You may not have heard of ol’ Dieter, but his precise calculations helped his pal, Robert Goddard, launch the first liquid fueled rocket!  The little one-room (plus alcove) museum has been opened by Die Deutsch-Amerikanische Freundschaft Gesellschaft für Wissenschaftliche Verbesserung und Vergesslichkeit der Dinge, die Geschehen Kann oder Maynot Haben, Bevor wir Geboren Wurden, so Lassen Sie uns Einfach mit Dingen, Warum Nicht? (The German American Friendship Society for Scientific Improvement and Forgetfulness of Things that May or May Not Have Happened Before We Were Even Born, so Let’s Just Get On With Things, Why Not?), and it tells you simply everything you need to know about the legendary Herr Doktor Dieter, who emigrated to Brooklyn Heights in 1921, where he set up a little basement workshop on Hicks Street.  Communicating by mail and telegram with the famous Doctor Goddard, who lived in Ohio, our homeboy Herr Doktor used his knowledge of obscure math concepts like Continued Fractions and Sphere Eversion to help calculate potential parabolic velocities.  Viehmann’s personal eccentricities and extreme political beliefs later stained his reputation, which is perhaps why it’s taken so long for him to be honored in his hometown; Viehmann was deported in 1938 when it was alleged he was conducting experiments in Mendelian Eugenics (his phrase) on neighborhood dogs that he kidnapped, and he further damaged his reputation by standing on the sidewalk outside the Ahavas Israel Shul in Greenpoint every Friday night for four years and cooking ham and buttermilk soup in a giant tureen while singing “You’re a Grand Old Flag” in Yiddish.

After his deportation, Viehmann used his almost obsessive knowledge of the Fourier Coefficients (a0=1af0f[x] dx, ah=2af0f[x]cos 2πhax dx, and so on) to help the Third Reich develop X-Ray Weaponry.  Alas, his tic-like habit of singing the patriotic songs of Irving Berlin in Yiddish (it is likely the Herr Doktor suffered from an undiagnosed form of Tourettes Syndrome) caused his undoing, and following prolonged torture by the Reich’s most notorious interrogator, Wilhelm Tim-Tuefel, Doktor Dieter Viehmann died a horrible death in the Brandenburg an der Havel Prison camp outside Berlin.  The new Viehmann Museum doesn’t gloss over this, and they include an actual page from the Doktor’s Prison Diary, in which he writes “I have cut out my own tongue with a shard from a broken mirror to stop me from singing the most disgraceful songs that caused my spiritual defenestration.  Yet I cannot help humming them.  Why, oh why, did I ever let my darling wife Mitzi take me to that production of This is The Army by that merciless Hebrew genius of melody?”

In happier news, the museum also features a great little ball pit for the kiddies!

And Now.,..The Three Dot Round-Up! 

 Mr. Remarkable highly recommends the great new show at Faux Felines, that terrific new drag club on Kent and 11^th in Williamsburg!  I was especially taken by a special Tribute to Lady Newscasters, starring Miss Christiane A Man Poor, Lady Diane Saw Ya, and the REAL Lara Spencer (who knew?!?  She tucks very well!)…I had a simply scrumptious meal at Le Pain Quotidien on Montague Street, but I got nothin’ but quizzical looks when I asked them why their John didn’t have “traditional” French toilets…All you young ‘uns can go on and on about Game of Thrones, but just give me a little Adam 12 on the ME Channel, and I’m happier than Joey Heatherton with a Percodan prescription!…As I write this, the New York Mets are STILL playin’ above .500!  I haven’t been this surprised since Christine Longet was set free.  I have a bet with Mister Marty Allen (“Hello Dere!”) that if the Amazin’s finish above .500 for the season, he has to dye his famous crazy hairdo Mets’ Blue and Orange!…Hey, if you’re like me, you have very fond memories of Sid and Marty Kroft’s Banana Splits TV show – I mean, there is nuthin’, and I mean zero-zilch-nada-null-нульовий-bupkiss-rien-nix-nought- aon rud-doodley squat- គ្មានអ្វី- שום דבר –nuthin’ funnier that chimps in people’s clothing singin’ rock music, is there?!?  Well, good news for all of you lovers of jaw-flappin’ simians in tuxedos!  The FX Network is gonna be airing MonkeyTV, a show based around an all-chimp group called Guns’n’Lemurs, and their rise to the top!  I can’t wait, and until then I’ll stand in front of the TV holding my banana!…Speakin’ of bananas, I don’t go to Broadway much these days – the prices for tickets are higher than Paul Simon’s bail, and the quality is lower than Paul Simon’s tail! – but I must say I am truly looking forward to seeing Harvey Fierstein’s new musical about Harry Belafonte, The Banana Boat Song Trilogy.  It opens at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater in September!   Maybe by the time it opens, I’ll finally be able to take the R Train from this luverly little town to the Big Apple!…AND THAT’S WHY I LOVE LIVIN’ IN BROOKLYN!

Mr. Sommer’s opinions and grasp of reality are entirely his own. 

Timothy Sommer has earned a considerable reputation as a musician, journalist, record producer, music industry executive, MTV/VH-1 VJ, and purveyor of minor cultural dada-ism.  He is currently writing NOVA, OTTO? AVON, a palindromic history of the German love for Lox and Shakespeare.  He also continues his efforts to get one-time New York Mets’ reliever and long-time Toronto Blue Jays team medic Ron Taylor into the Medical Wing of the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame. 

Seriously, my friends: the look on the pizza man’s face was as blank as the look on Oliver Cromwell’s decaying gob after he was posthumously beheaded and what remained of his rotting melon was stuck on a pike outside of Westminster (that’s right – the leading figure in the English Civil War was dug up after his death and beheaded by Charles II, the son of the King that Cromwell had beheaded!).  So…I thought to myself, perhaps if I DREW an anchovy, this gentleman would know what I was talking about! So I reached for a pen and on the back of a take-out menu I sketched, from memory, a reasonably efficacious and completely satisfactory one-dimensional representation of the slim, surprisingly radiant silver fish of my desire.

Still…no reaction.

I then phoned an actor friend of mine – hi, Kevin! – and, handing the phone to the counterman, I asked my thespian acquaintance to recite Ezra Pound’s “Sub Mare,” the poet’s famous ode to the humble yet resplendent anchovy.  Kevin did what he was told, and in his prosodic, almost Olivier-esque lilt, I heard Kevin say “And one gropes in these things as delicate Algæ reach up and out, beneath Pale slow green surgings of the underwave, ‘Mid these things older than the names they have, These things that are familiars of the god.”

A tear came to my eye, but the white apron’d gent behind the counter at Monty Q’s still looked at me with the empty, uncomprehending look that recalled history’s most famous hydrocephalic, Charlie Brown.

I decided to try one more thing.  I remembered that I had an old drag queen acquaintance, the lovely Miss Salty Manchovy.  I thought to myself, surely, s/he, of all people, could make my food industry friend comprehend my request (because I still thought of us as friends, despite his ignorance; only a glass partition and a gaggle of Garlic Knots separated us, and aren’t we all the children of Njörðr, the Norse God of the sea and the wind?).  So I borrowed a nearby laptop (thank you, Lashaniqua!), and embarked on an Internet search to see what had come of that delicate flower of the sea, Miss Salty Manchovy.  See, I hadn’t spoken to her since 1988, when we had gotten in an argument over whether Bea Arthur was taller than Julia Child (she isn’t; it’s a known fact that only Brienne of Tarth is taller than Julia Child).

Well, it turns out that my dear friend had ‘retired’ Miss Salty Manchovy many years ago; instead, s/he had taken a great interest in the history of New York City politics, and was now living and dressing as Miss Mess Byerson, a character that honors the life and work of Bess Myerson, who was the head of Consumer Affairs under Mayor Ed Koch (and, lest we forget, the lovely Miss Meyerson was also the first Jewish Miss America!).   In fact, Mess Byerson is currently touring in a drag show based on the political machinations of the Koch administration,  along with Miss Edwina Kock and Lady Donald M. Anus.  And I know what you’re thinking!  Was Ed Koch our tallest mayor?  He was, after all, a towering 6 feet 2 inches!  Ah, but our NEW Mayor, Bill DeBlasio, measures in at 6’ 5”!!!  Bizarrely, Mr. DeBlasio is DWARFED by City Councilman Robert Cornegy Jr. (who represents Bed Stuy/Crown Heights) who is nearly 7 feet tall.

I seem to have become distracted.  Please forgive!  Anyway:

All of this left me anchovy-less, sans anchois, ohne sardellen, בלי אנשובי, sin anchoas, click click violent-horizontal-wagging-of-the-head click anchovies click, and so on; in any language, my friends, your humble and hungry correspondent was left standing in a pizza place in Brooklyn that not only didn’t have any anchovies, but seemed to be completely confused by the notion of putting these on a pizza.

