Is there a worse actor than Keanu Reeves?

That new movie "the day the earth stood still" looks miserably acted,. I think that Vinny Chase's character might have based on Keanu, cause that dude can't act his way out of a paperbag, he is more that miserable.

You know you are terrible when every movie you do sounds like they just typecast you after your Bill and Ted's performance.. When you get out acted by Jim J. Bullock's twin sister you know you are never going to win an Oscar, let alone a TORy.

I think I'd prefer to sit at an IMAX theater and watch a collection of commercials than Keanu Reeves. Give me a combination including that terrible Beyonce "time to upgrade" commercial, the $5 footlong one and the worst one yet.."Say Bye Zero's"
Makes you almost miss those John Mellencamp ones.

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You wear a black armband when they trampled the man who said, peace would last forever

People disgust me, especially when a poor overnight clerk gets trampled to death by a mob squad trying to save $25 on a Tickle Me Elmo. Personally I would line up every idiot who stands on a line at 5am to be the first of those door busters.against the outside wall and peg them with tennis balls like a game of asses up.
Actually anybody who was part of the Long Island stampede should be taken out back and beat with 42" TV's and Walmart hotdogs.

I walked into Toys R Us yesterday and was ready to start my own stampede but the stampede I was hoping to start was to get out of that hell hole. Who the hell cares so little about their own personal time that they are willing to sacrifice an entire Vacation day to save $15 and be surrounded by people as stupid as themselves.

People should be shot.
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I got a Gas issue

Although I don't own a car, and thus haven't been directly hit by the rising and falling gas prices, I do have an issue about gas stations which MUST be addressed..

Topping the gas off when paying with a credit card is completely nonsensical and an absolute jivejob. What the. Hell is the point to making sure my gas is divisible by$0.50 when it just gets thrown into a large pile of other credit card purchases...

This is almost as big a scam as the $0.0099 they add to the price of gas, 89 octane or the "fresh" coffee they sell in those station bodegas

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Gluttony

We are a disgustingly obese country and that is never more apparent than on Turkey day when the entire country seems to come together as one, regardless of religion, race, creed, sexual orientation, shoe size and gorge ourselves on Turkey and cookies. The one day in the year where the fairly healthy person who exercises, and eats right can act like the rest of the country and sit around and stuff stuffing down their throats,. Issue is that there is a small minority of people who are just acting "fat and disgusting" for the day (like Halloween) will go back and run 4 miles tomorrow while the vast majority of people just see this as an excuse to embrace the gluttony and almost see it as a badge of honor..



I have heard so many people tell me "you are lucky, you are skinny".. Screw that, I was 245 pounds and there was no luck in me getting off that number.. it was hours sweating on the treadmill, it was countless cookies and bowl of french fries I passed up, not luck. These are usually the same slobs who pride themselves in saying "run a marathon,...I drive to the front of the driveway to get the mail"



I'm thankful that tomorrow I will have the will power unlike 85% of this country to NOT repeat the Thursday foodbowl but instead will go back to getting off my ass, the rest of the country should take my lead.



Let's play a game to keep you sane today:



Everytime some idiot says "tryptophan", kick him in the nuts



Everytime some jackass mentions the economy, stab them in the wee-wee with your knife.



Everytime some jerk says something to the effect of "I'm starting my diet tomorrow, but today I will take another serving". Stick your winky in the mashed potatos and serve it to them



And everytime the Lions give up a TD, slam your nutsack onto the table and beat it with the turkey



It'll make Thanksgiving that much more fun.

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The Grease Truck's of New York City

I'm not talking about the legendary Rutgers meals-on-wheels but instead the gyro carts around New York City.

There might not be a better/worse meal to get in New York City than a $4 gyro from one of the many carts which line the midtown streets but the difference in quality is so great that you can go from just a normal run of the mill bad stomach-ache to a very very bad stomach-ache by going to the wrong one.

I believe I have found the best one in the city and luckily it is right around the corner from my office, called "Mr Khan's Best Food".. this is the kind of place where you order a gyro at noon and you are still tasting it at 6pm.. And really for $4 how can you go wrong? You get about a pound of gyro meat with some iceberg lettuce a couple of soiled tomatoes.. Don't worry about any possible E-coli, all bacteria gets burned away by the liter of hot-sauce they pour over your sandwich and don't worry about your burning tongue because they douse the entire sandwich with a full pound of white sauce. Throw it all together, wrap it in tinfoil and you are off and running (to the bathroom)..

people ask why I prefer this truck to the 4 other ones within a 2 block radius and I can't really put my finger on it. I have been to at least 25 of these trucks and the quality of the food goes from terrible to fantastic. I always believe that Mr. Kahn's combination of the succulent meat and the extra flavor they get by pouring back the fat which has come off the meat.. .

The real way to know that this Mr. Khan is better than others is that this dude has a line of 10 to 15 people from noon till 2pm everyday.. He must be doing something right because he has a line of people just dying to hand over $4 for some heartburn and will stand there in rain or shine, when it's snowing or when it's 95 degrees outside.

I have a friend who refuses to hit the Trucks because she believes she'll pick up hepatitis from the meat but then again this is the same chick who once dined on raw tuna she found at some club.

The Metropolitan Diary

Not sure who has ever picked up the NY Times on a Monday and read through the Metro section and come across a section entitled "the Metropolitan Diary"

It's a cute little section where people write short stories of funny anecdotal items based on various experiences they have living or travelling through Manhattan. A lot of the stories have travelling on public transportation or in taxi's as the back-scene and they are usually about 10 to 15 lines long and are intended to give the casual reader a quick chuckle.

