If you had half the heart of.....

it has been 2 years since I have taken the 2AM D-Train but now I am back...On the platform, shitfaced and nowhere to pee, I stand waiting for any sign of life!!!

By the way this seems like the perfect time to rate all time football movies

1- Rudy..... No discussion, would be #1 on any best of list... Football, baseball, vampire whatever.. I have never NOT gotten choked up during the " if you had half the heart of Ruettiger, you woulda been All Country" part. John Favreau's best movie

2- Wildcats. Infinitely better than Jerry Maguire.. Goldie Hawn still looked kinda hot plus you gotta laugh when the fat dude takes the cash out of his jock..

3-We are Marshall
If this doesn't shake you to your bones, you aren't human

4- the Replacements
Great in spite of Keanu Reeves. Heart pumping action, hot chicks (not really) and a feel good story.. Keanu reminds me a lot Mel Gibson in Lethal Gun

5-Naked Gun
OJ was fantastic

Honorable mention: Invincible, Remember the Titans, Lucas, TenYardFight (Not a movie but still great), That one in the prison, North Dallas Debbie does 40, Friday Night Lights(never actually seen it but it will dissapoint when compared to the book I am sure) and Any Given Sunday

Football generally doesn't translate to the big screen cause chicks don't get the appeal.. Dudes though and honestly this is why I live... I live to watch football and I live for hot chicks

And don't give me Varsity Blues.. That movie is all glamour no true love

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

I've always been told that 3000 hits gets you into the hall-of-fame

If this is the case you are looking at a hall-of-fame blog as today we should get our 3000th hit!!!!!!!   Pete Rose here we come!!! 

Now on to today's rant
The best part of the $5 footlong is definitely the fact that you get a footlong sandwich for $5.. The worst thing is that I have no will power and after I order a $5 footlong, I also tend to eat an entire $5 footlong which means that my belly starts to hang over my own footlong..

I need them to start offering a 3/4 footer for $4 or something cause yesterday I slipped into a pair of work pants and I almost split them right down the ass-seam. 

I guess i'm not the only one thinking this cause I was online the other day when I heard some chick say

"The normal 6 incher isn’t nearly enough, I need at least 9 inches but Christ you gotta be a big girl to handle the full foot."  

then again I can't remember if I was online at subway or online when i heard/read this.

AverageAhole.com

A few years ago I came up with a business model. It was a business model based on criticizing other business models. Basically I designed a professional outlet to bitch and complain and tell people what I think. It was going to be called AverageAsshole.com


The thought-stream behind it was that I am just that: an average asshole and sometimes you don't need complex market research to tell you an idea is a bad one. Basically the "average asshole" would have told you that your idea was flawed and had you asked him, you would have saved millions.

First of all you don’t get more average than me: I got average grades, I am completely average looking, I have never won the D-Cup in our fantasy football league, I went to a state college and I have an average blog

But the real reason I should run this place is because I have great vision when analyzing average situations.

For example, a few years ago there was a fairly big consumer website called Pets.com. It was a one-stop website for all your pet needs, from food, to pet toys and those annoying little jackets they make dogs wear. I remember distinctly thinking “This will never work, I have had dogs my entire life and you get new dog-food when you turn the box and realize it’s empty. People will never plan far enough in advance to go get a box of cat food three weeks before it is finished."

Plus the above-obvious fact that there are a ton of other places where you can get pet food while getting a ton of other stuff like toilet-paper and dish soap likes target.com, amazon.com and freshdirect.com. What they thought might be their ideal audience is an audience that wouldn’t go to a place to only get pet-food and their selection of other items didn’t compare to what other companies offered.

Long story short.. Pets.com fails miserably and there I am standing there thinking: why didn’t they just ask a few Average Joe’s to see if there this was something they would have an interest in and whether they would even use it. Take a Friday night, invite 20 buddies for free pizza and beer and kick the idea around, it would have been the best $200 they ever spent.

Of course there are a ton of other businesses bound to fail, like the bagel shop in my hometown which I commented would fair cause there was no place to park in front of the joint. Bagels and coffee are an in-and-out place where you want to throw the car in park and be back in 20 seconds on your way to work. This place closed down in about a week, again ask me before hand and this is the most obvious fault in your business plan.

So I’m opening the doors for AverageAsshole.com again and invite you to submit your terrible business propositions to me at TakeOnRighetti.blogspot.com and I will tell you why they suck!!!!!

(then again the Average Asshole may very well tell investors in AverageAsshole.com that this is not a money making enterprise, which will only cast the tortured businessmen into the sea)

TakeOnTheSess.com

On an email chain between a couple of buddies the other day, one guy asked the following question

Anyway, isn't Bruce a sell out? I thought you could only buy his new album in Walmart. Which pretty much goes against everything he sings about.

The response features today's Relief Bitcher

at 6'6" the Big Sess comes huffin and puffin out of the bulpen with a record of 2-6 and a 4.19ERA, with his flaming fast-ball he does have 80 K's in 60 innings but also has walked 80 guys.   Wild Thing has nothing on this guy



I was on the road yesterday so I didn't get a chance to comment on this Springsteen sell-out thing, I just listend to the cuts of the new album, not too impressed and I probably wont rush out to buy it, nor will I be rushing out to buy tickets for the  new world tour, not going...

