TV Quarterly - Obie-Wan, Obie-Won and Lost Meets Kojak

I just realized... no more elections.... no more baseball... now what do I do??

The election season that is now finally over was unlike any other we had ever seen... which is what we seem to say every 4 years. In '04 I was on a cruise ship with Trophy Wife watching CNN International with Wolf Blitzer and it took great restraint not to jump overboard as the concept of Bush II became a reality. Luckily we stayed afloat and didn't sink unlike the economy during Bush II.

The big change this time around was not only that blogs have become more popular - NWOW celebrates its 3rd bloggiversary next week - appears to be the instant messaging capabilities on Facebook. The time leading to election day was a bit annoying with people constantly repeating their political views and then right before Tuesday "donating their status" to their candidate! I donated mine to the local sandwich franchisee who let me cut in front of him in the voting line in exchange for this announcement - all subs are now 5 bucks!

Now I am seeing all the commentary about the decision to add Rahm Emanuel. Personally, I think Obama deserves a little vaca time after that endless campaign and you know the next 4 yrs are gonna be tough... Did you ever see the before and after pics of Presidents from Election Day to 4 years later? I'm curious how much he is going to age in that time - he might look like Redd Foxx in 2012!

Emanuel is an interesting choice for the post and that will put an end to any speculation that the Obama White House will be an Open House for Louis Farakhan. Emanuel reportedly has a short fuse and doesn't take crap from anybody. In addition, his talent agent brother Ari Emanuel is the inspiration for the Ari Gold character on "Entourage"! Apparently, Rahm has a similar Ari Goldesque temperament... I can just see him bringing Congressman Barney Frank to the White House to be his "Lloyd". All of a sudden this Obama administration looks like it could be entertaining!

Today we present our TV Quarterly Report. We will start with the Election Coverage and then go to the Fall Season which for me begins after the World Series. WE will talk about the fact that there are only 2 good nights of TV with one very notable exception. By the way, last week we moved one of the tvs into the bedroom which had been tv less since we moved into our house last year. I rarely watch TV in our bedroom, but Trophy Wife and I decided to move one there. As a child, my parents had a tv in their bedroom and here is a pic of a very young Nate the TV critic watching - probably a game show!




TUESDAY'S ELECTION COVERAGE.

I mostly watched CNN even though I was kind of baffled by the glowing Will.I.Am hologram interview. Pretty cool idea - maybe that might be how news will be presented. Back in the old days, people were just as stunned that Huntley and Brinkley were anchoring the news from 2 different studios.. maybe Star Wars stuff is the wave of the future. But it still strikes me as being odd beaming somebody in like the Princess Leia scene in Star Wars - "Hey Obie Wan - Obie Won!" My friend Jake has an autographed pic of Adrienne Barbeau on his Facebook but I will now use my holographic powers to beam that pic right here.... Adrienne... welcome to NWOW



As things started to look good for Obama on Tuesday, I decided to tune over to Fox News to see how they were handling it. It was rather amusing to watch their long faces as 8 years of a Republican White House had come to an end. (Nauseatingly enough the GOP has been in the White House for 20 of the last 28 years - blech!) Watching the Fox News Channel the night Obama won the election was like watching the losing locker room interviews after the Super Bowl.

CNN didnt use as much as John King's magic map as I had anticipated... or maybe I just was not watching too closely. As part of the new generation of media coverage I found myself watching News Radio 88's camera coverage of its radio broadcasts that they were showing on their website. It was quite fascinating to see 2 anchormen sitting there playing commercials, going live to Tony Guida and basically holding down the fort with a lot of down time. One of the anchors seemed to spend a lot of time on his black berry while the other guy just kind of sat there looking at an unseen monitor. They rarely spoke to each other off air although one guy did get a drink for the other guy. On the radio it sounded smooth, but watching them made their job seem a tad dull.

I also found myself tuning it to ABC late at night.. .this was the first Presidential Election in the post Peter Jennings era... and I was mesmerized by how remarkably good Diane Sawyer was looking even though she must have been putting in a 20 hour day. I presume she was able to make it back the next morning for Good Morning America? I didn't bother getting up early to watch to see if she was back on.

BEST NIGHT OF TV NUMBER ONE

Sunday has become one of the 2 best days on TV - after all the Sunday football I am ready for some yuks which is why Seth MacFarlane continues to be the King of Sunday Night cartoons! He rules the roost with the classic Family Guy and the extremely amusing American Dad. The episode with Roger the alien having a split personality and having one persona steal the id from the other one in order to get a credit card was quite hysterical. Now Family Guy is spinning off Cleveland into his own show as he bluntly pointed out to Quagmire while they were being held against their will in the Griffin's basement in the "Home Alone" episode. How often does a guy being held prisoner turn to his fellow captive and say - "Hey Im getting a spinoff!".

I have also noticed there is a bit of a Simpsons vs. Family Guy competition because McFarlane has been pointing out Family Guys pulling in a larger audience than The Simpsons in the weekly TV ratings. McFarlane is finally getting some long deserved credit but even though I think The Family Guy is funnier, I don't think it will last anywhere near as long as The Simpsons will. I used to watch Desperate Housewives, but now i have been watching it on ABC.com later in the week. However, ABC did something with their video player and the audio and video never seems to be in synch, which makes it a bit difficult to watch. It could be an issue with my computer.

After The Fox cartoons its off to HBO to watch Entourage. The 4 guys and Ari Gold provide for a very amusing and entertaining show. Jeremy Piven is absolutely brilliant as Ari and the 4 boys interact with each other quite well. Even Turtle's character who is somewhat irrelevant has some big moments - his little handy run in on the plane with the girl from The Sopranos made him the butt of jokes from Drama - but when his bragging about his studliness came back to bite him and he got dumped, Drama was the first person to immediately step forward to defend his pal who he had been endlessly picking on for the last several episodes. Nice to see somebody has a heart. Its like a buddy movie with a nutty power hungry agent and a gay assistant (Lloyd) who seems to be the target of every gay joke that has ever been written.

After Entourage I tend to flip to the NFL game or Fox 5 Sports Extra. For those of you not in our tv market - sports caster Andy Adler is a woman and homina homina homina! You oughta see the outfits she wears. After that its over to Channel 4 for the night to see the late news... now anchored by Darlene Rodriguez although last Sunday Sue Simmons co anchored with Chuck Scarborough and Sue had the craziest looking perm I had ever seen! Her hair was back to its normal self Monday night. Maybe she was sending a message to management that she doesn't like working weekends??

After getting my sports wrapup with Mike'd Up with Mike Francesa - I just discovered that early seasons of Monk are being rerun on Channel 4. I had never seen the earlier seasons and everyone raves about his original assistant, so now I will get to see what I was missing.

BEST NIGHT ON TV NUMBER TWO

Nothing is better on back to work Monday than coming home to get some yuks. CBS has the hysterical Big Bang Theory at 8 and then How I Met Your Mother at 8:30. Heroes follows at 9 - and even though there has been a lot of controversy swirling around the show this season - 2 producers were fired this week - I think the show is quite entertaining.

What will it take to fix Heroes? Well let's keep one concept intact - Heroes has a very good way of creating good guys and bad guys and then painting them with a shade of gray to make the bad guys look good and vice versa. This vagueness with who do you root for makes for some excellent storytelling you don't see too often on TV. The problem is what are these guys up to? Parkman meets Heroes version of Pumpstradamus and knows he will hook up with Daphne, while at the same time she has to abduct him for her bosses. At the moment they meet for the first time... they already know each other yet they have never met or spoken. But what is the end game to all this?? Well maybe the Heroes should be crime fighting superheroes - kind of like the Fantastic 4. Unfortunately the writers have created so many freaking characters with so many different tangents and time traveling time lines that its getting harder to get the plots under control. While I like the idea of not so bad bad guys and not so good good guys... it would be nice if they team up to fight a villain. The episode with Claire and her 2 moms teaming up to defeat the puppeteer was not only quite suspenseful but also set a good example of the kind of super hero team work that could make the show work even better.

The night wraps up at 10 with the silliness of CSI Miami..(what are they doing to Emily Procter? Did she get some collageon or something? She doesnt look right) and at the same time ABC is airing Boston Legal pitting David Caruso against William Shatner in the battle of the worst actors. Shatner has either gotten to be a better actor or a caricature of himself since we have gotten so used to his poor acting skills, that he seems to be just imitating himself.

BEST NEW SHOW OF THE FALL

I usually dont get too involved with the new fall shows because half the time they get canceled anyway. Last year's time traveling Journeyman was a typical example,. That is why when I heard another show involving a time traveling element would premiere this fall, I got a little nervous that I would get hooked. Well I got hooked on Life on Mars which is by far the best new TV show of the season.

Over the summer I started watching Swingtown on CBS - a show that took place in the 70s involving 3 couples... one swinging couple,... one square couple,.... and one couple sort of in the middle. While the "swingers in prime time" aspect got all the attention - in reality the show had a lot of heart warming moments and it turns out that as the season ended, the swinging couple emerged as having the strongest marriage.

Once the show wrapped up (and sadly probably for good) in September I had this nostalgia for the 70s that only seemed to be fulfilled by watching old game shows on GSN. Along came Life on Mars with this crazy concept about a cop who gets smacked in the head.. and wakes up living in the 1970s where he is working as.... a 1970's cop. And if you watched the crime shows in the 70s and the crime shows of today, you know that cops were different back then - at least on TV. Nobody really knows how he ended up back in the 70s.. much like the mystery surrounding the time traveling abilities of the main character on Journeyman.... so the premise of a 2008 cop on a 70s cop show with a bizarrely mysterious back story - is kind of like a cross between Lost and Kojak.

If you watch the old '70s cop show reruns, you kind of get a little nostalgic because the current era shows are basically out of the Law and Order and CSI format. And the occasional cop show involving a cop with an offbeat personality don't seem to do well. One case was Boomtown on NBC a few years back - the lead character in that show is the same actor who plays mysterious Dave Williams on Desperate Housewives.

The 70s cops on that show are well played by Havey Keitel and Michael Imperioli from The Sopranos. Imperioli's character has a pretty accurate 70s sideburns and mustache look while both cops are incredibly Archie Bunker-esque in their political incorrectness. The fact that they nicknamed a female cop No Nuts pretty much explains how these guys operate.

The other mystery is how did this guy bang his head and wake up 35 years ago? This show ran in England and already explained it... but nobody knows if the American version will follow the same path although I hear the first few episodes were strikingly similar. I don't know anything about the British Life on Mars so I will have to stay in suspense to see how all this falls into place. Nonetheless, the mystery combined with the old 70s cop show characters makes Life on Mars by far the best new show of the season!


STUFF ON THE OTHER NIGHTS

Other than Life on Mars the non Sunday - Monday shows are pretty lame. I do catch a couple of other shows on Fox - Kitchen Nightmares is entertaining but it's the same thing every week. A restaurant is poorly run... Gordon comes for a visit, hates the food, curses a few times, fixes the place up, reopens it, watches them struggle with the crowds for the reopening, and then everybody is happy and sings cumbaya at the end.

Friday also has a couple of goodies - Don't Forget the Lyrics could bring in a lot of money if I can ever convince Trophy Wife to go on the show. Wayne Brady is the perfect host for this karaoke game show. And Bill Maher's show on HBO has been terrific when he gets a good panel - although I think the show's quality might drop a bit now that the elections are over.