Problem is that most of these stories are so completely self-serving. Usually not overtly but within the details of the story.  I'll try to find a couple but out of the four or five they print, inevitably three of two or three of them have nothing to do with the "cute story" and only to give the writer a platform to brag from.

Although I don't remember any off the top of my head, a typical 'dear diary' entry would go like this

"Dear Diary


I was on my way to volunteer in the local soup kitchen last Saturday but after a late night I got up a bit later than usual .  I usually take the 6 train downtown but since I was running late I decided to jump in a cab.. When we got to my destination I realized that in my haste I had left my wallet sitting on my dresser at home.   I explained my story to the cabby who looked and handed over a card with his home address and said 'just send me the fare when you get home. I smiled and rushed out.. Only in New York


Signed


Jane Blow from the Upper East Side"

the fact that the writer was volunteering that she was volunteering has NOTHING to do with the story but it's this type of self-serving detail that is always buried in the story.

You also see a ton of them that are basically just excuses for bragging about a kid.

"Dear Diary

My wife and I were on our way to the Graduation ceremony at Columbia law school for our Son Jim, we were both in a rush because as Suma Cum Laude he was to give the class speech and we wnated good seats. As we walked out of our apartment building we saw a man struggling keeping his small dog leashed. After struggling with the dog, he finally lost his grip and the pooch ran down the street. Three kids standing on the sidewalk jumped to action and chased the canine down 89th street finally catching up to him as the dog was waiting patiently in line for the hot-dog stand. My wife and I had a good laugh as we hurried to the cross town bus

Signed

Joe Blow from Manhattan"

 
People should be shot

I'm not a Socialist it doesn't work, I'm not an anarchist, I'm not a Jerk, I'm not a communist, come suck my ass

Disclaimer: There are a few things in this world which I know almost nothing about but I have a very strong opinion about. The kind of thing where I start yapping and everybody around me looks at me like I’m half a mental patient because nothing I’m saying is based on any direct knowledge of the situation, I realize all of this but don’t care.

HOCKEY
Hockey sucks for many reason but one of the biggest issues I’ve always had with Hockey is that when two teams go into overtime that both teams win/lose get at least 1 point (the winning team gets 2 points I think). First of all this concept is ludicrous and un-American and absolutely ridiculous, how can a team lose a game but still make up ground in the standings? The integrity of the sport is at odds here, but the issue is larger than this, it speaks to the core values of our society and defends the people living in a Free Society from those living under Stalin.

This is the reason that this sport is so big in Eastern Europe and Russia and doesn’t work for a country based on Capitalism because capitalism is about winning and losing not this pseudo-Marxism which rewards failure. Socialist crap like giving a point to a losing team will forever keep this sport far out of the top three in a country which believes that working harder and better should be rewarded. The only thing I can say is that at least they finally got rid of the tie (the NFL should look into this by the way).



24
I have never seen this show, know nothing about it although I have many friends who live-and-die by the actions of Jack Bauer. The issue I have discussed many times with TOR relief Bitcher “The Bump” is that the concept of this show would have been so much better had a different character been put into one of these 24 hour settings. It makes the concept so far beyond-belief when the same guy just coincidentally gets into these types of situations time-after-time. I know everybody loves Bauer and are attached the character but it’s seriously flawed, at least John McClain addressed the ridiculousness of this type of situation when he asked “How can the same shit happen to the same guy twice?”

Jimmy Skimpy

Saw an ad in the subway for the Bowlmor bowling alley in Union Square. The ad focuses on all the big celebrities that have bowled there including Michael Phelps, Cameron Diaz, Will Smith etc.. Then as I go through the list of celebrities it mentions Jimmy Fallon and Michael Kors.. These two jackasses aren't the kinds of celebrities you should be proud to have had at your place they are the reason I would NOT go to bowl at your hellhole

As a follow up to yesterday's rant on McDonalds hating white people... After checking my call log, I remembered calling the McDicks 800 number Friday Night to complain, I am sure that message will be replayed at some point on a FOX show entitled "world's drunkest dialers"

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McDonalds discriminates against poor people, environmentally conscious people and people who work in NYC.

I walked up to the McDonalds on 4th Avenue and 1st Street tonight after a night of honest heavy drinking and was met with blatant discrimination. Although the front door was locked after 11pm, the sign said 24 hour drive through. I walk into the drive through lane and try to order two double cheeseburgers off the dollar menu.   The chick at the window then tells me that I am not allowed to order food because I am not in a car.

What?!!??! Because I don't own a car, I cannot order food??? I ask to speak with the manager to confront him on this blatant discrimination and am told that a without a car, they will not serve me a cheeseburger.  This manager couldn't give me a legitimate reason why I could not be served and I started to sense that this was their way of keeping the man down.  He claims it's store policy, so in other words this discrimination against pedestrians might go all the way to the top of the food-chain, the big honcho, the bigmac.
I called it as I saw it and told him that he was basically telling me that if you could either not afford.a car or was environmentally conscious or because you live in Park Slope and commute into WORK IN NYC you cannot get a burger, reverse racism I tell you.  I should have hailed a cab and had him drive me through the drivethrough so at least I can have two patties with cheese at 2am

Views from the airport (take 2)

Riding that airplane, high on cocaine, Poor little Righetti,stuck in the middle seat
Trouble ahead, trouble behind, poor little Righetti wants to blow out his mind.

5 1/2 hours from LA to Newark in seat 22E and I am ready to shoot myself, so figure that I would complain a bit. Really this will take you all of 3 minutes to read so indulge me!!