Springsteen up to Tunnel of Love was a broke jersey guy working crap jobs, fightin with the old man and such. Even though he was rich, he came off as one of us. I used to be that jersey guy and springsteen used to embody that guy. Love every minute of every album up to that  point.

Tom Joad on my walkman freezing my a$$ off waiting for the bus in college. Reuinion tour at the garden was the best concert I have ever seen, The Rising came out 3 days before I go married, fantastic album.

I am pretty confident in saying that springsteen was the soundtrack of my life from the time I was 16.

Now however, The last 3 times I saw him, I had to listen to his rambling politics, politic annalysis from a guy who washed out of ocean county college after 1 semester.

Springsteen has gone from the voice of every dude who breaks his a$$ in an effort to "get a little something for himself" to a guy who has won and forgot where he came from. He once said live on stage that"blind faith in your leaders can get you killed" Now he stands side by side with a president who wants to sit down and talk with regimes that think the holocaust didn't happen? The president who is earmarking 4 billion

of our money for ACORN to pay back the folks who helped him get elected?

Don't you see it Bruce? This Government is the same hypocritical mess you have railed against for years, but now you throw your lot in with them. 

Sad, a guy you think of as one of your heroes, rich guy who was the same as you. You knew he lived behind iron gates in a posh community but it didn't matter, but the fact that he now comes off as that guy who lives behind iron gates as opposed to an everyman changes everything.

You think 1978 Springsteen plays the Super Bowl?

TakeOnTheLad.com

So with the demise of Dubya was supposed to come the demise of Fox News
(though getting rid of Lou Dobbs may have been an even better idea).
However, it seems that Fox have figured out a new way to control public opinion
and push forward their evil agenda - Jack Bauer and 24. Now I'm a big fan
of 24 and a huge fan of Jack B, but this season has been so focused on using
torture (or radical methods) to get information out of suspects that it seems
somewhat coincidental that this emphasis is happening at the same time as Obama
is sweeping into office with his promises of shutting down Guantanamo.
Even funnier is that it seems to be working. Public opinion, which was so
anti-Guantanamo and the flouting of the Geneva Convention, has suddenly turned
to support for whatever methods are necessary to get required information.
Even the gray lady appears to have changed its tune! What next? Is
Ryan Seacrest going to convince us that we need to attack Iran? Will Homer
Simpson espouse the need to reduce taxes and increase government
expenditure? I know it's too much to think that Fox can change but I
really hope the rest of us do.

William Kristol's final column

Apparently Kristol's New York Times tenure ends today, ironically on the cusp of Obama's first full week. I didn't know it would end like this and I wonder if the Times has been pressured to let him go, or not renew his contract from the liberals who read the paper? When a voice gets shut out because of pressure from a dissenting group, I call this censorship!!
I don't agree with most of what he says and I know he's a pompous ass but I will miss a dissenting voice on the Op-Ed pages, and they owe it to their readership and to 'fairness' to replace him with another conservative voice. David Brooks remains the only staunch conservative voice on the entire page and quite frankly I will need more than just a Tuesday and Friday fix to see how the other side thinks.

So the new Righetti must read 5 Op-Ed columnists go as follows:
Frank Rich
Gail Collins
Paul Krugman
David Brooks
Maureen Dowd

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I hate fucking Coldplay

As I'm listening to Mr. Crowley blasting through my laptop speakers, I wonder to myself  'what has happened to great music' and I've already addressed the fact that Rock and Roll has died since Guns N' Roses split up.   Now I know that ever hoping that Axl and Slash come back together to create what they had 20 years ago is a long shot and even if it did, the fire fueled by Heroin and Jack Daniels will probably be gone.  Axl has become a complete recluse and the anger from Appetite was lost by the time they recorded the Illusions.   Not that the Illusions didn't have a bunch of great tracks, it was missing the desperation necessary to bring about the anger to create great Rock & Roll.   
This is where Coldplay has it wrong, there is no desperation, no anger, no heroin, no JD, no passion...nothing.
This is cock-rock at its best (or worst).  It's catchy which makes you feel like a sellout for even singing along to it.  Creativity in general and more specially Rock and Roll is only able to reach its peak if there are unresolved issues at its core and sadly the downfall of great creativity seems to coincide with the artist getting off chemical dependents.   This is why Death Metal has it all wrong, it's an act, it's got no fear of life in it, it's pompous in its state battle against pomposity.  Rock & Roll's greatest attribute is that it doesn't need to feel forces, it's born out of desperation, anger and passion.
   U2 has make a dozen good albums and a hundred good songs, Bono is a saint for what he has done to shine the light on the plight of the world's poor but he has a band which couldn't rock it's way out of a paper bag.   But Ozzy Osbourn makes you feel his pain in Suicide Solution and Axl makes you feel his fear in Welcome to the Jungle while Bono makes you feel bad for being a human.  It's the unresolved tension in the human psyche which makes for the conflict neccessary between the baseline and the lead guitar, the lyircs and the rhythm.  Conflict is what is missing in today's musics, there is nothing about Coldplay which makes you want to rip your shirt off at a wedding and drop to your knees to be consumed by the guitar solo or bass-line or worst yet there is nothing about Coldpay which entices a chick to take her shirt off.  

