In fact, it was very quiet.

I ran into Board Chairman Bill Ryan in the lobby. For a guy who was 44 votes behind in the unofficial count, he seemed rather buoyant. The election in the 5th District is far from over—there will be a recount. Maybe Ryan thinks he’s got in the bag. After all, they haven’t yet counted the absentee ballots from the local graveyards.

I also ran into Legislator Vito Pinto, D-Eastchester. Pinto was standing at a table selling raffle tickets and baked goods to raise money for U.S. troops overseas. He was doing a brisk business. By the time I got there, he figured he was going to collect $500 for the cause.

Not bad.

A few words about Pinto are in order. He is a modest and dedicated public servant, who has held his seat for 12 years despite being in a mostly Republican district. His popularity with people from all political persuasions was evidenced by the fact that no one opposed him in last Tuesday’s election.

We talked for a little bit about the terrible shooting spree at Fort Hood, Texas. I said something about how  the most noble job in the world must be that of an Army medic or Navy corpsman—the noncombatant soldiers and sailors who risk their lives in battle to save fallen comrades.

Pinto knows more than a little about combat. A Vietnam veteran, he flew in 250 missions and was wounded in action. It was moving to see him doing his bit for the troops.

I’m not going soft on the Board of Legislators, but Pinto deserves a thank you and so do all the veterans. Nov. 12 is Veterans Day.

One of my spies tells me  they’re busy emptying desks and file cabinets and shredding documents like mad.

My informant tells me that when he came to work today on the eighth floor, where the county legislators roam, there was a “huge rolling garbage bin” filled to the brim with papers. The janitor told him the garbage was from the floor above—Spano’s domain—and that there was more to come.

Gee, I wonder if they brought in the county shredmobile for this major operation. (at left)

But here’s a more serious question: How much of that stuff was sensitive material not meant for scrutiny by the prying, public eye?  If you want to see it, you’ll probably have to go down to the Canyon of Heroes today and sift through the confetti.

We’ll try to answer that.

For the first half hour, our phone guest will be Rob Astorino, who won in a stunning landslide over three-time incumbent Andy Spano in the Westchester county executive’s race. On election night, Astorino said the results “blew his mind,” a remark which prompted memories of the movie “The Candidate,” when in the end, the victor turned around and asked, “Now what do we do?”

In addition to our usual cast of crazy pundits and political analysts, we’ll also be talking to Journal News reporter Gerald McKinstry and Andrew Whitman, a correspondent with RNN-TV, which conducted the only poll on the county executive’s race.

Tune in today at 1460 AM or log onto wvox.com.

He was.

A standout at Stepinac High and a star football lineman for the Super Bowl winning Greenbay Packers, Hyland, has long been  a familar face on the local scene. For manyy years, he has owned and operated the Sports Page pub in White Plains. Hyland is tall, soft-spoken and modest in the mold of a Garry Cooper-type. His business acumen and biography made him an appealing candidate.

However, he faced some big problems. He’s a political novice for one thing. And he was up against a powerful, entrenched incumbent in Ryan, who sits as the chairman of the county Board of Legislators. Ryan raised more money than Hyland and he had the advantage of serving in the Fifth legislative district which overwhelmingly favors Democrats.

Ryan mailed out a last-minute flier that came close to libeling Hyland. Even if Ryan pulls this out in a recount, it’s an upset and a repudiation of the Boss.

But look what happened. With all 51 election districts reporting, the race is a virtual dead heat. Hyland leads Ryan by 44 votes—5,456 to 5,412, according to unofficial numbers from the Board of Elections.

For the commercial click on Andy and scroll to the icon.

In the spot, Spano is depicted as tourist in China, a place he frequently visited during his tenure, which ended last night in a landslide victory for Astorino.

Word has it that Spano has hit the road again.  Not China,  though. This morning, he took off for Florida.

Of course I ignored the advisory because I rarely drink water from the tap—even if it is Yonkers water which every once in awhile wins one of those water-tasting contents. What the hell is water supposed to taste like anyway?

The idea that some foreign substance had infiltrated the east side of Yonkers made me think for one second that it was a big county government plot, but to what purpose I knew not. Perhaps it was cherry-flavored Kool-Aid to make us obediently follow Andy Spano and his veggie wagon.

