New Jersey wine? Why not?

When does a beach day that gets wasted for no reason turn into a blessing? When it ends with a couple of glasses of merlot — and locally produced merlot, at that.

I left beautiful Beach Haven on Long Beach Island today to play softball. The Garden State Parkway was a zoo, so I decided to take Route 539, a back-roads way that eventually puts you on Route 195, right near exit 7A of the New Jersey Turnpike.

About 15 minutes into my journey on 539, I got a text message that our doubleheader was canceled due to a flooded field. What to do? I was already too far into the drive home to even think about heading back to the beach.

Then, inspiration struck. I remembered that there was a winery on 539 that I hadn’t passed in a couple of years — there’s a new shortcut at the end of the trip to 195 that avoids a small town and gets you on the highway faster. So I took the “old way” and pulled into Cream Ridge Winery.

There was a violin recital going on (those kids were pretty damn good, too), and everyone I encountered was exceptionally friendly. As I type this, I’m enjoying a glass of Cream Ridge American Merlot, and I also picked up some Riesling and some Gewurztraminer. I haven’t tried the Riesling yet, but I sampled the Gewurztraminer at the winery and it was fruity and delicious.

So although I wasted a beach day and never got to play softball, I salvaged the day with a nice nap with the two cats and two glasses of tasty merlot made right here in sunny New Jersey.

How to give your car a lovely cinnamon smell

1) Leave Hoboken and stop at the Exxon/Dunkin Donuts on Jersey Ave.

2) Purchase a large iced coffee, cinnamon flavor, from Dunkin Donuts.

3) Take Route 1/9 South, toward Newark Airport, and choose the Pulaski Skyway option.

4) Get caught behind a moron driving a van at 45 miles per hour in the left lane, leading to a clusterfuck of cars attempting to pass the offending van from the right lane.

5) Come around a curve while accelerating, only to see a Cablevision van at a dead stop in the right lane with its flashers on.

6) Slam on the brakes, coming to a stop slightly more than one yard from the van. In the process, be sure the cup containing the cinnamon iced coffee flies out of the cup holder, crashes into the windshield and erupts, spilling cinnamon coffee and ice throughout the vehicle.

7) Wait until heart rate slows from four times normal level, call Cablevision van driver every word of profanity in your vocabulary, and proceed south on Route 1/9.

9) Repeat as necessary (or hopefully never again).

Yes, I know, there’s no step No. 8, but I’m a little fahklempt.

Stupidity camps out

Would you camp out from Sunday-Wednesday in the parking lot of an IKEA that hadn’t yet opened its doors to the public just for the chance to win a $399 couch? If the answer is “yes,” please don’t read any further or you might want to stab me.

According to the New York Post, people began camping out at a new IKEA location in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood Sunday, and the first 35 customers when the furniture store opens its doors Wednesday will receive a $399 white couch.

Am I missing something? Is a $399 couch worth spending three nights outside?

First of all, I like IKEA, but let’s tell it like it is: A $399 IKEA couch won’t exactly become a family heirloom.

Second, Red Hook doesn’t exactly bring Mayberry, N.C., from The Andy Griffith Show, to mind. It’s got a reputation as a pretty dicey neighborhood.

Third: I certainly hope none of these people has kids or pets if they’re actually going to bring white couches into their homes.

Fourth and finally, if $399 is such a significant sum of money to a person that they’d spend three nights outside a Swedish retailer, here’s a novel idea: How about WORKING for those three days instead of creating a Hooverville in Brooklyn?

I just don’t get it at all. Camp Stupid makes no sense to me.

The Wang place, the Wang time

Is there any athlete more pampered than the American League starting pitcher?

Chien-Ming Wang, the Yankees’ best starting pitcher (at least until the Joba machine is fully cranked up), suffered a fluke injury running the bases, and some of the reactions to this event have bordered on the absurd.

Mike Mussina, always willing to share a whine, contributed this pity-party-inspiring quote: “We don’t hit, we don’t run the bases. You get four or five at-bats a year at most, and if you happen to get on base once or twice, you never know. We run in straight lines most of the time. Turning corners, you just don’t do that.”

Hey, Pussina, you also get paid several millions of dollars per year to work every fifth day. Let’s be serious, now. Is running the bases different from running in a straight line? Sure it is. But you’re supposed to be an athlete. And unlike the athletes who play every day (or, in the case of relief pitchers, who have to be prepared to play every day), you guys have four days between starts to work on little things like running the bases.

Plus, if Wang would have gotten his bunt attempt down successfully, he wouldn’t have been on base in the first place, but he did a poor job at the one thing pitchers are asked to do at the plate, so a runner was forced at third instead of both runners advancing.

