And so an era is over. Joe Torre turned down a pay cut to manage the Yankees again this year, ending a remarkable 12 year run as the most successful baseball manager of his era. The success is not really as remarkable as lasting 12 years as Yankee manager since George Steinbrenner bought the team in 1972. Prior to the stability of the Joe Torre stewardship it seemed Yankee managers lasted an average of about a season and a half. But Joe was successful right off the bat, his team winning the World Series his first year as Yankee manager in 1996 and then 3 more within 5 years.

But I’m not going to talk about any of that, that’s what sports pages are for, recapping one of the great managerial careers in Major League baseball and his eventual shabby treatment by the Yankee front office. Such is life in baseball and especially the Yankees. You’ll be reading reams of this stuff about Joe Torre the Yankee manager and the glory years and the last three frustrating seasons of first place finishes followed by early playoff elimination. Well, Joe fielded the team the Yankees provided him and they played as well as they played and that’s that. There’s only so much mileage to be gotten from aging pitchers well past their prime and no manager can change the fact that young and healthy starting pitchers dominate playoff series. The rest of the inevitable minute dissection of his managerial career (and the Machiavellian jockeying for power in Yankee land now that George Steinbrenner seems to be prematurely senile) has started already and will continue for weeks.

What I want to remember about Joe Torre is my memories of him as a kid. He didn’t play for any New York team in his prime, but was a superb baseball player who’s career I followed because he was from Brooklyn. He started with the Braves in Milwaukee and when they moved to Altanta as a catcher and first baseman. There he was the teammate of baseball royalty like Hank Aaron, Warren Spahn, Eddies Mathews and Lew Burdette. In 1966 he was traded to St. Louis where he was the peer of other baseball immortals like Bob Gibson, Curt Flood, Lou Brock, Dick Allen and a young lefty pitcher named Steve Carlton who later made quite a name for himself in Philadelphia. Joe was one the the elite players in the National League in his salad days, a nine time All Star, a batting champion and Gold Glove winner.

In St. Louis Joe switched from catching and first base to the demanding third base position, something almost unheard of for a slow footed catcher late in his career. Well, Joe Torre earned the coveted Most Valuable Player Award in his first season as a full time third baseman and did Brooklyn proud with his .363 batting average, 24 home runs and 137 runs batted in in 1971. In the waning years of his career he came to the New York Mets, hitting .306 in 1976 , the year before he became the first player/manager in baseball since the days of Ty Cobb. A year later he hung up the spikes and began what seemed to be a snake-bit managerial career, managing one bad team after another and announcing ball games between managing jobs.

Baseball had all but written him off as a viable candidate for new managerial openings when he was the surprise choice to helm the Yankees in ‘96.It had been over a dozen years since their last World Series Championship and the smart money was on anybody else but the respected but low-key Joe Torre. The next 12 years he and his teams made baseball history and cemented his place in the Hall of Fame that narrowly eluded him as a player.

Getting back to Brooklyn, Joe never forgot Marine Park, the neighborhood where he grew that was named for the big flat park chock full of baseball diamonds that was his home away from home. And I remember the Joe Torre Little League he founded in Marine Park. At the end of their year whenever he could he would personally hand out the trophies to the boys who played in that league, a thrill for any Little Leaguer. He also made sure the Joe Torre Little League was well equipped and well coached and whenever the demanding travel schedule of a major league ball player permitted, he would take in a game or conduct a baseball seminar for the boys.

I never played in the Joe Torre league since I come from a couple of neighborhoods over but I knew plenty of kids who did. Our Little League would often play against them and we’d all be hoping to get a glimpse of the great Joe Torre when we did. I had once met Gil Hodges when I was a kid and was speechless when he shook my hand. Well, Gil had been a Brooklyn Dodger and so of course he was huge in Brooklyn. Joe on the other hand played for Milwaukee and St. Louis but was a Brooklyn guy born and bred who never forgot Brooklyn kids and baseball playing boys like myself idolized the man.

In those days baseball players and ex-players were not wealthy men but those like Joe Torre shared what they had and gave of themselves. He didn’t change by being a nationally famous baseball player, he was still the low-key down to earth guy that grew up in Brooklyn. When he did grow wealthy with the Yankees he again gave generously of his money and his time to a Foundation he started called Safe at Home, an organization dedicated to helping children who are victims of domestic violence. His quiet demeanor masks a great passion for baseball and for helping others, two worlds where he had succeeded remarkably. Thanks for everything, Joe. To this day you still teach the kids by your example, showing how a man carries himself; with class, patience, loyalty, humor, dignity, quiet strength and an abiding respect for others. New York is going to miss this son of Brooklyn.

Kudos to Al Gore. He won the Nobel Peace Prize to go along with his Oscar for his movie about global warming called "An Inconvenient Truth." And you just know it's got to be true judging from all the people screaming like 5-years olds with their hands in the cookie jar that it's not true, you're not seeing what you're seeing. I haven't seen such hysterical reaction to a movie since that other great documentary made back in the 1970's, "Deep Throat," perhaps a tad more entertaining than Al's movie but not nearly as thought provoking. Well, maybe it is just as thought provoking, but the kind of thoughts it provoked were quite different from those provoked by "An Inconvenient Truth."

So I'm sitting in my yard in late October wearing shorts and a t-shirt wondering why so many people are screaming that Al Gore's a liar. Usually this time of year it's pretty cool and all the trees are bare. Not this year. The many maple trees lining my block are not ready to give up their foliage until it gets a lot colder than it's been. So while I'm not a scientist and don't play one on TV I can observe what's in front of me and I can read and understand plenty. And one thing I'm pretty good at is reading people, been at that quite some time.

And when I see and hear the people denying Al Gore's message I see a bunch of petulant 5-year olds who want to keep their hand in the cookie jar until the end of time, never thinking that no fresh cookies can be placed in that jar while they are industriously emptying it. Step away from the cookie jar, junior, and let's talk about where a those cookies came from in the first place. Besides, sooner or later you're going to have to eat your vegetables, whether you like it or not. Talk about your inconvenient truths.

We here in America have been hogging the cookie jar for decades, burning more oil than anybody anywhere. That's not an anti-American statement for those of you looking for those sentiments to use to argue against my point of view. Let me say this plainly and get it out of the way: I love America with all my heart and think it is the best possible country on this troubled planet. So if you want to argue any points you're going to actually have to rely on facts and logic and not take the easy way out of attacking my patriotism. Besides, even if I didn't love my country, would that be any reason to disagree with me if I told you that geese fly south in the winter?

They sure do and pretty much anyone can point that out and it would be just as true or false of a statement as the facts bear out and the politics or lifestyle of the person pointing out the obvious has no bearing on any arguments or facts or theories. But just the same, I am proud to be an American but not so proud to have to point that out. I wonder if in France when somebody criticizes society or their government they are dismissed and branded as"UnFrench?" Or in other nation, UnRussian, Unchinese, UnEnglish , UnSwedish and the like. It seems like only over here to we try to tell our own citizens that they're not Americans. What the hell else could i possibly be. I was born and raised here and a product of my nation. Why can't I just be wrong if I'm wrong, or dumb if I'm dumb? And whatever happened to "I may not agree with what you say but I will defend unto death your right to say it?" That's American.

So I'll say again that America has been wasteful in our use of the finite cookie jar that is the world's supply of petroleum and that means me too since last I checked I'm as American as a reality game show. Now we're a nation that put a man on the moon when I was 16 years old, an incredible accomplishment given the available technology of the time. So why can't we figure something else out to power our enjoyable lifestyle other than burning the substance of our planet and choking one another with the resulting fumes? Just for the stink factor alone we ought to at least try. Smog is no joke for people's lungs. What makes us think that it doesn't affect our host planet when you look at all this acrid smoke on a global scale?

America lives a very technology intense existence, all micro-chips and fiber-optic cables, i-phones and lap-tops and the like, but at the bottom of this space age technology it's all powered by the 19th century technology of burning dirty fuel and letting the resulting fumes eat away at our upper atmosphere as well as our sensitive membrane tissues and inner organs. In the past 15 or more years our national response has been best characterized by Humvees, possibly the most ridiculous vehicle ever devised. So all the talk about conservation and fuel economy has been just that, talk.

Now if we could harness the gas coming from the likes of Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh we'd be getting somewhere. If erroneous assumptions presented as irrefutable facts were convertible to energy, those two alone could probably power a city the size of Baltimore well into the next century. Or how about these computer geeks who make billions inventing gizmos for the internet or home computers. As high tech as their creations are, they are still reliant on fossil fuels to power them. Is the irony of fossil-fueled high tech lost on these guys? You think maybe in five million years the fuel of choice might be the rotting remnants of personal computers and palm pilots?

