a bandaid for a gunshot

Nothing is more exciting than a prime-time speech by the POTUS in front of both houses of congress with the entire world looking on as Nancy Pelosi blinks her way through 46 minutes of Obama speaking.

 

I particularly liked Joe Wilson pulling a turrets moment and screaming at Obama as if he was at a Green Day concert or at least a member of the House of Commons. I also appreciated the fact that they got a paper prop of John Kerry since he was apparently wind-surfing off Martha ’s Vineyard. I also appreciated the fact that the women in the Democrat’s contingent of the house all wore floral colors so the entire thing looked like a choreographed kaleidoscope whenever they jumped out of their chairs to applaud the president sneezing.

 

What I really appreciated was that for the first time since making this his signature domestic issue, Obama actually took charge of this issue and made it his own.

 

I got a tweet about 15 minutes into it from regular TOR reader Philthy Ryan who asked rhetorically why Obama doesn’t ask any member of congress who does NOT agree with the concept of health-care reform to stand up, this way we know who’s so greased up by the insurance companies that no sense can be made anyway.

 

What I just don’t like is that health-care reform still is patch-work and band-aid stuff, not true overhaul which I’m convinced is what needs to happened. We can talk about malpractice insurance being too high (I agree), hospitals needing electronic record keeping (this is 2009 after-all), more preventative practice (OK this is getting too easy) and less complacency to act but this entire issue comes down to a few major issues in my mind

 

1. Health Care should NOT be a for-profit operation; it is too important for the well-being of the country (literally) and has NOT proven to keep its prices inline. Now I do NOT suggest that the federal government should be running health-care’s ins and outs this should be contracted out to companies who can handle it. Nicholas Kristof last week made the point that the Police department, Fire department, Parks departments and even the DMV are not run on a for-profit organization as they are too crucial to the well being of the state to be left in the hands of others. I am a raging capitalist and am not suggesting we have some form of socialism but I do believe that health-care is not one which can run unregulated like it has.
2.  Health care should be decoupled from the workplace. I have said it a 1000 times but this comes down to too many problems.

•  When companies are the provider of health-care it ties it’s employees to a certain type of coverage which they did not have a say in regarding their own families needs. Decisions on the coverage of people should be made in living rooms not board-rooms
• When people lose their job (this seems to happen a lot in a recession by the way) people will also lose their health-care. Yeah there is COBRA but this is debilitating expensive.
• Having the government force companies to pay for health-care by threatening to fine them if they do not or otherwise offer incentives with payroll tax cuts puts undue stress on the small and large businesses in this country. Let companies make widgets not worry about the well-being of a country
• The costs that companies are absorbing cut into their profits which is counter to capitalism, the tax savings they get should be given to individuals and the savings companies get by not offering health-care should be used to compensate employees more. Wages are stagnant in part because companies are paying more every year for health-care.
• Small companies feel a larger burden than large ones do since they themselves cannot get the same kind of rates as the large ones are able to negotiate. This leave employees of small companies paying more for less

 

Now my big complaint about health-care is that nobody from the Health-care side ever comes up with anything new, content to stay with the status quo. Why do you think this happens?

 

Because they are doing so well!!!!

 

They say that a public option will cut services which are completely counter bullshit. Look at the VA hospitals and Medicare and see how many services are cut there.

 

They say that it will cost the government a trillion dollars but they conveniently forget that today’s health-care is already funded by the government. When the government doesn’t collect taxes this is lost revenue.

 

What they should say is that they don’t want to cut their corporate profits which they make today because things are pretty good for most people in the medical field (hospitals, drug companies, insurance companies).

  

I suggest people should get a tax break for getting health-insurance; people should make decisions on what health-care to buy. People should be making decisions about what plan works for them based on their own needs not be decided in board-rooms. Have people decide which hospitals they will use based on the price and service they provide not limited to the plan their employer has chosen. Health care needs to be turned on its head and sadly I’m afraid all they are doing is putting a band-aid on a gun-shot wound.

