APRIL
10,
2016 
PRÊT-À-PORTER
In a snobbish April 6 essay for the New Zealand Herald (not on my usual reading list), Rachel Wells wrote in part, “On Thursday, Swedish fast fashion retailer H&M will launch its first ever bridal collection. The most you will pay is $599. The launch of the affordable wedding gowns comes just weeks after fellow fast fashion giant ASOS launched its first bridal collection to the Australian market. Prices for ASOS’s wedding gowns start from as little as $137.
“I think it’s a little tacky. I am well aware that not every bride can afford to spend thousands of dollars on a bespoke wedding dress, but I can’t help feeling that wedding dresses that cost less than your weekly grocery bill somewhat trivialise the significance and sanctity of a wedding.”
A cheaper garment is “ready to wear” or “off the rack,” while a custom gown — the only kind worthy of a bride — evidently is “bespoke.” But that word bothers me.
I guess it’s the proper term if you’re a tailor. “No, you can’t buy this suit I’m constructing. It’s not destined to hang on the display rack. I’m not making it ‘on spec’ to a standard set of measurements. It’s bespoke. I’m making it on the request of a specific client who has already spoken for it.”
But until very recently I’d never heard the word outside Albany’s line in the fifth act of King Lear:
If you will marry, make your loves to me;
My lady is bespoke.
Shakespeare means the lady is engaged. Someone’s already called dibs.
To describe clothing designed for a particular person, let’s use “custom made.” The word “bespoke” is bespoke. (Besides, shouldn’t it be “bespoken”?)
|
UPDATE: Garry Trudeau used “bespoke” in Doonesbury to describe ‘facts’ that are fabricated to order, depending on what the customer wants to ‘prove’ to reinforce his bias. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
APRIL
8,
2026 My grandmother, who lived 120 miles away, baked some cookies for me to take to my kindergarten class more than 73 years ago. I reported to her that nearly all had been distributed, except for three bunnies.
|
APRIL
6,
2016
BURNING
DOWN THE COUCH
|
Shortly after Villanova's exciting victory in Monday night's NCAA Tournament championship, arsonists uprooted campus shrubbery to fuel this celebratory bonfire. A sofa and other small items were also ignited. Police in riot gear were on hand. At least six people were arrested, two of them for hitting a police horse. One report says that 30 were injured, five of them hospitalized. This is nothing new. Following the 2002 title game, for example, rioters at both schools assaulted police and committed other mayhem. At joyous Maryland, there were 17 arrests and four injuries; at enraged Indiana, 30 arrests and 40 injuries. In 2002, Dick Moreland told Ron Cook, a sports columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: “People are basically uncivilized. [They’re] held in check only by fear of punishment.” Moreland, a professor of psychology at the University of Pittsburgh, does research on social behavior in groups and organizations. |
|
Cook remarked, “People are nameless and faceless in a mob. That leads to courage they wouldn’t have in another situation.”
Moreland concurred. “Even nice people will do these kinds of things when they’re in a group. To be influenced by your conscience, you have to turn your attention inward. That tends to happen when you’re by yourself. But the acts of a group draw your attention outward. That tends to short-circuit guilt when it comes to your values and beliefs.
“We’re basically selfish people who are prone to misbehave as long as we can get away with it. We’ll try almost anything if we think we won’t get caught. ...And even if [we] are caught, the punishment probably won’t be as severe because, well, everyone else was doing the same thing, weren’t they?”
So go ahead and break the speed limit and cheat on your taxes, right? It’s okay. The rest of the mob is doing it.
|
APRIL
4,
2026 Pittsburgh, the city of three rivers, has 446 bridges according to one list. They span the famously uneven terrain of rivers and valleys. Someone has to construct and maintain them. We hold these truths to be self-evident: that to secure these bridges, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. |
|
|
|
|
Karaj, a city west of Tehran, was building a $400 million bypass that would be 446 feet high. Two days ago, American and Israeli forces bombed the middle of the “B1.” An hour later, when emergency crews were on the site, it was struck a second time. Eight people were killed and 95 wounded. “The biggest bridge in Iran comes tumbling down, never to be used again,” boasted Donald Trump, who had earlier threatened to blast the whole nation “back to the stone ages where they belong” unless a deal could be struck to end the war he started. I hold this truth to be self-evident: that it is better to bring people together via bridges than to destroy them. |
APRIL
1,
2016
FICTION
IS STRANGER THAN SPORTS
Because sports is merely the “toy department” of news media, sporting types sometimes play hoaxes.
