Oops, My TV Gig Off Today, But I'm Working Rangers Game

5/25/2014

MSNBC just cancelled my mid-day appearance in order to cover more urgent news. Can you imagine?
However, the NYT has activated me to write a column from the Rangers' Stanley Cup game at MSG Sunday evening.
What are the odds I slip in a reference to the Champions League final?
Caveat: Book media schedules can change in a heartbeat, but readings/signings are secure. GV.
.
CANCELLED:
Sunday, May 25:    Weekends with Alex Witt
                                MSNBC-TV (National)
                                12:15PM -12:45 PM

NEAR FUTURE:

Thursday, May 29: Appearance, Reading & Signing.
Book Revue
                                 313 New York Avenue
                                 Huntington, NY 11743
                                 7-8 PM

Thursday, June 5:    Fenway Park Writers Series

         Dinner/Reading/Signing
Hotel Commonwealth
500 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, MA 02215
6:30 – 8:30 PM

  NOTE: This is a ticketed event priced at $60 per person. The event includes dinner and every guest receives a signed copy of EIGHT WORLD CUPS. For information: http://www.fenwayparkwriters.org/fenway_park_register.asp

Sunday, June 8:    Up With Steve Kornacki, MSNBC-TV.
8-10 AM. Time to be arranged.

Please keep checking Appearances on the left side. GV

Alina link

5/25/2014 12:00:58 am

This is very much a work in progress whenever I find out about one who is more beautiful than any of these I will add her and kick out number ten Thanks for sharing the informative post:)

Alan Rubin link

5/25/2014 03:45:48 pm

George

Too bad, I was looking forward to watching it. It is the luck of the draw.

Shortly after the 1977 blackout, a major TV network was on their way to do a story on my store being looted. However, they called to say that we were preempted by the murder of a Mafia big shot. Where are people's priorities?

Another time, many years later, I had an educational experience courtesy of Channel 7. They had an in-your-face investigative reporter (I do not remember her name) who was very popular. One busy summer air conditioning day, she and a cameraman burst into the store and began asking very hostile questions designed to expose us as bad guys. After several moments I asked her what was going on. She stopped and said, "Isn't this the Wiz", which was on the next corner.

A bit embarresed, she asked if they could film us. Their expose that night on how the Wiz sells air conditioners included footage of RCI/Radio Clinic as a knowledgeable store that treats customers right.

Later, many customers commented on how we always beat the Wiz.

The lesson that I learned from this was not to trust sensational investigative reporters as they come in with an agenda.

Mendel

5/25/2014 11:53:41 pm

George,
Nice Rangers piece. The similarity of hockey and soccer in contrast with baseball is what led to my suggesting to a friend who is recovering from a heart attack that he avoid those two exhilarating pastimes, and instead watch the less electrifying Mets.

Alan Rubin link

5/26/2014 01:24:36 am

George

You are a man of your word, you got the Champions League final in.

Mendel is right about hockey and soccer being similar. I saw my first hockey game at age ten when my friend’s father took us to a Rovers’ game at the old garden. I was fascinated by the goalkeepers, which may have subconsciously influenced my becoming a soccer goalie.

The bravest, and probably the most stupid, play I ever witnessed in sports was when Gump Worsley , flat on his back, covered the puck with the back of his head.

Shortly after that, a bunch of us started playing roller hockey on the streets of Washington Heights. We used a hospital street at 190th between Fort Washington Avenue and Cabrini Blvd since it was traffic free.

The nuns at Mother Cabrini allowed us to play there as long as we did not make any noise. Try playing street hockey without talking, but it was safe.

Can we now look forward to a new book called "Thirty Two Stanly Cups?"

George Vecsey

5/26/2014 01:31:37 am

Alan, are you back?
You must be.
Thanks for the nice note. Gump had a large head -- and no head protection in those days. Crazy.
I think that was one-and-done. Back to flackng the book. GV

Thor A. Larsen

5/26/2014 09:01:31 am

Hello George,

Your article in the NY Times today gave an excellent description of the current 'game' of hockey as it is played especially during the Stanley Cup series. The brutality of the 'sport' as it evolved from the days I would see games in the old 'garden' is the reason I no longer follow hockey.

George Vecsey

5/26/2014 11:14:18 am

Thor, fair point. I started paying real attention in 1980 with the Islanders. That generation was a bigger breed than the players of the 50's and 60's.
And the guys now are monsters, with weights and other modern training. Not their fault, but they do damage just be making contact. The Rangers have a defender (Boyle) your height. He's high-sticking all the time on shorter guys.
NBA and NFL players are bigger and stronger than decades ago. NBA players are three-dimensional, and contact is minimized.
It really is evolution. Olympic hockey has a bigger sheet, as they say. Skating and passing more valuable.
I can't argue with your visceral reaction. Those are big humans clubbing each other around the net.
GV

Alan Rubin link

5/26/2014 11:38:57 am

George and Thor

I used to love hockey until about the late 70’s to early 80’s, but stopped going or watching for all the reasons you both mentioned. Olympic and European hockey is a saner and more open game with the larger sheet and more space behind the goal.

I was in the Baltic capitals, St Petersburg and Moscow the past three weeks. There was great excitement in Riga when Latvia upset Finland in the current tournament. I also caught parts of games in Russia at some great bars.

George—I returned last Thursday after 30 hours without sleep. I’m still not caught up, but I’m off to Red Bull Stadium tomorrow for a two day NSCAA Level 2 Goalkeeping course. The following week I’m back to Brooklyn for Jen’s Moth performance. My third trip to the NYC area is on June 12 for the WC opener at Foley’s.

Maybe I should go back to work so that I can have more free time. Not really, I’m enjoying retirement while I can.

Alan Rubin link

5/27/2014 02:18:19 pm

I saw the movie, “The Other Final”, on the plane coming home. It is about two Dutch fans who were disappointed that their country's football team failed to qualify for the 2002 World Cup. They decided to organize a match between the two lowest FIFA-ranking teams-Bhutan and Monserrat.

The match took place earlier on the same day as the World Cup final, and became famous as “The Other Final”.

I guess the earlier start was to avoid drawing fans away from the actual event.(LOL)

I do not want to spoil your enjoyment by giving away any details in advance, but it is a hilarious gem.

Even Blatter could not spoil it.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379419/plotsummary?ref_=tt_ov_pl

George Vecsey

5/27/2014 02:32:38 pm

Alan, that is brilliant. While I was enjoying myself in Tokyo, this was happening elsewhere. I never knew. Thanks, GV

Comments are closed.

QUOTES

Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

Oops, My TV Gig Off Today, But I'm Working Rangers Game

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