It reminded me of Jack D. Ripper, the crazy officer in Dr. Strangelove played by Sterling Hayden. He does a great riff on water in a scene with Peter Sellers who played the unctuous Capt. Mandrake. Click on  “vodka” for the scene.

RIPPER: Mandrake, have you never wondered why I drink only distilled water, or rain water, and only pure grain alcohol?

MANDRAKE: Well it did occur to me, Jack, yes.

RIPPER: Have you ever heard of a thing called fluoridation? Fluoridation of water?

MANDRAKE: Ah, yes, I have heard of that, Jack. Yes.

RIPPER: Well do you now what it is?

MANDRAKE: No. No, I don’t know what it is. No.

RIPPER: Do you realize that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face?

I slammed Ryan’s Republican opponent, Denise D’Ambrosio, in a Oct. 31, 1999 column that carried the headline, “Campaign flier defies facts, fairness, common sense and good taste.”  Yes, I defended Ryan.

The flier in question basically said that Ryan stalled on a proposed gun control law and set Westchester up for a Columbine-type disaster. What made the ridiculous charge even more outrageous was that the flier included a photograph of two boys—one white and the other black. The white boy had a very real-looking gun pointed at the black boy’s head.

D’Ambrosio lost the election.

But now, what do you know? Ryan has essentially done a similar jobbing on his 2009 opponent, Bob Hyland. A flier “paid for” by the Westchester County Democratic Committee went out late last week that smears Hyland and his business, the Sports Page Pub in White Plains.

The flier, reads “Not paying his taxes, violence at his bar…that’s Robert Hyland.”

This is a sign of desperation and it’s the subject of my column which will appear in tomorrow’s edition of The Journal News and posted on lohud.com. You would think Ryan would know better.

I just got one from Chappaqua resident Bill Clinton—or maybe it was just a guy disguising his voice. It is Halloween, isn’t it.

Besides, there’s more than few car dealerships around here that hire bad impressionists to appear in radio and cable-TV commercials masquerading as the former first president.  And it’s not all that hard to effect Clinton’s twangy voice.

I mean, there’s no possible way I could tell if  that was a phone recording from the real Bubba. It could have been anybody.

Even I could have done Clinton’s voice.

Of course, if it had been me I would have added heavy breathing to give it the perfect Clintonian edge. Then I would’ve said: “Hey baby, this is your old president, Bill. Your husband isn’t home, is he? I hope not. Hah, I’m just kiddin’ ya!”

In any case, the  10-second call was on behalf of County Executive Andy Spano, who is seeking his fourth term on Tuesday. I expect Hillary, or the Bam will call next…or maybe Jack Nicholson. How about the Guvenator of Cal—ee-forn-i-a?

“Hallo, dis is Ahnald. Dohn be a gurlee mahn…vote for Ahn-dee Spah-no!”

But what the records don’t show is the shadow contributions paid for by taxpayers. That’s the money that goes into bogus press conferences, press releases, mailings and vote-getting gimmicks that ostensibly have to do with important county issues but are transparently timed in the weeks, days and hours leading up to election day. Spano’s staff, whose salaries are paid for by the citizens, are not supposed to be engaged in electioneering.

So one might question a letter dated Oct. 19 that was written by Spano’s deputy, Sue Tolchin,  and mailed to South Salem residents. Accompanied by a brochure, the letter purports to explain Spano’s controversial affordable housing settlement which calls for the county to spend at least $52 million to build, buy or lease 750 units of housing in 31 mostly white communities.

Because this issue has bitten Spano in the backside, one might conclude that the purpose of the correspondence was more about politics than policy—and that it was done on the taxpayers’ dime.

It begins this way:

“Dear South Salem Resident:

“It has come to our attention that there is a great deal of misinformation about the fair and affordable housing settlement that was recently passed by the Board of Legislators. Because of this, we have put together the enclosed brochure that will give you the facts about what the settlement means and what it does not mean.”

Note that Tolchin puts the settlement at the feet of the Board of Legislators. Spano negotiated the deal and then put a gun to the board’s head to pass it quickly, even pulling out the race card to shame them into action.

Spano should reimburse the taxpayers for the cost that went into this. Come to think of it, he should also make good on the Columbus Day Weekend discounts he gave to Bee-Line bus riders.

He can afford it. He’s got more than $3 million.

