One Monday in January, 2002 I showed up for work at the Associated Press at my regular time, not completely sure why I was able to find a better parking space than usual but grateful. Before I could reach my desk the shift supervisor intercepted me and with amusement in her eyes asked what I was doing in the office.

“Uh…Monday,” was all I could muster.

“Uh, MLK Day,” she replied. “You get a choice of off days. MLK Day or your birthday. So who’s birthday you going to celebrate?”

“Mine, I guess,” and I hightailed back to my car, giving up my awesome parking space.

During the 30 minute drive home, I was a bit ashamed that MLK Day just wasn’t on my radar…that it was an optional holiday per the union agreement. His birthday or yours. Didn’t matter. You get a day off.  Never crossed my mind. It should have. Not only because I grew up in the 60’s, was 100 percent aware of, and in awe of, his courage and accomplishments, recall with great clarity hearing the bulletin announcing his assassination, but because 15 years earlier, I was assigned to cover the very first MLK Day in his hometown of Atlanta for CNN.

But as I reported in the story attached here, MLK Day faced a volume of struggles in direct proportion to the challenges Dr. King faced in life. Bigotry, small-mindedness, ignorance. Indeed, there seems to be a take it or leave it attitude. Your birthday or his…which day do you want off? Doesn’t matter. Pick one.

Don’t get me wrong. There are many wonderful events commemorating Dr. King’s birthday including the annual “United We Walk” march in my community in suburban Detroit, and many, many others across the country.

I remember covering those first MLK Day activities from Dr. King’s church, on the street where the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Non-Violent Social Change sits, where Dr. King is buried. On a map it’s called Auburn Avenue. In the hearts of those who respect Dr. King’s work, it’s called Sweet Auburn.

I interviewed all sorts of people including Rev. Joseph Lowery, head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Dr. King’s widow, Coretta. She exuded peacefulness, forgiveness and strength.

Jesse Jackson and Rev. Robert Schuller were there. Perhaps caught up in the moment I breathlessly reported to the CNN assignment desk “the civil rights movement has been revived! I can’t wait to turn this package!”

All the air out of my balloon was expelled when the editor told me to just do a VO/SOT. That’s TV language for some video for the anchor to voice over and a soundbite. Don’t even write a full-length piece.  Being in the Deep South, I took what’s known down there as a hissy fit. The editor thought I was just a reporter having a tantrum. I was beyond frustrated, but had no recourse but to carry out my assignment.

So there it was. From the first MLK Day to today, 28 years later, the annual remembrance of the birth of this giant of the civil rights movement, who risked his life, and lost it, fighting for common human decency and fairness, still seems to be an afterthought. A welcome three-day weekend. Three at last.

Your birthday or his. Pick one. Do yourself a favor. Choose both. Your life is better because he was born.

This year’s auto show was a blend of little tomatoes presented on pedestals, big vehicle introductions and dawn patrol scrums.

 

Being a major auto show, let’s tackle the tomatoes first. Here you see teeny tiny tomatoes perched on diminutive pedestals begging always grazing reporters to pluck them…and eat them. In what appeared to be the comestible version of Lilliput, the tomato-tots were joined by sandwiches small enough to be plucked, shucked and swallowed in one motion.

What miniature meal would be complete without a first course. Voila, spoon-sized salads so small one could only top it with Two-And-A-Half Island dressing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

As I moved on I found some journalists thoroughly involved…in themselves…socializing by being anti-social, but not alone.

One poor guy just gave up altogether, surrendering to the rigors of covering an expansive motor show by collapsing in one of the manufacturer’s stands—an import, of course.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Indeed, our company energized the crowd buzzed on free espresso and granola bars with the Alfa Romeo 4C Spider. I mean, you can’t beat curvy..and topless.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Ram Rebel didn’t cause any of the journos to yell, except those who might have missed their chance to snag more than one press kit. I can’t wait to blast Billy Idol and annoy those next to me at stop lights.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When the big boss takes a walk on the floor a scrum immediately materializes even if it’s 7:15 in the morning. A reporter clutched his coffee while in the clutches of the group hug aimed at getting him to say what he said yesterday, only this time, to them.