Noticed a new wrinkle at security.. The airport I was at has two lanes as you get to the security section: : one labeled "casual traveler" and the other "expert traveler". Not sure what it takes to get from one to another but the description was something like

Casual Traveler:
Is fairly familiar with TSA regulations
Has good overall understanding of security check-in procedure
Has boarding pass available
Travels occasionally

Expert Traveler
Is an expert at TSA regulations
Is completely knowledgeable of security check-in procedure
Has boarding pass in hand
Travels twice per month
Has a frequent flier number
Scored 4 digits on the SAT's

This is like going snowboarding and having to decide whether to go down the Black Diamond or the Blue Square trail.

There was no card, no proof, no black belt. Just your own call about which lane most fit you as a traveler.

This is how I decided:
The Expert line had 3 people in it while the casual line had 15 people in it.. WTF??!! What the hell does it take to be an expert: take off your shoes and take your laptop out of your bag? Know not to take out the toothpaste? Know to bend over when the guy shows up with the blue glove?? Basically the only thing that proves you are an expert is that you were expert enough to get into the shorter lane.

Plus went to Hudson News to find out that there now is a Hooters magazine??? I know this is supposed to delightfully tacky but this is a bit more than just tacky.

Not Shocking but whatever

Plus talking about tacky "professionals" wearing orange uniforms, Ocho Cinco just Ocho Sucks... My receivers with the exception of Roddy White all should be taken out back and taken out of MY misery.. They (Roy E Williams, Santonio "don't call me John" Holmes and the aforementioned Stinko) have made my receiving stable look like a glue factory. I think I may start Ted Ginn Jr. this week. Oh and in running back news Julius Jones and BrianJarvus Austin Green-Ellis can suck my ass.

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How do you people do it??

Two days in Los Angeles and I'm about to shoot myself...   I have spent exactly 4 hours working and a total of 20 hours driving and by driving I'm talking crawling.      For all the crap the NYC subway's get, at least it gets you where you need to be somewhat quickly.  This LA Traffic is just plain stupid.   You go from one parking lot to the next and everything is 100 miles from everywhere else...  I left my hotel at 5:30 this morning and rolled into my new hotel at 7pm tonight and I can count the amount of hours of actually meeting with customers one one hand and still have enough fingers left for a little self love.

Plus NYC is falling apart without me,  The Boss steps down, the MTA raises fares, Ashley Dupree is back on the front pages and the Knicks are scoring over 100 points per game.. I need some major help out here.

 Great picture of Jr and Sr. Bush

Reasons I despise flying commercial

First of all everything in the flying experience is a gigantic schlep from getting to the airport, to getting through security, to getting out of the plane everything takes a year. Then add to it that they treat you like a goddam 10 year old by telling you what you can and cannot do. This is all the same kind of bull intimidation that bouncers get who stand behind the velvet rope, except I have to get on a plane to make a living.
The way I see it, it's the combo of the airlines and the FAA all get together to tell the business travelers to go screw themselves, although the business traveler is the one who keeps them alive especially when times are rough.

If you take everything into consideration, from start to finish, they have made the entire experience so unpleasant and so expensive that you just dread getting on a plane. Not only do we have to deal with delays and overcrowding but they have to go in expecting to be treated like a complete fool.
Just look at the progression of airline travel from just a few years ago.

First it was the fact you had to get there over an hour and a half early to basically stand around and pick your ass, when you get there you deal with those long lines specifically at security where you get strip searched because god forbid you have a bottle of water in your bag, then they add the wrinkle where you gotta remove not just your belt but also your shoes, then they charge you for a suitcase which only means that every ahole tries to squeeze 2 weeks worth of clothes into those overhead bins. Add to it that they charge you $5 for a can of miller lite and $1 for headphones which are probably covered in lead paint and you got yourself a royal business traveler ass-f•ck.
They have their reasons for everything but none of it has any logic to it.:

My Pet Peeves:
1) Taking you shoes off at security, I cannot bitch about this enough.

2) Having to put your goddamn shaving cream in some stupid ziplock bag and put it separately through the XRay machine. I have learned long ago to just keep everything in my bag cause everytime I actually have taken it out they make me toss my toothpaste or shaving cream. When I leave it tucked away I walk through with everything intact. Next time I should shove it into the front of my $129 jeans and you walk through with a COSCO size tube of Crest.
First of all how do they get the water bottles and toothpaste through security to sell it inside the terminal?? Answer: they don't do anything because their systems can't pick it up on the XRay machine.
Volunteering to take something out of your bag and being surprised they confiscate it is like taking something out of your pants in the sauna at the NYSC and being surprised it gets 'confiscated'.

3). Why the hell do they tell you that when you are about to taxi from the gate that you cannot use your cellphone because the doors are closed when you are departing BUT as soon as you land you can talk/text/email away? Doors are closed then to, this makes absolutely zero sense and it annoys the piss out of me.

4). All the Hot Stewardesses from the 80's are the same fat-kankled broads working there now.

Really, I am convinced that all of this is just the airlines and airport's methods of keeping the man down.

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When all else fails, blame Richard Reid

So this where we are at the end of it all, on a train, high on life with a pocket full of money and a 40 in my hand.

Well this is how I always imagined they would end Bull Durham.

Now onto more pressing issues.. Why The F do I have to take my shoes off at the airport. The only thing I am hiding are the holes in my smelly socks.

They don't make you do this when you take the train which by the way picks you up right under MidTown Manhattan.. But no, this is an airplane and for everything holy you cannot board unless they made sure your I didn't hide a pack of gum in my Nike's.

This is the most idiotic concept I have ever heard of.. It slows everything down, they never find crap except passenger agitation and utter annoyance, which I am convinced makes it all worth it for them.