• In 1941, a group of stockbrokers wondered about the many college football results that were listed in tiny “agate” type in the New York Times. They suspected the newspaper was making up games to fill space. “Slippery Rock State Teachers College”? Come on! That can’t be a real school, can it?
So
the guys invented Plain
field
Teachers College and began phoning in its scores.
“Plainfield Teachers?” “That’s
right.” “Where is that, in New Jersey?”
“Uh, sure.” There’s no fact-checking in the toy
department, so Plainfield’s fanciful results got printed.
Bill Christine relates in this article
how readers were regaled with tales of stellar performers like Johnny
Chung, the greatest Chinese halfback ever to wear the mauve and puce.
• A quarter century later, George Carlin as sports anchor “Biff Barf” asserted, “I call ’em the way I see ’em. And if I don’t see ’em, I make ’em up! No games today; however, we’ve got a few late football scores still coming in from the Far West. Guam Prep 45, Tahiti 14. Mindanao A&I 27, Molokai 10. Cal Tech 14.5, MIT 123. And here’s a partial score: Philadelphia 29.”
In the fall of 1965 I was a freshman on a campus near Cleveland. And this is not fiction: The Cleveland Browns were actually the defending champions of the National Football League. I had no TV in my dorm room, so I listened to local sportscaster Gib Shanley calling the Browns games on the radio.
Cleveland was also the source of my daily newspaper. Every morning, I bought a copy of the Plain Dealer for a window on the wider world.
The PD covered American college and pro football, of course. But it also had its own football scores coming in from the Far West. Each week that fall, columnist Bill Hickey reported on the exploits of the Pusan State Panthers.
|
|
The Pusan State fullback was Won Sok Hung, “the Sun Prince of Korean football.” Once Hickey included a photo like this of the 4’11” 128-pound Sok in his golden helmet. I thought he looked more like a Fighting Irishman, but what did I know? I read with raised eyebrow that the Panthers’ quarterback was Kim Dip Thong and the coach was Nu Rok Nee. Finally, when Hickey quoted an enthusiastic comment from announcer Gib Chan Lee, I caught on. Pusan State won the Sake Bowl in a thrilling upset but was never heard from again, except for a Scorecard mention in Sports Illustrated. |
• That was not the end of imaginative sportswriting, of course. Two decades later, George Plimpton wrote about a Mets rookie with a 168-mph fastball. The story of Sidd Finch ran in SI on this very date in 1985. The date, of course, was April 1.
MARCH
30,
2026 
TIIMELESS
SITCOMS
My memory bank is slowly filling up, but recently while watching a Mary Tyler Moore Show rerun on a cable channel, I clearly recalled a scene I'd seen nearly 60 years ago.
Lou Grant is disappointed to learn that Charlene, his new girlfriend played by Sheree North, has a “history.” He's glumly sitting on his desk, arms folded. Mary wants to know the standard he's using.
Mary: How many men is a woman allowed to have before she becomes "that sort" of a woman?
Lou (flatly): Six.
The audience and I found that answer incongruously amusing. Mary leaves the office but comes right back to lecture Lou. She does this several times, allegedly washing her hands of the entire matter.
But I remembered how the scene was going to end. She enters once more.
|
|
|
|
|
I also remember viewing the sitcom Head of the Class, which aired on ABC from 1986 to 1991. Mostly I just liked to look at the gorgeous student portrayed by Khrystyne Haje. I recently ran across a rerun on a different cable channel. |
|
|
In the third season, the class visited Russia for three days. Their sightseeing in the capital of Moscow included Saint Basil's Cathedral. Steve Rose has described this iconic landmark as “an odd-looking pile-up of onion domes, polygonal towers, blank arches and sharp spires.” The teacher, played by Howard Hesseman, repeated the myth that after this chaotic structure was completed, Ivan the Terrible wanted to make sure it could never be duplicated elsewhere. Therefore he had its architects blinded. |
|
|
Hesseman's punchline in 1988, still funny four decades later: Now those blind architects work for Donald Trump. |
MARCH
28,
2016
HOW
ABOUT FOULS PER ASSIST?
