The model of a modern major general.....err Admiral?

 So Sunday we decided to go to Michaels which is a crafting store. The wife had to pick up some supplies to make some Christmas ornaments. As usual I was wandering around pushing the cart while I wait for her to get what she needs. Not easy when there are 300 different types of ribbons.

As I am wandering around what do I find? The little shelf with the models. You remember those from when you were a kid. You would save up your money and when your Mom would take you shopping Donwtown at A&S and you would be able to pick out a model to make a home. A muscle car like a GTO or a Barracuda. A plane like a Spitfire or a German Messerschmitt. A warship like the Arizona or an aircraft carrier. A spaceship or a rocket like Apollo 11. 

Best of all are the Monsters!

Aurora Models had a full set of movie monsters. Dracula. Frankenstein. The Creature from the Black Lagoon. You would run home from the store and tear off the plastic. Take out all of the parts. Slice off the pieces with your exacto knife. You paint them up and then glue them together. Before you know it you have a monster to put on the shelf on your wall!

Man I had a great collection. Until my little sister came in and smashed them. The dirty cunt. 

You have to learn about disappointment early in this life.

I thought for a moment about buying the Titanic and making the doomed ship at my kitchen table. It seemed appropriate for what's going on these days. I decided to pass on it. Let's be optimistic this Holiday Season.

I am sure it will still be on the shelf in the New Year.

Go down to Columbia Street for Grandma Jamesy

 

When I was a little kid I didn't just run around in the street and play stickball and scully. I had to do chores. Throw out the garbage. Go to the stores. I went all over the place even when I was in the second grade. When I was old enough to cross the street I was sent on errands all the time. My grandmother especially sent me out shopping. Why not when she was supposed to be in the second grade she was already working in a shirt making factory. So she didn't take any bullshit.

She would send me to Columbia Street where the push carts were. They had a bunch of stuff that came from the docks. Legal and otherwise. I had particular people I had to patronize. Friends of my uncles who made sure I didn't get ripped off.

I miss those days. Now I go to Stop and Shop.

Containers killed Brooklyn.....or at least the docks

 

When I was a kid growing up everything revolved around the docks. I might have told this story before but I am an old bastard so I like to repeat myself. You see my uncles worked on the docks like 99% of the people in the neighborhood. Everything revolved around the docks. The restaurants catered to the longshoreman. The stores carried working mans clothing. They even sold stevedore hooks. Then there was all the stuff they stole that fed the economy.

You see they would drop a crate off of the shit and when it broke they would take everything out. The crate would go to the coopers who would fill it with rocks and repair it and send it off to Kansas or wherever. Then they would go up and down the neighborhood and sell whatever they had. Dresses. Watches. Tools. Whatever. You could get some great bargains. Ten cents on the dollar.

Then they invented the container. Everything was in these huge metal boxes. No matter how high you lifted and dropped it ....well it just didn't break. It went right off the ship onto the truck. They had to build these big cranes to lift the containers off the ship. So they moved the ships out to Jersey or Howland Hook in Staten Island where they had room to build the cranes. Plus they needed a lot less people. It wasn't like an ant hill with hundreds of guys carrying sacks and crates. It was just a couple of crane operators. The union had to go on strike to get a guarantied wage for some of their members. Which they did. They closed the books since they needed so many fewer guys. It was a bloodbath.

Almost all of the longshoremen moved out to Staten Island or Jersey. Over the Guinea Gangplank and out of Brooklyn. To be replaced first by yuppies and then by hipsters. Now there is nothing left of a 150 year old culture. It's all gone.

So I don't care if a container ship sinks. I hope they all sink. We should buy American and only American. America First. Last. Always. 

RIP Anthony....is there Spaghetti in Heaven?

Anthony the kid in the Prince Spaghetti commercial is dead at 61. Just a couple of years younger than me so we are almost exact contemporaries. I lived that life in Brooklyn.

The clothes and the food and the decor in the commercial are what I grew up with in the 1960's. My Mom had the same haircut as his Mom. I used to be outside with my friends playing all day and at dinner time the Moms would open the window and shout at us to come home. It was never all the Moms. Just the one closest to where we were hanging out The rest of us got the message and hurried home. If we didn't want a smack.

Back in those days everyone bought the same stuff. Not Prince or Barilla or some other brand. Everyone bought Ronzoni macaroni and Red Pack tomatoes and Polly O mozzarella and ricotta. It was a given. They were always on sale at G&G on Henry Street and my Grandmother would send me out to buy it. A simple supper was often just spaghetti and sauce with nothing much on it other than grated cheese. Sometimes as a special treat she might cook up some veal spiedini in the sauce. But usually it was just a basic puree. Of course that wasn't the Sunday sauce with the meatballs and sausage and the pork skin. That was what made Sunday Special.

You can't buy Ronzoni anymore. It is way too starchy. The macaroni just falls apart. Some big company bought it from the family that ran it and ruined everything. Red Pack is still around but I use Pomi tomatoes exclusively that are imported from Italy in cartons not cans. Much less salt and much better tasting. Still only use Polly O since they are the best by far and are what we are used too.

