Our Viking Journey - Part One

As I indicated in previous post, Linda and I returned recently from a wonderful vacation cruise aboard the Viking Cruise ocean liner Neptune.  We left Pittsburgh on May 6 and flew to Montreal where we boarded the Neptune,  and over the next 13 days, we explored Montreal, Quebec City, Halifax, Boston, and New York City.  We did all of this while traveling on this beautiful ship, all the while being treated to excellent service, eating wonderful food, and being entertained nightly.  It was the trip of a lifetime, and a vacation experience that we will never forget.

Now I have often said in this very space, that overloading other people with details and photos of YOUR vacation, is a lot like recounting your latest round of golf or telling everyone how your fantasy baseball team is doing.  There is only so much that other people want to hear.  So, I will try - repeat TRY - to just scratch the surface with a few stories and some photo highlights.  If you want to hear more, just ask, or, if you REALLY want to know more, come on over and we will happily sit you in front of our computer and show you the hundreds of photos and videos from the trip that we have stored there.

So, here goes....

This is a piece of public art in downtown Montreal.  We don't know what its is called, but those of us the tour bus called it "The Goalie".

It was quite cold and very windy when we got off of the bus to explore Quebec City, so I bought myself a toque hat to commemorate the visit.  How very Canadian of me!

A block later, we went into another store, where I found a toque that I liked better, so now I have two of them,  Hey, you can't take it with you, right?

Because of weather and bad seas, the Captain had to cancel our port stop in the city of Gaspe, but that gave us an extra day at sea and an extra day in Halifax. We much enjoyed our stop in Halifax, where we stopped at a local brewery, enjoyed a flight of beers, and had some wonderful conversations with some local folks.  Sadly, while in Nova Scotia, we did not run into Sidney Crosby 😥

Then it was on to Boston, where I was able to get some pictures of some famous Bostonians, or at least pictures of statues of famous Bostonians.

JFK at the Massachusetts State House

Unfortunately for us, the Paul Revere stature 

is undergoing some refurbishment

Bobby Orr outside of the TD Garden

This was taken one day before the Celtics 

were eliminated by the Knicks

And of course, while in Boston, we had to stop where everybody knew our name.

Here's a crazy memory.  The guide on our tour bus in Boston, "Uncle Steve". used the word "cockamamie".  I told him that I hadn't heard that word used in forty years, but it's a great word, and I resolved then to use it more often!

The trip ended in New York City where we took a "Manhattan Highlights" tour.  Now this is not a tour that I would highly recommend.  Your bus drives through Manhattan and the guide says something like "On your right is Rockefeller Center Plaza." If you're sitting on the left side of the bus, you miss it, and even if you're on the right side, the bus drives right past it and if you blink, you miss it.  It is also difficult to appreciate the grandeur of the Empire State Building while sitting on  a moving bus at ground level.  One thing that the tour did though was make a thirty minute stop at the World Trade Center 9/11 Memorial.  That was a moving experience and well worth putting up with any of the other shortcomings of the tour.

I am going to stop here with this particular travelogue.  I will be doing an additional post in the days ahead that will showcase some of what we experienced aboard the Neptune.  That will include some of the features of the ship itself, the entertainment that we experienced, and, most importantly, some of the people that we met.  Meeting different people, I have found, is the most fun part of a journey like this.  Everybody has a story to tell. In that post, I will especially highlight a couple from Massachusetts, Patti and Barry, that we met on our first night on board with whom we shared a cocktail or three just about every night on board.

Stay tuned for Part Two.

Sunset in Nova Scotia

It is my intention to wrote in further detail of the wonderful vacation that Linda and I just had on the Viking ocean cruise liner Neptune, and I will do so, but I thought that I would start by just showing this series of photos that I took from aboard ship of a sunset over the St. Lawrence Seaway one evening during our cruise.

Two Absent Friends - George Wendt and Charles Strouse

 

The death of actor George Wendt earlier this week at the age of 77 prompted an outpouring of tributes in both traditional and social media, and that should not have been surprising.  Wendt's portrayal of Boston barfly Norm Peterson on "Cheers" was truly iconic.  You can go on YouTube and find a clip of every entrance that Norm made into the bar and delivered one of his trademark clips.  It runs for nineteen minutes.  Many of them you remember ("How's the world treating you, Norm?"  "Like a baby treats a diaper.") and many of them you don't ("How's a beer sound to you, Norm?" "I don't know. Coach, I usually drink it before it has a chance to say anything."), but all of them funny. and perfectly delivered by George Wendt.

