Take on Mr. Mom

Nobody tell Mrs Righetti but Jesus does she have a hard gig. When
she caught a nasty stomach big, Righetti had to come in from the
bullpen and try to close out the week. I get that working all day is
a schlep but having spent a full day playing Mr. Mom, I can't wait
till Monday when I get to go back to work and relax a bit
Between the shopping, diapers, crying, whining, pickups, housework and
random stuff, I'm exhausted. I get that there is a lot of downtime
but nothing like the downtime I get when I hide out on the toilet for
a half an hour when I'm hungover at work. There is no time to get
anything productive done what so ever when you have two kids pulling
you in twenty directions, especially when you are exhausted.

TGIF never rang so true

Take on the emergency HVAC repair

Somebody could have warned me that house ownership was expensive.
Within 5 hours of moving all my crap in, we noticed that the vents
were all blowing cold air and we were stuck at about 64 degrees for
our entire second floor, the only heat coming from downstairs.
I first tried to putz around with unit myself but as I have almost no
clue to HVAC systems and can barely tell a wrench from a hammer, that
wasn't a very fruitful endeavor. So we threw six layer of clothes on
the kids, cranked the downstairs heat to 85 and waited for some of it
to creep up the stairs

In the morning when I thawed out my daughters, I made the dreaded HVAC
call. Three hours and $356 dollars later, I had a new thermostat that
promised the latest technology in heat and air control and didn't even
get a handsome HVAC dude like the chick in the picture

MLIA

Take on the adult move

Having now moved three times in the last four and a half years, I can
safely say that they aren't much fun anymore. Years ago I'd get a
bunch of my buddies to come out of a Saturday morning, load up a UHAUL
and lug it from one crummy apartment to the next. It would cost you
the price of of the UHAUL, a case of beer and 5 pies (my friends are
gavones) and then hear them bitch and moan about how heavy everything
is....it was great and cheap. What wasn't great was that two months
later, you'd get a call from one of these guys to help him move and
now you were on the receiving end of the pizza, blow and booze but
you're back would feel like one of your buddy's sat on it. We'd have
a bunch of laughs though, mostly when we'd break the couch trying to
squeeze it through a doorframe because we were hungover to measure it
or when we spill a full diet coke in their laundry basket because we
are too busy checking out a hot chick living next door
Now I'm 38 with a mortgage, two kids and one on the way and a much
busier schedule, so I pay a bunch of dudes to do it. Can't say that I
am a huge fan of laying out $1765 but also couldn't possibly imagine
asking my friends who all have kids of their own to do this for me
anymore

Although honestly, the reason that I don't ask them anymore is
because I don't want them to call me for it either.

Take on the worse job in America

Is there a more depressing job than the furniture salesman at a local
couch place? The guy is always wearing a cheap suit and looks like
his wife, kids and dog have all left him and now he's hawking cheap
couches for 10% commission.

I've had the (dis)pleasure of having been in about ten of these places
over the last few days and it's always the same some guy from Bob's or
Raymour and Flanigan or Ethan Allen or the modern leather place walks
up to you and he looks like he's three drinks in, or should be. I
won't disparage anybody's job but there really is nothing redeeming
about that gig, people come in with their noses stuck way up in the
air and there you are standing and trying to give a sh!t about their
living room decor at 9pm on a Monday night knowing full well that the
couple will probably walk out and order it online

Take on the cruise

I never quite got the appeal of a cruise ship when I was younger. To
be trapped on a boat with 1000 strangers going from one tourist trap
port to another seemed as much fun as poking your eye out with a meal
cleaver. Then I got older and had kids and thought that ax extended
family vacation might be a good way to spend a few days basically
because with all the kids, the fun could stay contained. I've kicked
the idea around a few times but always end with a big X because every
time you read about one of these cruises the entire boat is puking
from all openings

Take in the callused heel

Most people will wear our a pair of socks when one of their nails pops
a hole in the toe but that is not me. When I wear through my sock,
it's almost always in the heel. I always attributed it to violent
walking but after examining it further, I have come up with another
conclusion. My problem is that the heels of my feet are basically
lined with two strips of sandpaper and they will abrade anything they
touch completely away.
Guess it's time for that Asian fish foot bath thing again