One last show I have really started to enjoy - oddly enough I work from my home office in the mornings and Friday afternoons so I catch The People's Court. I think this is the best of all the court shows because Judge Milian is not only easy on the eyes but also seems to have a lot of common sense and doesn't yell at everybody like the more popular Judge Judy. I am also trying to figure out the logistics of how Harvey Levin balances his New York People's Court tapings with his LA TMZ daily show. And I recently found out on Wikipedia that Levin is openly gay. I never knew that - not that there is anything wrong with it of course. Unless you want to get married in California - but that my friends is a topic for another day!


PUMPSTRADAMUS NFL PICK OF THE WEEK - For the 6th time in 7 weeks, Pumpy was right again last week to improve to 7-2. This week we go to Chicago, home of President Elect Obama. The Bears are 3 point home dogs against Tennessee - Sayeth the Pump - "To paraphrase Oprah, I couldn't bare to watch the results if McCain would have won - take the Bears!"

UNBIASED GIANTS FAN PICKS OF THE WEEK - We went 2-1 last week - we are actually 15-3 over the last 6 wks - the season record is now 18-9.

Giants 3 point doggies over PHILLY - A 3 point home favorite essentially means the oddsmakers feel the teams are very equal. I politely disagree with that.

RAIDERS 9 doggies over Carolina - The Giants and Carolina are battling for home field in the playoffs. Pumpy had his gutsy Raiders pick against the Jets a few weeks ago, and he won. They should at least cover.

Saints 1 doggie over ATLANTA - Each Philly and Atlanta loss gets the Giants closer to a playoff berth. GO Saints!

Republicans, Israel and The Jewish Vote

Well we are almost at the homestretch of the election now.. as Tuesday we head to the polls to cast our votes for our next president. Gosh, I wonder who I'm gonna vote for. Hmmmm.

I am pretty oblivious to election advertising. I already knew from day 1 that I would not vote for a Republican... so whatever the ads say basically goes in one ear and out the other. In addition, since I live in NJ, I don't get to see the rough and nasty anti Obama ads that the Republicans have been buying throughout the country since they already have conceded that NJ and NY are going to vote Obama... so why spend the money here?

Even Frank Lautenberg isn't spending a lot of money on his re election campaign. One campaign that caught my attention is the Republican hot bed in Northwest NJ where a blind Rabbi named Dennis Shulman is running for Congress against incumbent Scott Garrett. Hey, I'd rather have a blind Rabbi than a blind mohel.

I remember Garrett when he was in the NJ State Assembly in the early 90s.. and you have never met a person more Conservative. His blood is redder than a red state. This guy earned the title of most right wing voting Congressman from NJ, based on his Brad Lidge-esque consistency of voting for all things Conservative. That is how he earned a perfect 100 percent score with the American Conservative Union. Some of the things he has voted against include unemployment benefit extensions, stem cell research, aid to Katrina victims, and amazingly child safety locks on guns. What happens if somebody in his district has a problem and needs to "call his Congressman?" Do they really think he is going to actually help somebody if it is going to go against his Republican mantra of "Don't spend taxpayers money".

I also see that my new fellow Hebrew John King (he recently converted after marrying his fellow CNN colleague Dana Bash) is getting a lot of attention for his amazing CNN map. It's not that the map is so impressive... it's his amazing knowledge of geography, a subject we Americans are very weak in. As much as I am aware of how voting goes around NJ and NYC, his map can pinpoint local markets all across the country and predict how people will vote. Unfortunately, as much as I would like to see Obama win, I can see King smacking around his map next Tuesday pointing out locations around the US that are still not ready to accept a Black man as President. Btw, can you imagine if he uses that map highlighter to teach his kids about the birds and the bees? Here on the east coats is the daddy and his shmeckle - Over in California, this is the mommy and her eggs. Now if the shmeckle juice ends up swimming through the midwest....

Anyway, since I don't get to see the anti Obama ads, I still want to see what those Republicans are up to because the old saying goes, keep your friends close and your enemies closer. That is why I make it a point to check out what's going on on Fox News. Every night like giggly eyed school girls they show the latest Sarah Palin speech and frankly I gotta admit, those Republicans are really bending over backwards to get the Jewish vote. Palin has been the poster girl for the rhetoric unleashing says some nasty comments about the Palestinians.. especially this alleged Palestinian spokesman Rashid Khalid's friendship with Obama that is on some video tape, hidden somewhere at the LA Times... With all this anti Palestinian talk, Sarah Palin is starting to look like Meir Kahane with boobs.

Obviously, Israel is very important to me, and my Republican colleagues are amazed that I am a Zionist that does not support McCain. In reality, Israel occupies a place close to my heart... and I am extremely right wing when it comes to politics there. I am also not too tolerant of the Palestinians there. I don't have an issue with the ones who are struggling to get by financially since everybody knows that Yasser Arafat and his co horts stole all their money and screwed them over way worse than what they allege the Israelis have done.. despite what the bleeding heart Jewish liberals might think. The Palestinians that worry me are the treasonists who constantly plot against the government and terrorize Israelis who are just trying to get on with their daily lives. It appears that the violence has subsided there, but they always have to be on the lookout for the homicide bombers.

That is why I get such a kick out of Sarah Palin - she has the guts to speak out against the PLO. I really like that about her... but not enough for me to vote for her. But I can see Palin getting a little chic show on the Fox News Network after the election with Elizabeth Hasselbeck that might be watchable if Palin wears that short skirt - boots combo she wore during the closing credits on SNL a few weeks ago.... This would go along with my predicted CNN show with the bearded journalist and horny former Governor called Blitzer and Spitzer. I just hope a future Palin show doesn't bounce out Greta van Susterin.

However, as much as I might agree with Palin on this ONE issue, I see exactly what she is up to. Her latest attacks this week have been for Obama's alliance with Khalid who she claims is a former PLO spokesman. CNN however says that the guy is a Columbia professor who is a PLO sympathizer. Believe it or not, as anti PLO as I might be, I don't have an issue with people feeling sorry for them, as long as they are not sending over a lot of money to them that goes to terrorist operations. But for a college professor to speak out on their behalf doesn't bother me. I might not agree with him, but there are a lot of issues I don't agree with... and frankly being based in New York and sympathizing with Palestinians is not something I find to be too dangerous.

In reality, this is Palin's way of trying to steer Jews away from Obama. People seem to equate pro Israel with the Jewish vote.. but in reality every politician is pro Israel and it's not for the Jewish vote.. it is because it makes sense. Israel is the only normal country in that crazy Middle East and the US government knows it is dealing with the only sensible democratically elected government in that area. Americans find Israelis a pleasure to work with compared to its neighbors. This is in direct contrast to dealing with Israelis at electronics stores. One day I went to a now defunct electronics store to buy an advertised technological gadget that was manufactured by Microsoft. When I got there, the actual product was made by some company I had never heard of. The salesman said... "Buy this one.. its better; who knows how long Microsoft will be around?".

I think my fellow Jews are smart enough to see through Palin's rhetoric. We will always be pro Israel as long as we continue to work together to keep the Middle East safer and saner. And keeping Israel as a safe tourist area helps both Jews and Christians since that is the Holy Land for everybody.

According to the Jewish Week, the GOP is actually getting a lot of support from the Ultra Orthodox Jewish community. An article in the latest issue talks about how the ultra Orthodox are more on the same page with Republicans when it comes to "moral" issues such as taking away the right to choose etc. This weeks Jewish Week has a report that Democrat Congressman Jerry Nadler appeared at a pre Election Day event in Boro Park and pointed out that a lot of the local programs that are specifically important to that community that has a lot of kids, but not a lot of money are actually supported by Democrats. According to the Jewish Week, Nadler told them that before voting for McCain they should keep in mind that 98% of the people pushing for Section 8 and increased social services are Democrats.

Another issue with that community is they are immune to pop culture - no TV, no NY Post, etc, so the stuff they hear about the politicians is basically hearsay. Many of them still think that Obama is a Muslim. And now the rumors about his relationship with a PLO sympathizer is gonna cause more trouble. One of their newspapers - Hamodia - printed an editorial ripping into Obama for jumping to conclusions about somebody innocent till proven guilty, because he criticized Agriprocessors the house of horrors slaughter house in Iowa that faces 9000 criminal charges after an immigration raid earlier this year. As if Obama's criticism was worse than what went on in Iowa?

And as we head to the homestretch and this crazy call your bubby and zaida in Florida to vote for Obama movement, I really find it hard to believe that my fellow Jews would not vote for Obama ONLY because he is black. We as a people were marched to the gas chambers because we were "different" than the Aryans. So what if he looks different... the color of his skin is not going to affect his ability to do his job.... and I hope you will join me Tuesday in helping him get the job of President of the United States.


PUMPSTRADAMUS PICK OF THE WEEK: Last week Pumpy lost to drop to 6-2. This week Pumpy has an Election Day theme to his pick which is very interesting since Wayne Root who made a fortune by selling his NFL picks is amazingly the Libertarian's Vice Presidential Candidate. Does Pumpy have a political future? This week we go to Washington where George W. is packing his suitcases to get out by Inauguration Day. This week the Redskins are at home and are 1 1/2 point faves over the Pittsburgh Steelers. Sayeth the Pump: "According to tradition if the Redskins lose their last home game before Election Day, then the incumbent party loses the election.... so I'm backing the Steelers.... because Obama's going to steel the White House!"

UNBIASED GIANTS FAN OF THE WEEK: The 12 game winning streak bit the dust last week. We went 1-2 for a season record of 16-8. This week I am picking a week of doggies - except McCain!!

Dallas 9 doggies over GIANTS - The Giants will win, but I think the Cowboys will cover.

KC 8 1/2 doggies over Tampa Bay - The more the Bucs and Eagles lose, the closer the Giants get to a playoff spot. Hopefully the Chiefs will stop that "play not to lose" mentality and take this one.

Pittsburgh 1 1/2 doggies over WASHINGTON - I'm with Pumpy on this one - I think the Steelers are ticked after they blew last week's game against the Super Bowl Champion Giants.

Socializing and Socialism

Before we start today's column....how about those football picks? Unbiased Giants fan is 12-0 over the last 4 weeks! And Pumpstradamus is 6-1!! Stay tuned for this week's picks to see if the hot streak continues. And we welcome all the new readers who are joining us today after googling "NFL Betting".

This weeks marks the end of the Jewish Holiday season... a terrific time of year where we can take a lot of time off from work... and nosy co-workers wondering about ANOTHER holiday are reminded that alternate side of the street parking regulations are suspended... confirming that yes indeed, it is another holiday.

Well, once again with all the celebrating, and praying and of course socializing... I waited till late in the week to start my column and guess what happened?? That bronchial bug that has been afflicting Trophy Wife for the last few weeks, found its way over to me and attacked and at the worst possible time. I have a pretty good immune system and I rarely get sick, but this bronchial infection started floating around my system on Tuesday Morning and finally struck full force late Tuesday night. It actually forced me to miss... my all time favorite holiday Simchas Torah... or as I like to call it... an 18 hour celebration interrupted by about 4 hours of sleep.

