Hook, Line & SINISTER

Fourteen Facebook Faux Pas

2011-07-27T12:17:00.001-07:00

Mr. Griffith: I don't know what your generation's fascination is with documenting your every thought ... but I can assure you, they're not all diamonds. "Roman is having an OK day, and bought a Coke Zero at the gas station. Raise the roof." Who gives a rat's ass?!

Olive Pendergast: He got a coke zero again? Oh, that Roman. Incorrigible!

This dialogue from the movie “Easy A” cracked me the hell up. My wife too. We were both rolling, because the truth is, 95.82% of the stuff on Facebook—that’s scientifically proven by yours truly—is absolute crap. It’s part of the reason why I hate Facebook as much as I like it. True, if it had not been for checking my mobile app at nearly 11 p.m. on a Sunday night this past spring, I probably wouldn’t have known the U.S. Navy Seals took out Osama bin Laden. So thank you, Facebook, for that. That is one of the great plusses of social media: overwhelming consumption and documentation by everyone 24/7.

But one of the worst things about social media is the … overwhelming consumption and documentation by everyone 24/7. I joined just shy of a year ago, really to keep up with former co-workers and whatnot, as I found myself jumping around in employment opportunities in this shitty economy. To network, basically, but more informally. And yea it’s good for seeing some pictures and getting random invites to events (though I have yet to accept even one). And sure I like to kibbitz about the odd movie or random event. But mostly I like to tease others for their retarded posting.

And there are mmmaannnyyyy examples of stupid-ass, waste-of-time, what-the-hell-were-you-thinking, who-cares posts. As such, behold, the Fourteen Facebook Faux Pas to avoid in the future:

14) Sports updates. If your team wins a championship, have at it. Go nuts. Share all your thoughts and congratulations to the world. Feel free to shit-talk at length. However, if the Yankees are playing Kansas City in July, I really don’t care if it’s 4-1 in the fourth. That’s what SportsCenter is for!

13) Don’t get fancy or cutesy with upside down writing or writing in other languages. I’m not spending the time deciphering that. Facebook should be quick and easy; I shouldn’t need a cipher key to figure out your postings.

12) Directions for profiles. Look, just because it’s Michael Jackson’s birthday does not mean I have to change my profile pic to the Thriller album cover. I don’t need to put a picture up of my father for Father’s Day. And I certainly do not have to put up a picture up of the Thundercats to celebrate Random Cartoon Day. My picture is my picture.

If putting up a picture of a pink ribbon would get some sponsor to donate X dollars to some charity per person who does this, then fine. Otherwise, mind yo bidness!!

11) Random thoughts and asinine comments need to be curtailed. When someone goes, “I hate traffic,” what are you really trying to prove? Yea, we get it, traffic sucks. Did you really feel the need to share that? If you blurted that out in public you’d just look like a crazy person … so why type it for everyone to see? It’s grounds for de-friending if you keep that shit up. And don’t even think about posing …

10) The not-qute-rhetorical question. Examples include: “What are you up to?” “What you doing?” “Who likes ice cream?”

This also goes for random statements: “I love turquoise.” “Springtime is the best.” “I want to see a movie today.” Thank you for that, Corky. A dur dur...

9) Nutbaggedness. Look, we all know the cardinal rules of conversation, whether at a party or with family or with total strangers: You don’t bring up religion or politics. No one ever agrees. Fifty percent of the time you piss someone off, the other half you are just patting someoene on the back for sounding as smart as you. Leave it all alone. Those “God is Great … I feel blessed today … Jesus lifts me up” crap has gots ta go. No one wants to be preached to. I can just ride a subway for that.

8) Keep your depressing, woe-is-me shit to yourself. If you are having a bad day, I get it, go ahead and vent. But do you really need to write things like, “Oh, life is terrible now, but it’s worth living. I just know it’ll get better soon.” Well fuck you for ruining my day! Go wash down a bottle of vicodin with some Jack and leave me the hell outta this sobfest! I’ll call the ambulance for you in about 45 minutes, but that’s about it. If your boyfriend dumped you, it sucks, but stop whining about how you’ll never get a ring. Look, you probably got fat and stopped giving him head anyway. No wonder he left. Go order Chinese and hook up with your black neighbor. Leave me out of it.

7) Fishing for sympathy. This one is similar to the above, except for the vagueness of the way it comes out. For instance, someone’ll write “Just took her to the doctor. The news isn’t good, but hopefully we caught it in time.” What the hell is that?! Look, you tossed out your line real shallow on that one but I ain’t taking the bait. She could have a friggin hangnail! Maybe your dog has a cold. I can’t tell. If your mom was really sick and needed a kidney or something, just friggin come right out and say it; what do you have to lose? You are posing statements like this because you want the sympathetic and worried comments they will bring on. And because you are asking for attention—which is more about YOU than your sick mother anyway! (Don’t worry about little Fifi. Yea she ate the mascara, but nothing a little diarrhea won’t cure.)

6) Endless pictures of your kids. It is nice to be able to share pictures of your children growing up with family, especially when family is so spread out such as mine is. But how interesting is it if you see a picture of your nephew coloring—every single day! Seriously, it’s just not.

And another thing: This new app that allows you to make pictures look like vintage photos of the 70’s? Ok, it was cool a few times, but it’s just getting boring. There’s a reason photo technology has progressed from 35mm film—cuz it sucked! Colors were washed out, the ink looked grainy. And that crappy white border was ridiculous. A few landscape shots are nice, a few good ones of little Levi are cute, but I don’t need to see ‘em every day.

And there are to be NO 70’s vintage shots of Levi potty training. Under no circumstances!

5) Random music videos. Who’s really stopping to watch these? Who really cares what you’re listening to at the moment? I’m sorry, but just because you got the urge to Youtube Debbie Gibson’s “Electric Youth,” doesn’t mean I’m going to ride that nostalgia train. Same goes for brand new shit. Look, Katy Perry is ubiquitous; if I wanted to hear her I’d just turn on 20on20 or Z100 or something. You don’t need to post her video to “Last Friday Night.” She has big boobs and no talent, that’s it. If she’s topless, by all means, post it. If she’s singing, I think I’d rather gargle with battery acid. Or force her to.

4) The language of the digital age. Abbreviations and acronyms kill me. LOL. Ok, laugh out loud. So then what does LOLOLOLOL mean? Laugh out loud out loud out loud out loud? I think the caps will suffice for emphasis, thankyouverymuch.

I can’t tell you how long it took me to figure out what the hell SMH meant. I had to ask a college kid. I can see abbreviating long words in the essence of saving characters (especially on Twitter), but on Facebook, just write the damn thing out. Is it too hard to write ‘love’ instead of ‘luv?’ Its ONE MORE LETTER! I’ve seen people write ‘bt’ instead of ‘but.’ No, not for ‘between,’ for ‘but.’ Really?

My children are going to be illiterate, I can feel it. Which hurts me, because I love reading and writing. It would be like if the Lopez/Anthony twins hate singing. Oh, and marry white people.

3) Checking in. Now this has got to stop. It’s just dangerous. Seriously, since when did we want to tell THE ENTIRE WORLD where we were going? For instance, what if I yelled out at work, “I am going to Ranch 1 now, then the ATM, and I may hit up Banana Republic on the way back.” Would anyone care? Nope, they’d be annoyed. Shall I announce that my risotto has a fly in it while at a restaurant? I think not.

If you post for the world to see that you are at Tony’s DiNapoli, then I can only assume you are out with friends or family and you will be gone, stuffing yourself with mediocre family-style Italian food, for a good several hours. Looks like an invitation to rob your ass, if you ask me! If I study your Facebook page long enough, I’d probably know if you had a roommate, live with a dog, and what kind of stuff you like to shop for. That’s Robber Christmas in my book.

If your Breitling goes missing, though, it wasn’t me; it was your Dominican neighbor downstairs, I swear.

2) These games have just got to go. Café World? Mafia Wars? Farmville? What the hell is Farmville?! I couldn’t care less. These games are mostly played by middle-aged fat women who have kids instead of dogs and who don’t like their husbands very much. It’s an excuse to avoid conversation with them completely. Yet it clogs up my friggin’ wall to no end. And as such I have taken to hiding all posts from people who play these sorts of games.

Remember SAT analogies? To me …

Facebook : Games as Fat Loser : Player

1) Potty Training. This is NOT a milestone people care about. It ain’t walking, it ain’t talking. And it certainly ain’t cute. You can CALL the damn grandparents and tell them little Morgan went on the potty. The general public DOES NOT need to know this.

Let alone see the visual evidence! My god! How is that any less disgusting than the Jackass guys shitting in a detached toilet in a Home Depot? It isn’t.
Little Morgan gets three drips in the toilet and 12 all over the People magazine on the floor—and that’s video-worthy? No. It. Is. Not. Keep that shit private, nobody wants to see it.

You Down With OCD? Yea You Know Me!

2011-04-14T08:12:00.000-07:00

I thought I was going to die this morning.

I thought I was in jail, about to get shanked.

I’m on the subway standing next to this big, black woman with these huge shades on, covering what I thought was the remnants of a black eye. She was chewing like a cow the entire time, only she kept making this weird clicking noise, like she had a mouth full of thumbtacks. Click-click-click. Clllllllick. I had no idea what it was. But I typed this after I got off the train, so, as you can tell, I am alive and well. I departed the train, and I presume she went on spinning that razor blade in her mouth.

I am also a germophobe. How does that tie into this story? Well, I’ll tell you. It all began when I heard Howard Stern interview Howie Mandel on his radio show, oh, maybe close to 10 years ago. Both are notorious germophobes, and I couldn’t believe the scenarios and stories they were discussing. But shoot, everything I heard them say was absolutely right! And disturbing. How door handles in public bathrooms are disgusting because men never wash their hands. They hold their dicks to pee and then just walk right out!

They discussed their entire public bathroom routine: How they first make sure they have enough paper towels at the ready, which means they dispense the appropriate length before they wash. Then they turn on the faucet and wash their hands with soap and water. Doesn’t matter if the faucets are filled with germs, in their estimation, because they are about to wash those hands that just touched the diseased faucet anyway. But after that they don’t touch a thing. They dry their hands with the paper towel they previously laid out and then use that towel to turn off the sink and open the door to the restroom.

Some people might think this is obsessive. I think it’s genius! Changed my public-bathroom-going life. And I’ve done this routine from that day forward. Shit, I don’t leave the house with out Purell. I shoulda bought stock in Johnson & Johnson!

So anyway, I’m on the subway this morning and I didn’t get my customary spot with my back against the side door of the car, the one that leads from train to train. I like that spot best because then I don’t have to touch anything in there; I don’t need to hold on for balance with my back supported. But, unfortunately, I had to stand in the middle and hold onto one of the railings. When I do this I never move my hand, never switch hands, and try very carefully not to touch a thing, not even my Kindle that I hold in the other hand. And you know how the bars are metal and how at first touch they are cool but the longer you hold them they get warmer, because of the heat from your palms? Well, the warmness is gross. Mine is ok, but everyone else’s is just fucking gross. I never move my hand because I never want to touch any other part of the bar that may have been touched by anyone else.

Well, this woman, who may or may not have just come from Rikers, kept infringing on my bar-holding territory. She kept moving her hand in such a way that I was forced to move mine. Over and over! I had no choice but to constantly degrip and regrip the bar, so as to avoid any bodily contact with her. And every single damn time I moved my hand I wound up in her warm spot. (That is NO euphemism for sex, I’m telling you now!). It’s just the grossest thing ever, having to hold onto the same spot someone just vacated. It’s warm, sweaty, probably filled with grease and boogers and sneeze residue. Ugh! I’ve now washed my hands and Purell’d several times at work … and I still feel like there’s an invisible coating of crap on my hand.

I know I’m nuts. No need to remind me.

Let’s Play A Guessing Game!

2011-02-13T09:24:00.000-08:00

What am I?

1) Tender strips of steak, green peppers, onions, mushrooms, tomatoes and Cheddar cheese. Served with salsa and hash browns.

2) Bacon, pork sausage, shredded beef, ham, onions, green peppers and Cheddar cheese. Served with salsa.

3) Six strips of crispy bacon, a rich cheese sauce, Jack and Cheddar cheeses and diced tomatoes.

Noticing a theme here? Since when did salsa become an alternative to a serving of vegetables?

How about this: What am I?

1) A sweet cream filling, crowned with your choice of cool strawberry topping, warm blueberry or cinnamon apple compote and whipped topping. Served with two eggs, hash browns, two bacon strips or two pork sausage links.

2) Loaded with creamy, rich cheesecake pieces and crowned with cool strawberries, powdered sugar and whipped topping.

I’ll give you one hint with these last two: They are NOT desserts!

In case you were wondering, the answers are all culled from the IHOP breakfast menu and the first three are all omelettes! That’s right, IHOP fills three eggs with that crap. Unbelievable! The fourth is something called a Stuffed French Toast Combo ... also known as Puke on My Pedals, if I ate that and hit the road. Lastly, the thing with the cheesecake? Yea, that’s something called the New York Cheesecake Pancakes. You gotta be kidding me—those are pancakes?! (Take a look for yourself here.)

