Friday’s Kitchen Nightmares was touted as the worst restaurant rescue yet and undeniably so; the show took viewers through many emotional highs and lows that one could never imagine. The restaurant under review was Classic American in Babylon, New York owned by Colleen and Naomi, who are former waitresses. They are assisted by Colleen’s son Kevin (Chef) and her boyfriend Dominick (Manager).

Did anyone out there see what was going on when they were filming?

Lets hope that this works out better for Classic American than it did for Peter’s Pasta (RIP).

Sadly, this seems to be not the case. According to Newsday, a representative for the daringly coiffed Ms. Polizzi denied the rumor.

Realtor Mary Adams says she believes that high school students circulated the story about the hard-partying reality TV star, whose signature hair style is “The Poof.” “Everybody’s kind of upset about the whole thing,” says Adams of Century 21 American Homes. “Not that you’d want to say you cannot live here, but come on.”

So there you have it, fellow Babylonians and avid Googlers, Jersey Shore is not coming to the South Shore. Now we must all go on with our humdrum lives.

On the other hand, if you’re suffering from a celebrity jones, you may still be able to catch Gordan Ramsey filming at The Classic American restaurant in West Babylon.

From Flickr user viccauron

Commenter MetroProletarian points us toward Suffolk Historic Newspapers where we can read back issues of the South Side Signal, the local Babylon paper, from 1869 through 1879. The interface is kind of clunky and you might go blind trying to read the scans, but it’s very cool nonetheless.

If you’re interested in this sort of thing, this article in the Beacon points out a bigger project.

The Babylon Public Library Board of Trustees thanks resident and local author, Theresa Santmann, for her generous donation of eight thousand dollars. Ms. Santmann has directed these funds be used for the Library’s Historic Newspaper Project.

…

The newspapers are slated to be available online for patrons and researchers to view on library or home computers. When the project is complete, the Library expects to have converted the South Side Signal, Babylon Leader, Babylon Town Leader and the Babylon Beacon, from 1869 to the present. T

I spoke with Aaron Stein some time ago about a project like this and it’s great that someone else had the same idea and is making it happen.

From Long Island Daily Photo

I really meant to tell the tale of buying the house, the delays, the frustration and the ready to chuck it all and rent a yurt somewhere out in the Midwest where we could never be heard from again. I really haven’t had the energy or desire to write that story. I still have all of the literally hundreds of e-mails documenting the process in excruciating detail should I feel the need to write it out.

Suffice it to say, that you should never hire a litigator to be your real estate lawyer, even if he’s a family friend. That’s probably the best piece of advice you’ll ever get from this blog, so keep it and cherish it.

OK, so where am and what’s going on? Well, as you might imagine, things have been busy. Trying to set up house with both Debra and I working full time while chasing around a little Energizer Bunny of a daughter hasn’t been easy. In fact, things really stalled out early on. Once we got all moved in and did some preliminary set up work, we basically all went “woof” and took the next couple months off.

Things have actually been progressing well with the house of late and I plan to write about that more in subsequent posts.

On a personal note, things have been going really well. My little side business doing web sites and programming picked right up a couple months ago and I’ve been pumping out the HTML and PHP. It’s mostly sub work now for one of my old clients, but I have a bunch of new things coming down the pike as of this writing. By the way, if anyone out there needs a website done or redone, drop me a line. I have a new website in the works for myself, but that always takes a back seat, as you might imagine.

As far as the family goes, Aurora has really taken to the English language. She knows hundreds of words now, speaks in three and four word sentences and occasionally goes into long rambling monologues, not unlike her father. She’s also pretty much grown out of her 2T clothes.

Debra has been figuring how many bulbs she can buy to plant this fall and where the Christmas tree is going to go. My wife is always thinking ahead.

And last, but not least, my son Ben has come to live with us. It’s hard for me to say how happy this makes me. He’s been here a couple weeks now and still settling in. By the way, he’s looking for a job, so if anyone is hiring, let me know.

Well, that’s about it for now. More to come in the next week or so. Stay tuned.

This is the 2007 rejected pilot for a series called “Babylon Fields”, an edgy show taking place in Babylon, Long Island, New York, and how one day, all of its dead, got out of the ground and went back to living their lives. Now, as far as I can tell, none of it was actually shot here in the village, but it’s neat enough that it it was set here., I think.

Free firewood! Come with your chainsaw and take as much as you like!

Saturday night, three of the four big trees on the back, left corner of my property blew down in the hellacious Nor’easter.

We didn’t notice it until the morning. In fact, I had to work on Sunday and I didn’t learn about it until Debra called me. She woke up that morning, looked out the window and had a bit of a freakout seeing giant trees lying across our backyard.

I can’t complain too much. The trees fell almost straight across the fence line and didn’t land on anything important. I know that some fellow Babylonians had trees fall on or into their house. The only real damage from this little incident was to my back neighbor’s fence, which got bent up from the tree roots.

I’m not quite sure what to do at this point. As you might expect, local tree guys are going to be pretty busy for the next few weeks and I’m not real confident in my ability to handle a chainsaw sell enough to slice up a three 75 foot trees. Plus the one remaining tree needs to come down as well.