I’m madder than Al Capone after he realized too late that he forgot to fill out his 1040EZ form over the fact that Derek Jeter has retired I didn’t get a chance to see him play even once!
Look, you all know the ol’Screecher is always as busy as a big fat beaver whether I’m doing my duties as president of BWECC! or setting up a dinner for my annual Carmine Awards, or stuffing my face with free food over at Bob’s on Flatbush Avenue (and I ain’t even shopping for furniture), so I was just as surprised as you to learn the captain of the Yankees was calling it a career after 20 season at shortstop.
It seems like only yesterday that he made a great catch and hit a home run in his first game against Cleveland, and I can’t believe time has slipped by so fast.
I remember listening to that first game on the radio while I was double-parked on Sheepshead Bay Road waiting for my wife to wrestle my freelance check away from the hands of the old owner of the Brooklyn Graphic for a job well done.
I vowed then and there to get to a game to see that kid play, but I never got the chance.
I guess I was teaching too many ballroom dance classes to get out to Ebbets Field.
So many things have happened since Jeter took the field, and it got me to thinking that it has been at least 40 years since me and Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sillywa were honored with two “Golden Apples” for our hard work making Brooklyn a better place to live.
I was reminded of that when I read the Daily Noose the other day and saw a letter from a woman who complained about Sillywa’s remarks in an op-ed about my favorite San Gennaro feast in Little Italy under the headline “A feast for fraud, past and present.” After reading that I thought Sillywa joined the ever-growing list of people with huge egos and mouths to match their pea-size brains.”
Of course, I received First Communion and Confirmed at the Most Precious Blood Church in Little Italy (which sponsors the event) as most of you regular readers of this column know. Hopefully the Curtis Sillywa I knew sends an apology. Curtis in this day of tumultuous times, nobody needs more enemies!
News flash! There’s a cannoli-eating contest at Il Centro coming up during “Italian Resturant week.” To be perfectly honest with you, dear reader, A cannoli is not my favorite pastry. Instead, a lot of cannolis is my favorite pastry! And those attending the Oct.11 bonanza at II Centro to watch the three contenders stuff about 200m of them down their gullets may also get to taste one — that is if I leave any for anybody to taste and I’m not even competing.
Any of you guys remember former Assemblyman Frank Barbaro’s World’s Largest Cannoli contest baked by Sal Alba, when Sal had the world famous Alba’s Pastry Shop at 1717 18th Ave. Frank approached me and said “Carmine, what can we do to help Sal celebrate the Alba diamond anniversary?”
That’s when I came up with the idea to make my favorite pastry kingsized!
Well, a picture is worth a thousand words, but a two-part video of the occasion can be googled at Alba’s Bakery Presented Diamond Anniversary Awards Oct. 13th, 1993. Catch me eating and also everybody else eating his cannoli’s. See the cream of Bensonhurt at the celebration, some long gone — but not forgotten. Enjoy the trip down the 1993 memory lane of yesteryear and see who you recognize.
Mangia! at Brooklyn’s Second Annual Italian Fest, starting Oct. 8 with eight days of food, glorious Italian food, discounted and two-fers at 40 restaurants from Dumbo to Sheepshead Bay.
For info and full-length list of participating restaurants, go to the News and Event page at ibrooklyn.com. Mangia!
I’m gonna ask youse all a question, isn’t this type of news more appreciated than the horrors you read in the daily papers and the television news. Do you really care about big ferocious bears in somebody’ backyard where ever in the world or are you more concerned about what happens near you in your neighborhood, in your shopping centers, in your schools and churches. That’s right, ol’Carmine brings you the news you can use!
Screech at you next week!