Why not put those thinking caps back on and see if you men and women can invent something tiny and useful that provides energy instead of drains it? This is still America here, people, the place where cutting edge technology is supposed to come from, not the place that is fast becoming the world's poster boy for gluttony and conspicuous consumption at the expense of the rest of the kids who just want a cookie or two from that jar before it's empty. Let's invent a new cookie jar that doesn't smoke up the whole kitchen every time we reach into it.

I think we're good with the gadgets for the time being. How about supporting that new Apollo Program some people started to support Green Energy. Whether or not you think Global Warning is man made or even real, development of new energy sources makes a lot of sense for our nation. Nobody disputes fossil fuel's polluting properties and most Americans are uncomfortable with our ever-increasing dependence on foreign oil. Already our oil demands have gotten us into bed with some very unsavory "Allies" and costs America a lot of hard currency leaving our shores . Does anybody think for a minute we'd have anything but scorn for Saudi Arabia if not for their huge oil spigot? There isn't a nation on earth less like the United States that that woman-hating, jihad-exporting, freedom-oppressing, playboy prince-producing cesspool.

Does anybody refute the fact that the wars we're fighting in the Middle East are not the result of our quest for oil if not directly then at least indirectly? We would have had no reason at all to have any military presence in that region if not for the vast reserves of petroleum being pumped out from under those sandy wastes. Who would have ever heard of Osama Bin Laden or KIng Faisal or any of the tin pot emirs and mullahs that are world famous only because of their connection to the United States, either as enemies, creditors or dependent allies? Outside of diplomats and students of world affairs, darned few of us.

If we had a different source of energy we could let these dysfunctional malcontents sort themselves out and emerge before the world as responsible nations trying to do their best for their own people and wanting to be good neighbors in the world community. We in America would likely consider that none of our business instead of the national obsession it's become. We might send foreign aid or technical and medical support like we do to a lot of places on earth but it would be just as it is with those other places, no big deal and America lending a helping hand to developing nations, no soldiers or mercenaries required.

We've got the brains and the research centers here in America to make alternative energy work. And it doesn't necessarily have to be super cheap to be viable That would be like insisting on only a free lunch to replace the very expensive one we've been eating every single day of our lives. Maybe it will still cost the same to run our cars and heat our home but if it's an American technology the money spent will remain in this country and a lot of good jobs will be created right here. And who know, we might even be come energy exporters to the rest of the world and reverse the outward cash flow of the past half century? And just maybe the next Bill gates will be the guy who starts the Microsoft of the alternative energy industry.

Like the early opportunities offered by personal computers and the internet, the field is wide open to young entrepreneurs with guts and brains and a belief in themselves and their product. America has always produced such men and women in almost every field you can think of; medicine, railroads, technology, automotive, aviation, weaponry, politics, entertainment, communication, etc. Not only our native sons and daughters, either. We have a rich history of providing scholars and inventors from other shores a fertile ground to plant their intellectual seeds and a free system to pursue their goals and gain recognition and profit from their labors.

Alexander Graham Bell was not born here but came and stayed and flourished and changed the world. Werner von Braun was a native German who once worked for the Nazi regime yet he came here and supervised the exciting first steps of our manned space program culminating on our Moon landing in 1969. They recognized America ads the place to be to develop new ideas and a platform from which op transform mankind for the better.

The time is now and the place is here. Global warming is only one reason to get the ball rolling. We've been giving away he store for a long time to pay for our energy and I suspect the hemorrhaging of our jobs to other nations has a lot to do with hight energy costs. Lets stop choking on all the smoke an gagging on the alliances with odious oil-ptroducing nations and declare our independence once more. Either that or drive our Humvees to the unemployment office.

Once upon a time in a kingdom far, far away lived a little boy named Buzz. Buzz was a spirited boy, full of energy and curiosity. His mother said he was a real handful and she never knew what Buzz would do next but she loved him very much and encouraged him to explore his curiosity. He had an older brother Bert and a little sister named Bella. They lived together with their Mom and Dad in a little cottage in a little village called Happyville.

Happyville was a nice little village where people prided themselves on being happy and serene. Everything in Happyville was orderly and quiet and the people there loved their little village and felt it was the neatest and most orderly place in all the kingdom, with only a single exception. That exception was Buzz. Many of the villagers felt that Buzz was a bit too high spirited for Happyville and asked too many questions. Buzz didn't notice that people thought he was different, he was too busy going this way and that way, that way and this, asking everybody questions and exploring his little world.

Buzz wanted to know everything and would always ask why and how an what for. The people in Happyville always answered his questions with "because that's the way things are" or "it's all for the best." These answers did not satisfy Buzz. When he asked why the river near the village turned orange sometimes people told him that it was a "sometimes orange river." That didn't make any sense to Buzz so he explored the river and found a factory next to it a little way outside Happyville where they made paint. When he saw that the factory was sometimes not so careful and spilled things in the river Buzz had his answer, but no one in Happyville seemed to care that Buzz had found the answer to a riddle. They told him the paint factory was owned by Mr. Basskill, a leading citizen of Happyville and a very good man. He must be a good man, they explained, because Mr. Basskill went to church every Sunday and had the biggest house in Happyville, and a very orderly and neat house it was. Besides, Mr.
Basskill was far too busy doing very important things to answer a little boy's questions.

Buzz asked other questions no one could answer. He wanted to know how the mayor of Happyville got to be the mayor. Mayor Glibb had been the mayor for a very long time, since even before his big brother Bert was born. People told Buzz that Mayor Glibb was the mayor of Happyville because that's how things were. He learned in school that in other villages people took turns being mayor and the people of the village decided who would be next. He was told that in Happyville people liked order and serenity so that when it was time to vote for mayor, nobody ran against Mayor Glibb. Nobody in the village wanted to change their happy and serene way of life. Mr. Glibb made sure things never changed for the happy people of Happyville, and that was all for the best.

Buzz asked around and found out that Mayor Glibb used to work at Mr. Basskill's paint factory and was married to Mr. Basskill's sister. He also discovered that Captain Krankee, the chief of Police was also a cousin of Mr. Basskill. Captain Krankee had a big police car and a very impressive uniform with tall shiny boots. The villagers liked Captain Krankee because he made sure people followed the rules, and even if he did seem a little scary sometimes they knew it was all for the best. Buzz wanted to know who made up the rules an where they were written down so he could know these things too, but Captain Krankee told him he'd let him know when he was breaking them and that Buzz ought to watch himself since he was getting very close to breaking the law. That didn't make any sense to Buzz. How can you avoid breaking the rules when you don't know what they are? When he played games with the other boys and girls in the village there were rules that you followed. How would you know what
game you were playing if the rules changed all the time? Buzz was confused.

When he went home that day his Mom an Dad were worried and they took Buzz aside. It seems that someone from Mayor Glibb's office had spoken to them about Buzz and his curious ways and warned them that he didn't start behaving like a regular Happyville villager steps would be taken. Buzz wanted to know what steps were they talking about and his Mom said that in school they gave pills to children who don't behave properly. What kind of pills? Buzz was once again curious. Would he still be curious if he took these pills? Would he still be able to explore his little world, going this way and that, that way and this?

His Dad told him that Miss Primproppa, the principal of the village school assured them the pills would do Buzz no harm but would make him happy and serene. Buzz didn't like the sound of that and didn't like Miss Primproppa all that much in the first place. Many was the time he had been called into her office for being too high spirited. He was already pretty happy but had his doubts about what it meant to be serene. Was this what Captain Krankee meant when he said he'd let me know when I was breaking the rules? Could you still play games with the other children if you were serene? Can I still go this way and that, that way and this?

You see, curious little Buzz was made even more curious about this turn of events. That's the kind of little boy he was, spirited and curious. He wasn't hurting anyone, Buzz reasoned, just trying to learn about the world and have some fun in the process. So he kept going this way and that, that way and this and asking everybody all sorts of questions. Why does everyone in Happyville owe a lot of money to the Happyville bank? Why does Mr. Basskill's son who owns the bank tell everybody to tighten their belts? Were their pants falling down?