But the good news for Astorinos is that leave 11 percent of the voters up for grabs. The poll has 4.5 percent margin of error, plus or minus.

Here’s the whole press release from Andrew Whitman of RNN:

RNN Television (Regional News Network) and the Siena Research Institute have released the results of the only public poll in the race for Westchester County Executive, and Westchester County District Attorney.

The results were first made public on the network’s news/talk/opinion program Richard French Live Thursday night at 7pm.

The results in the County Executive race are particularly revealing, in that the lead is just 7 points in a county where Democrats hold a huge registration advantage (D:  46.6%; R: 25.5%), and where Spano defeated Astorino by more than 16 points in 2005.

Other areas of note within the poll:  Spano, a 3-term incumbent, leads despite a high unfavorable rating (46%); Spano’s favorable/unfavorable split is even more pronounced among unaffiliated voters (34% favorable/60% unfavorable; unaffiliated voters make up 22.2% of the electorate in Westchester County); Astorino is within striking distance, even though nearly half of those polled (1/3 of all Republicans, as well) say they still don’t know enough about him to form an opinion.

In the DA’s race, incumbent Janet DFiore (D) remains in solid shape for re-election, polling at 52% against® Dan Schorr’s 21% and (WF/I) Tony Castro’s 14%.

Complete results (including polling on some specific issues) as well as demographic breakdowns are attached.

For any additional information or comment, please feel free to contact RNN as listed below.

Chamberlain was the British prime minister who famously waved a piece of paper signed by Adolf Hitler in 1938 that basically said Germany had no intention of invading Czechoslovakia. And we all know what happened, don’t we? That’s right—the opposite of “peace in our time.”

The incumbent county executive’s moment came midway through the debate when he was forced, once again, to defend his settlement of a federal lawsuit that will require Westchester to build, lease or acquire 750 affordable housing units to be spread over 31 communities with mostly white populations. The settlement calls for the expenditure of $52 million, a cost that Spano claims will not be exceeded.

“We don’t see any additional impact on our budget because of the spending, ” he said. “The money that we have to spend is capped. What that means is we have capped the amount of money we should spend, and will spend—and that’s all the housing we have to do, is that amount of money.”

So far so vague. But then Spano walked into it when he said the following. I’ll put it in bold print. “We have a letter from the Justice Department indicating that and I’m confident that everything stands in that vein.”

He should’ve waved the letter aloft. See, peace in our time!

Rob Astorino, the Republican challenger, had a pretty effective rejoinder.

“Well, let’s just do the math,” he began. “He wants you to say it’s a $52 million cap and he has a letter from the Justice Department that says that. The letter is just that. It’s not part of the binding agreement and that is very specific if you read this settlement.”

Astorino said Spano wants people to believe that the cost will be contained. But 750 units divided into $52 million comes out to $68,000 per unit. No way does housing come out that cheap. Not here. And not Aberdeen, South Dakota for that matter.

“By Mr. Spano’s  own estimation in our last debate he said it’s going to be about $400,000 a unit. So if you do 750 times $400,000 you’re going to come out to much more than $52 million. You’re  going to come out to  hundreds of millions of dollars.”

In other words, look out Czechoslovakia. Hello Poland. So long France.

Now, this may be true. Or maybe not. The problem for Spano was that he had no answer to this. At least not a convincing one. This was true pretty much throughout the debate. Politics is about persuasion. And last night Spano left his powers of persuasion at home.

Fines.

If I were forced to give a peformance grade to the combatants, I’d say that Rob Astorino, the Republican challenger got an A-minus grade and Andy Spano, the incumbent Democrat got a “gentleman’s C.” I know I give Spano a hard time, but by any objective analysis Astorino clearly won the debate that was aired on Cablevision’s News 12.

Astorino came across as polished, prepared and pugilistic—the three “P’s.” Spano came across as, well, tired. He sounded like he was mailing it in.

The most annoying thing about Astorino’s message was his constant reference to his Web site. Spano’s mantra was that Astorino was “divisive.” Most interesting, however, was that Spano, knowing he was on TV, mightily restrained himself from coming across as a grumpy, old codger—which is the way he appeared in previous untelevised debates.

