Change of philosophy is needed

I would like to bitch at the way cashiers give you your change back. And this goes for every cashier—from Starbucks, to Duane Reade to The Gap. Why do they INSIST on putting the bills in your hand first and then the change? Maybe it’s just me but once they fill my cupped hand with bills and then spill the coins right on top of the bills—with the dexterity Elin wielding that golf club, I might add—all the coins do is slip down the damn bills and wind up on the fucking floor! It’s friggin annoying! Just put the change in my bare hand first so I can grab the bills between my fingers. It’s not that hard, people!

And another thing: If my bill is like $11.03, and I hand you a $20, can’t you just give me back $9. I mean fuck the three cents, ya know? Now, I gotta wait for your dumb ass to figure out how to make 97 cents? C’mon. No!

Well, at least some rest for the weary

Silly me. I have been left thinking recently that the price of a movie ticket in New York City has gotten out of hand. They are around $11.50 now. I feel bad for the high school kid that wants to take his girlfriend out to dinner and a movie. That’s like $100! But on second thought, it all depends on what you go to the movies for.

You and I will pick out a movie that we want to see; we’ll probably go get a Sprite and some Sno-Caps and watch the previews until the flick starts. But that’s not what my parents do. They go to take a nap! I used to think this was insane; I used to think it was such a waste of money to shill out $11.50 for a movie only to fall asleep in it. I was definitely wrong.

My parents were up for a week for the Thanksgiving holiday, and we did our usual eating, shopping, hanging out and seeing a few movies. (Remember, I’m using the word see lightly.) One day, I’m not sure which, we go out to Long Island to shop and eat and then we decided to just head off to the movies without consulting a time schedule or what was playing. To make a long story short, we get to the theater and my mother made the call to see “An Education” without any of us knowing what it was about. But she was adamant that’s what we were all going to see. Ok, fine, we said, we’ll all go see that. We heard it was good. It’s 2:15 in the afternoon, my father pays for the tickets, and we head for the theater just in time for the 2:30 showing.

By 2:28 both of my parents are asleep! And I can’t believe it.



Truth is, being good shoppers and loving a bargain, my parents got a really good deal. Turns out a 20-minute nap at MetroNaps is $14. It’s $9.50 for each additional 20 minutes. So that two-hour movie gave my parents each $61.50 worth of napping for $11.50. Good for them!

Some Random Thoughts...

Periodically I have a couple of non-sensical things I want to get off my chest that really don't lend themselves to elaboration. Here are a few below:

1) Remember that old trick question from grade school: Which weighs more—a pound of feathers or a pound of marbles? The answer was they both weigh the same, right? Because they both weigh a pound? I thought so. So then, tell me, why does a new Burger King commercial for its quarter-pounder tote it as bigger than McDonald’s quarter-pounder? Does that make any sense to anyone else?

2) Has anyone noticed that Bono is looking more and more like Robin Williams? Put some sunglasses on Robin and spend an hour or so shaving his body and you get Bono. Think about it.

3) I absolutely, positively cannot stand the fact that T-Mobile is a HUGE sponsor of Madison Square Garden, yet I have T-Mobile and I have NO RECEPTION INSIDE THE ARENA!!! How the hell does that make any sense whatsoever? Yea, great advertising, people at T-Mobile. I believe their chief marketing officer is a person named Sirini Gopalan. Feel free to complain, New Yorkers.

4) I’m sure not many of you even bother to go to the teller in the bank anymore. But I’m old school, and for deposits I always feel safer bringing my cash/checks to the counter. The problem is, have you ever noticed that there are NEVER any working pens at the bank? You go up to that counter with the deposit/withdrawal slips and there’s usually at least four of those pens tied to a string on the counter. Do any of them work? Of course they don’t! What the fuck?! Seriously, as the bank employee is busy every morning filling up those damn slips of paper, can’t they take one extra second and see if the pens work?

I have a hangnail. Please pass the bacitracin, vicodin and gauze.

