Take on the thru-streets

There is nothing more stressful than having to catch a plane, jumping in a cab ad all of a sudden be confronted with the equivalent of the parking lot at Metlife stadium. I realize NYC traffic is a pain in the ass but it seems that it shouldn't be entirely unpredictable but that hasn't stopped my cabby from systematically choosing the most crowded streets throughout manhattan
It has assured me of one important fact. That there is no way that those thru-streets are even slightly more effective of getting traffic across town
I am convinced those are designed to allow taxis from jacking riders for all they're worth

Take on the left side gas tank

We seem to be able to adjust to most thing even if the old English system the Americans use is antiquated. We buy milk in gallons, soda in liters, we count football fields in yards but the premier event in the Olympics is measured in meters

But one thing that gets me is that my informal study has shown is that 75% of all cars have their gas tank on the left driver side. This is convenient when the drier has to pump gas but it makes for a cluster at the pump. I pull into a station yesterday and find that there is a huge line for gas on one side of the pump while the other side was as clear as day. Now I am impatient so obviously i swing around, make a three point turn and pull in facing the opposite way as everybody else I get my gas and then have to reverse out, do a backwards pony turn, wait for the other ahold doing the same thing before I am back on the highway. Now obviously you can't force GM, Chrystler and Ford to do anything but the next time one of them comes hand in hat looking for some tax payer handout we tell them that we would on the condition that they make their fleet right side gas pump accessible.

Take on the NJ transit ticket machine

I feel for anybody who has ever had the misfortune of having to commute to the Garden State out of either Penn Station or Port Authority. I don't feel for them because of what can only be described as one of the least pleasant commutes in America with the overcrowding in these two mass transit hubs. I din't even feel for them considering when they complete this hellish commute they end up in some non descript jersey towns with about as much personality of a wet fart
Why I feel bad is that these commuters have to deal with the slowest ticket machines known to man. What should be a transaction which takes about the same amount of time as an ATM withdrawal easily takes 60 seconds. Now that may not sound like a lot but when you want to catch a 5:35 train to Manalapan it seems like an eternity
It's like they have a homing pigeon in the back of those suckers which has to literally fly back to the base station in Rahway to complete your transaction

Take on snail pace

Most of the time I find myself in a rush. I'm rushing to and from work. I rush through lunch, schedule short vacations, multitask constantly and hardly take a break so I realize that there is more than just a bit of irony in the fact I hate being rushed at a restaurant. I get that these places need turnover in order to survive but there is nothing more frustrating than having lunch and feeling like you are on the clock. I hate food not coming out together, I hate being given a check before I've finished my coffee and although I don't like sitting in front of an empty plate k hate having a waiter start to collect the place-settings, napkins and salt and pepper shakers before I am through. If I am going to drop $25 for brunch, at least allow me the dignity of not feeling like I'm being herded like a cow
So here is a big thumb-up for any restaurant which gets the snail-pace approval

Take on the gift of booze

When my sister in law opened her presents for her super sweet 16 (x1.875) birthday party this weekend it shocked me to see how many people brought her booze. Not because she's not a fan of alcohol but because who the hell ia ever going to drink all of this. I unofficially counted 7 different bottles which if it had been a house party might seem logical but for as a present was more than a bit weird I get the idea behind a good bottle of wine or a beer of the month club but to give somebody a cheap bottle of chardonnay, a fifth of Wild Turkey, a two liter of vodka just seems odd. This kind of gift just screams regift.

Take on the tipping point

Malcolm Gladwell's book The Tipping Point speaks about the masses following the innovators when it comes to popular culture. The coolest bands are discovered in small murky clubs, the best authors start out as guys who write for a small audience and Hush Puppies are cool only when they are not.
I believe in The Tipping Point concept and feel like most things Jump the Shark pretty much as they get 'discovered' by everybody. The one exception seems to be Facebook. I was speaking with a 20 something the other day and she admitted to checking Facebook at least 20 times per day, she posts, she lurks an she comments and asking her to get off of it for 24 hours is akin to asking her to chop off her left arm
The funny thing is that unlike a traditional Tipping Point, she was part of the original Facebook army having gotten her account with her .edu email address but the irony is that she like all the other early adopters never left Facebook when it got lame while basically everybody in my generation who joined late also saw how incredibly lame it was.

Although FB claims to capture about 25% of te world population it really only gets three demographic groups. Do a quick search of who is an active Facebook person and I am sure it is overwhelmingly women in their 60's, new (or wanna be new) mothers and the original FB kids crowd who are now in their mid to late twenties. Out of all my male friends I only know two guys who actively post and comment. Basically everybody in
My generation left in a Moses like mass exodus but the people who stayed are very much the original members.

