Fresh!

BY BRUCE APARMAYOR, PENNYSAVER COMMUNITY MOM CULTURE: Pop, remember when we used to talk to each other? POP CULTURE: Didn’t know we stopped, Mom. MC: I mean on the phone. PC: It hasn’t all gone to seed. You still talk to me when I’m on the phone – with someone else. MC: Why is that? PC: I don’t know. You tell me why you talk to me when I’m speaking with someone on the phone, Mom.It’s one of the great mysteries of our 48-1/2-year union. MC: Not that you’re counting or anything. PC: I only count the blissful years, Dear. All 48-1/2 of ‘em. MC: Well, I meant why is it that people don’t talk on the phone like we used to?

BY BRUCE APARMAYOR, PENNYSAVER COMMUNITY Lately, when I write the acronym ASAP, I can't help wonder if the recipient is reading that the same way I intend it. Acronyms can be funny little devices, at least this one in particular. When you see ASAP, don't you associate it with a task getting done immediately? I tend to too. But the words those initials represent are As Soon As Possible, which means not necessarily right now, or even tomorrow, but whenever I practicably can get to the task. I may begin to spell out ASAP instead of using shorthand to ensure my audience takes from it what I mean by it.

You know Mom & Pop Culture. We all do. They are us. They surround us. They appear on reality TV shows. They eat, drink and sleep gossip. They complain that people complain too much. Let’s listen in as they get ready to call it a day in the life… [Full Disclosure: The author chairs Yorktown Organizations United in Westchester County.] MOM CULTURE: Pop, ever hear of this book “Bowling Alone”? POP CULTURE: [CHUCKLING] You calling me a pinhead, Mom? MC: You? Never! You like life in the fast lane, having a ball. PC: At least you didn’t say my mind’s in the gutter. MC: Anyhoo, it’s from 2000, by Robert Putnam, subtitled, “The Collapse and Revival of American Community.” PC: Collapse sounds cynical. What’s his beef? MC: His research claimed people have been drifting away from belonging to traditional civic organizations. PC: Not us. We love the Lions and Rotary and all those groups. They do a tremendous amount of good. MC: That’s why we belong and volunteer. But we’re also considered the old guard. PC: Thanks for the words of encouragement, Mom. MC: No, it’s just that younger families do volunteer work too, but their circle of influence tends to be things like youth sports. You know, that whole “soccer mom” thing. PC: Yeah, but then you also have a lot of young solid citizens doing community service through local teen centers and groups like Lions Club’s Leos and their schools. MC: It’s mandatory now in more schools. PC: As it should be. MC: Even so, it seems volunteerism altogether has declined. Remember the woman from United Way’s Volunteer Center who came to the Yorktown Organizations United meeting? PC: Oh, sure. She was bowled over herself by all the enthusiasm in the room, saying New York...

BY BRUCE APAR MAYOR, PENNYSAVER COMMUNITY I have mixed feelings about Sunday, May 13. The sentiment behind it is as wholesome as motherhood and apple pie. The need to set aside but a single day out of every 365 to honor the cause of our existence is a curiosity, if not downright patronizing. Maybe my mixed feelings also hark from the relationship I had with my Mother. It ended abruptly, in the worst way.  September 1959. I had just gotten home from grade school. Rose Apar, part-time beautician now that she mothered three sons 9, 12 and 18, was with a client in the makeshift hair salon in our Long Island Cape Cod home’s rec room.

BY BRUCE APAR MAYOR, PENNYSAVER COMMUNITYLanford Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize and Tony winning romantic dramedy Talley’s Folly, produced by Hudson Stage, is at Pace University’s Woodward Hall Theater on the Briarcliff Manor campus through Saturday, May 12. For ticket information: hudsonstage.com or (914) 271-2811. Mom Culture: Pop, what do you want to do this weekend. Pop Culture: We need to get out, Mom. I’m going to go stir crazy if I watch any more inane TV sitcoms. And every other channel is showing a police procedural. It’s enough to give me a rubber neck. I’m hankering for some meat and potatoes. MC: You mean a steakhouse? PC: No, I mean entertainment with some meat on it, and some starch in it. MC: Well, Cousin Sophie was speaking very highly of this play at Hudson Stage. We always like their shows. PC: What is it? MC: It’s called Talley’s Folly. PC: Odd name. Is it like the Ziegfeld Follies, or that Sondheim musical Follies? MC: [Laughing] No, Pop. It’s a contemporary classic by that famous playwright who recently passed. His name is Lanford Wilson.