Nate missing Simchas Torah is like Santa Claus missing Christmas! ST is the celebration by my fellow Hebrews and Shebrews that God gave us the Five Books of Moses. Each Saturday morning at services, a portion of the Torah is chanted right out of the hand written Torah scrolls, set up in such a way that the Five Books takes one year to complete - and then restarted from "In the beginning" on Simchas Torah.... which leads to the celebrations.. the end of Deuteronomy and the beginning of Genesis.

For the celebrations, each synagogue takes all of its Torahs, and marches around 7+ times during services on the evening of the holiday and again the following morning. In the evening all the men (and at some synagogues all the women) each carry the Torah scroll and the next morning they repeat the process, plus each man over the age of 13 (and again in some places, each woman) is called up to the Torah one at a time for an aliyah where they say a special prayer and a few sentences of the Torah portion are chanted out loud.

Since I was a kid, this has always been my favorite holiday. The kids who are too small to carry a heavy Torah scroll (trust me, they're heavy) are given little flags and they get to march around the sanctuary like cutie pies. The idea of the holiday is you are so happy that you dance with the Torahs with joy. As a kid I liked it that me and my fellow little pishers got to march and we got candy.

As I became a teenager I realized what the adults were really up to. At the orthodox synagogues, the adults traditionally dont eat till after morning services which comes after the recitation of the post-synagogue, pre-lunch prayer of the kiddush. The Simchas Torah service traditionally runs so long that you won't get to eat till after 2pm. In order to keep everybody's bloood sugar in check, a person is allowed to recite the kiddush AFTER his aliyah, at which point he and his family can eat. The kiddush also involved the consumption of an adult beverage or 2 or 3.(The observant dont drive on this holiday.) In addition, the traditional Priestly blessing which is usually recited after the Torah reading, is moved up to before the Torah reading, because traditionally everybody had done so much celebrating at that usual point in the service that they can't perform that part of the service all liquored up. Incidentally, I have rarely encountered too many drunks in my day... but I have encountered a lot of levity during that holiday. Also, in Israel, they also do the somber Yizkor Memorial service on ST, but I have never seen how they do it and how it is worked into the whole scheme of things. If anybody has seen this, please feel free to explain it in the comments section.

The levity is part of why I like the holiday so much... they do stuff you never ever see except for that one day. The kids get to run all over the place.... they also get a special aliyah when they are called to the Torah..., the adults fire off wisecracks as if they were on Hollywood Squares... (Moshe Moskowitz for the block), and the Priestly Blessing is moved to a different timeslot. The part that I find to be most incredible... it is the only day of year that we read from the Torah at night. I find this very cool for some reason, yet I don't know why. I also like the levity and socializing... which gives kids the notion at a young age that a synagogue is a fun place to be. All the traditional prayer tunes are tossed out the windows and replaced with melodies that remind you of a Weird Al Yankovic parody. For 17 yrs at my old synagogue, I used to lead part of the service with a carefully choreographed series of musical tunes... usually to blank faces, unless I stuck to the old traditions of Yankee Doodle and Fiddler on the Roof songs.... but the year I tossed in some Take a Walk on the Wild Side by Lou Reed - crickets.

In the mid 90s, I began a new tradition that I mentioned in the Yankee Stadium column last month. I started traveling on the holiday (you're not supposed to, but my religious observances or lack thereof is not really the point) and I discovered the Bnai Jeshurun synagogue on Manhattan's Upper West Side. I remember going with my friend Mike and it was like we had discovered a new island - I had never seen anything quite like this. For the first several years I went, they closed off part of West End Avenue and danced like maniacs for hours and hours. In 2001, the Jewish holidays were right after 9/11 so for security concerns they moved the festivities indoors, and that has been the case ever since. But again, they still celebrated up a storm there... and that is how they have done it ever since.

After leaving there, I would walk a few blocks over to the Carlebach synagogue, a wonderful Modern Orthodox synagogue that has an incredible night of dancing that apparently goes till the wee hours of the morning. This creates a tough dilemma. One year, I drove into the city, but Mike was not where he was supposed to be, and since we didnt have cellphones, I just assumed he wasn't coming. I had to pick up a few friends but I couldn't find parking so I momentarily parked in front of a church and went to ring their buzzer to tell them I was there. I was gone for maybe 2 minutes.. and as I got back I saw Mike had driven to the city, and parked right behind me! And I had gotten a parking ticket... yet amazingly he didn't!!

Since parking is so hard, the train seems to be a better option, but you really have to watch the clock to get outta Carlebach in time to make it to Penn Station for the last 140 train back to Jersey. As I wrote last month, in 2000 I got so caught up in all the activity there, that I lost track of time and almost missed the last train.. however because the Met Yankee World Series Game 1 went extra innings (Thank You Armando Benitez) the last train's departure was delayed, so the fans at the game were given enough time to get the train!

Now, Simchas Torah has become an annual opportunity to catch up with old friends in the city, followed by an early wake up call to get to the morning services and all the related frivolity. And yes, they actually don't discourage you from heckling and make wisecracks during services.... but only after a certain amount of people have had their little shot or shots of adult beverages. This year unfortunately, Trophy Wife and I were under the weather... we decided in advance we wouldn't trek to the City. I did muster enough energy to go to nearby Highland Park to visit 2 local synagogues on Tuesday Night. At the first, my friend Barry the Red Sox fan shmaneuvered me into carrying a Torah, even though the bug was causing some bad tummy aches... luckily the Immodium kicked in during my turn to march. After that, I visited another nearby service and ran into Rabbi Green who married me and Trophy Wife and he gave me such a bear hug I think I cracked a rib. As I strolled home at around 945 pm, I realized that my buds in the city were probably just getting their party hats ready. Oh well, I still had the Wednesday Morning activities to look forward to.

Wednesday Morning I woke up sicker than a dog and I realized what it would take to get me to miss Simchas Torah. We ended up staying home, but later in the day we felt much better so we took a little mini Torah I have had since my bar mitzvah and an Israeli flag and spent about 10 minutes marching around the living room singing Simchas Torah songs. After that, we went back to bed and zonked out from our excessive partying until I woke up and realized I had not started this week's column!

After that, I brought in the mail, and saw that a local Jewish paper published a very interesting letter to the editor during this holiday season. A doctor (of theoretical physics, whatever that means) who supports McCain wrote that if Obama wins, "The government would become much more socialistic, with the focus on helping people - this sounds like welfare". Well this guy might be a big hotshot in the physics world but its obvious he doesn't know about how tax dollars relate to welfare vs helping non welfare. Where do republicans get this idea that all tax money goes to lazy people who refuse to get a job and want to mooch off the government? Socialism Shmocialism! Government is there to help people - all people... rich, poor, middle class etc. How about the roads that are built, the police and firemen who keep us safe in our homes... the schools that provide education for all kids, and the efforts to make cars and planes safer - or work done by the FDA to make drugs safer and affordable, even for rich people? And the bank bailout which now "socialized" the banks? It will ultimately reopen the credit markets and hopefully get the economy moving back in the right direction.

Nobody except for a few fringe wacko liberals believes in giving free rides to welfare recipients who refuse to work.... and the idea of "helping all people" - not just those on welfare..... is the entire point of what we are here for - and really, isn't that what we just celebrated last week during Simchat Torah? And when did socialism get to be such a bad word? On Simchas Torah we sing a song "Next Year in Jerusalem".... maybe next year we will be in Jerusalem - on a kibbutz! Or is that too "socialistic"



PUMPSTRADAMUS PICK OF THE WEEK - Last week Pumpy won again improving his record to 6-1. This week we go to Tampa Bay the home of the Rays who we Met fans hope will beat the Phillies in the World Series. This week the Tampa Bay Bucs are in Dallas where they are 2 point doggies to the Cowboys. Sayeth the Pump: "Let's go with the Bucs, because I need some to make up the bucks that I lost in this abysmal stock market"



UNBIASED GIANTS FAN PICKS OF THE WEEK - For the 4th straight week we went 3-0... I have no idea how! That 12-0 run has put our season record at 15-6.

Giants 3 point doggies over PITTSBURGH - Could this be a Super Bowl Preview?

DETROIT 7 1/2 doggies over Washington - Is it wise to risk a 12 game winning streak with another underdog? I think the Lions will cover.

Tampa Bay 2 doggies over DALLAS - We did this a few wks ago going all doggies and struck gold. How can I possibly go against the Amazing Pumpstradamus??

Empire of the Sun - A Movie Club Column

Greetings from the NWOW sukkah where today's column is originating.... I'm sitting here pecking away at my laptop - This weekend we are going to do the traditional Chinese Food in the sukkah.... which is a perfect opportunity for a movie review column of "Empire of the Sun". This is part 1 of our Bateman to Batman 4-pack featuring Christian Bale movies.

It seems like the only banks doing well nowadays is Elizabeth Banks...the actress is in 2 new movies this month... the new Oliver Stone movie "W" and "Zack and Miri Make a Porno". I think Banks turned in her star making performance a few years back with her brief appearance in "The 40 Year Old Virgin" during that that sizzling hot jacuzzi seduction scene. Oy Vay! Homina Homina Homina! By the way did you know that her last name is actually Mitchell but she changed it to Banks? When she became an actress there already was an Elizabeth Mitchell... the hot blonde who plays Juliet on Lost. Banks also could have also taken her husband's last name of Handelman.... by the way she converted to Judaism prior to her wedding.

Speaking of name changes, I just found out the other day that Dana Bash and John King from CNN got married over the summer. And gosh did they look cute sitting next to each other during CNN's debate coverage Wednesday Night!! A few weeks ago in the Yankee Stadium column, I wrote about my buddy who missed 6 innings at a Yankee game back in the 80s. I think his sister who went to that game with us actually went to school with Ms. Bash who back then was Dana Schwartz. She married her first husband - a guy named Bash and took on his name. Now she is married to John King.. but still goes by the last name of her ex husband. It's kind of odd that John King will speak to her on the air and refer to her by her previous husband's last name! Imagine if she hyphenated her name... then divorced hubby #2 and married Tony Robbins... her name would be Dana Bash-King Robbins! By the way, just like the aforementioned Ms. Banks, John King converted to Judaism prior to the wedding, which is physically more painful for a man than a woman. Mazel tov to the King family and tune in later today on CNN as John King and Larry King will have a Shmini Atzeret trivia contest.

OK... enough silliness.... let's get on with the movie review....... here is the trailer...



World War II has a different meaning to different people - it depends on who you ask I guess. Veterans have first hand accounts of what they went through - so do Holocaust survivors. Steven Spielberg decided to take a different look at things based on what was going on for Westerners living on Japanese soil during WW II. Japan rounded out all of its "enemies" so that they would be in "camps" as Pearl Harbor was being attacked on December 7, 1941 (The week that both my mom and Pumpstradamus's mom were born!) - and those westerners remained there until we dropped the atom bomb on Nagasaki on August 19, 1945. I have really never thought much about what was going on in Japan then.. until I saw this terrific movie!

Christian Bale was only 13 when he took on this role playing Jamie Graham... Spielberg cast him after his wife (at the time) Amy Irving recommended him after they acted together in a miniseries. In this movie, Bale plays a young boy growing up in Shanghai..(at that time part of Japan) . which at the time was inhabited by a lot of Brits; they moved there from England and instead of being British people living in Japanese territory, they turned it into another England... sort of like what the Indians did to Iselin, NJ! As a matter of fact, I was just thinking about this on Columbus Day that in 1492, if Columbus had landed in Iselin and declared the people he saw there as "Indians".... people really wouldn't think much of it now, would they?