Long ago, when I was keeping stats for my high school basketball team, a teacher from the next county introduced me to a new statistical measure that he claimed to have invented: the Offensive Efficiency Rating. It was merely points per possession. Tracking this stat required some work, because we didn’t normally count up a team’s possessions. However, I referred to the OER occasionally when I was my college radio station’s sports director.
It’s still being used. ESPN SportsCenter reported that when Villanova shot 63% from the field to defeat Miami last week, the Wildcats’ 1.58 points per possession marked their “best offensive efficiency in any game in the last five seasons.”
Nowadays, of course, analysts tabulate all sorts of ratios. Before Duquesne met Nebraska Omaha in the CBI tournament on March 16, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said of Duquesne, “Of all its points this season, 36.6 percent of them have come from 3-pointers, 26th most in Division I.” Conversely, it said of Nebraska Omaha, “Only 20.6 percent of its points are coming on 3s, the 14th-lowest mark in Division I.”
Tons of statistics are calculated for all 351 Division I teams. The reporter searched all the categories to learn where the Dukes and Mavericks ranked, thereby discovering an additional Hidden Stat: “Both teams rank among the top 20 Division I teams in tempo, with Nebraska Omaha fifth and Duquesne 19th.”
Tempo? I hadn’t heard of that one before; apparently it’s also called “pace.” I looked up the numbers myself. Sure enough, Nebraska Omaha races through 79 possessions per game and Duquesne 75½. (When they met, they really racked up the points. Duquesne won 120-112.) Virginia has the slowest tempo at 62.7 possessions per game.
I assume there are many other ratios out there that I haven’t yet discovered, such as “put-back efficiency,” which would be second-chance points per offensive rebound. Or how about “blocks per foot,” defined as blocked shots divided by the average height of the starters. Some ratios might even be meaningful; others might only seem meaningful.
MARCH
25,
2016
A
WELL-GREASED SWITCHER
|
Fox is rebroadcasting the musical Grease Live this Sunday. When first telecast live on January 31, it was an amazingly complex production, performed partly on a sound stage and partly on a studio lot outdoors in the drizzling rain. Bleachers were filled with audience members. That was one of my few quibbles: I heard the audience only when they erupted in cheering that sounded like American Idol. The Applause sign must have gone on. I would have expected to hear laughter and other reactions at other times, but I didn’t, so the audience almost sounded prerecorded. |
|
During musical numbers, every camera shot was choreographed. The associate director counted the beats and measures until the next shot, as you can hear in this video and read about in this interview. That’s much different from the way my colleagues switch a sports event, which of course is unscripted. And it’s much more intense than editing a movie.
One commenter called this “a job for adrenaline junkies who prefer to be safely seated inside.” But how else can you make that many precise camera cuts in real time?
Another noted that the AD repeats a lot of numbers. “The operator of Camera Three knows that most of the time when she says ‘three’ she’s not referring to him. Except sometimes she is.”
To avoid this confusion, I’d suggest the following rules. Single digits should be reserved for ordinary numbers, as in “four measures and one beat.” Cameras should be assigned two-digit identifiers between 10 and 49. Shots should have three-digit identifiers from 150 to 199, 250 to 299, and so on; however, when they’re being called in sequence the first digit isn’t necessary. And the counting of beats should use a different language, perhaps German in which Eins! Zwei! Drei! Vier! Fünf! Sechs! Sieb’n! Acht! can all be single syllables.
Mark Evanier remarked, “Like certain magic tricks, some things in television are more impressive when you know how they're done. And speaking of magic: If you go full-screen and look real careful at the various monitors on display in front of Ms. Havel, you may be able to figure out how they did that amazing transformation of the car during the number.” Between the one-minute mark and the dramatic “whip!” pan, a Chevy is temporarily changed from dingy white to sparkling red.