Where’s this all coming from? In late fall my wife and I were starving, but we were on a mini road trip and we had no choice but to stop at an IHOP for breakfast.

We sat down, looked over a menu as long as Moby Dick and, with it being breakfast time and all, decided to, you know, order breakfast. My wife ordered strawberry crepes. Who doesn’t like creps? They’re delicious. Sure, this wasn’t the Champs-Élysées but they were fine.

I decided to get one of IHOP’s “specials” (I use that term loosely). I ordered this pecan cinnamon french toast. I thought it sounded delicious, and I generally order what’s new or different on a menu. The waiter came over and took our orders. When I said I’d like the pecan french toast, he said, “And what else would you like with that?” This question puzzled me—isn’t french toast considered breakfast? He said, “Do you want anything on the side with that?” And I’m thinking, maybe some hash browns or something. He said, “No scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns, ham, maybe some pancakes?” In my head I’m like, “So lemme get this straight: You’re asking me if I want pancakes on the side of my french toast???” I couldn’t believe it. Clearly in America we need fried bread, a slab of pig, enough fried potatoes to feed a Polish village and maybe even some more dough covered with butter and sugar for a meal to be considered breakfast? Adequate to give you energy for the day?

I said no to everything. I just ordered the french toast. Came with a very nice wedge of orange too, which I ate. How healthy of IHOP!

Turns out I realized where he was coming from once I received my order. My pecan cinnamon french toast amounted to two pieces. Literally one thick piece of bread cut in half. With whipped cream and syrup of course, but still, it was a small order. So in this case, I could have seen getting some scrambled eggs on the side. No matter, I ate it, it was enough, my wife and I moved on.

But that’s not the point is it? My G-d we eat crap in this country. I’m as guilty of it as any. But if I can keep vegetarian in my house for nine months now, and still be 5’9” and weight 215, what hope does does the poor motherfucker in Gulfport, Miss., or Baltimore have? Damn.

I don’t Mean to Piss on Your Parade, But …

2011-01-28T05:49:00.000-08:00

We’ve come a long way, baby, since the days of kerosene lamps, milking our own cows and outhouses. We have home water delivery, personal shoppers, and credit cards are so '80s when we can pay for things with our cell phones. It’s a constant array of ever-evolving items and services to make our lives easier.

We have biodegradable potato chip bags*, the increasing lineup of hybrid cars, we’ve thankfully long moved away from the ubiquity of Aqua Net-needing hairstyles that destroy the ozone layer with their CFCs.

Our green-ness struck me around the holidays as I’m walking around this enormous outlet mall called Woodbury Commons in upstate New York. Here I am, carrying my Banana Republic shopping bag and fending off personal-space-invading Asian shoppers (also ubiquitous) when I had to pee.

So I go to the restroom and am pleasantly surprised that they have installed flushless, waterless toilets throughout the shopping center. This is a good thing, right? Saving 1.5L of water per flush, conserving the environment, going green, yay us.

But then I got to thinking: What the hell IS a flushless, waterless toilet anyway? Seriously, isn’t it just a hole in the ground? How’s it different? Where the hell is all that piss going? And what’s more, why the heck did they have to build an enormous porcelain basin for me to piss in in the first place? I assume the creation of said porcelain basis must have produced a waste product in and of itself? What makes this such an advance? I just don’t get it.

To me, it’s the reinvention of the outhouse. We’ve come full circle. We piss in a hole and shit in a compost pile. It’s the friggin’ frontier all over again. I like Mustangs, not a mustang. I’m not going back. From now on I will piss in a Sun Chip bag and hope for the best.

* This is how fucking retarded people are in America. Our fat asses, who consume God-knows-how-many bags of chips a year, finally had a capitalistic corporation do something good! The Frito-Lay Co. developed a biodegradable bag for their Sun Chips in 2007. That way, when your lazy ass leaves it on the ground in the park it will just break down over time and not affect the grass or the soil. So what happened? The stupid, fat, ridiculous American consumer complained so much about the bag being—get this—too loud, that it was pulled from the market in October 2010. People would rather not be bothered while reading their video game magazine in a Subway than put up with a little extra noise in the hope of protecting the Earth. I’m disappointed, but what’s worse, I’m not surprised.

A Picture is Worth 1,000 Bananas?

2011-01-27T08:28:00.000-08:00

That ASPCA commercial with Sarah McLaughlin? You know the one I’m talking about, when “Angel” is playing over pictures of all those poor animals in cages or being rescued from horrible situations? Damn that kills me. I have to turn away every time it’s on. I love animals. If I won MegaMillions tomorrow I’d buy a farm for all the doggies and the kitties out there.

And around holiday time you just cannot escape those sad commercials from every charity known to man. They pull at your heartstrings, rightfully so. They need donations, and hey, the holidays are a time for giving, right? The lonely old people for Meals on Wheels, the WWF trying to protect natural habitats, the Christian Children’s Fund …

Damn those starving African kids. You know what I mean: There will be the slow, solemn narration by a guy with a tenor voice while video is running of 11-year-old Chikeze who is caring for his three young siblings because his parents were murdered in some dictatorial coup? One kid has a booger running down his lip, the other has a fly crawling by his eyeball. You can’t watch. Those shits are set up for you to cry. (Seriously though, Africans have been starving for 50 years now; how the hell do they have the energy for sex?!)

Then you see poor Chikeze, holding his 9-month-old, fly-infested little sister, as he’s woefully staring at a picture of his long lost parents. And I’m thinking … How the HELL did those poor motherfuckers get a picture of their damn parents?! You mean to tell me this motherfucker who ain’t got no shoes, lives in a hut, and sleeps on the dirt was able to get a picture of his parents? What is that, a family heirloom? Who the hell is going around taking pictures of poor ass African families? You mean to tell me CCF is taking my 39 cents a day and walking around in the dust taking pictures? Geez, Ezekiel, put down the fucking camera and start handing out bananas! Bring ’em in by the truckload. Like lil Chizeke needs a damn picture?! His parents are dead. What he needs is to be adopted by Madonna. But in absence of that, give him the damn Nikon so he can hock it for a goat. And save Heifer.org the trouble of sending one to his village.

Now is the Winter of my Discontent

2011-01-26T11:12:00.000-08:00

It’s the winter in New York. It’s bound to be cold, wouldn’t you suspect? Most mornings I put on my coat, grab a scarf and my messenger bag and head off to work.

My wife does the same thing, as I’m sure countless women do, again, considering it’s winter. In New York.

What amazes me is that women refuse to close their jackets properly. They’ll just stand there outside, holding their jacket together, refusing to either button it up or zipper it up. And then they bitch that they are cold. Well, ladies, I love you, but you’re retarded. It’s cold … because it’s WINTER IN NEW YORK! Quit shivering over there on the street corner and either button the coat or your mouth! Either way I'll become infinitely happier.

Random Thoughts: Volume VI

2010-11-16T13:10:00.000-08:00

1) I love Target. And I especially love the Target dollar bin. I’ve bought notepads in there, Elmo books for my nieces/nephews, doggie bowls for the shelter I volunteer at, bungee cords for my car—just tons of odds and ends. But I think it’s so strange that there’s food in the dollar bin. Crunch ’n Munch and boxes of Pepperidge Farm cookies were in there for $1 this past weekend. I know both are filled with tons of nitrates and preservatives, and can probably sit unopened and edible for decades, but how OLD must that food be to be found in the dollar bin? How long could it possibly have sat on Target’s regular shelves with its regular merchandise? Thanks, but I’ll skip that bargain like I’d skip any place that offers “discount sushi.”

2) Does every bag nowadays—no matter the size—need wheels and a handle? If it’s a backpack … PUT IT ON YOUR BACK!!! It can’t really get any easier than that. Do you really need to wheel something the size of a bag of potato chips through the subways and up the escalators? I think not. Carry the damn thing like it was meant to be carried and call it a day.

3) Wasn’t it a revelation when VHS gave way to DVD? It wasn’t just the picture quality; with DVDs you didn’t have to stand at the machine for 15 minutes fast-forwarding through endless previews and commercials. But the effing DVD manufacturers are again leaving us stuck watching the endless crap we don’t care about. You can’t hit ‘Menu’ until it says so anymore, you can’t chapter skip anymore, you can’t even fast-forward through the previews unless the disc permits you. Maybe this is why DVD sales have fallen off a cliff the last few years.

4) Admitting this probably makes me seem strange, or gay, or both, but I like ‘products.’ My wife has 162 bottles of stuff in the shower that G-D knows what she does with all of ’em—and I’ll try every last one of ’em. If there’s an exfoliator in there, I’m on it; a moisturizer, sure, I’ll give it a try; some new shampoo that smells like avocado and bubble gum? Heck, sign me up. Not everybody is like this, I get that. But some of these products marketed to guys just aren’t helping to sway me. Hair, Face and Body Wash all rolled into one bottle (that conveniently looks like motor oil)? C’mon! Let’s call that product what it really is: Lazy Man’s Shower. You mean to tell me the same product you use to wash your ass is appropriate to wash your face with? Please.

5) It’s a benefit to be a smoker. Sure, you WILL get lung cancer and die a horrible death, but in the short run it’s tits, bro. I’ve been observing the smokers in my office. I’d say they take, on average, five smoking breaks a day (not including lunch). And each lasts about 10 minutes or so. That is 50 minutes of break-time. Nearly an hour out of their working day. And they get paid for it! How’s that not some bullshit?! What if I said to my boss, “I need several breaks a day to go outside and pick my nose.” I don’t think that would fly. What if I needed four breaks of 15 minutes each to eat Mr. Softee ice cream? No go. I think smoking is where it’s at. Not only can you be absent from work for about an hour a day, but you can be wholly unproductive when you get back, just jonesing until that next break.

It Must Be a Quest-ion of Desperation

2010-11-15T06:42:00.001-08:00

As I’ve said before, I love having the latest gizmo—Kindle, iPad, whatever. Technology brings us together, opens up our lives, makes communication a breeze (but also steals our privacy). Heck, the tech boom made millionaires out of millions of people in the ’90s. Innovation is good.

So can someone explain to me why the HELL there are so many commercials for those Quest chat lines? I mean a call-in, chat-line dating service? In 2010? Are you kidding me? Using one of those is like going into Best Buy and asking for Avatar on VHS. It’s like getting a Discman for Christmas. You mean to tell me between Facebook, Twitter, Foresquare, email, texting and cell phones you Questers can’t find a better portal to hit on women? I know there are tons of losers out there; I’m sure there are plenty in utter-desperation mode. But using a chat line is like thinking your 1987 IROC is gonna get you laid—now.

I love the commercials; they make me laugh every single time. It’s usually an attractive-enough blonde who struggles to read her lines. The acting is terrible. It’s like Channing Tatum put on a wig and said, “Call now, hot girls like me are standing by ready for a GREAT time!” Uh huh.

Roll with the Punches, I Guess

2010-11-12T10:11:00.000-08:00

Move over Al Gore, Savior and Protector of Planet Earth for All Mankind.

When Jimmy Carter was elected president in 1977 one of the first things he did was install solar panels in the White House. How ahead of the curve is that? Thirty years ago he was doing what he felt was best for the future of our planet. Of course Ronald Reagan, as soon as he took office, immediately removed them, saying Americans will never have to sacrifice in our consumption of natural resources. I find that stunning. (Don’t believe me? Watch this interview Bill Maher conducted with Pres. Carter.)

So fast-forward 30-plus years. I understand, as I’m sure you do, that this is the age of ‘green.’ That we all must be willing to be a bit more environmentally conscious in order to protect this earth for our grandkids’ grandkids. In fact, I just saw a commercial the other day for “tube-free toilet tissue.” (Don’t you love that pc-sounding name? Toilet Tissue … not toilet paper. Ha!) Scott is responsible for this invention. Of course, in a cruel twist of irony, it’s only available at Walmart—the killer of small business across the whole world.

Tell me, why is this such an incredible innovation? And another thing: Why the heck haven’t we all been using tube-free toilet tissue this entire time? Seems like the simplest thing ever. And we’d’ve never known the difference. How many countless tons of trees were cut down? How many countless rolls of toilet-tissue waste did we produce in all these years? This is one of those things where you say, Why didn’t I think of that? Some asshole invented those Silly Stringz, and now he’s a bajillionaire. Why didn’t someone come up with tubeless concept sooner? Or did Reagan threaten to kick someone’s ass for being ahead of the curve?

Random Thoughts: Volume V

2010-10-21T10:02:00.000-07:00

1) We are all fat Americans. I know this better than most, as I have been permanently retaining my ‘holiday weight’ for, oh, about five years now. But have you ever noticed that portions everywhere have been getting bigger and bigger, and even less and less expensive? That helps. Just witness all those commercials on TV for Friday’s, Chili’s, Applebee’s, etc. Come on down to Bennigan’s for a SEVEN-COURSE MEAL for TWO, for only $9.99! Everywhere, that is, except the movies. I’m sorry but my box of Junior Mints, which includes a grand total of 12, is now like $5! True, a medium soda is like 44-ounces, but it’s also like $6! From now on I’m skipping the Milk Duds and bringing in a bucket of KFC; with a coupon I can get a 12-piece for $4.99. Say it loud, I’m fat and I’m proud!

