Date: Tue, 19 Aug 1997 21:42:24 -0400 From: "Barry A. Popik" Subject: Full Cleveland; "Subway Series" and NYPL again FULL CLEVELAND This is from FULL CLEVELAND by Les Roberts ("A Milan Jacovich novel"), St. Martin's Press, 1989, pg. 40: He was medium-size, if you happened to be talking about Cape buffalos, about six foot six and pushing two eighty, and not much of it was fat either. His reddish sideburns came down level with the bottoms of his rather pendulous earlobes, and his cinnamon brown eyes peered out of a round face that looked as though a six-year-old had fashioned it out of pinkish Play-Doh. His mustache drooped at the ends and was the same ginger color as his thinning hair. The loud breathing came through a nose that had long ago been broken and that hadn't been set properly. His skin had the kind of pallor that comes from a lot of years out of the sun--like in the penitentiary out ofthe sun. He was wearing the type of lowbrow outfit that unkind newspaper columnists have dubbed the "Full Cleveland"--a polyester leisure suit, this one in bilious lime green, over an open beige sports shirt with a vaguely Western design on the points of the collar. A white belt bisected his paunch and a pair of matching shiny white shoes with a few black scuff marks on the toes completed the ensemble. I couldn't be sure, but I thought it was the guy in the Toyota who had tailed me home from Joseph Zito's office. He was some piece of work. "Are you Milan Jacovish?" he said. He pronounced it correctly, as though the first letter were a Y. "Hello," I said. He had a nice smile, open and friendly. "My name is Buddy Bustamente." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------------- SUBWAY SERIES (or, MTA: "GOING YOUR WAY") One more try at the origin of baseball's "Subway Series" (Yankees vs. Mets or Dodgers or Giants). The only other source (besides the NYPL) for the Subway Sun is the MTA. The MTA's new motto is "Going Your Way." (This assumes, of course, that you're not going straight to hell.) HBO ran "Subway Stories" last Sunday. In today's New York Times, pg. B9, cols. 5-6, "On Baseball" by Murray Chass, "This Could Be It For Yanks-Mets Finale," it begins "About that Subway Series..." I called the Transit Museum, but the number was disconnected. I called the MTA number, but it was busy. I called again later, and it was still busy. I called again later, and I got a 20-minute recorded announcement for the Metrocard. The MTA person told me I'd have to call the Transit Museum, and I got the new number. The Museum's open six days, but yesterday was Monday, and they were closed. I called again today, and got bounced around twice. "We have the Subway Sun. We have all of them. They're billboards that were put up in the subway cars." Great! "You'll have to schedule an appointment. But you can't do that for six weeks." Six weeks?? "Our archivist left in July. We have to hire another archivist. No one can have access until we hire an archivist by late September." GOING MY WAY?? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------------- NYPL, again To make a copy in the new NYPL system, you first have to show your books to a librarian. There's only one, so you have to stand in line for half an hour. Then, you have to wait on line at copy services, and this takes another half hour. Then you are privileged to pay 25 cents per page. Then you have to wait another half hour until they copy it. I didn't have this kind of time to copy my books from the Annex--until today. I told the NYPL: Please, please, please, don't return my books to the Annex! I still want my books! Don't return them to the Annex! DON"T RETURN THEM TO THE ANNEX!! I came back today. All of the books had been returned to the Annex.