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| The Forest Avenue ramp in Paramus has no lane allowing drivers to merge onto Route 4 west, above, making it one of Bergen County's biggest bottlenecks, with cars often backed up onto Forest. Drivers pass the old Forum Diner, below, an eyesore that has been closed for years, and wonder why a merging lane couldn't be carved out of the vacant parking lot. |
By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR
After hours of TV coverage on Saturday and the millions of words that preceded it, readers of The Record likely won't bother doing more than glancing at the photo of a racehorse on Page 1 today.
More animal news appears in Local today -- rotting deer carcasses on road shoulders near and far, and coyotes that are frightening Saddle Brook residents (L-1 and L-7).
Local human news is scarce, however.
TV coverage of the Belmont Stakes, the last leg of the Triple Crown, began at 2:30 Saturday afternoon and ran past 7 p.m. -- this for a race that lasted less than 3 minutes.
To fill all that time, commentators ranged far and wide, even telling viewers American Pharoah's jockey grew up on a goat farm outside Mexico City.
Not long after that, a commercial for a cable-TV service showed a beach with a woman whose enormous breasts were spilling out of her bikini, a goat and a horse.
Was that just a coincidence?
Local news?
You know local Assignment Editors Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza are desperate when they lead their section with a routine post-trial motion to set aside the racketeering conviction of Joseph A. Ferriero, onetime Democratic boss in Bergen County (L-1).
Road Warrior John Cichowski, the so-called commuting columnist, goes on and on today about deer carcasses seen among roadside litter near and far, including Pennsylvania and Minnesota (L-1).
The confused columnist is now referring to every driver, including state troopers, as "road warriors."
Also, does the headline make any sense?
What's "fragile" in the conflict between drivers and deer? "Bloody coexistence," maybe. But "fragile"?
Better Living
One look at The Corner Table column today, and you can tell restaurant critic Elisa Ung ran out of anything meaningful say about readers' restaurant experiences (BL-1).
On Friday, Ung praised the "high-quality" ingredients in a couple of dishes she liked at Sorrento Ristorante in East Rutherford.
But in the lukewarm, 2-star review, she didn't back that up with any information on whether they were naturally raised or grown.
And the Sicilian-born chef lost points because she hated one of his desserts.
Kelly loses it
On the Opinion front, Columnist Mike Kelly compares airport security to "a near theatrical experience that is unlike anything else in life -- except perhaps a mosh pit at a rock concert" (O-1).
No one edits Kelly, so he often sounds like a moron, even though he's been writing a column for, what, 20 or 25 years?
And in recent years, he's been avoiding his own near-death experience -- emergency open heart, coronary bypass surgery -- one that could make compelling reading and perhaps help others struggling with heart disease.
When The Record was in Hackensack, Kelly was among dayside newsroom staffers who were allowed to take a break and go outside and jog, and he appeared to be one of the fittest.
If you have any column ideas for Kelly, his contact information appears here:
Contact Mike Kelly
I received a message from the editor of the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers in The Record:
ReplyDelete"My time has been taken up with a lot of personal and financial issues.
"The Road Warrior problems are comparable to a gnat's ass in the great scheme and priorities of life.
"I gave up on the bumbling clueless Road Warrior many years ago.
"Keep up pointing out the very weird, clueless, and misleading aspects of the Road Warrior columns in your Eye on the Record.
"I get a kick out of regularly seeing that commercial where a 'cable-TV service showed a beach with a woman whose enormous breasts were spilling out of her bikini, a goat and a [talking] horse.'"