I finally get to the plane, find out I didn't get upgraded and the worse part is that they are showing Mamma Mia on the flight.

Please shoot me..

Entourage is incredibly not good

I can't tell whose acting is worse.. Vinny Chase or Adrien Grenier.. I really expect more from Marky Mark, this is worse than going back to the Funky Bunch. The script is terrible, the character develoment is awful, the acting is dreadful and sadly the story-line is worse.


Is there anything less comfortable looking than McCain and Obama meeting today, they promissed to work together, I'm sure that they will happily share a few cups of hot cocoa as they discuss this Detroit mess.. I think McCain might be laughing all the way to the bank as he tells Obama "sucks to be you!"

You gotta love the fact that Mark Cuban is being accused of insider trading, my first thought was if this had to do with trying to get Steve Nash back

Rick Sanchez on CNN looks like he ate Cambell Brown


Forget having to deal with this economic crisis and the Iraq war, I found a new reason why I don't envy Obama's pending job..

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Before he ran for president Barack Obama quit smoking. Now that he's won the job, he may have to break another addiction: Checking his BlackBerry for e-mail. The president's e-mail can be subpoenaed by Congress and courts and may be subject to public records laws, so if a president doesn't want his e-mail public, he shouldn't e-mail, experts said. And there may be security issues about carrying around trackable cell phones.

H&M (Hillary and McCain)

There is talk that Obama and McCain are due to meet next week.. I wonder if this is with or without preconditions.
Lets see if Obama adds both Hillary and McCain to his cabinet, just to prove he can put together his own Team of Rivals.. Forget Lincoln this would be like Michael Jordan and Reggie Miller both joining the Knicks.



Talking about H&M

Regular TOR reader Dr. Maddog makes the point that considering Michelle Obama's figure, she dresses pretty well. Michelle's style is hit or miss for me but everything she wears looks like it was bought at H&M.. The fit isn't always right and it looks like the kind of thing that won't make it through one wash-dry cycle without looking like it has been chewed up by the new White House Pooch.


My two pet peeves about sitting at The Little Mermaid on Broadway
1) Being at the little Mermaid on Broadway
2) People who sing throughout the entire thing, if I wanted to hear you sing, I wouldn't have paid $85 a person for it.

Stop reading this blog and pay attention where you piss

standing in a men's room the other night, I noticed a sign which caught my eye.. "Please don't throw paper towels in the toilet". What struck me was how effective that sign apparently was as the toilet bowl was paper-towel free. I was wondering why they didn't bother to put a "don't piss all over the toilet seat" sign next to it as the seat looked like a slip-and-slide.  I am not for people doing anything while taking a leak.  No talking, no texting, no wacking, no shaking..nothing..  Just piss and leave. 

Then again I never understood the concept of washing your hands after you took a leak and not before.. I mean I've been touching the subway, the door handles and then my winkie.   My winkie is definitely the cleaner part between my hand and unit after walking around NYC all day.    My rule is that you wash your hands before AND afterwards,

and honestly you should consider washing the back of your thighs and your ass cheeks after ever sitting down on one of these public bowls.. 

Sarah Palin = Peggy Bundy

Saw a picture of the first press conference that Palin has had since before she was selected to be the VP candidate on the McCain ticket. I thought it was Peggy Bundy first, what the hell is with that boufant?

Obama and Hillary got together today to discuss how she will fit into the plans of the new administration. So basically Obama will surround himself by the dead carcasses from the Democratic Primary Season.. So we can possibly have Bill Richardson Sec of Homeland Security, Hillary Sec of State, Biden VP, John Edwards Secretary of the Interior etc etc. lets hope he doesn't put Dodds in charge of Sec of the Treasury.

I am not one who believes that this bail-out of detroit is such a hot idea, basically you are only going to prolong the agony..   I believe that Capitalism is about building up when it is good and tearing down when the product is not any good, not this hand-holding socialist garbage that Washington wants to shove down our throats.   If a company cannot stand up on it's own feet and is not offering a product that people want to buy, why should you keep them alive especially if the mentality never changes?   They are burning through $11 Billion dollars of their reserves per month and this will only extend them hemoraging cash for another 2 months and then they will have to face the music. This is years of ineptitude and close-minded short-term thinking that has led to an inherent failure to break the culture they have created.   So not only has Detroit screwed the American consumer by offering crappy cars, they screw the tax payers out of billions of dollars plus they screwed me last year when Mike Martz refused to commit to the run when he had Kevin Jones ready and eager.

Going to the dentist for the first time in literally 5 years.

Why does every dentist tell you that those XRays are completely safe and then walk out of the room and put some 50lb jacket on you?

Then they tell me that it is 50-60% safer than before.. so in other words it was basically going to kill you instantly 5 years ago but now you have no worries.

Then they tell you it's much less radiation than a knee XRay, of course that isn't zapping through your head either.

18 XRays and 456 pokes with a sharp needle-like contraption later, I walk out refreshed and incredibly relieved that not only do I have no cavities but I also wasn't scolded for not flossing enough..

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Walk Tall and Carry a Big Stick

Apparently our President-Elect is just a little confident:

New Yorker Magazine: Obama said that he liked being surrounded by people who expressed strong opinions, but he also said, “I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.” After Obama’s first debate with McCain, on September 26th, Gaspard sent him an e-mail. “You are more clutch than Michael Jordan,” he wrote. Obama replied, “Just give me the ball.”