 

metropolitan diary strikes again

As many of the regular TOR readers know one of my Pet Peeves is the self-serving letters people submit to the Metropolitan Diary, the section in New York Times on Monday's which allows readers to write in quick little anecdotes and observations about living in NYC.  Well my complaints are well documented (here, here and here) but never a dull moment I once again came across some self-serving, back-patting pompous diary entry this week.  

Dear Diary:


I’m on the phone with a representative, 15 minutes after my new credit card arrives.

“I can’t use this card. The expiration date is 9/11.”

“Yes?” he says.

“I live in New York City,” I tell him. “I worked on the pier, counseling families. I won’t use this card if I have to keep saying this date.”

“There’s nothing I can do,” he tells me.

I call an hour later and bypass the representative for a supervisor who gets it and tells me of the numerous calls he’s received.


A week later, my new card arrives, dated 9/12.

That’s better. Jane Seskin

 
Thanks for sharing your story Jane Seskin and for your service to the people of NYC but was it really necessary to point out that you worked as a volunteer counseling people?? First of all I think everybody who reads the NY Times can figure out why somebody might be uncomfortable about the 9/11 date on their credit card.. (plus you do realize that this is September 2011 not September 11th right?) but more importantly the extra 'context' you throw in is self-serving and appalling. Ever hear about doing anonymous charity work?




I really hate people

Specials

I had dinner with friends last night and they told this story of how they were in a restaurant a few months ago and ordered something on the special menu and were later floored when they got the bill. This is an issue I've come across myself and will no longer assume anything when it comes to situations like this.

A few years ago, I was having a boys-birthday dinner. (this is a very exclusive dinner party which happens only seven times per year with the invite list being limited to the seven guys I went to high-school with, no exceptions). We have had the birthday dinner tradition for 10+ years and have used it to hit every major steak-house and top restaurant in and outside of NYC. We've had great dinners, so-so dinners and some dinners that gave me the runs before the D Train crossed the Brooklyn Bridge heading back home but all-in-all they are a ton of fun and I always expect to spend $100 a pop. Back in the days before we were high-powered bankers, hospital execs, diamond salesmen and pen-shop managers the price-tag meant this would probably be our only big night out for a while. The one way to justify the $100 in 1999 was that as a group we were getting about 2 chicks per year combined so really there were not a lot of other things to spend our money on.

Well I remember sitting down one year at a place in Northern Jersey whose name I forget. It was a nice place decent atmosphere and had a good reputation, if I remember correctly the food was mostly steak and seafood and as we went through the menu I remember seeing that most option on entrees were about $28-$35 and sides are in the $8-$10 range. We are putting down a couple of beers when the waiter comes over and reads off the specials including some special filet, a free range chicken and some kind of crab-stuffed lobster or something. We place our order and five out of seven jump at the lobster/crab option while the other two settle for the pizza burger and the overcooked salmon or something equally lame.

Fast forward about 2 hours later as the bill shows up.. I was absolutely floored when the entire thing came out to $1000 which divided by six (the birthday boy doesn't pay) came out to about $165 a person.

After inspecting the bill the crab-stuffed lobster was about $95 a piece which explained the outrageous price but my issue is as follows:

when the price of a special is significantly more expensive than any other item on your menu, it is your duty as a waiter to inform the guests what the price of the specials are.

Now obviously we could have (and should have) asked about the price before hand but I don't think there was a single one amongst us who imagined it would be twice as expensive as the next option on the menu and since the check included auto-gratuity so we couldn't even take it out on his tip

From that day forward I always ask for prices of specials which when courting a hot-chick does put a bit of a dent on the high-roller lifestyle you are trying to give off.

The sack

There are so many humiliating scenarios in this world including getting the runs and take a runny dump in the woods or seeing the pictures online from a topless wedding dance when the audience has all retreated to the bar..

Obviously I have chronicled my terrible life and ailments including my sausage fat ankles, my fat thighs which rub together and chafe plus that time I peed merlot color after passing a kidney stone art mile 21 of the NYC Marathon.

