Mission Impossible

Monday, June 8, 2015

The New York Times must have a building somewhere just full of numbers, because it frequently offers us such fascinating statistics.  Today, it publishes a study of the geography of sports championships, where do the trophies go?  Or, as the headline suggests, where don’t the trophies go?  http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/06/04/upshot/The-Most-Cursed-Sports-Cities-in-America.html?ref=sports&_r=0&abt=0002&abg=1

Cleveland, now in the finals of the National Basketball Association championship, leads the way, in a manner of speaking, having won it all never since 1965 in any of North America’s leading professional sports.  That encompasses 147 seasons of fruitless competition in all of those sports combined.  

The other side of the coin is found in Boston, whose teams have won titles in 10% of the seasons in which they have competed over the last 50 years.  http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/05/upshot/boston-and-pittsburgh-americas-most-successful-sports-cities.html?abt=0002&abg=1

Ars gratia artis – “Pole dance routines by exotic dancers in an Albany-area juice bar are an expression of artistic merit, but the private couch dances performed for individual patrons are not, a state tax department administrative law judge has ruled.”  New York Law Journal, 06/08/15.  

Tuesday, June 9, 2015  

Michael Ratner and I are going to the Mets game tonight, but first, on the way, we are eating at Ben’s Best Kosher Gourmet Delicatessen (as it styles itself), 96-40 Queens Boulevard, Rego Park, really the best Kosher delicatessen standing.  Michael’s business, before he retired, was located not too far away from Ben’s and he used it frequently for catering and his own meals.  As a result, he had a sandwich named after his company, the Richter & Ratner.  I recall that it was turkey, pastrami and chopped liver, piled very high.  America’s Favorite Epidemiologist and I would share it, although we sometimes substituted roast beef or corned beef for the turkey, when we visited my mother, who lived nearby.  This was a happy byproduct of my mother’s longevity.  

Ben’s has removed the R&R from the menu, but Michael seems to hold no grudge (which would not be true of your humble servant).  We both had corned beef on rye, eschewing more elaborate combinations.  I yearned for a Dr. Brown’s diet Cel-Ray, long discontinued, so I settled for diet black cherry.  

Michael plink plinked his mobile phone to arrange for an Uber ride to the ballpark, a short distance on the map, but awkwardly reached by public transportation from where we were.  I marveled how an available ride popped up, advising us that it would arrive in three minutes.  After several minutes, Michael’s phone rang, the Uberman asking where we were.  Standing right in front of Ben’s door, I bellowed to overcome any deficiencies in electronic telecommunications.  No, he insisted, he was at the right address.  Well, the Uber app displayed his location on Michael’s phone, about one mile further east on Queens Boulevard.  When I tried to explain how he might close the gap between us, he displayed such confusion that I told him to forget it, which apparently generated a charge to Michael’s account nevertheless.  

We decided to deal with that later and got a regular taxicab to the ballpark, arriving just before the teams took the field.  It turned out to be an historic evening, a no-hitter, the first that I have ever witnessed in person.  Of course, it was the other team that registered the no-hitter, the Mets registering no hits.  Actually, the Mets got three hits, that is three batters were hit by pitched balls.  Each was then allowed to go to first base where they remained stock still as their succeeding teammates proved unable to place their bats in the path of pitched balls.  

 “Jeb Bush Tells Germans He’d Confront ‘Ruthless’ Putin.”  We have to hope that this Bush, unlike his brother, does not confront Putin face to face.  After all, when they held a summit meeting, George said, “I looked the man in the eye.  I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy, and we had a very good dialogue.  I was able to get a sense of his soul.”  

Wednesday, June 10, 2015

A bill passed by the Wisconsin legislature, pending approval by the governor, eliminates the 48-hour waiting period to purchase a handgun.  This will reduce the time that a bad guy will be asked to hold still while a good guy rushes off to buy a weapon.

I'm getting annoyed with Mission Chinese Food, relocated to 171 East Broadway.  After all, I visited their initial East Coast iteration (January 2, 2013), an interesting dump beneath a tenement on Orchard Street, and I have attempted to visit new/renewed establishment.  The inquiries that I have received about Mission should increase after today's favorable review in the New York Times. 
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/10/dining/restaurant-review-mission-chinese-food-on-the-lower-east-side.html?_r=0

But, as I wrote on January 20, 2015, you can't go there.  The place doesn't open for lunch, as if it were some swanky nightclub.  That's no way to get my money. 

Thursday, June 11, 2015

Even though Jaya Malaysian 888, 90 Baxter Street, had its walls and windows wide open to the street, I found a cool corner in the back as I continue to seek to elevate it to the best Malaysian restaurant in Chinatown.  I wasn't hungry enough to order anything more one dish from the lunch special menu -- beef with curry sauce ($6.95).  The promised soup of the day never appeared, as it never has on any prior occasion.  I didn't mind because the large mound of rice and the 6 ounces or so of curried beef cooked with a lot of onions made for a good portion.  The only problem with my quiet, cool back corner was the poor lighting which made finishing the crossword puzzle a little difficult.

Friday, June 12, 2015

MilkMade Ice Cream delivered its two pints of extravagantly priced ice cream for the month last night – "June Gloom" containing Ronnybrook Farm Dairy milk and cream, sugar, cream cheese, blueberries, Mast Brothers chocolate, and "A Midsummer Night’s ‘Scream" containing Ronnybrook Farm Dairy milk and cream, sugar, egg yolks, lavender, organic pansies, crisp (sugar, flour, brown sugar, butter, oats).  Let’s see if we enjoy these more than last month's flavors.  We'll do our tasting after the weekend.

The anarchic Jews of West End Synagogue are holding their annual retreat this weekend.  The theme is “Reconstructionist Judaism: L’dor  v’dor (Generation to generation).”  We are leaving in the early afternoon for a camp site just over two hours north of New York City.  No Chinese food will be served. 

P.S. Removing me from the isle of Manhattan resulted in this delay in publishing to the world.