Let’s call Fibromyalgia what it really is: Neurotic Jewish Woman’s Disease. Oh, those commercials make you believe it’s a real disorder, something older women get if they are experiencing widespread pain without any real explanation. Well honey, lemme explain something to you: If there’s no real explanation for what’s wrong with you IT’S ALL IN YOUR HEAD!!! It is the physical manifestation of your crazy, nervous, overthinking head.

If your daughter is 28 and still single—fibromyalgia. If your 17-year-old son pierced his nipples—fibromyalgia. If you are worried about how you are going to pay for your granddaughter’s second nose job—fibromyalgia.

Don’t you love how these pharmaceutical companies make a pill for EVERYTHING now? I am thoroughly convinced a disorder or disease does not exist until GlaxoSmithKline says it does. Hey, well, if they make a pill for it it’s gotta be real, right?! Hello, they are profiting off of this! The commercials even tell you so. Ever notice? They start off: “If you’re experiencing pain across your body, that won’t go away, it IS real. You’re not imagining it. Go talk to your doctor. And ask them for Lyrica.” Wow, how clever of them?! I watch these commercials over and over again laughing my ass off. We really are a stupid people. Americans that is.

As seen on TV

What is the deal with commercials on TV for restaurants that are NOWHERE NEAR the vicinity of the market in which they are shown? Red Robin, CiCi’s, Sonic, Golden Corral, Joe’s Crab Shack, Jack in the Box to name but a few, are ALWAYS shown on TV in New York, yet those places are just not even remotely close to where I live. It’s annoying. Now, one of my savvy political friends tells me the answer is because it doesn’t cost any more to buy a national spot on TV than it does a regional one, which may be true. But I’m sorry, just cuz I see a commercial for Sonic’s MegaSuperQuadrupleBaconHeartAttackMaker burger doesn’t mean the next time I’m driving to North Carolina am I going to go out of my way for one. Thank G-D for DVR, huh?

It's raining jerks and assholes

If you are on the street in New York and it is raining, I’m sorry but you do not need to use one of those 6-foot-in-circumference golf umbrellas!

Look, your pants can get wet a little, it ain’t gonna kill them. And if you’re so worried about them in the rain, well, then there’s a little something called The Weather Channel! It’s this wonderful service on TV or on the Internet that actually tries to predict the weather, with decent accuracy, too. If they say it’s gonna rain, hey, why don’t you not wear those pants that day!

Trying to bob and weave on a NYC street with umbrellas on a rainy day is hard enough without you walking around thinking you’re Steve Williams. C’mon, use one of those piece of shit little umbrellas that everyone else uses. Umbrellas don’t work anyway. We all know this. Using an umbrella is like a promiscuous teenager praying she ain’t pregnant--it never works anyway.

Fuck Christopher Columbus. He should have gone the other way.

I’m pretty sure everyone agrees with me on this one, and I’m sure this one has been written and reiterated many times, but I can’t stand call centers in India. Look, I know they are speaking English, but I still cannot friggin’ understand a goddamn word they say! If it ain’t the heavy accent it’s the background noise; if it ain’t the accent it’s the lack of volume on the line. If it ain't the accent it's the time delay in conversation. A five minute call to India takes 15 minutes because I have to keep saying ‘What?’ after every single sentence.

Look, I know the Indians get paid like 1/4 what Americans do, and so in the name of saving a buck the big corporations moved operations overseas. But what about the efficiency? There’s no way those guys could field as many calls in a day as an American call center can, because I guarantee most Americans--like me, ACTUAL English-speaking Americans—can’t understand a goddamn thing those fuckers over there say!

For argument's sake: I was on the phone with XM radio the other day and I swear I had Cohutta from the Real World on the line and even he was easier to understand with his slow, heavy Southern drawl than Maheshwar Srivastava over in India.

Opening the doors of stupidity

People just never cease to amaze me. Last Monday, my wife and I got up earlier than usual to go to one of New York’s Department of Finance offices to fight our very first parking violation. The doors didn’t open until 8:30 am, so we had to wait about 45 minutes to enter the building. We were third in line. As 8:30 approached there was maybe a line of 30 people in total waiting outside to get in. What just amazes me so much is that no matter how many people were standing in an orderly fashion, in a line, right in front of the building’s entrance, there would be one idiot after another walking right up to the front and trying both sets of double doors to see if they were open. Like 30 of us were just standing out there in the cold twiddling our thumbs for no reason!? Could they not, by deductive reasoning, surmise that the building must not be open yet? Yet one after another would do the exact same thing—check the goddamn doors. I’m at a loss. And this time it wasn’t even me bitching about them; it was my wife calling them retarded!

