samhexum

Thankfully, it has been long enough that I was able to watch him without throwing up from the memory of his portrayal of Yack's indescribably annoying husband on the horrifically awful final final season of Will and Grace

I think Mariska Hargitay's father was my favorite.

The actor who played Yack's indescribably annoying husband on the abysmal, abhorrent, abominable, atrocious, awful, acid reflux-inducing final season of WILL & GRACE created and stars in a new series on FX called ENGLISH TEACHER. The first 2 episodes were not abysmal, abhorrent, abominable, atrocious, awful, or acid reflux-inducing. There's some potential.

Milwaukee's newest player was born to be a Brewer. The Brewers recalled outfielder Brewer Hicklen from Triple-A Nashville before their game Sunday against the Cincinnati Reds. This marks the first time in franchise history that the Brewers' roster has included a player named Brewer. Hicklen was in the Brewers' starting lineup batting fifth and playing right field Sunday as he made his first major league appearance since 2022. Hicklen played in six games and made four plate appearances that season with the Kansas City Royals, who selected him out of UAB in the seventh round of the 2017 amateur draft.

The Cardinals won in the Bronx yesterday for the first time since the 1964 World Series. I believe that was right around the time @WilliamM turned 40. Milwaukee's newest player was born to be a Brewer. The Brewers recalled outfielder Brewer Hicklen from Triple-A Nashville before their game Sunday against the Cincinnati Reds. This marks the first time in franchise history that the Brewers' roster has included a player named Brewer. Hicklen was in the Brewers' starting lineup batting fifth and playing right field Sunday as he made his first major league appearance since 2022. Hicklen played in six games and made four plate appearances that season with the Kansas City Royals, who selected him out of UAB in the seventh round of the 2017 amateur draft.

Johnny Gaudreau’s brother was dad-to-be when killed by alleged drunk driver The couple were expecting their first child – Little Tripp — in December Sister cancels wedding after brothers killed by drunk driver just before ceremony Alleged drunk driver glassy-eyed in mugshot as cops reveal details: ‘5 or 6 beers’

