait. When I called a second time to see if anybody would be in the office today, the message service operator told me, “The roads are awful, sir.” Oh, I see (but not with contacts until next week, I guess.)

Well, tell that to a hospital patient who needs a nurse or doctor or orderly, or to someone in the ER waiting for a serious injury to be treated: “We’re sorry, but nobody can help you today because, you know, the roads out there are just awful.” Tell it to the people of Haiti: “We just had 12 inches of snow and you can’t imagine what it’s like. We are completely dysfunctional.” You can say that again. Haitians only wish they could imagine something so relatively uneventful.

Hudson Valley Hospital Center spokesperson Dawn French tells us that “[we] had a couple of dozen staff members stay overnight, some sleeping on inflatable mattresses…to ensure we continue to provide quality care for our patients.  The Engineering Department has worked through the night plowing the hospital to keep it safe for visitors and staff…”

THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT! 

Despite the edgy observations this blog is known to make as a matter of course — that’s commentainment! — I don’t sit in judgment or hold to account or blame anyone for not going to work today (and if you care what I think anyhow, that’s your first mistake; I’m just another jerk with an opinion on everything that doesn’t concern me.)

What can rankle, though, is the attitude of anyone who virtually decides not to go to work the next day based on the eventuality of a forecast — not on the workday’s actuality. It’s not my opinion that matters in that case. It’s just wrong. Maybe it’s time to change jobs for that person, or for the job to be changed for that person. In the case of Friday, Feb. 25, the forecast was prescient and a decision to stay home is well advised. But at other times, when the forecast overstates the actuality, it’s not the weather’s severity that decides who shows up; it’s whether the person’s free will wants to be at work that day.

Now I’m in Chase Media Group offices at my desk. Oops. We lost power. But there’s backup. So, heigh-ho, it’s back to work I go. Where there’s free will, there’s a freeway that’ll take you there. Unless there’s a little (less) snow in the way (than today). Then, where there’s a wimp, there’s no way I’m going in to work on a so-so snowday because I’d rather play than make hay. O-kay! Whatever you say!

Stay safe, warm, dry. And don’t patronize anonymous blogs. If you’re going to get riled up, like by today’s especially bilious blog entry you just read, might as well know who to rant against.

To no one’s surprise in medialand, there was a rash of emails flooding our inboxes today that started with the fateful phrase, “Due to inclement weather …  is cancelled.”

Except for one such email that stood out — for the wrong reason.  In fact, it almost caused Grammar Geek to gag on his thesaurus (talk about an endangered species). This email spoke of “in climate” weather. It was sent by a school district. From someone whose title is “Key Communicator.” Sigh.

Discretion being the better part of pallor, we’ll refrain from identifying the school district to protect the guilty, but movie fans will recognize the municipality as the very tony east coast moviestar colony made famous in “Fatal Attraction.” And anagrammarians might visualize its name as a combination of sleeping furniture and the most famous American automaker. But I don’t want to identify the fancy shmancy town whose school district made such a stunningly uneducated gaffe.

Other than evoking the studied inarticulateness of 1960s standup comic Norm Crosby — a regular on The Ed Sullivan Show who made a career out of purposely mispronouncing words in the service of humor for the masses — “in climate” (the sender of course intended the word to be “inclement”) proves my long-held theory that subliteracy largely derives from the tendency of people to spell and pronounce words based not on understanding basics of the English language — relegating it to the English languish — but on intuitive (and more problematically, counter-intuitive) phonetics. Witness those who say “supposably” instead of  the correct “supposedly” or “hone in on” instead of the correct “home in on” or “for all intensive purposes” instead of the correct “for all intents and purposes.”  There are many more such examples that we don’t have thyme for.

Meanwhile, back at the meteor-illogical ranch, with the accuracy of some forecasts lately, I worry more when the prognosticators predict little or no snow. How often, or so it seems, have we been forewarned about an avalanche of frosty flakes only to have the little kiddies disappointed the next morning when the school bus stops on time at the corner as always.

That makes it all the more bemusing that nowadays school districts can’t wait to cancel classes a day in advance on the strength — or weakness, as the case may be — of a forecast. It’s like a doctor treating a patient for pneumonia after hearing the sniffles because, well, you just never know what it might turn into.

Why, when I was a kid in the rough-and-tumble former potato fields of Long Island’s western Nassau County, I had to trudge a whole block to school in the snow. In my galosh-shod feet. It had to snow 18 inches for school to be canceled. Or maybe it was 8. You know how big things look when you’re four feet tall. But let’s not nitpick. Back then, men were men, and kids were kids and snowmen were snowmen. A little frozen precip was hardly reason to bypass readin’ and writin’.

Not in the weather-wimpy 21st Century, though. When I told my wife Elyse that the schools already were canceled for Friday by 6:00p Thursday, she told me how Thursday counted as a school day even though students were dismissed at 10:00 a.m. and a school district needs to use up those snow days.