Take on Friday bloody Friday

My three favorite days of the year are Thanksgiving, The 4th of July and Black Friday because these are true American Holidays and in all three times you can catch fire works. Either because your aunt doesn't like your uncle's new young wife, because some nutjon is setting off M80's in his backyard or because American shoppers are psychos I have never been one of these crazies that stands online at a BestBuy at 2AM hoping to get a BluRay player for 50% off but I love watching the news that night to see people get trampled or shot as they fight over a Tickle Me Elmo doll. This is America at it's worst/best anyway you get it, people so infuriated with the man (in front of them) they take out a gun.
This year is mo different as there are already reports of a few injuries including some chick who started to pepperspray anybody who tried to come near the tablets in the electronic division at a Wall Mart
You gotta love it

Take on the Thanksgiving game

The three things you can count on during the fourth Thursday in November is indigestion, tryptophan and people complaining about the Lions. Every year everybody complains that teams other than the Cowboys and Lions should be afforded the national exposure which they say isn't fair to other teams but really it comes down to people being annoyed that they are forced to watch a team that has sucked since I was in high School. This year is the first time in about two decades that people didn't complain the Lions were on TV and it's not because they finally started to believe in tradition. It is only because the Lions finally don't suck

Taking on the cab to the sticks

Yesterday as I jumped into a cab in the pouring rain and told the driver to take me to the last stop in Brooklyn he -like many before him- groaned. Anybody who has lived in the boroughs has had this happened to them with cabbies acting annoyed for having to comply with the law because they will say that they will not get a return fare. Now first of all this is crap because there are plenty of people in Bensonhurst, Riverdale and Flushing who would use a yellow can but because they are like the bald eagle seem to be completely extinct

But forget servicing all the boroughs, I think long trips are actually a great deal for these guys, especially at 10pm on a Tuesday. Our entire ride did not take more than 25 minutes and after a generous tip the guy put nearly $35 in his pocket. So even if it takes him another 20 minutes to get back into lower manhattan, he has already made $35 for the hour plus he has 15 more minutes to shuttle a couple people between wall-street and TriBeCa. This dude probably made $45 during the hour he had me in a car, I'd guess that $45 is more than he sees in an hour cruising Manhattan.

taking on the power of a win

I have a friend whose life seems to be turned upside down lately.    His wife went up and moved out of NYC to some Midwest town, his hairline went up and moved about 3 inches up his scalp, his gumline is creeping into his mustache and for the last few months he has been in total depression.   I called him a few weeks ago and felt like I was talking to somebody taking a call in a library, his voice so soft it was barely audible and honestly I am getting a bit worried.     He's a good guy with a ton of life but he also goes through these episodes where things don't seem right.   I check with mutual friends and honestly nobody has heard from him in 3 months eventhough he's got more time on his hands than anybody.   The last time I saw him was at a wedding when he looked like he was ready to plunge either his unit or his fist into the first thing that moved.    He used to be a pretty regular member of a small online forum and chat-room but even that has stopped…until

Out of the blue with a combination of Jay Cutler firepower, a resurgent Larry Fitzgerald, the transformer named Eric Decker Nelson and some dude named Helu the world has opened up again for my friend.   I can't say that it was a total points onslaught but it was enough because all of a sudden as if some divine intervention birds were chirping, romances were rekindled, pens were being sold and broadband was being used..  it didn't take much (and it usually doesn't when you you are competing in back to back weeks against the likes of Reggie Bush, Marquez Colston, Braylon Edwards, Brandon Jacobs and some dude named Baldwin.)   but like the first time a 11 year old boy beats off..an entire world was (re)discovered.  

See from those who have never devoted their lives to something as important as a team there will always be snickers but what they don't realize is that by shutting themselves out of the new American pastime, they are shutting themselves out of America.   Of course there are days when it doesn't feel fair like when Adrian Peterson goes down with a high-ankle sprain early in the first half, when Peyton Manning's injury makes Reggie Wayne and Dallas Clark's values moot or when you look down and see you have a team filled with Buffalo Bills but that is all part of the game.   So for those who don't quite know, there is a love out there that a man will have that is greater than that of their mother or wife, it's an addiction worse than the best Smack and it's a high better than three hours at FD's with somebody else's black-card and when things are rolling it's like nothing in the world but when you are on a three game losing streak the pain is unbearable but all it takes is one win 

Take on the Indian guy

I was talking with an acquaintance the other day about this great HP touchpad I got for $99 as part of that HP closeout sale and mentioned that i was thinking about upgrading it to the Android Honeycomb operating system. I wasn't doing it because I dislike WebOS as it's actually kind of cool but was doing it because the HP app-store is a total graveyard and with them shutting down the production of these things nobody believes that any developers have any long term plans to create software for it
Long story short is that when I was discussing it, one guy mentions that the IT guy at work could do it for me. I say "oh the indian guy Jinesh" the third guy we were talking to looked at us like we had two heads each I know he was seething and was just dying to say something like 'not all IT guys are Indian you bigot'
Except for the fact that this guy is in fact an Indian. I have known him for 10 years, seen pictures of his kids and wish him a happy Diwali so although my acquaintance thinks I paint with too broad a brush I actually just being descriptive
If I said the Russian ballerina nobody looks twice, the Japanese sushi chef is completely acceptable Now tell me why you can't refer to the Indian IT guy or the Jewish Lawyer.