Kids don't play out in the street anymore either. It's was all play dates or video games on the phone. Nobody plays stick ball or stoop ball or skelly.

Anthony wouldn't recognize the North End. Just like I don't recognize South Brooklyn.

I hope they have spaghetti in Heaven.

I know Hell has Indian food.

I like Eggs!

Did you ever think about how many eggs you have eaten in your life?

We go through 2 dozen a week. Just today I used six. Two scrambled for me. Two for the french toast I made for the wife and the mother-in-law. Two for the Swedish meatballs I made for dinner. I am always using eggs to bread eggplant and chicken cutlets or for an egg wash for the apple pie I made yesterday.

Above is a photo of the simple scrambled eggs I had for breakfast with scallions. garlic and cheese on gluten free toast. I can't photograph it as nice as Chip and I don't have a great recipe like he would have to share with us.We miss you Chip come back soon. You are a good egg.

Happy New Year!

I'm really not a big fan of New Years Eve drinking. I mean it is the same bullshit as Paddy's day. I used to  drink all the time. Every day. So I didn't need to go over the top to prove I was Irish or that I was happy that we were having a new year! I like to stay home and eat potato puffs and pigs in a blanket and watch Dick Clark having a stroke. Which is what we are doing this year. No Dick Clark but Ryan Seacrest and Andy Cohen who like to stroke a dick. So to speak. Still they are amusing little homo's,

Anyway one year the wife convinced me that she wanted to do it up big for New Years. I rented a tux and we went to the Campbell Apartment which is a bar over Grand Central Station. It was originally the apartment of a Railroad Robber Baron guy. They turned it into a bar. The key attraction was that they had a big band and a Frank Sinatra impersonator. So we got to listen to music and enjoy champagne and can of peas. It was actually fun. After the ball dropped we ventured into Times Square. The crowds had dissipated and we went to Kevin St James which was the bar that Lisa was managing at the time. We hung out until dawn. It was a lot of fun.

I hope youse guys enjoy your New Years Eve. I hope Lem picks up a lot of people. In his Uber of course. I hope Sixty enjoys stroking his wood as he welcomes the New Year. Momma M can think of new insights she can share with us in the New Year. Chickie can come up with some more great music that I am not familiar with to enjoy. Dust Bunny Queen can post some of her old recipes in the New Year to take up the lack. I especially hope that our friend Chip will decide to come back and share his inimitable talent.

Happy New Year!

The Deuce

                                             
I have been catching up on the HBO series "The Deuce" which is about Forty Second Street back in the day. My day.  The 1970's and the 1980's.

This series specialized in the sex trade. Whores, pimps, massage parlers and bars of Times Square. It is by the same guys who did the Wire and it is just about as great as that series. David Simon, George Pelecano's and Richard Price are the main writers and they do an unbelievable job.

I started working in Times Square in 1970 when I was about 12. I would go with my Dad to an accounting firm where he did taxes and I made copies or filed or ran off downstairs to get coffee or sandwiches. It was the way it was depicted in this series There were whores all over the place but they pretty much left you alone. Later as a teenager I used to go with my buddies to the movies on the Deuce. Bruce Lee. Kung Fu. Pam Grier and the Hammer. All of the flicks that used to play in the movie houses that you see on the marquees on this show. We would go to the Garden and catch a Knick game and then go to Thads steakhouse for a three dollar steak I think I ate many times in the diner they show with Leon the dude who went upstate for shooting a pimp. It was always full of pimps and hos. And cops. I know I had hung out at the bar that they called the "High Hat." It was based on a couple of joints from that time that we were real familiar with so to speak. I started going to hang out when I was about 15, I was big for my age and if you had money nobody carded you. The thing that they show about the Mafia is right on the money. In fact there was a half a wiseguy we knew from President Street that got us into a couple of after hours like the one they use as a main part of Season Two.

The scenes with the cops on the pad also brought back a lot of memories.. I remember having to hand over an envelope. Both to the cops and the wise guys who both wanted a taste. You know what? Things were better in those days. Sure you had to pay but you got service you know what I mean. Homeless guys couldn't set up shop outside your store. You could call the cops and they would take care of it. Or better yet you could call the crooks and they will really take care of it.

I have been nostalgic the past few days. I am rereading a bunch of Lawrence Blocks books about his alcoholic detective Matt Scudder. His life was a lot more like mine as opposed to Vinnie the Barman in this series. Still and all they remind me of how it was.

I have to say the whole thing is right on the money and very well done. Gritty and realistic. Highly recommended if you want to know what New York was really like back in the day.

(Enjoy the clip. I heard variations of this rap several times when a pimp was working on a girl in one of the gin mills like Smiths or the Blarney Stone. Shit you could hear while you were waiting on a light to cross the street. The scene is really well written and Method Man can really act. He's got some chops)