The movie starts with a brief back story of words scrolling on the screen... just like Star Wars. Bale is introduced to us just days before the Japanese military started rounding up the westerners in Japan. The Japanese military waited very very patiently to get their official orders just to make sure everybody would be well behaved on Pearl Harbor Day. While attending a costume party at a family friend's mansion, the little guy actually stumbles into a Japanese hideout but manages to safely get away.... as the adults realize that the Japanese are just going to sit there marking time until just the right moment. It's almost Hitchcockian to see the Japanese just patiently sitting there.. with untold horrors awaiting the non Japanese residents.

Ultimately, the horrors turn out to be bad, yet not quite as bad as one would imagine. The movie tells the story of how Bale's character grows up in the labor camp during WWII... in almost a style we saw in "Life is beautiful" this movie attempts to show a somewhat lighter side of what the boy goes through. Based on a true story by JG Ballard, (who appears in a cameo at the party where the young Bale discovers the Japanese hideaway), the movie is typical of a pre-Schindler's List Spielberg movie... (although this film doesn't have a final scene as touching as the finale to Schindlers List... nor does any movie for that matter...) featuring a lost boy separated from his parents and looking for something to cling to. Jamie actually has a picture of a Norman Rockwell family painting which he carries around with him all the time. In this movie, the boy has a fascination with airplanes and plays with them all the time. Ultimately, it will be an American bomb dropping airplane that will rescue Jaime from his camp.... That's kind of like my fascination with blondes.. imagine if I was imprisoned somewhere and rescued by Elizabeth Banks, Elizabeth Mitchell and Dana Bash.

The plane leads to poor Jamies downfall. He and his parents try to evacuate Shang hai but he gets separated form his mom when he reaches down to pick up the toy airplane he dropped. Once separated, he is all alone and tries to give himself up to the invading Japanese army which just kept marching past him. Of course if it was the Nazis, they would have just shot him dead. Ultimately, he runs into 2 American soldiers played by John Malkovich and Joe Pantoilano who seem more interested in selling his non existent dental gold fillings. Even though they have no use for the kid.. he starts to hang with them and ultimately invites them to his mansion where they are ultimately caught and sent to the camp.

As Jamie ages... the make up is remarkable because Bale goes from looking like a little boy to looking like a young version of Christian Bale... he starts to make the best of his situation. He becomes quite the businessman trading materials between different people.... His American friends live in the American bunk house while he stays with a married couple. And while the British do not make the best of the situation, the American bunk resembles something of a MASH episode with a strong camraderie developing between the imprisoned. The Malkovich character almost seems to be living in a country club!

Ultimately, Jamie strives to work his way in with the Americans... partly by plotting a daring "escape" to the other side of the barbed wire fence in order to plant "pheasant traps" which is really an attempt by the Americans to use him to check for landmines so they can plot an escape. When it looks like Jamie might get caught by the Japanese guard, the Americans cruelly start a betting pool wagering on whether he will get away or get caught. Jamie ultimately is able to utilize his friendship with a Japanese teen at a Japanese air hangar on the other side of the barbed wire to bail himself out of a dicey situation; later on watching that teen go through the pre suicide mission traditional ritual is quite touching.

It's an interesting comparison to 2008... back then the Chinese were the good guys and the Japanese were the bad guys. Amazingly the movie was shot in China, the first American movie to be shot there. I guess when your name is Spielberg you carry a lot of clout with the Chinese government! The Japanese invasion of Shanghai is a very touchy topic for the gazillions of extras, especially those who were still alive during WWII. During that shoot they converted the streets to make them look like just as they did back then, shooting some amazing scenes involving the invasion by the Japanese military. Watching the young Jamie separated by his parents as a young boy is heart wrenching... and seeing him as a young teen with a Davey Crockett hairpiece is mesmerizing when you realize that he looks exactly how Bates will look when he evolves into Bateman and Batman.

Before we get to my bladder scale... here is what Siskel and Ebert had to say....



Now even though I think Siskel and Ebert was/is two of the best movie critics.. I really have to disagree. The movie runs an incredibly long 2 hours and 40 minutes and even with my ants in the pants, I was glued to the screen from beginning to end. Speilberg is a legend and this is one of his many masterpieces. The cast is terrific especially young Bale but also Malkvoich and a rather brief appearance by Miranda Richardson as a British woman who lives in the British bunk. That character has a turning point in her life just as we dropped the Atom Bomb on Hiroshima, giving young Jamie what he thinks is an incredible spiritual moment...... On a scale of 1 to 4 bladders meaning how less likely you would be to leave in the middle to go to the bathroom..... Empire of the Sun is a 4 bladder movie!!


PUMPSTRADAMUS PICK OF THE WEEK: Pumpy won again last week improving his record to 5-1. This week we go to Hofstra, the site of the last Presidential Debate at Hofstra. Up until recently Hofstra was the practice home of the NY Jets. This weekend, the Jets are in Oakland to play the Raiders. The Jets are favored by 3. Sayeth The Pump: "Since one of my favorite Spielberg movies is Raiders of the Lost Ark - take the Raiders!"

UNBIASED GIANTS FAN PICKS OF THE WEEK - The incredible run continues.... we went against all 3 NFC East teams last week to go 3-0 for the 3rd straight week running our winning streak to 9 games! I might have to charge for these picks soon. The season record is 12-6.

THE GIANTS 10 1/2 faves over San Fran - I usually don't like such large spreads, but I think the Giants have a little anger after Monday Night.

Cleveland 7 doggies over WASHINGTON - Didn't these people see what happened Monay Night?

ST. LOUIS 7 doggies over Dallas - The spread has dropped 3 1/2 points with the Romo injury situation. Maybe a TD is a tad much to expect Dallas to cover.

Did World Savings Save the World? Nope

I gotta make a note to myself that the next time Yom Kippur falls on a Thursday, I should not wait till Thursday night to write a Friday column! I am actually a good faster on YK,.... I'm a bad fast breaker! I have some dehydration issues, so even though I'm not particularly hungry or thirsty or headachey like many of my fellow Hebrews and Shebrews, I do run into some problems after the fast is over.

My YK fasting activities are also quite consistent. Every year except for 1999 and 2003 I always spent the Day of Atonement in either one of 2 synagogues.. Anshe Chesed in Linden from age 1 to 1996, and then The Highland Park Conservative Temple since '97 after my mom sold her Roselle house and moved to Edison. The one year I made an exception was '03 when I went with Trophy Wife (who back then was Trophy Girlfriend almost Trophy Fiance) to services with a bunch of her graduate student friends at Rutgers University... The services were terrific but during the break in the afternoon we trekked over to musical Genius Neil Fein's house to hang out... and I grossly underestimated the walking distance from his house to Rutgers. The walk to his house was ok.... but the walk back that day was sheer torture, and thankfully Highland Park has a lot of benches for me to sit... but in retrospect, that was not my smartest moment. I actually was home on YK in 1999 because I had a badly sprained ankle (that I sprained on the 2nd day of Rosh Hashana while walking to services!) and I couldn't walk to services on Yom Kippur. And yes, on that 2nd day in '99, I amazingly did the 3 mile walk from the synagogue to my mom's condo on that badly sprained and swollen ankle and by the way just to put it in perspective, that was NOT worse than the 2003 walk back to Rutgers!

Speaking of Rosh Hashana... I really have lost almost all respect for Ben Stein. While Congress was voting on the bailout last week, its first go round fell through and the 2nd attempt was scheduled for after Rosh Hashana out of respect to the Jewish House Members who planned to spend the day at services. Stein went on Larry King and said that those Jewish members should be at work instead! The actual rules for those who observe The High Holy Days, are that one is not permitted to perform work activities and while many people do not observe those rules, it's absurd that one Jew would make a comment insulting the beliefs of others who are observing the holiday.

I am also surprised by the amout of people who blow off the 2nd day to go to work, although I understand why certain business owners feel an obligation. Maybe they should move the 2nd day of Rosh Hashanah to Thanksgiving Friday.... how many of those people would give their boss a "Whatcha talking about Willis?" look of shock if they are asked to work that Friday, yet were willing to work the 2nd day of 5769?


Now that Saturday Night Live is relevant again... and you wonder if Sara Palin was purposely chosen because of her resemblance to Tina Fey.. I see that SNL had to re-edit a skit from last weekend before NBC allowed it to be posted on their website. The skit parodied the post bill signing press conference with those 2 wacky liberals Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank. Incidentally, I think most Democrats are more like me, moving away from the liberal ideas of Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Frank, and I find it odd that those 2 are at the forefront at such a momentous occasion.

The skit was of C-Span's coverage of that press conference showing other subprime "victims" including a borrower who got a loan even though he was jobless and a yuppy couple, that reminded me of that goofy dog training couple from "Best In Show". The skit also featured Herb and Marion Sandler. They are the couple that sold World Savings to Wachovia in 2006.. and now Wachovia has shut its doors just like Yankee Stadium! When the Sandlers appeared on the screen the C-Span graphics introduced them as "people that deserve to be shot". The subsequent online posting of that skit deleted that graphic.

I dont know that they deserve to be shot, but the whole World Savings situation has played quite a role in this mortgage debacle. The Sandlers walked away with a bundle of money after they sold their "portfolio" to Wachovia. That portfolio was actually not subprime loans which were loans that were given to people with shaky credit, but actually consisted of those infamous negative amortization loans that were advertised as loans with 1 or 2 percent rates.

Here is how they worked: World Savings would send its borrowers a coupon each month with a choice of 4 payments. Among those choices were an absurdly low 1 or 2 percent payment, an interest only payment at a rate approx 1-2% higher than a regular interest only loan, and a 15 or 30 year fixed option, which was also at a rate of 1 or 2% higher than a typical rate. The rationale for the higher rate actually makes sense... since that is the price these borrowers paid for being allowed the so-called "privilege" of having the low payment option.

But if your rate on the interest only option was 7% and your payment on that coupon was $1000, and your 1% rate payment was $400... guess what happens. The difference between those 2 payments would "negatively amortize"... For example... cars historically lose value - the moment you drive a new car off the lot, its value goes down... and thus it negatively amortizes. In a typical housing market, values are supposed to go up.. so a house would positively amortize over time... but lately home values have been going down. This creates a situation where even interest only loans are negatively amortizing, and these "payment option" loans were negatively amortizing at a much higher rate.

Now let's say a home owner makes that $400 dollar payment... he negatively amortizes $600. He has to pay at least the interest only payment to avoid negative amortization... the 1% option was just a carrot dangled in front of them... But that $600 which is now deferred interest is tacked on to the loan. So math students get your pencils... if a person made 10 months of minimum payments on a $150,000 dollar loan.... that loan now carries a balance of $156,000. And if that balance shoots up to the $160s and $170s as the value drops to the $150s and $140s, everybody involved is in a tight spot... since the home owner is paying on a house he owes more than its own value. Multiply that loan scenario by thousands and now you see the portfolio of loans that the Sandlers eagerly sold to Wachovia as truckloads of cash were delivered to the Sandlers.

