1.21.2006

Hi Eight Us

Some people have said there's far too much to read here.

One of my favorites was about the woman with the blue shoes. I think it was posted in September.

What's your favorite post here?

We'll be sorting through the comments and the emails.

So, we'll see you after a while ;-)

As always, thanks for stopping by.


Copyright © 2006 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.

Cleavage in Cleveland

Would all the young, horny guys move to Cleveland expecting to find a lot of cleavage?

Do the folks in Fredericksburg, Va., get a discount on clothes from Fredericks of Hollywood?

"... I had just come through the little fishing village of Sausalito, and the first thing I said was, "There must be a lot of Italians in Sausalito."

"There must be a lot of Italians in Sausalito!" he shouted at the top of his lungs. "Aaaaah!" He pounded himself, he fell on the bed, he almost rolled on the floor. "Did you hear what Paradise said? There must be a lot of Italians in Sausalito? Aaaah-haaa! Hoo! Wow! Wheel" He got red as a beet, laughing. "Oh, you slay me, Paradise, you're the funniest man in the world, and here you are, you finally got here, he came in through the window, you saw him, Lee Ann, he followed instructions and came in through the window. Aaah! Hooo!"
..."
- On The Road, Jack Kerouac



Copyright © 2006 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.

On The Road, online version

On The Road

Frederick's of Hollywood

Fredericksburg, Va. map

Sausalito, Calif.

Your Inner Kerouac - an earlier post

Everywhere in New Jersey

It sure seems like I've been every where in this long, narrow state.


I've been to West Milford and around Greenwood Lake until I crossed over into the little town on the New York side.

I drove south to Somers Point and east to Ocean City (in search of Gay Talese's childhood haunts).

I've been out Route 80 to the end and beyond more times than I can count. And old Route 46 out to Denville is an old friend too.

One summer our vacation consisted of Jersey trips. We saw Edison's Black Maria; the Sterling Mine in Ogdensburg; the Great Falls in Paterson & the Paterson Museum; the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.

For a weekend break we hit the Marriott at Newark Airport - their pool has an indoor and outdoor section and you can swim back and forth between them. On alternate trips we went to the far reaches of Parsippany and stayed at the Hilton or the Marriott. They were all close enough to home to come home and walk the dog and feed her twice a day.

I've been up and down old Route 9 and the Palisades Parkway.

I've circled Milltown and East Brunswick, and headed off to South Amboy and over that Route 35 bridge around South River.

I rode a mock-paddleboat on the Delaware River cruise out of Trenton - or maybe it was Camden?

Another time we were supposed to ride a yacht on the Hudson River to celebrate a new book release - but it was too foggy and we ended up chilling with the author and some of the people in the book at Arthur's Landing.

We've seen Pele play at the Meadowlands.
... John Prine play at Club Bene
... Springsteen at the Capitol
... Amy Grant at Holmdel
... the Muppets at the Meadowlands

Yeah, me, who used to think that anything south of Newark is South Jersey and should have been in the 609 area code, well, I sometimes feel like I've been all over this great old state, and the thing is, there's so much more to see.

Copyright © 2006 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.

1.16.2006

Shall We Continue?

In seven months and about 300 posts here on this blog we've actually gotten very few comments back - despite the spike (nearly triple) in page views.

And another thing, the viewers here are not interested in buying books. My friend John told me nobody reads books anymore. Everybody wants to read everything for free online.

We haven't figured out a way for someone to make any money giving their work away for free.

Even the lonely writer hacking away in that cold garrett some day will expect his ship to come in and be loaded with booty to boot!

So, we're taking this opportunity to ask you to let us know shall we continue these random writings about life in northern New Jersey?

Or, is this a good example of 'what's the use?'

Log in and post, or drop us an email.

Otherwise, I'll see you in the funny papers.

- UT

"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." -SAMUEL JOHNSON
"Dr. Johnson was a very smart guy."
-PAUL B. BROWN


Copyright © 2006 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.


Second Grade Dropout

Here's another reason I wanted to drop out of school in second grade: When I went to school my mother or my sister - or both, would go through my toy box and throw stuff out.

If only she'd left the Beatles cards or the baseball cards. Even the crap baseball cars would have been worth SOMETHING today.

