Sherlock away from Holmes

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!

Well, at least some rest for the weary

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

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

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

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



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

Smell of success?

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

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

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

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