CAN YOU IMAGINE?!?  WHAT KIND OF PIZZA JOINT, especially in the borough of Brooklyn, the noble pizza-loving County of Kings, CAN’T PUT ANCHOVIES ON A PIZZA?!?  Now, we may not always WANT anchovies on our pizza – I mean, if there was a TV channel that only showed the work of Nat Hiken (the creator of Car 54 and The Phil Silvers Show/Sgt. Bilko), I wouldn’t want to watch it all the time; and I occasionally want ice cream that doesn’t have peanut butter cups in it…but it’s nice to know that we can have anchovies on the pizza when we want it! And truly, should any place that CAN’T put anchovies on a slice of pizza even CALL ITSELF a pizza joint?!?

I, my friends, adamantly say no.  This I state, aver, affirm, maintain, declaim, testify, and avow.  And I know what you’re thinking:  as long as we are discussing the height of famous statesmen, is Michelle Obama our tallest first lady?  After all, she towers nearly 6 feet over the neatly parquet’d historic floors of the Executive Mansion.  Well, my friends, she is only TIED for this honor; she is the same height as the estimable Eleanor Roosevelt.  And I am sure that the great Eleanor, the niece of one President and the spouse of another, would agree:  A pizza place without anchovies is like Martin without Lewis, Rossi without Allen, Petrillo without Mitchell, Durante without Jackson, Burns without Schreiber, Olsen without Johnson.

And a lifetime of slurping, chewing, munching, masticating, thoroughly enjoying and ALWAYS FOLDING pizza has led me to come to this conclusion:  When you walk into a pizza place, there should be television in the joint tuned to a soccer game (Juventus, A.C Milan, Man City, Ashton Villa, it hardly matters) and they should readily – no, HAPPILY – be prepared to dispense anchovies on request.

And if they can’t do that, they have no RIGHT to call themselves a pizza place.

Mr. Timothy Sommer’s opinions and grasp of reality are entirely his own.

Tim Sommer has achieved a degree of success as musician, record producer, major label executive, DJ, and personality on MTV and VH1.  He is currently composing Rebel Mensch, a rock opera based on the life of Judah P. Benjamin, the Confederate Secretary of State and the first person ever Bar Mitzvah’d as a reform Jew, and he continues his efforts to get New York Met pitcher Al Jackson in the baseball Hall of Fame. 

Now, the details behind the dazzling line of copy I recorded above hardly matters; suffice to see that Mr. Chapman, a left-handed pitcher of Cuban-Andorran descent who can throw a baseball at an almost supernatural speed, was quite recently on the receiving end of a batted line-drive to the forehead that nearly resulted in his premature defenestration from mortality (or, as they might say in Catalan, the native tongue of Andorra, esports induïda per decapitació); and the injury did, most indeed, leave our dear fast-balling friend with head full of staples.

What matters is this:  Baseball is back.

Baseball, which kept us company as a lonely child, and thrilled us when our middle school world was full of taunts and the snail-gray of boredom; baseball, which taught us math, patience, frustration, and loyalty to team and town; baseball, whose elegant pace reminded us of the need to breathe amidst the now-continuous distractions of the day, and whose green fields are full of space yet demand attention; baseball, whose radio and television announcers comforted us through long summer nights and shorter autumn days with tube-warmed voices as familiar as our mothers; baseball, which never changes yet is always in motion, and which continually promises us a spot under lights or sun in which to simultaneously richly relax and deeply focus; baseball, which allows us to have the heroes of every stage of our long lives immediately recalled simply by seeing the number on a uniform; baseball, which belongs to the sepia city and the sluicing subways and the green fields and the crystal blue country skies, all at the same time; baseball, which declines to grow old, even as we do; baseball, which refuses to be rushed in an era where now has already come and gone; baseball, my dear friends, which like the beautiful cream-colored bird glimpsed from the Brooklyn Bridge and silhouetted against the skyline, mysteriously vanishes with the chill and returns with the first rumor of spring; baseball is back.

And to honor the return of baseball, and inspired by the accidental poetry to be found in the headline about the fastballer felled by fickle flicks of ashen bat, I am going to present you with some baseball haikus, to remind us of the grace, simplicity, and poetry inherent in our greatest game.

Aroldis Chapman/Has a Head Full of Staples/A courageous Red.

Moe Berg, Atomic Spy/Heisenberg’s sworn enemy/Batted .243.

Third Base Coach Ed Yost/Relays signals in my dreams/Of Miracle Days.

All Hail Pumpsie Green/Who sought solace in Holy Lands/With pal Gene Conley.

They called him The Bird/He flew, he skipped, then flamed out/What a character.

Alex Rodriguez/Shame, shame, shame, shame, shame, shame, shame./Shame, shame, what a shame.

I have seen few sights/As disturbing and odd as/Davey Johnson’s neck.

On Montague Street/We stop and pause at a plague:/Jackie was signed here.

…AND THAT’S WHY I LOVE LIVIN’ IN BROOKLYN. 

Tim Sommer has been employed to varying degrees of gainfulness as a musician, record producer, DJ, VJ, and music industry executive.   The first baseball game he ever attended was on July 8, 1969, at Shea Stadium.  The New York Mets scored three runs in the 9^th to come from behind and beat the Chicago Cubs, 4 – 3, giving Jerry Koosman the win.  

Well, since I wasn’t exactly out and about this past week (unless you call confinement to a mattress in a 5’ by 7’ windowless room on Swinburne Island “going out”), Mr. Recoverin’ Remarkable is going to have to dig into his archives for this week’s column!  (Oh, by the way, dearest readers, The Carrie Fisher Center is on Swinburne Island, and Swinburne Island, for those who don’t know, is a man-made Island – built in 1873 – in the Lower Bay, not too far from Staten Island; it originally housed the doomed and quarantined sick who were pulled off of Ellis Island. Real estate is cheap there, and the CFCTPA knew a bargain when they saw one, so they snapped it up and put up a few sheds and a Quonset hut, and imported a couple of doctors from, as far as I can tell, the Philippines).

(Oh, by the way, the poor chap pictured below isn’t me, but the unfortunate Leon Czolgosz, who you, dear reader, shall learn a little more about shortly.)

Fortunately, I have a file set aside for precisely these occasions (I last utilized it in 1986, when my depression over the suicide of Queens borough President Donald Manes tipped me into a catatonic state for three weeks).  The file is labeled Remarkable Facts!, and it contains all sorts of Tantalizin’ Tidbits and Insanely Amazin’ Info I’ve collected over the years!  AND IT’S ALL TRUE!!!

• Researchers at Duke University have determined that 8 out of 10 people will become sleepy if they stare a dog directly in the eye!

•  In the Netherlands, it is considered exceedingly rude to touch a stranger’s bicycle tire!

•   The reason we call a prostitutes’ client a “John” is because of a very public scandal involving Indianapolis mayor John O’Dwyer in 1904!

•   When President Lyndon Johnson was depressed, he would have aides roll him inside a carpet and throw him down a flight of stairs!

• The original name of IHOP (the International House of Pancakes) was IHOPWESOOT (The International House of People Who Eat Spaghetti Out of Troughs)! In 1955, brothers Jerry and Al Lapin opened two IHOPWESOOTS – one in Siler City, North Carolina, the other in Greeneville, South Carolina.  These eateries were great successes, so the brothers opened a third IHOPWESOOT in 1956 in Greensboro, North Carolina.  Problems with the North Carolina health department forced the two N.C. IHOPWESOOT’s to close in 1958, so in 1959, Jerry and Al reconfigured these two locations around a breakfast and pancake friendly concept, shortened the name, and the rest is history!  Oh, the one remaining IHOPWESOOT (the South Carolina one) changed its’ name in 1962 to Ye Olde Spaghetti Feedbag, and remains open to this day!

• Jared Folgle – whom the world knows as “the Subway guy” – is the grandson of atomic spies Ethel and Julius Rosenberg!

•  Before Merv Griffin created Jeopardy!, he created a less-successful game show called That’s No Lady, That’s My Chimp!

• The Black and Tan, a libatious staple of every Irish pub, was invented in 1916 by a Dublin-based terrorist group working for Irish independence, The Blacken Ten!

• The actual inventor of the recording process later known as the Edison Disk was Leon Czolgosz!  After Thomas Edison stole Czolgosz’s idea, the inventor descended into madness, culminating with his assassination of President William McKinley in 1901!

•  Due to the fact that he was born in England, funnyman Bob Hope was briefly interred as a Suspicious Alien by the U.S. Government during the 1938 Cordell Hull Poisoning Crisis!

• The dog breed name “Pit Bull” originated with legendary British Prime Minister Winston Churchill!  Churchill, who was notoriously cruel to animals, owned four Staffordshire Bull Terriers, whom he kept chained in a small cage behind his quarters in the War Office.  The Prime Minister took to feeding the dogs only peach pits, which he claimed kept them “hungry, healthy, and regular as a soldier,” further citing that when he had been a prisoner of war himself in a Boer prison camp, his captors had fed him only on peach pits, and he had “turned out fine.”  Before long, due to their simple and constant diets, people around the War Office began to refer to Churchill’s dogs simply as “Pit Bulls.”

