Taking on the MILF decal

I totally get that we live in an oversexed society where we need to constantly go to extremes to get the kind of reaction we were able to solicit with a provocative look 20 years ago
When I walked home this week and saw a MILF decal on a Chevy Venture nd whereas I should have been intrigued instead I really wondered what they were thinking. Now I'm in no way against hot mothers but when you post it on a mini van with two baby seats in the back you might be pushing the 'I am a slut' envelope too far.
I was completely petrified when my mom dropped me off in front of the elementary school, just imagine how horrified these poor kids are being chauffeured around by Britney Spears

take on President Cookie Monster

Color me intrigued.

The rumors about New Jersey Governor Chris Christie making a potential presidential run continue to swirl and didn't get any quieter after he spoke at the Reagan Library in the last week.    Although Christie continues to deny any interest it's pretty obviously that the Governor likes the spotlight like he likes cheesecake.   The truth of it is, I don't care what anybody says but this Republican field is shaping up to be one of the worst in recent history..right now you have a guy who looks like he spends all his time in a tanning booth, another who is quite possibly certifiably crazy, a chick who has that 'crazy look' in her eyes, a fat old speaker of the house and that crazy black dude who keeps screaming about 9-9-9 which I  guess is code for J-J-J.  Just Jobs Jones..

But if Governor Cheesecake joins the ranks, I think it might bring some much needed life to the party especially because Chubby Checker has become the darling of his home-state with his take no crap, no-nonsense attitude.    The problem will be… can he survive the pressure of a presidential run..  Everytime I see him it looks like the cookie monster's poor heart is just not going to hold up.. The presidential campaign is a marathon with the winner getting the unenviable position of having to put his health on the line for another four years of the most stress.   you look at the Cupcake King and he breaths so heavy you feel like you're watching a guy with wake apnea.  Did you see this poor guy during that Hurricane Irene thing, he looked like he was wearing a tarp.. 

I know this is a no-nonsense guy and obviously there have been plenty of presidents with vices (Obama with the smoking, Bush Jr with the coke, Clinton with the BJ's, Reagan with the late night cookies and warm milk) but you wonder what Putin will think when they sit across the table from double C knowing that the quickest way to any deal might be one of those large cookies.   

take on the three day hangover

Getting old sucks.. sometimes it's the bad knees, sometimes it's the few extra pounds around my mid section and sometimes it's the fact that I'm going to the bathroom a couple of times at night, sometimes it's the fact that my sack dropped 5 inches since I was 30 but mostly it sucks when you realize that your recovery time has gone to hell.

I went out on Saturday Night and I swear that on Tuesday afternoon I was still hung-over.   Now I'm sure the near concussion I gave myself with a lethal combination of Tequila and Sambuca has a lot to do with this but I know that even this head crusher would have only put me out of commission till about noon a few years ago.. now it takes me THREE FULL DAYS TO RECOVER!!!!!

 

Give me back my youth

Taking on the one way car reservation

I pick up a car earlier this week for a one way rental from one city in Ohio and dropping off in another and made my decision in part based on the estimated total charge of $178. So you can imagine I'm flabbergasted When I return the car earlier today I am told my total charge will be $318. I question it and am told that they are charging me $0.45 mile for the 250 miles I drove
Now nowhere in my reservation was it clearly stated that there was any kind of drop off fee and no time before have I been charged a mileage penalty
I explain to the guy that I booked this reservation specifically because of the estimated charges and that nowhere did it give me a number that resembled anything close to $300. He counters with the thought that Budget would not know how many miles I would drive which countered with the fact that they knew where I was picking it up and since they knew I would at minimum drive to the other airport they could have at least estimated that the most direct route from airport to airport was still 175 miles.
I get charging extra for the 75 'extra' miles but basic laws of physics tell you that it could not have been done in zero miles

Take on the rules

when hitting an adult entertainment place there are a few rules that can never be broken

- never take the offer from the doorman to help him find you a good table. Tables are for suckers because strip clubs are about the stage and on a busy night you need to be as close to the action as you can be. You'll air there like a schmo wondering why Savannah from Georgia (the country not the state) hasn't made it back to your table and thenyou realize she's being scooped up the second she leaves the stage. You'll spend the night nursing on $9 Miller Lite's while you could be nursing on something much less filling

- never let her start a dance when the song has already started. Strip club songs are already ridiculously short, nobody needs to be shorted any more

- always have singles. I know this sounds ridiculously obvious because spending $200 is easy in theory but spending 200 singles takes time. It's like the poker room in a casino, you can sit there for hours drinking free jack and cokes or you can go to the blackjack table and blow your wad in 15 minutes. I guess it's all about preferences

- always limit your possible expenditures before you walk in the door Decide beforehand what you are going to spend, take out that amount and don't allow yourself to hit the ATM ever

- when you lend money to a friend never allow them to give it back to you under the black-light. He may as well just flush the $200 down the toilet because when you have money in your pocket at FD's it's as good as spent

- leave your credit cards at home because would better off giving your VISA card to a Ukranian website than a Ukranian dancer.

