A lap around the lake

Reflections about Lake Placid:

The hotel where we stayed was on a short but steep hill; taking it slowly was advisable. It wasn’t too onerous, though I broke a sweat pushing the baby carriage up on the one hot day we had.

Right at the bottom of the hill is Mirror Lake. It’s called that because when you’re on the far side of the lake, you can see the buildings of Main Street reflected in the water as though it were…you get the idea. The conference presenters, including myself, received a framed photo of the lake, which is quite lovely. The path around the lake is a 2.7 miles of red brick.

There is a Kate Smith library (which is but one room) in the hotel, and a couple blocks from the hotel, a Kate Smith Avenue. Several other places are named for the singer as well. She summered there for 40 years and was baptized in the village in 1965. For more about Kate (and to hear “God Bless America” in an interminable loop), you can go here.

One afternoon just off the hotel lobby, there was some kid hitting on a stuffed seven-foot (or so, it was seated) bear that was perched on a bobsled from the 1932 Olympics (or a good replica of same), while his mother watched, seemingly unconcerned. I was quite annoyed until I realized what a great headline it would make: “Belligerent Boy Beats Bobsled Bear.”

There was a bakery that had THE most annoying sign on its wall – 35 “stupid” things that their customers have asked, and their “clever” responses:
“Do you bake everything here?” “No, we have it flown in from Chicago. The plane lands right on Main Street to deliver daily.”
“Aren’t you hot in here?” “Yes, but we can eat what we want and sweat it off.”
“What’s a Snickerdoodle?” “There is a sign in the showcase. It is in front of a Snickerdoodle.”
“Is that ALL you have?” “No, we keep the really good stuff for ourselves to eat later.”
And my personal favorite:
“Do you have any water?” “No, we lick our dirty dishes clean.”
My wife wouldn’t go back there because of this rude “humor” (and despite the quality of its pastries), and I absolutely agree with her on this. Telling your customers that they’re stupid is a bad marketing plan.

That sign is much worse than the one I saw in a Lake Placid restaurant a couple years ago. I’m paraphrasing the first part, but the second is a direct quote: “We cook your food to order. Not responsible for overcooked meat.”

I’ve been here twice in the past three years, and I’d come again any time. (But I’ve never been here in the winter, nor during the notorious black fly season, so maybe not ANY time.)

Our driver on the way home, the Hoffinator, warned us to expect a roadblock on Interstate 87 so that officials could check for illegal immigrants. This is not at the Canadian border crossing, but some 20-25 south of there. She had made the trip up to Lake Placid and back to Albany several times in helping to plan the conference. But, surprise – no checkpoint. We were oddly disappointed.

What was it that Dorothy said in the Wizard of Oz, while she clicked the ruby slippers?

ROG

The RULES (Part 1 of 37)-The Name Game

You’ve got a lot of rules for somebody from Binghamton.

No, not THOSE Rules. MY rules. I don’t mean like “Follow the Golden Rule,” (which I try to do). It’s more like, “When I get a new album, I must play it at least three times before I file it away” or “When I play racquetball, and the score gets into a rut, I must find arcane ways to recite the score” or “Almost any song can be done in chicken, the more bombastic, the better. Ode to Joy and Smoke on the Water are good examples.”

I knew I had rules, but until we got into naming Lydia, I don’t think that Carol was aware of my naming rules. I wasn’t aware of my naming rules. When you’ve never had a child, naming is more a conceptual thing, as it were.

So the rules were:

  • No name in the top 10 in the Social Security list of most popular names for the most recent year available. There will be enough Emmas in her kindergarten class (but Emma IS a lovely name).
  • No naming after any family member, living or dead. I want her to have her own identity. And I didn’t want, “Oh, you named her after Aunt Hortense!” We’ll call her Little Horty!” No, you won’t.
  • No unisex names: Terry, Madison, e.g. This comes directly from the fact that my father AND my sister were both named Leslie. Confusion ensued, and often at my expense. Since my father had a child named Leslie, it was ASSUMED it was his ONLY son, i.e., me. “Hey, little Les,” one guy from church constantly called me. “That’s NOT my name,” I’d mutter under my breath (but never aloud, for that would have been considered rude.)
  • It had to have two or more syllables, to balance off the shortness of Green.
  • No names that easily went to the nickname. Elizabeth is in the top 10 anyway, and which variation (Liz, Lizzie, Beth, Betty, Betsy, or several others) would ensued? No thanks.
  • It should have a recognizable spelling. While a few people have spelled her name as Lidia, most have opted for the more traditional option.
  • No names beginning and ending with A. This is a practical consideration. I have a niece named Alexandria. Carol has nieces named Adrianna and Alexa. One of Carol’s best friends has a daughter named Ariana. And there are several others. Having but one child, I didn’t want to run through a litany before I found hers.So, Lydia it was, named in part after a woman in Acts who was rich even to put up the apostle Paul and his cohorts. It was only later that a friend pointed out that the church I attended as a child, Trinity A.M.E. Zion, was on the corner of Lydia and Oak, and that I walked down Lydia Street every day on my way to school. Obviously, I knew this to be factually true, but never crossed my consciousness.

    The only downside to her name has been those streams of choruses from Marx Brothers’ fans of “Lydia the Tattooed Lady”, a song that had TOTALLY slipped my mind.

    So, even with RULES, tattoos happen. But so do encyclo-pidias.

    ROG

 

JEOPARDY! Part 0

I had fully intended to talk about my JEOPARDY! experience from 1998, starting today. Unfortunately, I’ve had limited computer time recently, and moreover, I have little time at home to do the research. (It was only seven years ago; you’d think I’d remember every detail as though it were yesterday. But, NO. Memory cells lie gasping on the side of the road.) SOON.

So, I thought I’d write about…JEOPARDY!
First off, I haven’t watched it since last Tuesday, May 10. So, PLEASE don’t ask me what I’ve thought about the end of the “Ultimate Championship”. In due course, I will watch these shows IN ORDER. I almost always watch the show IN ORDER. If I happen to catch that some person had won the game I’ve not seen, it diminishes the enjoyment somewhat. (I’ve also taped World Series games, and some “March Madness” basketball games”, and as long as I don’t know the outcome, it a great watching experience – better because I can zap through the commercials, and close basketball games tend to have coaches using all of their timeouts, which means a LOT of commercials, near the end.

On the other hand, during the first round of the JEOPARDY! tournament, I watched some games out of order, because it didn’t inform who won a previous match that I didn’t see. Likewise, in some of the other tournaments with 15 players, I’ll watch the first week Monday-Friday shows in any order so long as I avoid the end of Friday’s “who makes it to the next round” segment. The following week, M-W in any order, with the same caveat. The final two days IN ORDER.

The other rule is that you oughtn’t to call me between 7:30 and 8 pm, Eastern time, because I’m not likely to answer. Indeed, there were folks over at my house, and someone wanted to take a picture of Lydia, Carol and me DURING Double JEOPARDY! I was not accommodating. (In other words, I ignored him.) If he’d asked three minutes later, which was during that four minute gap between Double and Final JEOPARDY, I would have posed gladly.

Finally, I never mock players on the set for not knowing an answer. I AM surprised (and REALLY PLEASED) when I get Final when none of the constants do. I WILL, however, mock bad betting. If one’s in first place, one has to bet enough to win if the person in second place bets it all. Conversely, Second only really has to bet enough to be ahead if he/she gets it right and First gets it wrong (assuming that Third is in as distant third. If Third’s close, Second should bet similar to the way First bets in relation to Second. (Wha?)

OK, say, at the end of Double Jeopardy!, the totals are $14,000, $10,000 and $9,000. First should bet twice what Second has (2 X 10,000=20,000) less First’s score (-$14,000) + 1, or $6,001. Second will have to bet $8001 to protect against Third. BUT if Third has only $6000, Second can bet $4001, enough to win if First gets it wrong, quite possibly even if Second gets it wrong as well. Being in First is great because, if you get it right and bet enough, you can’t lose. Being in a close second is great, because you can win if it’s a really tough Final.

On the other hand, if you REALLY hate the topic, bet little and hope for the best.

ROG

Slippery affiliation

I was going to request a tape of the season finale of Gilmore Girls on this blog, but I’ve already been helped by a certain blogger.