Take on the Kindle app

Last week before flying out to China, I downloaded the kindle app hoping to be able to catch up on some reading I've been putting off for too long. I've schleped around too many books that I've not actually had time to read in the fear that I would be stuck somewhere with nothin to do but stare at a wall but with virtual books I could alleviate the fear without having to break my back. Sounds like a great concept except when you click on your kindle-app it doesn't actually let you download books. The way this app is set up is that you can pull any book you hbe previously bought from the Cloud but doesn't actually let you purchase a new book. For that you have to log onto amazon, buy and E-book and then log back into your kindle-app to download it from the cloud which obviously could not be less convenient

So here I am sitting in an airport waiting to take off and what should be a 2 click process becomes a complete ordeal

Thanks Kindle

Take on the running late vendor

When we made arrangements with some event we booked on Groupon with the vendor, I knew we were in for a mess. Not because the Groupon was a rip-off but because the lady said that she'd be there at 10am as arranges as long as she didn't hit traffic. She called at 9:55 surprise surprise saying she was stuck in traffic somewhere in the Bronx Now I fully understand traffic but when you are already predicting it a week before wouldn't it make some sense to leave a bit earlier. I am not the kind of person who says that when you are being paid to be somewhere that you should be giving yourself a bit of a buffer and calling somebody 5 minutes before you are to be there saying you are in the Bronx really means you didn't leave early enough. Now if we had asked her to come at 5AM maybe you would say that being early is uncalled for and completely inconvenient but this is 10AM in Brooklyn. Worse comes to worse you get a cup of coffee and hang out for 20 minutes but when your entire thing revolves around JIT you know it won't ever really work

take on the airplane stub snub

Considering how often I fly, it's surprising how infrequently I have a problem with my SkyMiles.  100,000 miles in per year and Delta accounts for almost all of them… the problem is that they never seem to capture all  of them which is a bit tricky.    Last month I flew from Bucharest to Brussels on Brussels Air which is a SkyMile partner, before I boarded I gave them my frequent flyer number and never thought about it again.

Fast forward a month as I check out the miles I have accrued recently and I noticed that these miles are conspicuously missing..   I called up Delta to get them added and they told me that I would need to submit the ticket number, date of travel and a copy of my boarding pass.     Now getting a ticket number and date of travel is easy enough but how the hell am I to keep a boarding pass.  I fly on 50 flights per year, and most of the time I toss that little ticket the second I get on the plane.

Why in today's age do we still have to present a physical boarding pass.  Can't these airlines look into their fancy computers to see that I was on the flight. 

And what the hell does a boarding pass mean, who cares if I even flew on the flight because I paid for it.. and really it doesn't prove you actually flew it just proved that you checked in and got a boarding pass and left the airport which is really no different than showing my initial bill for the ticket which also doesn't prove I flew but does prove I paid you $500

Take on Occupy Subway

There are rumors that the Occupy Wall Street idiots have decided to try to block the subways tonight at 5PM right when the entire city is getting ready to go home.   I really hope they are planning on protesting the $5 footlong because if they really try to shut the subway down any chance of getting public support is gone... 

My prediction is this..  they will get noticed, they will get press and they will NOT get any public sympathy.  

The nice irony of this is that the big-1%ers on wall-street aren’t taking the R train home tonight, they are probably taking a black-car service home while they are getting serviced by some exotic chick with fake out to their McMansions on the North Shore overlooking the LI Sound or to their McMansions on the south shore of Connecticut overlooking the LI Sound.      No the people who are going to be affected here are the 99%ers who are the normal hard-working blue-collar guys who just want to get home after busting their ass at some shitty job to MAKE A LIVING!!!!

Listen if you want to go and protest, more power to you but don’t fucking interfere with my commute home..   I’ve been in China for 10 days and haven’t seen my family but now your selfish crap is going to cost me an evening with my daughter..  I don’t come to your shitty tent and piss on it, leave my little world alone.

take on the 'you'll never guess where I'm at' guy

As a seasoned traveler, I have long given up any hope of any of my friends or family members giving a crap where I am at any given time.  It's not that they don't care but when you add 100,000 miles to your total every year, there just isn't much to say about the place you go especially when you are going to the same few places over and over again and at some point it all becomes routine.   Well as I'm sitting in the Delta lounge in Tokyo today there is a dude who is on Skype on his laptop and had to call every single person in his Rolodex and started every conversation with the same "you'll NEVER guess where I am?"  

