Rant #981: Super Curse?

This has been something of a strange morning already.

Woke up, got ready for work, and found that the Internet was down and our phone didn't work.

But after a while, everything came back to normal.

It must be those rains I was talking about yesterday.

Anyway, have you ever heard of the Superman "curse?"

The "curse" that every actor who has played Superman has been cursed, died early, never progressed with his career?

It's sort of like the Little Rascals "curse"--so many young kids in that series died early, it belies the fact that several of the kids, including Jackie Cooper and Spanky McFarland, lived long, productive lives.

Yes, the Superman "curse" is a bit of balderdash, just like the Little Rascals "curse" is.

Let's see ...

Kirk Allyn, the original Superman in the movie serials, didn't have a long movie career, but he lived to a ripe old age.

The "curse," if there is one, actually was fermented with George Reeves. The actor, who as a young man was in "Gone With the Wind," was very typecast in the Superman role, couldn't get much of anything else to do, and killed himself in the process.

Of course, there is much, much more to that story than I can talk about here.

He had become a B actor way before Superman, he was a carouser, an adulterer, a heavy drinker, and fraternized with wives of mob members.

Did he kill himself or was he rubbed out? The question remains more than 50 years after his death.

I remember his death very well. It is one of the first memories I have as a human being. I could not understand, as a two year old, how Superman could be dead, but he was.

He remains as my favorite Superman, and the template from which all succeeding Superman actors were drawn from.

Now we move to the case of Christopher Reeve. He helped to create the Superman movie franchise, and he was probably the best actor ever to play the role. His series of movies was like printing money, and he was so talented that he didn't allow himself to be typecast, taking on a variety of roles during his brief career.

But he had a penchant for riding horses, which led to the "curse," if there is one, being extended.

He fell off a horse, became paralyzed, and later passed away. His wife passed away soon after.

Again, there is much more to the story than I am going to speak about here. But Reeve was one of the most courageous people around, and he is well remembered.

The movie franchise died itself until Brandon Rouse took over the role in "Superman Returns," and well, he returned all right, but Rouse's career never took off at all.

And there have been others in the interim, including Dean Cain, who played the character on television. His career never really took off, either, although his co-star, Teri Hatcher, became something of a TV phenomenon later on "Desperate Housewives."

Now we have the rebooted "Man of Steel," which in early previews, has gotten mixed reviews. This movie hopes to do with Superman what the recent reboots did with Batman: make him a more sincere, believable, and "human" character, even though this son of Krypton isn't really human at all.

Will there be any residual effect of this "curse?"

I doubt it, because you have to ask yourself if this "curse" actually exists.

I don't think it does. The previous actors were victims of various, unrelated circumstances, joined at the hip by them all being Superman sometime in their careers.

Henry Cavill, the new Superman, will do fine. Will he have a long career, will he by typecast, will his name be part of nothing more than a trivia question?

Who knows?

So, no matter how Superman does at the box office, there is no "curse," much like there is no Little Rascals "curse."

Maybe Alfalfa would disagree, but people make things of circumstances that they don't know anything about, and this "curse" thing, well, it does not exist.

Or at least I keep telling myself that it doesn't exist.

Rant #980: Super Soaker

I often talk about the weather at this blog, because the weather impacts so many things that are part of our lives.

This weekend, in my neck of the woods, the weather was pretty much picture perfect.

It was warm without being absolutely sweat inducing, the sun was shining, and it was shorts weather outside.

But getting to that point was another matter altogether.

On Friday, we got soaked with rain, the likes of which I hadn't seen in years.

Brought on by the last remnants of Tropical Storm Andrea, this storm was the fiercest one I have seen in these parts maybe ever.

After leaving work, I drove home to buckets and buckets of rain coming down from the sky.

It wasn't only cats and dogs, it was probably a variety of animals not seen since Noah's Ark that pummeled us.

It was very hard to see, and there were not only puddles, but mini-lakes, on the roadways that you had to be aware of.

I drive on the highway much of my destination home, a two-lane highway that was originally built with a lesser volume of traffic in mind.

Now, with so many people taking their cars to work during the week, the roadway is normally bumper to bumper at this hour anyway, but with all the rain pelting us, this was like each car was still bumper to bumper, but separated not by space, but by raindrops.

When I exited the highway, I got onto the major road leading to where I live, and it, too,was bumper to bumper, but traffic was moving as the raindrops continued to fall rapidly.

I thought everything was clear sailing, but boy, was I wrong.