The reminders arrive at least three times a week, 3 ½-by-2 ½-inch snippets of the life he should have had. People still want Gil Patterson to sign his baseball card from 1977. He wonders why they care, but he’s flattered, anyway, and returns each card with his signature across a photo of somebody else. Patterson is 68 years old and has reached 50 seasons of working in baseball. In 1977, at 21, he was the best prospect in the New York Yankees’ farm system at the height of their Bronx Zoo glory. That spring, Topps awarded Patterson a coveted spot on a four-player rookie card. Clockwise from left, card No. 472 depicts Don Aase, Bob McClure, Dave Wehrmeister…and Sheldon Gill, a catcher who barely made it out of A-ball. The Yankees, apparently, had sent Topps an image of the wrong Gill/Gil, and that’s the player shown above Patterson’s name. Gil Patterson’s erroneous 1977 Topps rookie card (Tyler Kepner/The Athletic) “Don’t worry, you’ll have 15 more,” Sy Berger, the Topps impresario, told Patterson that spring in the Yankees’ Fort Lauderdale clubhouse. “You’re only 21 years old.” But there would be no more Topps cards for Patterson. While the others on his card combined for more than 1,200 major-league appearances, Patterson made just 10. He beat a Hall of Famer, Bert Blyleven of the Texas Rangers, in his fourth career start. He never won again. “I still owe George 299 wins,” Patterson said last weekend. “I promised him 300. I’m 299 short.” Now the minor-league pitching coordinator for the Oakland Athletics, Patterson was back at Yankee Stadium for Old-Timers’ Day last Saturday. He wore his 1977 championship ring, as he always does, and slipped into a pinstriped jersey with his old No. 22. That was Patterson’s age when the Yankees won the World Series without him that fall; he was home in Florida with a dead arm. Patterson’s rise had been swift: three levels by age 20, with a 24-8 record and a 2.26 ERA across two seasons. Before the ’77 season, the Yankees refused to trade Patterson to the Cincinnati Reds, straight up, for Tony Perez. They would not include him in a deal for Bucky Dent, either, acquiring Dent from the Chicago White Sox only when they substituted LaMarr Hoyt, a future Cy Young Award winner. “Gil Patterson’s arm has sunk a million trades,” wrote Moss Klein, the Yankees’ beat writer then for the Star-Ledger. The Yankees, he added, were “expecting many big seasons” from their untouchable future ace. “Oh, he’d have been outstanding,” Dent said last week. “Had a great feel for the game, great stuff. That game in Boston, he struck out Lynn, Rice and Yastrzemski on, what, nine pitches or something?” Not quite, but Patterson did fan eight Red Sox in 5 ⅔ innings at Fenway one night. Carl Yastrzemski was so impressed that he called Patterson one of the five best young pitchers he’d ever seen. “Nolan Ryan, you can see the fastball coming,” Yastrzemski told Newsday. “This guy, he sort of short-arms it and it explodes on you.” Alas, by then, Patterson had already lost his best fastball. In the majors, he said every pitch “was like a knife going through my arm.” Long before pitch counts and innings limits, the Yankees – under general manager Gabe Paul – had sent Patterson to instructional league and then winter ball after his magical 1976 season. Altogether, he estimates, he threw a staggering 280 innings in that age-20 season. Nobody thought to protect him from himself. “I’m 21 getting told to go pitch, so you go pitch,” Patterson said. “That’s why nowadays, you’ve got to tell the pitchers they’re done. Not too many people ever want to come out of the game, so you can’t ask them how they feel. If you think they’re done, get them out.” Patterson had eight operations in all, to his rotator cuff, labrum, ulnar collateral ligament and so on. He missed two full seasons and played parts of the next three in the low minors. Out of work in 1983, he took a job parking cars at a restaurant in Fort Lauderdale, throwing left-handed against the outside walls after closing. Patterson shows off one of the many surgical scars on his right pitching arm at Old Timer’s Day in the Bronx last weekend. (Tyler Kepner/The Athletic) Steinbrenner went to the restaurant one night, recognized Patterson and offered him a coaching job for life. It was a kind gesture, but the work didn’t last: coaching for a Yankees farm club in 1984, Patterson refused an order to have Al Leiter – a hard-throwing, sore-armed teenager – pitch through pain. The Yankees fired Patterson after that season, and when injuries indeed slowed Leiter’s progress, Patterson – in a gesture of friendship – helped him rebuild his delivery and save his career. He went on to instruct at Dent’s baseball school and has spent the last 33 seasons in various coaching roles for the Oakland A’s, Yankees, Arizona Diamondbacks and Toronto Blue Jays; Roy Halladay won a Cy Young Award under Patterson’s guidance with Toronto in 2003. “He has done in coaching what a Hall of Famer does on the field,” said Craig Lefferts, the longtime assistant to Patterson with the A’s. “He loves what he does. He loves his players, and he goes to bat for them like nobody else.” Lefferts made his mark in a dozen major-league seasons; he saved a World Series game, led the league in appearances, and even hit a walk-off home run. What feats would Patterson have achieved, with the arm he once had? That chapter will never be written. “He’s always talking about all the great things I did, and I tell him, ‘I was nothing like you,’” Lefferts said. “I mean, he was going to be one of the greats. We have that conversation all the time: what could have been?” The question has gnawed at Patterson for 47 years. Maybe he’d have struggled. Maybe he’d have thrived. Maybe he’d be rich – but that’s never been the point. “It’s funny, would I rather have won $500 million in a lottery when I was 21 or pitched for 10 years but only made, like, $20,000 a year and lived in a three-bedroom, two-bath house like I was brought up in, with five brothers and a sister,” he said. “I’d rather do that and play for 10 years than have the money. Because I loved pitching, oh my God.” Patterson laughed softly. He made the majors with a storied franchise, and he’ll always be proud of that. But there’s no video footage of himself on the mound – if it hasn’t surfaced by now, it probably never will – and he yearns for something else to mark his brief stay at the top: another Topps baseball card. He’s trying. “I called them and I told them the story: ‘I’m 68 years old and I’d like to have a card with my picture on it,’” Patterson said. “They said to send an email. So I sent the email and the heading was ‘Sad baseball card story,’ and I explained it.” Topps typically does not issue coaches’ cards, but a representative sent Patterson an encouraging response. He would seem an ideal fit for their Allen & Ginter set, a vintage-styled product that produces cards for all sorts of figures in and around the game – including, ahem, some of your favorite baseball writers at The Athletic. And if sportswriters can have their own baseball cards, it’s only fair that Gil Patterson, with 10 games on the mound but half a century in the game, should have one too. With his own picture on it this time.