By Bruce Apar Mayor, PennySaver Community You know Mom & Pop Culture. We all do. They are us. They surround us. They appear on reality TV shows. They eat, drink and sleep gossip. They complain that people complain too much. Let’s listen in as they get ready to call it a day in the life… MOM CULTURE: I miss Dick Clark already, Pop. POP CULTURE: Talk about an American original. MC: How do you mean? PC: You know how sometimes we’ll say about a person, “He reminds me of ….” MC: Yes. PC: Well, what they say about genius is that the person reminds you of no one else. Pure invention of self in a way nobody else had thought of previously. That’s Dick Clark.

BY BRUCE APAR MAYOR, PENNYSAVER COMMUNITY You know Mom & Pop Culture. We all do. They are us. They surround us. They appear on reality TV shows. They eat, drink and sleep gossip. They complain that people complain too much. Let’s listen in as they get ready to call it a day in the life… MOM CULTURE: Pop, how do these government websites work? POP CULTURE: How so, Mom? MC: I mean their purpose is what exactly?

BY BRUCE APARMAYOR, PENNYSAVER COMMUNITY You know Mom & Pop Culture. We all do. They are us. They surround us. They appear on reality TV shows. They eat, drink and sleep gossip. They complain that people complain too much. Let’s listen in as they get ready to call it a day in the life… MOM CULTURE: Pop, you see that cutie pie Sarah Palin has popped up on the Today Show as a guest anchor? I have to tune in. POP CULTURE: Popped up, or popped off?

BY BRUCE APARMAYOR, PENNYSAVER COMMUNITYIf you believe the adage “youth is wasted on the young,” odds are you haven’t been of late to a youth recreation sports game, where youth is wasted on the occasional parent behaving immoderately. Coach Jerry Costa of Bayside, Queens, will have none of it, and he’s to be applauded for “getting it,” as well as for giving his charges and their caregivers guidance in sportsmanship that doubles as life lessons. His tone may sound rough around the edges, but if you’ve ever had to cope with the limitless supply of parents in youth sports who truly believe their 12 year old is a major league prospect already guaranteed a full ride at a D1 college, you know Jerry’s just being realistic in telling it like it is and putting parents in their place -- in the stands as respectful spectators, not backseat coaches. Thanks to my compatriot Joel Forbes on Yorktown Athletic Club’s Board of Directors for passing along The Wit & Wisdom of Coach Jerry, exemplified by these samples from www.jerrycosta.com:

BY BRUCE APAR MAYOR, PENNYSAVER COMMUNITY Don’t fool yourself. Once upon a very long time ago, according to Infoplease.com, “Ancient cultures, including those of the Romans and Hindus, celebrated New Year's Day on or around April 1. It closely follows the vernal equinox (March 20 or 21.) In medieval times, much of Europe celebrated March 25, the Feast of Annunciation, as the beginning of the new year.” The conscious reason I did not consult Wikipedia on this matter is pertinent to the topic at hand: Fools and Foolishness. (I count myself squarely among the Fools, by the way: I’m heading into rehearsals for a Neil Simon play by that very title, courtesy of The Armonk Players and director Pia Haas. It’s about a fictional town in the Ukraine where the entire populace has been brainwashed into believing they are fools by dint of an evil Count’s curse.)

BY BRUCE APARMAYOR, PENNYSAVER COMMUNITY At first blush, this column was titled “March Sadness.” It is selfish self-therapy externalized. For the past nine spring awakenings, I publish some form of this column as a memoriam to our Harrison, who traveled way up north March 21, 2003, the day after we celebrated his seemingly successful third open heart surgery – and my birthday.

BY BRUCE APARMAYOR, PENNYSAVER COMMUNITYAll you need to know about what I think of a certain legendary sibling composing team of the 20th Century is that I used to own two cats, and one of their names was Gershwin (the other Sondheim). The Brothers Gershwin – musical George, verbal Ira – were a pair of creative geniuses for the price of one, a songwriting team who prodigiously authored Great American Songbook standards that have not only endured but rudely remind us “they just don’t write ‘em like that anymore,” more’s the pity. Their work was as inspired and romantic as it was accessible in its sentiment and unerring in their melodies.

  The "Bruce the Blog Goes Bazzo!" original, full-length video interview with New York State Assembly member (District 99) Steve Katz that made headlines all over the region in recent days will be posted shortly on YouTube in its 30-minute entirety.  The controversial segment of the "Bruce the Blog Goes Bazzo!" weekly community affairs television series was shown on Cablevision channels 74 and 15 for the first time at its full-length on March 8 at 10 p.m..