I was about a half mile away from where I live, and traffic pretty much stopped dead in its tracks.

I couldn't see what was up ahead, but being so close to home, it was getting very frustrating to me that I was seemingly so close, yet so far from my destination.

I saw numerous cars making U-turns off the road I was on, and then it pretty much hit me: there must be some newly created rivers up ahead, and people don't want to take a chance of driving their cars through this mess.

And that is exactly what it was.

By the park that we live opposite of, there was a river formed on the road that must have been at least two to three feet deep, which means that if you drove through it, it would be up to at least the middle of the doors on your car.

We received such an amount of rain in such a short period of time--some places got more than five inches on Friday--that even though there was drainage at this part of the road, it could not withstand such a load of rain, so a mini-ocean formed.

I decided to wing it, figuring two things: one, that I was so close to home that I didn't want to veer off elsewhere and have it take me even longer to get to my destination, and two, that my car performed well in other weather conditions, including snow, so I believed it could do well here, too.

So I drove my car through the ocean, all the while holding my breath, and lo and behold, it worked!

Once past there, I was able to get home pretty easily, since so many cars turned around before getting to this mess.

I parked my car, and I saw that our little street was being used as a through street by numerous cars. Evidently, on the other side of the park, another mini-ocean had formed, and it was the safest way for these drivers to get from point A to point B.

But it was just rain, and in a few hours, pretty much everything was back to normal.

I don't remember seeing rain like this where I live ever, and I have been living in this area for more than 40 years.

I have driven in worse, though.

On one of our vacations to Florida, actually coming home from the vacation, I remember that two or three years ago we hit the most massive rainstorm I had ever seen, before or since. It was in the Carolinas on I-95--I think it was South Carolina but I really don't remember for sure--and it lasted for hours.

You could not see in front of you pretty much at all, and I remember that the guy ahead of us for miles and miles also had a New York license plate, and we pretty much followed him through it, at a distance of course.

That was the worst I have ever seen, but this thing on Friday was pretty close to it.

And the forecast today? More rain, but not of the super-soaker type, I am happy to say.

Rant #979: Awards Week

This was a pretty big week for my family.

Not only did my wife and I celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary, but our son received two sports-related awards over the past two days.

On Wednesday, he received an award for participating in the Police Boys Club Saturday Afternoon Bowling League.

This is not just any bowling league. This league is specifically geared to those who have learning disabilities, and physical and emotional problems.

It provides an opportunity for those kids who normally shunned athletics to get into sports as much as anybody else, to be themselves, and to act like typical teenagers ... which they are, through and through.

My son enjoyed this league. He is very quiet, doesn't show his emotions that well, but he knew that every Saturday, at least for an hour or two, he had a chance to show his athletic side.

His team was sort of a middle of the road team, not the league champion, but he and his team did well.

He averaged slightly over 100, which is fine.

The next night, on Thursday, he won an award for participating in the Challenger Basketball League.

I have written about this before in this blog.

Again, it is a basketball league for those kids in participating school districts who usually fall by the wayside athletically.

If you can get on the court, in any way possible, you can play in this league.

My son really enjoyed this competition. He would talk about it continually while it was on, and honestly, I wish more schools participated in this program.

I was able to go to one game, and the enthusiasm shown by the kids and the crowd was electrifying.

Nobody is looking for the next Lebron James here, but the kids really get into it.

My wife and I are quite proud of our son. In spite of his learning disability, he really is your average teenager. What kid doesn't like to show off his athletic prowess every now and again?

So, all told, this was a pretty great week for myself and my family.

I don't know if next week can duplicate this one, but we're going to try.

Speak to you again on Monday.

Rant #978: 20 Years

Today is my wife and my 20th wedding anniversary.

I have to say that I am pretty lucky. I am married to the best, greatest and most beautiful woman in the world.

I met her at a very low point in my life, she stuck with me through that, and all these years later, we are as strong as ever.

We believe in the same things, have the same values, and while we don't see eye to eye on everything, we make a perfect match.

We share a son, and my daughter respects her for what she is to her and to me.

Looking back, the evening leading up to my wedding 20 years ago is something that I can now laugh at, but at the time, it really wasn't funny at all.

My best man, Drew, was taking me out for dinner the night before.

He lived in Queens at the time, on a street that ran parallel to the Van Wyck Expressway.

I drove there from Long Island, parked my car in front of the building next door to his, and went on my merry way.