(By the way, in case you were wondering, we won our ticket fight!)

I guess that makes me an indoor owner

Can someone tell me—what’s an outdoor cat? I just don’t understand the concept.

Person A: Oh that’s such a cute cat. Is it yours?
Person B: Oh yea, she’s my cat. That’s Charlotte. But she’s an outdoor cat.

That makes sense to some people? Let’s try this:

Person A: Oh, that’s such a cute squirrel. Is it yours?
Person B: Oh yea, that’s my pet squirrel Linus. But he’s an outdoor squirrel.

How the hell is an animal a pet if it always stays the hell outside? Someone might say, ‘Oh, well I feed it and pet it and make sure it has water every day.’ Wow, that’s mighty big of you, ma’am. If I drop a peanut on the ground on Park Avenue and a pigeon picks it up, did it just become my pet pigeon? Am I now obligated to drop a peanut on the ground every day for this rat with wings? Does this mean that I can claim a duck as my pet if I throw some Wonder Bread crumbs in a water hole at a golf course?

‘Oh, that? That’s just my pet duck Woody. But he’s an outdoor duck.’ Fuck me, he better be … unless your name is Joey and your roommate is a guy named Chandler.

You think you're so slick

I think it is an utter conspiracy what these petroleum companies do to us nowadays. We all know how monumentally wealthy companies like Exxon/Mobil, Texaco and BP are, but there are some tiny, underlying reasons why.

I pump gas at least once a week. I put the credit card in the slot like everyone else does, put my pin in like everyone else does, put the handle in the gas tank like everyone else does and stand there pumping. And the pump goes until it stops, usually just before it’s completely full. So what happens then? I’m usually at like $34.68 or something, so I want to top it off, like everyone else does. I want to pay a nice even $35 for my tank of gas. So I click the handle fairly firmly a few times until I get to like $34.95. Then what do I do? I click ever so gingerly: .96, .97, .98, .99. I have the perfect touch! The perfect amount of tension! I am inching up perfectly, one cent at a time. Then what happens? At .99 I click with that same gentle touch to get to exactly $35 … YET THE PUMP IMMEDIATELY JUMPS TO $35.01! AARRRGGGHHHHH!!! EVERY-SINGLE-FUCKING-TIME!!!

Is anything more frustrating? And is anything more of a crock of shit than that? It is a vast conspiracy to gain one extra cent out of every single paying customer in America. Think about how much extra money that is in those oil companies’ fat pockets?! See, it’s not just a penny; it’s your penny, combined with tens of millions of other people’s pennies all across America, every single day. This is why they are rich. Don’t just blame the Saudis. This is fucking crap.

Apprehend The Misconception

I don’t really understand the ‘convenience’ of drive-thru ATMs. It’s one of those ideas that sounds good on paper, but never really pans out. You know, like electing Sarah Palin governor of Alaska. Drive-thrus work for fast food, and they even work for liquor, but they just don’t work for ATMs. I pull up, but I can NEVER reach the damn thing, at least not without taking off my seatbelt and contorting myself in such a way so that I can lean out the window to access the keypad thereby crushing my ribs in the process. You can never get within 3 feet of the window because there is always a large curb and/or one of those monumental yellow iron poles in the way (you know, the ones women drivers use to take those pesky little side mirrors off of their BMW 330’s?). C’mon, I am not the only one who feels this way, am I?

Fleedom from oppression

One of my closest friends is Philippino. And so I asked him: Why do Asians have absolutely zero sense of personal space? He had no answer (and then corrected me and said he was a "Pacific Islander").

