Thoughts of the Day

I was very glad that it did not rain today. Lee and I went out to play basketball early in the morning. After that Lee joined some of his buddies for bowling. I got a phone call from my mother saying that she was a little under the weather. She has a bad cold that she just can't get rid of. She asked me to come over to buy her some items at the grocery store. She only lives 10 minutes away. After I did some errands for her, I did my little hike in Forest Park.

Sports Notes

The NJIT basketball team started out where they left off last season by losing its opener to Manhattan College 56-32. They have now lost 34 games in a row to tie the NCAA record for consecutive loses. I am just stating the facts here.

The Knicks blew a lead and lost to the Dallas Mavericks 124-114 in overtime. The Knicks are now 6-4 which is much better than last season

Radio Notes

Today's stations

WINS
WCBS-FM
WAXQ - Breakfast with the Beatles with Ken Dashow
WBGO
XM/Sirius - 60s
XM/Sirisu - 70s featuring American Top 40 with Casey Kasem
WNYC-FM - standards show with Jonathan Schwartz
I was disappointed when I accessed WODS-Boston to hear the Lost 45s with Barry Scott. They were already playing all Christmas music. It is just too early for that.

Soul Men and Ellen's Stardust Diner

Instead of going to a football game yesterday, we went to see the movie Soul Men. This film marked the final appearances of Bernie Mac and Isaac Hayes who sadly passed away recently. The story was a little silly and Bernie Mac and Samuel L. Jackson were not professional singers. Anything has to be better than sitting home. Last week I took out of the library a new biography of John Lennon by Philip Norman. Since this book is over 800 pages, I just can't schlep it on the subway to and from work, so I must read it at home. I was able to spend some time reading it yesterday. I am up to page 169. In the evening I met up with radio fiend Jonathan Binstock from Maryland whom I've known since the mid 1990s. Back then we were both regular posters to the Prodigy radio message boards. Prodigy was an online service in the pre-Internet era. Once a year he comes to a lawyers convention and we meet there. I have hooked up with him when I have gone to American Chemical Society meetings in Washington, DC. We had dinner at Ellens Stardust Diner in the theater district. We held a Meet and Greet of Oldies enthusiasts there in June 2006.

Another Rainy Saturday

This is the fourth Saturday this Fall that it has rained preventing us from seeing a college football game. There is that old saying that everybody talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it.

Mom and Her Mah Jongg Friends over the years

Back in the early 60s my Mom played Mah jongg with the following for ladies:

Betty Cohan
Evelyn Mauer
Shirley Dule
Ruth Scheinbart

Once a week they would play and rotate the location. During the Christmas season my father had to work late every night so they would play at our house because my mother didn't want to leave my sister and me alone since she was afraid we would fight. The entire group with their husbands came to my Bar Mitzvah in April 1962.

Betty Cohan had two daughters about my age. During my senior year in high school Roy and I met her older daughter Fran outside her apartment on Saunders Street walking her dog in the morning. In the late 1990s we reconnected on a chat of Forest Hills High School graduates from the late 1960s. We had a mini-reunion in Tenafly, NJ in 1998. Sadly, Fran died of breast cancer in 2000 at age 50.

Shirley Dule lived diagonally across the street from us in Rego Park. Since she had a problem schlepping the Mah jongg set, I would come over to pick it up and bring to my house when they played. Her husband Irving became friends with my Dad. I distinctively remember he took us on a fishing trip to Jones Beach. Irving Dule was a coach in the Forest Hills Little League, though I never played on one of his teams. I was never a very good athlete anyway. He also liked to tinker with electronics, so whenever we had a problem with our TV set we would call him over to fix it. Shirley and Irving had two daughters Ellen and Linda. Sadly, Irving died of cancer in 1971. About a year later Shirley relocated to Arizona. I believe a few years later both of her daughters moved out there. Very recently, I reconnected with Ellen through Facebook.

Evelyn Mauer had a son about a year older than I named David. I remember that Evelyn recommend the photographer that we used for my Bar Mitzvah. In 1966 I would run into Evelyn on the Q60 bus when I worked as a volunteer for Memorial Hospital.

I did not keep track of Mom's Mah jongg activities from the early 1970s to the late 1990s when she formed another group with:

Eleanor Herschaft
Muriel Wolfe
Betty Solomon

Sadly, these three ladies passed away within the last few years.

Eleanor is the mother of Roy who has been my friend for over 40 years. One of these days I'll have to write an entry about him.

My Cousin Billy Slutsky married Muriel's daughter Barbara in the early 1970s. I remember my mother was annoyed back then since Joyce and I were not invited to their wedding. Billy and Barbara were inseparable while they were dating, but their marriage didn't last very long. Both of them have remarried.

In recent years Mom played Mah jongg with some women at her pool club. I never became acquainted with any of them. This season, these women did not rejoin the pool leaving my mother without a group.

Why is Mah jongg only played by women while other board games are not "gender specific."?

Today was a radio day

Once a week I am scheduled to work from 1 PM - 8 PM. This semester it is usually Thursday. Instead of bringing reading material on the train, I bring my radio. Here is the list of radio stations that I listened to today either at home, on the train, or in the office:

WCBS-FM
WFUV
WBGO
WAXQ-HD2
WLTW-HD2
WABC
XM/Sirius - The Loft
XM/Sirius Classic Rewind
XM/Sirus Adult Albu Rock
XM/Sirius Sinatra/American Standards
WWOZ - New Orleans (a tape that I made when I was there in 1999)

Good Luck Jeff Mazzei

The New York Radio Message Board reports that Music Director Jeff Mazzei was let go from the station likely for economic reasons. This is quite unfortunate since he worked so many years for America's greatest oldies station. I believe that he was responsible for picking the music that was played on the station all these years. During the Jack years (June 2005-July 2007) programmed the oldies on WCBS-FM HD2. One of the reasons I bought an HD radio was to get that station. I'll be honest to admit I didn't think would return to oldies which were re-branded as classic hits. I certainly wish Jeff well in his future endeavors.

Changes to my XM Radio online subscription

Readers of this journal may remember that back in May, I decided to subscribe to the online version of XM Radio. Since that time there has been much movement with its merger with Sirius. Today I am able to get many more channels as a result of this merger. I was able to work in my office today so I listened to the Elvis Presley Channel and Classic Vinyl which came from Sirius to the new merged entity. There are other channels I would like to hear. I believe that stations for the 60s, 70s, and 80s have merged. If so, I will be able to hear Cousin Bruce Morrow Saturday nights at 8 PM. Gee, if the Saturday Night Oldies superenthusiasts read this, I’ll be beaten to a pulp. Dave DuBrow’s World Journal file reports today that XM/Sirius is in very bad financial shape. This is one of the reasons I’ve resisted the temptation to buy a radio.