- never use their ATM unless you are OK with a 10% convenience charge for $100 worth of monopoly money

- don't eat the sushi. I don't care if the place has a grade A plaque from the health department in their window, nothing good can come from chowing down on raw fish at strip club

But finally when selecting a possible lapper remember go with real ones over the ones with the big fake boobs. Apparently the silicon has leached into their minds or they have lost any sense of sensuality and somehow they always assume that constantly jumping down on your lap from five feet up is suppose to be a turn-on.

Take on the morning after

I don't have a lot of fears. I am not afraid of ghosts, I don't hide money under my mattress and I don't overreact to the great storms. What I do fear though is checking my pockets after an epic night at FD's of too many shots, too many gin and tonics and too many lappers if that concept even exists When you start the night with $600 in your pocket you know you are at least limiting your potential losses so when I emptied my pockets I was relieved to find what look like about $100 of crumpled bills so for about 20 minutes all seemed well but then I realize that I also pulled the old mastercard out a few times too you just don't want to go online to see the damage it could have done

Take on the end of summer flu

For the last two weeks every person I've encountered has met me with a cough which seems like they are trying to dislodge a piece of hot-dog stuck deep inside the throat. Just about every conversation is interrupted with a sneeze, people have a hard time concentrating and left ad right you see others constantly blowing their noses. It is really a disgusting time to be alive. I couldn't be sure but it seems that there is a rampant flu going around NYC right now which just about every person has gotten. I'm not sure if it's a particularly potent strain but i can say that I have not seen this many people looking like death in decades. It seem like nobody has been spared as the subway is filled with a chorus of throat clearing, hachhooing and people doing that disgusting sick nose snort thing. The winter can't come soon enough

take on the neck tattoo

I get why people get tattoos, feeling the need to clutter up their disgusting bodies with mementos of a time gone by even when they very well know that they can have some major tattoo regret.  As long as they are discreet I will usually just mark it down as childhood indiscretion, but when they become visible in normal work gear you have to wonder if it's evolution in progress.

I get why thugs, dudes at Rikers and gangbangers have neck tattoos as their potential employment opportunities are probably already entirely limited but when I see a normal looking dude with a spider web crawling out of his collar I have to wonder how entirely useless this part of the population really is. How the hell can you ever expect to get a respectable job unless you have a wicked cross-over or can drop a 20 footer from the corner?   This is one of the situations that if there were only 20 spots on a lifeboat and I was the deciderer™ than I would be very comfortable making the call for those who live and who die based solely on the amount of visible tattoos.

Sent from my iPhone

take on those shoe gloves

A couple of years ago on the back of an article about some dude who followed some South American tribe of bare-footed long-distance runners,  a couple of companies came out with these idiotic looking glove sneakers.   Being a runner there has never been one time that I've seriously thought about trading in my Asix for a pair of these things but I can understand that if there is some medical proof that this improves running and decreases injuries that the concept has a lot of value.

What I don't understand is why somebody would wear these things out…   yesterday on the subway, I sat across from a young chick who was otherwise very attractive..that is until you got to her feet.  I'm not sure what it is but rubber encased toes have to be one of the least attractive ways to show off one of the least attractive body parts and unlike basic mathematics this isn't a case where a negative multiplied by another negative becomes a positive. 

Take on the centerpiece

One thing that always gets me when ibsit down in a restaurant is how much clutter there is on the table. Between the menus, specials, wine lists, glasses, wine glasses and table settings a typical two top looks like Noah's ark. I know space in a city like New York is at a premium but the clutter is completely distracting, you can't even put your wallet on the table without having to move ten things out of the way.
But the worst culprit are those idiotic centerpieces made famous for being overpriced necessities at weddings. Somewhere, somehow somebody decided that a big gaudy centerpiece made for elegance while it only hinders conversation. I cannot tell you how big a pet peeve it is for me to sit at a table and not be able to see the person sitting across from me without severely straining my neck as I am trying to peek around a Frank Lloyd Wright tree growing in the center of my table. It's like
So my rule is simple, if you must have a centerpiece keep it no more than 9 inches off the table and if you are at a restaurant he waiter should remove the flowers as soon as they bring your drinks

take on the adult desitin

With my first half-marathon race on the horizon, I’ve started to run more rigorously over the last few months.   Long gone are the lazy Saturday 4 mile runs having been replaced with regular 7 or 8 mile runs with a ‘recovery’ run the day after.     Although the wind in my hair, the hard pavement under my shoes and the inches off my waist-line are all nice reasons to run, the pounding to my 35 year old bones seems to be affecting me significantly more than in years prior.    After a run my ankles hurt, my feet cramp and my legs ache for days but the worst thing that happened after my 10 miles run this weekend was the reappearance of an old foe.    At the sixth mile I started noticing it, it was creeping up slowly but definitely made it known that it was out there.  By the seventh mile there was some discomfort, by the 8^th mile the uncomfortableness had lead to a pain, by the ninth mile I was biting my shirt and by the time I finished about a half a block before I hit my house I was practically in tears.