I had two toy boxes in those days. One toybox was in my bedroom and the other was in the living room, in the corner near the sofa end table and mom's Singer sewing machine.

I had sets of Army guys and cowboys & Indians and whatever other stuff would fit in an old cardboard cigarette case.

I still have one tin of my 'men' but the wide-open Singer ranch is gone, and the long carpet battlefield barely a memory with the few handfuls of soldiers and sailors and blue marines I have left.

You might have thought that as a budding writer the stories that came out of that old cowboy play might have deliniated characters and incredible plot twists. But my guys always won, and that was all that mattered.


Copyright © 2006 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.

1.15.2006

'Marty' Makes 'em Laugh & Cry

If you got over to the Nutley Little Theatre on Sunday afternoon to catch the Readers' Theatre presentation of "MARTY" then what I have to say won't surprise you.

The troupe, directed by Don Sheffrin, performed the 1955 TV version of Paddy Chayefsky's play "Marty." In those days, to be a widow at 56 was virtually the end of your days.

Except for two actors in brown shoes, all the actors wore black. Except for four deep blue bar stools and one breakfast nook stool, the bare stage was all black too. Better to fill in the imagery with your imagination. Worked for me.

The Readers' Theatre has been around for years, and I'm only sorry that I didn't discover them for myself long ago.

This performance - yeah, I know they were 'only reading' - put you in the center of the action. You listen to the words and hear the descriptions, and you are transported to the scene of the play: a butcher shop, a bar, a dance hall, a darkened apartment.

Three characters stood out in this excellent performance.

Kevin Hersh as Marty certainly drew on the empathy of the audience. Regardless of his physical attributes of the 30-ish single butcher, Hersh brought you inside the character and you could feel his loneliness.

Marty's Mother Pat La Carrubba - had the role down to the deep sarcasm and 'the look' and you knew there was a whole lot more going on that what words seeped out.

As Clara, Cody Dalton seemed to have lived this play - she and Hersh broke away from the bar stools the other scenes had depended on, and walked around the stage, and touched, and hugged. I bet you could feel the big man in the back row of the audience turn his head away and wipe away the tears before anyone saw him.

Kudos to all. Another well kept secret performed as if the whole world was watching.

After all, the world should be watching, and listening!

Copyright © 2006 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.




Earlier post on this play - press release

Nutley Little Theatre Catch: Fuddy Meers By David Lindsay-Abaire; Directed by Penny Paul; in February.

1.14.2006

Running of the Bulls

You're probably thinking that like all movie actors know each other then so too all authors know each other. Well, that's not true. Not in either case.

If authors know each other at all, it's usually through their work, or through some sort of business. We're not like the Elks who might have monthly meetings for all their members to attend and get to know each other.

In fact, most of the writers I know are solitary creatures.

Did I say writers?

I actually meant authors.

There is a world of difference between someone who makes a living as a writer of every day things and an author who gets to paint the big picture in a 100,000 words or so.

Writers usually work in quick bursts, 300 words or so, sometimes 750 words. And some other times, what?, 1200 words.

Readers today don't have time for much more than that in their every day news that writers produce.

But an author of a book, that's a whole different world.

You know the reader makes a commitment to carry around that big thick book until every single word has imprinted an image on the brain ... and that's all there is to it.

The other night I met a young author, and in all my bluster telling her about what I've done and, yes, about this little blog thing and all its web page attachments, I barely got beyond the info that she said she wrote a little and edited some other people.

I told her I should shut up and give her a chance to talk, but she insisted I continue. Age before, oh, never mind.

So, it turned out that I had worked with this writer many years ago.

She was inside, talking up old times with old friends, and our friend whose farewell party it was, I guess.

Outside the party I remembered that she spelled her last name without an 'e' which is how most people would spell it when writing it down.

You see. That proved to me that I worked with her all those years ago, and that like any good editor, knew how to spell her name.

Yesterday morning, as most people do these days when they meet someone whose name they still remember the next day, I Googled hers and found that yes, she did spell her last name without an 'e' and lo, and behold, she was an author.

The Running of the Bulls: Inside the Cutthroat Race from Wharton to Wall Street by Nicole Ridgway. The book was published here last August. It is being published by Penquin Books in India in January 2006.