Take on the rear view camera

When I have up the last glimpse of coolness I had left and bought a
minivan, I knew my life was never gonna be the same. Long gone were
the nights of LTT's, beers, football talk and babes, replaced by runs
to Target and Home Depot. One thing I was told though was how easy
the minivan would make my life. The engineers apparently had asked a
bunch of moms what they needed in a car full of screaming kids and
they listened. The car door slides open with a key remote, you have
two rear view mirrors, one to check the road and the other to check
the kids. You don't need to put you key in the hole to start the car
which is probably similar to the rest of your life and it's got cup
holders, lights, chargers and seat adjustment galore.
Another feature is the rear camera, which is sort of great of you are
too lazy to turn around but this is a prime example of technology
making us worse. Driving is suppose to be a somewhat active and
engaged event, with a camera in the back and a TV mounted on the
dashboard it is just a video game and that is dangerous. Just this
week, I was making a three point turn and proceeded to crash into a
huge ice-bank, mainly because you cannot tell any depth perception in
that two dimensional camera and when it is a owning, everything looks
friggin white
So I already have a dinh in the bumper and a broken reflector, this
minivan is coating me a fortune in coolness and in actual dollars

Take on the Facebook lure

Facebook keeps sending me reminders to nudge me back onto their
terrible website and I keep nudging back by deleting their emails.
It's not just that I hate FB and everything it stands for but this
constant badgering of you to log onto their site is beyond annoying.
I know why they do it, because if you log on even to change your
setting to say you don't want to get these alerts, it counts you as an
active user, which I am not and never plan on

Well Facebook now uses an even more devious method of trying to get
you to log on, scare tactics. Today, I got an email saying that
somebody tried to log onto my account which may or may not be true but
I suspect it's just their method of luring you back in so that I can
get first hand reports of people's terrible takes on current events,
people's terrible updates on their lives and people's terrible kids

So, no thank you Marky Mark Zuckerberg, leave me the F alone

Oh. I deleted WhatsApp today, too

Take on stupidity

There are hundreds of times per year when I am shocked by stupidity,
whether it is people speeding when the roads are icy, people paying
extra for 'protection' plans or people buying a month worth of food
whenever there is a storm coming. With all of that said, there is an
example of stupidity which even shocks me - people who believe The
Flintstones is historically accurate with the earth being about 3000
years old. I never thought I'd be more shocked than by that nuts
until yesterday when I read an article stating that a quarter of
Americans don't realize the earth revolves around the sun. I am not
exactly sure how you prove this to them but I'm also not so sure it
matters because we can't in good conscious force castration upon
people

Take on docking

There are a handful of people (mostly Dutch people I suspect) who have
continued to use the CitiBike program through the summer. What this
has led to is a much greater amount of bikes at the main midtown
stations and, because the usage seems to be sparse during these
months, a plethora of docking stations. The issue now is that after
about nine months of this program, the docking stations are falling
apart as quickly as the bikes are. For months you have been able to
walk up to any station in the city and see two or three bikes docked
with the red light indicating it is broken but in the last few weeks
you are also seeing that ever station has anywhere from three to five
docking stations that don't work anymore. Maybe it's the weather,
maybe it is the use and abuse or maybe they should try pulling some
foreskin over them when not in use but Bloomberg's signature program
is going down like De Blasio's first term

Take on the paint swatch book

My car window says that things are closer than they appear, my
cornflakes look more rich in a nicer milk than the soggy crap in my
bowl and the swatches on my paint color-wheel look nothing like they
do in person. I don't know how you can ever be expected to decide on
a 15 by 10 foot foot wall be staring at a 2 by 2 inch swatch printed
on paper because ever color that I have ever chosen looks like
somebody threw up on my wall. Forget accents or trim or whatever, add
color to a room and be prepared to have your house look like the set
of Beetlejuice

Take on the Sherwin Williams color palet

As part of our move to out first real house, we have decided to get it
painted which cannot be more painful than of I actually broke out a
paintbrush and roller myself. Not only is a professional paint-job
much like a professional blow-job...extremely expensive but like the
latter, you don't expect any spillage from the former by going with
professional over amateur help