New trash cans specifically for pizza boxes to appear in NYC parks

https://qns.com/2024/08/queens-authentic-flavors-nyc-restaurant-week/

The Angels' brand of baseball has been comedic for years, but they are taking it to a Shakespearean level this weekend by starting one gentleman of Verona... Samuel Aldegheri.

...years before they became best-known for being on BATMAN and being JR Ewing's mommy, respectively, right?

You'd have just the outfit to wear, right?

The other day, two men were killed in Manhattan when a driver going the wrong way on a highway slammed into their car. They were a man scheduled to be married later that day and his cousin, who was up from North Carolina for the wedding. Both had kids. Yesterday, an NHL player and his brother were killed in New Jersey (near Philadelphia) by a drunk driver when they were out riding their bikes; both were scheduled to be groomsmen in their sister's wedding today. I don't know about the brother, but the hockey player was a dad. The deaths would have been tragedies under any circumstances, obviously, but the timing is just horrific. The bride in the first case had to switch to planning a funeral, and the sister in the second one will now always associate her wedding (whenever it winds up taking place) with her brothers' deaths. RIP to all.

You misinterpreted me in your rush to be judgmental and dismissive. Jarren Duran, one of the best players in the league this year, got suspended for 2 games because his response to a heckler was a casually-tossed gay slur, and from the reporting I've read on this incident, casual bigotry about gays is still quite common in US male professional team sports.

https://photosex.biz/imager/w_500/h_500/d5c650c56c972f796562c8fdd2dea1fe.jpg

anyone involved in US male professional team sports

Have you ever noticed a great, old sign in your neighborhood, perhaps above a bodega, laundromat or other local business? It’s possible you only noticed it after it was gone — after the business closed and became a Popeye’s or maybe a Cricket Wireless, and the vibe of the neighborhood shifted just so. David Barnett hates this vibe shift — so much so, that he’s devoted his life to halting it. Barnett is the force behind Noble Signs, a signmaking studio he cofounded in 2013 out of “an appreciation for the vanishing classic signage of New York City.” He’s also the founder of the New York Sign Museum on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. The museum was established in 2019, with a mission of preserving the great old signs that come down every year and would otherwise go to scrapyards. “I’m lucky I’m alive,” Barnett said during a tour of the museum, which doubles as his fabrication shop. “I’ve craned my neck around to look at a sign and almost crashed my car more times than I can remember.” He’s rescued classic signs from Essex Card Shop, which replaced its sign after a fire in 2022, and from Queen, the red-sauce Italian restaurant that reigned in Brooklyn Heights for 62 years before shuttering in 2020. He has dozens of signs from bodegas, pharmacies, auto repairs and Jewish delis. Some are small. Others are taller than him, or stick far out the back of his box truck. “Signage that was handmade with so much personality really defined the aesthetic experience of living in a New York City neighborhood, maybe even more than the architecture,” Barnett said. “The tide we’re trying to push against was to find that character, the thing that makes interacting with your environment fun — that personality and playfulness that is just not the norm anymore.” The museum’s and studio’s parallel missions of preservation and creation feed into each other, he said. Every old sign they rescue teaches them something about how to make their own. “You can design something that looks classic, but if you don’t make it the classic way, it might have an ersatz feeling,” said Barnett. Barnett keeps a mental map of great old signs to check in on regularly. When he learns that a well-signed business is nearing the end, he makes his approach. “The first thing I usually say is, ‘Hey, I love your old sign. Do you have any plans for it?’” he said. “Often people go, ‘Oh, that old thing?’” Barnett pulls out his card and explains that he represents a real business, has insurance and will come de-install the sign for free. He estimates his success rate is less than 50%. “The irony is that often people would rather pay literally thousands of dollars to have someone come throw the sign out,” he said. “I don’t know why.” Barnett speculates that one reason is very simple — and very New York. As soon as you tell someone you want something, they wonder if they can get a better offer somewhere else. Unfortunately, he said, they usually can’t. “A lot of these signs, if they were 50% smaller, they’d be worth a lot of money,” said Barnett. “But who’s going to take a 30-foot sign?” Barnett said that before the Instagram age, signmaking was even more of a dead art form. Popular brush lettering and neon appreciation accounts have helped to revive interest and spread knowledge. Before that, he recalls mining libraries and eBay for old books on the craft. He learned about 20th-century signage and the mid-century giants of the industry, like Silverescent Neon, which made signs across Coney Island and Brooklyn, and Artkraft Strauss, which designed iconic signs in Times Square. “Before neon there were bulbs, and before bulbs the original lighted marquees in Times Square were made by cutting letters out of tin and filling them with candles,” Barnett said. One of his favorites is the Canal Rubber Supply Co. sign in Lower Manhattan. Barnett was honored to work with the business on a restoration of its classic sign last year. The owner of J & R Television and Air Conditioning said knowing his sign would be preserved in the New York Sign Museum made it just a little bit easier to retire after decades in the business. The museum’s crew was in Park Slope last month, de-installing a sign from J & R Television and Air Conditioning. Owner Ralph DiCerbo had worked behind the counter since he was 12 years old. His father opened the business in 1953. “I’m happy to be able to retire, but it’s very bittersweet,” DiCerbo said. “I grew up here, I know all the customers. We have a lot of old people who rely on us to change their batteries and tell them what vacuum bag they need, the small stuff.” He said knowing his sign would go to a museum helped to take the edge off. Some film production companies were interested in taking it. The sign has been featured in movies, TV, graphic novels and even the video game “Grand Theft Auto,” Di Cerbo said — but the family voted and decided it should go with Barnett instead. “If we want to see it, I could bring my grandchildren one day, if I ever have any,” he said. “And say, ‘Hey, that’s where your great-grandfather started.’”