(Mr. Sommer’s opinions and grasp of reality are entirely his own)

Tim Sommer has been employed to varying degrees of gainfulness as a musician, record producer, DJ, VJ, and music industry executive.   He is currently working on Beame!, a musical about New York City’s much maligned elfin Mayor of the same name, and he recently testified before the veterans’ committee of the Baseball Hall of Fame that middle reliever Terry Leach was the best pitcher he ever saw.

Folks, I only kid.  There’s nothing funny about air disasters.  Why, it seems like only yesterday that a private plane crash in California’s San Rafael Mountains tragically ended the life of two of our greatest and goofiest second-generation funnymen, Red Buttons Jr. and Leander “L’il Doodles” Weaver.  It happened back in ’88:  these two up-an’-comers had rented a plane to take them from State Line, Nevada, (where they had been performing with fellow celebrity scions Frankie Laine Jr. and Lou Costello Jr.) to the yearly Chabad Telethon in Hollywood (Red Jr. and L’il Doodles weren’t performing – they were just manning the phones, something they were doing to spit-shine their image after they infamously made some off-color jokes about Rebbe Manachem Mendel Schneerson).  But if L’il Doodles was still with us, I know what he’d say…

“I’m not sayin’ my date last night was reluctant to put out, but she went down slower than Malaysian Airlines 370.”

…And that’s because ol’ Leander could find humor in anything, and believed any situation could be brightened by a smile.  So, folks, if you are offended by these jokes, write my lawyer,  L. Ike I. Giveadamn, Esq. But seriously, I want to pay tribute to the “laugh at anything” spirit of Leander Weaver, and that’s why I’m barbequein’ these rib-ticklers.  Leander had a hard life:  despite having a famous dad (and an even better known relatives – L’il Doodles’ uncle was television pioneer Sylvester “Pat” Weaver, and his first cousin was actress Sigourney Weaver!), Leander suffered from a rare condition called male galactorrhea; in other words, his breasts produced milk.  This condition first manifested in Junior High, so you can imagine what a living hell gym class was for Leander.  This rare disorder plagued him his whole life; not only did Leander give milk, he gave it prodigiously, and it was not uncommon for him to have to change shirts six or eight times a day.  In addition, the small “pinky” toes on each of Leander’s feet had fused to the adjacent “ring finger” toe, causing Leander to walk with a very peculiar gait – he would begin a step on the “toe” of his foot, as opposed to the heel.  Most people assumed Leander walked that way for comic effect; but he did not, my friends, and due to this strange gait, by the time he was 25, he had the shins of an 80 year old.  Oh, and he had one wandering eye, the result of a rather well-organized albeit shameful assault he suffered at the hands of the girl’s volleyball team in 10^th Grade.  I suppose it was all these adversities that made Leander Weaver want to make people laugh – the louder he could make them laugh with him, the less he would hear them laugh at him.

I still remember where I was when I heard that Leander had died (I really didn’t give a crap about Red Jr. – he was a nasty piece of work, though he did a great routine about the Wilbur Mills and Fannie Fox scandal):  after a hard day at The Bugle covering the fallout from Geraldo Rivera’s groundbreaking reports on the conditions at Willowbrook, I had plopped down in the Barcalounger with a pitcher of cool Rob Roys to my left and a Swanson’s Salisbury Steak Dinner on the TV tray in front of me.  I had flicked on the Motorola and I was trying to decide between Alias Smith and Jones on Channel 2 or Me and the Chimp on Channel 7.  Then a bulletin came on TV…

WAIT.  That’s what I was doing when I heard that Alabama Governor and Presidential Candidate George Wallace had been shot!  Damn.  L’il Doodles and Red Jr.’s plane didn’t go down until 16 years later.  Dammit.  Percodan is a cruel mistress, my friends.  It leaves holes in your memory bigger than the questions the grieving families must have about the REAL fate of the passengers on Flight 370.  If only my friend Artemis Kenyon was here to solve the mystery!  But that’s another story, and maybe I’ll tell it to you sometime.  Wait…I told it to you last week, didn’t I?  My god, Jerry Lewis told me this would happen. Or was it Bernice Massi?  Man, she was hotter than a three-dollar pistol, yes she was.  She put the “Broad” in Broadway.  When I was a kid in Little Neck I had a dog named Duke, named after Duke Snider, and I once saw Chuck “The Rifleman” Connors buying a Chevy Impala at a car dealership on Northern Boulevard.  My friends used to call me Johnny Ringo because I would never stop talking about that TV show.   What was I talking about again?

Mr. Remarkable is indisposed, and has asked me, his nurse, to think of ‘stuff’ to put into something called…THE THREE-DOT ROUND UP!  Boy, there was a long line at CVS today – two of the automated checkout machines were broken! …Boy, if you like pizza, Brooklyn is the right place to live!…Stephanie, she’s the lady who does dispatch at the car service company my brother works at, she says her boyfriend was an extra in that picture The Wolf of Wall Street…wait…Mr. Remarkable says “You’re doin’ a crappier job than Pia Lindstrom” (whatever that means) so he wants me to just write down exactly what he says…I’ll tell ya that Joey Heatherton didn’t have much in the chesticles department, but her tush was firmer than the first tee at Augusta…I don’t know about you, but I still turn on the TV late on Sunday night expectin’ to see The George Michael Sports Machine…Burns ain’t nothin’ without Schrieber and Schreiber ain’t nothing without Burns, those two lovely kids really ought to give it another go…the other day I was standing on Montague Street and someone came up to me and asked me where “Stan’s Church” was!…AND THAT’S WHY I LOVE LIVIN’ IN BROOKLYN!

(Mr. Sommer’s opinions and grasp of reality are very much his own)

Tim Sommer has achieved some small degree of note as a musician, record producer, DJ, VJ, and music industry executive.   He is currently writing a book titled Eddie Deezen: The Thinking Man’s Sammy Petrillo (and the role of other Lewis Manqués in the Culture of Hollywood), and he continues his efforts to get the New York Mets to permanently rename the Third Base Coaching Box at CitiField after Ed Yost.

Our story starts on U Thant Island.  As you know, U Thant Island is that tiny rock that lies in the East River just south of Roosevelt Island.  It is the smallest of Manhattan’s many Islands, and is named for the beloved Burmese Director General of the United Nations, Dag “U Thant” Hammarskjold.

In the early 1970s, U Thant Island had only one resident:  the legendary spiritualist, psychic researcher,  and cosmologist Artemis Kenyon.  Kenyon, who lived in a hole 12 feet deep and four feet wide carved into the living rock of the island, had been given the property by the United Nations as thanks for his work finding Hammarskjold’s plane after it mysteriously disappeared in 1961.  Kenyon’s specialty was solving aeronautic mysteries that could not be resolved via more conventional means.

How did I meet this remarkable man?  In late 1972, a plane carrying Congressmen Hale Boggs and Nick Begich vanished in Alaska, and I visited Kenyon for his assistance with a piece I was writing on the strange disappearance.

Kenyon, who ritually dressed only in baseball shirts once used in actual Negro League Baseball Games, offered me a cup of Lichen tea, which I politely declined, and an odd candy of his own invention fashioned out of dried eel and caramel (which I accepted; it tasted like the bile of the elderly). He then shared with me the 60-volume history he had written, in verse, of the legendary lost world of Mu.  Kenyon claimed that the massive work had been dictated to him by an elder spirit of Mu named Chappy of Çatalhöyük, Tighearna (God) of the Pipe-Whistle. Inexplicably, Kenyon had written the massive tome in a recently dead language called Jassic, a Hungarian dialect that appeared to have become completely extinct some time in the 19^th Century.  Confiding in me, Kenyon explained that the 60-volume epic was really a hidden history, masked in metaphors and riddles, of the fairies and demons who hide in the ether and direct traffic in the sky.  He further explained that all of his clues regarding the many aviation mysteries he had solved over the years came from interpretations of the Mu text.

Artemis Kenyon was a remarkable man.  He died in 1977, mysteriously vanishing during that summer’s great blackout, his remains not turning up until 1980, when they were found in the meatpacking district by a film crew working on the movie “Cruising.”   Kenyon’s great history of Mu’s ethereal spirits was never located, nor was it ever copied; but I am quite sure that somewhere in its’ lost pages, decipherable only by the great Kenyon himself, lies the answer to the puzzle of flight 370.

Kenyon, incidentally, was the father of high-spirited TV-taxi film crit  Ignatius Malachy “Sandy” Kenyon.  In fact, when you hear Kenyon screech “I’m Sandy Kenyon!” he is actually saying “I.M. Sandy Kenyon,” paying tribute to the full name given to him by his father Artemis and his mother, TV funnygal Judy Graubart.  Oh, and Artemis Kenyon’s daughter from a prior marriage was long-time Orson Welles paramour, Oja Kodar.  What a remarkable man!

