Throw Out the Damn Incumbent! Elect Mike Bloomberg!! Oh, Wait.....

Where Rudy Giuliani failed, Mike Bloomberg has succeeded in getting term limits removed so that he can run for another four years as NYC's mayor. He has, at best, token opposition but he is pouring millions of his own money into the campaign just, I suppose, to remove all doubt of a landslide win. Overall, I think he deserves to win, if not the landslide.

Still, the campaign does make for its amusing moments as in the relentless TV and mailers that pound away at New Yorkers's discontent with their transit service. In our mailbox the other day I found a slick four page ad that on its cover showed a long line of citizens standing at a bus stop, the line at right angles to the curb, something you never see in the City, but that's another story. The bus is pulling up (or, more likely, about to whiz by with one of those "Out of Service" signs on front where its route number should be) and into a large font red headline that says, "Sick of Your Lousy Commute?" And at the bottom of the page, in equally large blue, "Support Mike Bloomberg's MTA Reform Plan," as if Mike Bloomberg was the insurgent candidate running against the old Tammany Hall gang instead of the man who has been, uh, mayor of the city and ultimately responsible for MTA performance the last eight years. Ah, politics, such good fun.

SEIZED!

Blondie's is a sports bar watering hole along W. 79th that we pass walking from the 1 line to the AMNH. Nights it's usually packed, several televisions inside and sometimes spillover outside. So it was with some surprise I saw not long ago two orange "SEIZED" stickers from the New York State tax commissioner's office plastered across the doors and windows. They read, "This property has been seized for non-payment of taxes and is now in possession of the State of New York."

A smaller, photocopied note from the bar management apologized for "this unexpected inconvenient situation..." and stated that ownership was "in the midst of resolving the issue when this unanticipated action occurred..."

Let's see here, "in the midst of resolving" -- would that be paying up what we owe? And "unanticipated" -- would that be I don't pay, but nothing bad will happen? No, for the future Blondies has maybe discovered another "inconvenient truth" through this "inconvenient situation" -- taxes need to be paid.

It was a bit like the Simpsons episode where on April 15 Marge asks Homer if he's paid the Simpsons tax bill for that year and Homer says, "Pssh, I did that last year."

Disaster in Central Park

These three pictures graphically portray the damage to the Park in a ferocious microburst thunderstorm late in the evening of August 18. For all Park lovers, it was a tragedy, and a sharply defined one -- everything below 90th Street was completely untouched. Above that? The Parks Commissioner called it the worst damage he's seen in 30 years connected with the Park. I work as a tour guide volunteer for the Central Park Conservancy and will also be manning membership and donation tables this week. One can also donate at the Conservancy site. If you have ever been in the Park or look forward to the day when you first set foot in the Park, please consider a donation.

Michael Vick

Excuse me, but what is the issue here?

Michael Vick was convicted of doing a terrible thing (I write as two dogs lie sleeping at my feet), sentenced to prison for it, served his time and was released. Since that release, he has continued to be mentored by one of America's real idols, Tony Dungy, partnered with the American Humane Society to counter the issues and mentality his crime displayed, and worked with at-risk youth. If the purpose of prison is both to punish and to rehabilitate, Vick appears -- on the early evidence -- to be one of the shining cases where the purpose has been met. The man deserves a chance to continue demonstrating that he has changed and to continue practicing his career, which just happens to be professional football player. Why then the outrage from so many quarters that the Philadelphia Eagles signed him to a contract? Last time I looked second chances were supposed to be one of the things this country is all about.

As he did in the furor about Barry Bonds, the NYT's columnist William Rhoden offers a welcome, articulate, and unhyperventilating view:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/15/sports/football/15rhoden.html?scp=4&sq=August+15+2009&st=nyt

Let's Play George Mitchell Jeopardy

It's easy! It's fun! It's free!

Answer: The Boston Red Sox. Question: For which MLB team's front office has George Mitchell worked?

Answer: The Boston Red Sox. Question: For which MLB team did George Mitchell's 2007 report find no player involvement in performance enhancing drugs?

Answer: The Boston Red Sox. Question: With which team are the two biggest names in this season's wave of steroid use revelations/charges (Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz) most prominently associated?

The NYT on Monday was the first printed reference to this fact that I'd seen, and it noted that the former Senate majority leader denied that his association with the Red Sox influenced his report. And probably that is so, but who among us -- even former Senators -- would look equally thoroughly at allegations regarding our friends and those we don't directly know and like?

Personally, I imagine this sort of dialogue:

Mitchell: "Theo, about the use of performance enhancing substances among the Red Sox..."

Theo Epstein: "Senator, Terry and I have talked to all the guys and they all say no one's doing it. Nothing going on in our clubhouse, no ways."

Mitchell: "Well, maybe I should talk to a few of the players, or maybe a clubhouse employee."

Epstein: "C'mon, George, I told you Terry and I have checked it out. You know we're good."

Mitchell: "Yes, you're right, sounds thorough to me."

Epstein: "Great. Have a good trip to New York. You heard about that former clubhouse guy there...?

Coulda Been a Song Doctor

OK, if you don't know the song by Joe Ely Me and Billy the Kid, first you watch this You Tube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11gxJDrcxq8

I always thought the key line toward the end of the song was "...but I didn't like the way he swayed in the wind when I played him his favorite song," but turns out that Joe wrote "...I did like...". What's that? Exactly what you would expect -- frameup, betrayal, and live happily ever after with the cute senorita in the triangle. I don't think so. Is that the way life works? No, Joe, the twist should be that after you betray Billy and he hangs, you are haunted by what you've done and you lie awake for hours, listening to the pocket watch tick and the wind howl. That's the twist of betrayal. The wages of sin, after all, should be at least guilt.

It's Great to Be Back in NYC

1) At nearly 1 AM Saturday morning, eight hours after I get back to JFK from Seattle, I'm sitting in front of the tube watching the longest scoreless tie in Yankee - Red Sox history when A-Rod gets a hanging curve just above the knees and hits it so hard and so fast that the ball is out of the picture and clearly gone before the mind can even compute that he's hit it. Yankees go on to sweep four, and October here we come.

2) Bianca and I are at the Lincoln Center multiplex Saturday night, in the second row for the mostly entertaining, but just a bit too impressed with itself 500 Days of Summer when a guy sneaks in from another theater in the complex, takes a seat in the front row, takes a call on his cell phone, and spends the next hour in the mostly dark drawing on a sketch pad, sketches that have nothing to do with what's on the screen.

3) Sunday morning 8:15 or so I'm riding home with hot bagels and pedal past a Columbia doorway where a guy in blue hospital orderly garb -- apparently with Blue Tooth activated, but since this is after all NYC maybe declaiming to himself , "I don't want a hooker, I want a girlfriend!"

4) It's now August 10 and for the first time this summer NYC will hit 90 degrees.

5) Pretenders and Cat Power on Summer Stage in Central Park tonight and Leonard Cohen tickets bought for his MSG stop October 23.

Yes to it all.