There are two ways to determine if music is great.


1) have you ever seen a girl take her clothes off to it?   Rock and Roll was made for the seedy black-light lidt strip club stages not to hum in your car.   If you haven't it's not worth listening to.

2) Does it have the ability to cange your mood?  Can you hear the pain or anger to the point that you feel it?  If it doesn't than you might as well quit and get yourself the Guitar Hero IV cause that's the next great fall to our society.

TAKEONBUMP.COM

With a 3-3 record, a WHIP of 17.8 and an ERA of 5.68, here comes relief bitcher Bump Wendell making $3.99 and a club-sandwich for his services

So everyone is up in arms about the Obama Presidency so far. I mean, it's been three days and no change yet!. But all in all, Obama doesn't need to even do so much to look great compared to our outgoing President. I liken it to the situation with our beloved New York Knickerbockers. At 17-24 they are 4 games better than they were at this point last year. At this pace they will win 34 games and probably not make the playoffs(I say probably cause the east is more miserable than sitting next to Righetti at a foreign film). If you read the media, however; it's another story. Everyone is talking about how well the Knicks are playing, how well the young guys are doing, even talk of David Lee as an All-Star. The way I look at it is Isaiah Thomas=George W. Bush and D'Antoni=Obama. Isaiah ran this team into the ground. Instead of Guantanamo Bay he the sexual harassment trial with Anucha Brown. D'Antoni doesn't need to accomplish much right now. 34 wins, much to the chagrin of Dan Patrick, would be great. Obama just learning the job and not screwing up, much to the chagrin of Keith Oberman, is fine right now. We don't need another Eddie Curry nor Dick Cheney. So all's I am saying is that rooting for the Knicks is rooting for America. It is your patriotic duty. Go Knicks! Go America!

“Partner”

Scene: Some bar in the Lower East Side

Time: roughly midnight

Characters: Righetti and some guy talking who is a friend of a friend, lets name him “Matthew”



Righetti: how has everything been?


“Matthew” : not bad, you know just got a new apartment


Righetti: cool, where are you now?


“Matthew”: My partner and I just got a two bedroom in Brooklyn.


Righetti: cool, is it nice


“Matthew”: yeah we have some beautiful rustic furniture and this gorgeous table


Mundane Conversation goes on for a while


……….


(Yada Yada Yada


……..


Righetti: so is that dude Javier at the bar your partner?


“Matthew”: my what?


Righetti (confused): your partner?


“Matthew”:  I’m not gay, I have a live-in girlfriend


Righetti:  oh I thought that..eghh sorry


Uncomfortable conversation continues for a few minutes


Now this cannot be my fault, who the hell refers to their girlfriend as their “partner”?? I am completely pro-gay rights and have nothing against anybody who is but this is completely unacceptable. You can’t just use a term like “partner” indiscriminately especially if your name is “Matthew”. There is a right time and place to use “partner” and this is NOT it, I don’t care if you are European or Korean and the misuse is borderline criminal.  And if you are going to go down this slippery slope than realize that you are bound to  confuse people and you can't make 'em feel guility if they fall down that trap.

That’s like getting a poodle and calling him Spike.

Just another victim

This is a bit of a redux but it needs to be said (again)

So I've got an idea, it's novel but just might work. This idea will probably not resolve the middle-east crisis, the banking crisis, the housing crisis or the oil crisis but it might solve something else.. The crisis which happens everytime I step into the subway.

See people on the subway have no ability to act rational cordial, they push and pull, the shake and rattle and they run like crazy but they never do anything that makes logical sense.

Here is my idea.... "WAIT TILL I GET OFF BEFORE YOU TRY TO GET ON"
I don't know what country or society you are from but I come from the country of logic. Because it only makes sense to let people off before you get in their way in your attempt to get on.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

View from the Inauguration

just look at Dick Cheney's face..



These are the comments I got from friends after the inauguration

From my buddy from college

In 5 years when you are driving a wiener mobile with solar panels on the roof, ripping down the turnpike at 30 mph, you will wish you blogged more about this.

Pretty soon I am going to able to use my truck for a planter. Its gonna be great. Granola recipes and Birkenstocks for everyone. Oh baby

But I'm rootin for the guy

From the same guy

Can't not root for him

From a black girl I know

-U know y its so cold outside? Cuz white people said it would b a cold day n HeLL b4 we had a black president... Well Bundle up crackers!!

From the original poster

Did you see that ridiculous hat that George HW Bush was wearing, he looks like he's going duck-hunting

From a Facebook post in response to a buddy being told to go back to work

WORK?!Obama will solve all of my problems before 3pm EST and i'll never have to work again.

Starbucks (f@#k yeah), Disneyworld (f@#k yeah), McDonalds (f@#k yeah), Wal-mart (f@#k yeah), the Gap (f@#k yeah), baseball (f@#k yeah), NFL (f@#k yeah), rock and roll (f@#k yeah), Bed Bath and Beyond (f@#k yeah).

from a buddy on a fantasy football website

Country as a whole must not agree with the optimism.

market down 200 right now

Danny Kannel theory, he is the QB of the country, so he is the best there
is, same way I support Bush most of the time.

so apparantly there is something going on today

So Dick Cheney will be wheelchair bound today after he pulled a muscle in his back as he was moving boxes. Although I have sources which say that it actually happened when he tried to climb into the back window of the National Archives in Washington to try to add a quick amendment to keep the vice-president elect from taking office and fell through the window.