AND NOW IT’S TIME FOR THE THREE-DOT ROUND UP!  Hey, you know who loves Brooklyn Heights?  I do, that’s who!  My love affair with this neighborhood is legendary, I mean Steve McQueen and Ali McGraw couldn’t hold a candle to us.  But why can’t I get a pint of Ben & Jerry’s after 10 PM?!?  Like you, like me, like noted Ben & Jerry’s fan Ted Bessell, I love me some sweet n’ cold stuff with lot’s of gooey an’ chewy an’ crunchy stuff inside, but the nice gents at the all-night candy store near me ONLY have Haagen Dazs, and Mr. R. E. Markable (that’s me!) has NO darn idea where somewhere is open that might sate my late-night craving for a trough of da good stuff!…Best o’ luck to the brand new People Who Dyed hair salon on Clark Street! (do I get a free trim for that plug? Here’s hopin’!)…Here’s somethin’ logical:  CHEESE is made from milk, an’ MILK CHOCOLATE is made with milk – it was only a matter of time before someone blended the two and made Chocolate Cheese!  Well, hooray for the weird beards at Curds and Wythe on Wythe Street in Williamsburg, who have been making artisanal cheeses and dairy products from their storefront at Wythe and N. 1^st for a little over a year now.  They’ve just come out with not one but TWO varieties, Monster Muenster Mocha and Chewy Chocolate Cheddar.  How do they taste?  Well, imagine licking the deck of a slave ship  (jus’ jokin’, guys – we kid everyone here at RemInfo HQ! Tho’ next time be a little less stingy with the free samples)…I wanted to note the sad passing of Dario D’Abbruze, a/k/a Roslyn Kind-Of, the world’s best known (and only!) Roslyn Kind impersonator.  As you all know, Roslyn is the super-talented singin’ sister of superstar Barbra Streisand, and dear sweet Dario created his own niche in the crazy, mixed-up industry we call Le Biz by devoting his too-short life to honoring Ms. Kind’s considerable skills and style.  Dario was 62, and a memorial concert is being planned, so watch this space for details… Hey, if you want to spend a compelling evening at the theatre, I highly recommend the Prospect Players’ production of an exciting new play, It Should Happen To You (It Happened to Me), a one-man show based on the life and loves of Peter Lawford.  Brooklynite Kevin Hogan does an absolutely stellar job making Lawford’s legendary trials and tribulations come to life…AND THAT’S WHY I LOVE LIVIN’ IN BROOKLYN!

(Mr. Sommer’s opinions and grasp of reality are very much his own)

Tim Sommer has achieved some small degree of note as a musician, record producer, DJ, VJ, and music industry executive.   He is currently teaching a class at C.W. Post on the semiotics of Mantan Moreland’s famous “Mashed Potato” joke (“Lexicon, Language, and The L’il Gal in the French Maid’s Outfit”), and he continues his efforts to get Ron Swoboda into the Baseball Hall of Fame. 

THE THREE DOT ROUND-UP! 

How ‘bout a big Three-Dot Cheer for TBS:  Not only are they trying to reach the kiddie market with their new Saturday morning live-action entry, L’il Dallas, they’re actually casting Larry Hagman III (that’s right – the original J.R.’s great-grandson!) as the 11-year old Mean Widdle Texan!…And just to create some confusion, the young’un Hagman is NOT to be confused with the up-and-coming Bushwick band, The Larry Hagman Three, who have just released their debut 7” record on Brooklyn’s own Straight to L record label…I don’t know about you, but sometime this Politically Correct stuff can get outta hand:  General Mills is gonna be CHANGING the magical l’il leprechaun on the Lucky Charms box to something “less offensive” to the sensibilities of people of Irish Descent.  Apparently, the new box-star (and I’m quotin’ from the press release, folks, don’t blame ol’ Mr. Markable!) will be a character that “…more realistically and respectfully embodies the achievements and legacy of the Irish People.” I would say I am speechless, folks, but you know I always have something to say!  I haven’t been so offended since The House of David baseball team was forced outta business…It seems that so many ‘big name’ people have died recently that some very important dearly departed are fallin’ through the cracks.  SO I would like to take a second and tip the ol’ Three-Dot Yarmulke to some of the names you may have missed in the smaller type of the obituaries: The talented Marty Johnson, the younger brother of comedian Arte Johnson, died on February 23 at age 74.   Marty was the co-star of the 1966 ABC military laffer You and Watt Army about an entire family – The Watts, of course – who get accidentally drafted into the Military.   Marty played the bumbling private who gets to share a tent with the Watts (a role originally written for funnyman Howard Morris). The show may have only lasted four episodes (it was personally yanked from the airways by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, who called the show “an almost treasonable offense to any man who has ever served his nation’s flag”), but it put the “Ho” in “Ho Chi Minh”…You know who else  also passed recently with relatively little fanfare?  That’s right, one-time Heights’ resident Lysander Eurphrosyne “Maynard” Agnew, the younger brother of Vice President Spiro Agnew.  Maynard, who was known for his trademark beret and goatee, turned his back on the “establishment” legal and political career path his famous brother pursued and chose instead to live life as (what we use to call!) a “beatnik.”  Maynard lived in the Heights during the early 1960s, where he briefly ran the legendary Like, Books bookstore.  Always a thorn in his brother’s side, Maynard was appointed ambassador to the tiny Micronesian nation of Palau in 1969, and he remained there for the rest of his life;  by 1990 he had asserted a nearly-godlike sovereignty over the coral atoll of Kayangel in Palau, with many comparing him to Kurtz in Heart of Darkness.  Lysander died  on March 1 in Kayangel at age 91, brutally beheaded by his eldest granddaughter, Mariur Ngiratkel “Click Click” Agnew…Whoever said you couldn’t get a good Quinoa Spelt Scone in this town hasn’t been to the lovely and charming Le Pain Quotidien, which brings a touch o’ France to ol’ Montague Street.  Lovely atmosphere and the food is Tres Bon!  Better get there fast before some Germans march in and they start selling sauerkraut…Hey, I’m only Joking when I take jabs at the Jermans – some of our best Brooklynites were Huns!  The amazin’ John A. Roebling,  the man who built the Brooklyn Bridge,  was born in Germany, and didn’t come to America until he was 25…With the success of GIRLS, it should come as no surprise that the networks are scrambling to put more shows on their sched set in Brooklyn.  In September of 2014, The Lifetime channel is gonna unveil Windsor Terrace, an evening soap about luscious lady Vampires living in a glamorous mansion.  Kelly Packard and Jamie Gertz are set to star, with Bronson Pinchot as the ladies’ Transylvanian butler.   Also, in a bid for the desirable 20-something female demographic, Oxygen has announced a fairly transparent Girls rip-off called Greenpoint Dolls.  No casting has been announced, but oddly they will be shooting exteriors for the show in the Los Angeles hipster district of Silverlake, and interiors in Toronto. Finally,  the CW has already started shooting Sombrero, about a private eye named Luke Sombrero who prowls the streets of Downtown Brooklyn breaking rules and catching bad guys.  The title roll is being played by Eric McCormack, who you may remember from Will & Grace…AND THAT’S WHY I LOVE LIVIN’ IN BROOKLYN! 

Oh!  One more thing!  Before I go, I wanted to pass along a joke told to me by one-time Brooklyn resident Elliot Gould:

A bar walks into a dog.  “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form,” says the bar.  “Rough!” says the dog.  The bar looks out from within the dog, whose psyche-soma self he has entered through the process of Tonglen meditation, and notices that the dog needs to get it’s nails cut.  “Geez, you should really clip those, pal,” says the bar.  “How is it walking on those?’”  “Rough!” says the dog.  Then the bar asks “What is life like when we don’t recognize the emptiness inherent in all things subject to dependent origination?”  “Rough!” answers the dog.  The dog, conscious of its’ existence in both conventional and ultimate reality, realizes he is thirsty and asks the bar for a beer.  “I can’t serve you,” says the bar, “You’re only four.”  “Rough,” says the dog.  “The self is made up entirely of non-self elements,” the dog adds, trying to maintain his balance while having an entire bar inside of him.

 (Mr. Sommer’s opinions and grasp of reality are entirely his own)

 Tim Sommer has achieved some degree of note as a musician, record producer, DJ, VJ, and music industry executive.   He is the author of an acclaimed monograph about the career of TV and Film Star Marty Ingels, and continues his efforts to get Frank Viola into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

But did you know that the Winter Olympics were once almost in Brooklyn!

The story starts in 1936 with Stephen W. McKeever, the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers.  One day while watching a ball game, he and his pal Robert Moses  (yes, the master builder – try sayin’ those two words three times fast!) were jawin’ about the pomp and spectacle of the recently concluded Olympic Games in Munich.  They agreed that the krauts could sure put on a show, but they thought they could do better! So McKeever and Moses decided to join forces and bring an Olympics to Brooklyn!

