Strong current in beach read
Summertime. Sand, sun, surf, swim, shove it. It’s best-seller time.
Bill O’Reilly — of whom you may have heard — is out — surprise! surprise! — with a new book. Less time than he usually spends chopping lefties, he’s knocked off another read faster than Moses threw together those Commandments.
My advance reader copy paperback — St. Martin’s Press — is nearly 300 pages. It’s “Confronting America: What Has to Change.” Chapters like “Loyalty,” “Are You a Patriot,” “Fake News,” “God Help Us,” “The Destroyers,” “The Deceivers,” “The Dilemma.”
Opens with 1620’s Pilgrim separatists: “Largely loons.” Ends with “57% of today’s Americans check their hand-held phones 224 times a day.” And: “70% cannot name their state senators.” And: “Men lie about 6 times a day; women lie roughly 3 times.”
Divorce? 1960: 14%. 2025: 50%. Chapter 9, “Working for a Living,” reports that Martin Van Buren became US president “because he kissed Andrew Jackson’s tush.”
Page 57: “The Right doesn’t care about the drug issue. They feel drug-involved people deserve their fate. Leftists refuse to acknowledge the reality.”
Good read. Out Sept. 15.
Maine-ly polished
I spent July Fourth with friends in Maine. It has lobsters and aged gents with bare feet in thong slippers. Nice. Especially when those antique nails remain gray in color. Not much else besides.
I finally figured out the reason for why there’s the state of Maine. America needed something to stick between New Hampshire and Canada.
Besides trees, what they have in Maine — who knows. I only know nothing’s in it that looks, sniffs, tastes or dresses like New York City.
So, go. Enjoy yourself. Forget L.L.Bean. Just bring nail polish for the geezers.
Build it better!
New York. Back in civilization. A Midtown high-rise crumbling happens to be similar to information I heard last year. Topline contractors who adhere to every rule, pay every tariff, obey all tack-on extras and are behind many top NYC buildings told me this. Understand, they told me this sitting in my kitchen a year ago.
Today’s builders, interested in cutting corners and making a buck, involve themselves with cheapo non-union help. Some are inexperienced, not expensive, come from who-knows-where, do not know their valves from a hole in the ground, have not possibly been involved in a major NYC high-rise construction before — and eager to knock off a quick buck. Their ability? Do it fast, do it now, do it cheap, make it look good — and get out. Walls crumble, elevators stall, water doesn’t come out of faucets, big money is paid, window panes shake. And that’s dealing with some of the newer slick-looking buildings.
I’m telling you what I know. Sitting in my kitchen, the pros told it to me. I knew it long back when I considered moving.
From Jim Fragale: Palm Springs co-op: Nighttime. Crooks stole the workings of two hot tubs. Later, a NYC AA member put a $50 bill in the community basket, made change and the fifty was counterfeit.
Not only in New York, kids, not only.
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