Was talking with a 5th grade teacher from the Connecticut suburbs this weekend, who told me that her public school lets the kids out if the temperature reaches above 89 degrees because it is too hot.. Like a snow day for a country of sissys, no wonder we are falling behind in all levels of eduaction.. I'm disgusted

I got the following email from regular TOR reader and occasional Relief Bitcher The Bump

"gas is under two bucks in jersey...why are we getting rid of W.Bush again?"

The Chicago Tribune had this piece today about how Michelle Obama was becoming the next fashion Icon and I quite frankly don't get it. Somebody should offer Michelle Obama $150,000 for some new clothes, she is the anti- Jackie O. I'm not saying she is always awful, because sometimes she looks pretty good but other times she looks like I'm watching her through a fun-house mirror.

somebody post pictures of me in my $129 jeans please

Day: Saturday Night
Occassion:  Mrs. Righetti's birthday Party
Place: Crowded NYC Bar which adds a 20% auto-gratuity.
Scene:  Righetti with the $129 jeans on standing at the bar talking about the election with a buddy "The Catfish"..  Some skanky looking hootch walks up and starts a conversations


Hot Chick: (chatty and bubbly)
Hey guys, what are you up to?

Righetti: (looking around, hoping to be rescued)..
nothing much

Hot Chick: (trying another angle)
So what do you guys do?

Catfish: (completely seriously)
I'm an attorney but not a very good one

Hot Chick: (laughing but kind of surpised)..
really?

Catfish: (dead serious with a defeated attitude)
Yeah, I've lost every case I've ever been on.

Hot Chick: (wondering what it will take now)
Oh.. Fun place huh?

Righetti: (not making any eye contact at all)..
yeah.. fun place

Hot Chick: (getting desperate)
Oh.. So you guys here for a party or something?

Righetti/Catfish screaming almost completely simultaneously
It's my wife's birthday/It's my fiancé’s friend birthday

Hot Chick (completely defeated)
I think my friends are calling me.

Righetti to Buddy (completely relieved)
Wow that was close, I thought she'd never leave

As a married dude, it's a sad day when you realize that you are not even remotely happy about getting hit on and actually more annoyed that some hot-chick was interupts your conversation.   It was like the weight of the world lifted off my shoulders when she finally left.

I knew those God-Damned Jeans were a disaster.

Oh Yeah.. Congrats to Relief Bitcher: The Ryan Express on his engagement, soon he'll have no idea what to do when getting hit on either!!!

An economic transfer of wealth worse than socialism

For all the name-calling and fear tactics from this last campaign season, there was a stone which was left unturned. After consulting a number of complex financial analysis and movements between economies of scale and analyzing how wealth from the private sector gets taken to be added into the social economic pool by the public sector I am ready to unveil my research on the transference of monies from the haves to the have-nots which is becoming more problematic than even endemic welfare.


People have never done less and gotten more, the issue is one of the largest transfers of wealth for virtually no work what so ever... my issue is the new Marxism......the 20% auto-gratuity.

On two separate occasions this weekend, I was hit with this Communist crap, the first time at some crappy ass bar who found it justifiable to add 20% to any credit card bill. What the F***, 20% to bring me three beers? You have to be kidding me!! how some bartender feels he is owed the same percentage as a "service charge" as a waiter, a masseuse or a barber, people who actually service you is beyond me.

There is no service in one of these busy bartenders what-so-ever,

no friendly smile,

no "how was your drink?",

no "can I get you something else?"

NOTHING.. this is complete horse-shit and I'm not standing for it anymore.



The second time was even worse after we sat down at an empty restaurant with a party of 10 late Sunday afternoon. Some waiter who looks like he fell out of RENT takes our order and subsequently forgets about us all together. Not one time does he come to ask us if we wanted another drink, some crushed pepper, another piece of bread anything.

Then comes the worse part, the reason you come to a restaurant.. here came the food.

The issues included

1) one out of the ten dishes ordered never comes out at all, something the waiter never acknowledges and only realizes when we complain to the bus-boy.

2) complete mistakes in food delivered, I got cooked salmon instead of the smoked salmon, a chicken sandwich down the table comes delivered sans chicken

3) the food quality, for those who actually got food, was piss-poor.

4) and worse yet my Bloody-Mary tasted like watered down tomato piss

But the biggest issue was not even the food but the fact that this sorry excuse for a human was completely AWOL.
No acknowledgment of the mistakes or the items he forgot, no apology from the management nothing plus to make a bad situation worse, I had to beg the busboy to refill my coffee and I get cranky when I haven't had at least a full liter of caffeine.

Then to add insult to injury, an hour after the first dish was served it becomes our obligation to track down this two-piece jack-off to ask him for a bill so that we can pay him for his crap food and of course we are met with another 20% auto gratuity.

What the hell is wrong with my life? I know that a large party usually has gratuity added but 20 percent for awful service and we're just supposed to bend over and take it. We've come to a point in this country when the waiter doesn't urinate in your coffee and wipe his ass with your hoagie you are thrilled. Since shitty service now basically requires 20%, what the hell does good service get.. felation from the customer?

I have a denim issue

On the average night the two pairs of jeans in my wardrobe are enough choice for basically any situation, my options are always between the one pair which has the rain-mold smell on them from the day I sat in the bleachers during a god-damn typhoon at Fenway Park and the other pair which has a knee tear that Sebastian Bach would have been proud of. Most nights this is fine but last night was one of those nights where I did not want to be the one a-hole who couldn't get into the bar because my jeans had an aura of homelessness around them and I’m not ready to be the guy who wears khaki’s in any social setting.