The first thing they needed to do, of course, was put together a good proposal, and pitch it to the International Olympic Committee, who were then headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland.  Now, Moses and McKeever cleverly thought that getting the winter games would be easier than getting the summer ones!  The Winter Olympics were only a few years old at that point (they had started in 1924), and they weren’t the big deal they were to later become (in fact, the first Winter Games in the U.S., in 1932 in Lake Placid, had been a decidedly tepid affair – only fourteen events in four sports were staged, and many of the world’s greatest winter athletes were no-shows because they didn’t want to spend the money to come over from Europe!).  In fact, this was one of the things Moses and McKeever wanted to change, and oh boy oh boy, they had big plans.

In January of 1937, McKeever, Moses, and famed architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, arrived in the land o’ banks and chocolate (that would be Switzerland! Ha!) to try to convince the IOC to award the 1944 Winter Olympics to Brooklyn!  Here’s what McKeever, Moses, and Mies had in mind:  They wanted to build an ARTIFICIAL MOUNTAIN in Prospect Park for all the downhill skiing and bobsleddy-type events; they wanted to convert Bed Stuy Armory into a state-of-the-art indoor arena to house hockey and skating; and they wanted to put a ROOF on McKeever’s own Ebbets Field, so they would have a site for a majestic opening and closing ceremonies befitting the grandeur of the games!

Boy, the ’44 Brooklyn Winter Olympics was sure gonna be a sight to behold!

Moses, of course, had long-term goals in mind:  he hoped to make the Prospect Park mountain permanent and create an income generatin’ tourist attraction to bring skiing and hiking into the city (it would be called Mount Moses, of course); and he also wanted to keep the dome on Ebbets Field, to create a forward-looking monument to the future which he hoped would compliment his plans for the 1939 World’s Fair, then being built in Flushing Meadows’ Park.

Well, when the Moses and his pals presented their ambitious plans to the crusty old burghers at the IOC, the reaction was swift.  Henri de Baillet-Latour, the Belgian head of the IOC, bluntly pronounced “C’est le travail de rêveurs et les Juifs, bien haut sur l’opium Hébreu” (“This is the work of dreamers and Jews, clearly high on Hebrew opium”); and with that one withering sentence, he dismissed Moses, McKeever, and Mies, and awarded the 1944 Winter Olympics to the city of Cortina d’Ambezzo, Italy.

Moses was never one to take defeat lightly.  Angrily, he announced that he would start his own International athletic competition to compete with the Olympics; this would be called The World Congress of Athletic Progress, and he would hold it every two years, to be permanently housed in the new Brooklyn winter paradise Moses was planning on building.  Now, McKeever thought that such an endeavor would surely bankrupt Moses, McKeever, the Dodgers, and the borough of Brooklyn, so he suggested to Moses that they all be good sports and accept that you win some, you lose some (a phrase first attributed, by the way, to the Roman Emperor Elagabulus; very shortly before his execution in 222 A.D. for his “unspeakably disgusting life”, ol’ King Gabby famously said “vincis, aliquam perdas”).   Well, ol’ master builder Moses didn’t like that kind of conciliatory talk, and he attacked his former partner with a rather large decorative ashtray presented to him in 1935 by New York Governor Herbert Lehman.  This incident was later hushed up, but there are some who believe the injuries Moses inflicted on McKeever contributed to his death in 1938, though that’s never been remotely proven.

But that’s another story, and Moses plowed ahead with his plans for his own personal Olympics.  To help promote the idea, he enlisted some corporate sponsors, high-profile politicians, and contemporary celebrities for a radio telethon to both raise money for The World Congress of Athletic Progress and familiarize the public sector with the concept. So, on November 14, 1937 a telethon titled Champion Spark Plugs and Pepsodent, the Antiseptic Toothpaste Present Muscle, Pride, and Progress aired on the Mutual Broadcasting Network, beamed live for eleven hours from the Mutual studios at 1440 Broadway.  It was quite an event!  Hosted by Comedian Fred Allen and surrealist painter/celebrity Salvador Dali, the remarkable evening also featured performances by the Boswell Sisters, Orson Welles, Kay Kyser, Chester Lauck and Norris Goff of Lum and Abner, Ed Wynn, noted juvenile Eddie Cantor impersonator Larry “L’il Banjo Eyes” Kase, the Dandy Dixie Minstrels, and star athletes from the New York Giants (Moses had switched team allegiances after the rupture of his relationship with McKeever).

The telethon was a disaster.  First of all, in order to emphasize the gravity of the event, Moses insisted that every reference in the script to the proposed inaugural games of The World Congress of Athletic Progress (slated at that time for February, 1942) include the date being written out in Roman Numerals.  This detail wreaked havoc with all the talent on the show, who found themselves attempting to pronounce “MCMXLII” as a word!  By the middle of the show, the considerable vocal talent had agreed upon a pronunciation of “Mick-Mix-ell” (as in “I’m Ray Corrigan, and Ernest Truex, Rosita Serrano and I want to tell you about The World Congress of Athletic Progress in February of Mick-Mix-ell”), and this infuriated Moses to such a degree that he physically attacked Ed Wynn’s wife and infant daughter.  Secondly, less than a third of the way through the marathon broadcast, news broke of the Japanese victory at Shanghai (in the ongoing and tragic Second Japanese-Sino War), and Mutual continually broke into the broadcast to update news about the event.

Within days, the grand idea of The World Congress of Athletic Progress was dead.  Moses licked his wounds, concentrated on the 1939 World’s Fair, had Rita Serrano deported to Nazi Germany, and went on to many great projects, but Prospect Park never got it’s mountain, Ebbets Field never got its’ roof, and the remarkable events of the global conflagration known as The Second World War preoccupied everyone’s minds for years to come.

There was an interesting fall-out from the event, however:  Salvador Dali and Fred Allen formed an unlikely friendship, with amazing results!  The artistic insouciance and conceptual savoir faire of the genius artist and the witty, fertile, and febrile mind of the great comedian combined to come up with one of era’s greatest inventions:  the toy we came to know as The Slinky.  But that’s another story.  Let’s just say that Dali saw the tightly coiled spring as the only possible reaction to the ludicrousness of the Civil War that had just wracked his native Spain (he envisioned the toys being dropped in the tens of thousands over the war-wracked plains of Andalusia), whereas Allen saw the ultimate commercial potential of the strange and mischievous object.

Once again, no time for THE THREE DOT ROUND-UP! Boy, there’s a lot of gossip and news piling up!  AND THAT’S WHY I LOVE LIVING IN BROOKLYN! 

(The author’s opinions and grasp of reality are entirely his own)

Tim Sommer has been employed as a musician, record producer, DJ, VJ, and music industry executive of some little note.   He is the author of the critically acclaimed I, Wellonmellon:  The Dark World of the Women in the Films of Jerry Lewis, and he continues his efforts to get the New York Mets pitcher Al Jackson into the Hall of Fame.

Anyway, it’s a story I love to tell…so here, Ladies & Gentleman of the most Kingly of Counties, is the story of Presidents Day!

Like so many great American holidays, the roots of Presidents Day lie in Germany…but that part comes later, so let’s begin here:  Due to unforeseen problems in the calendar reforms introduced by Pope Pius XI and Vice President Charles Curtis in 1930, the year 1935 was going to be 26 minutes too long…unless no fewer than THREE new three-day weekends were introduced into the American work calendar! So in February of 1934 the government created Memorial Day and Labor Day, but they still needed one more!

Enter legendary film director King Vidor, who was an avid follower of current events (as we all know!); he was also a great friend of another Vice President, FDR’s John Nance Garner. In September of 1934 while Garner and Vidor were on the Hearst yacht pulling a train on Marion Davies, they were discussing the calendar problem. Vidor mentioned something interesting that had just happened in Germany:  the Nazis had introduced a holiday to commemorate the life and achievements of their legendary President, Paul von Hindenburg, who had recently died. In fact, not only had the Krauts created Präsident Tag, they had made it – you guessed it – a three-day weekend! (Or, as they call it, Einen Tag Nach Sonntag Knödel und Kalbfleisch ohne Angst vor Arbeitszeitverdauungsstörungen Essen – “An extra day after Sunday to eat dumplings and veal without fear of work-time indigestion”).

After cleaning up, Vidor and Nance discussed their brainstorm with some of the other guests on the yacht (who included actors Adolphe Menjou and Franklin Pangborn, Los Angeles mayor Frank Shaw, and George Putnam, the husband of aviatrix Amelia Earhart).  They all agreed that a holiday to commemorate America’s Presidents was a first-rate idea! Not only would it solve the calendar problem that was dangling over the very fabric of time like the Sword of Damocles, but the holiday could also boost the economy due to increased revenue from both tourism and Presidents Day souvenirs.

