Good morning and greetings, Presidential Election fans. Wow, what a wild and tragic week we had running up to Tuesday’s election. Hurricane Sandy wreaked unbelievable havoc and destruction along the east coast, with the most severe damage occurring in my home state of New Jersey and New York. These two states and the New York Jets were declared a state of emergency while requesting federal assistance about what to do with Tim Tebow.

This incredibly powerful freak storm left behind a surreal landscape of devastation. We’re talking homes destroyed, towns under water, millions without power and heat, the New York subway system ground to a halt, a rising death toll and Halloween being cancelled in many places. So much for eat, drink and be scary. There was talk of cancelling the election, as how were people going to get to the polls? By canoe?

The final word on Sandy comes from Yankee fans, who said if the storm had been named Hurricane A-Rod, it wouldn’t have hit anything.

But we are still on track to vote to see who will occupy the White House for the next four years. So with some big help from the folks at randomhistory.com, let’s take a look at some fun facts about previous presidential elections. Or as either Donald Trump or his hairdresser once said, “How come we choose from just two people to run for president and 50 for Miss America?”

The first official presidential election in the U.S. took place in 1779, with George Washington becoming our first Commander-in-Chief. While in office, the Father of our Country did not chop down any cherry trees, refused to serve a third term and made history by becoming the first president not to blame his troubles on the previous administration.

Under the heading of “I did not know that,” prior to the 12th Amendment of the Constitution in 1804, the presidential candidate who received the second highest number of electorial votes was named the vice-president. The oldest presidential candidate to be elected was Ronald Reagan at age 69, while the youngest was John F. Kennedy at 43. If he had been elected in 2008, John McCain would have take over the title of oldest elected president at age 172, er, 72 years old.

In the 1984 presidential election, Reagan received both the highest number of popular votes (54,455,075) and the highest number of electoral votes (525) in history. As a Hollywood actor, Ronnie once played the role of football star George Gipp in “Knute Rockne, All American.” Because of this, I would tell my son before he stepped onto the floor before a big game, “Sometime when the team is up against it and the breaks are beating the boys, tell them to go out there with all they’ve got and win just one for the Gipper.’

The first general election presidential debate was held on September 26, 1960, between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. Prior to this, presidential candidates occasionally debated, but never on TV. Tricky Dick had not completely recovered from a hospital stay and looked pale, tired and sickly. He also refused to wear any makeup, and as a result, he had a heavy five o’clock shadow look on the black-and-white TV screens from that era. JFK, by contrast, was tan, confident and relaxed with Marilyn Monore sitting in his lap during the debate. For Nixon, it was a Watergate,er, watershed moment.

The presidential election is traditionally held on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Or in the words of Gregg Allman, “They call it stormy Monday, but Tuesday is just as bad.” November was chosen as the election month because it was a convenient time for farmers, when the weather was still nice enough to travel to the county seat, as the bulk of their harvest chores and Halloween trick-or-treating was done.

The Obama-McCain 2008 presidential election was the first time in U.S. history when two sitting senators, although McCain was probably dozing, ran against each other for president. Only two women have ever won the nomination of a major party in a U.S. presidential election: Geraldine Ferraro was the Democratic vice-presidential nominee in 1984, and Sarah Palin was the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee. However, Palin was the only one who could see Russia from her house.

In 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the election to George Bush when the Supremely Inept Court stopped the Florida recount of ballots, giving George W. the state’s 25 electoral votes, for a total of 271 to Gore’s 255. This went down as the biggest heist in history until Saddam Hussein’s ordered his son to rip off $1 billion from Iraq’s Central Bank just hours before the U.S. began bombing Baghdad.

So let’s end with the following oaths. “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” And more importantly, I’m Geoffrey Gilbert and I approve this blog.

For today’s photo recap we are going back to the lovely evening of October 7. The clouds were lining up nicely as I hit Stockton Avenue for the sunset cruise, and as this day turned into night, no man nor beast walked away disappointed. Or to quote the great Woody Allen, “Today I saw a red and yellow sunset and thought, how insignificant I am! Of course, I thought that yesterday too, and it rained.”