Pretty cool. You know, I would have had a million questions to ask her about her book and stuff. But with the live band playing at the other end of the bar and the smoke and the rest of the din, not only did I lose my voice but my ancient set of hearing instruments began to fade as well.

I probably said too much already.

So, I bade a hasty retreat and headed home to hearth & Zamboni and his happy dog dance.


Copyright © 2006 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.



Photo courtesy Dutton and Gotham BooksAuthor Nicole Ridgway (No 'e')

The Running of the Bulls

Penguin Books India

Nicole Ridgway

Forbes

Stephen King - On Writing

1.13.2006

Not So Modern Man

Two things I've never done:

1 - Use an ATM to do banking of any sort.

2 - Used a laptop computer in my lap.


Copyright © 2006 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.

Smarty 'Marty' Reading on Sunday in Nutley

Be there or be square!

The Reader’s Theater group of Nutley Little Theatre will present Paddy Chayesfsky’s classic teleplay, “Marty,” on Sunday, Jan. 15, 4 p.m., at the NLT Barn, 47 Erie Place, Nutley, N.J.

Don Sheffrin of Little Falls will direct the production, which is free and open to the public. Reader’s Theater features actors reading scripts of new and established plays, supplementing NLT’s regular, fully staged performances.

"Marty" was performed as a television drama featuring Rod Steiger in 1953; it was subsequently made into an Academy Award winning film in the 1960s with Ernest Borgnine. The NLT production will read from the television script.

"Marty" is an old-fashioned love story about a down-hearted butcher and a girl he meets at a dance hall one night. It is a sweet tale of ordinary, lonely people who discover each other after years of heartache, isolation and family dependency."

The title role will be read by Kevin Hersh of Caldwell along with Cody Dalton of Montclair, Pat LaCarrubba of Hasbrouck Heights, Joe Ribaudo of Belleville, Elyse Halloran of Somerset, Phil Rafferty of Upper Montclair, Leyda Lukowiak of Nutley and Kathryn Lombardy of Cedar Grove.

Nutley Little Theatre stages its productions at the NLT Barn, 47 Erie Place, Nutley, located off Brookfield Avenue (one block east of Franklin Avenue) in the heart of the Erie Place Historic District.

For information about this or other productions, call 973-667-0374.


'It's A Wonderful Life' - earlier post on reading at NLT

1.12.2006

The Other Side of a Telethon

Many years ago my troop of Boy Scouts was volunteered to help out at a telethon call office in an insurance office building floating somewhere in skyline in Newark, N.J.

We had all seen telethons on TV so we expected to see celebrities singing their latest hits and the top comedians making the viewers go to the phone and pledge some bucks.

We knew from watching that every once in a while the cameras would pan the crowd of workers, the plain folks on the phones and then go to the tote board to check out the latest total of pledges.

We figured we'd go down to Newark and help answer the phones and take pledges and, who knows, maybe meet a celebrity or two?
When we 'green monsters' descended upon the rows of tables and phones and blinking white lights a few of us rushed to pick up the phone so no one would miss a pledge and were immediately scolded and shooed away from the ringing phones, corralled in a corner and read the riot act (no pun intended) and told to stay off the phones and do as we're told, which was to collect the completed pledges filled out by the folks on the phones and make sure they all had pencils, forms and carbon paper.

At the end of the day, when the show was virtually over, we got to answer the phones. We couldn't tell people we were in Newark.


We couldn't tell them there were no celebrities to talk with.

We got to help clean up the litter left behind by hundreds of volunteers manning the phone banks on a Saturday-to-Sunday night telethon.

We never saw any celebrities you saw on TV, only on the monitors.

There weren't any cameras in Newark.

In the lobby of the big building, maybe it was Fidelity Bank or Prudential Insurance, there was a 4-foot-by-4-foot-by-4-foot cardboard box they used to collect paperback books to send to GIs in Vietnam.

The box was pretty full.

Copyright © 2006 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.

United Cerebral Palsy

Musculadystrophypy Association

Boy Scouts of America

1.11.2006

Bullets, Walls, Trees

Bullets, walls and trees.

The latter, we believed as kids playing cops & robbers or cowboys and Indians, or Army, could stop the former.