It’s not like the decision to make pitchers hit was made with a pregame coin flip. The rule since interleague play started in 1997 has been that pitchers hit in National League parks. The last time I checked, the Houston Astros were in the National League.

Here’s another gem from loose-cannon Yankees owner Hank Steinbrenner: “My only message is simple: The National League needs to join the 21st Century. They need to grow up and join the 21st Century. Am I [mad] about it? Yes. I’ve got my pitchers running the bases, and one of them gets hurt. He’s going to be out. I don’t like that, and it’s about time they address it. That was a rule from the 1800s.”

Smokin’ Hank needs to brush up on his baseball history. The designated hitter was added to the American League in 1973, which, the last time I checked, was not part of the 1800s.

I mean, seriously, how about a little perspective here? Wang was asked to run 90 feet, make a left turn and run another 90 feet. He scored easily on the play even after hobbling most of the way between third base and home plate, so it’s not like he was asked to duplicate the base-running skills of Rickey Henderson or Lou Brock.

I’m a Yankees fan, and I like Wang a lot. I don’t mean to sound like I’m trashing him. This injury is unfortunate, and it saddens me. But injuries are part of the game.

The point is: It’s time to stop babying American League pitchers, and it’s time for American League pitchers to stop acting like a bunch of sallies.

The cat conspiracy: the look

There is no doubt in my mind that cats are a lot smarter than any of us in the human race give them credit for. There’s also no doubt in my mind that most of them are in on a huge conspiracy.

The conspiracy revolves around “the look.” Anyone who owns a cat knows the look. The look is a randomly timed event when your cat walks up to you, nudges you to get your attention, then gives you this look that says, “I love you and appreciate everything you do for me.” It’s very potent, and it scares me.

When I say randomly timed, I mean it. The look wouldn’t have the same impact if it happened a few minutes after feeding, for example, or right after arriving at home. That’s when affection is expected.

And if you have multiple cats in a household, I am absolutely, positively convinced that they coordinate their deployment of the look. I can almost picture them huddling together and saying, “Why don’t you handle the morning look, and I’ll get him sometime around the sixth inning of the Yankee game?”

And the cats are onto something, because the damn look works. No matter how mad I may be at my two monsters, when I get the look, I forget about things they broke and shoelaces they destroyed. I forget about having to clean up hair balls, vomit and poop from the bathtub, much less the litter box. I forget about the 4:30 a.m. “I want food and attention” wake-ups.

Cats are dangerous and not to be trusted.

Rats with wings getting brazen

The seagulls on Long Beach Island are overstepping their boundaries.

Saturday afternoon, I was sitting on the beach about to enjoy the second half of a turkey sandwich. There was another beach chair less than two feet to my right. Suddenly, I felt a whoosh and what I thought was someone’s towel or T-shirt brush past my arm, and I was holding about one bite’s worth of the bread from one side of the sandwich, while the Godzilla of seagulls was sharing the rest of my lunch with what suddenly became an entire posse of rats with wings.

Most of the people in my beach house were at a bar a few blocks down the beach enjoying a liquid lunch, so they laughed at my story, but I’m not quite sure they believed just how brazen this little critter was.

But Sunday, in the very same spot, a smaller seagull performed an encore, snatching most of a sandwich right out of someone else’s hand. This little sucker didn’t even bother traveling very far down the beach to enjoy the fruits of its labor, landing only a few feet away and giving all of us a look that seemed to say, “Yeah, I took your sandwich … AND?”

Why don’t you rats with wings stick to your natural prey and leave my damn lunch alone?

Stimulated

The day I’ve been yearning for has finally arrived: Today, I received my 2008 Economic Stimulus Payment in the mail.

Fear not, however: I vow not to let this newfound wealth get to my head. I believe in the old cliché: Be nice to the people you meet on the way up, because they’re going to be the same people you meet on the way down.

It’s tough to keep a level head, though. My brain is aflutter with the possibilities. Having this extra cash on hand just opens up a world of avenues.

Do I invest it? Do I put it in my savings account for safe-keeping? Do I treat myself to something nice? Or perhaps pick up something shiny and glittering for my girlfriend? Do I buck conventional wisdom and bet it on a Belmont Stakes exacta that doesn’t include Big Brown? Or let it ride on No. 22 on a roulette table in Atlantic City?

Chill: There’s no need to make a hasty decision. I’ll consult with relatives, friends and advisors and determine the best use for this sudden embarrassment of riches. And until then, I’ll just stare at the beautiful check and those wonderful digits that appear on it: $8.05.

I really hope I don’t spend it all in one place.