On to some late night. “Halloween is a day when we all get to fool people into thinking we’re someone else. Or as Mitt Romney calls it, campaigning. We had the last presidential debate. A very subdued Mitt Romney. If you saw it, Obama would talk, and then Mitt would say, ‘what he said, but from a white guy.’ In the last three weeks, Mitt Romney has come out against tax cuts for the rich, against war, and suddenly for regulations, for teachers, for auto bailouts, for the UN, for birth control, for foreign aid. And what I love is that at this point it’s too late for the Tea Party to do anything about this except act like they’re okay with it. At this point they’re at this point they’re like Jerry Sandusky’s wife.” –Bill Maher

“Michelle Obama is with us tonight. She’ll encourage us to vote early. Most Republicans are opposed, because they believe that voting starts at conception.” –Jimmy Kimmel “Today Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama for president. This news surprised many elderly Americans who thought they were the same person.” –Craig Ferguson “The debates are over. All that’s left right now is to set up and rig the voting machines.” –David Letterman

“Michael Brown, the former director of FEMA who was forced to resign after Hurricane Katrina, has criticized the president. He said Obama may have acted too quickly this time — instead of taking the wait-and-do-nothing approach that worked so well during Katrina.” –Jimmy Kimmel “Donald Trump, did you see him today? He was giving candy only to kids who could show their birth certificate and their school records.” –Jay Leno “President Obama now has a 52-point lead with Hispanics. However, Mitt Romney has a 90-point lead with the people who hire Hispanics.” –Conan O’Brien

“The hurricane has interrupted the presidential campaign. Both presidential candidates are taking measures to prepare for Hurricane Sandy. President Obama is staying in Washington to coordinate relief efforts. And Mitt Romney is moving his smaller homes into his larger home.” –Conan O’Brien “This storm could mean the biggest power outage since the Yankees in the playoffs. Economic losses could reach $20 billion. And most of that is in paper towels.” –David Letterman

So that’s our election day special. Birthday wishes go out to my old backcourt running mate, Aromas’s own Doug MacKinnon. In my greatest days of basketball glory, Doug was right beside me, picking and rolling, as our opponents were helpless to stop us. The bigger they were, the harder they fell. We were legends in our own minds. Now we both have great futures behind us.

So remember to vote early and vote often. We’ll catch you being named last season’s sixth man of the year and alongside Linsanity, exploding out of the blocks this season with your new Rocket team. Aloha, mahalo and later, James Harden fans.

Good morning and greetings, opening day fans. April has always been a big month on my family’s birthday front, as both my son and youngest brother share the April 7 experience. And coming up this Thursday, my father, Daniel Gilbert, the partriarch of the tribe, celebrates his 95th birthday. Unbelievable, Batman.

95. That’s a remarkable number. We are talking about 1,140 months, 4,940 weeks, 34,675 days, 832,200 hours, 49,932,000 minutes or 3,995,920,000 seconds, or about the same amount of time it took for “Mad Men” to return to AMC for its fifth season.

My father was born in 1917, a year that falls somewhere between the invention of the telephone, automobile, vacuum cleaner and the neapolitan ice cream sandwich. Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, he lived through the Great Depression of 1929, the depression brought on when the Dodgers left town and the super depression of being a long-time New York Knick and Giant’s fan.

Forget Dick Cheney’s little waterboarding fetish. You don’t know real suffering unless you watched the Giants dominate the statistics yet find themselves vulnerable to coming up losers on the last possession of the game. Yes, I do realize the Giants were Super Bowl champions this year, but it’s too easy to look back upon the positive as the negative is so much darker and exciting.

My father graduated from Columbia University and Brooklyn Law School. He went into the army and was part of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which was a wartime intelligence agency that was a predecessor of the CIA. It was formed to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines, and his unit’s assignment was to crack German intelligence codes and to figure out why BMW’s were called the ultimate driving machine. He was part of the allied liberation of Paris, when the Americans came in and banned Paris Hilton from releasing any more sex tapes.

The formulation of me began in 1950, when my parents met and after three dates were engaged, and three months later were married. I’ve had stomach aches that lasted longer than their courtship which might explain why I rushed into marriage after nine years of dating.

In 1958, they started Hooks Lane Nursery School, which grew into 100 happy children a day romping around the grounds of our home in Fort Lee, New Jersey. This gig had my father ferrying the children to frolic and play at places like the Bronx Zoo, Staten Island Ferry and various parks around the Garden State. The best part was, besides the nurturing of the children, was that the day ended at 3:30 during the school year and 1 pm in the summer. Now that’s what I call a full day of work.

