The Zeitgeist

        

Ah, nothing like an old fashioned cast iron monster of a furnace to keep the house warm…

I Need 65° and I Need It Now.

Like many of you, I unfortunately burn oil to heat my home. I’ve got a 50-plus year-old beast of a burner down in my basement which probably emerged from the foundry at the same time as the boilers for the Titanic (which is also probably why it continues to chug along year after year, what with it being made from solid steel and not plastic). Come what may with the outside temperature or occasional puddles down in the nether reaches of my basement this burner keeps cranking out the heat and hot water, sending surges of old fashioned scalding hot steam to my 1920-vintage cast iron radiators.

Now when this steam engine was initially installed, I bet that home heating oil was five cents a gallon. Maybe they were even giving it away. Right now however, on the last bill from my dependable oil people, I see that the charge per gallon has risen to $3.94 and at 127 gallons came to over $500.  We have a story in this week’s issue about the ever escalating expense of oil and gasoline but you don’t need that to tell you that the cost of warmth and mobility are reaching new challenges to household cash flow management.

Yeah, I hear all the time about natural gas. The thing is, to remove the existing burner and put in new stuff costs something like $5,000 along with having legions of plumbers wreak havoc on my basement for a week. It would probably take three years for the natural gas savings (on years when there are savings versus oil) to pay for it all. The other issue for me is a deep set paranoia about being the one house in the Five Towns that gets blown to smithereens by a gas leak explosion (you see these all the time on TV, don’t tell me they don’t happen every year) with my being catapulted to kingdom come in the middle of the night courtesy of National Grid. Rational? Hardly. The real solution here to my heating angst is for the weather to finally climb north of 60 degrees for a sustained period and preferably above 65 so that heat becomes irrelevant.

The daffodils, crocuses and tulip tips peaking out from the now thawing ground are harbingers and teases of the balmy temperatures on the horizon. These past two winters here have been a real throwback to the winters of my youth in the 60s and 70s – real, deep cold combined with a lot of snow and ice. Unrelenting and unremitting. I’d like to send the bill for “global warming” over to Al Gore. Maybe he’d like to fill my oil tank. Having spent a week in Florida in February and blissfully missing one of our big storms has made me ponder just how much our area would be paradise if only we had an median temperature of 70.

Thankfully, we’re in the 50s most days now, which means the scarves and gloves are back in the closet, we’re wearing lighter coats, and come next week with the first day of Spring, the banishment of my corduroy pants to the back of the closet until next November. I love cords and the preppy-tweedy look and am excited to don them around Thanksgiving time but I have a rigidly inflexible fashion policy of no cords after March 21^st and no whites after September 22^nd. So, I’m hoping that with the cords put away, the flowers will yet reemerge and we’ll see 65 degrees which I need now not only to stop supporting Big Oil (and the hedge fund/commodity speculators) but also to sit on the porch, warm my bones and get more natural Vitamin D into the bloodstream.

The Zeitgeist

   

A stack of Mets Tickets and folks lining-up to buy them at CitiField. 

Yes, I Bought Met Tickets

I just couldn’t help myself. When it comes to the New York Mets I’m kind of like an abused spouse who keeps coming back for more, or a crack addict who just can’t shake the addiction. So help me G-d, I love baseball and I love the Mets. I’m even watching Spring Training games on WPIX and SNY. Though more often than not utterly unworthy of my affections, this is the team to which I pledged my troth at the ripe old age of five or six. My blood runs orange, blue and black and I’ve never been able to wrap my hands or my heart around Bronx pinstripes. This is a team very much on the ropes from just about any and every perspective imaginable – financially, the team owners were mauled by Bernie Madoff (as were quite a few other innocent people I know) and are now being persecuted and prosecuted by the Madoff Trustee, Irving Picard who is trying to force the Wilpons to fork over something like a zillion dollars. The team is weighted down with some very expensive aging players of diminishing worth (like Carlos Beltran) and some just plain stupid acquisitions by former General Manager Omar Minaya that is tying the Mets’ hands on finding some new blood. The pitching staff is dominated by wounded warriors, ace Johan Santana won’t be back probably until July (if at all) and for sure he won’t be the guy he was a few years ago. Some of the new pitchers just came off Tommy John or other kinds of surgery and heaven knows how long they’ll last before throwing out, breaking or tearing something. Mike Pelfrey, the Vice-Ace, is inconsistent. It’s all going to be up to thirty-something R.A. Dickey and his knuckleball and Jon Niese who exudes potential but hasn't become a star just yet. On offense, we’re a grade “B” team with very few guys hitting for real power compounded by a huge home field that makes home runs as scarce as water in the Sahara. One bright spot is Scott Hairston who has been swatting homers left and right in Spring Training and is a fair bet to fill in for Beltran in right field.