Within three days, Vice President Nance and the newspaper big-wig William Randolph Hearst were in Washington to present the Presidents Day idea to a phalanx of congressmen and senators (and also to seek out a legendary specialist to cure a rather persistent case of the Suppurating Gleet they had both acquired).  Provisionally, they slated the holiday for March to coincide with the birthdays of Andrew Jackson, Grover Cleveland, James Madison, and John Tyler, but this notion got caught up in the heated racial politics of the day.  The southern contingent loved the idea of a March holiday, because it honored both hootin’ an’ hollerin’ Andrew Jackson and because John Tyler was the father-in-law of Reb-in-Chief Jefferson Davis.  The Northern politicos, however, bristled at the idea of turning the new holiday into an excuse to wave the rebel flag, so the whole Presidents Day idea stalled for a while, bogged down in partisan politics.

But the clock was ticking!  By now it was already the middle of October 1934, and 1935, with it’s potentially missing 26 minutes, was just weeks away!

Enter the legendary Adolphe Zukor, the founder and head of Paramount Pictures.  Born a poor Jewish girl in Hungary, few Americans loved their adopted land as much as ol’ Addie.  He had read about the holiday deadlock in Der Hollywood Teglekh Bleter, the popular Yiddish-language Tinsel Town gossip daily, and he sprang into action, getting directly in touch with ol’ FDR himself!  Zukor promised the President that if the Federal Government would move the proposed holiday to February, he would personally guarantee that Paramount would produce movies about the three Presidents born in that short and cruel month — George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and William Henry Harrison.

Well, that sealed the deal (an expression first heard, coincidentally, in the Presidential campaign of Benjamin Harrison, ol’ William Henry’s grandson), and F.D.R. used his considerable powers to push through the February date for the new Presidents Day Holiday!  But the kerfuffle over the new holiday wasn’t over yet!  Remember how I just said there were two President Harrisons (and you probably do, unless your memory is impaired by, say, an overwhelming Percodan addiction that greatly reduced your ability to recall events between 1972 and 1983, and left 11 years of your life a soiled, soggy fog of regret and sadness)? Well, some of the same southern politicos who were pressing for the March holiday were inexplicably confused by the relatively simply notion of there being two President Harrisons.  One of the leaders of the Southern Dems, South Carolina Senator James F. Byrnes, completely mistook the latter Benjamin Harrison for the former William Henry Harrison!  And since Benjamin Harrison was very forward thinking on segregation and civil rights, Byrnes and the Southern Dems – confusing, as I just said, William for Benjamin – said they would only approve the February holiday if Harrison was eliminated from the list of Presidents commemorated by the Holiday!

(Boy, what a story!)

So, Harrison was kicked to the curb, and the February Presidents Day Holiday was signed into law just in time, on December 19^th, 1934, and the dilemma of the extra 26 minutes was solved.

I know what you’re thinking:  If Harrison didn’t pass the muster of the Southern Dems due to his support of Civil Rights, why did they support ol’ Abe?  Well, to be frank, I’ve never been able to figure that out.  I first heard the gist of the Presidents Day story from Nelson Rockefeller, Lou Walters, and Walter Winchell on one very, very long night at the Latin Quarter Club when I was still in my twenties, and I was able to confirm virtually all of it via extensive research conducted by my crack staff in the lonely days after the Apollo 1 fire on January 27, 1967 (everyone was pretty stunned, and I thought it would cheer everyone up to engage in some serious investigatory work!), but that was one question we never were able to answer.

Oh…and what ever happened to the Presidential biopics Adolphe Zukor promised an eager nation?  Well, that’s an interesting story in its’ own right, but I’ll try to “shorthand” it here:  The Abe Lincoln biography was re-scripted as a comedy vehicle for Paramount’s reigning bombshell, Mae West, and ol’ Banjo Eyes himself, Mr. Eddie Cantor.  In the film, titled Dumb Mr. Lincoln, Lincoln (as portrayed by Cantor) worries that Mrs. Lincoln (West) is cheating on him; and she is, in fact, carrying on with virtually everyone in sight, including Ulysses Grant and Vice President Andrew Jackson (played by the vaudeville team of Smith and Dale, also signed to Paramount).  She even has a peccadillo with Frederick Douglass (played by Cantor in blackface, surely one of the most offensive portrayals in Cantor’s otherwise distinguished career). A young Gary Cooper shows up briefly as the bodyguard at Fords’ Theatre who West distracts from his duty with her womanly charms.  Now, unfortunately – or maybe fortunately – the film was withdrawn almost immediately upon release, and all copies thrown into San Pedro Bay; movie censor Will Hays said that “…not only is this film a savage desecration of the memory of one of our greatest Presidents, but a scene with Mae West and Charlie Dale hints at a depravity only known in the darkest alleys of Algiers.”

How about that.

Now, the Washington biographical film also got handed over to the Paramount comedy department, but with happier results:  The L’il Georgie series, starring Jackie Cooper as young George Washington (and also featuring Ben Turpin and Ernie “Sunshine” Morrison), was a popular series of 12 two-reelers depicting somewhat idealized scenes from the childhood of our first President.

(Bizarrely, Dumb Mr. Lincoln got remade in the late 1960s, despite – or perhaps because of – the infamy and ignominy of the original picture. In the 1968 version, Lincoln is portrayed by Pat Buttram – Mr. Haney from Green Acres – and the lusty Mrs. Lincoln is portrayed by Beverly Garland, a last-minute replacement for Jayne Mansfield, who died just weeks before filming.  Arnold Stang plays Ulysses Grant, and V.P. Johnson by a somewhat miscast Nick Adams. A peculiar and discordant anti-war theme, obviously inspired by the contemporary situation in Vietnam, underlines the movie.)

WHEW.  Now, I warned you it was a long story, didn’t I?  No time left for the THE THREE DOT ROUND-UP!  But, as I said so many years ago on that mysterious talk show, you’ve been a great audience, AND THAT’S WHY I LOVE LIVING IN BROOKLYN! 

P.S.  You know…now that I think about it…I believe the talk show may have been Agronsky & Company.

Tim Sommer has been employed as a musician, record producer, DJ, VJ, and music industry executive.   He is the author of the critically acclaimed From Duel to Prinze:  How Suicide Framed Television in the 1970s , and he continues his efforts to get the city of New York to rename the borough of Queens after Gil Hodges.

Now, as you know, I took over this column in 1966 from its’ creator, the amazin’ Kermit Roosevelt Clinton-Henry, whose work was so admired in this parish that the city fathers named not one but two streets after him. The rest is history, and I am proud to be part of such an estimable legacy of accuracy and mirth.

Nevertheless, I will be the first to confess I am human and I do make mistakes.  So this week, I’m gonna do something I’ve never done before:  note some of my errors of the last 38 years.  As Brooklyn’s own Walt Whitman said, “All faults may be forgiven of him who has perfect candor.”  So here goes (oh, and I’ve noted the original publication date of the column):

*  Borough Hall did not get it’s name from the burros that originally grazed there (6/11/94).

 *  The word “semitic” descends from Shem, the eldest son of Noah and Emzara, not from Shemp, the third born son of Solomon and Jennie Horowitz (5/4/02).

*  Walt Disney’s Fantasia was not “in part” based on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion  (11/10/70).

*  Moe Berg, the second-string baseball catcher of the 1920s/30s who was also an Atomic spy (and who came within a hairs’ breadth of assassinating German physicist Werner Heisenberg), played for the Boston Red Sox, not the Boston Braves  (5/28/84).

*  During the manpower crisis of the First World War, trains on the IRT subway line were not manned by monkeys “most” of the time  (10/8/09).

*  The German title of Billy Crystal’s 1992 film, Mr. Saturday Night, was not Crystalnacht.

*  My statement that French Fries were “neither French nor Fried” was not entirely accurate  (8/2/80).

*  Funnyman Jerry Lewis did not have a stillborn twin named Jesse Garon Levitch (7/5/94).

 *  Speaking of the King of Comedy, there is no convincing evidence that in the early 1990s he was planning a sequel to The Geisha Boy exploring the “dark side” of Mr. Wooley, to be titled The Day Watanabe Cried, (10/26/93).

*  In my second-ever column (published on 3/5/66), I gave a misleading account of the censorship controversy surrounding the Disney film That Darn C**t.  The film, starring Don Knotts, Dean Jones, Roddy McDowell, Kathleen Freeman, Ed Wynn, and Clint Howard, was withdrawn from circulation not because of the somewhat risqué title, but because of a brief scene in which Clint Howard held hands with an African American child.

THE THREE-DOT ROUNDUP will be back next week!   Thank you for letting l’il ol’ me air some of my dirty laundry, and I am quite sure you very, very kind people will forgive me, AND THAT’S WHY I LOVE LIVING IN BROOKLYN! 

(Mr. Sommer’s opinions and grasp of reality are entirely his own)

Tim Sommer has been employed to varying degrees of gainfulness as a musician, record producer, DJ, VJ, and music industry executive.   This spring he will be in a bookstore near you with his co-author Paul Sherman promoting their new work, Dick Sargent:  Second Darrin But First in Our Hearts, and he continues his efforts to get the New York Yankees to rename Yankee Stadium after one of their best and bravest, Mr. Elston Howard. 