The result was that Astorino got the aggressive upper hand. He started out the debate by telling the viewers what Spano was going to tell them. For instance. he said Spano would complain that  the county’s high property taxes aren’t his responsibility. Also, Astorino predicted Spano would claim credit for the county’s a triple bond rating. without explaining that the rating is high because the local municipalties are responsible to make good on the prioperty tax collections. And he was right—Spano couldn’t veer from his script and he mentioned most of the things Astorino said he would.

And he kept pounding Spano on taxes, on Playland, on the affordable housing settlement and even on Spano’s driver-bodyguards. Spano still hasn’t come up with an answer to that one.

Spano seemed lost at times. When he tried to score on a Fair Campaign Practices Committee that faulted Astorino, he garbled the answer with an inside-baseball explanation that must have been lost on the average viewer.

Astorino also got off a good one-liner, maybe the best one of the night. As he has all through the campaign, Spano read aloud the breakdown on Astorino’s property tax bill to make the point that the county portion of the bill isn’t high. This was an effective “gotcha” in the first debate between the candidates. But this time, Spano garbled it.

Then in an aside, Astorino leaned over to Spano and said. “It’s a little creepy that you’ve been snooping around in my taxes.”

Phillies Win Game 1

Astorino Wins Debate 3

Taylor, grew up as James Wesley Voight in Yonkers and went to Archbishop Stepinac High School in White Plains. He is the brother of actor Jon Voight,  wrote the classic garage-band hit, “Wild Thing” and other other songs. His other brother, Barry, is also an actor. 

The announcement fro Chip Taylor Day is being made, probably as I write this post, at City Hall in the Mayor’s Reception Room. (From left to right, the photo shows Barry, Jon and Chip Voight.)

Taylor and his friends and family and friends are there right now. According to the mayor’s office, the songwriter has a new album out that was inspired by  Yonkers. But he’ll probably be always know for “Wild Thing.”

The British group, the Troggs, made a hit out of “Wild Thing” back in 1966. Click on video.

Check out the low production values with the Beatle-brow hairdos and striped, clown suits. And how about the half-dead onlookers on the train platform? This should’ve been a zombie movie, and I don’t mean, The Zombies, another group from the British Invasion years.

It’s hardly sophisticated brand of humor, but it still cracks me up. There’s an art to it.

Soupy was a pie connoisseur. He knew that the pie had to have a crust that allowed for pieces of it to slowly fall off  the face of the “victim.” To be really funny, the impact also had to have a loud, whirlwind kind of sound to give it that shock and awe feeling.

A key element to  confection-based slapstick is the have the proper recipient. Here’s an example of a particularly effective  pie-throw, involving, of all people, the rock star, Alice Cooper.

He appeared on Soupy’s kid show in 1979. The setup involves White Fang, the giant dog who was mostly off-camera and had an expressive way of grunting.

Here’s a photo of that storm taken by a friend of mine, Mike Augustyni n Mamaroneck. Ain’t that incredible? Right out of a Frankenstein movie.

Bob Marrone, the fine journalist of WVOX radio and host of “Good Morning Westchester,” will do a Halloween special on the results of the investigation this Friday at 7 a.m. I was interviewed for the piece, so it should be very amusing.

Tune in Friday at 1460 AM or log onto wvox.com.

By attributing racist motives to those who may be skeptical of a controversial settlement in an affordable housing lawsuit, Andy Spano has unwittingly put himself on notice.

If the incumbent county executive truly believes in the principle of a level playing field in which everyone – regardless of racial, ethnic and economic background – has an equal shot at the American Dream, then he can make a very simple statement to back it up.

To see how that involves eminent domain and Port Chester, read more by clicking on column.

But this was a mind-blowing revelation. While I was watching a recent playoff game between the Yankees and the Angels, I got to thinking about how the so-called “post season” has now extended deep into the regular season of the NFL. Some day they’ll be playing the October Classic in December, I thought.

Then I wondered how much the players get in World Series these days. As a kid back in the 60s, I remember how the perennial champs, the Bronx Bombers, always counted on, and in fact, expected to receive the extra money gained from their series shares. Going online, I found this very revealing chart.

It shows the winners’ and losers’ shares from the first year the World Series was played in 1903. The winners got $1,182 for a full share. Somehow the losers got a few bucks more—$1,316. Maybe somebody can explain that anomoly to me, but it was the only year in baseball history that it was better to lose than win.