I haven't found a good picture of it yet but I can just imagine he looks like Dr Manheimer from Naked Gun 2 1/2

So when the Jets signed Rex Ryan to be their new coach, I had one thought. "it hasn't been 15 hours since his team had a devastating loss in the playoffs and he's already the HC for the NYJ, how quickly can a coach ditch his old team after getting defeated in the playoffs", honestly the corpse isn't even cold yet and this guy has already agreed to a 4 year deal with the Jets. Fans can't sleep after a loss like that and the defensive coach is on the DC-NY shuttle to sign a new contract.

I wonder how many hours it will be before Cheney becomes the CEO of Haliburton again.

I'm guessing he'll be flying to Dubai by 8pm tonight.

Review of the top sites

I have devoted roughly 100 hours after having been requested to review the top free-porn websites for the TOR readership.

please click the links at your own risk

YouPorn
A decent layout although the black background is distracting, the first one reviewed feels a bit like going to one of those shaddy back-rooms and finding midget and chubby chasers stuff in between the newest Jenna Jameson hits.  In general, this site is full of amateur stuff, which generally is pretty good but often leads to ugly people doing fat people which is not exactly my cup-of-tea.   Amateur content can be good , but in my opinion, The search function is tough but they have been better about separating the man on man stuff. 
In general YouPorn tends to have a lot of material filmed with bad-lighting and very little introduction.  Seems to me that there is a real lack of Quality Control done on the content which makes it feel like you are digging through a lot of cow-dung to get a couple of mushrooms.  YouPorn also has tons of international stuff which kind of proves that Eastern Europeans make better flashdancers than porn stars. 
YouPorn is a star but more of a porn-dump behemoth than a fine collection

XNXX   
    Although other connoisseurs don't love it, I am a fan of the layout and color scheme.   One thing that first-timers will probably be confused by is where the rest of the free content is (hint top right-hand corner).  Not nearly as many amateur sites as YouPorn but also tends to have a lot of professional content which does give it an air of professionalism but also makes it feel like you are watching previews on OnDemand.   I do like
the feel of the layout but it takes a bit of getting use to.  
XNXX is not great although it does have potential and in our opinion would be better off focussing on some speciality items


RedTube
 I think this site is best described as 'great content, bad layout'.  In an industry based on how well one is perceived I think that the fine people of RedTube need to consider the lay-out to make sure the content iss able to shit.   Overall, you can find absolute gems on this site but must be willing to do a little digging.   Best Of content and Most Viewed gives a good way to separate the good from the bad.  The Amateur stuff is generally done very well and the professional stuff is not always over the top.    Some good blooper type stuff but in general RedTube features interesting story lines which keeps the content feeling fresh and honest although I'm sure that most of it is professionally filmed.
RedTube knows what it is doing bit would be helped with better search and labeling functions.

Tube8
    I love this site, well thought out, well laid out and excellent content.   A bit too much of chubby chasers but like RedTube they seem to have the right things in mind in terms of layout and ease.  Good content, a bit more 'professional' feeling than what is featured on RedTube but seem to feature a lot of "college party" stuff as well as 'bachelor and bachelorette" things which at least puts real-people in social setting situations which is usually pretty good. 
Tube8 has had some early success and should be a force to be reckoned with, should continue to get better but might want to define it's company goal a bit more clearly


by the way, if I hear a knock on my door at 6AM on day with "Let us in FBI", the first thing I'm doing is throwing my laptop out the window.

TimesSquare.com

Click on the picture to get a blown-up version

http://www.timessquare.com/

Why the hell can't I sleep?

Most people will tell you that after a night of boozing, they sleep till noon, crawl out of bed and take on the day. But not a Righetti, I cannot possibly sleep any later than 8:15AM, regardless how late I got home the night before. It's this internal clock I got going, kinda like the one chicks have about getting married and popping out kids, except mine involved waking up and feeling like death. It's like I've skipped by mid 30's, 40's and 50's and just signed up for an enlarged prostate which gets me up at the crack of dawn
See I haven't had an alarm clock in 5 years and I've yet to get to work late once. I guess if you train yourself well enough your natural rhythm will get you up when you need to, problem is that I can't get this stupid rhythm to turn off on the weekends..it just wants to keep on going like that energizer bunny.

There are a few positives about getting up early, you can read the Sunday paper , you can go for a jog or you can surf the web for porn in peace but regardless the rest of the day you feel like you've missed out on something. It's not like I'm tired the entire day, but I know the rest of the week i'll be miserable. If I could have one superpower it would be the ability to bank extra-sleep..

Of course with my luck, since I've never overslept for work but now i've blogged about it and I'm sure jinxed the entire concept, kind of like wishing to the world to NOT have a birthday party and then find yourself piss drunk at 3AM with all your buddies hanging around you. Sometimes I should really keep my mouth shut.

a "Facebook Birthday"

Apparently this what I get for putting together a completely racially sensitive daily blog about how shitty my life is.

So this is my first "Facebook Birthday". I am sure you don't know what that means, asIi just made it up, but you can guess. See I signed up for Facebook like 11 months ago, check it about twice a week, mainly to update my status and see if I can find any scandalous pictures of hot-chick friends ..

