All The News That Fits, We Print

Saturday, July 25, 2026

Now that the World Cup is firmly in the rear-view mirror, I want to look at football, as it is known in the rest of world. It is also affectionately called the beautiful game, a phrase popularized by Pelé, the immortal Brazilian player. However, you won’t find me calling it the beautiful game. 

I watched many more hours of soccer during this World Cup than I ever had before. It ain’t beautiful. The championship game, Spain vs. Argentina, lasted over 120 minutes, ending 1-0. Guys were falling down all over the place. Cheap shots, dirty shots, grabbing, tripping, flopping. And dramatically confronting the referee whenever a foul was finally called. Only rarely was there a smooth flow of action, even rarer was a score. When the match ended and the winning team was being honored, the losing team turned its back. Not beautiful.

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Tonight, I went to the Awards Banquet at the 111th American Ethical Union Assembly, the federation of the 20 Ethical Culture Societies. While I make no claim to be either ethical or cultured, I had good reason to be there. Dr. Arthur Dobrin was deservedly receiving the Felix Adler Lifetime Achievement Award, named for the founder of the movement. Speaking of lifetimes, Arthur and I have known each as long as we can remember. We lived across the street from each other in Brooklyn and then our families moved across the street from each other in Queens over 70 years ago. 

The meal was catered by Carmine's, the local restaurant chain noted for large portions of Southern Italian food. Indeed, there was an abundance of food, pedestrian food, unlikely to attract future customers. However, the evening was not about food and I was very pleased to have attended.

Sunday, July 26, 2026

It is probably unwise to put the blame on Michael Corleone. This morning around 7:30 or so I thought, I heard pounding on my front door. It was Stony Brook Steve checking up on me after his many telephone calls beginning at 9 AM went unanswered. It was, in fact, 10:20 and I had been out like a light. 

After the dinner last night, I returned to my spouseless abode (Madam returns from Panama next week) and was able to watch whatever I felt like on television. Around 1 AM, I found them playing Godfather II, an all-time great. With commercials, it was running to about 4 AM. That and stupidly turning off my phone thwarted Steve’s good neighbor gesture.  

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Scanning the death notices in the New York Times last week, I saw a very distinctive last name, that of someone I taught with in 1968. I had not seen him since then. The deceased was William, but his brother Fred, named among his survivors, was surely the colleague I remembered. 

The funeral was scheduled at a nearby funeral home on Sunday at 11:30 AM. Thanks to Steve’s intervention, I got there shortly after 11 and went into the parlor where the family was receiving guests before the service. When I did not recognize my former colleague, I asked a young man if Fred was there. By chance, I was talking to Fred’s son who told me that his father was ill. I explained myself, gave him my card and asked him to extend my condolences to his father. 

I hope that Fred recovers soon and calls me after his mourning period so that we might catch up on 58 years.

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From the funeral parlor, I headed to Brooklyn to pick up Geri and accompany her to visit her husband and my longtime (but not as long as Arthur) friend Burt Grossman, currently in a rehab facility. Burt had a nasty fall while moving stuff from his old apartment to his new one in the same building. 

I didn’t want to say anything, but moving to a lower floor in the same building invites the Evil Eye. Kinahora (or kein ayin hara) is a Yiddish phrase that translates to "no evil eye," used to ward off envy and misfortune.

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Driving back to Manhattan, I sought someplace interesting to eat lunch, someplace with a parking space in the same Zip Code. I lucked out at Bob White Counter, 94 Avenue C, one of four locations with an excellent reputation for fried chicken.

It’s a small joint, five two-tops, one four-top and a scattering of stools. While I sat there, a constant parade of bicycle delivery men came to pick up orders. I had The O.G., the biggest fried chicken sandwich that I ever had and one of the best ($8.59). It held two chicken tenders, pickles and mayonnaise. Plus I had a very large portion of hand cut fries ($4.99). It was a lot to eat at almost bargain prices. 

Monday, July 27, 2026

This morning it was Dr. Brickman the dermatologist, not Dr. Brucker the urologist, and I was able to keep my pants on but barely. She found a few things worth further scrutiny, but assured me that I will survive at least long enough to pay my bill.

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Good neighbor Trent was available for lunch and we went to Pho Broadway, 2058 Broadway. We took the last of the six wooden two-tops coated in polyurethane. We each ordered a Banh Mi, Trent the Special Combo, pork roll, pork belly, pate and butter; me, flank steak and brisket. Both sandwiches came on narrow 6" toasted baguettes with cucumber, cilantro, pickled carrots and daikon radish, priced at $10. Adding the hoisin sauce from the squeeze bottle that sat on the table improved my sandwich considerably.

Tuesday, July 28, 2026

I was thinking about paintball today and wondering how it is being celebrated. It turns out that there are at least two paintball halls of fame, the World Classic Paintball League Hall of Fame (https://www.playwcpl.com/wcpl-the-hall-of-fames) and the Hall of Icons (https://www.iconicpaintball.com/post/hall-of-icons-2025-nominee-s-revealed-professional-paintball-honors-hall-of-icons). This division is understandable considering that paintball is a highly competitive endeavor. Note that neither is a physical structure; they are notional categories, supported by the miracle of the Internet.

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Alert!

Tinker Bell is leaving Disneyland on August 4th, apparently involuntarily.

https://insidethemagic.net/2026/07/disneyland-removes-tinker-bell-character-effective-august-4-jc1/

Wednesday, July 29, 2026

I agree heartily with Tom Friedman:

“New York is the only city in the world in which at least 750,000 Jews and Muslims apiece live side by side. Rather than being a constructive bridge builder between them, [Zohran] Mamdani, the city’s first Muslim mayor, has chosen to be a bridge destroyer — using the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as his ax. It is such a waste of a truly charismatic political talent.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/28/opinion/mamdani-netanyahu-stunt-israel.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

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Gentleman Jerry and I had lunch at La Dinastia, 145 West 72nd Street, one of the few remaining Cuban-Chinese restaurants that were a byproduct of Fidel Castro’s Cuban Revolution, sending top Chinese chefs to New York when luxury Havana hotels were expropriated. In fact, La Caridad 72, 130 West 72nd Street, right across the street, is another example, once La Caridad 78, 2197 Broadway at 78th Street, until it relocated. 

We both had the well-reputed fried chicken crackling (what this word adds, I'm not sure because it usually means pigskin snack), Jerry boneless, me boned ($13.95 either) with a choice of rice white or yellow, beans black or red. The four pieces of very crispy chicken and the starch will keep you going well past dinner time.

Where we substantially differed was afterwards, Jerry stopped at the Häagen-Dazs store around the corner at 263 Amsterdam Avenue for a chocolate chip cone, while I went to Fairway Market, 2131 Broadway, for a 1.5 quart tub of Tillamook's Oregon Dark Cherry ice cream. To each his own.

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Even if epidemiologists were not held in such high regard in our family, we would still be disgusted by the treatment of Dr. Anthony Fauci by Republican senators yesterday. These politicians were poised to embarrass, insult and compromise him legally. These same public servants have, on the other hand, studiously avoided examining any of Mr. Tangerine’s seeming conflicts of interest or self-dealings.

By following his lawyer’s advice to take the Fifth Amendment, Fauci left his opponents to urinate in the breeze.

Friday, July 31, 2026

The New York Times delivered to our door comes in several sections, a different combination each day. Here is a picture of a page in today's business section.

All four stories have “A.I.” in their headlines. The page itself is labeled Artificial Intelligence, which I only noticed after seeing the headlines.  What does this all mean? It means that I don’t know what the Hell they are talking about.