Old Friends

On January 19, 2012 I attended a multimedia presentation tracing the career of Simon & Garfunkel by legendary New York rock and roll disc jockey Pete Fornatale. The event, which was titled “How Terribly Strange to be 70,” was held before a capacity crowd of about 300 people at the Budarz Theater inside the Ossining Public Library.

Mr. Fornatale, who graduated from Fordham University in 1967, played video clips of the famous duo, both of whom turned 70 recently. The title was taken from one of their songs, Old Friends, from their Bookends album: “Can you imagine us years from today, sharing a parkbench quietly. How terribly strange to be seventy.”

Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel met when they were students at a Forest Hills, Queens high school and began singing together in the early 60s as “Tom and Jerry.” By 1965 they had a number one single, “The Sounds of Silence” under their real names. Towards the end of the decade, Fornatale was teaching English at a Catholic high school (“in order to avoid the draft,” he admitted). One day he read the poem Richard Corey to his students. They were unimpressed. The next day, he brought in a Simon & Garfunkel album and played their musical version of the poem. From that day forward, Fornatale said, he had the attention of his students, one of whom was Mike Francessa, the radio “sports pope.”

After the video clips, Mr. Fornatale introduced a special guest – Art Garfunkel himself. Garfunkel had been having throat trouble for about a year and wanted to practice singing before a live audience. I was sitting in the front row, having arrived late and been fortunate enough to snag one of the new seats that were set up in front to accommodate the overflow crowd. Accompanied by someone on piano and another fellow on guitar, Garfunkel sang about six songs, but sadly, his voice was that of a 70 year old man with a throat condition. He also looked like a 70 year old man. The top of his head, which once sported a white man’s afro, was now bald and the hair on either side was short. He wore sneakers, jeans and a white dress shirt that was not tucked in, presumably to cover his moderate stomach paunch.

Fornatale had quoted James Taylor, who said that the secret of life was enjoying the passage of time.

To that I might add, “and remembering the good times.”

Being 70 may be inevitable, but reveling in it is not much fun.

Destined to join the Occupy Wall Street crowd

A young man traveling on Metro North railroad was wearing black dress shoes with laces as he sat across the aisle from me early one afternoon. I noticed this because he put his feet on the seat cushion facing him. He took out his cell phone and called a friend to ask, “Wanna get some food?”

A female conductor came by to take my ticket and I wanted to ask, sarcastically, whether it would be okay to put my feet on the seat facing me like the young man was doing. But I didn’t. And the conductor said nothing to the young man, who continued his cell phone conversation, speaking loud enough for me to hear, “I’m not home, dude. I was in the city. I had like interviews and shit.”

Now, that’s a young man who will soon be joining the Occupy Wall Street crowd when he doesn’t get hired.

In Jeopardy

As time goes by, I fear I may become more out of touch with today’s youth. Most young people have grown up with the wizards of Harry Potter and have graduated to the Twilight vampires. I have neither read these books nor seen the movies. When these cultural powerhouses make their way onto the Jeopardy answer board, as surely they must, I will be totally lost. And by that time, the trivia which currently clutters my brain and sometimes enables me to give the correct Jeopardy question will become so dated as to be irrelevant. As it is, I am already past the demographic that advertisers are seeking to attract. So, when the television shows they sponsor become less relevant to a person with my knowledge and experience, I may be forced to turn off the “tube” (boy, even that reference is out of date) and read a book.

That is, if I can find one that’s still printed on paper.

A Burning Issue

I was sipping my coffee as I sat on a bench waiting for my train at an outdoor Metro North station on a bright, sunny, early summer morning, when suddenly I caught a whiff of smoke passing by. I looked to my left and saw a woman smoking a cigarette. I was about to ask her to move down wind when she moved of her own volition.

I’ve been taking the Metro North for about a year now and I can’t recall more than a handful of times when I saw someone smoking on the platform. But this day was the exception to the rule. As my train was pulling into the station, I got up from my seat and headed towards the front car in order to be close to the exit at my stop. As I walked, I passed two more smokers and then started to notice numerous cigarette butts on the platform.

New York City has banned smoking in public places, but as of yet, Westchester County has not followed suit. There are no ashtrays on the platform, so at least they are not encouraging smokers. But for a non-smoker, the smell of burnt tobacco does not mix well with the taste of freshly brewed coffee.

I actually don’t mind if people want to smoke. What I object to is when the exhaust from their burning tobacco invades the space under my nostrils.

They can choose not to smoke.

I can’t choose not to breathe.

The New Litter

I’ve noticed a trend lately. Now that most plastic bottles have a five cent deposit, there seem to be fewer of them tossed along the roadways. Admittedly, there are few people who would stoop to pick up a discarded bottle. And with the economy in the tank and prices soaring, more people are recycling the bottles to get their nickel back. But there doesn’t seem to be a reduction in the amount of litter. The litter of choice nowadays seems to be losing scratch-off lottery tickets.

If you can find 20 returnable bottles, you can redeem them for a one dollar lottery ticket. Finding 20 bottles may not be easy, but it’s a lot easier than purchasing a winning lottery ticket.

Better yet, put that dollar in the poor box. It’ll make you feel a whole lot richer in the long run.

Cell Service

The other day there was an article in the newspaper which indicated that in some restaurants you can now text your order to a waitress. At first I thought this might be a good idea – no more waiting for a drink refill when you needed it. But technology may be ahead of its time in the smaller restaurants.

I walked into my local diner for breakfast this morning. The usual waitress wasn’t behind the counter, but a new face was. She took my order right away and brought my coffee immediately. Then, as the minutes began to go by, and the usual time by which my breakfast would have arrived passed, I looked up, only to see this new waitress standing behind the counter with a cell phone in her hand. Whether she was texting, reading e-mail, or surfing the web, I couldn’t say. All I could think of was my breakfast getting cold sitting on a counter behind the swinging kitchen doors. Finally, the waitress who usually waits on me asked if I had gotten by food yet. When I said no, she turned to the new waitress and told her to check on my order. The new waitress put down her cell phone, went into the kitchen and returned with half my order. “You wanted whole wheat toast, right?” she asked. “No,” I replied, “White.” Sixty seconds later my toast arrived, unbuttered.

The food tasted the same as it always does, but the service left a bad taste in my mouth.

Waiting Room

This morning I sat in the waiting room of a car dealership while the oil was being changed in my wife's vechicle. The waiting room was empty, except for one other male, who spoke not a word. The TV was on, forcing at least the audio of The Price is Right into my eardrums. I tried to read Steve Martin's An Object of Beauty (a good book, by the way), but it was difficult over the sounds coming from the television. Then, about an hour into my 90 minute wait, a woman entered the room, took out her cell phone and called her health insurance company. In a loud voice, she gave her name, date of birth, account number and started discussing her pre-existing condition.

It made me wish the TV volume was louder.