World Savings also imposed tough pre payment penalties so many people who didn't quite grasp the way loan works, wanted out... and they were stuck. And, they also bypassed laws such as the ones in NJ that ban prepays since their federal charter allows them to charge those prepayment penalties. Those loans were priced in such a way that created an incentive for the borrower to agree to take the pre pay. The loans were also structured that only a certain amount of minimum payments would be allowed, until the borrower would be required to make the payments on the higher rate.

Are Herb and Marion Sandler responsible for this crisis? No. Did they bring down Wachovia? Probably Not. But they did carve their niche by offering a gimmicky loan that has caused a lot of aggravation. But there is one key factor here that one should keep in mind and that is many people who took these loans did not fully grasp how the loan worked, and really thought they had a "1% interest rate". Many of these borrowers took a 1 or 2% because that was all they could really afford. Once the ability to pay the low payment was taken away - they were screwed. And the fact that so many World Savings customers took out loans that they did not understand, is extremely unfortunate.



PUMPSTRADAMUS PICK OF THE WEEK

Pumpy was right again last week improving to 4-1. This week we go to the Bay Area in CA... the home of mortgage villians Herb and Marion Sandler. This week the San Fransisco 49ers host the Philadelphia Eagles. Sayeth the Pump: "I hear the Eagles have a player named Trent Cole...and since we chanted Kol Nidre on Wednesday Night... I gotta take the Eagles"


UNBIASED GIANT FAN PICKS OF THE WEEK

For the 2nd straight week we went 3-0! Now we are at 9-6. This week it's all about the doggies.

CLEVELAND 8 doggies over Giants - It's a Monday Night game and you know the old saying about home dogs on Monday Night. The Giants will win but won't cover.

ARIZONA 4 1/2 doggies over Dallas - Could this really be Arizona's year? Dallas almost blew it last week against the Bengals if Cincy had not gone for that ill advised 2 point conversion after that late TD.

St. Louis 13 doggies over WASHINGTON - A hot team against a winless team with a 2 td spread? The Skins could be ripe for an upset.


CLIP OF THE WEEK

Here is that SNL clip which many say explain the mortgage crisis better than the news media!

Baseball Quarterly Report: The Mets and Another Shea-mful Ending!

First of all... let's give a shout out to our new pals at The MetsPolice.com Blog. Their September 21 column featured my column about Yankee Stadium which is kind of odd because they are a Mets blog and I'm a big Met fan! And how can a Met fan do a whole column about Yankee Stadium without doing one about Shea?? Today we will rectify that as part of our Baseball Quarterly Report.

The Yankee Stadium column was a lot easier to do because I have not been there anywhere near as often as I have been to Shea. It is hard to pin point the best memories that I witnessed in person, since many of the games I have been to have been run of the mill games or losses to the Yankees where those annoying Yankee fans booed the Mets on their own home field. The most exciting game that I ever saw in person was June 30, 2000 when the Braves took an 8-1 lead into the 8th inning only to see the Mets come up with a huge 10 run rally capped off with Mike Piazza's 3 run homer off Terry Mulholland. Otherwise the games that I ended up attending were relatively uneventful....


My first ever ball game was at Shea in the early 70s... and I think it was a day game against The St. Louis Cardinals. I went to legendary YAC Camp which has now been immortalized on Facebook. I really dont remember anything about the game... however I didn't know bubkis about baseball... my dad was not a fan so I really had no formal introduction to the sport. I did know the rules to the game and as a little 6 year old pisher I actually thought the fans bat in the game too. What did I know? Years later I was a CIT at that same camp and took a bus to the city with another Met fan who worked there. We went to the Banner Day Double header which really was a fertile ground for any pharmaceutical salesman selling ADD medication since the twinbill and the between games Banner Parade seemed to go on and on.

Back in my college days my college radio station was able to get press passes to cover games which was pretty cool. I became a Met fan in the early 70s... around 1973 but really got into the game in the late 70's during the lean years. Things started really looking up for the Mets in '83 when they called up Darryl Strawberry and after that traded for Keith Hernandez in an absolute steal of a deal. The arrival of Davey Johnson in 1984, and then Gary Carter in '85 completed the turnaround and for the first time in my generation, we Met fans had something to cheer about. That is why it was fantastic that Met PR Director Jay Horowitz was nice enough to give us press access to batting practice.. (no press box or post game locker room though), but we got a pair of tickets in the stands so who could complain? We got to chat with the players! . I actually have photos of myself on the field with my microphone asking the players questions.

I also still have a tape of an interview I did with Pete Rose that showed what a Jerk he was.... I asked him a question right after he was traded to the Reds to be their player/manager about his reaction to the idea of that transaction and he kind of twisted it around a bit just to be a shmuck. From that day forward I could see that Rose was unlikeable... and that attitude is probably why the media has not made a bigger deal about his being left out of the Hall of Fame. His arrogance seemed a bit toned down on Bob Costas fantastic HBO show at the All Star Break which also featured Willie Mays and Hank Aaron, so maybe Rose has eaten about 19 years of humble pie since he was banned from the game. I also recall Bobby Valentine was a Met coach back then and he accidentally spit some chewing tobacco right on my tape recorder. Good thing I didnt have access to the urinals!

Those early college days were the era of Darryl and Doc and believe me I would have chills going down my spine every time I got to speak to them. Doc Gooden was also the first player who was approximately my age to make the big leagues. I used to know who was the first major leaguer who was younger than me; I think it is Al Leiter but I am not 100% sure.. Now only a handful of the active players are actually older than me!

In 2003 I went to a Mets Marlins game with a buddy of mine who got awesome tickets from a friend of his - we were in the first row right behind first base. It was a late season clunker against the Marlins and Shea was rather empty that weekday afternoon. We were just a few feet away from the first base coach's box and he could hear most of the wisecracks originating from our seats. At one point he actually looked in my direction and chuckled when I yelled..."Hey down in front... you're blocking my view!" Over the last few years, we have been going with my buddy Adam and his lovely wife. He takes a notebook with him and must keep score for every game. He literally sits there the whole time with a pen and notebook jotting down every single out while I sit there gearing up for Carlos at bats so I can do my Jon Miller impression and yell out.... Beltraaaaaaaan!~


I was kind of curious what the Shea finale would be like after seeing the great show that was put on at Yankee Stadium the previous week. It was neat to see Yogi Berra who had a key role for both franchises participate at both Stadium Closing ceremonies. Perhaps Yogi should be hired for other closings.... like bank closings? Hey join us this week as we close the doors on Wachovia... with a special appearance by Yogi Berra!!

I was really hoping that if the Mets didnt make the playoffs that they would at least get eliminated before Sunday so the closing ceremonies would not be affected by a Met elimination. I just never imagined how excruciatingly sudden it would be with the late inning loss combined with the Brewers late win. But the decision to do the closing after the game.... combined with the emotionally draining game made it very tough to get excited for the ceremonies. Nonetheless, the players got their game faces on and it was quite exciting to see all the old timers and not so old timers. Although Howard Johnson who was a Met coach this year looked like a deer caught in the headlights when he was introduced because he was still numb from the results of the game...

My Met fandom stretches a little more than 30 years and it was great to see the Mets especially from the crummy years... such as Dave Kingman for example.. It was also great to see the post Kingman '86 crew including Hernandez, Gary Carter, Doc Gooden and Sid Fernandez who looked nothing like I had expected. It would have been nice to bring Bill Buckner along since that game is the consensus favorite for the most incredible game in Shea's history... but I actually think winning it all in Game 7 was more exciting!.. Even though the Yankee Stadium ceremonies were more historical.... I felt emotionally detached from it... except for when Willie Randolph came out... and for that incredibly touching moment when Mickey Mantle's son comforted the recent widow of Bobby Murcer in Center field. But the Shea ceremonies carried a lot more meaning because being a Met fan has been a big part of my life for so long,

Willie Mays was there... he really had gone downhill by the time he arrived at Shea. And George Foster was at Shea Sunday too... even though he was cut early on in '86 and wasn't on the team when they won it all... but many credit his acquisition in '82 as being the first stepping stone to the '86 season. I still cant believe Dave Kingman was there! Jesse Orosco was also on hand... but the two real stars of the day were the best hitter and best pitcher to ever put on a Met uniform... Mike Piazza and Tom Seaver. I mentioned last week I hoped the Mets would give those 2 a very prominent role and to me the way they were utilized made it a very touching evening.

Even though the Yankee Stadium event was very well choreographed.....Shea's had a much different feel.. You could tell by the numerous missed camera shots that they must have made some late changes to the way it was presented.... It appeared to be put together on the fly, and I am very curious how different the event would have been had the Mets made the playoffs. The fans would have been quite happier, but it would not have been a true farewell to Shea. But, the Mets painful end to '08 gave the ceremonies a true sense of finality to the Goodbye Shea ceremonies.

The former Mets players who were involved emerged from behind the Center Field fence and lined up along the 1st and 3rd base lines. After the intros, which seemed to move along quite quickly maybe due to rain concerns.... each player was invited to touch home plate en route to leaving the field. No current Mets were involved in the ceremonies by the way..but I think a few of them deserved to be there for it. They were probably still worn out from the game. The Mets all touched home plate until the 2 Best Mets were remaining: Seaver and Piazza. At that point it was time for the last pitch - an incredibly clever idea which Tom tossed to Mike. The two then walked to the outfield to In My Life by The Beatles... don't forget The Beatles concert was an important part of Shea's history - and strolled to the center field wall... at which point they closed the wall behind them essentially closing the Stadium.

It would have been nice if right before that, they would have tossed a grenade into the bullpen and just blow it up... but that was not meant to be.


Now it's time to revisit my preseason picks and see where I messed up and where I was right.

Obviously my Mets predictions were wrong, but before they go and break up the whole team... let's consider one player's injury - Billy Wagner. If Wagner had been pitching, the Mets post season fate would have been sealed way before the final weekend, but losing your stopper when the rest of the pen is lousy was just too much for The Mets to overcome. The starting pitchers and offense is in pretty good shape although they could still use a new second baseman and a corner outfielder. Otherwise just fix what is broken - blow up the pen - get some different arms there and get ready for 2009.

In the National League preseason preview, I was two bullpen choke jobs from hitting on all 4 predictions. Back in April, I originally had the Division Winners being the Phillies, Cubs, D-backs with the Mets as Wild Card. We also picked the Astros as our surprise team, and they almost pulled it off but their late season hot streak (which came despite a season ending injury to slugger Carlos Lee) was derailed when Hurricane Ike moved 2 "home" games against the Cubs to Milwaukee where Cubs fans got the chance to hop in a car for a short trip to root for the Cubbies on "the road". The Astros lost those games and were never the same after that.

Over in the AL I predicted the end to the Yankees post-season run picking Boston, Detroit and Seattle as the division winners with Cleveland as the wild card. Whoda thunk how far off those picks were going to be - I even picked the LA Angels as my big disappointment. I did predict the White Sox as my surprise AL team for 2008.

As for the 2008 post season, I am going to predict that the Cubs will lose to LA - The LA Angels in the World Series!

Here are my other picks

Phils-Brewers - I couldn't care less
Cubs over LA - Not to poke fun at Torre but he has blown a post season series lead in the past.
LA over Bahsten - Angels look to be the class of the AL.
Tampa over Chicago White Sox. The Chi Sox pitching could be running outta gas.