I looked at her in disbelief: “Oh, that’s nice. Early dismissal means today they didn’t learn much of anything, but here we are conversing casually about some bureaucratically-bungled rulemaking that dictates it still can count as a school day?” As the non-commital slacker types are quick to say … whatever.

The way I look at it, with the snow-drift-high school taxes we are privileged to pay, what business is it of mine or yours how far in advance classes are canceled. If anything, it probably is more cost-efficient and stress-reducing to plan ahead. I get it. I’m a lowly taxpayer: just shut up and pay up, like a good little lemming.

Here’s an idea for a revisionist rubric: Let’s teach kids math by having them count snow days. That’ll work just swell.

[TO SEE NCNLOCAL-TV VIDEOS OF ALL SIX PERFORMANCES BY FINALISTS VANESSA RACCIOPPO AND MARYANN RENZA, GO TO http://www.facebook.com/NCNLocal]

There were no losers Tuesday night (23) at Augie’s Prime Cut Restaurant and Bar in the Mohegan Lake hamlet of Yorktown. (One of the myriad beauties of life in Yorktown is the charm of having five sub-’burbs grouped under the rubric of hamlet. Billy Bard would be proud, if a tad confused because, after all, as far as he was concerned, to paraphrase Oscar Hammerstein II, “There is nothing like a Dane.”)

After such a self-indulgently elongated parenthetical aside, the writer in me (yeah, he’s in there somewhere, I swear) is compelled to act like one of those ’60s serial weekly TV dramas that began with a recap of “last week’s episode.”

Well, it’s true. There were no losers at the final, championship-round, no-holds-barred, cage match of Augie’s Idol Season 1 (Season 2 starts April 22). Not the audience (with an unfortunate momentary lapse of couth at the end), not the restaurant staff or management, and certainly not the two performers, who gave it their all and treated the jam-packed house to a thrilling display of competitive vocalizations in a community contest that was a rousing success on several levels.

The community itself — and people came from all over Westchester as well as beyond its borders, including as far away as Poughkeepsie (made famous by Gene Hackman’s cryptic recurring line in Oscar-winning “The French Connection” to a punk: “Do you pick your feet in Poughkeepsie?”) — got to spend a weekend-style night midweek each Tuesday for 14 weeks. The ultimate night was simply amazing not least because on a horrendously inclement evening, when it took me nearly an hour to drive back to Yorktown from Hastings on a snow-encrusted Taconic, Augie’s was more crowded than arguably for any of the previous elimination rounds. It was quite a sight.

Showman Sal Barone, owner of the hot spot with wife Audrey Hochroth, even added his trademark dash of class and flash with what he jokingly called his “flashlight,” actually a skylight the likes of which are used at Hollywood premieres. As I was driving up a white-blanketed Lexington Avenue from Route 202, the beam of light washed across the night sky like a beacon beckoning to a judge who was running late after hightailing it from a really cool reception at Harvest on the Hudson to launch Hudson Valley Restaurant Week March 15-28.  Fortunately, the competition start time was running late too, so my lateness was right on schedule!

The restaurant staff and management benefited from a major boost in the watering hole’s reputation, reach, number of regulars and, quite evidently from all the filled tables and heavily peopled bar, midweek take.

Even the judges, including yours truly, had so much fun it should be illegal, with time off for good behavior.

Extra big shout-outs go to keyboardist par excellence Shelly Gartner and sound technician Brian Gunther, both of whose reliability, proficiency and professionalism helped elevate this competition way beyond a run-of-the-mill karaoke night.

The final night was graced by Maxine (Mrs. Tommy) Agee, a delightful person who served as a celebrity judge and with vocal chops of her own, as she amply showed with her rendition of “Wind Beneath My Wings.”

But the real point of this musing about the musicfest Augie’s treated us to these past several months is that both MaryAnn Renza and Vanessa Raccioppo are winners. Their final three performances each were a fitting, exciting culmination to the hard-fought competition.

Even my friends in the crowd who were so upset at the end they made some inelegant remarks about the outcome can be forgiven their trespasses because that’s how seriously some people took this bout among the warbling warriors. Some silly remark was passed — shouted, actually — that one of the contestants “should have been gone three weeks ago,” which couldn’t be further from the truth. Nobody in their right mind who was a regular Idol-ator would argue that MaryAnn and Vanessa weren’t the most deserving finalists.  We of course are not about to dignify the dishy outburst by identifying to whom it was aimed because it has zero validity. Like we said, there were no losers. That’s the point. That’s the spirit of this competition. To suggest otherwise is to totally miss the point, and perhaps to overindulge in liquid refreshment beyond your tolerance. That’s why The Kinks’ Ray Davies (pronounced “Davis,” BTW) called it “Old Demon Alcohol.” It can make people act waywardly and talk gibberish.