BY BRUCE APARMAYOR, PENNYSAVER COMMUNITYA career or so ago, your faithful (and at times fitful) observer plied his trade in the back end of Hollywood, running publications read by retailers who sold and rented movies, videogames and the like. Movie industry people are fun and a half in the Never-A-Dull-Moment Department. Take the guy who helped perfect the digital video disc, stamping his name on key patents.

BY BRUCE APARMAYOR, PENNYSAVER COMMUNITYChances are you’ve never heard of Paul Klein, at least not the Paul Klein I’m invoking, blogwise. He was the king of television audience measurement in the 1960s as an employee of NBC. Through the romantic gauze of contemporary history, that era to baby boomers is forever associated with the music from Lerner & Loewe Broadway musical Camelot – JFK’s famous fave – which is fitting for the likes of Mr. Klein and then-Federal Communications Commissioner Newton N. Minow. In their separate but sanguine points of view, commercial television, for its part in those days, could boast little more than “brief shining moments.”

BY BRUCE APARMAYOR, PENNYSAVER COMMUNITY [Full disclosure: Bruce Apar chairs a Community Affairs initiative under Town of Yorktown Supervisor Michael Grace, and Tom DeChiaro chaired the Transition Committee for Supervisor-elect Grace between Election Day and New Year's Day Inauguration.] What a difference an election makes. For Tom DeChiaro, it translates to accomplishing in six weeks what he's been trying to do for more than six years: receive from the Town of Yorktown a Certificate of Occupancy (CO) for his business, The Winery at St. George. The vintage moment finally arrived approximately 9:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2012 at a town board meeting, when a resolution was passed to grant him the coveted document. He purchased the building in August 2005. What's that old Gallo commercial line about not serving wine before it's time?

BY BRUCE APARMAYOR, PENNYSAVER COMMUNITY  Do people in Occupy Wall Street’s hyperbolic 99% not own iPads, while those in OWS’s equally simplistic 1% are the only ones who own iPads? In no way am I part of an economically advantaged 1%, yet I can’t see eye to eye with the blur and caricaturization of America that is the collective conceit of the 99%. As one who used to work on the periphery of Hollywood, the shallowness of the ramshackle OWS movement resembles a not-so-slickly produced reality show on wheels in search of a coherent story line and compelling lead characters. 

By Bruce Apar Mayor, PennySaver Community When decades ago The Mamas & The Papas sang about “words of love, so soft and tender,” the ‘60s group wasn’t harmonizing about death. But never are words of love more heartfelt or necessary or comforting than when mourning comes. It came without warning and with horror recently to the Yorktown family of young Patrick Werner, whose life ended tragically Jan. 15. The immediate outpouring in tribute to the rookie officer who had just finished working his way through the New York City Police Academy included long lines of mourners outside Yorktown’s Clark Funeral Home, standing in frigid temperatures to pay their respects to parents Jacquelyn and Paul and sister Danielle, and to console each other as best they could manage.

BY BRUCE APARMAYOR, PENNYSAVER COMMUNITYMost motorists have the brights to appreciate there are at least two good reasons vehicles have headlights: 1) so the operator can illuminate the road ahead when natural or street lighting isn’t enough; 2) so other operators easily can see your vehicle, especially in a rear view mirror or with peripheral vision when visibility is less than ideal, such as inclement weather, early morning, late afternoon and what skiers know as “flat conditions,” where lack of sun obscures details in your line of sight such as contours under foot or moving objects at a distance.  Resolution today is never to fully accept, and to point out persistently, that there still exist too many dim bulbs on the road, those being vehicles with headlights stubbornly not turned on even when visibility warrants otherwise.  Take today, in Northern Westchester County (N.Y.), where my sojourn to a train station in Croton-on-Hudson, to fetch my 21-year-old daughter Elissa and her friend Colette, brought me headlight to deadlight with a smattering of vehicles inexplicably flaunting dim bulbs, despite snow falling and very flat visibility. You need to be able to know there’s a vehicle in your rear view mirror even without looking directly in that mirror. Today’s the kind of day when a car without illumination easily blends into the background, thus dangerously camouflaged.  Adding to my resolve not to understand how such motorists think (or don’t) is the fact they must notice others have headlights burning bright. Do they think it’s just an affectation, a conceit, an errant use of battery power?  Oh, there’s another, third good reason worth adding to the couple aforementioned. In the state of New York, having headlights on when windshield wipers are needed — as is the case with any form of precipitation — is a law. Eh, what the...