1a) And you know what? Thanks for putting those calorie counts on menus now. Yea, they’re a deterrent. I appreciate the reminder that I’m a fat ass when I go to Ranch-1. You know what? Sometimes you just want some friggin Ranch-1!!!

2) Do convenience stores really need signs on them that say, “We Sell Beer,” “We Sell Cigarettes.” Really? You don’t say?! It’s not like I went in there for some alfalfa sprouts and nice guest towels.

3) This has irked me for years now: I absolutely CANNOT STAND the tourists that come to New York City, go down to Ground Zero, and stand in front of that pit, smile arm-in-arm, and take a picture. I’m sorry, but this ain’t Six Flags motherfucker! You ain’t standing in front of the churro stand! It’s like the Vatican. Go down there, take a look, soak it all in, and leave with your memories. You don’t need a picture for posterity of Uncle Bob standing in front of that fuzzy green fence with a crane in the background. Have some respect!

4) I’ve mentioned this before, but style just irks me. You gotta wear what’s flattering on you, not what’s hot at the moment. Slim Fit pants for overweight women? Are you kidding me? No one would want to see my ass dressed like Russell Brand, trust me. If your size reaches double digits--if you're shopping in Lane Bryant--that should be a clue that Slim Fit just ain't for ya, honey. I’m not saying the bigger ladies gotta cover themselves in mumus (actually I secretly am), but be real. Slim fit ain’t for you, honey, just like the media spotlight ain’t for Christine O’Donnell.

5) These ads for pharmaceuticals have passed the point of sanity. I don’t need 90 seconds of information on Vagisil. The last 30 seconds alone on the side effects are enough to make me stop eating my dinner. And how about that name—Vagisil? Vagisil? Who came up with that? Let’s just call it what it really is: Vagina Fungus Fixer. What the hell kinda woman is gonna go to her doctor and be like, “Yea my cooter is itching sooo bad. Gotta get me some Vagisil!” Couldn’t they have named it like Comfortex or some neutral shit like that? I mean if simple red nail polish can be called “Day at the Beach” then someone coulda come up with a better name for Vagisil. Fire that marketer immediately.

6) Isn’t Country Fried Chicken Salad the biggest oxymoron on a menu? Get a salad if you’re in a light mood, fried chicken if you want crap. It’s like ordering a Big Mac with a Diet Coke. Like going to a baseball game but just staying at the bar. Makes no sense.

7) Wanna witness one of the most unique places on earth? Spend some time in a vet’s waiting room. Wow! Interesting people, petowners. There’s the single guy with the overweight Pug, who surprisingly look alike. There’s the crazy cat lady who reads The New York Times to Bootsie. There’s the guy who is 5’3” with the two enormous, killer pit bulls (obviously compensating for something). There’s the old lady, probably widowed, who dresses her Maltese in a Burberry sweater—that matches her’s. Yet they can all wax poetic on the daily routines of their animals. Highly recommended people-watching destination, trust me.

8) What the heck is a ‘whole grain?’ It is on the packaging of EVERY consumer product now. Does anybody have any idea what it is? Are there half grains? I’m supposed to think Chocolate Frosted Cookie Crisp is good for kids because they have 2 grams of whole grains? Kiss my ass. It’s cookie cereal! It ain’t Shredded Wheat. How could it possibly be for good you? Here, try my chocolate-caramel-M&M-covered rice cake. Your kids’ll love it. Half the calories of a pint of Ben and Jerry’s! And with 4 grams of whole grain! Yea, and Lindsay Lohan was sober the whole time.

9) It is official that subway riding sucks. It’s as comfortable as watching a sex scene in a movie with your parents. But you try to get off a crowded subway carefully. You try not to push anybody or step on anyone’s feet. You say excuse me repeatedly. Nobody moves. Fuckin’ iPods. Fuckin’ Kindles. Nobody hears you, no one even sees you! From now on I’m shoving ass and taking toes!

UNbelievable

2010-09-23T07:06:00.000-07:00

Why.

Why, why, why! Why did somebody decide to put the United Nations right smack in the middle of midtown Manhattan!?

This had to have been the worst idea since the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. New York is one of the most heavily populated, most densely trafficked cities on earth. And it’s certainly the busiest modern city around. Whose brilliant idea was it to put the world’s headquarters for all international matters, from climate change, to human rights, to nuclear proliferation, right here?

How do we support all the foreign dignitaries and their staffs? How do we handle the traffic from all those limos with the flags on them? Do we have enough hotel rooms? And, for that matter, how does the delegation from Gabon even afford a hotel room here in New York? ($100 to the person who knows where the hell that is without cheating!)

You mean to tell me there wasn’t a nice tract of farmland out in the boonies of New Jersey to put a massive complex? Where security could have been handled more easily. There are more hiding spots New York than there are in Sesame Place. There are more weirdos running around here then there are in Creedmore. What about considering where much of the evil has happened in the 20th century? I’m sure the Allies could have found a nice spot in Germany for the UN. Not like they could have argued against it anyway! Even so, somewhere in Europe would have made more sense geographically because it would have been about equidistant between the North American continent and Asia.

But no, us New Yorkers are stuck with it right here, fucking all our commutes up! The subways, which are usually a goddamn catastrophe on a normal day, have been as crowded as downtown La Paz. The East Side is entirely shut down for traffic, making most streets a wall of cars. (At least the traffic cops can actually, you know, DIRECT traffic, instead of just writing asinine tickets!) Throw in the fact that President Obama is coming to town and I might as well hire my first rickshaw to take me to work.

*Followup: See, I told you!*

Mr. Sinister is ‘friend’-ly

2010-09-16T16:08:00.000-07:00

Friend
–noun
1. a person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard.
2. a person who gives assistance; patron; supporter: friends of the Boston Symphony.
3. a person who is on good terms with another; a person who is not hostile: Who goes there? Friend or foe?
4. a member of the same nation, party, etc.

I joke that I met my wife on the Internet. I call her my very own Polish mail-order bride. Oh, she hates it, but when anyone asks us how we meet, I say, "Over the Internet," and that usually creates a whole funny conversation and even funnier looks.

Truth is, I literally married the girl down the block. We rode the school bus together as kids. I am two years older than her, and we were always at the very least acquaintances, but once I left for college I did not see her for eight years … until Friendster came along.

I graduated college in 2001 and recently after a friend persuaded me to join Friendster, which was kind of like the grandfather of social media sites. Right idea, maybe the wrong time, hence it’s relative death. I reluctantly joined, and although it didn’t have much value for me, it paid dividends in its ability to link me up with old friends and those that lived far away. Turns out, my neighbor across the street from me was then and still is my now wife’s best friend. So I bumped into my neighbor and we got to talking, and my wife’s name came up. So after a neighbor’s re-introduction, I used Friendster to open lines of communication with the woman who would become my wife.

So given that this was now around Christmastime 2004, I used Friendster communication, to quickly graduate to IM communication, and then the old standard: phone communication (crazy, I know, a dude calling a girl nowadays). Which obviously led to dating, and then one drunken night a few years later she ruffied me and got me to propose (just kidding). So we are a social media success story!

Now, I also happen to be an early adopter of technology; MP3 player, LCD television, Blu-ray player—all bought when they were still fucking expensive. So it may come as a shock to you all that I just joined Facebook yesterday*. That’s right, yesterday! (BTW, Hook, Line & Sinister Fan Page coming soon. Facebook is fighting me on the title.)

I did not want to join Facebook for a number of reasons: 1) I was out of full-time work for over a year and did not want any prospective employers Googling me and finding my page which would inevitably include some ‘tagged’ picture of me from college with a 412-lb. bucktoothed stripper and my famous sidecar bubbler 2) it’s an enormous distraction; and 3) I really don’t need to know that Steve, who I went to middle school with and haven’t seen since I was 12, had twins. I mean good for him, but that is more useless information to me than what US Weekly charges $3.99 for each week.

But honestly, it’s gotten just too big not to be a part of. Five hundred million users worldwide is nothing to scoff at. It’s not just a fad. It’s here to stay. I needed to join.

Fast forward to my first Facebook experience—boy is that a clusterfuck of a site! I’m amazed that something so poorly laid out is so damn popular. I know there’s a learning curve, but what the fuck am I looking at? A News feed? Please. Wow, the Yankees won … Look, there’s a cat up for adoption; aren’t there a bajillion of those? … A new Tosh.O episode is airing … Move over Edward R. Murrow!

This whole ‘wall’ thing took some getting used to. You’re posting on my wall, I’m posting on your wall. If it’s so popular to write on walls, then why the hell was my dry erase board ripped down within a day in college? I want my $2.49 back!

‘Liking’ something has gotten out of hand. I like watches; I like meatball heroes. Now you know. But I didn’t know that my friend can ‘like’ the fact that I like meatball heroes. I mean that’s crazy. We should call this thing Wastebook from now on.

I am now aware that Evites went out the door; everyone just uses Facebook invites; Calendars and datebooks are gone, because everyone’s on Facebook all damn day that they don’t need or have the time to click on any other application. And when you’re bored you can play Scrabble or Bejeweled. (Note: Remind me never to employ anybody ever again.) I see the value in posting pictures there for everyone to view. Granted there are dozens of other sites you can do this on, but fine. If anyone posts—or ‘tags’—that picture of 22-year-old Joe Schmuckler with hookers and coke from back in college, he can be damn sure he won’t be president in his lifetime.

Then there’s chat, a ubiquitous function. But I was talking to my friend Randi—literally 20 seconds after I joined—and asked her why it’s so important we talk in this way. I pointed out that I have AIM, GChat, e-mail, text messaging, and a phone—none of which she uses to communicate with me—yet she ignored all those portals and is chatting with me now—on Facebook. Curious.

It took me some time to realize that Facebook suggests people I may want to be friends with. This is different from an actual friend request. I realized that when I’m checking the several dozen or so of those I’d get at a time, that I have to scroll down to the bottom of the list to actually see the people that requested that I make them a friend, and not the other way around. Tricky, tricky. This can sucker me into a conversation with the goth girl that had a crush on me in high school. Who the hell wants that?!

I was thrown for a loop by a girl who sent me a friend request who I went to school with from probably middle school on, who I went to Hebrew school with, who has a twin brother who I hated (they were both dorks), who my friend used for a bit when we were 15, and who I was really never ever friends with, only cordial to in certain situations. It took me a good few minutes to figure out who the hell she was. First off, her profile picture was her baby. Did that help me out? Shoot, her REAL FACE didn’t help me at all. (Why the HELL do people put a picture up of their little rugrats instead of themselves; it’s THEIR profile!) Secondly, she was obviously listed under her married name. Lastly, even the pictures she posted of herself didn’t help. I stared at one closeup and looked at her profile for several minutes before I realized who it was. My god, I’ll never get that time back. This nigga owes me four minutes of my life! I shouldn’t have accepted her, but I clicked the wrong damn button and now I am ‘friends’ with some chick I do not know now, and rarely knew before.

People say Facebook is great for communication. Yea, with who? The nerd on your 4th grade soccer team? I'm sold. But see, first my phone stopped ringing, then chatting got old, then my inbox just wasn't filling up anymore and now texting is few and far between. And now I’m sucked in to Facebook like Kyle Broflovski.

And yet I still don’t know what a 'poke' is.

What it boils down to is Facebook is a high school hallway. It’s a way for the nerdy kids, parents, etc. (don’t kid yourself, I’d say the average user is either a 15-year-old boy or a 38-year-old woman) to stay up with the gossip they never could before of the cool people. To this day everything’s a popularity contest, except it moved from parking lots, and diners, and football fields to a virtual world of clicks and pics. It’s the anonymous girl in the orchestra talking about the relationship between the cute guy and his pretty cheerleader girlfriend. It’s the loser trying to figure out how to make fun at the jock who embarrassed him in gym class. Facebook is a dumping ground for gossip and information and so that you feel informed. Informed about crap you really shouldn’t even be informed of anyway. And it is an enormous waste of time. It basically allows us to know an inordinate amount of information about someone on a personal level that you never ever talk to or see, and generally don’t really care much about. And you have to be a virtual stalker to do it. If I were in the mall, would I shout out, “Hey, look everybody! I’m trying on a pair of shorts at the Gap!” No, of course not. You’d all look at me as the crazy dude in the mall. So why the hell would I go out of my way to discuss every minute detail of my daily life with friends and strangers alike online? Think of what the real-world interpretation of a ‘wall’ would be? What if I walked around with a sign on my neck saying, “I just ate meatloaf for dinner. Boy am I stuffed!” Insane. It’s just making us all mind-numbingly boring—yet unbelievably uninhibited—at the very same time. And nothing else.