It has been one of the very few shows that Carol and I watch religiously, ever since we caught it in summer reruns during its first season. It’s a soap opera, and I don’t mean that pejoratively at all. (N.Y.P.D. Blue, ER, Hill Street Blues are all soap operas.)

I had set the VCR to tape at home. But I neglected to tell Carol that she needed to put in a FRESH (just like the WB!) tape and the incumbent tape ran out of space about 20 minutes into the show! (I would have changed it myself except that I was still in Lake Placid.)

And since I was still in Lake Placid Tuesday, I went up to my room after the SBDC awards banquet at about 10 p.m., turned on the TV, flipped through the channels and came across an episode of Gilmore Girls. Initially, I assumed it was a rerun broadcast on ABC Family cable, but it soon became evident that it was THAT NIGHT’S episode, which I watched.

Most of the buzz about this series has about the rapier-quick dialogue between Lorelei and Rory, the relationship of Lorelei (and Rory) with Lorelei’s parents, and the Luke and Lorelei relationship- Will they? Won’t they? They did – now what? (An aside: I’ve long wondered if their names are nods to Luke and Laura from the daytime soap General Hospital.)

But the best thing about this show is about the parallel construction that the show tends to provide. I don’t always pick it up until the show is over. This season ender was about quitting. Will Rory quit Yale? Will her best friend Lane Kim quit her band? Where they each end up, and how they got there, was a real treat.

But why was it on at 10 p.m.? Was there some (amazingly rare) Presidential news conference or some major catastrophe that backed up the programming?

Nah.

In the Plattsburgh, NY/Burlington, VT television market, there is no WB affiliate, so WFFF in Burlington (actually Colchester), FOX 44, broadcasts the 8-10 pm WB shows from 10 pm-midnight!

Those of you in large markets may not appreciate this fully. When I was a kid, there were 7 stations in New York City, 2 (CBS), 4 (NBC), 7 (ABC), 13 (PBS), and 5, 9, and 11 (all independents). Eventually, 5 became a Fox affiliate, 11 became the WB’s outlet, and 9 went with UPN (and moved to New Jersey).

(Incidentally, this numbering is the reason most fictional TV stations in those days were 3, 6, 8, or 12, the remaining numbers on the VHF dial, or some upper number on the UHF dial, Channels 14-83. Most notable is WJM, Channel 12, Minneapolis, on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. And if you don’t know what the heck I mean by VHF and UHF, look here.)

But in a smaller market, such as Binghamton, NY, where I grew up (and at a time when there were only the three “major” networks), there were only two stations, WNBF, Channel 12 (CBS) and WINR, Channel 40 (NBC).

Then one Saturday morning in the fall of 1962, I turned on the TV just before 7 a.m. to Channel 34. Where there had nothing, suddenly we had a third station! It was WBJA, an ABC affiliate. My TV viewing choices had just increased by 50%!

What I didn’t realize until later is that Channel 12 (and perhaps Channel 40) were broadcasting some ABC programming before
Channel 34 came on the scene. I specifically remember Lawrence Welk, an ABC show, showing on Channel 12 Saturday nights at 6 or 6:30 pm. I recall that other ABC shows such as Bachelor Father, The Flintstones, Hawaiian Eye, Leave It to Beaver, Ozzie & Harriet, The Real McCoys, and Top Cat would show up on the schedule, often on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, outside of prime time (which was usually 7:30-11 pm in those days.) I remember these shows quite clearly, and most of them were off the schedule by the fall of 1962. I must have seen them SOMEWHERE. Cable didn’t exist and I didn’t go to New York City that often.

Apparently, shows broadcast by one network appearing on the affiliate of another network was common in most small markets, going back to the days when there was a fourth network, Dumont, in the mid 1940s to the mid-1950s.

You big-market folks just don’t understand the confusion!¦

ROG

We forsake you

Pete Townsend turns 60 today.

My father and I used to listen to my early Beatles records together, trying to discern lyrics and meaning. By the time the Who’s Tommy came out, we were no longer doing that. I remember him coming into the living room when the lyrics, “We forsake you, gonna rape you” came on. He said nothing. But his look said, “What IS that kid listening to?”

ROG
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