But what is really a killer is trying to find a color. I asked the
contractor to paint the basement white and was told that I could go to
the local Sherwin Williams store and pick out my white. They have
more than 180 types of white, all of which with one more pretentious
name than the other. There are the standards like white, pure white,
extra white and super white which all look the same. But then you
have he ones with the clever names like Athena dream, pearl river,
plush pillow, ice-cream, linen closet, chrissy snow and a bunch of
others and THEY ALL LOOK EXACTLY THE SAME
So here I am, a guy who wears an oversized Jets jacket stuffed with
newspapers like a homeless man, trying to pick out the nuance of white

This will end well

Take on the Korean Haircut

Sometimes random facts surprise you, other times they make complete
sense. I have no idea if the @OMGFacts handle get proofread of
fact-checked but they usually give you two or three tidbits per day
which are somewhat interesting like telling you that Pinocchio died
in the original version of that the Model T only came in black because
it was the fastest drying paint

But nothing made me less surprised than when I saw a piece about North
Korean dudes only be allowed one of 28 hairstyles. Obviously, anything
the North Korean regime does can't possibly surprise but but having
known quite a few Korean's in my time, I was only surprised that there
were even 28 haircuts to be had. Ever kid I knew had either the
rice-bowl thing, the #3 buzzed sides and the bouffant or the total
shaved head. I don't think that hair texture allows for much else and
really a Mohawk on a Korean dude would look like somebody sat on a
Shock Top bottle

Take on the cable company merger

When TOR read that Comcast was going to buy Time Warner we thought..
Maybe a negative times a negative will turn into a positive. Most
people hate their cable company and two of the most hates ones are
Time Warner and Comcast, so it is only natural for the two of them to
combine into a large conglomerate of crap.
I get that this is the way capitalism works but the Cable Companies
have always had an unfair advantage because for years they had no
competition. If you were zoned for Time Warner, you couldn't get
Cablevision and visa versa. So the leads these companies had against
their upstart rivals were so large they they couldn't possibly be
caught from behind. Finally you got companies like Direct TV or FIOS
but it is still. Of true competition because all these municipalities
are wired for one cable company, so the only way to get true cable TV
is to cough up $160 and deal with some of the worst customer service
known to man.
I hate them all and the Comcast-Time Warner thing is the worst of them all

Take on the NYC sidewalk after a snowstorm

New York City was a complete swamp today from the two days of snow
followed by the complete downpour last night. The puddles near the
sidewalks were lakes by the time I got in this morning, the mounts of
packed powder were everywhere and there were more wet feet and socks
than in a Louisiana swamp
But one place had their sidewalks perfectly cleared. It wasn't in
front of one of the big name banks, wasn't a big time attorney firm
near Rockefeller, a pen shop up near Harlem or a small building in
midtown. The place with the cleanest sidewalks was FlashDancers up on
Broadway and 52nd street. At 8:30 this morning, a full
three-and-a-half hours before they open their doors, their sidewalks
looked like they belong in South Beach. There was not a drop of snow
or salt, just a perfectly clean, completely inviting entrance to a
little slice of heaven

take on the Larry Flynt Lap Dance Back Tax

Just saw a report that a judge ruled that lap-dances must be taxable as they are considered a service and not art.    The entire case stems from the Hustler Club on the West Side Highway trying to avoid paying a sales-tax on lappers.

The ruling is that they club owes $2.1million dollars in back taxes, so the TOR guys wanted to find out how many lap dances this means

figuring the 8.875% NYC sales tax, $2.1 million dollars in back taxes should have been collected over $23,661,971.83.    Now figure that an average lap-dance at the Hustler club is probably $20 (per song) we're talking about 1,183,098 lap dances..

now just imagine how much the local Korean dry-cleaners made off of that and then figure out the 8.875% for that.

Big Government wins again

take on Bob Costas' nasty eyes

is there anything more disgusting than Bob Costas' eyes?     Forget all the other travesties at the Sochi Olympics, the everlasting image will Bob's nasty red eyes which have been the talk of the gawker world for a few days now.    I remember the first time I caught him with the pink-eye thing and realizing that it probably meant that he rubbed his eyes after picking his ass (this is the most common way of getting pink-eye and the reason that the most common cases happen to kids).    So Bob either he was picking his ass or he's having some kind of kinky ass/face sex, neither vision is very appealing

anyway, it was so absolutely disgusting looking at this little guy with his gross eyes just staring at you from the TV screen that NBC switching to Matt Lauer was actually a welcome relief, even with his mental-patient haircut and stupid beard

take on the Dutch Pee'er

Read an article today about some KLM pilot peeing all over Putin's house over in Russia after the Dutch team dominated in some skating event..   Deadspin made this sound like a major deal but anybody who has ever been to Holland realize that the Dutch will pee on just about anything..  it's like they are marking their territory..   Maybe it's lingering insecurities of when the the Germans marched over the entire country in about 15 minutes stopping only to drink a couple of Heinies 

when asked about this article, a chick with a dude's name who is married to a dutch dude who dresses like a chick said the following

The dutch are known for "wild peeing" (peeing on the street) Jeff once peed on the royal palace in Amsterdam. I'm SHOCKED he didn't get arrested.

