BRUCE the BLOG at NCNlocal.com

Li’l Abner, which played for three performances last weekend at Yorktown High School, is an old-fashioned musical comedy that lit up The Great White Way for two years a half-century ago (in the good ol’ days when people knew how to contract the word little, because apostrophes replace letters in the middle).

Even students having a lot of fun on stage performing a fast-moving, tuneful show like this one are getting an education, and so is an audience unfamiliar with forgotten gems that are rarely revived anywhere, while we overdose on yet another mediocre rendering of Annie ad nauseam.

Music teacher Tom Arduini, who directed the production to a fine turn — complete with crisply choreographed production numbers and well-projected vocal ensembles — made that point at the curtain of the final performance Sunday afternoon. No, he didn’t mention Annie, but he did offer an incisive observation to the audience in the seats and the students on stage that this is “educational theater, not recreational theater.” That is to say, instead of just performing a show like “Annie” almost by rote for the umpteenth time, as entertaining as it may be, students interested in theater craft stand to learn more by inhabiting shows that plumb deeper into Broadway’s rich history.

Some questioned Mr. Arduini’s choice of musical this year, to say the least, yet he proved crazy like a fox in his choice. Having seen my share of school musicals the past 15 years, this staging of Li’l Abner ranks right up there as one of the very best in memory.

As brought to life by an effervescent cast of talented teens, it was funny, fast-moving, highly tuneful and eminently entertaining. The score was penned by composer Gene DePaul and legendary lyricist Johnny Mercer, a hit machine who turned out many standards of the mid-20th Century.

There was not one, but many, standout performances, yet I hesitate to single out names here because this was a team effort all the way, no less so than a varsity football or basketball or lacrosse team pulling together in the same direction to triumph as a singular unit. And the protean effort actors and stage crews and production teams invest in painstaking rehearsals is no less demanding than the draining two-a-days of pre-season football training.

At the end of Sunday’s show, Yorktown’s own theater impresario, Barry Liebman, managing director of Yorktown Stage, said to me, “Every seat in that auditorium should have been filled.” His point, and mine, is that this was a show well worth seeing. At 10 bucks a pop, there’s no better value around. Somewhat sadly, it’s human nature to respond mostly to marquee names, whether a pop singer or a Broadway show title.

Chatting afterwards in the school parking lot, senior Joe Perkowski, a cast member, who also is on the varsity baseball squad, said how much he enjoyed performing on stage and how much he had learned from Mr. Arduini, including things about himself he may never have discovered had he not stretched and pushed and expressed himself beyond the classroom and ballfield.

It reminded me of another student in whose memory our Foundation proudly supports the performing arts in the schools. “There are no small roles, only small actors,” said one teen performer named Harrison Apar. “That would be me.”

Ah, yes, but when he was on stage, making people laugh by hamming it up, he felt ten- feet tall.

Self-esteem is a beautiful thing, especially in a person who is three-feet tall.

Northern Westchester Hospital Grand Prix racer Bruce Apar, whom nobody’s mistaking for a NASCAR dad, let alone a NASCAR driver. 

Never again will I entertain the notion that NASCAR drivers are something other than athletes. After a few laps around the track at Grand Prix New York in Mount Kisco — in full racing regalia (pictured above) that had me and about 30 other other thrill-seekers head socked, helmeted and jumpsuited head to toe — I was, as they say in Yiddish, shvitzing. My hair may as well have been under a shower head.

The next day, I sensed slight, dull aches in my right arm and back. But, man, was it ever worth it. The go-karts, built in France and considered the best of breed, according to Grand Prix partner and marketing VP Nat Mundy, can get up to 30 mph, but my top speed, according to the personalized stat sheet we were handed every each of three heats, was about 23 mph.

While negotiating the turns, including two consecutive hairpins, and literally looking over my shoulder to see who was on my tail, I was locked in, gripping the steering wheel with a competitive zeal that surprised me.

This event, on the morning of Saturday, March 8, was part of the Grand Prix Ball fundraiser for Northern Westchester Hospital. While the major-league players each had to pony up $1000 each, going to a great cause of course — the daVinci Robotic Surgery Program — hospital marketing VP Carin Grossman kindly invited me to experience the racing competition. Such are the perks of the working press — or the playing press, in cases like this.

However, there was the proviso that should I qualify for the semi-finals, which took place as part of the evening’s cocktail reception, I could not compete, and for a very good reason. The paying customers may not appreciate being edged out of a semi-final slot by a freeloader. Nobody needn’t have worried a second about that possibility.

In my three heats, each an endurance test of five to six minutes and 10 or so laps, I struck laughter in the hearts of the other competitors by placing 7 of 10, 9 of 11, and 10 of 11. How’s that for progress? So take that, Stirling Moss ! (am I showing my age?).

The smarter drivers — a group that emphatically did not include me – learned well the lesson served up in the orientation session by Grand Prix racing director Ari Gatoff: you are not racing against the other drivers, or even racing for the fastest heat time. Every driver’s fastest lap in each heat is used to determine your ranking.

So why, then, was I trying so insistently in the first heat to pass other drivers in my futile attempt to stay at the front of the pack? Good question.