Being a friend is an investment. It takes effort. And it’s worth it. I believe we have all lost sight of that.

So for now, update that profile and stay clear of cows!

*Yesterday was actually Sunday; I’ve been writing this post all week.

To Live and Die in N.Y.

2010-09-08T13:29:00.000-07:00

I love Queens. It's the most ethnically diverse county in the entire world. I hate Queens. It's the most ethnically fucking diverse county in the whole damn world.

Here is the scene as I literally just witnessed it 10 minutes ago ...

I'm at a new grocery store down the block from my apartment. It's really nice, wide aisles, clerks that actually speak English. So I get on line and there is an older Asian woman who has just paid and is trying to give her address to the nice, mid-20s Indian cashier for delivery. The Asian woman is getting belligerent because she doesn't understand that the checkout lady just needs her name and address. She's increasingly raising her voice: Accou Numbah Heah!!! Address One-Oh-Faow Faow-eey Queen Boo-re-vahhhd! The checkout lady is like, Yes I know, I got that part; but what is your name?

ONE-OH-FAOW FAOW-EEY QUEEN BOOOO-RE-VAHHHHHDDDDD!!!

I mean seriously woman. It's a fucking delivery. Name, address, you're friggin done. How hard is that?! Aren't your people usually the ones DOING the delivery? I bet your son is the one on the damn bike with my dumplings. Come on now!

So at this point I try to give up and go to the other cashier (Taylor Swift's shorter, prettier twin, I swear), but here's where it gets interesting ...

An old lady in a wheelchair (probably Jewish) is being pushed by a nice, probably mid-40s Caribbean woman. Since I happen to be in the widest aisle, the Caribbean woman says, Excuse me, so she can get the lady in the wheelchair through and out the door.

Unfortunately Lil Miss Pearl Harbor wouldn't move. The old lady was tapping her and asking her gently to move. (I mean what's the alternative? It was nice of the old lady to ask as it was. Usually old ladies have less patience than Paula Abdul on meth and will just run your feet right over.) But then the Dragon Roll refused to move! She was yelling at the old lady: I not mooo-veen! I busy! You go roun!!! I mean, she was being ruder and bitchier than I thought possible. At this point I finally opened my mouth and was like, Listen lady, can't you friggin move over? Let the lady through already. What's wrong with you? She said, Wai Wai (wait wait, I figured), and still wasn't moving. So the old lady just tried her best to push General Tso out of the way and the Caribbean woman wheeled her by.

Man, I hope she got a piece of Po Flied Lice's damn toe on the way out the door.

Well, the Indian woman was still trying to get the information she needed from PF Chang after that, so I then headed over to Prettier Taylor Swift and we laughed about it. I said I hate people, but she was sweet; she was like, For every mean person there's always a nice person.

Ah, the young. So oblivious!

Up Shit's Creek Without a Poodle

2010-08-30T11:39:00.000-07:00

I saw something dangerous, disgusting and infuriating on my way to work today. As I was walking south on Lexington, just past Bloomingdale’s there was a spread-out pile of fresh dog shit just laying right in the middle of the sloping part of the sidewalk … you know, the part that’s sloped to make it easier to walk on … where EVERYONE steps. I mean, thank G-D I saw it at the last second, because if I stepped in dog shit at 8:30 in the morning I woulda been pissed like Jennifer Aniston at her success with men.

The culprits were either an old man walking two Scotties just a few steps in front of me, or this yuppie couple walking a Shih Tzu about one block ahead. The guy was dressed like a sailor from Love Boat and the girl was dressed in those skin-tight running pants from Lululemon or wherever. I may have been blinded by her ass for a quartermillisecond until I realized I was still steaming about the shit.

Either way, I swear, if I had stepped on it, I would have backtracked, found Mrs. Yuppie, taken my shoe off, and wiped it on her shirt! Hey, shit for shat is what I always say.

Mosquing the Real Problem

2010-08-26T08:47:00.000-07:00

In a departure from my usual rants and raves on everyday things I cannot stand, today I write about a serious issue that is bothering me greatly. Thanks for understanding and reading.

About seven or so years ago I was rear-ended by a cab. It was about 4 a.m., torrentially pouring and I was heading home to Long Island in my car filled with four friends (I was the DD). We were heading north on 6th Ave. in the West Village, traffic was slow because the rain was blinding, and the cab slammed into me. The hit was hard enough to jolt us, and it caused about $3,000 worth of body damage, but luckily we were all fine, no one was hurt.

What made the accident happen? Was the driver tail-gaiting? Was he driving too fast, especially considering the conditions? Or was he simply not paying attention? Whatever it was, he hit me. It was all his fault and there was no other way it could be. We went through insurance and I got my money to fix my Jeep. That cab driver couldn’t blame it on the particular piece of pavement, or on my left front tire, or even on the rain. He simply fucked up and rear-ended me. End of story.

I have been terribly disturbed, but mostly disappointed, by all this talk regarding the Mosque that is in development near the Ground Zero site in Lower Manhattan. Let me be clear: I have NO problem with it. And anyone who objects to its right to be erected where it is planned is just wrong. This isn’t a matter of opinion, or of sensitivity. In this case there is only one correct opinion—and that is to support the right to build the Mosque.

This country was built—literally built—around the idea of religious tolerance, religious freedom. Heck, the Pilgrims crossed the ocean to start their lives in the New World on the premise that they would be able to worship without oppression. Our Founding Fathers considered freedom of religion one of the inalienable rights; this coming from brilliant men who strongly felt religion had absolutely ZERO place in matters of the state. (Don’t believe me? I can show you page after page of quotes from Jefferson, Franklin, Washington that prove me right.)

The naysayers we see on TV and on our streets every day are those who claim to be so patriotic, to love this country so much. Yet by protesting, by fighting in such a spiteful matter, they are basically spitting on the colors of our flag, and all it stands for, and all who died for it. Objecting to the building of this house of worship is Un-American.

Since when did we become a country of exclusion? Unless you can trace your ancestors back to Jamestown or to those that rode on the Mayflower, then your roots came from somewhere else. Oh, you’re still a citizen, but your origins lie elsewhere. See, in some ways we are Americans, but in other ways we are all visitors to this country. Think of the issue this way: What if the President was assassinated by a man with the last name of Sorrentino? Should we all boycott eating at pizzerias for the rest of our lives? Why punish all Italians—or, for that matter Italian-Americans—for the sins of one individual … who happened to have Italian roots?

Building this Mosque does not in any way whatsoever insult the memories of those who died on 9/11. In fact, the blatant affront to our Constitution that is this fight against building it is the bigger injustice to those that died. It means the terrorists won in changing the American way of life. Which has always been their sole objective anyway. It's not suffering; it's making us different.

Let me pose this another, more poignant way: If the Klu Klux Klan was to blame for the destruction of the Twin Towers, would we be objecting so vehemently to a Church being built a few blocks from the site? No, of course not. We’d celebrate it. We’d speak of the power of religion being able to overcome such horrors that come to affect man. We’d applaud the construction of a new house of worship. We’d see it as integral to the healing process. We wouldn’t punish the Christian religion as a whole by fighting to keep a Temple of God away from a tract of land where 3,000 people died. It would be considered the right thing to do; it would help us move on.

Why are we doing the same to Muslims? Why is all of Islam taking such blame? It was a few raindrops, not the rain, and more people need to understand that. Look, I’m Jewish, middle-class, educated. I realize that Islam did not hijack two planes to crash into the Towers on Sept. 11—a rogue group of extremists did. They are to blame, not their religion. To hell with them, I hope they are punished for all of eternity. No fucking 72 virgins for you guys! But you know who shouldn’t be blamed? Hakeem Olajuwon. He’s a Muslim. He’s also an American citizen. And he had nothing to do with this. And he certainly does not deserve any dirty looks and unjust thoughts just because he shares a belief system with certain criminals. People are entitled to worship how they want in this country, wherever they want. Lower Manhattan is no different. Islam is no different.

The KKK is to Christianity what Islamic Extremists is to Islam. Remember that.

If you want to be upset, fine. If you think it’s insensitive, ok. Maybe it is, a little. I'll concede that. But you know what eases my thoughts on the matter? The fact that this Mosque will be the most surveilled building in the whole entire country, outside of the White House. Every level of government, from local law enforcement to the FBI, CIA and Interpol will be monitoring the activities—daily—in that Mosque. You can count on that. Shoot, that thought makes me more comfortable than the enormous run-down house-as-Mosque that my parents live by. Who the hell knows what goes on in there? (But, truth is, it’s probably nothing, and it’s really none of my business.)

Where the money is coming from is another concern. But really, you can never know where exactly the money is coming from when a building goes up. How many skyscrapers did Al Capone bankroll in Chicago? How many thieving, conniving crook investment bankers built stadiums or convention centers around the country? Point is, no matter where the money is coming from for this Mosque, at least we can spy and track what’s being done with it. Building inspectors can harp on the Mosque, making sure it’s up to code. If they want to build the Mosque in a certain way, for safety or privacy concerns, well, then the city reserves the right to review the proposal, and reject it if need be. Either way, alls I’m saying is, I’d feel a lot better about this one building than I would a random apartment in Lackawanna.

Point is, the tires didn’t cause that cab to crash into me, shoddy driving did. Islam didn’t cause the devastation in Lower Manhattan, the actions of a sad few did. I cannot and will not place blame or penalty on an entire group of people for the choices only a few make. It’s not American. It makes us look bad. In fact, it’s disgraceful. We are a country of inclusion, the benchmark of tolerance for all the world to see. “Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses,” remember? It’s right there, for everyone who enters this country to view the second they step foot on our soil. Nothing will make the Arabic world hate us more than this sorry act we’re in the middle of now. Americans accept. It's what makes us great.

As it stands, we’re Pizarro and we’re slaughtering the Mayans for a City of Gold that does not exist. Even if it did, well, right now we just aren’t showing ourselves worthy of finding it anyway.

Riding off into the Non-Sunset

2010-08-23T13:08:00.000-07:00

We’ve come a long way since prehistoric man inventing the wheel. Native Americans learned to hollow out tree trunks to make canoes. Sailing moved from Viking longships to the Spanish Navy to Old Ironsides to German U-Boats to Royal Caribbean hotels-on-water.

Then came the horseless carriage. It was steam-powered until Henry Ford invented what we know to be the modern automobile. Now our cars have Wi-Fi, navigation systems, crumple zones, more cupholders than a movie theater and can even parallel park themselves.

Man had been obsessed with flying for a millennium until the Wright Brothers took off from Kitty Hawk, N.C., in 1903. Only about 20 years later, Charles Lindbergh made a solo transatlantic flight. By World War II FDR made this country into a war factory. He mandated we produce 50,000 aircraft for battle in Europe. We failed. Our plants made 100,000. Fast-forward to modern times and we have planes with Stealth technology, Internet connections and beds! (And if I were a rapper or NBA star I’d probably have my own!)

So tell me, why-oh-why does our rail system stink so badly? Locomotive technology, on tracks as we know them today, came to prominence in the 1820’s—and they haven’t made a lick of progress since! Oh, the trains are pretty now; they have electronic voices and maps and ergonomic seats. But putting our fancy new trains on our old ass tracks is like putting wagon wheels on Ferrari. If there’s a cloud in the sky they are slowed to a halt, like a baseball game.

Name me one instance when it rains or snows that you are not delayed on the LIRR, Metro North, New Jersey Transit, Path or Subway? You can’t. Because they suck! Every … single … time it rains the trains are delayed. In nearly 200 years we have not developed the technology to make our trains capable of running on wet tracks, yet there are disposable underwater cameras? I had a friend who dropped her cell phone in the toilet and it was still working the next day. Sure it smelled like piss, but it made calls!

There are major delays on the LIRR today, as I write this, at 4 p.m. on Monday. What is the cause of such delays? A track fire. That’s right, a fucking track fire. Fire! On the tracks! In the middle of the pouring rain! How the FUCK does that happen?? It’s as baffling to me as the popularity of Justin Bieber. It’s like farting out the smell freshly baked cupcakes. Some things should just not happen.

This is just great, because I know, when I leave work here today, I’ll be stuck on an overcrowded, wet, slippery subway, where someone will inevitably sneeze all over me, and I’ll have a woman’s bag jabbing me in the ribs and I won’t be able to finish my book because I won’t be able to lift my arms. So I will prepare for this by doing two things: A) Putting on my iPod and B) making sure I look really pissed off.

Oh, don't worry, it comes naturally to Mr. Sinister.

Random Thoughts: Volume IV

2010-08-18T09:41:00.000-07:00

1) I know the MTA is as broke as MC Hammer, but its service is ridiculous. My MetroCard keeps costing more and more and yet I’m waiting longer and longer for a train. I rode four separate lines this past weekend: the E, F, 2 and 4. I waited on the platform between 15 and 20 minutes for each! I’m sorry, are the cars being pulled by oxen? It is impossible to plan your travel accordingly in New York anymore because you have absolutely zero way of predicting when the hell you’ll be lucky enough to get on a damn train.