Looking at the chart, you can see that for nearly a half-century, the shares rose in only small increments. Year after year, the take was $2,000 or so, slowly building to the five- and six-grand range. (A low point for the losing side was $439.50, but in 1908 that was still pretty good bread.)

It was unitl 1954 when the New York Giants faced the Cleveland Indians that the winners’ share topped $10,000—but only be $1,147. From that time until 1968, the winners’ share exceeded $10,000 only five times.

In 1988, when free agency was pulling in higher and higher regular season salaries, the winners share finally went over the 100-grand mark.

Then came the sterioid era of the 90s. World Series shares have more than tripled since then. During the Yankees heyday of the late 90s, any player (even a bullpen coach, potentially) earned well over $1.5 million just in World Series shares alone.

Last year, the winners’ sharted was $351,504.48 and the losers got $233,730.05.

This is handsome bonus money indeed. So I pose the question: if the government can impose salary and bonus restrictions on investment bankers that took taxpayer bailout money, why can’t the same be done with baseball? It seems to me that with taxpayer-subsidized stadiums, they got bailed out too, thanks to the hard-earned money of regualr wage earners.

Lou Albano, who grew up in Mount Vernon, died last week at the age of 76.

Tune in to 1460 AM for the show, or log onto wvox.com.

Collins was elected in 2007 with one line on the ballot (Republican) in a county while his opponent had four lines and outspent him  three to one. He got 64 percent of the vote. The first thing he did when he took office was fire 21 of the county’s 25 commissioners.

He took away 250 cell phones and Blackberrys from public employees. Only five commissioners are allowed to have take-home cars.

Collins himself, drives his own Buick. He pays for his own gas. Evidently, he doesn’t  believe he needs bodyguard protection like Westchester County Executive You-Know-Who. His cell phone is his own.

He has two people in his office who handle media relations. You-know-Who has six.

Erie County has one million residents, close to the population of Westchester. But Westchester’s budget of $1.8 billion is abou twice the size of Erie.

Collins’ credo is run government like it’s a business, which he claims he has done with success. His slogan is lead by example.

Rob Astorino, who is running against Westchester County incumbent You-Know-Who seems to be holding Collins and his accomplishments in Erie County up as a model to follow. That may sound like a stretch because Erie is way out in the western New York  rust-belt and has been in economic decline for quite some time. When Collins took over the reins of government, there really was nowhere for Erie to go but up.

Nevertheless, Astorino earlier today introduced Collins to a round table of Westchester business leaders in White Plains, touting him as a rare example of a political leader who is succeeding in an uphill battle to streamline government.

Clearly, Astorino sees hope in Collins’s underdog election victory. But whether or not that can translate into a similar upset over the entrenched and very well-heeled Andy Spano, aka You-Kow-Who, remains to be seen.

In any case, the race in Westchester seems to be tightenting. An indicator of just how tight it’s getting is evidenced by the increasing level of nastiness. If Spano was genuinely secure, it’s doubtful he would release a mailing that attacks Astorino’s pro-life stance—and Spano did just that.

Collins talked at length about his efforts to reel in Erie’s public unions, with whom he said he has fought “tooth and nail.” Astorino may not be as successful in that area, but he has pledged that he will require all non-union employees to pay for health care.

In a brief interview following  the round table, which included leaders from the Business Council of Westchester and the Westchester County Association, Collins said that he managed under  a “limit test of what government should do and shouldn’t do.”

For instance, he’d unload Playland Amusement Park, which annually operates in the red.

“Absolutely, in a heart beat.” he said. “It’s not government’s role, I don’t believe, to do that type of thing—especially if it’s not making money. If it’s making money, that’s a whole different discussion  about quality of life and so forth.”

Astorino chimed in that 65 percent of Playland’s patrons are from outside Westchester, “So you have a minimum of $5 million taxpayer subsidy” for 35 percent of the population,” he said.

But here’s new one I just got from “Jill Rothstein.”

Am in a hurry writing you this note, Just wanted to seek your help onsomething very  important, you are the only person i could reach at this point, and i hope you come  to my aid. Because something very terrible is happening to me now,i need a favor from you now, I had a trip here in UK on a mission. Unfortunately for me all my money got stolen on my way to the hotel where i lodged along with my bag were my passport was ,And since theni have been without any money i am even owing the hotel here. So i have limited access to emails for now, please i need you to lend me about 1300Pounds so i can make arrangements and return back please,i have spoken to the embassy here but they are not responding to the matter effectively, I will return the money back to you as soonas i get home, I am so confused right now.
I will be waiting to hear from you.
jillie

For laughs, I e-mailed good old “Jillie” back. I didn’t expect to get a reply, but she surprised me.