Other than that it has been a way for me to 'reconnect' with a bunch of people I went ot High-School with. As I'm sure a lot of you have, I have gotten bombarded with roughly 100 friend requests from people as near-and-far as the dude who played first-base on my little league team, to the kid with the goatee who was a year younger than me, to the chick who played the trombone in the marching band. A bunch of people who I have nothing for, with or against, who I haven't thought about in 10 years and who have, thanks to the miracles of science, all paraded back into my life.

Well we all know the downfalls of Facebook, for one it allows the kid who spilled milk on his pants in the 8th grade to see you ripping your shirt off at an Egyptian wedding. I mean it's a complete invasion of privacy, it forces you to acknowledge people who you have no interest in and it is probably eating up more bandwidth than YouPorn and YouTube combined.

But one of the weirdest thing is your first Facebook birthday where some 80 people send you a 'happy birthday' on your face-book wall. It's a strange feeling when some chick who you remember being in your 10th grade French class has already wished you happy birthday before you wake up in the morning or some guy who stuffed you in a locker in the 7th grade says "hope all is good man, happy birthday".

One of my major pet-peeves is the mass-text message that you get on holidays, like when you get the "I hope you and your family have a great Christmas season". If you really wish I was having a good season, you'd take the time to personally text me, you are trying to get credit for being thoughtful but it only reminds me of how thoughtless that gesture really was.

But this Facebook birthday thing is the antithesis of the mass text, it's actually personal, so I can't complain about that. And I respond to each one with a well thought out response... or at least a "thanks man".

Now don't give Facebook users too much credit, too many of them use their status as a mass text message like "The Kid with the Goatee wishes everybody a Merry Christmas" but there is a way to keep things sort of personal without ever having to get into somebody's personal space which I like.





so to make a long story short.. Facebook is taking over the world, soon you won't have to leave your house for anything, which makes me believe that I might need you people to send me a couple of links to some more scandalous pictures

The Irony of being me!!

You'd never believe it but I hate events where I am the center of attention. Not places where I can pick my spots but events where I am the forced star of the show.

This is why when somebody asks if I want a birthday party I always tell them I have zero interest in having one.. I don't want anybody to make such a big deal about me.

By the way I am completely aware that this confessional comes from a guy who:
Blogs about his life
Twitters
Updates his Facebook status
Texts his running times to his entire phone book
Rips his shirt off at weddings
Is an all out attention whore

The irony of course is what I present as a selfless act it is totally a self involved one. as the only reason I don't want it is because I don't want the pressure of possibly seeing myself fail.

I never want to have the pressure of having people come out cause I made them and then if it sucks, I feel like I m personally disappointing them.. if I were not at least able to control everything in the situation. So obviously I am not just completely self involved, I guess I am also a bit of a control freak.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Red-Headed Monster

Is it humanly possible for a heterosexual man (or lesbian chick cause TOR has to shout out!!!) to walk down the street, see a red-head and not immediately wonder if the rug matches the drapes..

It's not because red-heads are particularly attractive as they often have that pasty look to 'em but there is something that makes them just so intriguing. The girl could be 18 or 45 and it doesn't matter, cause even an older one is better than nothing. Songs have been written, magazines and webpages devoted, and 'movies' filmed but the holy-grail of chicks might still be proof of the curtain's tint.

See the true Red-Head is like the Loch Ness Monster.. People know of people who claim they saw one in the flesh and there might be a couple of grainy pictures. There are people who have searched high and low and publications devoted to finding proof but nobody has real first hand unequivocal proof of what is going on down there.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Good Life sometimes, bad life always

I have to be honest with myself, I gotta say that I got it pretty good all in all.  Let's take work for example

For one they give me free coffee..  Unlimited, all you can drink.  We're not talking gourmet beans or anything but as long as you get a cup within 10 minutes of it being made it's not bad at all.   (Let that puppy sit on the burner for 20 minutes and you are chewing coffee goo).  But they give it to you for free so that's not bad.

They also have a clean restroom, have tons of extra pens, give you good vacation time and compensate you well.

My problem isn't with any of that, it's with a silent killer..
You know you are doing something wrong when you sweat more at the office than you ever could at the fitness club..  It is absolutely brutally hot in our office.  Like you are sitting fully dressed in a sauna.  Forget water-boarding,  trying to work in 95 degree office is torture.  It's so hot that I find myself rubbing my face and scratching my neck like some kind of mental-patient.   I am surprised that when I walk out of there, I am  not immediately institutionalized in some place where they make you sit in some kind of sauna where they pour nasty coffee over the coals.

MLIA

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Metropolitan "blah blah blah" Diary

As regular readers to TakeOnRighetti know I think that Metropolitan Diary section in the Monday issue of the Times is just a place for people to brag about their otherwise boring lives. You often get somebody who writes about how they got stuck on a subway on the way to give blood and then something funny happens.. The fact that they were giving blood is irrelevant but they use this as a forum to brag.


Well today's section had it's usual pompous crap like the following one

My 6-year-old grandson lives downstairs from me in a two-family house in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and sees me almost every day.