After "Cheers" long run ended, Wendt didn't have much success on TV. By his own words, television didn't;'t have much use for him, but I was surprised to see that he had a long string of successes in the theater, including Broadway.  I loved the fact that one of the many shows that he did was Neil Simon's "The Odd Couple".  If anyone was born to play Oscar Madison, it was George Wendt.

I close with a meme of one of my favorite "Norm" lines and two of the many memes that have appeared in the wake of George Wendt's death.

********

Charles Strouse

1928 -2025

Three time Tony Award winning Broadway composer Charles Strouse died earlier this month at the age of 96.

Strouse composed over thirty musicals, fourteen of which went to Broadway.  He won Tony Awards for three of them.....Bye, Bye Birdie, Applause, and Annie (which ran for over 2,300 performances).  If that was all he ever did, that's not a bad body of work, but there were other successful shows, and some flops, too, including Dance A Little Closer in 1983 that closed after one performance and Nick & Nora in 1993 that closed after nine performances.  In regard to the flops, I loved this paragraph from one of his obituaries:

“Everybody has flops,” he said. “When I teach, the students say, ‘How can you work three or four years on a show … and it flops? How do you recover from that?’ The only answer is, you’ve done your best, it didn’t work, what’s next?” 

There was more than just musicals for Strouse.  He did numerous film scores, including Bonnie & Clyde in 1967, and he was the composer of the "Those Were The Days" the theme song for the hit TV series All In The Family.

I will leave you with THIS SONG from Strouse first Tony winner, Bye Bye Birdie, wherein the great Paul Lynde wants to know "what's the matter with kids today?"

RIP George Wendt and Charles Strouse.

Irony of ironies, I also include THIS CLIP from a 1995 television production of Bye Bye Birdie where the song "Kids" is performed by..... George Wendt.

Whither The Grandstander?

The most recent Grandstander post was made fourteen days ago, May 5, and since that time, the following events have taken place.

• We have a new Pope, Leo XIV, and he's an American and was christened the same as The Grandstander: Robert Francis.
• The Pirates fired Derek Shelton.
• The Steelers traded George Pickens to the Cowboys.
• Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson (and a few others that no one cares about) got amnesty from Major League Baseball.
• A Broadway luminary, Charles Strouse, has died.
• The Pirates continue to lose games at both astounding and stultifying paces.
• Aaron Rodgers remains unsigned.

I know that all many maybe a few of you out there have been wondering "why in Hell isn't The Grandstander giving us his opinions on these weighty matters?  WHAT GIVES?"

Let me give you a hint:

On My 6, Linda and I embarked upon a thirteen day cruise of Canada and the Eastern Seaboard, Montreal to New York City, aboard the Viking Neptune.  It was a thirteen day journey where we made wonderful memories and made new friends. while seeing some wonderful places in North America.  

I will share some details and photos of that great adventure in later posts.

I will also be adding my $.02 on some of the items listed in the bullets above,

I'm back!

Kickin' back!

Sunset

Somewhere on the St. Lawrence Seaway

The Pirates 35 Games In (21.6% of the Season)

The Pittsburgh Pirates have now played 35 games, or 21/6% of the 2-25 season.

They are 12-23 and on pace to lose 105 games.

The only teams with worse records are the White Sox (on pace for 114 losses), and the Rockies, who are, incredibly, on pace to lose 133 games)..

They have been shut out 6 times, most in MLB.

They rank 26th out of 30 teams in run differential.

They routinely trot out starting line-ups with three, four, or five guys hitting BELOW .200. 

They continue to make boneheaded base running mistakes, the outfielders routinely throw to the wrong base.  Oneil Cruz in CF is making Dave Kingman look like a Gold Glove outfielder by comparison. (For you kids out there, I consider Dave Kingman the worst defensive outfielder I have ever seen.  Many will agree with me.)

A case could be made that their best player is (still) Andrew McCutchen who is now 38 years old.