I wrote:

My God, that’s terrible. How much is 1,300 pounds in American dollars?
Please write back.

Jillie wrote:

Thank you! This was a scam, so crazy!

I wrote:

Wow. Really? And here I was, ready to help.. Oh well.

Jillie wrote:

So appreciate it!

If the kid-in-the-balloon fiasco in Colorado yesterday wasn’t an outright hoax, most of America believes something else to be true: The father of six-year-old Falcon Heene is a certified a-hole.

Check out the Wolf Blitzer interview with the family that aired last night on CNN. Here’s a sampling of online comments.

“These people are STRAIGHT-UP freaks! I saw the “Wife Swap” episode that featured them. They let their kids? do everything and ANYTHING. I have no DOUBT this was set-up by them for publicity. Idiots.”
###############################################################################
“This is so uncomfortable to watch, this man is so in a delusional world that he should be put into custody at the nearest nut house so he doesn’t end up hurting those poor innocent children after he realizes what an utter laughingstock he? has made himself to the world.”

As we all know now, the kid was never in the balloon. It turned out he was hiding in the garage for four hours. But for a good part of Thursday afternoon, no one knew that.

Most assumed Falcon (There’s a new-agey name for you) was hurtling through the atmosphere in the balloon, possibly freezing to death at 10,000 feet. Then at one point it was thought that he may have fallen out.

Emergency workers, including personnel in a helicopter, were dispatched. Anyone who watched the live drama on CNN did so with horror and a sense of helplessness.

In the TV interview with the Heenes afterwards, Blitzer got the kid to say on the air that he didn’t come out of hiding because ” you guys said… we did this for the show.”  Oops, was the cat out of the bag?

When Blitzer  pressed the father, Richard Heene, to ask his son what he meant by “for the show,” Heene had a deer-in-the-headlight  moment. Then he scolded Blitzer. He said he was “appalled” by the question. One can easily presume he was huffy because the question implied that the whole thing might have been one big publicity stunt.

Gee, how could anybody be so insensitive? How could anybody think a guy like Richard Heene would use his own kid to pull a hoax? Here’s man who appeared as a babbling maniac on a reality TV show whose wholesome  theme is wife swapping. Here’s a man who chases storms and takes his family along for the ride.

Come on. Heene is as close to being a foolhardy exhibitionist as it gets. And what the hell was he doing with a giant helium-filled party balloon that was capable of dragging a child up, up and away and into a Wizard of Oz nightmare?

And not once did this clown thank the emergency crews that came to his son’s rescue. Not once. Nor did he make an offer to reimburse at least some of the cost of the rescue effort, which amounted to thousands and thousands of dollars.

I’m reminded of a more innocent story from about 20 years ago when a five-year-old boy from Port Chester drove off in his mother’s car, with his baby sister in the back seat.  It was a sensation and earned the kid a shot on David Letterman. All in all,  a cute tale with a happy ending.

The saga of “Balloon boy” has a disturbing feel to it.

I really hope Letterman and the other late-night hucksters resist the  temptation to book Falcon Heene. But nothing surprises me anymore.

He went to Stepinac High School in White Plains which also produced actors Jon Voight and Alan Alda and a host of other people. Albano was a bit of an actor, too.

I interviewed him twice over the years. At election time in 1998, I called to ask what he thought about Jesse “The Body” Ventura’s startling ascendancy to the governor’s mansion in Minnesota.

He was gracious. Ventura, he said was a “very capable wrestler,” who was “always interested in politics. I knew Jesse when he started in. His tag team partner was Adrian Adonis, who got killed in a car accident up in Canada some years back.”

Adrian Adonis—what a great name. The Albano era had a bunch of them—Haystacks Calhoun, Bobo Brazil, Gorilla Monsoon and on and on.

I first met Capt. Lou at a wrestling event at Iona College. There were a number of matches, including a dwarf tag team against female wrestlers. I seem to recall that one of the women threw the dwarf out of the ring. A fun time was had by all.