Another faux pas I made was thinking that cutting corners was a smart strategy. Wrong again. It feels good doing it, as your rear wheels skid around the turns and do a neat little slide step sideways. The truth, though, is that such moves are too clever by half because they cut precious fractional seconds off your lap time.

By the third heat, I kinda sorta figured that out, and started to take wider turns, but the ideal turning strategy is somewhere in between the two extremes I experimented with.

To be continued …

Elyse Apar with Queen of Katonah Martha Stewart
Photo by Mr. Elyse “Bruce” Apar

  The good people at Northern Westchester Hospital in Mount Kisco sure know how to put on a high-octane fundraiser. As guests of the hospital for its March 8 Grand Prix Ball, named for its host venue, Grand Prix New York, a very cool kart-racing complex off Route 117, my wife Elyse and I chatted with former George Bush White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, honorary chair of the event, and had a (very) brief encounter with the cool Queen of Katonah, Martha Stewart. Also among the crowd of 800 were Congressman John Hall and District Director Susan Spear, State Senator Vincent Leibell and wife Helen, and Yorktown Supervisor Don Peters and wife Karen.
  After I told Mr. Fleischer how I enjoyed hearing his views as an articulate political commentator on channels like CNN and Fox News, his friendly advice to this an unabashed cable news junkie was, “You’re better off watching ESPN.” He and wife Becki also were quite the ballroom dancers.
    The redoubtable Ms. Stewart made a million-dollar matching donation to the hospital for its state-of-the-art daVinci Robotic Surgical system, the beneficiary of the evening’s million-dollar fundraiser. The remarkable technology, used primarily for certain urology and gynecologic surgeries, is more accurate, less invasive, and reduces hospital stays and recovery time for patients.
  We also had what amounted to an impromptu demonstration of her vaunted reputation as a natural organizer. When I asked about the possibility of a photo, she graciously assented to pose alongside my better half.
  Foolishly thinking I could hand off my camera to work my way into the frame with the two ladies, I quickly realized Ms. Stewart had a different composition in mind as she pointed and told me to “stand over there” (a few feet from the table) to get the right angle. A bit deflated by being cropped out of the picture before it even got to the PhotoShop stage, I nevertheless played the dutiful husband, disguised as a fawning photographer, or vice versa.
 

Club Fit personal trainer Erick Omondi
has his hands full with Bruce the Blog on the treadmill.

In the Talking Points column in December 12 NCN (”Ring in the New Year, Wring out the Old Pear Shape,” page 9), the Pillsbury Doughboy body double in the above photo writes about starting his new three-month regimen of cardio and strength training workouts at Club Fit in Jefferson Valley.

Since filing that report, I subjected myself, on Tuesday, December 11, to the weight circuit at the club’s Fit Zone. For starters, the humbling factor is evident immediately, with men and women of various ages and body types doing some serious pumping of iron. Once upon a time, I would have been a lot more sheepishly self-conscious about placing the pin in the LifeFitness weight stack at 30 pounds (for arm curls) or 150 pounds (for leg press). Not now.

It’s one of the dividends of being both a certain age and having gone through some extreme life experiences that finding yourself the 230-pound weakling among buff bods in a gym — including buff bods your age and above — is hardly worth sweating over. Especially since, once you start exhaling with the weight press and inhaling on the depress, there’s plenty to sweat about.

Apart from the orientation circuit from three weeks prior, when Personal Trainer Erick Omondi set my weight levels, this was my first tour of the weight circuit. At that time, he also recorded on my logsheet the height to set the seat and proper angle to set other machine parts to ensure each exercise is performed for optimal effectiveness. I had to relearn where the settings were on each machine the second time because so many days had elapsed since the first workout. This is all a lot simpler and quicker to do than it sounds on paper. Each setting takes about a second or two.

Before hitting the weights, though, my workout routine calls for 10 minutes on the treadmill as a warmup. I did that, if ill advisedly, due to a foot injury that makes my right heel very tender to the touch. My wife Elyse, who is disgustingly fit and a regular at Solaris and also uses a treadmill, elliptical trainer and free weights at home, strongly suggested I instead use a stationary cycle or elliptical. But you know us men; we don’t listen too well, especially when it is wise advice via our better halves.

I went through the circuit with little trouble, completing two sets of 12 repetitions on seven of eight pieces of equipment prescribed for this beginner. The three leg workouts — press, extension and curl — were challenging but otherwise tolerable. The leg curl, though, was the hardest of the three for me. The chest press and upper back exercise were manageable enough. Where I did run into more than my match was the shoulder press, where I completed the first set of 12 reps, but started to fail on Rep Number 6 of the second set and only could make it to Rep Number 8. Talk about humbling.

The circuit finishes with machines for biceps and triceps, followed by a 10- to 15-minute cooldown. After pedaling half-heartedly on a cycle for less than that duration, I ambled over to the magazine rack where I spotted a Rush Limbaugh magazine (of sorts), filled with commentary that is a lot more about what he opposes than what he favors. Notably, the address label on the magazine was furiously blotted out with a pen, presumably by the subscriber for reasons of privacy or self-consciousness, or both.