2) And who are these people that choose to stand right next to you on an empty subway platform? You have endless empty space in which to stand, yet you choose to stand 3 feet from me? You clearly must have wanted to read that Scott Pilgrim vs. The World movie poster very badly. Either that, or you’re a raving lunatic psychokiller. Move the fuck over!

3) I hate those people who hesitate before going onto an escalator. It’s an escalator, not a fire pit! You’re not stepping over rattlesnakes. Keep the lines moving please. Your 1.5-second hesitation causes me to bump into your sweaty ass and the guy’s briefcase behind me to nail me on the back of the knee. I can only assume you’ve had at least 30 years to master the art of the escalator mount, yet you still fail. Go drown yourself.

4) Street sweepers are useless. They only succeed in widening the surface area of the filth in New York City streets. They just spread the slime around. Have you ever noticed that it usually smells WORSE after they sweep than before? (And for those of you too dense to get that—I’m talking about the trucks, not the nice men and women who clean our streets out there.)

Way Back when I had the Red and Black Lumberjack

2010-08-13T16:04:00.000-07:00

Most people dress like assholes. Now, I’m all for personal style, but things are getting too out of hand. It’s one thing to be an ‘individual;’ it’s another thing to try to stand out. Try too hard, that is. Put it this way: If you’re a dude wearing a Hot Dogger, I’m sorry, but you deserve to get mugged. By school children. Carrying mace.

Me? I’m a jeans and T-shirt kind of guy. Throw in some fresh kicks and a cool watch and there’s my flair. If I want to be really fancy I’ll rock a polo shirt—sans alligator logo. I blend in; I wouldn’t cause anyone’s head to turn in amusement, amazement, puzzlement or revulsion.

I’m also Universal Jewish Guy height. I wear Universal Jewish Guy sizes. At the moment I’m slightly over Universal Jewish Guy weight. But if you spend even five minutes walking around Lower Manhattan you’ll find that everyone else is quite the opposite … but not typically in a good way.

Why the hell is everybody trying so hard? What happened to just dressing normal? Is our dependency on video games, social media, mobile devices and the Internet making us not care about our appearance? Or is it making us care about our appearance so much, that we choose to go out of the house looking like anything from Carrie Bradshaw to a character from World of Warcraft? Are magazines and an abundance of cable television making us spend inordinate amounts of time cultivating a certain image, whatever that may be? Look, the dude from “White Collar” is a good-looking guy, and I dig how they style him … but I also know I could NEVER pull off that Rat Pack look. I know this.

Most people fail to realize. Fat women—you should NEVER be in Capri pants. Commit that to memory. Skinny guy—stop dressing like a mid-90’s rapper; you look ridiculous. There’s style and there are trends, but just because it’s trendy doesn’t mean it‘s cut out for you. Hey, white pants ain’t for everybody, though G-D bless the ladies who can pull them off. Skinny jeans may be the most unsightly, awful, ghastly, unflattering pair of pants to pop up since Z Cavaricci's. And I’m just praying for the day that those oversized sunglasses go away. (Except not for ugly girls; you ladies keep wearing ’em. That’s less of you I gotta see in the morning light.)

My personal favorite has always been the person in the city who wears all black. They think everyone in New York City wears all black, so they’re doing what they think is the best job of blending in. (Sephora employees excluded.) Problem with this theory is, all the people wearing all black in NYC aren’t from NYC anyway! They’re just wearing it because they think everyone else in NYC—real New Yorkers—wear all black. It's a domino effect.

Then you got 80’s Person. Gotta love those people. My favorite part about 80’s Person is, most of them were in Osh Kosh B’Gosh in the 80’s, if they were even born in the decade at all. I love seeing bright purple sneakers, bad sunglasses, studded belts, a plethora of zippers and suspenders. No one should ever be in suspenders unless you are attending the Oscars. (You hear me, Larry King?)

Outdoorsy Guy is an interesting one. The dude on the subway with his North Face fleece, moisture-wicking T-shirt, survivalist shorts with 18 pockets and Asolo trail running shoes. He’s the guy eating the Clif Bar with a CamelBak on. I’m sorry, where again did you find that rugged peak within the confines of New York City? Please don’t tell me you’re the guy practicing rock climbing on the biggest boulder in Central Park. It’s only 12-feet high! Getthefuckouttahere!

Prep Superstar can be found in many places. On Fifth Ave. during the day and on the LES at night. He or she wears khakis that are never khaki, rocks Wayfarers, has a grosgrain belt with crabs on it and a gingham shirt. You'd think they exploded out of a JCrew catalog.

Goth Person just scares me. I try not to stare too much at him or her for fear their spikey dragon ring will be driven into my temple.

I love Hoodlum, because as I’ve said many times before, that style went out with Tupac. Anyone still wearing Enyce jeans 8 inches too big for them and Timberlands in the summer should be thrown off Top of the Rock. (No, wait, they don’t know what that is; they should be thrown off Bad Boy headquarters. That’ll resonate.) And don’t you love Hoodlum’s shorts? They usually fall to the bottom of their ankles. These are ‘shorter’ than what, exactly? Your prison jumpsuit?

This style is in stark contrast to Skank Girl. Otherwise known as Ke$ha. Her shorts are basically denim underwear. Normally I wouldn’t care, but I’m 30 now, so staring at a 19-year-old in these makes me look like …

Creepy Guy. Creepy Guy wears pleated khakis, a wrinkled button-down-collar shirt from Eddie Bauer, tube socks and New Balances, worn thin. There is inevitably a stain on at least one of his garments and he is carrying a bag waaaaay too big. Makes you wonder what kind of stalking material that New York Post is covering.

Gotta love The Weirdo, who we all try and avoid. There’s always The Dork in the Firefox T-shirt and jeans from JCPenney. And Techie Dude. He’s easy to spot by his Hellboy hoodie and E3 messenger bag (procured for free of course). Eco Gal’s sandals and exposed feet give new meaning to the phrase “going green.”

My personal favorite are The Blenders. The dude who tries to be Hood but 80’s, like Kanye West. Or Preppy but Ghetto, like Pharrell Williams.

From now on I won’t be so scared off by the guy in flip-flops and a trench coat. I will commend him on his minimalist approach. It is simple, yet refined; it is contemporary yet classic. And if he flashes Skank Girl, well, she had it coming anyway.

Lookin' Like a FOOL With Your Pants on the Ground!

2010-08-11T14:20:00.001-07:00

Thank you, American Idol, for a stupid song I can never get out of my head. But, this guy was definitely right on. I agree 100%, as I have clearly stated in the past.

I received this in the mail yesterday. This is a completely legitimate political flier from New York State Senator Malcolm A. Smith (D-NY, 14th district).

Hahahahahahaha! This is the funniest thing I've gotten in the mail since my friend sent me a blow-up Beverly D'Angelo doll! But it also means the Senator and I see eye to eye on this. I'm gonna start walking around, all day, with my fly down and one nut hanging out. Let's see how that goes over.

Anyone Ready for a Loveburger? Well done!

2010-08-11T10:51:00.000-07:00

I have a tremendous amount of pet peeves, in case you couldn’t tell from my previous musings. I hate when people pull something I’m reading out of my hand. I hate when people blast their music out of their headphones on the subway. And I can’t stand when people comment on the food I’m eating (I have a close friend who is notorious for this). But along the same lines, I cannot stand when people are picky about their foods—what they eat, what they’ll try, how they want things prepared, or even how they modify an order. Basically I’m Harry and everyone else is Sally … and it irks me. (For the record, I married Sally; her I love.)

It is in this vein that I ask: What the hell is a well-done bagel? A steak well-done? Sure, because it is consumed immediately after being cooked. Bacon well done? Of course; hey, if you want it crispy then let it cook longer. Even if it’s cold it remains crispy. But a bagel? C’mon.

A bagel is already cooked—and usually is cool—when it is ready for consumption. A dozen or so go in the oven at the same time, so while a few may sit a teeny bit closer to the heat source, they are all pretty much cooked to the same temperature, for the exact same amount of time. They all taste the same. Maybe one has a browner spot than another, but big wup! Do you walk into a pizzeria and ask for a well-done slice? No, you just let them reheat the one up front. It’s a friggin’ bagel, man! Toast it if you want it well-done. Otherwise, get your everything with a schmear and call it a day.

Satellite Radio Killed the Video Star (Part III)

2010-08-10T11:37:00.000-07:00

As per TV Guide, here are more of the most popular shows on television, and where they are ranked (1 to 100). Sorry, I don’t know what criteria they used to come up with this list; there is nothing cited.

(3) So You Think You Can Dance: Known to me as "So You Think You Can Make Me Watch This Crap?" My wife used to DVR it, but thank the Lord we never have time to watch it. (Side note: Cat Deeley is the best host on TV. Her I like; but the show is about dancing! What straight man will watch this? (See No. 6 below.)

(5) Teen Mom: Where oh where did MTV make the turn to Crapville? This is certainly what I’d want my teenage daughter watching—depressed, unattractive, undereducated teen girls knocked up at 15 by horny, unattractive, undereducated teen boys. True role models. Absolutely!

(6) Dancing with the Stars: Just a snapshot of the ‘stars’ who have competed: John O’Hurley, Lisa Rinna, Tia Carrere, Shanna Moakler, Monique Coleman (I know, Who?), Shandi Finnessey (Miss USA 2004. I guess that show is still on, too), Albert Reed, Sabrina Bryan, Cameron Mathison, Steve Guttenberg (Has he made a movie since Three Men and a Little Lady?), Marissa Jaret Winokur, Cristian de la Fuente, Steve Wozniak (He’s HUGE. Nuff said.), Ty Murray, Melissa Rycroft, Gilles Marini (famous for showing his pee pee), Tom DeLay (Really?!), Louie Vito, Joanna Krupa, Ashley Hamilton, Buzz Aldrin (Did you see that clip of him on WWE? YouTube it.) and Kate Gosselin. (If she’s a “star,” we’re all going to hell.)

Side Note: is it really fair to the other contestants when they have people like Nicole Scherzinger, Mya and Evan Lysacek on as competitors? Come on!

(7) American Idol: It sucks now. We all know it. Let’s move on.

(10) Grey’s Anatomy: Is that the show with the skinny chick with the big tits who was in Old School? Yea, must have skipped it.

(13) Keeping Up with the Kardashians: Paris Hilton gets far less credit than she deserves. She’s a trailblazer. For instance: Rich…Check. Heir to a fortune…Check. Attractive…Check. Stupid…Check. Made obligatory sex tape…Check. Sooo upset over it getting out…Check. Turning a life of leisure that nobody in their right mind cares about into an empire…Check. Just replace Paris with Kim and you’ve got this show. I can say without hesitation that I will hate anybody who watches it.

(14) Desperate Housewives: I don’t know about you but I’m desperately waiting for this show to end! They’re in “Golden Girls” territory.

(22) Secret Life of the American Teenager: Molly Ringwold is on this; it kind of makes fun of itself. How in the HELL is this on a channel called ABC Family??? How in the HELL do the Christian nutbags out there not complain about this being on the air? It’s all about idiot teenagers having awkward sex. And getting knocked up. It’s worse than “Teen Mom” cuz some genius had to think up this fictional crap. I hope the producer’s 12-year-old has mixed-race twins as punishment!

(32) Ghost Whisperer: How did this last so long? For the record, this is not the male version of “The Mentalist.” Jennifer Love Bacon (thanks WWTDD) is not the female equivalent of Simon Baker; Blake Lively is.

(34) Family Guy: Only TV show I own on DVD. I have every season.

(38) Gossip Girl: Hate the show. Love Blake Lively.

(43) The Office: Jumping the shark + No more Carrell = Canceled.

(46, Miami; 81, Original) CSI: Hey, there’s a dead guy! Wait, I just found a fossilized sugar molecule! I know who did it—it was his middle school gym teacher! He always used to eat donuts and the dead guy used to steal them from him! Wow, thank god for all those fancy computer do-hickies. Without them we’d have definitely missed that bullet hole to the head and the confession letter left at the crime scene!

(47) Glee: Gayest. Show. Ever.

(67) Castle: First off, I couldn’t even believe this was on the list. But lemme sum up: A mystery author solves crimes with a hot cop? This sounds like porn to me. Seriously, I’m just waiting for that knock at the door of headquarters from the maintenance man …

(89) Mad Men: It is summed up easily: Men rock, women are only here for our entertainment. But I’ll watch a good hour of Don Draper taking a long drag of his cigarette, then a sip of his bourbon, then staring into space for 12 seconds, then opening his mouth to speak a five-word sentence berating a subordinate and moving on. … Now go get my coat and hat, woman!

Satellite Radio Killed the Video Star (Part II)

2010-08-05T06:38:00.000-07:00

Below are the top-rated Cable TV shows, week of Aug. 1, as per TV By The Numbers. (I am omitting the Disney shows. I am not a pervert.)

(2) The Closer: Chic lit brought to the small screen.