So with my options limited, I decide to run out and buy a new pair of jeans


The decision to get a new pair was probably wise but I was running late and there was no time to venture into the City to hit a GAP. Instead I walk into some fancy men's boutique clothing shop and head straight to the collection of jeans in the back of the store. I quickly realize that very much like the first time I played craps, I was completely out of my league, there wasn't a single pair of jeans under the price of $100 on the rack and if that isn’t bad enough most of them had some kind of weird embroidery on the ass.

Clerk asks if I need help as I clumsily fumble with a few pairs trying desperately to find something that doesn’t have three digits on the price tag. Conversation goes something like this


Righetti: so anything in the $40 range?

Clerk: our least expensive pair of jeans is $120,

Righetti: huh?

Clerk: you are in a designer jean shop, we don't deal in mass produced jeans. When you buy jeans here you’re looking for something that fits your figure

Righetti: ????

Clerk: when you buy a pair of real jeans, they should fit you perfectly. There are many types of jeans but these jeans aren’t for throwing a football around in, these are for going out. This is when you want to stand out, a real pair of jeans gets you laid

Righetti: (realizing that I’m on the wrong side of a losing argument but desperate) so nothing for like $50 bucks?

Clerk : No

Righetti: tell me about this getting laid thing?

Clerk: a real pair of jeans extenuates you where it counts and hides the parts that are flawed, mass produced jeans look like....well (looking down at the hip-hop things I got on) you know.


Now I realize that I have to be on the subway in less than an hour and there is just no time to run over to the GAP and back. My desperation is probably pretty obvious as I take a deep breath and try to not look completely overwhelmed. He asks what I’m looking for and I tell him that I’d like to get something sort of loose fitting and comfortable probably not realizing the irony of being the one jackoff who comes into a boutique shop to buy a pair of jeans they sell at Target.


He hands me about $2000 worth of denim and I walk into the fitting room and the transformation from a guy who watches football on a Sunday afternoon at an Irish Bar to a guy who needs a fucking shoehorn to get his jeans on is just about complete..


Now not only am I trying on jeans that costs more than anything in my wardrobe including my new suit but the most depressing part is that I have these gigantic thunder-thighs which basically makes 99% of these designer jeans impossible to even get on. This is the reason I always have to buy my jeans two sizes to big because otherwise I feel like they're pinching my nut-sack the entire day.


I try on a par and walk out of the fitting room into the shop and now I feel like one of those fashion shows on Bravo. Both the clerk and another customer critique the fit of every pair I try on and then hand me a new pair to try. This goes on for an exhausting 45 minutes till I finally give in and pick out the one pair, the one pair which don't feel like they are painted on.


Hanging my head in defeat I walk over to the register and hand over my VISA card, I go to sign my credit card receipt and as I stare at the $129 receipt, I realize that I don't even recognize myself anymore. I thought that I was the guy who wears a Creedence Clearwater shirt on Saturday’s not the guy who is willing to sacrifice sperm-count for fashion.


One Hundred and Twenty Nine Dollars and forty three fucking cents for a pair of jeans, has the world gone completely insane?

Start a Revolution from my bed

a friend of mine (black girl about 25 years old) sent me a text message Tuesday Night after Obama won.. It was pretty touching to see how this election has influenced somebody like her who has never shown any interest in politics but somehow it rallied her and I'm sure many other people in the African American community, as this is the next step in the long struggle for equal rights.

"They didnt' want to give us 40 acres and a mule so dammit we will tkae 50
states and a White House"

As I was trying to take it all in, I remembered asking her on earlier in the day if she had voted to which she responded "the lines were too long in the Bronx, didn't want to wait"

oh well.

Press Conference #1 went off without a hitch although it was weird to see Obama in his first non political campaigning event seemed a bit like a fish outa water.    So Gail Collins reported that Linsday Graham had said he would drown himself in a lake if McCain didn't win North Carolina, thank God Teddy Kennedy was busy.

I guess it didn't take all that long for Obama to be tested after all

MOSCOW — President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia greeted his future American counterpart, Senator Barack Obama, with bristling language on Wednesday, promising to place short-range missiles on Russia’s western border if Washington proceeded with its planned missile defense system in Eastern Europe.
In a speech to the Federal Assembly, Mr. Medvedev said Russia had “no inherent conflict with America” and invited the new administration to start afresh with Moscow. However, he did not congratulate Mr. Obama on the election he had won only hours before, or even mention him by name.

Later in the day, the Kremlin announced that Mr. Medvedev had sent Mr. Obama a congratulatory telegram

I read this article yesterday and my first thought was.. A Telegram? Are we back in 1930, what the f*ck, why didn't he just send smoke signals or send him a note by carrier pigeon, I'm almost 33 and I have NEVER gotten a telegram in my entire life. The ONLY way this is acceptable is if the Telegram from Medvedev was delivered by some singing topless chick in a nurses outfit.

I didn't realize that Obama was part of the original NWA

Also heard on CNN that people call Rahm Emanuel "Rahmy" because although he is such a bulldog behind the scenes he is really just kind of a sissy. He was a ballet dance for years.

Just realized that we were one big Revered Wright outburst away from having a vice-president who didn't realize that Africa was a continent and couldn't name the three countries part of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Talk about dodging a bullet.

how long before Hef offers Sarah $5million to do a full page spread..

I wonder what will be a bigger presidential transition question, who will be Secretary of State or what kind of dog will Obama get

My guess is they are going to go for something fun and big like a Golden Retriever or a Yellow Lab or something.   Being the First Family has some major advantages including what I'm sure is the fact that you never have to clean up after your dog.  There is no way you will see Michelle Obama picking up a piling pile of dog-doo with one of those blue New York Times bags.   I'm sure the Secret Service will hire some Mexican to come and landscape after ever pile this First dog leaves behind.