 

We’ll do this all again in a few weeks in Chicago, the next stop on the domestic auto show circuit. New badges, new wristbands, new vehicles, new shrimp, new blisters. Can’t wait.

Stories in the local papers today heralded the fact the Detroit Tigers finally signed a left handed reliever since the team didn’t have one. I suppose it’s important to have pitchers from each handedness since it affects the matchup between pitcher and left and right handed hitters. I remember when I was an 8-year old pathetic Little Leaguer. I played the outfield, but wanted to try out to be a pitcher. I had all the attributes. I’m left-handed, and couldn’t hit. In three years in the Little League I got 2 hits, 4 foul balls, 3 walks and struck out a million times.

The manager, who was really one of other kid’s fathers who looked like he was living from nitro tablet to nitro tablet, decided give me a tryout. He not only liked that I was left-handed, he liked the fact that the location he chose for my to pitch to him was next to the Mr. Softee ice cream truck.  He was also intrigues with my submarine delivery. Given the fact I was barely four-feet tall, submarine delivery meant most of my arm was underground.

He crouched in the catcher’s position and told me to “burn it in Eddie!” I reared back and fired a high, hard one, right past him and into the headlight of a parked car. Now a headlight is barely six-inches in diameter so I figured the skipper would be pretty impressed with my aim, but instead he shoved another nitro onto his tongued and sucked in slowly.

“OK, Eddie, put one right here!” he urged, pointed to his mitt. Wondering why he didn’t praise my “headlight pitch” I shook off the sign with ideas of my own. Sensing I had another unpleasant surprise awaiting him, he ordered his son, the pimply third baseman to get him a large chocolate milkshake from Mr. Softee.

Jutting my jaw with purpose, I wound up, fired the horsehide and planted that baby smack into the grille of a ’62 Pontiac Tempest.

“Shit,” the skipper said, “glad that wasn’t mine. What else you got, kid?”

“Oh, watch this! It’s my money pitch!” I replied.

Yeah, it was a money pitch alright. It knocked the milkshake out of the skipper’s hands, costing him 45 cents.

He actually never said another word. Devastated his lefty prospect turned out to be nothing but a southpaw sociopath, he just walked away, trying to suck what was left of the milkshake through a bent straw.

The first base coach ran up to me, told me never to handle a baseball again. But my parents paid for my full-season participation in Little League so they were compelled to play me the minimum two innings per game.  I mostly played the outfield after that and actually caught a few flies, but to this day I just know if skip had let me pitch a few more I would have found my groove..and maybe taken out a fire hydrant.

• A major ballot issue among the Amish will be same hex marriage
• It will take only two shows to discover there never was a real Stephen Colbert, but rather a guy named Morty Schwartz impersonating a Catholic dude impersonating a conservative talk show host. Word!
• CNN will change its format to 24-hour continuous tittering by Anderson Cooper.
• Fox News will update its long-fraudulent slogan to “Scared and Imbalanced.”
• MSNBC plans no changes since it has no viewers
• Longtime viewers of HGTV’s “House Hunters” will revel in the first murder of an obnoxious couple by a real estate agent, leading to a wildly popular spinoff “Love Them or Waste Them.”
• The Weather Channel will finally throw in the towel with the new series, “Just Look Out the Freakin’ Window.” It will score its highest ratings in years.
• NASA will suffer a major embarrassment when it triumphantly announces it has discovered life on Mars, only to be told the agency’s big telescope was focused on Mars, PA, a suburb of Pittsburgh, population 1,686. Guess whose planet will be looking red?
• Shirley MacLaine will cap off an amazing career by recording duets with her other selves.
• Taylor Swift will break up with her other selves and sell 3-billion records singing about it.
• One of Taylor Swift’s other selves will record a rebuttal song but unimpressed consumers will shake it off.
• One of the biggest movies of the year will involve a plot to end Seth Rogan’s career.
• Arianna Grande will reach her adult height of two-feet, six-inches and be tragically swallowed by Nikki Manaj during an especially vibrant performance of “Bang Bang.” Jessie J will feel left out.
• The Nobel Peace Prize will be given to CNN for ending the irrelevant war of words called “Crossfire.”
• “The View” and “The Voice” will merge, renamed “The Void.”

