The Jaffe Briefing - May 23, 2022

The Jaffe Briefing is heading to the beach! Will be on break from Wednesday, May 25 through Monday, May 30.

LONG BRANCH – It’s going to be a long summer. That’s the thinking of local cops, who dealt with another one of those pop-up parties fueled by social media on Saturday. Such parties – with 5,000 or so kids – typically create dumb, senseless fist-fights, vandalizing, underaged drinking and other stupid stuff that drive away typical beach-goers who just want to read a book. The NJ Transit trains dropped hundreds of day-tripping teens in the city Saturday, as temperatures soared into the 90s, prompting law enforcement to institute a 9 p.m. emergency curfew, prohibiting anyone, anywhere, to be on any public street or public space. The big question: With Memorial Day coming and a whole bunch of summer weekends coming up, can these pop-up parties be controlled without affecting summer tourism?

CARLSTADT – So much for “No Mow May” in Carlstadt. A local woman decided not to mow her lawn for the first two weeks of May, as part of a global campaign that encourages homeowners not to cut the grass for a month to protect pollinator habitats, the Record reports. But while that’s all environmentally-friendly, the neighbors with their finely-manicured lawns, akin to PGA golf courses, weren’t pleased. Neither was the town’s code enforcement official, knocking on the door with a simple message: cut the grass or pay a fine. To heck with pollinators.

BRIEFING BREATHER

Mulan has the highest kill-count of any Disney character.

HACKENSACK – You can’t get a summons for smoking weed in New Jersey, but you can still get smacked for smoking outdoors. Huh? New Jersey has the Smoke-Free Air Act, outlawing the smoking of any type of substance, at all, in a public space.  Some towns are passing redundant laws to make it crystal-clear that people can’t smoke or vape in their towns in any location that’s not a private residence, the Record reports. Hackensack and Paterson, for example, both have these new local laws, while other towns think it is ridiculously redundant because of the Smoke-Free Air Act. Whatever the case, lighting a bong on a city street in Hackensack could get you a $2,000 fine. Keep it at home.

WILDWOOD – A piece of local lore could be lost forever in the name of progress – if someone doesn’t take ownership of a kitschy, red A-frame home and relocate it. Known by locals as the Triangle House or Pizza House, it’s been sitting vacant at the corner of Bennett Avenue and Park Boulevard for years and is scheduled to be razed in the next few weeks to make room for a condo complex, NBC New York reports. A local conservation group that calls itself “Preserving the Wildwoods” is pushing to have one of those companies that relocate things, such as this odd 62-year-old home, do the work for free. Want it? Go get it.

IN THE MEDIA

LONDON – Bride magazine is out with a new poll, showing that 80% of men find the Predator movie to have “higher levels of excitement and intellectual stimulation than a lifetime commitment to some women.” The male-only poll also offers some colorful comments. Take Nathan Muir, from York, England, stating: “The scene where Arnie looks up from the body of a pal who’s just had several major organs vaporized by a seven-foot skull-collecting merchant of death and says – ‘if it bleeds, we can kill it’, sums up what it is to be a man. Don’t get me wrong – I like my wife. But I love Predator.”  And an anecdote:  Tom Logan, from Finsbury Park, went so far as to have a Predator-themed wedding to wife Jane in July 2001. He said: “When Jane’s father walked her down the aisle, we had the Vicar dress up as Predator, leap out from behind the altar and pretend to slit her throat.” Yes, big Predator fans reach Bride magazine.

IN OTHER IMPORTANT NEWS

SCHUPBACH, Germany - A 33-year-old German woman is big on horsepower, especially during this crazy gas crisis. And that is why she is trading in her SUV for a horse and buggy for her daily, three-mile trip to work in western Germany. She anticipates saving $264 a month by keeping her Toyota truck in the garage, switching to her carriage and two horses. And the trip to work now takes about an hour, rather than 15 minutes in the old gas-guzzler. The only unanswered issue: the woman’s office parking garage doesn’t accept horses. Yet.

THIS DAY IN HISTORY

It was this day in 1963 that CBS bought the rights to broadcast the first AFL Championship game for $936,000, about the price for a 30-second ad spot these days.

WORD OF THE DAY

Galumph – [guh-LUMF] – verb

Definition: To move with a clumsy heavy tread.

Example: Right after school,  my teenage son galumphs into the house, flings his shoes by the front door and vanishes into his room until he catches a whiff of dinner.

WIT OF THE DAY

“The liberals can understand everything but people who don't understand them.”

-Lenny Bruce

BIDEN BLURB

“The liberal world order that laid the foundation for global peace, stability and prosperity since World War II is genuinely, seriously under assault.”

-Joe Biden

WEATHER IN A WORD

Golf?