What happened to Mrs. Finch, the nice widow who lived next door to Buzz all his life? One day she just wasn't living there anymore and Mr. Basskill's niece now owned Mrs. Finch's cottage, and she wasn't anywhere near as nice as Mrs. Finch. Buzz' father told him Mrs. Finch could not pay her bills and so had to move out, but it was all for the best since he moved in with her daughter and grandchildren, Her daughter's husband used to work at the paint factory but was very sick now and they needed Mrs. Finch's help very much.

Now Buzz started to wonder about the "sometimes orange river" and the way the factory was so careless sometimes spilling stuff into the river so he asked if any other people who worked for Mr. Basskill got very sick. It turns out that a lot of Happyville villagers who worked at the factory got ill, even poor Mrs. Finch's husband who got so sick that he died. Luckily for the other factory workers Mr. Finch was fired before he could make them sick too. Buzz then asked if Mayor Glibb and Captain Krankee were letting the factory know when they were breaking the rules but it seemed that the rules did not apply to the Basskill family, only to the other residents of Happyville. It wouldn't seem proper, he was told, if we went around bothering our leading citizens. They are the people who make Happyville so happy and serene, and it's all for the best.

Buzz asked his school teacher to explain how all this worked for the best. He was as always curious and wanted very much to know these things. His questions earned him a trip to Miss Primproppa's office and with her was Doctor Fielgut, the village doctor. Doctor Fielgut told Buzz that he was a sick boy and needed to take some pills to get better. Buzz didn't feel sick at all and said so but the good doctor said that not every illness is noticeable at first and this one had to be prevented before it got worse. Well, he was after all the village doctor who had taken care of his family always so Buzz took the pills.

He felt pretty much the same afterwards and figured they really were medicine and not the kind of pills his parents had spoken of. He agreed with Doctor Fielgut and Miss Primproppa that the medicine would be their little secret so as not to alarm the rest of the village and put their happiness and serenity at risk. So every day before class he stopped at the school nurse's office and took his medicine. Soon Buzz was feeling quite happy and serene and nobody visited his parents to complain about him and Captain Krankee even greeted Buzz with a big smile and a pat on the head when he ran into him.

One day after school his little sister Bella asked Buzz some questions. She adored Buzz and was like him in many ways, curious and high spirited. She asked Buzz about the orange river and about Mr. and Mrs. Finch, the Basskill family and he factory and Captain Krankee and why things were the way they were in Happyville. Buzz loved his little sister and wanted her to be happy and serene. Then he told her that Happyville was the best little village in the whole kingdoms and the happiest and most serene and orderly place you could hope for. "It's all for the best, Bella," said Buzz with a serene smile. Buzz was puzzled when his little sister started crying very hard, but he didn't get upset himself. He knew that good Happyville villagers are happy and serene and orderly of mind and spirit so he hugged his baby sister and comforted her, whispering in her ear over and over, "It's all for the best, Bella, all for the best…" }

As part of my campaign for the Vice Presidency, I actually did a small bit of work looking into what it is they actually do and to my relief it is just as I suspected: damned little. My kind of job, sort of like those no-show jobs where mobsters extort a construction company to get paychecks for some of their "associates" in exchange for not killing anybody involved in the construction project, only this one is legit. Not that the job of VP commands much more respect than Paulie Walnuts, but who cares about that? The Vice Presidency a desirable plum that comes with a mansion, a jet, bodyguards, a large staff, a great salary and a sweet pension for life for a job where you do next to nothing. What's not to love?

The Vice President's only meaningful duty is to be of President Pro-Tem of The Senate. It sounds important and like it's a real chore but it's not. He shows up for the opening session and maybe once in a blue thereafter to cast the deciding vote on issues where there is a 50-50 tie in the Senators' voting. Even that seemingly important task is a no-brainer since the VP casts the vote the way his boss, the actual President, wants him to. This way there's no tedious investment on the part of the Vice President in learning the issues and weighing the benefit or detriment to the nation of the piece of legislation in question. Busier minds than his have already made that decision, thank the lord.

But a lot of Vice presidents seem to have had a pet project they wanted to get done, more to give them something to do than anything else. It usually involves some money-wasting boondoggle that puts up a statue of Davey Crocket or the Wright Brothers in the main square of their home town even though those guys didn't come from that town, projects having nothing to do with running the country but giving them something to show for their four years of anonymity. Well, I didn't have any such project in mind, figuring I'll be content to explore the world on Uncle Sam's tab in Air force 2, but I wracked my brain anyway for something that would benefit only the people of my home town and would cost a whole lot of money for the people of the rest of the nation. That's the American way, you see.

We've got plenty enough statues here in Brooklyn and there's a whole lot of construction projects going on that need no help at all from any Vice President so I'm kind of stumped. Then I'm driving in gridlock traffic one day on our only highway and it hits me. Build another highway in Brooklyn! There's 3 million people here and what seems like 4 million cars but only one highway that skirts around the edge of Brooklyn. But in the spirit of the Vice Presidency, I don't want to initiate any major projects that would take anything resembling a monumental effort. Very unseemly for man in an honorary position who's already booked up visiting the French Riviera to study the impact of topless bathing on society, inspecting our nation's bourbon distilleries and judging beauty contests in Brazil. Then the ideal location strikes me, one that is already in existence and would require no tearing up of neighborhoods like all highway projects seem to do. It's practically
controversy-free,very Vice Presidential.

There's an abandoned railroad cutting through Brooklyn the runs from the Canarsie Wholesale Markets to our once-busy waterfront. It used to haul a ton of produce back and forth but has not been used in a couple of decades. Why not make it a highway? The location is ideal since the end that's on the waterfront could easily hook up with the Belt Parkway where where it becomes the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and also to the approaches to the Verazano Bridge. Bingo! That makes it an Interstate Roadway, all monies for its construction and maintenance to be provided by Uncle Sam. No property need be condemned, no neighborhoods ripped apart and the beauty of it all is that railroads come under the jurisdiction of the Federal Government, where I'll just happen to be the #2 man, even if only on paper. Even a low-level federal bureaucrat gets to waste a few billion on useless nonsense, so the VP probably has a huge budget for boondoggles.

I figure that with all the billions and billions of taxpayer dollars already being wasted by the President and Congress at a feverish clip, what's a couple of bil to humor the Vice President? They'll be happy to give me a project that will further keep me out of their hair so they can proceed with the serious business of flushing billions of your dollars down the drain. And Brooklyn will get another highway out of the deal instead of a statue of Davey Crocket. And another beauty of the deal is that I won't have to do any actual work to make it happen, the mayor and state officials will move heaven and earth to get their lunch hooks on more Federal dollars, having already blown through their own huge budgets of State and Municipal taxes. All I need do is lend my name to the project, then stand back and get out of the way of the stampede for federal subsidies.

Odds are they'll name the highway after yours truly. It won't take all that long, either. The land's already cleared and graded for the defunct railroad, they'll just have to build the exit and entrance ramps, rip up the rails and pave the old railway bed with asphalt. Instant highway! With any luck I'll be able to cut the ribbon as a sitting Vice President, making a rare public appearance for the sake of my grateful hometown supporters who will be glad to have a new road rather than another statue of somebody from someplace else. And just maybe the gridlock on the parkway will be reduced the next time I'm headed to Coney Island for Nathan's hot dogs.

I know what you're saying, that this project is a vanity pork barrel project designed to benefit only me in my quest to get around Brooklyn faster. Well, you think I'm the only one who gets an itch for Nathan's hot dogs or a spin on the Wonder Wheel? Hardly. And what else would you expect from a man who has a do-nothing job, The Hoover Dam? The Lincoln Tunnel? Just be glad to get this dinky 6-mile stretch of highway and be grateful I didn't insist on a statue of Daniel Boone in Grand Army Plaza. I could do less, you know, just like the great majority of our Vice Presidents. Vote for Bob Crespo for #2 in '08. My motto? Less means less!

I could have saved a lot of people a lot of trouble if only they listened. Take the geniuses over at AOL for example. They were once the big kid on the block when it came to e-mail servers, the industry standard if you will. Only problem was that they charged a monthly fee for their services while their competitors charged substantially less, like nothing, free, zero dollars, yours for the asking. How do they make any money, wondered AOL? The ads, stupid, all the advertising on every page on the internet.

People need to buy stuff and the more people that peruse your advertisement the more stuff you're likely to sell and when said people are perusing the internet for free there's likely to be no shortage of them. So, noting this new phenomenon, that people will gladly eat a free lunch, the AOL brain trust responded decisively. How? They raised their prices, figuring that a costly monthly bill will convince consumers that they are getting something the freebie users are not.