Then we saw the bullets rip through the wall in the last battle of Saving Private Ryan.

Copyright © 2006 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.


About Saving Private Ryan

IMDb - Saving Private Ryan

Saving Private Ryan Online Encyclopedia

Saving Privte Ryan - the book

Military History reading list

Saving Privte Ryan - the DVD

World War II Collection (Price For Peace/Shooting War/Saving Private Ryan, D-Day Edition) (1998)

1.10.2006

Ten Local Trips to Take Before I Retire

Staten Island Ferry Copyright © 2006 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. 1 - Take a round trip ride on the Staten Island ferry

2 - Take an Amtrak trip on a sleeper car like in the old 1940s movies, or something like the Orient Express where you have a private room and sleep as the countryside passes by. Perhaps a trip to New Orleans, or Chicago or someplace the train trip takes overnight to get to and then you wake up and have breakfast on the train.
3 - Take the Metroliner or Acela to Washington or Boston, or both.

4 - Walk across the George Washington Bridge. Preferably in daylight.

5 - Traverse the old Morris Canal across New Jersey, or as many parts of the Canal as are traversable - including Lafayette Village and perhaps a good long look at the Clifton nature center that includes a part of the canal.
Copyright © 2006 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.6 - Fly over my house in a private plane a la Sky King - that's with me as a passenger.

7 - Take an authorized tour of the PATH operations; go someplace where the tours never go. I'll find out where the cars go when they are out of service. Do they go through a PATH car-sized car wash? Where do they pull up when they get cleaned? What do they - the engineers and conductors - do when it's not rush hour?

8 - Share the poopdeck with the skipper of a ferry as he crosses the Hudson River from New Jersey to Manhattan to New Jersey to Manhattan to New Jersey over and over again.
Construction era photo - Copyright © 2006 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.9 - Travel to the top of the tallest building in New Jersey and see if I can see Highpoint - then go to the top of Highpoint and see if I could see the Goldman Sachs building in Jersey City.

10 - Take a Jersey back road to a fishing hole that's stocked exclusively for fly fishing & watch the fishermen work their flies.

For as many times as I've seen the Staten Island Ferry cross under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, I've never once set foot on the ark-like ship. The closest I ever came was one time when I met the restaurant ladies at American Park Restaurant in Battery Park. I admit that I was so labored to park I considered putting my car on the SIF and picking it up later when the ship came back after dinner in the upper room.

Anyway, those are a few of the things I would do if, say, I were the transportation writer of a major daily newspaper in a large metropolitan area somewhere in New Jersey.


Leave your manequin behind photo - Copyright © 2006 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.
Leave your mannequin behind?
Copyright © 2006 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.

Shop at Amazon, through this link, thanks

The Bridge: The Building of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge

Morris Canal: Across New Jersey by Water and Rail (Images of America)

On the 9th

Copyright © 2006 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.
Afternoon: smoke billowed in Manhattan across the Hudson River. Up in the sky, helicopters shot down their high definition cameras and zoomed in on the action.

Copyright © 2006 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.
Afternoon: the sun reflected off the north side of Exchange Place, a reflection of the setting sun from a building nearby and facing south.

Copyright © 2006 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.
Evening: On the curb, the State of New Jersey Assembly citation commemorating the 40th wedding anniversary of Fred and Yvonne.


How the plaque came to be left behind from the long ago collected trash, or who were Fred and Yvonne, and were either or both of them alive today ... well no one in the street knew.

Copyright © 2006 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.

1.09.2006

Odds & Ends

Napoleon Dynamite
The thing I'm wondering about this offbeat movie is does it have two different endings? I remember it ending with Napoleon riding up on a horse to his brother's wedding. My friend says that's not the ending she remembers from the video they saw.

PACHALAFAKA – Soupy Sales
Maybe you remember the hit song by the children's comedian Soupy Sales. Maybe not. I have it on a 45 - so if you don't know the song, you probably won't know a 45 either. That's okay. The lyric says they whisper it all over Turkey.


I was wondering if Soupy Sales went all the way to Turkey to hear them whisper it, or if someone came back from Turkey and told Soupy Sales what the people over there are whispering. On the other hand, it could be a made-up word and it's never been whispered anywhere, only sung in a silly song.