Outside, I also met “Killer” Kowalski, who developed the famous sleeper hold, which he painfully demonstrated to my chagrin. Kowalski has also gone to his great reward.

So today’s guest on my WVOX radio show, “High Noon,” will be the Republican challenger, Rob Astorino.  We would like to have the incumbent, Andy Spano, on at a later date…but alas, I am not holding my breath on that.

Listen in today at 12 noon. What’s the frequency, Kenneth? That’s 1460 AM, or if you’re out of range simply log onto wvox.com.

I thought, “How the hell did thet manage to get Andy Warhol’s noggin?”

Reading on, I quickly realized that it was a shrunken head that Warhol, who died from a heart attack in 1987 at the age of 58, kept as a cuddly keepsake. It’s had several owners over the years, but of course, the original “owner” was the poor Central American jungle warrior who lost it after a battle with the Jivaro Indians.

According to the Ripley people, the Jivaros “claimed the heads of enemies as symbols of bravery and displayed them…reduced to fist-size war trophies.”

Cool.

With 24 specimens—including one that belonged to Ernest Hemingway- the museum claims it has the largest collection of shrunken heads in the world. Believe it or not.

We’ll find out.

In any case, I said they I had written about this in previous columns. And I forgot to link to them as requested below:

Jim D.

Can you link to those earlier stories?

Thanks

I apologize for the oversight. The last column on the subject ran in July. To read it, click on unexplained.

Action must be taken!

So tomorrow, Spano will join Gov. David Paterson at the the King Street Bridge on the Hutchinson River Parkway—a chronic accident location for wayward trucks—where they will propose legislation and other solutions to the problem. Spano’s press-release machine says the ideas are based on recommendations from a task force of state and county and New York City officials who have been looking into the issue for the past year.

Gee, you have to wonder what County Legislator Tom Abinanti, D-Greenburgh, must think, since he’s been on top of this for at least that long and seemed to be a lone voice calling for something to be done.

In a recent column about the crazy frequency of cargo-carrying rigs crashing into the bridges and holding up traffic for hours, I mentioned Abinanti’s frustration with the state Department of Transportation’s apparent inability to grasp that maybe an anti-truck barrier of some kind should be erected at key entrances to the Hutch where most of the mishaps occur.

When I wrote that column, 35 truck accidents on the parkways had been recorded. According to the Spano machine, the number now stands at 43. The latest collision happened Friday southbound on the Bronx River Parkway near the Cross County Parkway.

While he played, he did a goofy, attention-grabbing jig like he was a needy street urchin panhandling for his supper.

Some guy walking by, wordlessly dropped him a quarter without breaking stride.

My wife and I cracked up. The “panhandling” incident was recalled over the Columbus Day weekend when we found ourselves back in Lake George, strolling along the same pedestrian walkway. It’s funny how some memories stick to you.

By mid-October,  the summer tourist season in Lake George is, indeed, just a memory. There are fewer people and cars. Those who do come, are there mostly to watch the leaves turn color.

But I love this village in the summer because it has no pretensions. It is unabashedly and gloriously a giant tourist trap of custard stands, miniature golf courses, fake tattoo parlors, horse-drawn carriages, steamboat tours, wax museums, T-shirt shops and video arcades. You can’t find a drug store, book store or supermarket anywhere on the main drag. Those things are beside the point in the Lake George.

I embrace its tackiness,  as much as I embrace the spectacular mountain scenery and the region’s fascinating history.

In the off-season, or what the locals call, the “shoulder season,” Lake George takes on a kind of ghostly aura. It’s been a tourist destination since the Victorian Age, so maybe it’s the imprint of a century and half of echoing laughter.

But what I find to be weird is how the village is built around an event that happened in 1757—the massacre at Fort William Henry during the French and Indian War. The James Fenimore Cooper novel, “The Last of the Mohicans,” includes the siege of the British fort, which was a victory for the French and their Indian allies.

It’s a terrible novel. And it was made into a laughable movie starring Randolph Scott in the 1930s,  then remade into a very good movie with Daniel Day-Lewis as Natty Bumppo, aka, “Hawk-Eye.” A replica of the fort overlooks Lake George and tourists are treated to periodic vollies of cannon fire.