I could have told them that AOL users don't associate exclusively with other AOL users so word of the free web hosts that give them the identical services would spread quickly. So what happens? From 30 million subscribers they're down to about 12 million people willing to pay a toll on a free road, still raking in a lot of monthly dough but the value of their stock plummeted from 236 billion yahoos down to about 20 billion netzeros pretty quick, even with their merger with Time/Warner.

Now 20 bil is still a lot of money, but making 216 billion hotmails disappear overnight is quite a magic trick, one that I'm assuming doesn't amuse their investors all that much. Not even the car companies can match those losses. But did they listen and go the free e-mail route like I told them? Ask Yahoo and the other free e-mail companies that are growing in leaps and bounds. But like I've said time and again, nobody listens.

Take good old O.J. Simpson. Here you are a lucky son of a gun acquitted of slicing and dicing your ex-wife and some poor shnook who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Here was your big chance in life to turn things around and be a good person, live out your life quietly and raise your kids and learn something from your mistakes. Maybe do some volunteer work in hospitals, some public speaking warning young people not to act like you did, that sort of thing. Get some therapy for himself and his children. In short, get humble and try to be a good person.

Did he take that advice? Ask the guy who he robbed at gunpoint last month in Vegas. Ask the publisher of a book in which he all but brags he got away with two murders. Ask the judge who relieved him of his Rolex watch to give to the the dead guy's family to compensate them for his death. Ask his kids, who are probably living the strangest life imaginable and must live in fear every day of their lives. Ask anyone with a lick of common sense. Just don't ask O.J. himself if their are any sharp implements handy.

How about that Donald Trump guy? To his credit he never murdered anybody but he sure is one annoying son of a bitch. He's been told time and time again that nobody likes a bully and a delusional egomaniac. He dismisses that kind of talk as jealousy over his great wealth. Oh yeah? What about Bill Gates, the richest guy on the planet? He's not hated like The Donald. But then Trump brags about his prowess with women, saying stupid things like he's the best lover since Casanova. What did he think these gold digging bimbos are going to tell him, the truth? That he's the biggest gas bag this side of the Goodyear blimp and a boring braggart?

Then he goes and gets in a public fight with Rosie O'Donnel, America's favorite bull dyke. He calls her a fat slob and then tells the world with a straight face that he could seduce her girlfriend, by definition also a lesbian and so not interested in anything The Donald had to offer, even his money since Rosie's plenty rich too. Well, she doesn't back down and she goes to the mat with Trump and pretty much wipes the floor with him. Good for Rosie. She always was an enjoyable personality and not afraid to be who she is in a very public way. Plus she's a real funny comic and a superb entertainer, something Trump thought he was but found out different.

The Donald, on the other hand, can't invent enough imaginary attributes for himself. Come on pal, grow up already! Let me talk to you man to man here, The Donald. Mind if i call you The? All us guys when we were little boys imagined ourselves to be things we weren't: cowboys, firemen, movies stars, heroes, Mickey Mantle, you name it. Then we grew up and we are what we are and we're not what we're not. It's knowing your assets and your liabilities that made you a great businessman, The. Why can't you apply that to your actual life?

Like we say in Brooklyn, nothing wrong with you that two quick slaps wouldn't cure. You'll snap out of quick and get over yourself. You'll thank me for it afterward, believe me, unless of course you need two more sharp smacks. Some guys seem to need more than one wake-up call. Let me know, I know plenty of people besides myself who'd be happy to help you out there. Line forms to the left.

Why The Donald is not happy to be a talented builder and developer blessed with great wealth is beyond me. He's all that for sure and has built many exciting buildings, most of them with his name plastered all over them but nonetheless he knows how to get things done in the real estate and development world. Wouldn't that be enough for most people, to be really good at something and to succeed in it beyond your wildest dreams? Why bother with lousy reality TV shows that reveal a mean-spirited bully and a delusional fool who like to make his interns jump through hoops before he fires them in a cruel and vicious way. Shut up already and build something.

Author's Note: The woods are thick with people who don't listen. I think I'm going to make this a regular feature on this website. Anybody who knows a prominent example of such people is welcome to let me know about them by clicking on the Contact part of the site menu. For more on the subject, just click on Stories and Esaays and read Nobody Listens. Ciao for now. -Bob Crespo
P.S. bobcrespo.com is now accepting nominations for the TWO QUICK SLAPS AWARDS. Anybody you think has earned Two Quick Slaps for public idiocy is welcome for consideration by our panel of judges (me) in the following categories: Politics, Industry, Blond Bimboism, Celebrity Idiocy, Sports, Fashion or any category you deem worthy of the prestigious Two Quick Slaps Award. I already have way too many volunteers offering to administer the Two Quick Slaps to the lucky winners so don't overload the bobcrespo.com switchboard with phone calls, just e-mail us your nominations with reasons why this or that person deserves Two Quick Slaps.

Jack Hobbs here, thirties guy. The reason I'm called thirties guy is that I got sent here in a time machine in early September. Turns out it was a one-way trip. I thought I'd be here for half a day, tops, snap some pictures and disappear back to 1937. Didn't happen. My friend Bob, who's blog this is, helped me learn about the internet and I looked up old Doc Willoughby, the dotty old professor who sent me here. His bum ticker went kablooey shortly after I left and he died a month after that, so here I am for good.

Well, I did like the Doc told me, I knocked on the first door I ran across and I'm lucky it was old Bob answering the doorbell. Another guy might have had me committed with the story I told him. He heard me out, sort of giving me the fish eye at first, see, but little by little he sees I'm a square Joe. Lucky I had my copy of the Daily News, same as his only 70 years to the day older and the ink still fresh. That, plus my clothes (I still can't believe regular hats are a no-go these days.), the money I carried, the brand new camera which was now a valuable antique, the little shaving kit in my overcoat pocket and the lingo I use, well it all added up. It should, since it's the God's honest, believe you-me.

Well, good old Bob turned out to be a real friend an a pretty savvy Joe. He took me in and let me stay with him while he wised me up to the ways of this century. Being a teletype operator by trade, I'm a whiz at the typewriter so I took to the computer like a fish to water and Bob showed me around the internet and all the info available there. Maybe too much, so he taught me how to separate the wheat from the chaff if you get my drift. I got so I could tell in a flash whether a site was worthwhile or not and I had a lot of catch-up ball to play so I didn't waste my time on
eye-candy, although I hope to explore some of the fun sites soon.

Seeing as I needed dough and there being no call for teletype operators anymore Bob tells me about the internet auction house e-Bay we're we sold my camera for a cool 50 grand. As luck would have it there was a nice little apartment available right across the street from Bob's house so here I am. My little nest egg gave me some breathing room to figure out my next move. I bought some nice second-hand furniture, a TV, a stereo and splurged on a brand new Mac computer like Bob's, a pretty sweet little machine. I saw right off that with today's prices my 50 large wouldn't go all that far so I pretty much holed up in my joint and started reading and doing research on the internet to learn about this world and to try to locate any of my family still alive.

Turns out there's a heck of a lot to learn about those 70 missing years I skipped. A world war, a Holocaust, a cold war, a Berlin Wall, space ships, television, nuclear bombs, cell phones, computers, little wars, not so little wars, terrorists, 2 extra states in the Union for an even 50, jet planes, disappearing railroads, exporting American jobs to countries that do them on the cheap, assassinations, velcro, women's lib, drugs, video games, aluminum siding, electric car windows, automatic transmissions, pop-tops on cans, microwave ovens, giving drugs to little children to make them behave, multiplex movie houses, labels on the outside of clothes, music CD's, DVD players, Presidential campaigns that start the minute a new president is sworn in, the breakup of the European Empires(about time), Walk/Don't Walk signs on street corners, tax havens in the Bahamas so rich guys and corporations don't have to pony up their fair share, the Verazano Bridge, Civil Rights movements, Peace
Movements, and now a Green Movement so the ice caps don't melt with all the gas we're burning and drown the Statue of Liberty. Some of it I get, some I don't.

Here's something I don't get: You got a bunch of bozos running around spraying red paint on pretty ladies' swell fur coats because they're worried about animals in a world where people are still starving and getting slaughtered at the same clip they were back in '37 when the Japs started mowing Chinamen over in Manchuria and half the world was hungry. Now I'm not a wiseacre that thinks torturing animals is okay, never was. I never did like to see horses mistreated, and we still had a lot of working horses here in New York in 1937 pulling fruit carts and hauling junk and the like, or anybody treat their dog or their cat lousy. Those kind of people are no better than rats, see, but I just thought that sort of goes without saying.

