Will 2007 Be The Year of The Giant?

Now that we are about a week and a half into the new year….here are some things in the news during the early part of the year that may or may not be trends of what will be relevant for 2007.... It makes me wonder if this will be the year of the… (yo ho ho) Giant.

1. The Giant Ego - of Donald Trump

Even though Newsday says its a done deal that Dave Price will take over as host of The Price is Right, .. What’s all this hullaballoo about Rosie O'Donnell possibly taking over? Assuming this is not all one big publicity stunt,. she apparently got quite angry with Barbara Walters when Donald Trump told numerous interviewers that Babs cant stand her! Walters has denied it.. and now Trump says Walters is lying. Now who are you gonna believe.. a legendary journalist like Walters, or Trump who had to dosie do around all his creditors when they came knocking on his door demanding repayment on their loans when his business was tanking in the 90s? And Ivana must be smart too,... because this daughter of hers Ivanka comes off as being very bright on what little I saw of Apprentice... Heck they fired a guy because he wanted to interrupt a chat with The Donald because he had to take a pish. Don’t you think Donald would stop taping if one hair on that wacky pompadour was out of place during his ego maniacal boardroom firing sessions?

Now lets say Rosie and Barbara really are feuding? Wouldn’t it be a great ratings grabber for CBS if Rosie leaves The View and heads over to its 11 o’clock competitor The Price Is Right? I just hope all 3 are really all in it together as a publicity stunt, because if it isn’t… I think Donald Trump is mentally ill when he keeps saying all these nasty fat comments about Rosie and then threatens to sue her when she criticizes him.. As Barbara Walters would say.. “What a Poor Pathetic Man!”

2. The Giant Football Team -

Both Giants and Jets never lost playoff games on the same day before, and it was only the 2nd time that they both appeared in playoff games on the same day.. (The Giants won and the Jets lost the last time this happened).. Nonetheless, the Jets fans are thrilled with the season, while the Giants fans were calling for Coach Coughlin’s head, although the team will allow him back for next season. Granted, the Jets were vastly improved this season, but if you take a look at the schedule they played (based on their hideous performance in 2005).. it was quite soft.

On the other hand, The Giants played a brutal schedule especially during the early part of the season. Yet they got off to a 6-2 start that included big comebacks against The Eagles and The Falcons. However, everyone seems to have forgotten since they fizzled down the stretch to finish 8-8 (including a tough game against the division rival Redskins who wanted nothing more than to knock NY out of the playoffs). Now all these Giants/Eli Manning critics who are soooo eager to point out the poor 2nd half during the soft part of the schedule claim that the latter part of the season is most important.. If that’s the case, why don’t they give Eli credit for his late TD drive in the 4th quarter Sunday during a drive that included a 1st and 30? After tying the game at 20, the Giants defense couldn’t keep the Eagles from eating the clock and kicking a game winning field goal as time expired. Yet for some reason, my fellow Giant fans wants to blame the QB! Now the Ledger says that Bill Parcells was turned down when he made overtures to take over the vacant GM position. I guess they don’t love the Tuna.

3. The Giant Sandwich.

The Giant brass may not love the tuna.. but I do.. The sub that is…

My love affair with the sub goes back to my childhood. When I was a little pisher, the first time I was allowed to cross busy Raritan Road coincided with the Grand Opening of a nearby sub shop. I crossed at the Roselle Shopping Center where the Consumers Distributing store used to be... an oddball store where people paged through catalogs and filled out forms that they then brought to the front of the store.. kind of the model for the shopping carts on internet websites. From there I strolled past the old closed Pantry Pride, passed Sobin’s drugstore and waved at Mario and Angelo through the window while they were dolinig out haircuts at the Barber Shop. From there I jogged past the City Federal Savings Bank, past the gift shop and the cleaners and the mysterious tavern that never seemed to have women going in.. (I was a little pisher just crossing a street.. how did I know it was a gay bar?).

As I turned the corner to Wood Avenue.. there it was... a sub shop holding a Grand Opening.. .(Or to paraphrase Adam Sandler.. was it a hoagie/grinder/sloppy joe?) I stepped up to the counter, standing at attention as if I was ordering a minestrone from The Soup Nazi and ordered my first tuna sub.. a limited menu for me because due to my revisionist Kosher observance, I wouldn’t eat meat outside the home. (This is not a forum to debate if tuna at a sub place is kosher or not.. so hold your comments). After ordering my sub. I scampered home to watch Password at 12 noon... and of course I looked both ways before I crossed Raritan Road.

After that initial introduction the sub... it carried over with the arrival of Subway franchises. And they're the best.. all the stores look the same. they are pretty clean... and I really miss the round sandwiches they used to sell in the early 1990s.. Unfortunately, the only sub I have really ever had has been tuna.. but boy is it yummy. Subway became comfort food headquarters when we had a house in Bradley Beach in the summer of 1990. After a night of partying and getting shot down by drunk babes, me and my homies would head over to Subway for a late night sub that would get chowed down on our little summer home's porch... . Our ability to wolf down the tuna subs in virtually one bite created the phrase... "That sub never had a chance...". When I moved to Woodbridge ten years ago, the subway on St. George Avenue in Rahway at the Old Miller Pontiac location was my sub headquarters.. especially when they used to have the West Coast video store right next door. Now they even have a drive through Subway on Stelton Road in Piscataway! Apparently its the only one in the USA.