Miss MaryAnn opened it with “Remember Me,” and Miss Vanessa answered the well-sung challenge with “At Last.” Next time up, Miss MaryAnn lit into her belting mode with “The Greatest Love of All” and Miss Vanessa delivered a fresh rendition of “Over the Rainbow” that highlighted her smooth style.

Then it was time for the final round and Miss MaryAnn certainly didn’t disappoint, using her brassy, room-size personality and punctuated gesticulation to full effect with an homage to Tina Turner’s “Proud Mary.”

Finally, Miss Vanessa capped the competition with a sultry, shimmering “Power of Love.”

Both of these Misses didn’t miss much when it came to having the right instincts and excellent song selection that showed off their respective strengths and muted their lesser qualities. They both know how to put a song over, a talent that at its best is transparent because it’s effortless, but, perhaps paradoxically, you still know it when you see it, and hear it. Vanessa received a $2000 check from Sal Barone and Audrey Hochroth as well as a chance to appear in the April production of “Cats” staged by Scarlett Antonia of Antonia Arts at the Paramount Theater in Peekskill. Miss MaryAnn Renza received a $500 check from Bel D’Oro Jewelers owners Gino and Josephine Rubino, who are upping the runner-up prize for Season 2 to $750. They also are exploring the possible appearance of the elegant Miss Vanessa Raccioppo in Bel D’Oro marketing.

Speaking of Misses, I’m going to miss watching all the Augie’s Idol entrants, especially these two. But who knows. There’s always Season 2, right Sal and Audrey. Maybe I’ll even get my long-awaited break as a standup. That’s the dream of every aspiring comic — to play the big room in a Vegas hotel. In my case, it may be Sal announcing, “And now, laddies and germs, playing in Augie’s Men’s Room, please welcome Bruce the Blog. Fortunately, seating is limited.” Sorta gives new meaning to the show biz term “standup.” But I’m not greedy. All I need is a single laugh in that venue to feel flush with success. Oops. Time to clean up my act. Besides, the hook’s here. Later.

[For the prequel to this blog entry, see Oh, MOMA! Part I posted Feb. 21, 2010]

When we checked Museum of Modern Art’s website Friday in anticipation of visiting the venue the following day, we were crestfallen to find the popular Tim Burton exhibit sold out.

[Note from Grammar Geek: there is no hyphen for “sold out” in that usage, though the indiscriminate use of hyphens has become a distressingly common, and subliterate, faux pas nowadays. The hyphen would be appropriate in context of noun or adjective usage like “It’s a sold-out show,” but not when saying, “The show was sold out.” Thanks, GG. Now, take-a walk.]

Due to the popularity of the Burton exhibit, MOMA requires patrons to reserve a time to enter the gallery with a time-stamped ticket (at no extra charge). So when the website tells an onliner that each posted on-the-hour o’clock is “sold out,” it simply means issuing any more tickets at the appointed hour would be a fire hazard or just a bane of safe crowd control and comfort levels.

Once at the museum on Saturday, my much better half (though it’s not too hard being that when the other half is moi) Elyse, as is her paternally inherited wont to consider ”No” simply as a precursor to “Of course you can,” found out that circa 5:00 p.m. we most likely could just walk in to the exhibit, after the mid-afternoon crush thinned out. As advertised by a museum staffer, to Elyse, we were in like flint at 5 on the nose.

While the exhibit does not present any element — eg, a short film — that starts at a particular time, the reservation times posted online are every hour on the hour probably because it takes a good hour to take in everything Burton MOMA has to offer. It’s a prodigious display of a particularly off-center popular culture artistic sensibility that has given the world Edward Scissorhands, Charlie & The Chocolate Factory, Beetlejuice, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Batman (1), Corpse Bride, Mars Attacks! and Ed Wood, among others.

There are props, artifacts and costumes from all the above in the exhibit, as well as production notes hand scrawled on legal yellow pad paper, such as suggesting an unscripted line of dialogue (about the undesirability of cannibalism in polite society) to the young actor playing Roald Dahl’s Charlie in the film remake formerly titled in its original incarnation Willy Wonka. To say that Burton’s version of the story is darker is to encapsulate the whole of his ouevre.  [Wow, I’m really in a French italicized idiom today; must be the Canadian Winter Olympics, no? Oui.]

There are also mementoes from Burton’s artistic blossoming as an adolescent growing up in Southern California, such as high school essays and locally award-winning posters for civic activities.

Upon entering the exhibit, there’s a video monitor montage (with screens arrayed along a makeshift breezeway) of his animated character Stainboy. Certain of his semi-mutant illustrated figures bespeak the glaring influence of Charles Addams, and perhaps of early Playboy Magazine cartoonist Gahan Wilson, a master of macabre social satire writ in ink.

My daughter Elissa and I spent a full 30 minutes in the Burton funhouse and didn’t see everything, because the museum’s closing time of 5:30 closed in on us.

On the way out, we passed through a photography gallery, causing me to rue not experiencing that part of this magnificent repository’s diverse works. Next time.