Were you a “Friends” or  a “Seinfeld?” Just as you can’t be a White Sox AND a Cubs fan, a Mets AND and Yankee fan, or support both the Lakers AND Clippers, I don’t see how it would have been possible to watch both programs with equal fervor. But I broach this sensitive subject as a means of long overdue admission.

First, a very mild disclaimer. Jerry Seinfeld and I grew up within a few miles of each other in Queens. For several years he dated the daughter of childhood friends of my parents. Seinfeld, the girlfriend and I all attended Oswego State University, although Jerry ditched out after a year or two and transferred to Queens College back in NYC. I never met him but saw him around campus. Of course he wasn’t famous yet but I remember him because he was kinda goofy looking with wire rimmed glasses and big cuffs on his jeans. At least that’s how I remember him. My parents met him when he was my friend’s date at weddings or Bar Mitzvahs and he always had to leave early to do his set at some comedy club to hone his craft. So, in short, I have no connection with him at all, I just wanted to tell you that story as the basis for why I watched his show. I couldn’t believe that goofy looking guy who dated my friend was now a star. Incidentally, he and my friend stopped dating before he became a big magillah.

I watched “Seinfeld” from the beginning. I related to all the characters and they just sounded like the authentic New Yawkers I grew up with. They were neurotic, selfish, loud, idiotic, and hilarious. The show wasn’t really that great at first but I never gave up on it.

Then this other show hits the airwaves with a bunch of shiksas who were beautiful and they were impossibly good looking guys and they, too, lived in New York. I resented them immediately as Seinfeld copycats and for being so damned good looking. I refused to watch “Friends.” I also thought the title was generic and derivative. But mostly it seemed like “Seinfeld for Goyim” aimed at the vast population of the country with no interest in watch a sort-of Jewish show, even though Jerry and his parents and Uncle Leo were the only Jews.

So you can imagine my horror when “Friends” turned out to be a perfectly hilarious show with a very talented cast. I immediately resented this because my decision to ignore the show was proven to be idiotic but I wouldn’t relent due to both pride and devotion to my lifelong hobby–sulking.

The tide turned a little when I discovered Jennifer Aniston. I’d always had a crush on Courtney Cox since her “Family Ties” days, but Jennifer was a new revelation. So beautiful, so sexy, so talented, so unattainable. I became a closet “Friends” watcher when reruns played. I wasn’t proud. I felt like I was cheating on Jerry and Elaine et. al. But why should I feel guilty.?You know the characters in Seinfeld never felt guilty…ever…no matter their transgressions against humanity…or cereal.

But it was too much for me. The inner conflict, the mixed loyalties, the realization that not even the glorious Jennifer Aniston could make me support a show that contained a java joint with the too-cute name “Central Perk.”

I’ll admit it. If I see a “Friends” rerun as I’m grazing the channels, I may stop for a minute or two, but I can say I have never watched a complete episode of that show. I do own every episode of “Seinfeld” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” the vessel of inappropriateness created and starring “Seinfeld” co-creator Larry David.

I’m sure, however, if I ran into Jerry Seinfeld and came clean about dipping into “Friends,” thereby admitting to channel-cheating, he’d shrug with a “who cares?” air as he walked away deadpanning, “not that there’s anything wrong with it.”