(3) Rizzoli & Isles: My working title for this show would have been Cagney & Lacy 2.0. This nostalgia trend is getting way out of hand. That being said, these two ladies act as well as Channing Tatum. (In case you didn’t catch the sarcasm, that’s not a good thing.)

(4) NASCAR at Pocono: It was waaaaaay better when it was the Winston Cup. Back in the mid ’90s the crowds were just so amazing, who cared about watching the races. But then the drivers went and became rock stars and now the (so-called) sport sucks. But then again, I’m from New York, I never watched it anyway.

(7) Burn Notice: Gabrielle Anwar is beautiful. The male lead literally looks like an uncircumcised penis. All I know him from is Hitch. How do these random actors get their jobs?

(9) Jersey Shore: Snooki and The Situation are the greatest gifts to television since Ed Sullivan and Walter Kronkite. I seriously will be buying the uncensored DVDs.

(10) True Blood: It’s about thisclose to jumping the shark. But so long as there are tits in every episode I won’t complain. I’ll still watch.

(11) WWE: Toomanyjokesbrainoverloadmalfunctionmalfunction. I miss Jimmy Superfly Snooka, Koko B. Ware and The Junkyard Dog. Those were the good ol’ days.

(12) Royal Pains: I caught a preview for this show during one of those shamefully self-promoting 20 minutes that air before a movie. Seemed like a decent concept for a show. And I always liked Mark Feuerstein, cuz he just looked like that typical nice Jew that you or I or anybody would be friends with. But then he went and lost 30 more pounds and now he looks like he’s going through chemo. Someone bring that dude to Five Guys. Stat.

(14) Deadliest Catch: Awesome.

(15) Covert Affairs: Aha! We may have our Male-Version-Mentalist!

Satellite Radio Killed the Video Star

2010-08-03T12:10:00.000-07:00

I happen to love sitting on my ass watching TV as much as the next guy. In fact, it's how I got my pledge name in college. I love anything on History Channel, Discovery Channel, Travel Channel, Animal Planet and Food Network. Those are old standbys that I can fall back on at any time. Of course, I have the shows I love, and then there are those networks who create original programming that I will always give a shot to (HBO, Showtime, FX, A&E, AMC, even USA). But you know as well as I do most TV sucks. Especially the fact that we are inundating our airwaves—which the American public owns—with crap. Reality Show crap.

What’s reality about this stuff anyway? Watching rich people complain about their nannies and having to fix their Mercedes? Watching 16-year-olds starving for attention get knocked up? Witnessing celebrities crying their eyeballs out because they did one too many lines of cocaine? Hoping some stranger falls in love with another stranger in front of our eyes—over six weeks of taping? Please. I don't know about you but I'd rather find something better to do with my time than stare at obese 15-year-olds.

To prove my point, here are the top 15 broadcast television shows, by Nielsen rating (adults 18-49 demo), during the week ending July 25, as published in Entertainment Weekly (rankings in parentheses). This is telling …

(1,3) America’s Got Talent: Orrrrrrrrr not. Maybe a select few. It’s amazing people stay up that late to vote for their favorites. I usually fall asleep somewhere around the 40-minute mark. The good news is The Hoff isn’t on it anymore.

(2) The Bachelorette: Slutty, desperate women; men seeking the limelight. Sounds more like Skinemax to me. Either the show should move to midnight, or “Sexual Response” and the like should begin at primetime.

(4) NCIS: Does anybody watch this show? Apparently they do. But I have 647 friends on Facebook and NOT A SINGLE ONE watches this show. Seriously, how is it popular? How has it been on so long? I can’t name a single person on it and have no idea what it’s about. And I KNOW I’m not the only one.

(5, 6) Wipeout: Brought to America by way of Japan. What else can I say about Asians: Smart as fuck, stupid as shit. They invent great stuff—TV shows, cars, electronic gadgets, etc.—and can never use anything they create correctly. G-d bless ’em. (On a positive note, MXC was awesome!)

(7) The Big Bang Theory: Nerds were funny in high school. You could laugh at the things they did, you could make fun of them for any number of reasons, you could pick on them. Now they’re just annoying. Why would I devote 22 minutes to them?

(8) 60 Minutes: What do Twinkies, cockroaches and Andy Rooney have in common? I’m certain they are the three things that will survive the Apocalypse. Rooney may not actually be on TV anymore. It may seem that way, but it may be a re-recording. Ever notice he’s always using words like “dungarees” and “valise” and railing about what Coolidge will do to halt inflation?

(9) Two and a Half Men: Actually a pretty raunchy and funny show, judging by the four times I’ve watched it. But I hate it due to the fact that little shit kid makes like $750K an episode.

(10) The Mentalist: "Baywatch" for women. How come every show that’s based around a hot girl, but is generally terrible, gets canceled immediately (think “Dollhouse”), yet crappy shows with good looking men can go on and on for years and years? Because there are a lot of lonely women out there … with massagers from The Sharper Image, thanks to Samantha Jones.

(11, 14) Big Brother 12: I know as much about this show as I do about fractal geometry.

(12) NCIS: Los Angeles: Wait, you mean there’s another one? And Chris O’Donnell and LL Cool J are in it? And you’re sure we’re not really referring to House Party VII? I’m confused.

(13) Hell’s Kitchen: If I wanted to listen to someone yelling at me for an hour I’d either hop in my DeLorean, go back to 1996, and wait for my parents to come home after Parent/Teacher conferences, or I’d just throw on some Sam Kinison. At least he was entertaining.

(15) Criminal Minds: (Hold while I look up what the hell this is … Keep holding … Ok, got it.) So what I’ve gleaned from their website is, The characters look pensive, deep in thought, trying to tap into the ‘mind’ of a killer. They wear bulletproof vests. And they interrogate—a lot. So it’s Oprah.

All I have to say is, Thank G-D for books. And Internet porn!

Two Thumbs Down

2010-07-26T07:21:00.000-07:00

It bothers me that movies cost $13.50. It bothers me that most of them are in 3-D and that you HAVE to pay for it in 3-D, yet most movies BLOW in 3-D. It bothers me that a small popcorn costs $6.50, when it costs the movie theater about 10 CENTS for the entire product. It bothers me that a small drink is like 48 ounces. For a SMALL! This is one reason why we are fat in America. It bothers me that a Dasani water is $4.50—and you have no choice but to pay it because most theaters don’t even offer a small anymore, just the large. Forget being ‘green’ for a second, it bothers me that the movies don’t blast the air conditioning like they used to. Especially in the hot-ass summer. Especially after I waited 20 minutes on line—outside—to get in. Why the hell else am I paying $13.50 to see a movie? To cool down, dick! It bothers me that the theaters keep getting bigger and bigger, the tickets get more and more expensive, and the screens get smaller and smaller. A few inches smaller and my living room TV will be the same damn size!

It bothers me that movies don’t even start on time anymore. It bothers me that I have to watch 20 minutes of commercials for Coca-Cola and TNT dramas that I fast-forward through on my home TV and that I’ll never watch anyway. It bothers me that half the previews that are shown in the theater are already playing on regular TV. It bothers me that when the pre-show crap finally ends and the movie should begin no one is ever there to start the projector so you’re stuck, waiting, wasting even more time because no one is ever there to push play.

It bothers me when inconsiderate people leave their jackets and bags on empty chairs. People sit in the aisles during a crowded showing because of these people. It bothers me when parents bring their kids to R-rated movies. It bothers me when parents bring their children to PG-rated movies at night. I’m sorry but your six-year-old should be sleeping by then, not watching Toy Story 3 in 3-D (which, incidentally, cost you an arm and a leg … and $6.50 for popcorn!). It’s even worse when these horrible parents let their kids run amok all over the theater. Some people should need a license to have kids, I’m telling you. And I want the authority to hand them out!

It bothers me when people text throughout the show. Bothers me to no end. Put the friggin’ phone down for two hours! I’m sorry, but Laqueshia getting her hair did for 11 hours is news that can wait! It bothers me when grandpa can’t hear squat, can’t follow along, so every five minutes he screams to his wife to explain what just happened to him. It bothers me when parents let their kids just keep on crying during the movie, instead of taking them outside. Hey, I screamed my head off during Black Beauty when I was young, but you know what my mom did? Took me to the damn lobby!

It bothers me when people kick my chair throughout the whole show. It bothers me when someone gets up during the movie and puts their hand on the back of my chair to steady themselves with no realization that they just threw me off balance and made me spill my 48-ounce SMALL drink on my lap! It bothers me when people are bad armrest sharers. Seriously, even if you are 412 pounds, you do not have the right to both armrests. Fat ass, learn how to share! It bothers me when you have teenagers behind you that don’t shut the fuck up. (And, yes, I realize I was one of them once.) And it bothers me when people refuse to throw their garbage out when movie theaters have garbage cans EVERYWHERE now. The cleanup is what makes me stand out in the damn heat for 20 minutes. Because Mr. Fat-Ass-Texter-Who-Won’t-Shut-The-Fuck-Up refused to throw out his 64-ounce drink and TUB of popcorn.

But mostly it bothers me that I still like going to the movies. However, I buy my tickets at Costco now: $15 for two tickets. That’s my little stick-it-to-the-man play.

Hairballs and fruit salad

2010-07-18T15:43:00.000-07:00

There's a contest in my house to see who could shed the most hair ... between my wife and my cat. I'm not complaining; my wife's hair smells like fruit salad, and I have a very cool Siamese cat. But like in a Dashboard Confessional song: their "haaaaair is eeev-reee-wheeeeeerrrrreeeee!" I have cat hair on my underwear, because he usually sleeps in my underwear drawer, and I have my wife's hair in my underwear, because we wash our clothes together and it just gets inside there. It's a mystery of (probably not so complicated) physics.

But the cat is curious. You know that old observation where a dog will immediately stick his head out the window of a moving car but turns away if you blow in his face? Why is that? My cat, like most of 'em, loves running water. So we always let him drink from the faucet. He has a bowl of fresh water that sits on the floor for him every day, next to his food. But does he drink from it? Rarely. But if we left the toilet seat up he makes a beeline for the bowl. Why the hell is that? So strange. And friggin' disgusting!

Women ... can't live with 'em and they can't pee standing up. Cats ... well, just don't really have to live with 'em ... if it weren't for the women!

Multi-tasking my ass!

2010-06-03T15:38:00.000-07:00

If you rear-end someone while driving your car, it is automatically your fault. If you are walking on the street and walk directly into the person in front of you it is no longer your fault. Fuck them.

Why, you ask? Because of walking and texting! Oh, I cannot stand it, as I'm sure many of you can attest to the nuisance it is. Especially on a busy New York street. Especiallier during rush hour when you are heading to the subway and the sidewalks are incredibly crowded. Especially to the especially power when it's hot as fuck out and we're all sweating our nuts off. (Side comment: Touching anybody else's sweat is the grossest thing imaginable. I'd rather find Ron Jeremy's pube in my salad!)

Anyone who is texting while walking is clearly a self-centered piece of shit. They are clearly not concentrating on where they are going, or on the speed they are traveling, and they undoubtedly slow their pace so as to concentrate on their (most likely meaningless) text.

I generally have a short temper, and while I don't look like much physically, when I get angry I get a look in my eye that is fierce. I am also relentless and scream like a black woman whose wig got knocked off in church by her piss-ant nephew. And while you never know what kind of crazy person you are walking next to on a city block, I still find it acceptable to give a woman/gay man (the most guilty offenders) a quick piece of my mind as I walk directly into her/his-her texting-fat-ass, as is what just happened to me outside the Levi's store on Lexington (right across from Bloomingdale's). I mean she looked at me like I was the asshole, like I should have been the one looking where I'm going. Um, excuse me, lady, but next time you have a problem, fucking look up! How would you like it if your dentist was reading Maxim while filling your rotting Mexican teeth with copper? The next time your son is arrested, how would you like it if my public defender brother decides to accidentally skip your kid's arraignment and send me instead?

Thought so!

From now on, New Yorkers would be much happier if A) those Freedom Towers finally got built B) The summer Hamptons crowd stayed permanently in the Hamptons and C) some of our stimulus money went to this here.

Next time I walk into someone because they are texting, I will immediately throw my phone at their head while simultaneously holding up this picture, to one of the coolest—and most useful apps—I've seen in awhile:

Growing Pains

2010-05-25T11:37:00.000-07:00

Ah, to be young. The things we take for granted. Like living at home with your parents. The fridge is always stocked, laundry is free (and downstairs!), your mom will pick up the toiletries you need for you. Putting aside our teenage angst, and the I-can’t-wait-to-grow-up attitude, we really didn’t have it so bad.

(Heck, when I was in high school I'd put $10 of gas in my shitbox car and it would actually last the week! Touche.)

I don’t really mind being an adult now, it’s just I didn’t realize some of the good ways I had it before. Sometimes I’d gladly trade knowing I have to work 14 hours on a Friday for being 17 again, with a curfew. But so be it.