After falling into a once-in-a-generation pitcher in Paul Skenes, GM Ben Cherington beefed up the team around him this past off season by signing two washed up free agents, Adam Frazier (current BA: .227) and Tommy Pham (..184), and trading for a first baseman named Spencer Horwitz, who showed up in Spring Training needing arm surgery and has yet to play a game

They have a team loaded with utility infielders, but nobody can seem to play short stop.

They have the demeanor and the body language of a team that has flat out given up, four weeks before Memorial Day.

I could go on, but you get the idea.  The biggest question to date is this:  Why are these two guys still employed?

Sheltie and Ben C

We all know that the owner Bob Nutting is a cheapskate money grubber and won't spend money, but other teams with small budgets and cheap owners have been able to compete.  We will stipulate that Nutting deserves the fires of Hell when his time comes, but what about GM Ben Cherington and Manager Derek Shelton? They have been in place for six seasons now and the team is no further along than they were after the 2019 season when the Coonelly/Huntington/Hurdle team went away, and let me remind you that those guys steered the team to the post-season three years in a row before Nutting's penury caused that team to fizzle. 

ABOUT NINE HOURS LATER

Okay, I was interrupted as I was typing this post this morning and found myself busy with other matters all day until now.  (It is 8:50 PM).  The Pirates are playing the Cardinals in St. Louis and held leads of 2-0 and 3-2, but now trail the Cardinals 6-3 in the seventh inning, so I am figuring to Hell with trying to finish this other than by saying how much I look forward to Sheltie's post-game bon mots where he will say things like :we're just not getting it done" and "we just have to work a little harder"

Like I said, why are GMBC and Sheltie still on the job.

It has already been a long season, and it is only going together longer.

To Absent Friends - Ruth Buzzi

 

Ruth Buzzi

1936-2025

From Her "Laugh-In" Heyday

The death of actress Ruth Buzzi this past weekday the age of 88 made me realize just how long ago it was when "Rowen & Martin's Laugh-In" was must-see-TV before that term was ever invented.  I mean it debuted in 1967 so we are closing in on SIXTY YEARS now, folks.  My point is that there are multiple generations of folks out there with no memory of that show, and who probably have no idea who Ruth Buzzi was.

She was a regular player on that classic sketch comedy show, with her most memorable character being Gladys Ormphby, the little spinster lady who was constantly being approached by dirty old man Tyrone F. Horneigh, played by Arte Johnson.  It  was a stock bit every week on the show, and Ms Buzzi's passing gives me an opportunity to post THIS BIT, one of my all-time favorites.

When I looked up Ruth Buzzi in IMDB, I was surprised to see that she had 129 acting credits listed, including a movie from 2021 called "One Month Out", and, no, I've never heard of it either, but, presumably, Ruth earned a paycheck for it, so good for her.  Most of her post-"Laugh-In" work seems to have been as a voice actress in animated features.  Her early days included spots on shows such as The Monkees, That Girl, and Here's Lucy, and, of course, once he became a regular on Laugh-In, there were the requisite appearances on shows such as Love, American Style, and The Love Boat.  Doesn't appear that she ever made it to Fantasy Island, though.

And, yes, I do have a personal Ruth Buzzi story.  Back in the late 1960's, Rowen & Martin cashed in on the popularity of the show by taking Laugh-In on the road for summer stock shows, and that included a week with Pittsburgh's Civic Light Opera.  I wasn't driving them, so I remember my parents driving my sister and I down to the Arena one night for us to see the show.  As they dropped us off (can you imagine parents doing that today?) outside of the Center Avenue gate of the Arena, who comes walking up Center Avenue but Ruth Buzzi and castmate Inga Neilsen, a statuesque blonde bombshell Swedish actress who was often cast as a contrasting glamorous  foil to Buzzi's Gladys character.  They were obviously walking from their Chatham Center Hotel.  Both were dressed quite plainly and Ms Neilsen had her hair in curlers.  Neither was exemplifying show biz glamour at that particular moment.  Anyway, we saw them, they saw that we saw them, and Ruth Buzzi gave a quite pleasant wave and said "Hello" as they walked into the Arena to prepare for that evening's performance.  

RIP Ruth Buzzi.