Running isn’t just bad on your joints, it’s deadly on your skin.     Somehow during 10 miles of running I had developed some of the nastiest ass-chafing this side of a south-beach thong.    I can’t tell you why this happened as I’ve had many chafing battles before but this one seemed to rim around the inner-cheeks of my ass and with sweat dripping down and seeping into the open cuts the pain was unbearable.

I get home and am desperate remembering the  Italian Restaurant incident I rummaged through the cupboards desperate for some relief, fumble with a few bottles of cream but as I walk into the bathroom it hits me.. a blue tube of Desitin stares me right in the face.

I’ll be bringing a tube with me when I run that half marathon in a few weeks..just hope I can sneak off to a private spot for the application process.

take on active fatherhood

Well this is not good news but at least it may explain why I have such fat thighs, slightly lumpy breasts, a propensity to gossip and a slightly higher voice than normal

Over the weekend I read a new study which showed that men start losing testosterone when they become fathers.   They checked the levels of new fathers in a given age group and compared it to that of guys the same age without kids and found that the new dad's had a 34% drop in testosterone and found a direct correlation between time spent with a young kid and amount of testosterone drop.   I haven't tested myself but I was already half a chick who now spends basically every non-working hour with my daughter and will say that I've been low on energy, crabbier, definitely more sensitive although I have not yet had a desire to try on a thong.    

Now I will say that there probably is nothing wrong with it but but it does make you wonder if nature is changing where there is an ingrain need to not  want these huge families after-all.  Obviously low testosterone means less boogie-boogie which leads to fewer kids. 

I don't see any real issue here but I will have to hit FD's this weekend to be get my testosterone levels checked just to be sure.

Taking on the newspaper 'recycler'

I am all for recycling. I believe in my bones that we live in a wastefull place and we should do a much better job reusing things that still have value or avoiding things that are only adding to our carbon footprint. Whether it is plastic bodega bags or plastic bottles we go to great pains to make sure they don't end up in our normal trash With newspapers i am always a bit more torn If i have a copy that i am reading on a train or in a coffee shop, I try to leave it behind for another patron to enjoy. Knowing that this will be my intention I also will make sure to leave it in good readable shape and expect others to do the same. I am Ok if you did the crossword but if you drop an egg and cheese face down on the sports section then do us all a favor and drop it in the trash There is a very tight line between leaving a paper for reuse and plain littering
See this is where people suck, today I sit down in the bagel shop and see somebody left a copy of the Sunday Times. I flip through it and I realize that the previous owner culled out any of the decent sections an left a heap of liberal crap in its place. Gone were the Front Page, the Week in Review, the metro section and the sports pages while they left the car section, the arts section and that one about the mutual funds

Thanks a lot litterer

Take on "mommy"

One thing which I have never understood is why certain adult guys still refer to their mothers as "mommy". Now maybe they are searching for a long lost moment in time or maybe they have a general air of wimpiness but at some point this has to be a word that drops from your vocabulary. You can't possibly command respect when you are overheard satin things like "are you going to mommy's tonight?"
Now I know of three guys who use mommy in their regular vernacular and there isn't an obvious common characteristic although who do so although two of them are well over three bills so maybe a bad diet rich in chocolate and fried food is the common thread.

take on Times Square's ***Free Public Wifi****

I'm all for cities getting wired so that it's parks, subway stations and public places are WiFi accessible.  I don't mind a small fee like they charge with this Boingo thing at the airport for the service either although I have to admit that the free public wifi you find in many European and Asian cities is very pleasant.    The problem is that although Bloomberg did wire some parks with WiFi there are a number of other places where you might get the impression there is free WiFi but actually it just seems like some kind of Trojan Horse designed to give your IPhone gonorrhea.

Every-time I walk through Times Square my IPhone goes haywire with Wifi signals.   This isn't a crazy concept as there are thousands or offices and store in the area and they are almost always locked but there are always a couple right on top called something like **FREE PUBLIC WIFI**.    I can't figure out exactly what these things truly are but I am sure that clicking on them surely doesn't ever give you WiFi capabilities.   You just know these things are tied to some Russian sponsored outfit called The Black Sea somewhere outside of Kazakhstan where you can buy stolen credit cards, trade in gold and find imposter Viagra.