The Holy Cannoli
I got an email telling me this movie was on sale as a DVD for only $14.95. Funny, I don't remember ever hearing anything about this film being in the theatres. I have heard though, that some movies never get to theaters but go 'straight to video' as if they can skip Limbo and go straight to Purgatory for a few eons.

Fat Guy On The Bus
Nobody wants to sit next to the fat guy on the bus, or on the train.


The other day I saw two fat people sit on the PATH with an empty seat between them. You couldn't fit a kindergartener in the space there. In that case, nobody could sit next to the fat people on the train.

Before they changed the PATH turnstiles, I would catch a glimpse of a fat guy trying to squiggle through. I'm sure the guy is the nicest guy in the world, but watching him jelly roll through the moving iron bar was saddening.

Of course, he could have used the Handicapped turnstile, and I'm sure no one would have objected. But it was plain to see he never saw his Arbuckle shape as any kind of handicap. It was him and that was all there was to it.

It's heart-rending.

Mad at the World
This is not the name of a movie, well, not that I know of, anyway. It's just something my mother used to say to me when my frame of mind was fixed in a certain way. Go figure.


She's been gone the better part of two decades and I can still remember this reprimand from who knows how long ago.

I guess it's true what they say about words, they stay with you.

Copyright © 2006 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.

Wikipedia - Soupy Sales

On the Media

The Holy Cannoli

Napoleon Dynamite

Mad At The World (1955)

1.08.2006

Passenger's Life Story

Ever have the guy next to you talk your ear off on a bus or subway ride?

It happens once in a while.

Sometimes the guy's a complete stranger, or someone you've seen on the same bus ride from time to time.

But this time he has to tell you something. He has to tell you his life story.

It's like being dropped in an old movie, Strangers On A Train, or something.

Maybe he needs an unbiased ear to hear his story, or is certain you'll never remember anything he says.

But, then again, maybe you'd like some quiet time.

Who does he think he is? Forrest Gump?

This guy once told me about his plans to go to Florida, and what he was going to do there. I couldn't shut him up, you know. He just went on and on until the bus ride was over.

Next time I saw him I asked him when he was going to Florida.

He seemed embarrassed. "I told you that? ... I must have had diarrhea of the mouth. I can't believe I told you that..."

It doesn't matter, you know. I never knew his name. And I never saw him again. Maybe he finally DID go to Florida?

Or maybe he bought a car.

Copyright © 2006 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.

1.05.2006

In A Phone Booth

You can fight over my t-shirt collection. By now I've outgrown most of them anyhow. And where I'm going I won't need more than one t-shirt - if I need a t-shirt at all.

It'll probably be too hot for a t-shirt or they'll issue me something to fit around my wings. Ha ha. That's supposed to be funny.

But the reason I'm here today is to say that when I am gone, whenever that might be, you can hold my funeral in a phone booth.
Guthrie Phone Booth - Copyright © 2006 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.

Not one of the new phone booths that's just a phone on a pole with nothing around it, I'm thinking of one of those old phone booths like they had at Guthrie's back in the day, a phone booth with two bi-fold doors that close on tracks and you can shut out the world and make time with your gal pal or what ever it is you want to do.

If, after the rapture, you're still here and I'm not, you can have my t-shirt collection. And the old sweatshirts, too. I'm embarrassed to even try them on, but someday they may once again fit me ... and they aren't JUST sweatshirts, you know, they are souvenirs.

I bet my Bowling Green State University sweatshirt from 1972 wouldn't fit on my childhood Teddy Bear, let alone my thigh. But it was a good time with low beer.

And as for my tie-dyed Indiana State University sweatshirt from back in 1976, you know that doesn't have a hope in heck of fitting me now, either.

When I used to fit in in and wear it around, my daughter saw me with that and my faded blue jeans and thought it was some sort of uniform.

Those were the colors for the School of Hard Knocks, baby.

The NJ State Police sweatshirt was always one of my favorites. It fit so well I forgot I was wearing it. But that's at least 10 years old. If I could find it, I would be surprised to get it over my head.

You got time now, but it wouldn't hurt to keep your eyes open for one of those old-fashioned phone booths. You never know when you'll need it.


Copyright © 2006 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission. Updated May 2008