Fast forward to last weekend. Trophy Wife and I took a trip to Flatbush for a family event, (I'd link to the simchas.com website, but I don’t think these relatives want to be associated with a shaygitz tuna sub eating goofball like myself) and afterwards we were kind of hungry. We decided to see if there was a pizza place to satisfy our late night munchies because who the heck knows what is gonna be open at midnight on a Saturday Night. And there we saw it on Avenue J!.. A brand new Subway... And it’s kosher!! I almost fell out of my car I was so thrilled.. and for a moment I thought I had died and gone to heaven!

We got out of the car, looked both ways, and crossed the street… following the light to the store.. and there it was.... Kosher Subs at a Subway Franchise! I spoke to the guy in charge there and he told me that they were recently awarded the franchise and had just opened the store right after New Years! Welcome to 2007, and my early nominee for Time Magazine Person of the year.. the Kosher Subway franchisee!!... Of course, they can't offer a lot of the stuff on the regular Subway menu... but we did manage to order a half a chicken teriyaki and a half a pastrami beef fry.. What do you think, I’m gonna order tuna after eating nothing but tuna for the last 30 years??

The subs are awesome, and now I have a new place to go when I’m in Brooklyn! This is only the 2nd kosher subway in the USA.. . the only other one is in Cleveland at a Jewish Community Center! The Brooklyn one also apparently has to show the standard menu, but the non kosher items are left blank in the price column, and taped over since they are not sold at that location. Nonetheless, they still have a pretty decent variety of choices there.

By the way there is a very bizarre parallel between my tuna sub Roselle to Rahway odyssey and a notorious criminal from the 50s and 60s. I guess we can go from sub to unsub.... You may have heard the story of Robert Zarinsky... one of the more fascinating criminal stories to come out of New Jersey. He had accumulated a pretty large bank account because his mom's will left him a lot of money while his sister ended up with very little. Several years ago, while he was still serving time in prison for killing a teenage girl in the 1960s, his sister told police that he had also killed a cop in the late 1950s. It turns out the sister had been caught red handed stealing about 100k from her imprisoned brother's hefty bank account and “made a deal” that if they dropped the charges against her, she would testify against him because he was the culprit in an unsolved cop killing back in the late 50s.

Ultimately, 40 years later Zarinsky went on trial for the cop killing.. but he was acquitted. Some jurors felt he did it, but didn’t feel prosecutors proved their case. The officer's widow then filed a civil suit against him, sort of like the Goldman family filed against OJ Simpson… Zarinsky had trouble finding a lawyer and ended up representing himself at that trial and lost the case.. As a result of losing the case, he had to fork over all of his remaining money to the cop's widow. But there's more.. another court overturned the civil case, but the widow said all of the money was gone. Just this past year a court ruled that the widow would not have to repay the money back to Zarinsky... Talk about having your money mismanaged.. Thanks to his sister he went from being wealthy to flat broke… even though he wasn’t convicted in the cop killing. Incidentally, the sister told police she realized he killed the missing teenage girl when he failed to return to pick her up from a pre family wedding beauty salon appointment the same day the girl disappeared after working at Sobins drug store.. Both the salon and drug store were in the,.... Roselle Shopping Center.. and the cop was killed at the Old Miller Pontiac showroom.... which is now... Subway! It later turned out the sister was wrong about that accusation… the girl had disappeared 2 days before the infamous beauty parlor appointment.


As for the original Sub Shop… I haven’t been in Roselle in awhile, but as far as I know the sub shop is still there, along with the Barber shop... The gay bar is long closed, but late one night in the early 90s, I accidentally locked myself out of the house, and had to go to the payphone across from the gay bar to wake my mom at 1 am to open the front door for me... As I departed the phone, a gentleman in his car drove up and asked me directions to the Parkway, and then after telling him he just had to go straight.. (no pun intended) I walked back home.. As I cut through the parking lot of the Consumers (now the Sears) the aforementioned gentleman drove up again and asked me if I had just left his favorite bar.. I then realized that this guy was not looking for the parkway.. he was looking for studly Nate.. “No, I was not at the bar, sir” I replied.. and kept walking.. The little horndog got a bit belligerent.. C'mon... I saw you there.. "No" I replied... "I was NOT there… I used the payphone at the Gulf Station across the street because I got locked out of my WIFES PARENTS house!"

I then hurriedly covered my Charles Nelson Reilly t shirt and ran home..




Now time for this The Clip of the Week…

This week features 2 different clips with the legendary William Shatner from a 70s appearance on The $20,000 Pyramid. Here is Part I



And here is Part II of Shatner Follies… He's nuttier than Donald Trump...