An archaeological dig uncovered five skeletons of British soldiers who were wounded in the battle and then murdered by their Indian captors. Evidence showed that one of them was beheaded by an ax or tomahawk.

For awhile, summer visitors in shorts and sunglasses could actually view the exposed remains, until somebody with a better handle on the concept respect for the dead had them covered over.

Imagine bringing back the spirit of one those dead soldiers. He would see people laughing and eating ice cream in a strange, unrecognizable place of light and noise that had once been the frightening wilderness of howling wolves where he died a violent death.

This is so American.

No longer employed merely as a tool to make way for roads, bridges, hospitals and other traditional public-use projects, the practice of  taking private property has alarmingly morphed  into something morally reprehensible and  corrupt. All over the country homes and businesses have been seized to make way for private development under the pretense that the wholesale replacement of neighborhoods with large shopping centers and office parks fits under the rubric of  promoting the public welfare.

According to a comprehensive report just released by the Washington, D.C.based Institute for Justice, a nonprofit group which lends legal assistance to ordinary citizens fighting to preserve their property rights,  New York ranks among the worst states in the union when it comes to eminent domain abuse. Cases all  over the state are cited- including well-known development projects in Port Chester, Yonkers and Peekskill.

The  report points to specific problems in New York law and lists solutions for the courts and the state Legislature can enact. But I wouldn’t hold my breath on any of them. The judges and politicians in the Empire State are firmly in the grip of the big developers, making reform  difficult.

As the IJ reports says the  deck is stacked against the little guy:  “New York law not only makes it easy to condemn property, it actively encourages city agencies to do so.  A variety of incentives are in place to motivate cities to create redevelopment
zones, and to invite private developers to use government force to obtain the private properties contained in them, instead of negotiating
in the free market.  In this perverse system, city agencies and private developers are actually encouraged to team up together against local
property owners.”

A big court date is looming on the eminent domain front  New York’s Court of Appeals-the state’s highest court-will hear a case in Albany on Wednesday, October 14, at 2 p.m. that will be closely watched.  The case-Goldstein v. New York State Urban Development Corp.-challenges New York’s use of eminent domain to hand privately owned businesses and homes in Brooklyn over to private developer Forest City Ratner as part of the Atlantic Yards development.

The Goldstein case will be the first time New York’s highest court will consider limits on the use of eminent domain since the infamous 2005
Kelo v. City of New London  case before the U.S. Supreme Court. Although the case resulted in victory for the developer and the city, it  sparked a national outcry against the unfairness of taking private property for private gain.

The column was inspired by Assemblyman George Latimer, D-Rye , who called to tell me that my late father was owed about $125 and that the money was sitting in the state unclaimed money fund  maintained by the Comptroller’s Office. There is billions of dollars in the fund, literally enough to bail out a bank or auto company.

Some of the money has gone unclaimed for 60 years. It includes  forgotten bank deposits, misdirected dividend checks, lost insurance payments—you name it. It happened that my father, a TV and movie screenwriter, was owed a small residual check that never got through the mail.

I wrote how anyone can do what Latimer did, which was to simply plug a name into a state database to find out if there’s any money to be had. To find out how, you can read the column by clicking on money.

I only bring this up again because I recently got a phone call from a woman I know who lives in Rye. She told me she went through the process as I described it in the column and discovered she was owed $2,800.

Not a bad haul, considering it was money she never knew was hers in the first place.

Halloween is coming early to my house.

I’ve firmed up an Oct. 17  appointment with an investigative team from Katonah Paranormal to check out the weird stuff going on in my Yonkers abode. I’ve written about this in the past—the exploding drinking glass, the kids’ battery-operated toys turning on by themselves, fallen objects, a flying bottle cap, various and sundry noises and a mysterious sighting of an alleged phantom during a recent electrical storm.

Nah, I don’t believe in ghosts. But strange things have happened in the old house ever since we moved in more than 15 years ago.

If I DID BELIEVE in ghosts, I might come up with this explanation ripped from the Katonah Paranormal’s Web site glossary:

INTELLIGENT HAUNTING

this type of haunting involves a spirit that has either decided to stay for whatever reason: ex: fear of what is ahead, non-belief, etc, or a traumatic event has occurred and has caused confusion to the extent that they stay where they know they are safe.

The investigation will be broadcast on WVOX radio, by the way. I’ll keep you posted.