So now I find myself kind of rekindling my youth in unorthodox ways. How else do you explain my love—er, obsession—with sneakers. Sneakers are a big thing for me. I own A LOT of pairs of sneakers. I think it’s really because I never had the ‘cool’ kicks when I was a kid. They were just too expensive for my parents to buy me. They left my brother and I a budget of $40 to get a pair. That was tough at the sneaker store. I was lucky to find something decent at TJMaxx or Marshall’s. I’m not complaining, I wasn’t deprived, and I was only teased occasionally, rather than picked on (a rite of growing up, I feel), so it wasn’t an issue that made me bitter or anything. But I lived in a place where most of my friends were really spoiled. And so maybe I was a little envious of the material things they had. Hence, why I buy sneakers: I can afford them! If I want some Air Max 95’s or some Air Jordan III’s I can buy them for myself. It’s nice to have that freedom. The $100+ for sneakers luckily now takes me no time to earn; in high school it took like a week. So the cost is little but the satisfaction is great for me.

These creature comforts extend beyond my closet. And it’s always a little thing, something maybe you may take for granted. Honestly, good toilet paper! Can’t put a price on an honest mechanic, a good haircut and good toilet paper! My parents always used to buy that crap, frozen canned orange juice and that crap Scott tissue toilet paper. I convinced them half-gallons of Tropicana were the way to go, and I happily drank my yummy, non-watered-down juice from then on. But that toilet paper—to this day they still use that horrible, cheap toilet paper. I vow that poor excuse for a product will never enter my house again. Now that's a benefit of being an adult!

I recently started a new job, in a new office, a month ago. I'm comfortable here, but still settling in, feeling people out. And let’s just say I finally had to ‘christen’ the place last week. I was DYING the rest of the day. Good Lord I needed a Preparation-H baby wipe after that one! The mixture of sand and tissue paper they put in those stalls is just inhumane. The pain was physical but also emotional, drumming up all those horrible dumps as a kid finished in an unsatisfactory manner with that Scott tissue.

I hope my brothers out there feel my pain. I ask, Have any of my fellahs out there ever been in a work bathroom stall that was supplied appropriately? I doubt it. Now, this place steps it up like a law firm, with hand sanitizer, a plethora of hair products, mouthwash, colognes and deodorants, in case you need a little refresher. So how bout stepping it up on the main stuff!

I got a little stockpile in my desk drawer now; the ‘emergency’ drawer, if you will. From now on, if I’m heading to do some ‘extra work,’ I come prepared. I’m heading down the hall with the BlackBerry, the AMNY, and some good ol’ medicated baby wipes. Hallelujah! I'm an adult, goddammit! And I'm setting the rules now!

Bag ladies: Hideous monsters or dazzling beauties? Next, on Mr. Sinister!

2010-05-04T04:33:00.000-07:00

I love women. All women. Well, maybe not fat, ugly or annoying women. And especially no combination of the three. But I still love the ladies. Only, I'm perplexed by them.

I mean, all men concede we'll never understand women, but there are just some things you ladies do that are just more baffling than others. Take for instance your daily routines. Now, I'm not here to comment on what you do in the bathroom or why we are always left waiting for countless hours just to walk across the street to the diner. The one issue recently I've been trying to come to grips with is your everyday traveling accoutrements.

Lately, navigating a sidewalk, street corner and, especially, subway is like a running back's gauntlet drill. How can I move without getting hit by various objects? Ever notice what a woman has with her while heading to work? In my observation the women of New York City will carry a purse or pocketbook (whatever you women are calling those things these days!). Pretty normal, right? Ok, I get that one. Then there may be a gym bag of some sort, or one of those canvas ecofriendly bags from Origins or some shit. I get that, too. You ladies wanna look good and we appreciate it. But then there's always that 'extra' bag; that one teeny little Bloomingdale's bag that you have in your hand. What's that for?! What the heck do you have in there that wouldn't fit into your other two bags? I'm bewildered.

It's not that I really even need to know how much crap you girls are carrying. Frankly, why the hell would I care? But why the heck do you INSIST on keeping all those things on your shoulders and in your hands on a crowded subway. Surely one of those bags can hang out down by your feet for a few minutes instead of squishing me even more into the corner! Surely, I don't need to be hit in the elbow time and again by those enormous, ugly "CD" letters that hang off your expensive and tacky bag! Your 120-pound ass (hopefully) is taking up precious square footage real estate around town like a chick whose Friday nights consist of making Duncan Hines brownies and watching Gilmore Girls reruns.

Like I said, I love you ladies, you're all interesting and beautiful creatures. Just put the fucking bag down. You ain't Pretty Woman on Rodeo either!

Ejector seat needed

2010-04-20T15:02:00.001-07:00

I rarely, if ever, sit on the subway. Since today I was coming home at an off hour and there were seats available I decided to sit. I'm Rosa Parks for a new generation. (No, I'm really not.) After a few stops the benches were fairly filled up. But you know what, even if you are 5'2" and weight 112 pounds—if there are only FOUR INCHES OF ASS ROOM between me and the next person, YOU DO NOT HAVE TO SQUEEZE YOUR ASS DOWN IN THAT SPACE!

Look, I'm going to resist the temptation to go on a rant here, but let's just say the person who did this was of a culture where they have 2 billion people living in a space the size of Milwaukee!

Random Thoughts: Vol. 3

2010-04-13T07:16:00.001-07:00

1) Bono is Irish. Celine Dion is French Canadian. Robert Plant is British. Kieth Urban is Australian. Know what they all have in common? You can't tell where they're from when they're singing. Why is it that every singer, no matter their nationality, has no discernible accent? All singers, that is, except country singers! How is it that they talk in that horrible twang and it somehow translates to their singing voice? The only exception to this norm I can think of is friggin' Chumbawumba. (I ge' knowcked down bu' I ge' up agayhn...)

2) What do Nic Cage, Matthew McConaughey, David Spade, Jude Law, John Travolta and Jeremy Piven all have in common? They miraculously have heads of hair again. Speaking from a curious point of view, How the heck did they do that?!

3) Who started the ass slap? Gayest thing in sports ever. It's the Glee of sports. If Derek Jeter slaps Mark Teixiera's ass one minute and then starts talking about Glee the next, you can just put him right on the cover of Out magazine.

4) I've always wondered why pharmacists need MD's? Now, I truly don't mean to disrespect the pharmacists; I have several friends who are pharmacists. But it's the doctors who prescribe the medicines. It seems to me all the pharmacists do is reach on a shelf, pull out some pills, count them out, and put them in a little cylinder with your name on it. In what part of the equation did they need to know anything about medicine? All the warning labels and directions for administering the drugs are already on the labels. So what, exactly, do they do then? Have you ever tried to ask a pharmacist a question? They never know the answer. Most times they just read the labels themselves. Heck, they can't even tell me where the Tylenol is in the CVS!

5) I reserve the right to expand on this with more examples, but I was thinking about this the other day: Is there no harsher sounding word in the English language than Manslaughter? Speaking in legal jargon, I know the word Murder came about 1,000 years ago to speak of the most heinous crime a man can commit. But just take the words at their face value; doesn't manslaughter just sound so much worse? Think about it: the Slaughter of Man! I mean, that's awful. Way worse (sounding) than murder. I wonder how many other words are out there that just have much better connotation than how we're using them at the moment?

You should definitely shoot the messenger

2010-03-11T08:07:00.000-08:00

Ever have one of those mornings? Just one of those mornings when everything goes wrong? Maybe you ran out of milk for your cocoa puffs. Maybe the dog pissed on the carpet again. Maybe you accidentally broke that ugly vase your wife loves. One of those things by themselves wouldn’t bother you too much, or throw you too much off your morning routine, but when one disaster snowballs after another it just fucks up your day. You can’t recover. Maybe you’ve been up for 26 minutes but you know the rest of your day is just fucked.

So be it.

Maybe you got up, showered, shaved. But you cut yourself. It won’t stop bleeding and you get blood on three of your wife beaters. Fuck. Then, suddenly, last night’s dinner isn’t sitting so well. You are showered, dressed, got the tie all perfect, but guess what? You gotta take a shit. Fuck! (Nothing is worse than that. You feel dirty for the rest of the day, no matter how many times you baby wipe.) Now you’re in a rush so you run to the kitchen to grab a granola bar as you head out the door but you kick over the cat’s food bowl and water dish. It’s all over the damn place. Now you have to stop rushing and clean up the cat’s stuff. God dammit!! Fuck shit fuck!! Nothing goes right. I hate those mornings.

Your day doesn’t ever get any better from then on, does it? You are destined to hate every one and every thing that comes in your path. And is there anything worse when you’re already revved up than people? God I hate people. Stupid, annoying people. I hate how they don’t hold the elevator for you, or how they have absolutely no idea that you're walking behind them on the sidewalk desperately trying to walk around them. But worst of all, what might throw your or me or anybody over the edge, is the damn conversations; the small talk.

Why is everyone so BORING?!?!? You get on the elevator at work—and you probably see the same exact faces at the same exact time every day—and inevitably that older woman brings up the weather. Every day! It’s supposed to be 46 today. But it looks like rain this weekend. Gee, thanks lady, yea, I watched "Good Day New York" too. Or maybe the elevator is stopping at every floor. What does someone inevitably say? Must be a local. Aaaaaaaaaah! Then there’s always that 23-year-old, just-outta-college-this-is-her-first-job girl who talks to other 23-year-old just-outta-college girl and what does she say? I’m sooooo tired! Honestly, shut the fuck up. You left at 5:30 p.m. yesterday, immediately went out after work with your other annoying girlfriends, drank too many fruity drinks in a tall glass and stayed up too late. Of course you’re tired. Or, maybe it’s just the fact that it’s 8:30 in the morning! You're yawning already, you haven’t had coffee yet. You. Are. Not. Helping!

It never ends. You get to the office and the fat guy asks you if you saw the Knicks game last night. Of course not; you haven’t watched a Knicks game on TV since 2001. Then the boss’s secretary, who is usually a sweetheart, wants to talk about American Idol. Look, they all suck this year, just admit it. You still haven’t gotten to your desk yet when a colleague tells you some bad news which you know will keep you at work later than you had planned. And what does he say, after delivering this news? It is what it is.

Here’s what it is: I cannot stand people. I really should live on an island somewhere.

Hey, by the way, did you see "Lost" last night?

Next time they fall off, leave 'em off!

2010-02-10T08:38:00.000-08:00

I thought I was going to be fairly unique with this kvetch. Then I realized even Joan Rivers is more current than me. So I proceeded to stab myself in the eyeball before I continued.

Anyhoo, I'm pretty much tired of seeing "thug niggas" walking around with their pants halfway down their asses. I realize I sound like a grandparent (hence the Joan Rivers comment), but honestly they are now proven right. My grandparents died over 10 years ago and they laughed at it then. Tupac died nearly 14 years ago! He is credited with starting the look, based on his jail attire. Inmates can't wear belts in jail, so they got the best size pants they could, and if they fell down, so be it. Tupac got into this habit and brought it into our lives when he got out. I guess that was part of his street cred. (Like getting shot four times wasn't enough?!)

Well if I were still wearing Skidz or Big John jeans I'd be ridiculed like Gary Coleman. Whatchu talkin' about HLS? Style grows, it moves on. GQ realizes this; in its latest issue they praise Andre Benjamin and Pharrell Williams for their looks, while Joan Rivers utterly mocked T-Pain for his outfit at the Grammys. Even Joan Rivers said enough is enough! She's 117 years old. And at least eight of her faces have been subjected to this crap-ass (pardon the pun) style, which I say we first started seeing around 1992.

Look, if the throwback jersey can go, if Lebron James and Jay-Z can dress fly and grown-up at the same time, so can everybody else.

If anybody's out there, reading this at their desks while dressed like Eminem, just try and picture my 5'9", 220lb. ass in Umbros. And you'll get what I'm bitching about!

Time to take (trans)action!

2010-02-10T08:17:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted in now what amounts to nearly a month. For that I apologize. For the record, the last two weeks I've spent in Houston (with my flight being cancelled twice because of Eastern weather) with my nieces and nephews jumping on me every chance they got. I needed rest from them waking me up at the buttcrack, and lacked the time to blog.

Our daily lives are based upon convenience now. Debit cards, drive-through ATMs, WiFi everywhere ... so why is the receipt holding us back? In this age of environmental consciousness, do we really need to even be printing receipts anymore? Isn't that counterintuitive? Isn't that what bar codes were invented for, or why we have advanced computer systems with inventory tracking metrics? Shoot, businesses know everything about consumers now. They know how much our average shopping ticket is, what particular items we like to buy on a regular basis, even how many kids we have. It's mind boggling. Yet we're still printing out a piece of paper telling us what we bought. Hmm.

I ran across the street from my apartment to Rite Aid the other day. I bought five items. My receipt was 14.25 inches long. Over a foot long! To list five friggin' items! I'm not going to even mention the things that were on there; but suffice it to say that piece of paper went directly into the garbage. What a waste. Forgive me, but if I really needed to return my mini hand sanitizer, couldn't the cashier have simply scanned the bar code and seen that I purchased my Purell on X date and Y time? Honestly, by the time she found the product on that laundry list of a receipt, NFL players will have stopped beating up their girls. And who wants that, ya know?