She couldn't be more right.. the Dutch are know for about three things.. peeing in public (just look at the street toilets in Holland, they are just a little fence that you pee against, no urinal, no pluming nothing), dressing like crap at weddings and saying inappropriate things in proper company

I once left a pee stream from Prospect Heights to Park Slope paying extra attention to a couple of stray Food CoOp shopping carts and Chocolate Fondue shops 

Take on the furniture outlet

Having spent the last three days doing more research on living room furniture than any man should in a lifetime, I am about to give up.   I can't look at another leather swatch, another chaise couch configuration or another accent chair.   I get that this is all very important but after a weekend of this I think we are more than happy to sit on the ground.      

I believe that we were at every furniture store in a 30 mile radius trying to figure out if we're better off with a couple of love seats or a sectional for a room we aren't even that comfortable in especially because every option is $5000.   

We then decided to try a furniture outlet just because we are gluttons for misery. 

Forty minutes later I wonder how anybody would ever buy anything there.  All the couches are missing arms or pillows, have stains or marks on the seats and, in one case, had a giant knife mark through the seat cushion.  

I get saving a few bucks but if I wanted a couch that looked like it survived Scarface, I wouldn't think I'd need to still spend $2500

Sent from my iPhone

Take on the "Best Gas, Low Price"

There are not many things in the world which make me feel less
comfortable than a sign on the Bronx for "Best Gas, Low Price". I get
trying to pull in as many customers as possible and words like Best
and Low Price are usually very enticing but when it comes to gasoline,
I tend not to want the cheapest option as it just feels like it will
be watered down. I'd imagine getting gas here feel like getting a BJ
from one of those chicks from Hookers on the Point, night her the job
done but your internal will never quite be the same.

Then when you see the price of $3.79, you wonder how much cheaper it
really is anyway

Take on Sochi

I'm not one who makes a huge deal about the Sochi hotel conditions for
celebrities and newscasters but it would probably should have been
expected that after spending $50 billion dollars, you'd think those
Russians would have gotten something right. I like the thought of the
Olympic Village not being a total 5-star orgy but when guys have to
break down bathroom doors to make it to the mountain on time, it's a
bit of a mess

What we've heard so far are lack of lightbulb, poorly designed
bathroom plumbing, pillows being sold on the black market, falling off
door knobs, unfinished streets and a bunch of other black eyes for
Putin and his cronies.
What surprises me is that anybody was surprised by any of it.
Anybody who has ever visited countries outside of the West will know
that shortcuts are a way of life. When the IOC granted these games to
Sochi, you just knew that this was going to be a clusterf*ck mainly
because you can't get anything done in these counties without greasing
the entire machine and then still having to accept the fact it will be
done half-assed.

take on the coupon

Is there anything that feels more disingenuous than having a guy give you a quote for a job and then when you mention you have a coupon they say that they can’t apply it because you didn't mention it originally.   I've had two instances in the last few weeks where I've gotten quotes for various things around the house and in both cases when I went to book the work and tried to apply a coupon the company listed online, they said that they couldn't honor it.    In both cases they said that they have already offered us the lowest price for the required work which means only one thing.   They will quote you the same final price with or without coupon; it’s just how they’ll present it to you.