But when I noticed some weird welt on my back, I was made to go have it checked out by some hot-shot NYC dermatologist.
I figure that at the same time (and since to co-pay was $50) I would rattle off my other issues including some weird rash on my thighs, the aforementioned chafing and some more intimate skin issues.

I'm all ready to ask the doctor about these more intimate issues when some hot nurse in a skimpy outfit parades out in front of me. Immediately I think about changing my ailments to slightly less disgusting things like athletes foot or some arm rash but alas my mind doesn't work as quickly as I prefer and there I am standing in the buff and explaining that I got a cist on my sack and jock itch.

This is where this office has it all wrong, you want the hot receptionist but when any guy gets put in front of some 26 year old co-ed and have to explain your most intimate issues he will clam up. Now it doesn't matter if you are actually interested in getting with the chick, it's the humiliation of it all and you just regress back to the 6th grade when some hot bully chick grabbed you by the sack and yanked down while yelling 'it's so tiny'.

Well there I am, completely vulnerable as I avoid eye contact while explaining the ailments.. Out of my peripheral I see her kind of disgusted as she jots down the prevalent info.
Luckily the sack-bump was a benign cist and the jock-itch is preventable but this is not exactly the way to build up a guy's fragile ego. Next time instead of explaining it, I'll just refer her to TOR.
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The Lame Table

There are a few things in this world which I just don't understand like there is braille on drive-through ATM's, why couple see each other before the wedding ceremony and why I can't walk out of Walmart without spending $80.

My real issue is wedding guests; you always need a few people to go out and take on for the team but when the entire wedding party hangs out at the bar leaving only the grandmas and aunts to roam the dance-floor you are in big trouble.
The rule here is that Wedding guests are important. Obviously you want people there who you want to witness your vows but when cutting down I think it's crucial to take into consideration the 'fun factor'. When you look from the dance floor you expect to see a couple of lame tables but when the lame tables outnumber the fun ones 3 to 1, you may as well save the $100 a head times 200 people and elope.
My boy The Bump from www.BumpLovesTV.blogspot.com made a comment to me years ago that people who don't party won't throw a good one. You can't expect balls-to-the-wall fun if you yourself are a balls-tucked-to-your-ass boring.
First of all.. Nobody wants to bring it 100% if you yourself don't leave it all on the field but more importantly nobody wants to rip it up when they are siting at the lame table.

So the hints (a follow up on the TOR from a few months ago)

Keep the action moving, down time is killer

Keep the lame factor below 20%, if your friends are mostly lame consider not telling them about your wedding

The DJ matters..

No Open Bar means no stories the next morning.

Most importantly.. If you want a good party, learn how to party yourself and if you don't want me bitching then don't stick me at the lame table
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Wedding #4

Labor Day usually marks the end of summer for most, for me it marks the end of the wedding season. Obviously the Jon Bon Righetti experience has completely fallen flat recently and I have come to realize I actually have more fun when I'm not totally shit-faced. So in an effort to become a more social wedding guest and a more pleasant date I think it's time to put the booze away at wedding for the SPS.
Now I'm not talking about going dry (I can't possibly be asked to keep hydrated without at least a couple of Miller Lites) but no more heavy drinking or ridiculousness. This was all very entertaining years ago but too many brides have given me the stink-eye that I shouldn't have to be told that it's all wearing thin on the crowd.

So here's to today's bride and groom, hope you didn't expect me to be the reason the open bar would make financial sense.

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the Buffer Seat

I’ve heard many complaints about my movie-going tendencies: some complain about my restless leg syndrome, others about my refusal to buy the extra-large popcorn with 10 pounds of butter on it but most of them find it odd that when I go to the movies with a buddy we don’t sit right next to one another. The first few complaints come from just about anybody who goes to the movies with me but the latter one comes mostly from female friends who can’t seem to grasp the concept of a little extra space to let the boys air out and allow me to adjust myself a bit


I’ll hear the following from chicks all the time

If you are going to the movies with somebody else why would you not sit next to each other, you can’t even talk. It’s totally antisocial.

