"Good Luck"

Guest Blogger Dept.: Robert Benchley takes a gamble here to write about luck, our conceptions of which we can safely characterize as superstitions. If we’re lucky. Benchley portrait by Gluyas Williams.

                                                                                   

AND NOW they are trying to take away our superstitions from us. First they tax us until it is cheaper not to earn any money at all, then they force us to drink beer, and now they come along and tell us that we mustn't believe that if your nose itches you are going to have company.

I am not a superstitious man myself, but no Columbia University professor is going to sit there and tell me that if an actor (or anybody) whistles in a dressing room it doesn't mean bad luck for the person nearest the door. That's a scientific fact.

Neither will I be told that I must throw out all the little odds and ends of clothing and currency that I have accumulated during the past quarter of a century, each one of which has been certified by the United States Bureau of Standards as a definite good luck piece. I have proved their worth time after time (chiefly by not having had them with me when I had bad luck). I have an old green tie which I have worn so much that it now looks as if I were being led out to be lynched, and has that ever failed me? Never! I may not have always had good luck with it on, but it was because I forgot to wrap this long end around twice while tying it, or because I didn't have the ends even. The tie itself is sure-fire good luck, and I'll let no crack-brained theorist tell me different.

Backing Up, No Beeping

From the Tech Vault Dept.: Another of those mystery pieces that leap into my lap from time to time, in this case as I searched for something else in the depths of my computer archives. I would say this dates from about 2002, but I’m not going to go nuts finding out if it ever was published or not and if so, where. It’s about a technology that had its day, and caused a bunch of those oddball backup tapes to accumulate until the hardware went bad and orphaned my data.

                                                                                     

THE CENTURY TURNED, the lights stayed on. Your computer shrugged off the date change and you’re going to be sipping bottled water for a long, long time. How about backing up your data now?

What an unsexy subject! With all the inventive, colorful and just plain silly stuff out there competing for our time and money, backing up computer data is boredom itself. Unless you thought to shell out for the proper hardware when you bought your system (and it’s not a popular option), you have to pony up extra bucks for equipment that takes up space, requires costly media, gets in your way when you’re up late finishing a project, and then does nothing.

Until you lose a hard drive.

The question, as one backup software developer once put it, isn’t if your hard drive is going to fail – it’s when. You don’t get much warning, if any. And when it happens, you’ll enjoy an unbelievably sickening feeling as you realize just how much data – data you need! – was sitting on that hard drive. 

The Music Comes Round and Round

YOU WILL COME AWAY from this book with no doubt about Alex M. Stein’s love for his favored music. In fact, no matter how fervent a music-lover you may think yourself, the 40 essays contained herein may cause you to question your own depth of passion.

Stein’s talent has been realized and honed through years of professional writing and theater-making. He often performs his stories before an audience, and I’m guessing it’s this that gives his prose appealing contours of rhythm and an engaging mellifluousness. He uses judicious repetition of words and phrases which, along with such tools as assonance and alliteration, reveal the poetry lurking within these pieces.

There’s a commonality among those who obsess early on about music. At least those of, as we say, a certain age. Physical possession was important. If your obsession began in the LP days, you stockpiled records, both latest releases and elusive antiques. Your ears, ever-alert to nuance, treasured the differences a single song could display across a number of performances, even (or especially) by the same ensemble.

But most profound are the emotional associations created by the confluence of song and event. Stein’s musical universe, inadequately defined as “rock ‘n’ roll,” is far enough away from mine that I feared I’d have no commonality with his book. Until I read, in the Introduction, “If you’ve ever been dumped by someone and found you can no longer stand the music you associate with them, you’re definitely my people,” and realized that, no matter the music, we have grounds for bonding.

Speaking in Tongues

AS A LIFELONG CAT PERSON, I am most comfortable when my beast of the moment is snoozing on the nearby chair or prowling the house and yard for snacks, or just sitting nearby, staring into the middle distance. Whenever I catch her at that (and my cats, over the sixty-some years I’ve had them, almost always were female), she doesn’t even acknowledge my gaze by meeting my eye but busily commences grooming, often comically sitting on her haunches and bending into positions that cause my back to ache merely through looking. A few swipes of tongue over fur and then she glances my way, asking, “And what’s the big deal, Sparky?”

We fare well together, these cats and I. I make no big deal of this pet preference, having long believed it speaks for itself. Evidently, however, it hasn’t spoken to my daughter. 

Two years ago, Lily decided she needed a dog. Another dog, to put it correctly. The one that had been in residence for several year, a black Lab, had health-declined so badly so quickly that we had to pull the plug. A process I hate, yet one in which I’ve participated at the end of the life of nearly every pet I’ve had for the past forty-or-so years. 

“I’ve had enough of it,” I declared. “I’ve played Charon to too many of our four-legged friends.” Undermining my cause a little, I fear, because my daughter interprets any flowery language to mean that I’m out of my mind (or more so than usual) and not to be taken seriously. Seeing her skeptical moue, I reiterated: “No more dogs!”

Dinner at the Family Manse

From the Food Vault Dept.: It’s the 25th anniversary of the review posted below, a review of a restaurant in Amsterdam, NY, that had been in business in its current incarnation for 17 years, and has surpassed that by remaining in business today. I’m sad to report that Vittorio Valentino died in August, but the family continues to operate the restaurant, and re-reading the review has me excited to visit the place again. The hours given are the current ones; as always, don’t expect current pricing to be anywhere near what’s reported below.

                                                                                      

VITTORIO AND ESTER VALENTINO struck me as about the sweetest couple I’ve ever come across in this business. When we dined at their restaurant on a recent Friday night, they and one of their sons were running the whole show, as far as I could see, and Ester seemed to know everybody else who was dining there. By the time we were through, she knew all about us, too, and we’d had a tour of the place from Vittorio.

In many respects, this could typify your friendly neighborhood Italian restaurant. But there are a couple of major differences. First is the location: It’s in a mansion, with a striking-looking tower that gave earlier restaurants their names. Second is Vittorio’s training, which includes a stint at the Cordon Bleu in Paris, which he attended while working for a diplomat’s family. 

Difference number two is more subtle in the context of the menu, which is classically Italian-American. A few French specials once graced the menu but, as Vittorio explains, his wife was still learning English at the time and the task of explaining them was too daunting. Now they have a following solidly grounded in the Italian food that’s featured, so I suspect they won’t be straying much from that menu. But I may ask for something French the next time I visit.