Some have asked me why I remain devoted to the Mets? That's like asking fans in Baltimore why they stick by the Orioles, or Bostonians how they stuck with the Red Sox for a nearly 90-year drought from the World Series, or Chicago Cubs fans who have been left unrequited for over a century or the folks in Cleveland or Oakland. Being true to your team is about one's character as a man -- its about loyalty to things big and small and loyalty to people. It's about knowing how to win and how to lose with class like a man and about perseverence and stick-to-itiveness which are all metaphors for life. In a two-team town like New York, one's choice of team allegiance also says a lot about how a person sees themselves and conveys this to others around him for better or worse. It's also about geography, I'm a Long Island guy and The Bronx is two bridges (or two trains) and light years away in every respect.

What the Mets have this year is a realistic expectation of playing .500 ball and ultimately ending up in the second or third spot in the National League East. There will be no getting past Philadelphia as that team has probably the best starting pitching rotation in all of baseball and as solid an offense as there is along with playing at a ballpark that’s a homerun bandbox. What the Mets also have is a roster of young up and comers who are hungry to prove themselves in the big leagues and get the big bucks down the road if they can. Hopefully this scrappiness will lead to some aggressive ball playing which could be a lot of fun to watch. The Mets also have been freed-up from the pressure of championship expectations from 2006-2009. Most fans I talk to don’t expect anything. That is a liberation, not only for the players but also the fans because anything good that happens this season is gravy and contention for the Division will be the cherry and sprinkles on the sundae. The Mets have National League ball which means classic baseball where pitchers bat. The Mets also have the nicer, more comfortable and more fan-friendly of the two New York ballparks. The food and drinks are better and a whole lot cheaper than in The Bronx, the parking is easier (though not inexpensive) and the ride to my house after the game is just 20-25 minutes. Beers are half the price of Yankee Stadium, which makes alfresco semi-inebriation much more cost effective in these recessionary times.

So to slake my desire to wear my Met player jerseys in public, I succumbed to the blandishments (and serious price reductions) of the Met ticket office and bought into a 5-game flex pack. The Mets lowered ticket prices considerably versus two years ago when they were flush with “irrational exuberance” and with their flex packs are also offering free games. On the five-game pack you get a sixth game (against a non-contending team) gratis. Best part of this is you get to pick one of the Yankee-Met games as part of the package, which are my favorite “color war” type games to go to. Thanks to lower prices, I’m sitting on the field level between third base and home, right near the Kosher Sports hotdog and burger stand and not too far from the imported beer shack out in Center. So, once a month I’ll be back at the ballpark chomping kosher dogs and downing them with the $6 Brooklyn Lagers or $7.25 Leffe Belgian Wheat Ales. With Omar Minaya gone and a bunch of 60-somethings now running the team, I think we fans are going to have some fun and with zero expectations should come zero frustrations. Still nothing like a day at the ballpark – the paradigm of the American cultural experience. Everybody clap your hands!