imagine the male who left THOSE footprints... Matching dinosaur footprints found more than 3,700 miles apart, on different continents A team of paleontologists found matching dinosaur footprints on what are now two different continents, separated by thousands of miles of ocean. The footprints, dating back to the Early Cretaceous period, were found in Brazil and in Cameroon, researchers wrote in a study published Monday by the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science. The discovery shows where land-dwelling dinosaurs were able to cross freely between South America and Africa before the two continents split apart millions of years ago. The more than 260 footprints researchers studied were found impressed into mud and silt along ancient rivers and lakes, with more than 3,700 miles separating the ones in South America and Africa, according to the study. Paleontologists determined they were similar in age, shape and in geological and plate tectonic contexts. Dinosaurs made the tracks 120 million years ago on a single supercontinent known as Gondwana, which had broken off from the larger landmass of Pangea — once the world's only continent, Southern Methodist University paleontologist Louis Jacobs said. "One of the youngest and narrowest geological connections between Africa and South America was the elbow of northeastern Brazil nestled against what is now the coast of Cameroon along the Gulf of Guinea," Jacobs, the lead study author, said. "The two continents were continuous along that narrow stretch, so that animals on either side of that connection could potentially move across it." The continents now known as Africa and South America started to split around 140 million years ago, researchers said. The south Atlantic Ocean eventually filled the void. Basins formed as the continents pulled apart; rivers flowed and lakes formed in those basins, Jacobs said. The basins where the footprints were discovered can be found on both sides of the split. Most of the footprints were made by three-toed theropods, a group of carnivorous dinosaurs, researchers said. There were also prints left behind by sauropods or ornithischians. "Plants fed the herbivores and supported a food chain," Jacobs said. "Muddy sediments left by the rivers and lakes contain dinosaur footprints, including those of meat-eaters, documenting that these river valleys could provide specific avenues for life to travel across the continents 120 million years ago." https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dinosaur-footprint-discovery-different-continents-brazil-cameroon/?ftag=CNM-00-10aac3a

Absolutely... and it's only been within the last 5 years or so we've gotten Dennys, Dairy Queen, Chik-fil-A, & (just last month) Raising Canes.

I felt the same way about a show called SINGLE DRUNK FEMALE that only lasted two.

He'd been mentioned in an earlier part of the article about a couple of other things.

The upcoming third season, which begins in late October, will be the last one. There will be no season four. This is sad, but not surprising. It's not like there was ever any buzz about the show.

Queens Tourism Council highlights diverse dining options along the 7 line for US Open Fans

since I only make a third of the devils Food mix at a time and I eyeball the mix and the oil, it never comes out exactly the same, but last night's was the best yet, which is a good thing except for the fact that the way that I've been eating lately if it tasted like cardboard, I would probably devour it and then go find something else to eat. Actually, at this point I've had one half of what I made with 1/3 of a mix which is supposed to equate to 24 cupcakes so YAY MATH! I am giving you this math problem to figure out… How many cupcakes have I eaten?