So what's up with these PETA people making such a big stink? PETA stands for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Why isn't there a People For Ethical Treatment of People group? They could spray all that red paint on the embassies of these countries I read about that slaughter their own citizens if you want to protest something important. Or ask our own government some pointed questions about some of their behavior lately and demand some straight answers, something I don't see too much of around here. Anyway, that's neither here nor there. If people want to make a spectacle of themselves this is still America and they've got every right to put on the dunce cap if the want to I suppose. That's one reassuring thing about jumping ahead all those years, that America is still a wide open place where a guy can still speak his mind, so I figure I can put in my two-cents worth too.

So now I'm getting wise to pretty recent history with the attacks on New York and Washington in 2001. I see where the President right away went after the guy responsible, some Saudi Arabian guy with a turban and a hillbilly beard living in a cave in Afghanistan. So it made sense to go after him. He's the bad guy, right?. What I don't get, and nobody can really get it through my thick skull, is why we let this guy off the hook and then went and attacked Iraq, some country that wasn't exactly a a paradise but then again wasn't involved in the jet attacks. Sounds like the big shots down in D.C.have been smoking some of those reefer sticks the jazz musicians on 52nd Street over in Midtown like so much.

And now here it is 6 years later and nobody in charge seems to know what's what. Even in the worst of the hard times back in the 30's people sort of figured the government knew what it was doing. They had all kinds of plans and programs and they'd tell the people exactly what it was they were doing. They didn't claim to have a magic wand to make the hard times disappear, but they were real busy doing things and not sitting on their hands hoping for the best and not saying anything to the American people about the things that were going wrong. I don't see a plan down there in Foggy Bottom these days, but then again, look at the sad sack who's President now and the bunch of bozos around him. I wasn't here during the two elections that he won, but I can't help but wonder if his opponents were kidnappers or cat burglars or something worse. I mean, how else could such a chump get elected President? And who taught this guy how to speak, Porky Pig?

Which reminds me, I've got to register to vote. Might as well have my say-so in the matter as long as I'm here in the future for good. They'll probably give me a hard time at the Board of Elections when I tell them I was born in 1907, I've been getting a lot of that lately. See, I'm only 30 but I'm really 100 years old, if you follow. Once I got over the shock of knowing I'm not going back to '37 I figured I should make myself a part of society. I tried to renew my driver's license and almost got arrested for forgery when I showed them my old one. Even though it was expired for quite a spell, it's the real McCoy.

I also went to the IRS office to pay my taxes on the 50 grand I got and again almost got arrested. But I stuck to my guns, see, and all the ID in my wallet is the real deal, including my discharge papers from the U.S. Marine Corps. Bob says I should have been more careful about revealing myself but I says thanks for the advice but I wanted to stand up and be counted. As a result I was getting a lot of visits from guys in government agencies I never heard of, wanting me to go with them and get physical exams and be held in protective custody and such, for my own good they tell me, if you can swallow that fishbone. What's so good about that? I ask these jokers and then they change tack and say it's for the good of the nation and I tell them that no matter what year we're in that's still the Stars and Stripes flying over the Post Office. Now I'm a former Marine who saw some pretty wicked combat in South America (we had our small wars back in the 20's too) so I've paid my dues to my
country and I tell these cloak and dagger boys just where to get off, see.

I'm an American and I know my rights so I ask them if I committed any crime for wanting to pay my fair share of taxes and renew my driver's license. They said not that they know of but they were pretty sure I was some kind of con artist trying to pull something over on everybody. Prove it, says I, and they insist I come with them but I got my friend Bob with me and some neighbors as witnesses so they tell me they'll get a warrant to take me away. Now my Irish is up and Bob puts me in touch with a lawyer who does Civil Liberty work and the guy takes such an interest in the case he's representing me pro bono, which means gratis, bubkas, on the arm, free, you get my drift. Imagine that, Jack Hobbs with his own mouthpiece. His name's Jim Connaly, another Irish-American like me and at first he thinks I'm nutty as a fruitcake but even so I deserve full protection under the law. Amen to that, brother.

Anyway, this Jim Connaly guy gets the straight story from me and from Bob and looks into the research we've been doing and he starts to believe my story. Then he takes a gander at my copy of the Daily News and has it scientifically tested, and also my ID papers, my clothes, my shaving kit and even me personally by a whole battery of doctors including two shrinks who both found me as sane as a the next guy. Turns out like I said, everything's authentic. Besides, I tell them all, if I was a scammer I think I'd be sharp enough to come up with something a lot easier for a mark to swallow than time traveling. Where's the angle in that?

Then Jim looks up the guy who bought my camera and has it tested too in some science lab or other and it turns out it's the real deal too. They said they could establish definitely that the camera was recently manufactured but no place on earth could have produced it in the last 60 or 70 years. The film I sold him hasn't been manufactured since 1940, is impossible to make nowadays and would not have lasted for more than 5 years without disintegrating but instead it was brand new, in perfect shape and took excellent photographs. No way to fake that. Same with my copy of the Daily News, authentic and new right down the ink and the type of paper, both of which you can't get anymore anywhere and with no signs of aging at all. Then he has me fingerprinted and sure enough the Marine Corps still has my prints from the 1920's and of course they're a perfect match and my Marine official photo is undeniably me as an eighteen year-old recruit. The Corps never forgets one of its own.

So now this Jim Conally's scratching his head and wondering what he's got himself into. I ask him how do you think I feel? He thought I was just some loony-toon who's not hurting anybody but now he knows I'm Jack Hobbs, born 1907, disappeared 1937, reappeared 2007 none the worse for wear. He tells me he's in over his head and I have no idea what the government might do to me so now I ask him if he thinks I committed any crime by traveling through time. He says no, of course not, it's just that he never represented a time traveler before and I say well I never was one before so we're even steven.

So then he asks if he knows what kind of can of worms I'm opening and do I really want to become one of the most publicized men in history and maybe called a lunatic or a phony and have my privacy invaded in ways a man from my time could not even imagine and I say I never thought of it that way, I just that I want to do what's right, number one, and stand up an be counted as a man. And number two I've simply got to find out if any family I got left is okay, see if maybe they need my help. What's right is right, no matter what century you're in, end of story.

So Jim tells me boy, you sure are from 1937. Well, I wasn't born yesterday, I says, I could have told you that. Then he says I'm not getting the picture here and it may not be too late to drop all this and I go about my life quiet like none of this ever happened. He says maybe I should think about it and he'll tell the docs and the laboratories who tested me and my stuff it was all an elaborate hoax and I ask him if he was born yesterday. Does he really think any of those doctors and scientists are going to forget about discovering brand new stuff from 1937 that hasn't aged and turned yellow, including me?

Then he looks at me and shrugs his shoulder and say we're both in for the ride of our lives. I said I already took one heck of a ride, what's one more? So he agrees to stay on, not really knowing what to expect. He said certain government people had already been in touch with him, asking if my presence could be explained away by some sort of coma or something. A coma? I ask him how they think I wouldn't age in a coma, or get all soft and atrophied like what happens to people in long comas but I'm in the pink, see, I've always taken good care of myself, not one of those flabby Joes who let themselves go to pot.

And besides, the docs gave me every test known to man and established beyond any doubt that there's stuff in my blood that isn't in anybody else's blood these days, on account of the food I ate all my life is different from food today and some other things about my body that place me in a world long gone. No vaccinations, the way a broken bone was set, some recent dental work that's also brand new but obsolete and impossible to duplicate today, plus a couple of other tests with something called DNA and some other stuff I don't really savvy but they say are ironclad. You think those guys are going to forget about the most unusual case of their careers? Do I have to paint you a picture here, Jimmy my boy?

And bedsides, I told Jim, don't this mean that you'll be the most famous lawyer since Clarence Darrow? That'll only mean money in the bank for you from here on out. He says he didn't get into law to get rich but to help people who weren't getting a fair shake, which made me like the guy even more. He said that now his main job is to protect me from getting spirited away by secret government guys and I asked what he meant by that, this is still America, ain't it, and your job is to make sure it behaves like America for everybody, no matter who they are, right? So Jim says yep, that's pretty much his job description so he guessed that I'm the smallest minority as the only time traveler ever so I fit the description to a tee.

So that's where we stand so far, me trying to establish myself here and Jim trying to keep the government from making me disappear. I ask him for some help tracking down my family an he says that's a great idea, maybe they have photographs of you and can ID you positively. I say sure, sure, that would help but I'd really love just to see the kids again, let 'em know their Uncle Jack didn't just skip out on them when they were little. I've been making friends here and old Bob has been a great pal, but as the weeks pass I really miss being part of a family. Funny how stuff you take for granted seems so important when it's taken away.