Well, it starts at our very own Hotel St. George in 1936!   The hotel’s world famous chef, Ennis Shalit (yes, the uncle of beloved movie critic Gene Shalit!) was playin’ around with some leftovers in the kitchen, and he came up with the idea of mixing some meat with some greens!  He liked where this was going, and he topped it off with a vinaigrette-based dressing he had previously concocted for another salad popular at the hotel, The Luscious Lehman (named for the then-governor of New York — unfortunately, the recipe for that specialty has been lost to history, but apparently bacon-wrapped scallops were involved!  Yum!).  Now, ol’ Ennis was a history buff (later in his life, he authored a biography of Willem Verhults, the second governor of Dutch New Amsterdam), and upon seeing the finished salad, he commented, “Sure tastes good, but it looks like a bloody mess!  It reminds me of Colonel DeKalb after he was bayoneted by the British at the Battle of Camden.”

A few days later, Shalit’s brand new DeKalb Salad went on sale in the Hotel’s world-famous Pineapple Street Café.  It was a big hit!  People came from as far away as Albany and Trenton to try the new culinary creation!  But when they ordered Shalit’s creation, waitresses (including a young actress named Joyce Randolph, later to be Brooklyn’s much beloved Trixie Norton!) would write down the name of the salad wrong; even if the menu said “DeKalb Salad”, the wait staff would hear patrons sayin’ “Gimme de Cobb salad,” and that’s what they would write down on their order pads!  Under the old adage that the customer is always right, only eight weeks after the DeKalb Salad went on sale, the Café’s owners, over Shalit’s fierce, even violent objections, renamed the dish The Cobb Salad.  And that’s how a much beloved dish, famous all over the world, was born!

There’s a funny footnote to this story: In 1956, Shalit published his biography of Verhults, but due to certain insinuations he made in the book about the character of Peter Stuyvesant (the 7^th Dutch governor of ol’ Manhattan), Dutch Peter’s descendants sued the pants off of Ennis, and they won!  Ennis Shalit died a bitter, broken man in a bowery flophouse in 1964.

And now, THE THREE-DOT ROUNDUP!  Very excited to see that the Heights’ own Paul Giamatti will be starring in The Mario Biaggi Story…When I hear the words ‘Super Bowl’, I only picture one man, and his name is Joe Willie Namath…If you’re a fan of old timey radio (like me!) and a fan of Brooklyn 99 (like me!), you might remember a show on the CBS Radio Network called 21^st Precinct, starring the immortal Edward Everett Sloane …Speaking of ol’ E.E. Sloane, how many actors can YOU name that starred in films directed by BOTH Orson Welles and Jerry Lewis? Sloane was lensed by big Orson in Citizen Kane, and the King of Comedy in The Patsy…A recent poll by the BLGBBCCTVAS (the Brooklyn Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans, Bi-Curious Classic TV Appreciation Society) named Lost In Space’s Dr. Zachary Smith the gayest fictional character in TV history…On January 28, Community Board 3 in Manhattan voted NOT to rename a street corner on the Lower East Side after our very own Beastie Boys, and I, for one, think that’s bullspit!  Out here in the Heights, we happily renamed a park after our “homie” Adam Yauch…AND THAT’S WHY I LOVE LIVING IN BROOKLYN! 

(Mr. Sommer’s opinions and grasp of reality are entirely his own)

Tim Sommer has been employed to varying degrees of gainfulness as a musician, record producer, DJ, VJ, and music industry executive.   He is currently working on his monograph analyzing the work of actor Huntz Hall from a semiotic perspective, and he continues his efforts to get Mets southpaw Jon Matlack into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Now, I could say a lot of horrible things about what a consumer and flyer-hating mess American is, but I decided it would be better to cite the words of two legendary entertainers, Steve Rossi and Marty Allen.  In 1968, this wonderful duo hosted a special on ABC titled Flyin’ High: Allen & Rossi & The Goldiggers Meet America’s Apollo Astronauts in Miami Beach in Living Color.  Anyway, an up-and-coming comedy scribe named Lou Costello Jr. penned a pile of Airline jokes for the special, and with Li’l Lou’s permission, I will paraphrase a few of ‘em here, as a way of saying a big, fat “Eff You” to American Dumblines.  Here Goes:

If my girlfriend was as late as my American Airlines flight, I’d be buyin’ diapers now!…You know how long my American Airlines flight was on the runway?  We pulled out of the gate at Idlewild and took off from JFK!…There was such a back-up of traffic on the runway that I wondered if Chris Christie had a grudge against Fiorello LaGuardia!…I waited so long for my American Airlines flight to take off that I finished the complete works of Marcel Proust before I got to my serious reading!…I don’t wanna say our American Airlines stewardess was old, but her first threesome was with Wilbur and Orville Wright!…But at least the TSA was on top of things — The only way to get a bomb on a plane these days is to make a movie with Ryan Reynolds!…

(Of course, Lou Costello Jr. didn’t write ALL those japes – I got some of the more “topical” material from Larry Sombrero, Paul Sherman, Bob Giordano, and Aaron Chapman, the wonderful authors of the great new comic musical, The Not-So-Merry Life of the Merry Mailman: The Ups and Downs of Ray Heatherton, In Story and Song.  Good luck with the show, boys, and don’t let all those cease-and-desists get ya down!  As I told you in my last fax, just change the character’s name to Rance Lentzel.)

But in all seriousness, American Airlines sucks harder than Al Pacino in the director’s cut of Cruising.

No time for the THE THREE DOT ROUND-UP this week.  But I’ll be back soon with another grab-bag of gossip, gags, groovy gabs, and great stories! Meanwhile…I STILL LOVE LIVING IN BROOKLYN! 

Tim Sommer has been employed as a musician, record producer, DJ, VJ, and music industry executive.   He is the author of the critically acclaimed John Banner:  He Knew Plenty, and he continues his efforts to get the New York Mets to retire reliever Ron Taylor’s uniform number. 

Built between 1959 and 1964 by famed architects Reginald Verrazano and Archibald Narrows (of the firm DeRita, Fine, Verrazano, Besser, and Narrows, who also designed the Nassau Coliseum), until 1981 this amazing bridge was the longest suspension bridge in the world!…The central span of the bridge is 4,260 feet long (wow!), the length of 35 rugby pitches!..Actor Dean Cain was actually born on the bridge!  (Well, not literally on the macadam itself, but in a taxi cab on the bridge!)… President Gerald Ford once proclaimed the Verrazano-Narrows “a national treasure” and “my favorite bridge,” and actress Esther Rolle, who was present when ol’ Gerry made these statements, heartily agreed! …In 1970, famous aerialist Phillipe Petit Pere, the father of Phillipe Petit, attempted to walk a wire strung between the bridges two towers (each nearly 700 feet tall!); unfortunately, it ended in tragedy, as documented in the Academy Award winning documentary, Oh Mon Dieu Je Glissais (Pour L’amour de Dieu que C’était une Mauvaise Idée) (Oh My God I’m Falling, for the Love of God this was a Bad Idea)…The chief engineer was the legendary Othmar Amman, and that is truly a fantastic name!…Don’t forget the hypen!  The hypen between Verazzano and Narrows was officially added by New York governor Hugh Carey in 1976, after heavy persuasion by the powerful grammar lobby of the United Federation of Teachers…and even if the wondrous Verrazano-Narrows is now only the 11^th longest suspension bridge in the world, she will always be first in our hearts!!!

And now, THE THREE-DOT ROUNDUP!  Wendy Jo Sperber, we hardly knew ye…Our new Mayor, Bill DeBlasio, wants to proclaim Café Bustelo New York City’s “official” coffee, but I’ll always be a Dunkin’ Donuts man myself…The Tristan Tzara finger puppet wears you!…I have a pile of wampum riding on the Saints going all the way, and so should you…Even if you don’t dig drag shows, I highly recommend seeing the lovely and talented Marsha D’Penguins at Cabaret Lah-Dee-Dah in Greenpoint…Pointing out that Dennis Rodman is crazy is like pointing out that Jack Jones is a great singer – I mean, it’s kind of obvious, isn’t it?  So save yer breath…What do you prefer:  Splenda, Equal, or Sweet’n’Low?  According to a riveting new book by pop psychologist Joyce Brothers Jr., your answer says a lot about you!…If you haven’t made a pilgrimage to 328 Chauncey Street (where Ralph, Alice, Trixie, and Norton lived, and the real-life boyhood home of Jackie Gleason!), I’m not sure you can call yourself a ‘real’ Brooklynite…and when you’re there, say hi to Mrs. Manicotti for me!…AND THAT’S WHY I LOVE LIVING IN BROOKLYN!