And then LA over the Cubbies in the Fall Classic


Here are my predictions for the Post Season Awards:

NL Cy Young - I gotta give it to Johan Santana just ekeing it out over Brandon Webb. Both teams had crummy bullpens and should have won more games this season, but Santana strikes me as having had a better season despite fewer wins.

NL MVP - I have come to the conclusion that if Billy Wagner had not been injured that the Mets would have won the division weeks ago. That is how valuable a bullpen stopper is... which is why I think that Brad Lidge deserves it.

NL ROOKIE - Edinson Volquez of the Reds. 17-6 3.21 ERA, 206 strikeouts. This guy was amazing on a crummy team. Do you realize the Texas Rangers traded away Volquez (for Josh Hamilton) and released Armando Gallaraga who will be a runner up for Rookie of the Year?

AL CY YOUNG - I would rather see K-Rod get it for saving more than 60 games but Cliff Lee had one of those years - another Ohio pitcher who had an outstanding season for a sub par team!

AL MVP - This is a toughie! Who really earned it? I would have given it to Carlos Quentin but he missed the last few weeks and coincidentally his team started to slump. Nonetheless, what the heck? I'll give it to him.. although that is another award K-Rod might deserve.

AL ROOKIE - Evan Longoria - he went from being an Eva Longoria pun to a baseball star!!



PUMPSTRADAMUS PICK OF THE WEEK: Pumpy won with the Jets last week improving to 3-1. This week we go to The Nation's Capitol as all eyes were on Washington as Congress passed the bailout bill...(till the next bunch of banks go under!) This week The Redskins are 6 point Road Doggies to the Eagles. Sayeth The Pump: "Thursday Night Sarah Palin kept talking about "Maverick" which starred James Garner who was also in the movie "The Last Debate" and the 1973 movie "One Little Indian" The Redskins it is!"

UNBIASED GIANTS FAN PICK OF THE WEEK: Last week we ran the table go to 3-0 for the first time ever. The record is now 6-6.

GIANTS 7 1/2 over Seattle - Not a big fan of spreads more than one td after a Giant bye.. but The Giants have been looking fantastic this season.

Bengals 17 doggies to DALLAS - Cincy played pretty well against the Giants 2 wks ago... are they really that much worse than Dallas?

Redskins 6 doggies to PHILLY - I don't know about Pumpy's logic but I like seeing The Eagles and Cowboys rack up the losses.



CLIP OF THE WEEK PART ONE

The most incredibly shocking moment in Shea's history recreated in a legendary 1980s video game.




CLIP OF THE WEEK PART TWO

From WFAN's website - The Top 25 Memories in Shea History.

Click Here to Relive these Moments

Thoughts for 5769

If the Mets annual September swoon continues and they don't make the playoffs - Sunday will mark the final game at Shea Stadium. And as we say goodbye to the site of so much happiness in '69 on Sunday.... on Monday Night, we will say hello to another '69.... 5769!!


I like welcoming in the new as we say goodbye to the old. Yankee Stadium had its big closing party last weekend with an event that even the Mets fans enjoyed. Next season they move to the New Stadium across the street, although can you imagine the embarassment if the new stadium is not ready and they have to go back to the old one after that grand goodbye party?

I thought it was odd they made such a big deal about Bernie Williams grand return since he departed with a big chip on his shoulder and his "letting go" of that chip should not have overshadowed the historical implication of the final game at The House That Ruth Built that will be replaced by The House That The Taxpayers Built. To me, THE highlight of the evening was the "copied from the All Star Game" gathering of players and their families in the very spot that those stars roamed for all those many years. CF seems to be the big position for the Yankees starting with Joe DiMaggio and culminating with the 4 World Series won by Williams. But the moment that I thought was the best... better than The Willie Randolph slide and better than Yogi standing behind home plate in that vintage uniform.... took place in centerfield when the son of Mickey Mantle embraced the recently widowed wife of Bobby Murcer in a comforting gesture at a moment that surely was emotionally quite overwhelming.

The Mets probably can't top that and if they can make the playoffs it will be hard to plan in advance for when the final Shea game will take place. Nonetheless, the regular finale is Sunday and it will be nice to see Tom Seaver and hopefully Mike Piazza among others who excelled at Shea. I'm not sure about the first pitch for Sunday - how do you top the 90-something year old daughter of Babe Ruth? - but maybe Ralph Kiner who has been with the Mets as an announcer since Day One might be a good pick; he is probably the only person who has bridged the gap from Day One to 2008.


Hopefully there won't be any one game playoff Monday so I can enjoy Rosh Hashanah without any baseball distractions. I have heard that a lot of Conservative Rabbis will be addressing The Agriprocessors situation in their High Holy Day sermons, as this kosher food supplier company seems to be the polarizing issue between the Ultra Orthodox who blindly support the Ultra owners of that company, and the rest of us who are disgusted and embarrased by what has been going on there.

Agriprocessors, in Iowa manufactures what we see in the stores as The Aarons/Rubashkin meats. They were caught in a bust a few months ago for having hundreds of illegal and underage workers in their slaughtering facility. And the subsequent reactions to this news, which has led to approximately 9000 chargese seems to be a good starting point for this years New Years column.

With the election coming up shortly, I am very bothered by The Christian Right Wingers who want to impose their religious beleifs on everyone else. Exhibit A is that incredibly hot Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin. But beneath that va va voom and those little eyeglasses is a lifestyle that she and her other right wingers feel should be imposed on All Americans...such as laws to deprive rape victims the right to "choose". Thankfully, my ultra orthodox Jewish brethren are not missionaries, and do not try to convert people from other religions. They only want to see that other Jews become more observant, and God bless them for it! Their incredible work has kept Judaism alive and cut down on attrition due to intermarriage. They really do a terrific job. They only take issue with other religions whose morals allow the acceptability of advertising billboards with sexy cleavagey babes posted on highways where their young boys can accidentally get their first post nursing glimpse of gasp - boobies! But while a bustline is a no no, why is the Iowa bust ok?

I actually knew a very religious Christian woman who found out about the death of one of my relatives and sweetly and sincerely asked me if this person accepted Jesus prior to leaving this Earth. It might have sounded like an offensive question but in reality she was so convinced that Jews who don't accept Jesus will not go to Heaven that her question actually had some good intentions behind it. And of course theres that point made by Rabbi Shmuely Boteach who questions if a Nazi officer who accepted Jesus would go to Heaven while the little Jewish girl he murdered went to Hell.

But the line in the sand seems to be drawn by this Iowa raid. The owner of the company, Aaron Rubashkin is in a heap of trouble. And a well meaning relative who would like me to read religious right wing perioidicals instead of my usual stuff featuring sexy ads, started sending me a periodical that has some interesting editorials. The blinding support for Rubashkin in those editorials is actually embarassing. And some of them are slamming Obama's candidacy for the silliest reason! They reject him because of "slanderous" comments he made to the media criticizing Agriprocessors, when he was questioned by a reporter after the raid at that horror filled slaughterhouse. They contend that Rubashkin is innocent until proven guilty... and they feel Obama is more wrong for his comments about Rubashkin than Rubashkin is for what did!

Rubashkin does not appear to be too remorseful and through his lawyer has defended himself by blaming the victims for fibbing about their ages. Keep in mind that if every one of those young girls was caught in that Slaughterhouse doing the ol' hoochie mcscoochie with a male immigrant older than 18... not only would the jail bait defense "Oh she said she was 18" not fly.. but Rubashkin would throw those guys under the bus quicker than the next bus load of illegals would pull into the gates leading into his slaughterhouse.

And as I mentioned in this blog a month ago, the Conservative movements attempt to strengthen Kosher laws by not giving a stamp of approval to a Kosher food company that mistreats its employees has been met with sarcasm and derision by the Rubashkin supporters. But when it comes to those editorials, take it with a grain of salt. 99.9% of these right wingers are truly wonderful people, but the few who write these editorials come up with issues that make absolutely no sense. One such editorial writer recently criticized the wonderful Hillel organization on college campuses because the original Hillel would not approve of the activities that go on there. That is just pure silliness. My dad used to write for The Brooklyn College Hillel Newspaper although I think he did it to meet chics.

One more point about these polarizing issues amongst my fellow Hebrews and Shebrews. The other day on The People's Court a woman got into a parking lot fender bender with a religious guy. She said he backed into her car and didnt want to call the cops and then reneged on his offer to pay for the damages so she sued him for the approx, 2000 bucks on the estimate. The guy came to court and said she smacked his car to which the woman who was also Jewish pointed out that she expected more of a religious guy than to lie under oath. And there was a twist - unbeknowst to this guy, she got a cheaper repair job done for approx $200, and in her complaint said she didnt want to tell him, but also didnt want to collect anything more than she actually paid out of pocket. This not-as-religious woman came out smelling like a rose and she obviously won the case.

I thought the religious guy came out looking very bad. But others who saw the same case may have reacted differently saying that the Jewish woman should not have sued her fellow Hebrew and taken the case to a Jewish court - a beit din instead. Whatever the case may be... whoever we are and whatever we represent... it is important for us as we enter 5769 to take more responsibility for our actions and how things reflect on us.

Our economy is in deep trouble because people arent paying their loans and finger pointing banks don't want to admit that they made some poor decisions in who they made loans to. Yet, a few years ago, people came to me with mortgage applications and if I dared to tell them that they couldn't afford the payments. 5 brokers representing 5 other banks were standing right there ready to take the loan instead. Yet now the banks point fingers at everyone else - and many people thought nothing of jumping on the big banks bandwagon and borrowing hundreds of thousands of dollars.... even though they knew their repayment habits were so bad that they would not even loan themselves 5 bucks.


And if we do something wrong and get caught.. we admit to it... and dont blame 9000 charges on immigrant children who do not belong in a slaughter house!! But fessing up, and taking responsibility is the start. Take responsibility for your credit and think twice before you buy something. And most importantly, take responsibility for who you vote for on Election Day. Do you want to vote for a ticket that has a woman on it that wants to take away a woman's right to choose... and force a woman to have a baby, while that same candidate's party imposes tax cuts that take away the same programs that will help that baby that they want to force that woman to give birth to! And carrying ourselves in a proud manner and treating our fellow workers/employees in a proper respectful manner is a great resolution for '69.

Now if only the Met relievers can take some responsibility, Shea could look like '69 all over again... Thats 1969, not 5769!

Happy New Year to all my Jewish pals.


PUMPSTRADAMUS PICK OF THE WEEK:

Last week Pumpy improved to 2-1 after he picked the Bengals who covered the spread. Eagled eyed readers will note that I said the Bengals would cover but in a senior moment I typed in the wrong pick! This week we go to Shea where the Jets used to play! The Jets are 1 point favorites over The Arizona Cardinals. Sayeth the Pump: "I am going against McCain in November so this week I will go against his home state of Arizona!"

UNBIASED GIANTS FAN PICKS OF THE WEEK

Last week we went 0-3 and we are now 3-6.

Washington 11 point doggies over DALLAS - The NFC East looks very very strong this year. Its a good week for the Cowboys to taste defeat.

THE BEARS 3 point doggies to Philadelphia - Maybe this will also be a celebratory weekend for Chicago and a bad weekend for Philly in football and baseball?

THE JETS 1 point faves over Arizona - The Jets only 1 point faves at home to the Cards? Have the Cards really improved that much? I'll go with Pumpie this week.

Memories of Yankee Stadium

Today's column is about Yankee Stadium.. but we will start with a trivia question about Shea. The answer is at the end of the column.