I was just on line the other day to pay for two things at Duane Reade. The line formed down the main corridor in front of the registers, and there was probably about five to six feet of space between the customer at the checkout and the next person in line. One person moves to the checkout, the next person waits five or six feet back--that’s just how it goes. There were two people in front of me when I got there and about four people behind me. I was there to get the two items I couldn’t get at the grocery store and so as I was on line I had two heavy bags in my hand, one of which had eggs in them. So when I’m next, I approach the register and gently place my two grocery bags at my feet so I can pay for my two things and get out as quickly as possible so the next person can go. As the person in front of me paid, I was five feet back.

Now, you’d expect the person behind you to do the same. It’s one of those natural laws of etiquette, one that’s unwritten but that everybody follows, like not staring at a retarded person in the mall or where to walk and where to stand on an escalator. So I finish paying and am about to leave, I quickly put my debit card back in my pocket and bend down to get my two grocery bags. Lo and behold there is an Asian man standing RIGHT BEHIND ME! Literally 12 inches from my back where I just paid. Oh no, this man will not wait five feet back like everyone else! He cannot possibly! He has to have his fucking nose in between my shoulder blades! As I picked up the bags to leave they nearly hit him, because obviously I wasn’t expecting anybody to be that friggin' close to me. And if my eggs broke I swear I would have found the nearest Hello Kitty bookbag and beat him to death with it!

Bright Lights, Big City ... and other places

Living in New York City I understand that I forfeited the right to sleep in actual darkness. However, modern technology is NOT really helping me in this department. Ever look around your room and notice that every single thing you have plugged in has an indicator light? It’s mind boggling. Are all those lights really necessary? If I still lived in a studio apartment I’d never get to sleep.

Right now, just looking around my living room, here is where I see indicator lights: each of my two computers, the monitor, my cable modem, my wireless Internet/VOIP phone router, my KVM switch, computer speakers, wireless mouse, mouse USB signal, printer, my telephone, my water cooler, my wine fridge, my television, my cable box, my DVD player and my Wii. And that’s literally just the lights I can see from the desk I am writing at right now. It’s like I live at the airport.

Smell of success?

I think Abercrombie certainly has the monopoly on the dirty frat boy look. And I know there is no shortage of rich Long Island boys who go off to Indiana or Delaware or Towson and sport this look. But then those kids grow up and maybe have to look a tad more respectable but still want to be able to buy a pair of sweatpants or rock a polo with an elk on it on the weekend. Well Abercrombie is making it pretty much impossible.

I know this is going to make me sound like an old fart (bear in mind I graduated college in this decade), but I can’t get within 100 yards of an Abercrombie anymore. First off, there’s generally a half naked man at the front door with abs like a MMA fighter to remind me what I USED to look like. Then there’s the techno music, which is so unbelievably loud and horrible that I would think I was still at the Limelight in 1999. Then, of course, you get inside and see that everyone in there is between 13 and 17 years old. Normally I’d enjoy the view of a cute 17 year old girl—as all men would—but I’m just left feeling like a pedophile because they are usually dressed in either shorts up to their vaginas or Victoria’s Secret sweatpants that just don’t quite reach the top of their ass cracks. … And they are usually standing right next to their moms!

But I think worst of all is the smell! My god, does anybody actually put that shit on their bodies? It is so nauseating to think that’s actually a cologne. And that some savvy marketing exec at Abercrombie thinks it a good idea to circulate that stuff from the air vents. Just to give you an idea of how strong it is: I was at the Miracle Mile this weekend on Long Island. Abercrombie is a few stores over from Crate and Barrel, and from the back side it is also UP A HILL. The distance from Crate and Barrel to Abercrombie must have been 100 yards and up an entire story, and the moment I stepped outside of C&B I could smell the stench emanating from Abercrombie. Fuck it, from now on if I want a muscle tee that says ‘Fitch’ with a picture of a bulldog on it I’ll borrow it from my little brother.

(Aside: To contrast Abercrombie’s stench, what is it that The Body Shop wafts out of their store front at the 57^th and Lex location or the one just off 71^st Ave. on Austin Street? That shit is fucking delicious. And you can usually smell it for like three blocks. Takes a lot to make a NYC street smell like a fruit salad, but that stuff is so incredible I’m liable to lick the sidewalk in search of it.)