You can ask a quote for a chimney lining and get $2700 or you can tell them you have a coupon and they’ll quote you $3000 minus $300 for a grand total of…. You got it

Take on FIOS cancellation penalty

I've had a great experience with FIOS over the last year and a half
but like all good things, they seem to have to come to an end. And
like most utilities, the end is more painful than anything.
See, you can't exactly cancel your FIOS account, they make you jump
through more hoops than a Olympic gymnast and this is, of course,
exactly what they promised you wouldn't have to deal with when signed
up. They said that as long as there wasn't FIOS offered at whatever
new address we had, we could cancel with no penalty, so when I called
and found out that they didn't have FIOS at our new place, in thought
it would be easy.
First they denied ever offering this, then they said that that since
they had Verizon DSL offered in that town they wouldn't honor it and
finally they said that they just didn't have a way to NOT charge you
the $60 cancellation fee. Of course, being a persistent (and cheap)
Dutchmen, I wasn't going to take any of those answers lying down so
after 2 phone-calls and nearly 2 hours of my life I convinced them to
drop the $60 cancellation because they really didn't offer a
reasonable alternative because going from fiber-optics to DSL is like
going from a Maserati to a Honda Odyssey

Take on the wintry mix

Is there a bigger misnomer than the meteorologists definition of
today's storm as a "wintry mix"? For the last few days we were told
we'd get 3-6 inches overnight but it would turn into a wintry mix by
morning. I get that they need to come up with clever descriptions but
wintry mix sounds like the crap they play on LiteFM during the
holiday, reminding you of a happy white family sitting in front of
their Christmas tree talking about all the good they have done through
the year. It's got this mystical and romantic ring to it while it
really means a miserable dump of cold wet rain on top of a batch of
snow
I felt like I was shoveling square blowing balls out of my driveway at
5:30 this morning and when I walked back out two hours later the
entire driveway was one big ice luge.

Maybe Mr. G. should dub this with something more fitting for what it
really was "a miserable dump"

take on the air guitar

Just caught an article on bleacher-report  that said that the Red Hot Chili Peppers didn't even have their guitars plugged in during the half-time superbowl concert.   Now, I'm not so naive to think that any large act on a world-stage gets a bit of help (I'm looking at you Mrs. Spears) but when it's so incredibly obvious, you feel a bit duped.   It's one thing for Whitney Houston to lip-sing the Star Spangled Banner after the Gulf War because you HAVE to get that song right, especially that day but the RHCP are a Rock N' Roll band who have played that kind of venue hundreds of times, if they can't be trusted to do it right, who can?

I sure as hell had my doubts that Bruno Mars was going au naturale, but I never thought they would cut Flea's balls off, although he admitted so much on Twitter when the following picture surfaced..

Take on the commercials

What the hell happened to the advertising industry that they decided
to become collectively unfunny?

Not only was the game basically unwatchable last night, the
commercials made the night a blood bath. We've generally had very
competitive superbowls of late (Giants Ravens not withstanding) but
even when the game was getting a bit boring, you could always count on
a couple of yucks between the action. Yesterday was not one of those
days, where there were countless lame renditions from the Colbert
thing to the Arnold one and worse of all the Seinfeld massacre. I
cannot remember a single commercial which was worthy of prior Super
Bowl lore as the class of 2014 will go down as the least funny thing
since Mad about You

Take on the Supercuts line

The hottest destination in my home town isn't a bar, the newest
hot-wing place or even in front of a 7-11. The place people are lined
up for on a Sunday morning is Supercuts. As TOR readers know, I
obviously get the appeal of a cheap haircut and can always appreciate
it being done by a bubble-gym chewing guidette but to line up for
thirty minutes before it opens ok a Sunday morning seem ludicrous.
There are literally five people at 9:15AM waiting to get in, including
some fur wearing Jewish mother, a chubby townie, a dude who looks like
he could work at OfficeMax, a woman with one of the worst haircuts I
have ever seen and a bald dude who I can only presume is there to get
his scalp massaged

Maybe there is something to that hot-chick cutting hair for cheap
business model after-all.

Another dude just showed up, looks to be about 75 years old and pumped
full of Viagra

Take on the online opt-out

One of the (many) things I hate are we based programs that can't be
cancelled online. I tried to cancel my NYTimes.com subscription but
when I clicked on the cancel link on my homepage, of brought me to a
page with a phone number to call to process my requests.

You can sign up online, you can update your credit card online, you
can add services but when you try to cancel, it is completely
impossible. It's one thing if this is an account you signed up for by
speaking with a person, but when you signed up for it online, you
should be able to remove yourself

I get the reasoning behind this -make it as difficult to cancel as
possible- but the inconvenience only annoys me more and leaves a
terrible taste in my mouth and the five follow up offers to try to get
me to stay at big discounts makes it even more annoying.