I just want to see the look on the faces of my kid brother Joe's children Joey Junior and Marie when they see Uncle Jack back in their lives. I realize they'll be geezers by now if they're even still alive and I'm still looking the same as the last time they saw me, a couple of days before my time trip, but family's family and I really hope I can find them. I miss them a lot and I want to be a part of their lives like I used to be. Bob says I can use his blog whenever I like so I'll keep you posted when I know more. My lawyer Jim says it's a good thing we went public with all the tests or the government would have spirited me away somewhere to keep me a secret and they still might try it so if you don't hear from me soon that means I'm being held against my will by one of these secret spy agencies I keep hearing about. Just when did they get invented anyway? And just who came up with the notion that America should have secret police? I thought that was for the likes of Stalin
and Hitler and jokers like that. America got along hunky-dory without them.

That sort of thing worries me but like I said, I'm not backing down. My mother didn't raise any quitters, see. Maybe I'll tell my attorney and my friend Bob to spread the word that I'm really a coyote or a spotted owl so the animal rights groups will start a campaign to spring me from custody. Doesn't seem like any other group around nowadays gets that worked up over a guy getting locked away for no good reason.

So here I am in front of the computer today with a vacant stare. I sat down to write a blog but instead read some funny e-mails my friend Ed sent me, looked at wild lions eating Bambi’s mother on you-tube, e-mailed some people and generally wasted time since I was coming up empty on a blog topic. Yesterday I was going to interview the Times Square naked guy but changed my mind when I discovered he just wasn’t that interesting. And believe me, you’ve got to be pretty dull when your dullness overrides a front page story about your naked stroll through Times Square. That’s not easy, so I suppose I should say kudos to the naked guy for doing the impossible.

But that wasn’t helping me today. Blank page city, or I should say, blank screen virtual locale. Not that I miss writing on paper all that much. I still write songs that way and it works well for me but prose writing on paper is a pain in the butt to with my decided lack of organizational skills. I just tend to fling pages aside when I’m done with them and figure out the order later. To say nothing of my lousy penmanship. Even I can’t decipher it when I get in a groove and keep writing. It was a lot of work to figure out my work so the computer is a snap, like a typewriter with a memory and instant white out.

But today there was no writing groove to be had so I killed time by Googling myself. Sure enough, there were a bunch of listings for Bob Crespo, little capsule descriptions of various blogs and a couple mentioning my music. Pretty cool, thought I, so I did the same with Yahoo and there were some more, even some references to articles I wrote years ago about the Lubavitch Chasidic community in Brooklyn. So now I went to Dogpile, the only other search engine I can think of. They had me in there too a bunch of times. All the listings in the different search engines were the same.

So now I’m wondering who writes these little blurbs? Is there some guy out there who’s job it is to view all the web sites out there and write capsule descriptions of them? I sure didn’t provide them. Now I have to admit that there’s whole lot I don’t know about the internet. My son Rob keeps educating me and I looked up it’s origins how it works and still it’s a mystery to me. I know there are huge companies like Google and Yahoo and Amazon and e-Bay and AOL and a bunch more who do a lot of business on the internet.

I really don’t know what the heck Google is or exactly how they operate. I do know that they’re incredibly successful because its two founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page are listed among the fifty richest people in the world, worth a cool 18.5 billion apiece. Not too shabby for a couple of pups born in 1973. So they’re 34 years old and just about the two youngest billionaires around, which I guess answers my question of why they are still working.

No, it doesn’t, not really. Guys, retire already! What have you got to shoot for! 18 more billion? Same with the Yahoo guys, who raised 38 billion in their first IPO, shorthand for initial public offering to buy stock in their company, which a whole lot of people did. Well, my initial offer would have been my last day at work with 38 bil in the bank. I’d hire me some earnest computer geek to run the show and take it easy forever, do what I felt like doing when I felt like it, see the world, give a bunch of dough to charity and live extra large, maybe even XXX large. There’s lots of things in this world to do besides work. To each his own, I guess. I’ve noticed it’s always guys with no money like me who tell rich guys they should retire and enjoy life when they’re probably enjoying life just fine doing what they do.

So whatever it is they do they do it extremely well. But now I’m wondering if there’s a blurb writing company out there who provides those little synopses for each web listing. They’re always very accurate so you figure these people have to actually familiarize themselves with the subject matter. And when some Google listings tell you that your search produced three hundred thousand, seven hundred and fifty seven matches, that’s a lot of blurb writing so I’m figuring there’s huge teams of these people in some giant cubicled office building someplace viewing websites and describing them in brief. Do they charge Google and Yahoo for this service?

I know I haven’t received a bill for these very complimentary little descriptions of me and my work. And not everybody gets such complimentary write-ups. Sometimes they’re pretty negative, like when some product or service or person has been complained about by a bunch of people, then the capsule review tells you what pieces of crap the folks at this particular listing are. That’s gotta bite it if it’s your site. But then again, when you read these negative blurbs, it seems these sites earned the kick in the ass by stealing or lying or just being generally useless. (Note to self: Don’t lie or cheat or steal. Not only are these things wrong, which in and of itself ought to be reason enough not to do them, but if you do them on the internet you get bitch-slapped in front of the whole world. The useless part I’m not sure I can do anything about. After all, I’m writing a blog here, not providing an education, feeding the hungry or curing plagues. It’s definitely a leisure pursuit
item you can take or leave and still survive well enough, although skipping bobcrespo.com is not recommended for reasons of mental health. Mine.)

I like that about the internet. If you screw up, you get called on it, no matter who you are. Pretty democratic if you ask me. Are there Internet ethics I ought to know about now that I’m a part of it? Do I need a lawyer? I hope not. I’m betting that the old right and wrong and do unto others stuff my Mom taught me will carry me here like they have for my whole life so far. Of course in my writing I have insulted some people and made fun of plenty others but I’d do that to their face too. What good is being from Brooklyn if you can’t call a spade a spade or have a little fun with people?

And I can’t say it enough: I’m still amazed that this huge thing is not owned by some giant corporation and stringently controlled. I guess I’m used to heavy handed corporate thuggery and can’t get used to the freedom of a system that allows anybody to take part in it in any way they want and not have to pay heavily for the privilege. So I’m happy to be here doing whatever it is that I do. Which is another thing I love about the web, the very elastic job description. When I figure out exactly what it is I do around here, I’ll let you know. Meanwhile. go Google yourself. And may your capsule reviews be forever positive.

So now Rudy Giuliani's selling himself to the folks in other states as the guy who saved New York from itself. He states that New Yorkers did not agree with his ideas but elected him twice since we liked his results. Well, count me out, America's Mayor. Rudy Giuliani was on his way out of office in disgrace when two jets took down the World Trade Center. It was a horrible day for New York City and for the nation as a whole but it was the day that made Giuliani famous , an opportunity he seized eagerly and he has been earnestly selling himself as New York's savior ever since, making himself a very wealthy man. What a load of crap.

His supporters point out the fact that he was on the scene during the attacks directing the rescue operations and rallying citizens. Bullshit. The only reason he was anywhere near downtown that morning is because he was trying to get to the city government's emergency control headquarters, a command station designed to keep services and leadership up and running in the event of a major catastrophe such as the attacks of 9/11. So he was basically wandering around dodging debris like thousands of other citizens and had no impact whatsoever on the efforts to fight the raging infernos and to evacuate people to safety. He was too busy trying to save his own ass.

And believe me, there's nothing to complain about there. I don't blame him at all. The area was a hellish nightmare and one's natural reaction would be to flee the flaming death raining down all around you. Just don't try to sell it as leadership after the fact. Admit you were as confused and frightened as any of the other non-rescue personnel on the scene and leave at that. Tell the world the truth, that you were trying to reach your bunker where you could maybe get a handle on this situation.

The only problem with that concept is that Rudy had this center located in one of the Twin Towers, in fact insisted upon it over the strong objections of emergency service professionals. After all, 9/11 was not the first attack on the World Trade Center. In 1993 a huge truck bomb was placed beneath them in a parking garage. The towers withstood the shock but a lot of damage was done, a few people were killed and the buildings evacuated. Many eyes were opened as to their vulnerability, most notably the eyes of Osama Bin Laden who would finally figure out eight years later how to take the offending towers down.