One rainy and windy day in autumn, I picked him up from his after-school program. I moved quickly and purposefully through the cold rain, anxious to get home as soon as possible. Camilo, on the other hand, insisted on stopping to pick up every interesting stick or rock and jumping in every puddle, soaking himself and me in the process.

I warned Camilo several times to hurry up. Finally, exasperated, I yelled: “This is the last time I’m going to tell you to stop jumping in those puddles. Now come on, so we can get home.”

My grandson walked by my side, head down in a petulant sulk. After about a block of this, he tugged on my hand and looked up at me with a very serious expression.

“I wish you were the grandma who lived over the river and through the woods,” he said.

Elena Schwolsky

Typical, some grandmother braggin that she sees her bratty grandsome almost every-day. This has NOTHING to do with the story.. Just a forum to brag.


But to be fair, sometimes they are actually pretty good and pretty funny.. One that caught my eye which was different and made me laugh today was

Dear Diary

Watching election-night coverage at the home of a friend in urban Kansas City, I wanted to share the historic moment with our adult son in New York, so I sent a text message to his phone: "networks showing Rockefeller Center and Times Square. Where R U?"

"I'm at a bar in Harlem," came the electronic answer

Striving to keep the rare exchange alive, I quickly wrote "Obama won."

With remarkable understatement, he replied "I know. I'm at a bar in Harlem."

Tourists are an embarrassment

Just look at the embarrassments which are the tourists of this fine world.

As regular TOR readers already know, I have some major issues with the way that Tourists present themselves to the rest of the world..   Last week's entry dealt with this issue in more detail but today we are publishing the photo-essay addition to that entry.

This will be the first part on an ongoing photo-essay on the dress of tourists. Not only are these fine examples of the complete embarrassments that people are but the best part about it is that they people all spent about $4000 to go and see Egypt and everyone of their pictures will have them in a "Oh No, you did it just the way I told you" sweatshirt.

serves them right!!!!



The TOR editors invite readers to submit pictures of idiot tourists from their own travels.

I run because I am

Some days I run because I love being outside, the sounds of the birds, a nice breeze or the crackling sound of the fresh snow under my sneakers.
Some days I run because I am in training and I have a long term goal
Some days I run because I need some time to myself to clear my head.
Some days I run because I'm running a race and I want to challenge myself
Some days I run because I basically run every day and this is my routine
Some days I run because I know I should

And some days I run because it's the only way to turn off the jack-hammer in my head, on those days I run to sweat out the liters of alcohol pulsing through my body.

Nothing like a Roarin' 20's party to make a thirty something feel like he's a twenty something again, if only for the duration of his buzz.

I gotta say that there probably is no better method of beating a hard hangover, the kind caused by multiple shots of Jack and Jose, than 5 miles on a treadmill. Of course you have to come with to grips that your neighbor on the elliptical machine will be breathing in your fumes as I you are a 1981 pinto in Egypt. If you can come to grips with that, then I say lace up your running shoes and run till the pounding stops.

This is the reason I will be running outside today but with my luck (and this ice) I'm sure I'll be eating gravel at some point this morning.

Muffins and Iced Tea

The two food-groups which prove people are nothing but mindless sheep has to Muffins and Iced Tea.. People who so badly want to believe they are moving away from donuts and soda have convinced themselves that they are consuming healthy alternatives when they move to muffins and iced tea. Preying on the stupidity of people is one of my favorite pastimes and this is a classic case where you have to give credit and lay blame where it's due:


1) The American consumer is not very bright.
2) The American marketing companies have been able prey on this stupidity

the first part really deserves no further discussion, if you want to hear me rant on about how stupid people are sign up to read my blog regularly.

How Dunkin Donuts has convinced an entire country that they are making a healthy choice because they choose a Corn, Carrot or Broccoli muffin in a total coup. Carrot's taste like soggy althletes foot covered sock and the only reason that a carrot muffin is even half palatable is because they dump about a pound of sugar into the batter before they add some food-coloring and three strips of carrot to the mix. But because it's got carrot in the description the sheep will fall in line and order 'em every morning thinking they are making a healthy choice.

Iced Tea is another one, it's like the world has been told soda is unhealthy so people have started to move away from soda's and to tea's because a tea is something that has antioxidants or something.

In the 1940's there were ads for cigarette companies featuring doctors who endorsed cigarettes for their health benefits. Today's ad companies have moved away from this obvious mind-manipulation but pretty easily convinced the world that because it's got "carrot" or "tea"in the description, it's got to be good for you.

How to judge an athlete

I have a buddy who will tell you that he is a superior athlete to all his friends because he is a better basketball player although he can’t hit a baseball, can’t throw a football, can’t run for distance, has never tried to ski, snowboard, golf, when he swims he looks like a water-rat, I don’t think he knows how to ride a bike, is a terrible bowler, is not particularly fast and gets beat by his fiancé when they play tennis. This doesn’t seem to deter him though especially when he takes his bows for his basketball prowess which he argues is the only real way to judge athleticism is whether you can hoist a three from beyond the arc .

It got me to thinking about what it takes to be an athlete, I will not try to convince anybody that snowboarding, golf, car-driving or bowling is a ‘real’ sport but I do find one way to just whether something is a sport.

Can you get athlete’s foot playing it?