I recycle, I try to take reusable bags with me when I go shopping, I try not cook more than is needed so as to not waste food, and yet Blockbuster is fucking me up! I know most of you use NetFlix by now, but have you been in a Blockbuster recently? Checkout takes 30 seconds, but then I have to wait two minutes for three ridiculous receipts to print out. Waste, waste, waste. Annoying, annoying, annoying.

It's time to make printed receipts like a "Dancing with the Stars" cast--irrelevant.

Random Thoughts: Vol. 2

2010-01-15T07:36:00.000-08:00

1) Doorbells are obsolete now. At least for your friends waiting in the car for your slow ass or for guys wanting to pick up their dates while conveniently avoiding their girlfriends' fathers. You just pull into the driveway, or to the front of the house, and send a text that says, “I’m outside.” Done and done. No more need to even honk and annoy the neighbors.

2) Have you ever noticed that car dealerships are perpetually having sales? Come on down! We’ve got great deals on Corollas, Camrys, RAV-4s all for National Secretaries Day! … There’s no time like today to get yourself in a brand new Santa Fe for Arbor Day! And if you act now, we’ll plant a tree, in your name, in the rainforest!

3) It is the middle of January. It’s frickin’ freezing all across this country. So tell me, why are all retailers now selling Spring clothes? Especially while they’re all struggling in this economy? You don’t think it would be prudent of the Gap to lay out a few extra wool sweaters or maybe some thermals? Pisses me off!

4) If I order a, say, the Works pizza from California Pizza Kitchen (Sweet Italian sausage, pepperoni, sautéed mushrooms, Mozzarella cheese, mild onions, green peppers, black olives and tomato sauce), it would cost me around $12. If I added, say, bacon to my pie it would cost me, say, $15. So if I want the Works, say, sans mushrooms and olives, why the hell don’t they charge me less? That’s bullshit!

5) Call me a traditionalist, but I really can't stand this new trend of waspy ass, cheesy ass names for babies. Harper, Madison, Presley, Logan, Jordyn, Cort ... elementary school classrooms will shortly sound like law firms.

I'm fat. What kind of handouts do I get?

2010-01-08T12:09:00.000-08:00

“Expectant Mother Parking” is kind of a farce. Now, I’m not knocking pregnant women; they obviously deserve a decent amount of slack. But can we get a little more specific on what expectant entails? If you have been pregnant for three weeks, I really don’t think you need to park 10 feet from the Loehmann’s. I want to see some, fat, waddling, about-to-pop woman walking out of that spot. At least be showing!

It’s the word expectant that throws me all off. My wife and I will probably have children in the next two to three years. We’re ‘expecting’ to. So does that mean she gets to park there? After all, she IS expecting ... at some point. Uh, no!

It’s like going into a bank and asking for a mortgage. They ask you what you make and what your wife makes. Can I say, “Well, I make $60K/yr now, but I expect to make $1.6 million next year? So how ‘bout that $10 million loan now, huh?” Isn’t this exactly what caused the tech bubble to blow? Expectant had better mean something.

In like Flynt, out like trout

2010-01-07T07:44:00.000-08:00

Ah, the holidays. A time for family and exchanging presents and eating good food.

And it's also a time for family arguments, aggravating travel and being hung over from not only alcohol but the good food, too.

You know that when it hits November you start to think about when you can take off work. For me it's always been hard because on my small staff everyone wants to take off at the same time, but you just can't do that in a newsroom. But most people are cool and we work it out with each other. The worst part is trying to figure out just how many days off you have left.

I use the term "days off" specifically. To me, if you're out of work, youre out of work. Doesn't matter if you're in Barbados, if you have the swine flu or if it's Yom Kippur. If you're out you're out. Not to my company.

Our HR department gives you "vacation days," "floating holidays" (whatever the fuck that means) and (unwritten but accepted) "sick days." Vacation days you can bank, floating holidays you can't and sick days are luck of the draw. It's horrendously confusing, and makes absolutely no sense to me. You call HR and want to take five days off during Christmas/New Years and they tell you, "Well you only have two vacation days and one floating holidays left." Well that's great; I'm taking off anyway! The stupid way this system is set up means that for me to take off for the five days, I'm taking my two vacation days, one floating holiday and then rounding off my vacation with two sick days. I'm sorry, but this is ridiculous.

A day off is a day off. Why the hell can't an HR department just tell every employee you get, say, 14 days off for vacation, total, and we'll cut you some slack if you're sick. Or, even simpler: you get 21 days off a year; use them at your disposal. It's just too confusing to figure all of this out, especially in an environment where nobody punches a clock and staff ROUTINELY works 50 and 60 hours a week. We deserve our days off. I don't care if you call them Going-to-Vegas-to-get-a-Hooker days.

Taking a hit on cool points

2010-01-06T08:43:00.000-08:00

The DVR is the best invention of the past 10 years. I'm convinced. It changed my life. It makes decisions easy. Now, if someone calls me up at 4 p.m. and wants to get a drink after work I can easily say yes. I don't have to make an excuse as to why I can't, like, "I'm swamped at work," when in the past the real answer would be, "I really don't want to miss 'Temptation Island' on TV." And thank god for that.

The Bumper Bully is the worst invention of the last 10 years. I don't know what it is but lately I've been noticing an abundance of Bumper Bullies around. If you don't know what I'm talking about it's that ugly, black flap of rubber that hangs from people's trunks on the back of their cars.

First of all, what is it protecting? Your crappy-ass plastic bumper? Big wup. I live in New York City, where most people can't pull into or out of spots without using the 'touch' method. Little dings are a right of passage! But ok, you have a nice new Lexus and you park it on the street and you want to make sure you keep it clean. I get that. But why do you insist on driving around with the damn thing hanging off the back of your car? Can't you just put it back inside the trunk, where it rightfully belongs? It makes a nice car look ugly. And if it's on an ugly car then why are you bothering anyway? Your 1997 Corolla does not need a damn Bumper Bully!

Secondly, did anyone stop and think, Hey, what about the front of my car? How come some idiot only thought about inventing an ugly black flap for the back of a car? Is the front not at least equally important to protect? Trust me, Mrs. Shu can just as easily back her Honda Odyssey into the front of your car and ding your grill up. Personally, a dented grill would piss me off more than a scrape on my back bumper.

It's just a stupid, ugly contraption. I honestly don't get it.

Sherlock away from Holmes

2010-01-04T07:18:00.000-08:00

Anyone go to the movies on Jewish Christmas? Anyone see Sherlock Holmes? That’s good, hope you enjoyed …

Our Christmas started off with such promise. The plan was to drive out to Long Island, get some food somewhere and go movie hop. We had the schedules all mapped out for optimal hopping performance. So we get going around noon and wind up in Westbury. We know most things are closed on Christmas Day, but hey, this is Long Island! There’s always a diner open, right? Hmm. Well, I kid you not when I tell you we spent an hour in the car trying to find someplace open to eat. The one diner that was open was so packed we would have waited over an hour to sit down. Not happening. So we hop back in the car and drive around some more and we honestly settle on the only thing we can find open: Burger King. (This made me surprisingly happy because I’d been craving a Whopper for the longest! We didn’t want the standard Chinese because we just had it the day before.) So we eat our burgers and head off to the theater.

Huge mistake. I have never in my life seen a movie theater so crowded. The parking lot was like downtown Tokyo, which should have told me all I needed to know about the inside. The lines to buy tickets at the teller were out the door on both sides; the lines to get into your movie once you already had your ticket snaked around the entire enormous lobby; even the Fandango kiosk was probably 50 people deep. It was insane.

And then, of course, everything started to sell out. I mean everything! We wound up getting on line, hoping for the best once we got up there, but gave up after 10 minutes when we realized it wasn’t going to happen. Eventually we left and decided to take our chances back home in Queens. So, in case you were wondering, we drove all the way out to Long Island on Christmas Day to eat Burger King and drive home. Good times.

So we headed off to a nice, big Regal theater in Queens thinking we’d have a much better shot. After all, if you’re gonna aim for an empty theater on Christmas Day, might as well be where there is an abundance of Christians. Yea, in retrospect it really wasn’t such a good idea to spend Jewish Christmas in the Jewish Mecca that is Long Island. So we were in luck! The Regal theater was, relatively speaking, pretty empty. Only problem was, there was nothing playing remotely around when we arrived at the theater. We would have had to wait there God knows how long, and the theater is in an outdoor mall—and it was freezing—so we left again and decided to just aim for the theater right down the block from our apartment.

We wanted to see Sherlock Holmes at 5 p.m. We got to the theater and guess what? Yup, sold out. Fuck! But the 7:10 p.m. show was still available so we decided to see that. Finally. But now we had two hours to kill, and my wife didn't want to go home and come back, so we just walked around our neighborhood in the cold with nearly no stores to walk into, but we managed to finally kill the time. And then we saw Sherlock Holmes and everything was wonderful. So, for all you kids counting at home: We left the house at noon and wound up taking about 7 hours to see one damn movie!

At least my wife got to see the film. I missed the last 10 minutes. Nature called unexpectedly. Actually, Nature was knocking down my door with a battle ax … and to all the men out there, you know what that means.

So I had to excuse myself, miss the climax of the movie and head to the restroom. I was not thrilled about that prospect. Think about it, how do you feel about public restrooms? If you’re anything like me it is an option only for extreme emergencies.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

John Mayer once said (and I’m paraphrasing here), “Comfort is being able to take a dump in public like you would in the privacy of your own home.” That’s damn astute of him. And damn hard to pull off.

So I get to the bathroom and there are three stalls. The middle was already occupied, but otherwise the bathroom was completely empty. That was a good sign for some comfort. So I can either choose between the handicapped stall on the left or the normal one on the right. Which one would you choose? The handicapped, right? You want the extra room? It’s a nice thought and all, but should I pick the toilet filled with piss and shit, or the one filled with shit and piss? What a decision. It’s like choosing between the hot girl who you’ll have to buy 17 drinks for to wind up kissing or the butter face who will come home with you for a slice of bad pizza. When you’re horny. But I digress …

So I chose the smaller stall that was relatively shit-free but covered in piss. Now, bare in mind the severity of the situation here. Time is of the essence. But I spent as much—as little?—time as possible cleaning off the seat with some toilet paper and got down to business. Ahhhhhhhhh! That poor bastard sitting in the stall next to me! I think I shit out a large, decomposing raccoon. And besides, even though the whole situation was gross, I figured the movie would be over by the time I got out so I could just go home and shower right away. So this wasn’t as comfy an experience as being on your home field, but at least that thought was comforting.

But gentlemen, there are some things to be gleaned from this situation. Did you ever wonder why the hell women take so damn long in a public bathroom? Or why there’s always a line outside their bathroom? Well, I now know why. Listen closely, fellahs. It’s not that they wear a lot of layers, or that they are chatting with their girlfriends, or even that they’re spending time looking in the mirror touching up their hair and faces …

It’s the toilet paper. Public restrooms have terrible toilet paper. It’s absolute shit. It’s shit-covered shit. And it’s not even that it’s as thin as Brittany Murphy (Too soon? Oooh!), it’s that it’s as wide as a baseball card. I mean, what the fuck is that? Seriously, it covers about three fingers’ worth of your hand. This is why women spend so damn long in the bathroom, men. This is the answer right here: It’s because they have to spend 10 minutes wrapping that paper, and crumpling it and folding it and contorting it in such a way, that it covers their entire hand. And you know what? I don’t blame them. Not at all. Not in the least.

And you know what else? Why the hell is that industrial-sized toilet paper dispenser always like 6 inches off the ground? Who can reach that thing? Then you have to walk that tightrope where you reach your hand in gingerly and try and pull the paper down as gently as you can so that you can get an ample amount but make sure it does not touch the floor. Is there anything grosser than that? Seriously, you pull at the paper and it takes you a good minute or two just to get the rhythm going where you can pull a little and clump it in your hand without it touching the floor. The first five pulls you inevitably rip off one damn square, so you have to keep trying until you get your pace. Then you finally get enough paper in your hand that you can bring it up to waist level and reapportion it for general wiping use.

It’s a long and winding road, gentlemen. It’s a painstaking process. So next time those ladies are taking fucking forever in a public restroom, cut them some slack. They've got one heckuva situation to deal with, one we only come across in the worst of times.

We may be able to pee standing up. But heck, they can hover!

Change of philosophy is needed

2009-12-15T08:59:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-14T08:38:00.000-08:00

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...

2009-12-08T14:38:00.001-08:00

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.

2009-12-07T07:59:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-04T06:49:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-03T08:22:00.000-08:00

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.

2009-12-02T07:55:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-01T10:22:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-30T08:18:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-25T06:58:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-24T07:01:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-23T05:36:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-20T07:03:00.000-08:00

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?

2009-11-19T11:55:00.000-08:00

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.)