Taking on ass sweat

I get streaks, I have become used to puddles of piss, I dislike little hairs but there are not many things that disgust but like walking into a men's room to see the seat covered in ass sweat.
I know taking a shit is a big effort for some but how much pushing are you doing when you are precipitating from your ass?
Now I have a buddy who once literally detached his retina while taking an especially big dump so I guess how I can see this being almost a full contact sport for some of my larger friends but would it kill them to at least wipe down the seat afterwards??

take on the QBR

All summer we have been hearing about this new ESPN creation called the Ultimate QB Rating (QBR) as its final answer to the very flawed passer-rating stat which has been around for about 4 decades.

The issues with the passer rating has always been a combination of

·         Like its name implies, it's really a passer rating which does not accurately reflect the total value of a quarterback since it doesn't take into account a ton of things including fumbles and weighs other items like  hail-mary INT's as too heavily

·         nobody quite understands the math to it, I looked it up again today and felt like I was trying to do quantum physics

·         anything where a perfect rating is a 158.3, does not fit in our perfectly square society.  

Obviously these are all valid arguments but mostly they are all because for 40 years we've been trying to squeeze a round peg into a square hole.   What is good about passer rating is because it's been around forever everybody knows that hitting 100 is good, hitting 120 is great and hitting 150 is phenomenal.     The math is completely impossible to understand but so is the BSC ranking and people can live with that and although the perfect score is quirky, we are a society which still hasn't adopted the metric system so really it's never going to be a huge issue

Well ESPN comes back with their answer to the passer rating with this QBR and today I looked over the list of week 1 QB's to see how accurate the list seems relative to the way the QB's played

No.	Name	Total QBR
1	Ryan Fitzpatrick	91.2
2	Aaron Rodgers	91.1
3	Tom Brady	88.6
4	Matthew Stafford	87.4
5	Joe Flacco	79.6
6	Cam Newton	75.7
7	Rex Grossman	75.0
8	Drew Brees	71.6
9	Matt Schaub	71.0
10	Chad Henne	70.7
11	Michael Vick	68.4
12	Alex Smith	66.2
13	Tony Romo	62.9
14	Matt Hasselbeck	62.1
15	Jay Cutler	60.4
16	Eli Manning	53.6
17	Philip Rivers	52.8
18	Kevin Kolb	44.0
19	Luke McCown	43.0
20	Josh Freeman	34.7
21	Kyle Orton	33.0
22	Bruce Gradkowski	32.7
23	Sam Bradford	28.7
24	Matt Ryan	27.7
25	Andy Dalton	27.0
26	Jason Campbell	22.8
27	Tarvaris Jackson	21.1
28	Donovan McNabb	20.7
29	Colt McCoy	17.6
30	Mark Sanchez	17.6
31	Matt Cassel	11.2
32	Ben Roethlisberger	10.8
33	Kerry Collins	2.3

The top 5 seem pretty accurate as they were all QB's who not only had great NFL weeks but they all won their games pretty decisively.      Can't complain about Cam Newton high on the list because he had a great game too.

But here are some issues:  

Alex Smith at 12.      He threw for a total of 124 yards with exactly 4 passes for first downs.  He was efficient 15 for 20 but threw no TD's and basically was asked not to lose the game.. yet this new perfect system has him basically in the top 3^rd of QB's???

Tony Romo at 13..   He put up stats but was terrible when it counted.. he had two turnovers that are unforgivable including fumbling on third and goal within the 5 and throwing a pick into double coverage when one of those covering him is Darrell Revis.     There is no way he was the 13^th best QB out there this week if you watched the game

Eli Manning  at 16..  didn't see this game but I hear he was very up-and-down including the pick 6 in the shadow of his own end-zone.. I guess middle of the pack is right but there were guys behind him who were better including Kevin Kolb who actually led his team to a tight win.

Josh Freeman at 20.   I guess the ranking isn't bad but he got all his yards and his TD in total garbage time

Matt Ryan at 24..   he threw for about 120 yards up until he started to pat his stats in complete garbage time..   he threw a bad INT and fumbled a ball that was returned for a TD..both in critical parts of the game. 

Mark Sanchez  (full disclosure is that I'm a Jet fan)..   he wasn't perfect but he threw for 300 yards at a 59% clip including two TD's.   He had a stupid INT and held onto the ball too long for the fumble but he was surely not the 30^th best QB in week 1.   

So explain to me how Mark Sanchez who wins his game is ranked 30^th, Josh Freeman and Matt Ryan who both patted their stats in garbage time of a loss are ranked 10 and 6 slots ahead of him.   But the most striking thing is that on the exact same field in the exact same game he played against Tony Romo and their stats were basically even.    Both made mistakes although Sanchez played better as the game got close while Romo played worse.  Sanchez made throws to help win the game while Romo for all intents and purposes lost the game on his own. 

Maybe it's time for Trent Dilfer, Gruden and the rest of the boys go back to the drawing board