Forget trophy’s, accolades, cheerleaders or banners, I have somehow picked up some nasty case of Hong Kong Foot and I can’t seem to shake it. In the last 24 hours alone I’ve found myself taking a pocket knife to the bottom of my foot as I scrape layers of skin off the bottom of my foot, and pounded the bottom of my arch with a mallet. I know what causes this stuff and I have showered at enough gym’s to have fought this before but never suffered as badly as I am suffering now. I even know a guy who has suffered from Athlete’s hand although I think that had more to do with his ‘dating’ activities but never have I heard anybody come close to tears from the pain.

I’m considering having my foot amputated
Help needed

TOR takes on Gaza

I’m sure you guys have all been waiting on the TOR take on the Gaza situation, so here it goes.

I think it is time to consider a new alternative, Fatah is too corrupt and has failed to often to ever speak for the Palestinian people, Hamas is too militant, Israel is to self involved, the Israeli people are too hardened, the Palestinian people are too battered, the US has been too hands-off in protecting Israel, the European Union has been too uninvolved and the Arab world has been too quiet to condemn Hamas. The Hamas rockets are inexcusable, the cease-fire has been too temporary, the Israeli retaliation is too aggressive, the Hamas leadership is too irresponsible and the Israeli leadership has been too shortsighted. Hamas' insistence that they not recognize the State of Israel is stubborn and idiotic.  There is no long term plan, no consideration for innocent people who have nothing to do with 1000’s of years of conflict on either side of the border. There is no reason within the leadership, there is a complete lack of judgment when it comes to long term goals and there have been too many people who have suffered for their not to be some hard feelings. . The Palestinian people living in Gaza have no hope for the future and it doesn’t surprise me that they fall in line with resistant fighters, the Israeli people have seen too many attacks from suicide bombers to rockets fired from Gaza to no expect their government to retaliate.

I'm only half kidding when I suggest that that we should to throw everybody out of the country, build a huge see-through fence, lock it up and throw away the key.. This way people can look through the fence at the desert they have left behind and wonder why they screwed it up so royally.

If they are going to act like children we should treat them like it.

Why does nobody follow the rules?

I'm very happy for you people, proud of your goals and hopeful that you'll meet them but really lets be realistic.. You will NOT be able to keep up with it, you'll do your best but after about a week you will start to sputter out. I realize that I'll have to deal with a very crowded gym for the next few weeks and also understand that these are the same losers who keep my rates at the NYSC relatively low since they are the people that won't use the gym but continue to pay for it.

But there are other issues other than just crowding on the machines.

I go to the gym yesterday and there is NO treadmill available what so ever and every fat-ass on one of them is clearly over the 30 minute limit. This leads to a major issue for me. i don't want to be confrontational but I really also don't want to wait while people blatently abuse the 30 minute rule.

What am I to do?

my options are to either wait it out like a schmuck with a doofy smile on my face, confront the sweaty slob on the treadmill or go and tell somebody.

The issues by doing nothing is of course that if I just stand there, I'm complicit in the crime and accepting of this type of antisocial behavior but more importantly my gym routine gets compromised.

The issue bv confronting some sweaty slob is that I come to the gym to workout, not be put in an uncomfortable situation. The guy I confront might be the same guy who I run into in the Sauna one day which really isn't the place for two dudes to get into a tussle.

The issue by going and telling on somebody is that I'll lose my spot in line.

Why doesn't anybody ever follow the rules?

back on US Soil

Link to Video on Facebook

so a buddy posted the above link of the Righetti Cairo dance to a message board and the responses have been 'interesting'. Here are some of the highlights

Here is the latest rendition, this time during a traditional Egyptian wedding in Cairo. No matter how many times I see this spectacle, I just never have the words

Wars have been started over less

It didn't even seem like he knew the song that time.

Which makes it all the better.

What makes it best is this is the first time this has happened when he (and the crowd) was completely stone cold sober. It was a muslim wedding. Not an ounce of booze in the joint

Jesus

Also, I've never tried to rip and undershirt off myself before, but Righetti seems quite proficient at it. I'm not sure whether to be impressed or not

I texted him to ask him if he pre-rips the shirts like the Hulkster. Response: "Never."

my man crush on Righetti knows no bounds

Really, any dance that starts with pushups is bound to be a good one

That's 100x more awesome than the first one.

Love how he runs out of gas at the end.

This sober rendition is a lot less intense and seems to peter out at a couple points. He's got this look on his face like "crap, I used up all my good moves, now what

Look at the children running and cowering in fear

I want to party with that guy.

Solid work Terrance

Wow - that's really bad dancing even for dancing that's intended to be really bad

By really bad you mean totally awesome, right?

I think it is great when people can disregard the judgments of others and just have a great time, even if it means acting silly. It is infectious. Good for you righetti.

I used to think I was "that guy" at weddings too. But Righetti just put all other "that guys" to shame.

I'm still not sure what to do here ... to laugh my ### off or cringe in horror or stare in moderate disbelief.

What was his wife's response to all of this?

Righetti should rent himself out for other weddings and barmitzvahs

He's got like two, maybe three, moves is all. Even better.

So pathetic, it 180's to greatness

If you're ever attending a wedding in the Greater San Francisco Bay Area, can I get notice beforehand?

I may consider a second marriage just so I can invite Righetti.