But Giuliani's best people also saw the danger and urged the mayor to locate his emergency command center underground either in Brooklyn or on the upper West side of Manhattan, two locations apparently not prestigious enough for the mayor. So he took over a couple of floors of one of the Twin Towers and put his bunker there, complete with thousands of gallons of diesel fuel. Just what that disaster needed, more combustible material.

Add that to the fact that Mr. Leadership, in the eight years between the attacks, did nothing to improve radio communications between the emergency services. In the 1993 attack an in many other lesser but grave emergencies, fire, police and emergency medical personnel could not communicate with one another with the radio systems they were using. It was no surprise to anyone in any of these services that radio communication was one of the first casualties of 9/11, and that loss led to a lot of unnecessary deaths of these incredibly brave professionals who could not hear the orders to evacuate the towers before they collapsed.

Giuliani knew beforehand that this was a grave problem and had done nothing to change the system. So instead of being America's Mayor rushing to the scene to lead the troops it turns out he was just a clueless phony whose own actions and omissions prior to that day only made a terrible disaster even worse. Maybe he was too distracted trying to explain away his complicated marital status to install a proper disaster response in America's largest city and in many ways the capital of the planet itself.

It seems that in the waning days of his mayoralty he was preoccupied defending himself against people who thought it unseemly for a Family Values Republican Guy to install his mistress in Gracie Mansion, embarrassing his wife and children very publicly. Add that to the fact that people were starting to wonder about his first marriage that lasted eight years. Nothing unusual about that except that this first marriage was to his cousin. Nice. Rudy the Vanquisher of Squeegie Guys was starting to wear thin on people who expect a modicum of decent behavior even from their favorite megalomaniacs. Even fools like Donald Trump were looking good by comparison, no easy feat.

Not only was his complicated love life being widely discussed, but it was revealed that the effective policing tactics he claimed he invented to "clean up New York" were actually implemented by his predecessor mayor David Dinkins and his talented Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly. Also the fact that his administration had been a disaster for small businesses was coming to light. And now to hear him sell himself as our savior who taught us all how to behave is just too much. He has the balls to try to rewrite history when the people who were here with him are still around. At least with the Holocaust denying lunatics they waited for most of the victims to die before launching their odious campaign.

So basically Giuliani wants to rob the history bank in broad daylight with no mask and then tell you he was just making a withdrawal when all the people who were on line at the bank that day can tell you different. The man was no hero. Not that he was a coward, I won't call him that. He was just a guy in a bad place trying to run for cover. And a guy who by both his actions and inactions before the fact made a bad situation even worse and cost some wonderful and brave people their lives. The fact that he's portraying himself all over the country as something different makes him a liar and an opportunist building a reputation on shit that never happened.

This is a guy who was proud to ban the sale of Chianti at the San Genaro feast in Little Italy but the Federal Prosecutor who couldn't nail Mafia boss John Gotti. It was Rudy in charge of the many acquittals of Gotti that earned him the nickname "The Teflon Don." It as only after Giuliani was safely out of the way as mayor of New York when capable prosecutors finally nailed Gotti. I mean, it's not like Gotti was some clever guy or anything. He was a venal publicity hound who made no secret of who he was a what he did for a living. Any first year law graduate could have made an ironclad case against this guy. But not America's Mayor.

So is this the guy people will vote for to keep our nation secure and enforce our laws? The man who changed his mind about gun control and abortion to kiss the asses of the Christian Fascists who are sticking their noses into Caesar's business these days? The man who's talking about his former constituency like a bunch of petulant children he had to straighten out? Hell, his own children hate his guts and with good reason, he publicly humiliated them and their mother. This is the guy people are seriously considering nominating for President? His record as a leader and a prosecutor are very recent and very public. Just look at the facts and not the myth. Don't make the same mistake New York City did. Chances are you'll suffer and he'll profit from it.

The other day In Times Square some guy named Josh Drimmer decided to take a stroll. Nothing unusual there, it's a cool place to wander around. Lots to see. But good old Josh decided he'd like to do it naked so he stripped down to his birthday suit and gave the tourists something else to see. Now Times Square is a pretty wild place, long known as a pretty wide open sexual supermarket, what with the peep shows, adult clubs and no shortage of ladies of the evening.

Only problem was, this wasn't the evening. Broad daylight, eleven in the morning on a Thursday afternoon. That time of day all the self-respecting perverts and professional ladies are sleeping and Times Square is full of tourists, taxis and workers taking an early lunch. So the guy kind of stood out. He ambled along pretty casually, wearing only a little piece of jewelry on his ankle and checking his messages on his cell phone, not a care in the world. People made a few comments but no one hassled him, at least not at first.

Naked strolling must be hungry work so Josh decided to hit the Olive Garden, which was not yet open for business. Instead of finding someplace that was open and one with maybe a less stringent dress code, the guy starts banging on the locked door to the Olive Garden. When the workers wouldn't let him in he crossed the street to Tad's Steak House and jumped up and down on the counter. If you want service in a restaurant in Manhattan that's probably one of the least effective ways to get your waiter's attention.

He did get the bouncer's attention, though, and got thrown out of Tad's and the cops were called. New York's Finest are nothing if not thorough professionals. The first officer on the scene asked Josh if he had any identification. Naked stroller or not, this officer was doing it by the book. Needless to say, Josh had no ID on him. Somebody brought his clothes from where he had left them but Josh figured he liked being naked and refused to put them on. Well, that was that and before you could say Lady Godiva Josh is headed for Bellevue Hospital for observation, observation usually meaning being strapped to a gurney and being injected with something quite soothing.

So a day later Josh tells The New York Post he was having a bad day and had a panic attack. I don't buy it. Not the bad day part, thats pretty obvious when you're locked up in a mental ward and under arrest for public lewdness. I mean the panic attack bit. I know people who get panic attacks and the last thing they want to do in the midst of one is to draw any attention to themselves, so forget that angle.

Call me me clairvoyant but I strongly sense that stripping naked in broad daylight and walking around Times Square is an attempt to garner attention. But attention for what is the question. It's obvious he wasn't trolling for females since his body is a pasty white formless blob with no discernible muscle tone and sporting a decidedly small set of family jewels. So I guess he wasn't auditioning for a male model job either. Maybe checking his messages and talking on his cell phone was an attempt to land a part in one of those off-beat cell phone commercials. He'd be okay in the part of the nerd, but a naked nerd? Doesn't add up.

Well, it turns out that Josh Drimmer is a playwright who lives in Brooklyn and a Yale graduate who writes a blog on Myspace. So I figure the guy's no dummy and he's trying to draw attention to his plays and blog writings. So I check out his blog and it tuns out he is a dummy after all, a major jerk-off. Apparently he fancies himself an esoteric philosopher and some sort of music reviewer. Only problem is that he's reviewing music released many years ago. I think the jury's in on Sly Stone and Fleetwood Mac, Josh. As far as the philosophy goes, well, if whining about stupid shit qualifies then he's your man.

As for his plays I didn't get to read any of them but apparently one has been performed in some repertory company and he's had a few one-acters staged at a theater workshop. I don't know much about the play writing game but it seemed he was on the right track, getting some workshop feedback from people in that world. I hope his writing for his plays is a little less elliptical and show-offy than his blog ranting. I couldn't make head or tails out of most of it, coming away with the impression that this is a guy who thinks that he's smarter than the average bear and is really a clue-free jackass. People who go to plays are generally pretty intelligent people who can wrap their brains around some pretty esoteric stuff but I don't think they enjoy condescension from a maladjusted little punk and his inside jokes that only he gets. Just a wild guess.

So now I 'm asking myself do I really want to interview this guy? This time I did some research beforehand, tried to find out something about my subject, unlike my first few interviews where I was basically winging it. I'm tempted to go back to that approach because the more I find out about him the less I like him. You'd think a guy who walked naked through Times Square in broad daylight would be a colorful character, a bit of a wild man with an entertaining personality. This guy's a cipher with nothing to say and a big sissy to boot. What a disappointment.

Well, the hell with interviewing the naked guy! Life's too short to waste my time with sniveling wimps. I already wasted too many irretrievable hours of my life reading his unreadable writing and reading stuff about him. Can you say tedium, boys and girls? Maybe I'll just open this box of chocolates I was going to bring him in the hospital and share them with the lovely wife. I hate this research stuff. You think a guy is a talented and interesting eccentric who pulled off an outrageous publicity stunt and you find out you're dealing with a namby-pamby you wouldn't notice in a thousand years unless he was naked in Times Square. No, bobcrespo.com won't waste time and virtual ink on this guy.