We went to a very good Tex Mex restaurant in Manhattan. I didn't want to stay out too late that night since I had to get up early the next morning, so when we returned to Queens, I bid my friend adieu and walked to my car.

The problem was, my car was not where I parked it.

I looked all around for that car. I thought, perhaps, that I had parked it somewhere else, I thought I was losing my mind.

But no, I parked the car where I parked the car and that was that.

I asked the doorman of the building that I had parked in front of if he had seen my car, and of course, he said that he hadn't.

He was a liar. My car was stolen right in front of his eyes, and he was probably part of the group that took it, or at least he acted as a lookout for them.

Anyway, I went back to my friend's apartment, we called the police, and what we got back was the NYPD version of Abbott and Costello.

One was short and fat, the other tall and skinny. These two cops didn't know up from down, were completely incompetent, and really, I should have reported both of them.

One cop had a very bad cold, blowing his nose repeatedly when speaking with me. The other seemingly didn't take down the facts correctly.

They promised me that I would get back my Olds Cutlass Supreme very quickly.

Well, I am still waiting for that car to return to me.

My friend drove me back home, and I had to push that problem aside, because I had to prepare for one of the happiest days of my life.

And I did just that.

The next day was windy as I have ever seen it, and we had an outdoor ceremony. Everything was blowing over, but when I saw my soon-to-be-wife in her gown and everything else, I was literally blown over by how beautiful she really was.

And still is. Like I said, I am a very lucky man.

We honeymooned in New Orleans, and then moved on with our lives together.

Twenty years. I really can't believe it, but it's true.

I love my wife and I always will.

And like someone else once said for a far different reason, "I am the luckiest man on the face of the earth."

Rant #977: WWEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

About once or twice a year, my son and I take in a live wrestling show at our local venue, the Nassau Coliseum.

We did exactly that last night, being live and in person for a taping of the weekly "Smackdown" show that is presented every Friday on the SyFy Network.

As an extra bonus, we also saw a taping of the weekly Wednesday night "Main Event" show on the Ion network too.

And as an extra extra bonus, we saw a taping of a match that will be part of the new WWE Divas show that premiers on A and E next month.

We saw all the current stars of the world of WWE wrestling, from Ryback and Daniel Bryan to Kane and (not Abel) to Sheamus.

It was a fun show, nothing that we haven't seen before, but the WWE puts on a fine show, in the best tradition of Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey's Circus.

Let's be honest about it, a WWE show is really the equivalent of a modern-day circus, but with one ring.

They have invented their own universe, and people buy into it in droves.

And in plenty of cash too.

They have their conflicts, and that is where the fun sets in.

There are a lot of high-flying, dazzling moves--just about all choreographed--and yes, wrestlers do get hurt.

But the athleticism is there, let there be no doubt about that.

When I was a kid, I used to go with my friends to Madison Square Garden to witness that generation's biggest stars, like Bruno Sammartino and Chief Jay Strongbow.

But it was different, on a much smaller scale, but just as exciting.

Today, wrestling is on a mammoth, worldwide scale, and it is very, very popular.

You just look around, and you see numerous families taking their kids--and I mean, very young kids--to these shows. Probably two-thirds of the audience at these shows are kids from the ages of five or six to about 12.

And there are a lot of girls and women who attend these shows, which is greatly different than when I went as a kid, when the audience was about 90 percent male.

Today, it is probably 60 percent males and 40 percent females.

And yes, we had fun last night.

As usual, our seats weren't the top of the line, but we had a clear path to everything that was going on in the ring.

If the action spilled (literally) outside the ring, there was a giant screen that we could see the action from.

We were too high up to be on television, but the rows directly below us got lots of TV coverage.

All in all, it was a fun night, and the best thing was that getting home was a breeze.

It took us about 20 minutes to get back home, and we were in bed in no time.

And that may have been the best part of it all.

Rant #976: Fit To Be Tied

Since yesterday's Rant about shorts got such a rousing amount of support (not really), I figured that today I would write about the bane of my existence, and that is wearing a tie to work.

I have written about ties before in this blog, but it bears worth repeating, I'm afraid.

I hate to wear a tie, I have always hated to wear a tie, and I always will hate to wear a tie, no matter what the occasion.

I hate to put it on, to knot it, and to have it lay flat on my shirt.

I feel it is like a modern noose, ready to strangle me at a moment's notice.

It is a pain.

The only thing that a tie is good for is to wipe off my glasses when they get dirty.

Otherwise, it is truly useless.

