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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The Zeitgeist

                      

Poster to the 1968 film “Wild In The Streets,” Tunisians being wild in their streets, deposed Egyptian despot Hosni Mubarak (center) hopefully soon to be deposed Libyan strongman Muamar Ghadaffi ((third from left), author Yehuda Avner as an advisor to the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the cover of his book, “the Prime Ministers (right).

Wild In The Streets

There was a movie out in 1968 staring Hal Holbrook, Ed Begley (Sr.), Shelley Winters, Richard Pryor and a whole host of other character actors that was labeled as “Science Fiction/Horror” called “Wild In The Streets,” the premise of this B-movie was that America is taken over by the majority of the then U.S. population – namely the baby boomers who were all under 25. The young folks put everyone over 30 in concentration camps and forced retirement on LSD. (See trailer here – hysterical -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRLwV2xafpk). The theme song of the film was (Nothing Can Change the) “Shape of Things To Come” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqsxF_zt700&feature=related) which is a fairly good tune actually. While the film was a fictitious major exaggeration, the U.S. was in fact then dealing with a disaffected “youthquake” in the late 60’s which really did see a lot of wild protests in the streets and campuses. The country was in an upheaval that led to socio-cultural changes that have had lasting ramifications right up to the present day and those baby boomers are still a plurality of the U.S. population.

The Middle East has been experiencing their own 60’s-type of revolution lately. First Tunisia, then Egypt, probably Libya will see the end of Ghaddaffi real soon. Rioting in Yemen, Bahrain and other places (too bad Obama didn’t lift a finger to help the Iranian street protestors a year and a half ago, a wasted opportunity to trash the Ayatollahs…) These “people power” revolutions are being fueled mainly by the majority populations in these countries, specifically, the young people. Most Arab and Muslim nations’ populations have far more people under 30 than over it and these folks are tired of being oppressed and repressed by the Mandarins and geezer septuagenarian dictators (notwithstanding their “Just For Men” dyed-black hair) along with no personal freedom, no economic opportunity and the ancient Levantine way of graft, corruption and embezzlement. Generations often feel the need to shape their world according to their own vision and want a chance to do so. When this is indefinitely bottled up, the pressure will invariably build and explode the top right off. The Chinese Communists have been cynically brilliant in allowing personal expression (just not political expression) and economic opportunity functioning as steam pressure valves enabling them to they cling to power. The Arab despots generally have offered no outlet for their young folks.

JFK in his inaugural address spoke about “the torch being passed to a new generation,” which at that time referred to the ascension of "The Greatest Generation” (the WWII babies) to power over the WWI and Roaring 20’s generation. If there is never a sharing, let alone a passing of the torch, eventually the young will erupt in some way, shape or form. This happened twenty years ago in the former USSR, in Iron Curtain countries like East Germany, Poland, Romania, etc., especially as Western popular culture permeated the stifling censorship of the dictatorships. The big mistake of the Arab despots has been allowing the Internet in and also allowing U.S. television and movies and music in. Once people see there is a better world out there and that their world is stuck somewhere in the Middle Ages, atavistic repression doesn’t stand a chance against cell phones, laptops, blue jeans, dance music, YouTube, Hollywood, McDonald’s and more. Hopefully, as in Eastern Europe this will auger in a better democratic free society. The rub here will be ensuring (and I hope the Obama Administration is listening and won’t pull a “Jimmy Carter” vis-à-vis Iran) that Islamic theocracies don’t take the place of the current secular fascist dictatorships. But even in this country, young people need to see opportunities for economic, career and personal advancement because when hopelessness prevails, unrest won’t be too far off.

“The Prime Ministers”

Yehuda Avner had a long and storied career in Israel’s foreign service stretching over several decades. He worked on the staffs of four prime ministers, including Levi Eshkol (during the stressful days of the Six Day War), Gold Meir (during the stressful days of the Yom Kippur War), Yitzhak Rabin (during the stressful days of the Entebbe rescue) and Menachem Begin (during the stressful days of the Lebanon War). Avner, an immigrant from Manchester, England to Israel in 1947, chronicles the first forty years of the state from some of the most insider perspectives possible – the proverbial “fly on the wall” right in the inner sanctums of prime ministers during critical moments, crises and challenges. Avner was present at meetings with several U.S. presidents, European prime ministers and royalty. He also served for a time later in his career as Ambassador to Great Britain. Because Avner kept a daily diary for most of his life along with copious notes of key meetings, he gives the reader actual verbatim dialog of discourses between prime ministers and presidents, ambassadors and cabinet members, celebrities and the celebrated. Weighing-in at over 700 pages, “The Prime Ministers” is not a read for the faint of heart and the hardcover is quite a hefty tome (I actually took this to the beach in Florida for several days, demonstratively impressing people with my supposed intellectualism and/or penchant for weight training) and it will take you a while to get through, but every page is a delight and a surprise, like unwrapping unexpected gifts at holidays or birthdays. Avner has a great storytelling style that is engrossing and entertaining. Probably one of the top five books ever written on Israeli history and politics, it is a must for anyone interested in the first decades of the state.

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