Sorry for promising you an interview and not delivering, but believe me, it's all for the best. If you don't believe me, look up his blog and see if you don't thank me for breaking an appointment with a mental patient and eating his chocolates.

I read that there are nine and a half million millionaires in this world of six billion souls. That’s roughly one millionaire for every six hundred and thirty one and a half of us. I suppose that makes millionaires a small minority, not quite as scarce as Buddhists in Idaho or redheads in China, but still somewhat of a rarity. Do social scientists study these people like they do other unique minorities? Should I keep an eye on PBS or the Discovery Channel for a documentary on the hardships and misunderstanding they have encountered in being so out of step with the rest of humanity, you know, like having everything when most people don’t have much at all? Just wondering….

The Vice President, who has never shot at anybody besides his hunting buddies, now wants our brave young soldiers to start shooting Iranians in bunches. Now here’s a guy who went the extra yard to stay out of the Vietnam War because he had “other priorities,” applying for and receiving a half dozen deferments from the military draft at the time. Presumably one of those priorities had to do with becoming part of that small minority mentioned above. I suppose that’s like a religious conversion so even though he very much supports war anywhere, any time his status as a millionaire makes it okay to want to send others in his stead to risk their lives killing people they have nothing against. For all we know these dastardly Iranians may be threatening his status as a millionaire, or maybe somehow exhibited a strong prejudice against that beleaguered minority. That ought to fire up the troops. Just wondering…

And speaking of Mr. Cheney, can anyone ever remember a Vice President not running for the office of President or even wanting to? Few get there, but enough have made it into the seat to make it a natural springboard to the big chair. I suppose with his bad heart and repellant personality he’s realistic enough to know even his own children wouldn’t vote for him, so I guess he’s satisfied to make all the decisions for the Bumbler in Chief who somehow did get elected twice. And no matter how ruinous and cynical these decisions have been the blame goes to his inarticulate puppet. But don’t you think he’d love to be called President Cheney and let the world know who’s really been running the show all these years? I’m thinking no, this guy’s too smart for that. Presidents have to answer to the people while Vice Presidents have traditionally been window dressing and occasional Senate tie-breakers, the perfect cover for wielding secret power. No one really pays much attention to what Vice Presidents do. Until now, anyway.

I guess he figures to go down in history as sort of our own Cardinal Richelieu, the power behind the throne. It certainly will be a unique position in American history and he sure fits the bill as far as not giving a rat’s ass about the people of his own nation when their interests interfere with the exercise of his personal power and the advancement of his own agenda on behalf of his minority group. So maybe the guy’s doing America a favor by providing us with an object lesson in what kind of people to prevent getting anywhere near the halls of power. You think?

I wonder if the news media is bored with reporting news. I don’t see all that much of it anymore, at least not in the front of the newspapers or in the lead stories of broadcast news. Perhaps they got very depressed always reporting the serious issues and the real bad stuff that happens in this world, so they decided to lighten up the old news hour and front pages with smiley face fluff reporting, the kind of thing that got aired or printed in the past only on slow news days. These features are now the main attraction of most newspapers and newscasts. The antics of mean-spirited billionaires and drunken Hollywood bimbos are hardly startling revelations. Does any of that affect you even a little bit? Just wondering…

Trivial matters like worsening economic straits for workers, the drugging of our children to make them conform to questionable norms, assaults on our Bill of Rights by our own government, widespread hunger and genocide, the cancer and AIDS plagues, two ruinous wars our country is waging with no stated goal in either one, criminal activity in our government and the passing of laws allowing credit card companies and banks to implement usurious practices that used to land gangsters in jail, all these stories are relegated to sidebars to make room for candy coated crap if they are mentioned at all.

Thing is, candy coated crap still tastes like crap once you bite into it. Today we have a whole bunch of twenty-four seven news channels and little real news reporting. What one covers they all do, and changing channels gets you the same story running at the same time with the same point of view, either implicit or stated. And when the White House says something it is reported as fact, no questions or investigative reporting necessary.

For the younger of my readers, there once was such a career as investigative reporter. These reporters looked stuff up, interviewed people, took pictures, asked hard questions of the powerful and checked the facts of the answers they they recieved. They looked at all sides of a story and reported the truth to the public. Politicians hated them but respected them and were a lot more careful with the truth than today’s crop of lying sacks of shit with no one to call them on their lies. Indeed, their lies are simply reported as actual news, a real man-hour savings for the media, eliminating the jobs of those fact checkers, researchers and investigators with their quaint belief in truth and their delusional insistence that the role of the press was separate from the role of government. How naive, how tedious. Fourth Estate, Shmourth Estate say the Rupert Murdochs of this world. The world is what we say it is.

If the president’s mouthpiece said the sky was green, CNN, MSNBC and all the rest would tell us in authoritarian tones that we are now entering a “green-sky era,” using the government’s misleading and simplistic slogans verbatim, never asking anyone in power any pressing questions, not even thinking out loud whether or not the sky has turned green or having it occur to them that they could simply look straight up at the actual sky to confirm or deny their suspicions. Fox News would probably call for laws to be passed to punish those who point out that the sky is indeed still quite blue, or at the very least call their patriotism and sanity into question repeatedly. Then they’d run another story about Paris Hilton.

Does anybody ever watch the Dr. Phil show? Is it any good? I could be wrong, but he just seems like such a douche bag to me. Just wondering…

Have there been any “must-see” movies made lately? I can’t recall any I’m not willing to wait for on cable since…. since… I know… no, that one sucked… hmm… since a very long time. Oh, I got it! “The Departed.” That’s one of few big-hype movies to live up to the hoopla. I’ve got my eye on this new one they’re touting with Denzel Washington and Russel Crowe, “American Gangster.” Those two have made some great movies. Also some lousy ones. Hope this one is a keeper. I hate to see top talent in crappy flicks. I remember years ago the big buildup to “The Heist” starring Al Pacino and Robert Deniro for the first time since “The Godfather, Part II,” a truly great movie. “The Heist?” It sleeps with the fishes now. Did anybody actually like that one? Just wondering…

Did any athlete ever break a major sports record and be less celebrated then Barry Bonds? Well Barry broke two of them in recent years, the single season home run record and the lifetime home run record, two of the most cherished records in all of sports. He owns them both now, 73 and 762 respectively, yet he’s about as popular as Dick Cheney on a hunting trip. You think maybe it’s because he’s got a swelled head? Just wondering…

Nobody I know can make it on television. How do I know this? Simple. When they speak, they do so normally, not smiling until a smile is called for. On TV people talk while smiling, even when they’re talking about floods, heart medication, dog food, high-speed internet service or a power outage in fifteen states. I tried speaking while smiling non-stop a couple of times. It’s really difficult and before you know you bust out laughing at the absurdity of it. I’m guessing there must be an academy to train people in this difficult art. I’d like to find out where it is and throw a bunch of banana peels in the hallways, give the students there something to smile about between classes. Do you think they’d thank me? Or maybe curse at me with their smiles fixed in place. Just wondering…

Another thing I wonder about is if TV people smile constantly when they’re not working. Can you imagine being married to one of these buffoons? How long would it take you to strangle somebody who never stopped smiling? You wake up in the morning and there it is, Bling! She (or he) says good morning through her/his smile, you eat breakfast and try to read the paper and not focus on her/his pearly whites. Maybe you have an argument later on, you know, the running kind of arguments that weave their way through all marriages, and she’s/he’s smiling as she or he calls you every name in the book and wonders out loud what in the world they ever saw in you since you’re such an incredible loser.

You take a walk together and your spouse is all smiles the whole way, even if it starts hailing. You do the grocery shopping, maybe some unpleasant chores together and never does a scowl cross that beaming face. The kids make your life hell on earth as only kids can sometimes and still your mate is all smiles, even when berating and punishing your very confused children. You put the kids to bed, then watch the tube together awhile and the smile machine is still blinging away at 1,000 megawatts even during news reports of a killer earthquake and a deadly famine.

You both get tired and hit the hay. Nudge nudge, rub rub, kiss kiss and before you know it you’re making love, but still that smile isn’t wiped off her/his face! Is there a jury anywhere who would convict you if you decided to wipe that smile off their face forever? I doubt it. That is if the charges ever get far. I can hear the preliminary hearing judge now: “The charge here is murder. Now let me get this straight. You were married to a TV person? The smiley kind? Hmmm.. that changes everything.Case dismissed!”The only thing is, when TV people die, do they still wear that shit-eating grin in their coffins? Maybe closed coffin would be the way to go during that wake. Just wondering…