Back in 2006 when Endy Chavez made "The Catch"... what advertisement was on the fence right in front of where he leaned over to take away that home run. That sign was actually discussed in a column in this very blog 2 yrs ago.

Stadiums fascinate me. They are almost like a rock musician's ego booster. Here in New Jersey we are a bit spoiled... being the home state of the immensely talented Bruce Springsteen and the not quite as talented Jon Bon Jovi. (Good thing Trophy Wife never reads my blog - she wouldn't be thrilled with that comment, so we will keep this our little secret..:) Rock stars take to the stage at the big staduims and proclaim...."Look at me... I'm so popular I can sell out a stadium!". Other musical acts who are not quite as popular perform in arenas while others take their act to smaller venues.

I actually live near the new and improved Rutgers Stadium and it is pretty cool to drive past it during a game. The stands are positioned so that the fans appear to jut out almost on to River Road and as I drive by I see the fans cheering (well maybe not this season) and I can almost imagine them saying... "Great driving job Nate!... Great footwork on the gas pedal!"

This past Wednesday, I celebrated another birthday, and once again Trophy Wife was absolutely wonderful giving me a day filled with surprises. I was told to be home at 5pm at which point we departed for parts unknown. We first went to dinner at the most famous restaurant in New Brunswick and had an absolutely incredible meal. I'm not really a good food writer... but I will say that the meal was fantastic and well worth the price tag. After that I was led through the streets of New Brunswick... and right into the State Theater whose marquee did not display what show was on for that night. Trophy Wife picked up the tickets at the will call window, and held on to them and it was quite amusing that here I was in a lobby filled with people just minutes away from the curtain and I was the only person there who had no clue what I was about to see. Could it be the road show of Mamma Mia with another Pierce Brosnan musical performance?

Actually, it was the road show for NBC's Last Comic Standing featuring 5 comedians who had appeared on the show. The show was quite entertaining and you have to give stand up comics credit who perform in that type of setting since comedy clubs' ever flowing liquor gives the audience beer goggles that make the jokes funnier. The sobriety of Wednesday Night's audience forced the performers to work that much harder. After the show, I looked at the program and discovered that the show was co sponsored by The Stress Factory Comedy Club which meant that this tour had gotten so big - it had now graduated from comedy club to theater. Would an arena be next? Or a stadium in the future?

When I was growing up in the 1970s, it was interesting to watch as baseball teams opened new stadiums that were built to be filled by crowds of 50,000+ paying customers. The stadiums were "multi purpose"... which means they could also host NFL teams. However, now that we are 30 years past the 70s it seems as if the NFL's popularity has soared... while baseball has decided that the 70s style stadiums were designed in such a way that the fans felt "too distant" from the action, and the response has been a 21st century building of smaller more intimate baseball only stadiums. Sunday we will say goodbye to Yankee Stadium... and if the Mets make the post season, that tacky ol' Shea will close for good sometime in October. And if the Mets don't make the playoffs, they will close it on September 28th.

Today I will present some of my memories of Yankee Stadium. You will note that I have dates for most of the games, yet I did not keep the stubs nor did I keep a scoreboard. However I have discovered that if you have a good memory of certain events at a game, you can actually find the details of that day's game by utilizing a couple of excellent websites. I also noticed that I went to the Stadium a lot during my college years when my buddies were Yankee fans.. but I stopped going after graduating. I resumed in the late 90s when interleague play started... and then stopped going after I got married in 2004.

I believe my first game was actually a road trip organized by my former synagogue. Back in the 70s they used to have all kinds of youth group activities and I remember going there as a young kid although I remember nothing about the game except for the fact that we were way out there in the outfield and I really wasn't paying attention to what was going on. I also recall a Yankee Blue Jays game in 1998 that was organized by a buddy of mine and about 100 of his closest friends. He was dating a woman at the time who I met that day, and we are still friends to this very day! One of the girls there was drooling over the nice Jewish Blue Jay outfielder Shawn Green. As I recall, we were supposed to meet near the big bat, and that was the year Chuck Schumer was running for the US Senate. He was campaigning right near the bat, and some wiseguy got him a little flummoxed when he said... "Hey... your name is Chuck? What's that short for?"

Here are some other memories:

GAME 1 2000 WORLD SERIES - I include Game 1 of the 2000 World Series for Honorable Mention even though I was not there. It was the Jewish Holiday Simchas Torah and I trekked into the City for my annual tradition of attending services at Bnai Jeshurun. That year, I also went to the Carlebach Synagogue, where they were partying like it was 1999. As usual, they went to the wee hours of the morning. I hadn't been watching the time as well as I should have, and with the last train back to NJ leaving at 1:40 AM I had to forego taking a subway to find a cabbie that would get me down to Penn Station in time. As luck would have it, I could not find a cab anywhere although it was about 1:20 on a Saturday Night. Ultimately I found a cabbie who got me to Penn at exactly the time the train was set to depart. I ran like a maniac down the stairs to the departure board, found my track and ran like hell praying that the train would not leave without me because if it did, I was going to have to sleep in the waiting room with the bums. As I got down those steps, the train was there... and it was not pulling away! It had not left yet.. and it actually sat there for about another hour because thanks to Armando Benitez's blown save, the Met Yankee game went extra innings and the last train was not going to leave until all the fans were back from the game. The game went 12 innings and got the ball rolling for the Mets in the wrong direction. To this day I have never missed the last train, but that night was a close call, and if the Mets had better pitching than Benitez, this story and that World Series may have had a different ending.

RICKEYS FIRST GAME - APRIL 23, 1985. This was another extra inning affair that went 11 innings. I was in college and they were sponsoring a trip to the game so I hopped on a bus and figured, hey maybe I'll pretend to care about the Yankees and hook up with some hot babes. No such luck as far as I recall. It was Rickey Henderson's first game in NY after he had been aquired in the offseason by Oakland. He had missed the first few weeks due to an injury but that was the night he made his debut. He went 1 for 6 in a game that dragged on for 11 innings and I don't even remember if the bus left at a specified time or waited for the game to end.

THE "H" GEORGE STEINBRENNER INCIDENT - JULY 29, 1987. My buddy (I'll call him "H" in honor of the upcoming season premiere of CSI: Miami) got tickets to a Yankees Royals day game. We took his little sister and her young friend along with us... and off we went to a matinee game. H went to get a hot dog as soon as we got there, and the long lines and the scoreless duel that ensued found us in the 6th inning of a scoreless tie. And H still was not back! Where the heck could he have disappeared to for 6 innings? He finally came back nonchalantly with his food and was surprised how much of the game he had missed but he really didnt seem upset about it. The Yankees scored 1 in the 7th and 3 more in the 8th on Mike Easler's bases loaded double to win the game 4-0.

A few months later that summer a few of us took a road trip to Action Park aka Traction Park along with H. If you recall the water park, they gave you little lockers to store your dry clothing and each visitor was issued a little key to open the aforementioned locker. H's key appeared to not be working correctly, and he couldn't seem to open his locker. I could see he was getting very frustrated over the stupid little key and at one point he just kicked the locker and said..."God damn... that f'ing George Steinbrenner". Another buddy of mine who was with me looked towards me with the same puzzled look and in this moment of frustration over a malfunctioning key H finally came clean that he had been quite ticked off all this time at how poorly Yankee Stadium's concessions were run that he missed most of the game a few months earlier. All it took was a silly key to get down to the bottom of this.

CLEMENS STREAK ENDS - June 6, 1999. This was the first Met Yankee game I attended at Yankee Stadium... and I later decided I would not attend any of these game at Shea or Citi Field because I do not enjoy seeing my team booed at their home ball park. However, I did not find anything wrong with booing the Yankees at the Stadium. Clemens got the start for this one and came into the game with an incredible 20 game winning streak. But on that Sunday night's ESPN game, Nate booed and Clemens tasted defeat as The Mets knocked Roger out in the 3rd inning as they built a 7-0 lead en route to a 7-2 win. Piazza also homered off Clemens... perhaps that planted a seed in Clemens mind to retaliate. Too bad Action Park had closed down - I would have rather he threw a baseball at a locker instead of at Piazza's head!

THE MET YANKEE DOUBLE HEADER FEATURING THE CLEMENS BEANING OF PIAZZA - JULY 8, 2000. This was the first of what has now been three 2 stadium same day double headers. I went to both games that fateful July day with two seperate sets of friends! The first game was at Shea and the Yankees took former Met Dwight Gooden off the scrap heap to beat the Mets. Then it was off to the subway and a leisurely trip to Yankee Stadium. This was of course the infamous episode where Roger Clemens hit Mike Piazza in the head with a wayward fastball. This was before our cell phones had internet access, so we didnt really know how bad the injury was, and the buzz in the stadium was that Piazza was hurt so badly that he would be out for the season. As it turned out, Piazza was not quite that badly injured, but that game started the spark that led to Met fans anti-Clemens sentiment that carried on into the World Series and probably still continues to this day.

SINGLES GROUP TRIP AGAINST THE INDIANS - JUNE 3, 2001. I signed up to go to a Sunday Indians day game with a singles group that had an interesting twist. It was sort of a like a Big Brother Big Sister event where each of us singles was matched up with an under priveleged child who we would take to the game. My little brother didnt seem too interested in the game nor me for that matter and spent most of the time hanging out with his buddy, but otherwise it was a terrific event and it made the local Jewish paper too. I was actually interviewed for an article about the big brother aspect of the event, and I believe I said something along the lines of this was a great event for young kids since baseball played a big part of my youth and it was important for kids who don't have a lot of stuff to get an opportunity to get out to the ballpark so they will have happy baseball memories too. Andy Pettite who starts the finale Sunday took the loss in that game.


MY LAST TIME THERE - JUNE 27, 2003. Amazingly I haven't been back since that night when I went with Trophy Wife who is a Yankee fan and Pumpstradamus. Poor Pumpy was working in the city and they would not let him bring his work bag into the Stadium, and finding a place to leave it was quite a pain in the neck. One would think Pumpy could predict that this was going to happen. The Yankees jumped out to a 5-3 lead and held on to win 6-4. Amazingly Jose Reyes batted 8th in that game! Incidentally, I had a hard time racking my brain to get the year for that game... but luckily Trophy Wife saved the ticket stub which confirms that indeed was the last time I set foot into the Stadium. Pumpy is totally clueless about sports but we still had a good time despite the results and Trophy Wife's endless Yankee cheering. Pumpy's wife who is not a sports fan later made a terrific observation that baseball is a bunch of out of shape people eating junk food watching a game played by people in excellent shape.

MY HAPPIEST YANKEE STADIUM MEMORY - TOM SEAVER WINS 300 -AUGUST 4, 1985 - The all time best game I have ever attended! It was just a couple of months after the Rickey Henderson game. I had won tickets on WABC a few weeks earlier, and nobody at the time realized what a historical day this was going to be. I even made a banner that said "NY LoVES ToM" with the o's lined up and a 3 running vertically creating a 300. Off I went to the Stadium to cheer on Seaver... my favorite player at that time... as he went win #300 for The White Sox. It was also Phil Rizutto Day where The Scooter was knocked over by a live cow during the pre game festivities. As for the game, Tom went all the way for the win... We sat in the left field stands, but our view of the left field corner was obstructed so I actually did not see Don Baylor catch the ball to record the last out! But it was still quite a day seeing Tom Terrific win his 300th, even though it would have been nicer had he won it with the Mets.