Seriously, Righetti is like the kryptonite of nomarriage.com

But the Best Response was the following:

If I were gonna start a new rock-band, I'd call it Puddle of Piss

Not only do Tourists embarrass me and locals annoy me but throughout all my travels from small cities in China, through desert towns in Egypt, through the old Soviet style building in Eastern Europe, the cloud forest's in Central America, the Blue Lagoon in Reykjavik and the beautiful strip clubs of Montreal I find that nobody has come up with a real solution to the puddle of piss you always find in a public mens room about 5 inches in front of the bowl.

It seems to be a magical barrier which prevents the average dude from taking out his schlong and actually hitting the bowl. It becomes the broken window theory where the puddle becomes a small ravine, then a small lake and finally you are faced with the River Nile. The more that add the further the next schmo has to stand and the bigger the puddle becomes. It is absolutely filthy and I have yet to find a country with a real solution

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Four Bucks = 22 pounds for a medium coffee

As I sit blogging in a Starbucks in Downtown Cairo wondering why in the lands of Arabia, we are drinking Seattle's finest.. This is just obnoxious.. I have nothing against Starbucks other than the $4 coffee and the pretentious squaters who dominate the big chairs but I wouldn't order Dominos in Rome, Baluchis in Mumbai, Mr Softie's in Iceland or a Thai prostitute in Amsterdam .

Here is an observation for you: There is probably not a better sipping coffee than Turkish coffee especially when followed up with some apple tobacco from a huka on a crowded Arabian street.

Cairo has a lot of life to it, tons of energy, excitement and pull. Pace in these countries is different, Egyptian time is easily 30 minutes late yet everybody screams, cars honk and you can get woken up by either the call to prayer or the cry of a lamb about to be slaughtered.

By the way, next time you carry a water bottle back to your apartment so that you can ensure it gets recycled realize that greening the earth is going to be pretty hard when you see the amount of pollution you find in the rest of the world. Your Prius won't cancel out the black smoke billowing from the cars in ZhengZhou, Bucharest or Cairo. Trying to save the world is like running in quicksand.

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I hate Tourists

I might take more notice of this kind of thing than others but have you noticed how badly tourists dress? I find that tourists take the opportunity to dress in garb I could only hope they wouldn't otherwise be caught dead in. Go to a tourist attraction and you'll find non matching tops and pants, TShirts that read 'Fancy a Fuck?' or those zebra football pants. Not sure why this happens, could be laziness, boredom or lack of care but I am insulted that I have to be privied to it.



I actually find it insulting that people dress badly when they visit a foreign land, as if their best look is not worth the gaze of the people who don't speak in your native tongue.



The three worst offenders:



Europeans who although generally considered well dressed, are some of the worst offenders, the color combinations, the graphic tees, the chest hair. Italians and the Dutch share in this guilt for different but similarly offensive reasons



Americans are pretty bad too, and they tend to get worse with age from Fanny Packs, to doofy glasses and tourist t-shirts usually of the place you are at.. Like a shirt that reads "Cairo" in Egypt or "Amsterdam" in Holland. Might be that the Americans need a reminder where they are at all times.. Dreadful





Japanese are in a category all their own, and for them it seems to be more of a badge of honor than just bad. It's not that Japanese people don't care, they actually care too much and they are most easily identified by their big heads and hipster garb.



The best part about it is that any of these jackasses are going to have 30 rolls of pictures with them in front of the great sights of world wearing yellow sweatpants and a lime green tshirt with a Camel smoking a huka drawn on it.



I have collected a bunch of pictures and will post them as part of my new Photo Essay

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Jack brings people together

This is a bit of a reprise but honestly, there is NOTHING that bring people together more than fermented hops.

Ask yourself this question:
how many people do you love? Not marriage/family/baby love but love in the other way, the "I got drunk with that guy, and he's great" way

I love my wife, family and close friends but there is a different level of love which is based purely on having thrown back a few at some point which changes everything.

I don't understand chicks, nor do I try to.. But I understand beer love.. Take any two dudes and put them in a bar and all of a sudden the two will have a life-long bond. This is when you are at a wedding or something and you run into a guy you had beers with 10 years ago and you give that dude a hug vs a guy you once had coffee with whose hand you would shake.

Take that theory and throw a couple of shots of Jack to it and you have friend for life.
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A Pet Peeve revival

Mass New Years text messages.. This is not considerate but actually inconsiderate. You are costing me $0.05 (or actually $0.50 when I am traveling in Egypt) for an impersonal message..



Not a lot of action on New Years Eve in Egypt, the city of Luxor felt a bit like Fort Lee on an average Tuesday night, no fun, no action


A new Righetti Bitch:

I gotta say that I hate walking into a hotel room after spending 3 days in the desert and finding stains on the sheets of you hotel room, mold-gunk on the shower curtain and yellow water to brush your teeth. It is like you actually are MORE dirty than before you shower.. There I am in a hotel room with a perfectly good bed, mumified in my desert sleeping bag.

Another complaint.. Haggling with these store keepers is such a dirty feeling as you try to get $0.80 off of a $10 scarf. You feel dirty for arguing to save the equivalent of a cup of coffee but are more annoyed you have to even do it. When a guy offers you a scarf for 100 pounds and drops down to 50 pounds immediately without you even asking, you know he has a lot of room

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