My father played baseball at Columbia and was a four wall handball champion. He passed the sports gene down to all three sons, as the DNA was particularly strong in the hoops department, as we grew up with chromosomes packed with the basketball jones and seven layer chocolate cake.

I remember the first time my father took me to a game at Yankee Stadium (my brother Paul spent the afternoon collecting peanut shells) and my first basketball game at Madison Square Garden. He took me out for a chocolate milk shake after I pitched my first little league win and was always there for my high school basketball games. Unfortunately, he did not attend the National Honor Society Awards ceremony as I wasn’t selected for any honors.

I remember in the early years watching classic sitcoms with my father like “The Honeymooners” and “Sargeant Bilko,” so I guess I know where my sense of humor originated from. I’m not sure if he encouraged our devotion to “The Three Stooges,” but he still has a pretty good sense of humor, particularly if there are any younger women in the vicinity. And at 95, pretty much everyone is younger. In the words of Shemp Howard after hearing a beautiful blonde utter, “I’m his niece,” replied Shemp, “Ooo, the niece is nice,”

By the way, the new “The Three Stooges” movie opens up this Friday. If you like slapstick violence, this is a film not to be missed. Or as former first lady Nancy Reagan would say, “Just say Moe.”

My father once uttered the classic statement, “If cream cheese were declared illegal, I would stop eating it tomorrow.” He was on the cutting edge of technology, as when he came out with the line, “Why do we need color televison, black and white is fine.” I guess that’s why I don’t use a cell phone but wear my garage door opener on my belt loop.

So my Dad’s going to be 95, and I wanted to give him a shout out before he hits the century mark. He still loves telling my mother how gorgeous she is despite not “having gotten a kiss all day.” For decades of making pancakes for breakfast and continued acts of bravery in marriage, Congress will be rewarding my mother the Silver Star, the Bronze Medal and the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.

In his later years before dementia took some of him away, my father would always tell me how proud he was of me. Even though I wasn’t setting the world on fire at the time, I took his words to heart, and they still resonate in my head today. I see a lot of myself in him. Thanks, Dad, and I hope I’ve repayed you by being the man and the father you would have wanted me to be.

For today’s photo fun we are heading down to Lighthouse Point and Its Beach to take in a beautiful late January sunrise. As I’ve mentioned before a few million times, moments like this really do it for me as a landscape photographer. Well, that and the thought of NBA playoff tripleheaders that are on the way.

On to some late night. “A recent survey showed that Rick Santorum is the favorite GOP candidate among Republican women. When he heard that, Santorum was like, ‘Wait — women have the right to vote?’” –Jimmy Fallon “Yesterday Joe Biden thanked Dr. Pepper instead of a woman named Dr. Paper. Biden apologized and said he meant no disre-sprite.” –Conan O’Brien”This was the week the Supreme Court heard all the arguments about health care. The mood in Washington very tense. Angry, incoherent Tea Party protesters were everywhere, including the five on the Supreme Court.” –Bill Maher

“Welcome, lotto losers. Remember, you’re not just losers. You’re mega-losers! If it makes you feel any better, the odds of winning were 176 million to 1 — about the same odds the Supreme Court will pass Obamacare. “Despite being broke and coming in last in the polls, Newt Gingrich says he’s in the race for the long haul, describing himself as ‘the tortoise in the race.’ The tortoise! See if he picks Donald Trump as his running mate they could be ‘the tortoise and the hair.’” –Jay Leno “Congratulations to Mitt Romney, the big winner in yesterday’s primary. He won in Wisconsin.Rick Santorum finished second. Newt Gingrich came in fourth behind Ron Paul. But Wisconsin was not a total loss for Newt. He did make off with a 45-pound wheel of cheese.” –Jay Leno

So that’s our first blast for the new baseball season. Slightly belated birthday wishes go out to my webmaster, chess grandmaster and lover of all forms of chow fun, Kevin Deutsch, who celebrated his big day on Sunday.

We’ll catch you posterizing opponents and throwing down vicious dunks like no one else. Aloha, mahalo and later, Blake Griffin fans.