Sunday Night will be quite a big night for the Big Ball Orchard in The South Bronx as Art Rust Jr. used to call it. A pre game ceremony will preceed the game featuring Yankee greats from the past including Bernie Williams, Reggie Jackson and Yogi. I saw on Newsday's Neil Best blog this week that 90something PA announcer Bob Sheppard will not be able to announce the game. In the Newsday interview, Sheppard said he had been sick since late last year, and that illness combined with his age has made him feel that he does not have the stamina to conduct his announcing duties. The interviewer said Sheppard sounded great on the phone. However, as we get closer to the ceremonial "first pitch", I would hope that Bob has enough energy to be driven to the game, and ride to the Yankee Stadium mound in a car and surprise the sellout crowd by emerging from the vehicle, walking up to a microphone on the mound, and announcing that Bob Shep pard Sheppard (echo effect) will throw out the first pitch. Is there anybody more deserving?



PUMPSTRADAMUS PICK OF THE WEEK - Last week Pumpie took a loss when he went against the Giants, and evened his record at 1-1. For today, we go to Yankee Stadium where The NY Giants played from 1956-1973. This week The Giants are 13 1/2 point favorites over the Bengals. Sayeth The Pump: "Since Little Pumpie is learning about animals and learned to say meow when he sees a pussycat, we will have to take The Bengals."

UNBIASED GIANTS FAN PICKS - Last week we went 2-1 to even things out at 3-3.

GIANTS 13 1/2 faves over The Bengals - I like the Giants, but the spread scares me. I think Cincy is going to cover.

GREEN BAY 3 doggies over Dallas - The NFL's incredible popularity should make for some interesting TV ratings results since this game will air opposite the Stadium finale.

Steelers 3 doggies over PHILADELPHIA - I'm going to a bbq Sunday at an Eagles fans house. Hope they don't cry on the hot dogs!


And the answer to the trivia question is - Endy Chavez caught the ball behind the AIG sign!

Collateral Damage: Did We Just Solve the Mortgage Crisis?

While everyone is wondering how you get lipstick on a pig....has anybody else noticed how the NBC News political coverage has gone downhill since the sudden death of Tim Russert? All this craziness going on involving the sniping between the MSNBC hosts is just absurd. And kudos to the NBC bigshots who finally decided to take Keith Olbermann off the anchor chair for election news coverage! Olberman is a goofball whose most notable accomplishment was ESPN's Sports Center where co-anchor Dan Patrick knew how to draw out the good quailities of his nutty co host. The two have reunited on NBC's Sunday Night Football show where they do the highlights, as Olbermann's ego maniacal mind spins in circles wondering why he is not replacing Bob Costas as the host of The Football Show... and The Olympics,... and Deal or No Deal.... and The Price is Right... and American Idol... and American Top 40.... Who knows how long this gimmick will last? I still think NBC Sports down the road will "reunite" Mike Francesa and Mad Dog Russo on that show.


One of the things I noticed about Russert was his terrific relationship with his dad who he used to lovingly refer to as "Big Russ". It was interesting to see how Big Russ instilled a sense of hard work to help support his family by working his butt off to keep a roof over their heads. This sense of entitlement so prevalent today was never a concept for Tim Russert when he was growing up.... That ethic of hard work was passed on to Tim who earned a well deserved reputation of being one of the most prepared interviewers on TV. And its that concept of not taking reponsibility that may be a major reason for the horrific collapse of the real estate and mortgage industries.

Last week I jumped on the Republicans for absurd comments by a right wing talk show host that health care and food are a privilege and not a right. However, when it comes to home ownership.... that is a privilege and NOT a right.... and anybody who thinks that they are entitled to own a house needs a serious reality check.

The way mortgages are bought and sold is extremely complex, but for the purpose of this column, I will try to simplify it. I think the ball started rolling towards the mortgage meltdown a few years ago when Congress changed the bankruptcy laws. Of course I am extremely sympathetic to people who are hit with a hardship like an illness or a death that wipes their savings out and causes them to file for bankruptcy. However, under the old laws, a lot of people felt that they could get a mulligan when they piled up a stack of credit card debt. They would file for bankruptcy and choose the Chapter 7 option which wipes the slate clean... as opposed to the Chapter 13 option which makes the person pay his debts spread out over a period of a time through payments paid out to a bankruptcy trustee. The new laws however made it very difficult to file for 7... and a lot of people who thought they were going to get a do over got a rude awakening when they realized that the bankruptcy courts were not going to give them a magic wand. How many of these people who thought they were getting a break with a 7 and ended up in a 13, ended up falling behind on their mortgage payments because they budgeted in a Chapter 7?

As a result of all these late payments and subsequent foreclosures banks have been forced to tighten up their lending rules.... even for those with good credit. That has made it even more difficult for home buyers to secure financing. Many banks are requiring higher down payments and stricter income documentation. These tougher rules are making it harder for sellers to find qualified buyers, forcing them to settle for lower offers. This creates a ripple effect, since homes are only as valuable as the sales price of similar homes.

A few months ago, I got a call from a woman looking for information about refinancing a mortgage for her parents who refused to learn English and only spoke Spanish. My mortgage application interview consisted of me asking questions, and then waiting for her to translate the question and translate the answer back to me. The concept that people move here and don't learn English boggles my mind...especially since my father came over from Europe after spending the Holocaust in hiding, and he took great pride in becoming "Americanized", a foreign concept to those immigrants who steadfastly refuse to learn the language.

Anyway, this woman said she was calling because her mom was hoping to get a better interest rate on her mortgage.... and I told her that if her credit was good... she might be able to accomplish that. But that possibility was shortlived when she told me that her parents had recently filed for a Chapter 13. I looked back on my notes and noticed that the mother had a lot of equity in her home... I asked her to ask her mother why she filed for Chapter 13 instead of taking a cash out refi to pay off those debts. Her translated answer... "That is the way she wanted to do it".

Amazingly, this was not the first time I had heard this and I don't understand why people who have built up all this equity don't tap into it to pay down their debt instead of going through the hassle of a credit wrecking bankruptcy? Doesn't anybody have any sense of responsibility anymore... or are we just gonna sit around screwing our lives up and waiting for the government to bail us out?

This is why I think the time has come for banks to rethink how they offer mortgage loans. If somebody borrows 20 bucks.. I give them 20 bucks and they pay me back. If it's a bigger loan, the borrower offers collateral to ensure that they will lose something of value if they do not pay back the loan. Banks have this concept that using a home as collateral is going to be a good threat to keep people from not reneging on their mortgage payments. If you don't pay... we take your house. Maybe it is time for banks to rethink that idea. Nowadays, people whose homes are worth less than their mortgage balances are just walking away. Also, a lot of people bought investment properties with little or no money down... and then decided to walk away. Now the banks find that this great idea of holding the house as collateral is forcing them to turn into realtors by selling these houses... for a loss.

A lot of people in America live from check to check. If they don't get a paycheck or their paycheck bounces... they're screwed. Obviously with people racking up billions of dollars in credit card debt, we are not really a society that is living within our means. It seems that the banks have been doing this too. The last day of the month rolls around.. and the banks discover that many of the mortgage checks they were counting on... never show up. And as the months of delinquent payments started to add up.... the banks were forced to shut their doors. According to the Mortgage Implode o meter Website 282 lenders have shut down since this crisis started.

Here is my plan:

Forget the idea of using the home as collateral. Instead, convert the equity in the home into collateral and turn that into cash.

The bank counts on the interest payments to make their money. If the last day of the month comes in, and the interest is not paid to them.. they lose money they were counting on... Keep in mind that a borrower has signed a legally binding contract to pay that money to the bank,. (There are always going to be extenuating circumstances where families are going through unexpected financial hardships and I am sympathetic to that.) Under my plan...at the closing of a purchase or refinance, the bank would set up an amortization chart that shows how each monthly loan payment is broken down..... and how much of that payment goes to interest. Then, before they allow the loan to be finalized, the bank would set up a home equity line of credit for the equivalent of 8 months of interest payments. So if the amortization chart shows that 8 months of interest would be $16,000... that would be the amount set aside for that line of credit. That line of credit would then be frozen, and the person borrowing the money would not be allowed to touch it for the lifetime of that loan.

As the months go on.... the borrower pays his bill on time... Lets say one month the person doesn't make his payment. The last day of the month arrives and there is no check. Instead of the bank saying..."Oh crap... Jones didn't pay us"... they tap into the line of credit and take one month of interest. The problem with banks is... they were not getting their checks, and they would get almost no warning that a payment was going to be missed. Then the last day comes along with no payment... and the bank is screwed because x amount of people didnt pay their loan payment that month! Under this plan, when the late payment ultimately comes in after the 30 day mark... the interest is repaid to the line of credit and the "missed" payment can always be tacked on at the end of the loan.

And why do I choose 8 months of interest payments? Nowadays, if you are 4 months late, the bank starts to initiate foreclosure. But the way things are going right now, the bank has already had the sting of four months of unexpected missed payments. Under this plan.. they would start the foreclosure 4 months after the 8th month... which would be after 12 months of missed payments. Now, the bank will not be caught by surprise by the non payments of the soon to be foreclosed borrower, because after 3 or 4 months of dipping into that line of credit.. somebody better be making some phone calls to explain why the loan payments have fallen this far behind. This gives both the lender and the borrower more time to open the lines of communication... and takes away the surprise from the bank which will no longer have to camp out at the mailbox on the 31st waiting for all these non arriving checks to come in.

I think if the banks had counted on a plan to get their interest payments for those missed months and had not counted on a depreciating house as collateral... many of these closed lenders might still be alive and thriving.



PUMPSTRADAMUS PICK OF THE WEEK

Pumpy is off to a 1-0 start... which is one more win than Rutgers has. This week we go to Secaucus.. the home of the Giants, and also the city where the Porn Expo show was booted out this week.... That show is now headed over to Edison in Middle sex County! The Giants are 8 1/2 point faves over St. Louis. Sayeth The Pump who predicted the Porno Show's move to Edison: "I gotta go with The Rams in honor of all the Rammin'!" (Note to self: Find a new psychic who works clean)


UNBIASED GIANTS FAN PICKS OF THE WEEK

I recently commented that The Ledger dropped their National Baseball Sunday column. Now it occurs to me that they have also dropped Kimberly Jones NFL column AND the weekly staff football picks! What is going on with what used to be a terrific sports section? Last week we went 1-2.

Giants 8 1/2 point faves over ST. LOUIS - The Giants road winning streak continues.

New Orleans pick 'em over WASHINGTON - The Saints pick worked for Pumpy last week, so why not?

Philly 7 point doggies to DALLAS - The lesser of 2 evils. How does Tony Romo memorize a playbook yet have a relationship with that airhead girlfriend of his? She cooed to Letterman last night that she likes to look at football player's uniforms because she can see their shmeckles.



CLIP OF THE WEEK

With all the hullaballo about Mad Dog Russo going over to satellite radio, here is a very amusing short segment of Dog appearing on Howard Stern's satellite show... This is the first time I have heard Howard Stern's show since his defection to satellite radio a few years ago. It is broken up into 7 segments on You Tube, but this particular segment was the most amusing!