(Mr. Sommer’s opinions and grasp of reality are entirely his own)

 Tim Sommer has been employed as a musician, record producer, DJ, VJ, and music industry executive.   He is currently working on a play which dramatizes a fictional meeting between Newark’s two most famous sons, Jerry Lewis and Moe Berg, and he continues his efforts to get Ron Blomberg into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

• Learn more about the exciting field of Endocriminology, in which specialists study hormones to determine patterns of criminal behavior.
• Finally watch seasons 3 – 8 of Bonar of the North, a Canadian detective show starring Bonar Bain, the identical twin brother of TV’s Conrad Bain.
• Continue my fight to get Sue Simmons back on the evening news, at all costs!
• Remember that “at all costs” doesn’t mean going to the extremes I went to during The Great Chauncey Howell Battle of 1992.
• Confuse my friends and loved ones by saying “Damn! I’m out of snuff! Do you know if the snuff store is open this time of night? I think it’s on Court Street, right next to Popeyes. Because, boy, I could sure use a soupcon of snuff.”
• Make time to demand to see more of those Elevator Inspection Certificates they have on file in The Management’s Office. You never know who you’re gonna meet!
• Take that class at the Learning Annex that teaches you how to distinguish David Denby from Tom Bosley.
• Confuse my friends and loved ones by saying “Come to think of it, there isn’t a snuff store next to Popeyes. Really, there’s just a guy who hangs out in front of Popeyes selling snuff.”
• Try out this phrase on friends and loved ones: “Say, as long as I am going to get some snuff, do you need anything from Popeyes?”
• Complete my doctoral thesis, “Mr. Coffee, The George Foreman Grill of its’ Day: The dawn of the sports veteran as elder-statesman pitchman and how this revitalized confidence in the Establishment in the post-Watergate Era.”
• Stop my annoying habit of loudly informing people in bars that they are pronouncing “Smithwicks” incorrectly.
• Make sure that every time I order a sandwich from a Subway Sandwich Technician, I say “May I have a soupcon of mustard with that?”

And now, THE THREE-DOT ROUNDUP! Meteorologists talk about golf-ball sized hail, but I’ve never heard a sports announcer talk about a hail-sized golf ball…If there’s a classier guy in the music industry than Michael Des Barres, I’ve never met him…I have a nice feeling about Ruben Tejada making a comeback with the Metropolitans in ’14, don’t you?…Do you know who was one of the sexiest funny ladies of 1970s television? Patti Deutsch, that’s who…Is there anything sadder than the sight of a closed Carvels?… Here’s a synonym for “heroic,” “classy,” and “courageous”: Robin Roberts…There IS such a thing as Too Mucho Deniro: Hey, Bob DeNiro – I just turned on WINS, and apparently this is STILL a free country. That’s good news! It means you ARE allowed to say “no” to movie roles. Geez, Bobby, I half expect to wake up and see that you’re appearing in a remake of “Inchon”…Ralph Kiner is 91 and Don Pardo is 95, and they’re still both showing up for work, so what’s your excuse?…Has there ever been a politician with a groovier name than the last governor of Mexican California, Pio Pico?… From the promenade, I’ve never seen the downtown skyline looking anything less than majestic, in any weather!…AND THAT’S WHY I LOVE LIVING IN BROOKLYN!

(Mr. Sommer’s opinions and grasp of reality are entirely his own)

Tim Sommer has been employed to varying degrees of gainfulness as a musician, record producer, DJ, VJ, and music industry executive. He is currently working on the interactive version of his acclaimed annotated studio log of the work of Gary Lewis and the Playboys, and continues his efforts to get Mets middle reliever Terry Leach into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Anyway, as far as we can tell, the tradition of exchanging gifts at Christmas began in 884 when Holy Roman Emperor Charles the Fat celebrated his victory over the rebel Engelschalk II by decreeing that all members of his royal retinue were to exchange oranges and salt to honor the birth of Christ. Now, this ‘arm’ of the Empire crumbled with Charles’ death in 888 (too bad for Big Chuck!), but with the resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire in the 10th Century, Emperor Henry the Fowler heard tales of ol’ Charles gift-giving tradition, and around 933 he decided to bring it back, specifically as a way of giving thanks for the treaty he had just signed with the troublesome Magyars. By the middle of the 12th Century, during the reign of the legendary Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, there’s strong evidence that the gift-giving habit had spread to all classes throughout the Empire (and from there to the rest of Europe).

Now…there couldn’t possibly be a Brooklyn connection to all this Imperial Chatter, could there? Why yes, there is!!! As you know, Charles the Fat was the grandson of the mighty Emperor Charlemagne, who founded the Holy Roman Empire. Through a different line of descent, John Roebling, who designed the Mighty an’ Majestic Brooklyn Bridge, claimed to be a direct descendent of Charlemagne. How about that!!! You know it’s true, because you just read it!

And now, THE THREE DOT ROUNDUP! Those Christmas lights on Montague Street are prettier than Linda Gray in a pantsuit…If anyone out there is hoarding Sriacha hot sauce, here’s a h-h-hot tip: Fresh Direct’s got plenty!!! A shot of that stuff in your Chicken’n’Stars and you’ll Thai one on!…Hey, how does a Pinch Hitter make a cake? With Sacrifice Batter!!!…Did you know that the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel is the longest continuous underwater vehicle tunnel in North America?…I know it’s not even New Years, but if anyone’s takin’ early bets for horse racing’s Triple Crown, my money’s on Almost Famous!…Is there anything more depressing than that damn “Christmas Time is Here” Peanuts song? Folks, it’s more of a downer than an audio book version of The Bell Jar read by Ian Curtis…I am a big fan of Limey Thespian Martin Freeman, but does he have to be in every movie?…Try saying ‘Limey Thespian’ three times fast!…Hey, at Puppy Birthday Parties, do the Doggie Clowns make Balloon Humans?…Did you know that one of TV’s classiest beauties, Suzanne Pleshette, was from Brooklyn Heights? AND THAT’S WHY I LOVE LIVING IN BROOKLYN!

(Mr. Sommer’s opinions and grasp of reality are entirely his own)

Tim Sommer has been employed to varying degrees of gainfulness as a musician, record producer, DJ, VJ, and music industry executive. He is currently working on the second volume of his biography of television pioneer Lee Leonard, and continues his efforts to get Sammy Petrillo a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

But few people know this trend is well over half a century old, and it was started by a Brooklyn native, Dr. Allen B. DuMont! Dr. Dumont, of course, was the mastermind behind the doomed DuMont Network, which was television’s fourth network between 1946 and 1956. In 1951, the network (whose flagship station was Channel 5 in New York) needed a show to fill a fifteen-minute slot between the end of Captain Video and His Video Rangers and the (often erratically timed) beginning of Boxing From Eastern Parkway. Ol’ Dr. DuMont himself conceived of I’m A Bad Widdle Doggie, which was hosted by Chaim ‘Hy’ Silvers (the twin brother of famed funnyman Phil Silvers) and Dagmar, the blonde-bombshell who was the Anna Nicole of her day. The premise of the show was simple: ordinary people came on with their pooches and told (presumably) funny stories about their pets’ embarrassing behavior. But in reality, the show was a disaster: under the hot lights, the dogs frequently became aggressive, had accidents, dashed for the exits, and consistently performed in a manner inappropriate for live television. In an attempt to retain order amongst the chaos, Silvers and Dagmar were forced to improvise constantly and sometimes recklessly: one night this resulted in Silvers telling an only-somewhat sanitized version of Mantan Morland’s famous “Mashed Potato” joke, and the next day the show was cancelled, after only being on the air for six episodes. Hy Silvers’ career never recovered, and he ended his days emceeing kiddies’ talent shows at Mount Airy Lodge in the Poconos. But the legacy of Dog Shaming as a national pastime endured, all thanks to Brooklyn’s own Dr. Allen DuMont!

Remarkable Remarks! Call me crazy, but I prefer Blimpie to Subway…Why is it so hard to find good ol’ fashion Bazooka Bubblegum? It’s still the best, my friends…A tip of the Christmas cap to Duane Reade on Court and Montague for staying open until midnight during the holiday season!…Has there even been a sexier woman than Miss Joey Heatherton?…I’m not saying Tofu comes from outer space, but spell it backwards and you got UFO!…When are they gonna develop a post-season award that properly honors the importance of the Middle Reliever?…A morning in the Heights isn’t complete without a Banana Nut Muffin from Connecticut Muffin!…Every time someone says “Bachman Turner Overdrive” I say “Yes, please!”…I’m not saying everyone living in North Williamsburg is young, but the hippest place there is the Monkey Bars! AND THAT’S WHY I LOVE LIVING IN BROOKLYN!

(Mr. Sommer’s opinions and grasp of reality are entirely his own)

Tim Sommer has been employed to varying degrees of gainfulness as a musician, record producer, DJ, VJ, and music industry executive. He is currently recording an audio book version of his much-acclaimed four-volume biography of the pioneering vaudevillians Weber and Fields; and, with a grant from AACSM (The American Association of Celery Salt Manufacturers) he is seeking to advance awareness of the Bloody Caeser in the United States.