BRUCE
APAR

ELECTION SECTION + ENDORSEMENTS
Under the watchful eye of Managing Editor Kathleen Fitzpatrick, our rejuvenated, rockin’ staff is putting the finishing touches on NCN’s Election Section 2007, a 32-page bonus supplement inserted in the October 31 issue.

In it, you can scour in-depth profiles of 64 — count ‘em — 64 local candidates for elected offices in six towns and villages: Cortlandt, Ossining, Peekskill, Putnam Valley, Somers, and Yorktown.

On the editorial pages (16-17) of our Oct. 31 News section, you will find our endorsements. They are carefully considered conclusions reached after interviews with each candidate by our editorial board, comprised of our reporters and Managing Editor Kathleen Fitzpatrick.

As NCN Publisher and community volunteer who has close involvement with many of the candidates, I recused myself from the candidate interviews and the endorsement process. I will learn of the editorial board’s endorsements only when they are ready to be printed.

NO LONGER DATING OURSELVES
A detail some longtime readers may have noticed is that we finally got rid of the time-warped date format that had been on our folio — eg, Oct. 31-Nov. 6. Newsweeklies like Time and Newsweek don’t date themselves that way because each issue reports on the previous week, not the upcoming week — so the cover date represents news up until that date, not beyond it. Standard-issue newsweeklies also don’t refer in their stories to “yesterday” or “last Monday” because we can’t control on what day a reader is seeing the story, so we also are finally phasing out that bad practice as well, replacing it with actual dates, such as, Monday, Oct. 29. It’s all part of our ongoing efforts to make NCN smarter through the introduction of best practices, both on our pages and in our day-to-day newsroom operation.

ARE YOU A COPY EDITOR? APPLY HERE
North County News is currently interviewing candidates highly qualified for the following job description:North County News is currently interviewing candidates highly qualified for the following job description:

COPY EDITOR. Part-time. Minimum 5 years experience. Northern Westchester community newsweekly seeks expert wordsmith with journalism credentials to edit news and feature stories and proof final pages in fast-paced, deadline-driven workplace. Must have mastery of grammar, sharp eye for detail and highly focused work ethic. Flexible hours. Send resume with cover letter to editor@NCNlocal.com.

HIGH SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL IS BACK!
If you have a hankerin’ to write about school life or teen life or almost any topic that strikes your fancy and is of interest to other teens — as well as parents and school personnel — North County News’s High School Confidential is your chance to get published in a prestigious newspaper. For more information, contact editor@NCNlocal.com; or call (914) 962-3871 X410.

Is the whole idea of political campaigning devolving into Theater of the Absurd. That’s a rhetorical question. Consider Croton-on-Hudson. No Republican line? Puhleeze, people. Is that an issue people care about it, or it is merely more political nonsense that avoids a headlong dive into discussing what really matters to the electorate? It doesn’t help that there are Boards of Elections in some parts of the County peopled by party operatives. That makes some rulings — not pointing a finger in the direction of this one, mind you – less than credible. Could there be a more egregious conflict of interest. That’s a rhetorical question too.    

I have been receiving a constant stream of emails since Thursday (22) from the good people of Croton and Peekskill people who either have been the targets of the bad people of those communities with a perverted, and self-justifying, sense of blogging, or simply are fed up with the nonsense these bogus blogs perpetrate in the name of heaven-knows-what. They’re not blogs, but bogs that their own hosts are stuck in and can’t get escape, and so try to pull others down to their mudslinging. Our advice is to totally ignore this nonsense. We do.

The emails coming our way express strenuous support of the “Salvo” we printed on page 8 of February 21-27 North County News. The vile Bums on a Blog, wherever they may lurk, lack that human quality called “the courage of your convictions.”

To those who blow smoke that blogs are inherently anonymous, ask them if that self-serving conceit also holds true for a phone call, or an email, or a letter to the editor of a newspaper. An anonymous phone call harassing or threatening someone is punishable by law. So is use of the U.S. mails for the same purpose. Newspapers as a standard practice do not publish letters to the editor that are unsigned. You know why certain, illegitimate blog hosts desperately protest that anonymity is “OK”? Because the Internet is unregulated and remains the last refuge of such scoundrels.  

Not to worry. This much is guaranteed: those amateurishly anonymous bogs, those blights on the landscape, those pollutants of civil discourse, foisted by ne’er-do-wells you wouldn’t want to associate with under the best of circumstances, are not long for this world wide web. Gutless wonders wear out their welcome sooner than later, and don’t have the perseverance to stick with it.

Bums on a Blog are crass acts having a grand ole time, at the expense of others who are class acts for standing up for what they believe in. Bums on a Blog are hypocrites who can dish it out but can’t take it, and who believe only in being too afraid to attach their name to what they say. They are sad cases to be pitied, even as they mimic adolescents and bigots by mocking their betters under the cover of incognito cowardice.

As for elected officials who lack the sound judgment to not associate themselves with the unsavory crowd that sustains anonymously-hosted blogs, and who should be denouncing them instead as not hospitable to decent, honest people of good will, you don’t need me to tell you what message to send such beclouded public servants on Election Day.