Citibank Shea Spot and Other Cool Spots

Citibank (for whom CitiField is named) has been running a commercial for months now showing an older couple who’ve relocated to Istanbul (of all places). Narrated by their loving son (who we never see) we are informed that the couple manages to settle-in wonderfully in Turkey except for missing their beloved Mets. So, the son buys them their old seats at Shea Stadium, “Row C, Seats 5 and 6” and we then see the parents sitting in these orange seats in Istanbul, watching a game, presumably by satellite. Here’s the cool thing about the spot for me – those were my seats! I sat in Loge for years at Shea in Section 6, Row “C,” seats 5 and 6. How ever did the folks at Citibank know that? View the spot here:

La Quinta Inns is running kind of a snarky, subversive spot where they promise traveling road warrior salesmen that by lodging with them one will be empowered to in fact actually sell ice to Eskimos. Hilarious:

Chutzpah Spot of the Year – Chrysler featuring Detroit rapper Eminem in their commercial “Imported from Detroit.” Great attitude and right in your face. Here’s the one minute version but Chrysler is running the 30-second spot a lot now but I can’t find that one on YouTube. This kinda, sorta makes you want to buy an American car and it also doubles as a great spot for Detroit, the city:

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The Zeitgeist

     

The divinely inspired marriage of wasabi and herring into wasabi herring is now changing the face of herring consumption. From left: wasabi sauce, picked herring, herrings in their natural state before being filleted and the classic herring in cream sauce with onions.

In Praise of Wasabi Herring

Like most sophisticated New Yorkers I consume a lot of sushi. For some reason, denizens of The Empire State can’t get enough of raw fish seasoned with all manner and type of exotic spices and veggies. It’s protein, it’s light and no one feels guilty consuming four pounds of the stuff (as opposed to potato kugel). There is however one form of sashimi that is the Rodney Dangerfield of fish – I’m talking about the lowly herring. Once consumed with much obsessive gusto by Jewish New Yorkers (on a par or exceeding that of lox/nova/smoked salmon) with the accretion of the new generation the demure herring has fallen out of favor with broad swaths of our society. Herring in wine sauce, matjes herring and herring in cream sauce were once staples of the New York Jewish diet. With the diminution of herring’s popularity, what is a self-respecting appetizing man to do? Throw in the towel? Move on to other aquatic creatures?

Well, thanks to some creative and inventive minds the herring is being rescued and reinvented (re-engineered even?) for an entirely new generation. Driven by the need to have something to eat with numerous shots of Scotch and other dark liquors on Saturday mornings by Modern Orthodox Jews (one can’t have spirituality without spirits) and equally needing some greater diversity from egg salad and vegetarian chopped liver (what, am I veggie chopped liver?) the geniuses at such Five Towns appetizing establishments as Schwartz’s in Gourmet Glatt and at Brach’s have come up with herring in green wasabi sauce. Now, this has taken herring into an entirely new dimension – a dimension of ancient Far East Asian wisdom – whereby in the deep Japanese tradition of appropriating Western inventions (the herring in this instance) like cars and TVs and making them way better, the herring has been liberated from it’s Lower East Side Jewish and Scandinavian roots and transported to the realm of gourmet sashimi thanks to being marinated in and with wasabi sauce. Truly an inspired and amazing combination of tastes (a “duh” combo like chocolate and peanut butter) it makes one wonder why no one had thought of this before. Now, I don’t know if this was invented in my little corner of Long Island (I’ll have to put a team of crack investigative journalists on this) but wasabi herring only made its appearance here less than a year ago and based on the reaction at Kiddush tables, I predict BIG things for wasabi herring globally.

Following up on this innovation, the appetizing gods have also recently devised herring in spicy pink mayo and in a mustard sauce and something called "Mediterranean Herring", not as good as the wasabi version but plenty original and tasty just the same. These are not your grandfather’s herrings. What it wash this down with? Why, Yamazaki 12 or 18-year-old Japanese Single Malt, naturally. The Japanese have managed to deconstruct Scotch and put it back together again even better than they do in Scotland. Bonsai bubby!

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