Gonna be one of those interesting points when Obama and Bush come together to start this transition period early next week. Obama has spent 22 months campaigning basically telling anybody who would listen that Bush is completely incompetent and has ruined the country and now they will have to hang out.   This is like when you are ripping on somebody and all of a sudden you realize they are standing right behind you or they read your blog or something (sorry to all my goatee having wearing friends)..

Read that Laura Bush has already extended an invitation to Michelle Beavis Obama to come down to the White House and show her around, maybe show her where she keeps the toilet-paper and how to get the water in the shower just right .

I wonder what that will be like..
Laura:   'hey so I hear that your husband think my husband is a bumbling fool'
Shelly:   ".....so where is this personal chef I'm always hearing about..."


Did see that Bobby Jindal will be making a speech in Iowa in the next month or so, apparently he is throwing down the gauntlet for the 2012 campaign already. This dude looks so much like he could have been the fourth nerd that Homer hung out with when he went back to college, there is NO way he can become president when he looks like such a turd. 

So I guess there was something major going on the last couple of days..

I didn't get to sleep until pretty late after watching Obama take the reigns of a country he probably wouldn't have recognized when he started campaigning 22 months ago.

There was a point yesterday after Obama's speech, after Biden and Michelle and the families left the stage, Obama was the only one on left standing there and to me it looked like the enormity of the task at hand hit him. I'm not sure if it was by design but Obama was the last person to leave the stage and although the eyes of the world were one him (as they will be when he is president) it looked like a very lonely and isolated place. Maybe he didnt' realize that Bush left him a burning house.

Is there any worse TV than trying to get some political opinion than 9PM? Rachel Maddow on MSNBC is terrible, Larry King might be pulling a Weekend at Bernie's thing and honestly you can't watch Hannity and Colmes. Did get a nice mental visual from Newsweek's Special Election Project:

At the GOP convention in St. Paul, Palin was completely unfazed by the boys' club fraternity she had just joined. One night, Steve Schmidt and Mark Salter went to her hotel room to brief her. After a minute, Palin sailed into the room wearing nothing but a towel, with another on her wet hair. She told them to chat with her laconic husband, Todd. "I'll be just a minute," she said.

Carl Cameron on O'Reilly told Bill that Palin did not realize that Africa was not a single country and also did not know the countries involved in NAFTA.. Oh God.


How absolutely dreadful did Michelle Obama look last night, seems like somebody has been snacking on that Halloween candy. When she first hit the national stage, I remember thinking she had a cute little body but now she looks like 's she's built like Hillary. Girlfriend might be time to put down the dougnuts.

My wife made the comment that she looked like a LAVA lamp in her dress and the Ryan Express points out that she looks just like Beavis

I'm Proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free

Relief Bitcher The Ryan Express comes in with a 3-4 record, a 3.14 ERA and a three strikeout to 2 walk ratio. He's coming into the 7th inning with 2 on and no outs.

Got a flight from NY to LAX the other day for a wedding. I was looking forward to my second trip out to Cali Cali, especially after the first was to San Diego last month. The San Diego flight was Delta. They made you pay for booze but they gave out free snacks, as many as you wanted, and had screens in the back of the seats which also had free stuff (movies in this instance). So…I was looking forward to a similar flight on the way out to LA. Thought I might check out Get Smart if it was on. As it transpired, I was flying goddamn American and was on a plane from the 80s. I literally think I was on this one as a child. No personal screens. Not even the drop downs from the ceiling. This had a projection screen way up in the front which I would have been able to see if I’d brought my telescope (I hadn’t as it wouldn’t fit in the stupid handluggage size checker). It actually wasn’t bad that I couldn’t see the screen seeing as they were showing some Kit Kittredge something or other movie. This plane was pretty old. It had those huge no-smoking signs above your head (I almost expected there to be a no-smoking section). The sound and music was controlled with dials instead of the digital buttons (I almost expected there to be a two-prong plastic headset jack – remember those). Yup, the plane was pretty 80’s, though this would all have been forgivable if they’d kept the best thing about flying 20-odd years ago – the air hostesses. Not flight attendants; air hostesses. This was back when serving in the skies was a glamorous profession, akin to modeling. They slinked up and down the aisles and were straight out of that Leonardo Dicaprio movie about planes (not the Howard Hughes one). I yearn for those days. Now I get either bumped by incredibly large hips or have to put up with some dudes cheap cologne! The only thing 80’s about the ‘flight attendants’ on this flight was their age! Bad life – but at least the tickets were paid for with miles!

It was like they were giving out free "tree hugging buttons" at the local elementary school today.

Watching the CNN 24 hour election coverage they brought some very interesting facts to light

1) If Barack Obama were to win, he would be the first black president

2) If John McCain were to win, he'd be the oldest first term president sworn into office.

you can't get analysis like this anywhere else..

So I was out to vote at 6AM this morning and as my personal Righetti Polling confirms, Park Slope Brooklyn is going to vote Obama..

As my wife said this morning as we stood on a 1 hour line outside the elementary school in our neigborhood.. "it looks like Field of Dreams, if you build it they will come" there were people coming form every building, street, house, door in the neighborhood. Everybody walked in silence and stood neatly in line.

a lot of people were complaining about the fact we have to vote on a Tuesday as opposed to a weekend but my bigger complaint is that it took us over an hour to vote and it might have been nice if somebody offered me a donut or a cup of Joe.

Why the hell they decide to change the place my actual voting booth is inside the gym is beyond me, I first got on the district 42 line before realizing that the booth for district 44 had moved to the other side of the gym. I can't ever remember which district I vote in but I can easily remember what side of the basketball court I should stand on.