I have to wear a tie four days a week to work, Monday through Thursday.

On Friday, we get a reprieve. We have a dress down day, and we can wear basically whatever we want as long as it is business casual.

That is fine with me, and I get to wear sneakers that day.

But on the other four days of the week, for whatever purpose or reason, I have to wear a tie, and I hate it.

And I especially hate it during this time of year, when the weather is starting to get nice.

It strangles me during this time of year, and makes we feel warmer that I actually am.

Of course, I am speaking from the male perspective here.

I know that women love to see men in ties. They find it more professional, more business-like, and they find that their men are more handsome with a tie on.

I don't know if there is a female equivalent to a tie, but I guess there probably is (women, chime in now).

But I just hate ties. I have a whole load of them, maybe rotate between four or five of them each week, and that is about it.

So, although this column is something of a rerun, it isn't bad to kind of repeat something on a somewhat slow news day.

Would you rather I have written about Pia Zadora's battery charge against her husband?

So there ... maybe writing about ties isn't all that bad.

Rant #975: "Shorts" Story

This was a very nice weekend, a very nice weekend in the Northeast and in my neck of the woods.

Other places were suffering this weekend. Certainly, Oklahomans have had to put up with some incredible weather, and it isn't even officially summer.

The devastation over there has been incredible, to say the least. And to get hit twice within literally a few days with tornadoes that obliterated towns is something that really is astonishing, showing the full foce of Mother Nature.

But here where I am, we had a pre-summer heat wave the past few days, ending today, and for the first time this year--other than when my family went on a cruise in February--we were able to wear shorts.

With the temperatures in the high 80s and early 90s, I couldn't wait to break out my cutoffs. I certainly couldn't do it at work, in the early stages of the heat wave--but once Saturday came, it was shorts, and nothing but shorts.

I have found that the style today among many people is to break out the shorts in March, and pretty much wear them until October or November.

Why this phenomena has occurred is anyone's guess, but I swear, I see people wearing winter jackets and shorts in March.

Crazy, yes!

Shorts are made for the hot weather, perfect to cool you off in situations where you can't go swimming. And this was one of those weekends.

We had two barbecues to go to: one at my wife's brother's house, the other at my sister's house. And with weather as pleasant as it was, the long pants stayed in the drawer and the shorts came out.

I generally wear dungaree shorts. I kind of prefer them. Yes, they are a little bit heavier in fabric, but they provide a snugger fit, for some reason.

We had a good time at the two barbecues, but I remember one time when wearing shorts didn't benefit me at all.

I was a real little kid, probably about four or five years old. We lived in Kew Gardens Hills, Queens, New York at this time in my life.

I went outside with my shorts on, and no one was around. My friends for whatever reason weren't outside, so it must have been pretty early in the day.

In the backyard of our apartment building was a small playground, with the usual slide, hopscotch, swings ... a typical backyard.

But there was also a see-saw. You remember those, one kid sits on one side and another kid sits on the other side, and you go up and down, up and down.

Anyway, for whatever reason, I wanted to see if I could get the seesaw going myself.

I hopped on, little me with my shorts on, and I don't exactly remember what happened, but I somehow got on, started the motion, and fell right off while I was in the air.

I had a bruise on my knee that was bleeding all over the place. I ran upstairs, crying my eyes out, my mother was horrified, she put something on it, and that bruise became a scab that was so thick that it probably took a good month to go away, if not more than that.

It was an ugly blackish scab. I will never forget that scab. It was thick and must have been the size of a half dollar coin. Perhaps if I was wearing long pants, it wouldn't have been so bad, or maybe I would have just torn away the pants, and nothing would have happened.

Miraculously, I don't have a scar from that bruise, but suffice it to say, I didn't go on a see-saw for years afterward, and certainly not alone.

I learned my lesson.

But this weekend, I was very happy to wear shorts, and I stayed away from see-saws.

The barbecues were great, we had nice times at both, and now it is the beginning of work week ... and it is raining cats and dogs.

And no more shorts--long pants are "in" this week, and what's more, the weather is supposed to be 15 to 20 degrees cooler this week than it was at the end of last week into yesterday.

So the shorts go back in the drawer, but hopefully not for long.

To me, wearing shorts equates to the summer being here, and even though it is early for the summer right now, the sustained warmer weather is clearly on its way.

And summer means fun, vacations and more barbecues.

And the ladies look grand in short shorts, don't they?

I can't wait, and that is the long and "shorts" of it.