And if that isn't enough, here’s another control room, at halftime of Super Bowl 50.
MARCH
23,
2026 I
MADE THE MISTAKE; YOU HAVE TO OWN IT
One week ago, the National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center put the threat of severe storms at Level 4 out of 5 for a stretch of the East Coast, from Maryland to the Carolinas. Tornado watches prompted schools, businesses, and museums to close across the Washington D.C. region. However, no tornadoes hit the nation's capital, and The Atlantic's Joshua Partlow reports that many meteorologists on the internet were extremely disappointed.
|
Brady Harris, who calls himself “Weathers #1 HYPE Man,” wrote that meteorologists had “screwed up the Forecast BIG Time today.” He pledged to do better. In wraparound shades and a T-shirt featuring a kitty cat in a lightning storm, Harris explained to his StormCat5_ followers in a video: “I made the prediction. You have to own it. And you have to tell people, you know, publicly, that, ‘Hey, I messed up.’” |
|
My beside-the-point point is a grammatical one. I think Harris messed up in another increasingly common way: substituting a universal “you” for “I.” He should have said:
“I made the prediction. I have to own it. And I have to tell people, ‘Hey, I messed up.’”
MARCH
20,
2026 THERE
WILL ALWAYS BE WAR
Did you know that the highly destructive bombing of Tehran that began three weeks ago was depicted in detail 6½ centuries earlier? It's one of the 90 scenes of the Apocalypse Tapestry, commissioned by Louis I, Duke of Anjou, and woven in Paris between 1377 and 1382.
The
scene is based on the 18th chapter of the Biblical book of Revelation
by Saint John the Divine, who's shown here in his commentary
booth. He gleefully predicted the devastation of Rome (which he
called Babylon). Excerpts:
I saw an angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory. And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils. Therefore she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her.
And the kings of the earth shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning, standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come.
And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more: gold, and silver, and oil. And every shipmaster, and all the company in ships, and sailors, and as many as trade by sea, stood afar off, and cried when they saw the smoke of her burning.
A closer look shows the avenging angel descending through a sky filled with fiery explosions to drop his bird-like destruction from above. The evil ayatollah screams in panic as his buildings collapse around him.
The recovered and restored portion of the 460-foot-long tapestry is currently on display at the Château d'Angers in western France.
MARCH
18,
2016
EVERYBODY
RIDICULES ROBERT
I hear that the Columbia Broadcasting System is considering selling off its radio division. Nevertheless, I recently listened to a 1949 CBS radio comedy, My Favorite Husband, as one sometimes does when one’s Sirius XM is tuned to channel 148.
|
|
In the script by Jess Oppenheimer (left), two people upstairs are wondering why there's laughter coming from the people downstairs. “You don’t have a steamboat in the house, do you?” asks Lucille Ball. “A steamboat? No.” “Well, they’re not laughing at Fulton.” The actors didn’t wait for an audience reaction, which was wise because there was none. Only puzzlement. What did that line mean? |
I presume it referred to Robert Fulton, who was mocked for declaring he could propel a boat on the Hudson River without sails or oars. In 1807! It seems unlikely that “laughing at Fulton” was still a meme 142 years later.
Actually, the reference might have been only 12 years out of date. In the 1937 movie Shall We Dance, Ginger Rogers sang a Gershwin tune including the lines:
They all laughed at Christopher Columbus when he said the world was round.
They all laughed when Edison recorded sound.
They all laughed at Fulton and his steamboat, Hershey and his chocolate bar.
Ford and his Lizzie kept the laughers busy. That's how people are.
They all said we’d never get together. They laughed at us, and how! For oh, ho, ho — who’s got the last laugh now?