From the responses he was getting it didn't seem like anybody gave a crap especially when you consider the guy wasn't exactly calling from downtown Tokyo at at Sumo wresting event or at some awesome temple but was calling as he was waiting for a connection in the terminal.   



Each conversation went something like this

Fat Jerry"hey Jenny, you'll never guess where I am"
Disinterested Jenny  "I don't know Jerry, in Columbus?"
Fat Jerry  "I'm in Tokyo..  at the airport"
Disinterested Jenny  "wow"
Fat Jerry  "crazy right.. I'm waiting for a connection to Seoul"
Disinterested Jenny  "oh"
Fat Jerry  "log onto the webthing. so we can see each other on the computer"
Disinterested Jenny  "Jerry it is like 11pm here, I got to go to bed"
Fat Jerry  "alright..catch you on the other side of the international date line"

wash, rinse, repeat 10 times over again.

like they say to a young wide-receiver when he catches a touchdown, act like you've been there before.

take on Penn State

I know this is like two weeks late but I have to get something off my chest..   This entire Penn State thing is absolutely ridiculous and the fact that this was allowed to go on for as long as it did just tells you once and for all that these systemic cover-ups by church and state are what are the real levels of depravity in this society.   Whether it's the Catholic Church or the Church of JoePa, there does not seem to be any accountability when the top levels are looking down a barrel of having to publicly admit that this kind of behavior happened on your watch.

What really gets me is that this boy is 10 years old..   NOT 17 but 10..  and had it NOT been a boy but instead a young girl might there have been more action taken against Dirty Sandusky?   

well today Sandusky says he was just 'horsing' around with the boys in the shower as if this admonishes him from all evil because I know there were a number of times that I've horsed around with a bunch of prepubescent boys in a shower..  This type of behavior is sickening but what is almost more disgusting are the THON loving PennState fans who spent the last week overthrowing cars not because they wanted to show disappointment in their university's inaction but rather the fact that they finally took action.    They claim that firing JoePa was criminal while the fact that JoePa didn't walk over to the Sand man and knock him out is when he learned of this is what is really criminal.

Take on French water

Maybe it's the pink label, maybe it's the French snobbiness or maybe it's the price tag but there is nothing I dislike more than Evian. I never quite understood paying money for bottles water. I get that sink water may have some residual pipe flavor which you want to eliminate but to pay $3 for a bottle of H2O seems beyond idiotic. Well unless you are in a country where the water isn't exactly clean.
But out of all the water our there the one I least like is Evian. This stuff tastes stale and lifeless and drinking it makes me feel like I'm breathing air in Denver as there just seems to be something missing and the best way to describe it is that it has a flavor like it was filtered through my running socks

Take on food

You get homesick when you travel for work. There are sleepless nights, endless days and countless hours lost because of delays. Maybe it's the adrenaline that keeps you going, maybe it's the knowledge it's only a limited amount of time or maybe it's the fear of being stuck in a bathroom afraid to move further than 40 feet at any given time
5 days in China for the second time in six months is always a challenge and although the country is interesting, the people are nice and the business is solid you realize very quickly that there is more to it than just that. See most everything is done around meals which means you do nothing but eat. You wonder how the hell these people stay so skinny if they constantly eat. It's not like the food (or anything else) in China is healthy. Everything is fried or at minimum doused in oil. There are never salads or true greens although because it hasn't been cooked you would have a hard time eating it anyway. But this is always the problem. Even when you go to some 5 star hotel you don't want to take take and it is torture as there are thousands of items that look very enticing to eat but as you want to avoid anything that is not cooked or cooked thoroughly you have to pass on salads, fruits, oysters, sashimi etc and you fill your stomach with tons of fried noodles and white rice at $50 per meal

Oh how i wish to be at home with a Big Mac in front of me

Take in the master switch

In foreign hotels you will often have these system where one light-switch located right by the door controls the power in the entire room. It allows you to turn all the power off in your room as you walk out with a single switch and I am sure there are great advantages in terms of energy savings. The problem is that building designers and architects obviously are completely capable of working in the dark.
For example the hotel I am staying at uses this system which i'm all for except for the slight design flaw which is that the hallway light doesn't have a light of its own so the only way to turn it off is to kill all the electricity in the room. Now that doesn't bother you much while sleeping except it also means you cannot turn on your bedside light. Now even if that is something you can live with what I can't is that it also means you cannot charge your cellphone or computer at night which I found out the hard way when I grabbed my phone off the plug this morning to find it was 29% charged

MLIA