Saw a bunch of ads this morning, some crazy minister of some church where Obama use to sit in the pews.. Not sure what it's about but it makes Obama sound like some kind of crazy radical, I'm really having doubts about this guy especially with all this information coming out about him being on that grassy knoll in the 60's and the evidence they are finding that he was studying in Europe directly under Karl Marx back in the the late 1800s..

And that fact he's got that huge Lenin tattoo on one shoulder and that Lennon tattoo on the other really is freaking me out.

Dirty Communist

how big is 3 Millimeters?

so my weekend goes something like this


Friday afternoon go back to the Doctor for a follow up on that bleeding bladder thing and they do an ultrasound on my kidney's and tell me that I have a 3mm kidney stone on the right side which might have causing the bleeding. My first thought of course is the fact that 3 millimeters means absolutely nothing to me, I have never figured out this god-damned metric system and what a time to burn me when basically I gotta piss something out which could be the size of a donut hole, a green pea or a grain of sand but I have no point of reference. They show me a picture from the ultrasound but honestly he might as well have shown me a picture of the surface of the moon.

Of course I do what any Marathon runner would do and assume that as long as he doesn't say anything about not running I won't mention it either.

Sunday morning hits and I get to Staten Island at 7AM and stand around for three hours in 40 degree weather freezing my ass off as I watch the whitest group of 38,000 people you can imagine stretch, talk politics and drink cappuccinos. I'm not sure what the racial breakdown of this thing is but if isn't 98% white people I'd be floored. Shit take out the top 20 men and the total percentage is gonna be about 99.9%

Get on the course and first of all I get stuck in the group that has to run on the lower part of the Verrazano Bridge which means that not only do I not get any nice views but all the slobs who pee over the side of the bridge from the top level are basically peeing on me as the wind kicks everything around. Then add to the fact that the lower level is a wind-tunnel and at 40 degrees outside the wind-chill must have dropped it 10 degrees for those first two miles.

Rest of the marathon goes pretty well till I cramp up in my upper thigh which basically knots up and I'm long striding through it to end the excruciating pain. It reminded me of when I was a kid and sometimes I use to wake up in the middle of the night with a cramp in my calf. But not only was this cramping worse, unlike it happening when you are laying in bed, this time I have to run 7 more miles. Rest of the run is completely miserable and then it goes from shitty to bloody shitty when I hit the pisser at mile 23 I'm back to pissing Merlot and everything in my urethra hurts. Not sure if I passed the stone or if I was just bleeding from the bladder but either way..my Life is very very bad.

Drag my sorry ass across the finish line in 4:09 which is respectable but still 10 minutes off my goal and now I'm back to a regular Joe. No more adoring fans screaming my name, no more aluminum blankets, nobody handing me Gatorade my the gallon and no more reason to complain...

Thanks for everybody for the support along the way.

8:35 in Staten Island

A bit under and hour and a half before gametime and just getting to the starting point is a marathon on its own.. Subway to Ferry to Bus to PortaJohn to staging area to PortaJohn to bag drop-off to staring corral.



I do wonder why so many dudes decide that the seat of a public restroom but mainly PortaJohns would be so much more pleasant for everybody if they first sprinkle all over it, especially when all of them have a urinal right there.. Absolute idiots



Some dude in a Superman costume is stretching right in front of me and it just annoys me. Not because of the costume but the fact he keeps bending over in tights right in my mug.



When was the last time you caught a movie worth watching On Demand? It seems like the OnDemand people got together with the Continental Airlines people to see who could put together the biggest collection of crap movies in a given 12 hour timespan.



I am thinking of doing a ranking of overall hotness of Stewardesses and United must either have a staff of people who has lived the hardest life or maybe it's just so unpleasant to fly those friendly skies.



But what the hell do I know, I just sat down in a PortaJohn

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

It's the Final Countdown

Just about 24 hours till the marathon and less than 72 hours till the polls open, so things in the Righetti world are pretty exciting, although I do have a major fear of having very little to blog about after the elections are over and the marathon is all completed.  Guess no more bloody nipples, the mid-run runs and hopefully sneezing nut pulls till next summer, but I'm sure I'll come up with something

Couple of comments about Halloween, the Village parade seemed a bit toned down this year as I have to imagine the financial crunch kept some of the most extravagant costumes on the shelves this year. 

We all know this is a holiday for only two groups of people: kids and chicks.  It is the one time in the year that a hot chick can totally slut it out and not get any weird stares since it's all done in the name of costume..
Past the groups of slutty nurses, slutty cops, slutty school teachers, I also saw a bunch of chicks covered only body paint and saw an Asian chick wearing only hotpants and nipple guards which looked a bit cold to me.  Maybe she was preparing for the marathon.     

If I were to run for president this would be my main platform, just like years ago when some president decided that President's day would always be on a Monday and Thanksgiving on a Thursday, I would  change Halloween to the last Friday in October every year..  I know there is some religious reason for it being on the 31st, but it's supposed to be a kids holiday where they go trick-or-treating so why not make it on a non school night?  But more importantly, there is no better day to see hot chicks than on Halloween and you shouldn't have to wake up early for morning the next day

one quick bit for your Obama-McCain-Palin-OtherGuy fix

In a conservative radio interview that aired in Washington, D.C. Friday morning, Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin said she fears her First Amendment rights may be threatened by "attacks" from reporters who suggest she is engaging in a negative campaign against Barack Obama.....If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations," Palin told host Chris Plante, "then I don't know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media."

Wait I thought the First Amendment was about freedom of press?  I'm a bit confused