But since then, “laughing at Fulton” seems to have fallen out of our collective consciousness.
|
MARCH
17,
2026
Two
centuries ago in the suburbs of Syracuse, New York, a neighborhood
called Tipperary Hill (named for a town in Ireland) was settled by
Irish immigrants. |
|
|
Many of them had come here to be laborers on the construction of the Erie Canal between 1817 and 1825. Here we see the Canal passing through downtown Syracuse in 1904. Below is the major intersection on Tipperary Hill today: the corner of Tompkins Street and Milton Avenue, home of the Tipperrary Hill Heritage Memorial and the Francis Academy of Irish Dance. Notice anything about the traffic light? It's upside down. |
|
Google
Earth
One century ago, when the city first started to install traffic signal lights, they put one here. Some Irish youths, incensed that anyone would dare to put the “British” red above the “Irish” green, broke the light. The city replaced it. The Irish broke the replacement.
Officials eventually gave up by hanging the signal with green on top and red on the bottom, and so it remains. It's the only one like that in the nation. Happy St. Patrick's Day!
|
MARCH
14,
2016 I was sitting near the stage of an outdoor arena in my little hometown. All around me, hundreds of adults were hurling insults at two men they’d never met — a Mexican and a Muslim. My father was beside me, and he joined in booing and heckling the foreigners. As a shy adolescent who on Tuesday would be starting the eighth grade, I was slightly embarrassed to be there. The crowd shouted for the strangers to be clobbered and punished. They wanted to get them out of there. One was using the alias of Pancho Villa, the notorious Mexican bandit turned revolutionary. The other called himself Ali Pasha, “The Terrible Turk.” This was, of course, a professional wrestling show at the Richwood Fairgrounds in 1960. I mentioned it at the end of this article. It was great entertainment for folks who enjoy that sort of thing. There are people who know how to incite crowds like that, to whip them up to hate the designated villains. One such agitator was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame just three years ago.
Now that he’s set his sights on the White House, his political followers have started to act like wrestling followers. But they don’t seem to be play-acting. A riot could break out at any time. It isn’t only the demagogue who’s responsible for the bad behavior of his rabble. It’s the rabble themselves.
“...I implore you, if you're thinking about voting for Trump, reconsider. You are only promoting chaos and hatred. I witnessed it firsthand. And trust me, this is not something you want to see in person. This is not what you want to happen to our country.” MARCH 2026 UPDATE: About Trump's war on Iran, Robert J. Elisberg writes, "this is what happens when unqualified incompetent, wannabe macho civilians are in charge. Posturing, swaggering, fist-bumping. War is serious. People die. Costs rise. Life is disrupted. And no matter how much claims he can just declare the war over, it's still going on because there's no exit strategy. Nor goal."
MARCH
4,
2016 I often turn left at the intersection shown below, from PA 910 onto Freeport Road. (The pictures are from Google Earth.)
It’s hard to see the markings, especially on a rainy night. Where exactly should I go? There ought to be a “Keep Right” sign at 1, but there isn’t. (Maybe there used to be, until someone cut the corner short and ran over the divider and knocked down the sign.)
Closer to the city, the left turn shown below is thoroughly marked. It's from the 40th Street Bridge onto PA 28, headed into Pittsburgh. Not only is there a “Keep Right” at 1, it’s flanked by a “Do Not Enter” at 3, and there are “Wrong Way” signs at 4 and 5. And there are arrows on the pavement.
Nevertheless, last Saturday morning 81-year-old Perry Kastanias made his left turn too sharp. He passed to the left of the “Keep Right” and headed down the off-ramp. Going in the wrong direction, he struck one vehicle and then collided head-on with a second. Mr. Kastanias did not survive. UPDATE: In February 2026, an SUV traveling the wrong way after midnight bounced off three tractor-trailers, setting fire to one and scattering debris across all the lanes of Interstate 70 near New Stanton. The highway had to be closed for ten hours.
MARCH
1, 2026 Many folks love the musical Wicked and its movie adaptation. I never warmed up to any of its songs except the dramatic "Defying Gravity" and this one, "Popular," which caught my ear because of the way Stephen Schwartz has inserted an extra lilting syllable into the title — during a chord change, to boot. I couldn't figure out exactly how he did it until I looked at the sheet music.
EARLIER
POSTS BY MONTH:
POSTS FROM 2007 THROUGH 2016:
|