Well let’s take this one by one; first of all I’m sick of hearing the complaint about not being able to talk with your friends.  This is the ultimate crap excuse since you aren’t supposed to talk while at the movies anyway. The people who complain about the buffer seat are the same ones that are probably hooting and hollering the entire way through The Nutty Professor III which is a much bigger disturbance than two dudes not cuddled up together.  Secondly I’m paying $12 to be entertained by Warner Brothers not my fantasy football league-mates.

But forget the talking aspect,
How is going to the movies any different than sitting in your own house?  
When I’m watching the Star Wars trilogy with a buddy, we don’t sit right next to each other on the couch.   He sits on one side and I sit on the other leaving a little space.

How is it any different than an airplane?
When two friends get onto an airplane and they are given the option of one sitting at the window and the other on the aisle leaving the middle seat empty nobody complains.  This is the exact same set up as the moview and nobody would claim you are homophobic for not sitting leg to leg on a flight when given an option for a little extra room to stretch your legs.

What is it about sashimi and cheap beer?

I love sushi and have often considered it the one food I could eat every single day for dinner for a week without suffering from it. I’ve had Sushi made by Korean and Italian sushi-chefs, I’ve had sushi delivered to me on a conveyer belt, I’ve had it delivered by a Chinese delivery guy and I’ve shoved it down my throat in an all-you-can-eat sushi place.

I love sushi but when you have REALLY good sushi everything changes, this is when I go from a guy who likes sushi to the equivalent of lesbians to sushi. When it’s served at the right temperature (just below room temperature), it’s cut well and it’s matched with a large Sapporo you can’t go wrong. I like sushi but actually prefer sashimi


The funny thing about sushi is that everybody thinks they can make it and the Americanization of it has taken away from the real hole-in-the-wall places which when sitting there still makes you feel like you are dining in Tokyo. I like the rolls a lot but it’s still not real sushi for me and it’s almost sad to hear people tell you that they like sushi but only eat California rolls. What they should say is that they like cucumber, rice, faux-crab and avocado but they cannot accurately claim they like sushi. The fancy rolls (spicy tuna, Godzilla, Blue Crab etc) can be absolutely fantastic but this is still not real sushi and calling it sushi is like telling me you had a great steak when you had some ground sirloin on a bun.

Anyway Chicken sucks.

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health carelessness

Obama is looking to reshape the national debate on healthcare which is political speak for “how do we retreat back to our corners and lick our wounds”. I like the idea of health-care reform but have for a long time thought the argument they have made is messy and filled with holes.


One of my biggest issue is with the present incarceration of health-care reform is how it keeps the onus of paying for it on the companies in this country. As much as the insurance companies talk about keeping it privatized as opposed to offering a public-option what they don’t tell you is that the burden falls on the small-and-large companies in this country and one way or another the government pays for it too. This issue has been discussed on TOR a lot but what I find most troubling is that in this day-and-age almost every company has to offer health-care to get compete and the government has made it abundantly clear that this is the way they want to continue bringing health-care to the public.

Two issues with this


1) The health and well being of a country probably should not be left to a for-profit industry with little regulations.


2) They want the government to stay out of the health-care EXCEPT…….to help pay for it.

The first issue is pretty simple. If you are watching corporate profits and you are going basically unregulated there is at least a chance that you will not be offering people the best care. Why would you want to spend thousands of dollars on an operation that may not work or a test which may not find anything. Corporations shouldn’t run health-care, at least not unregulated.

The second is a bit more complicated but the way I see it anyway you cut it healthcare costs both today and in the future are going to be funded by the government. See anybody in the health-care industry who tries to convince you that it’s a private-option seem to forget that it’s paid for in a large part through tax-breaks given to corporations anyway. The private sector winds up being forced to eat the health-care of the country by the government and decisions on health-care are thus made by boardrooms and not in dining-rooms.

Whatever happened to people paying their own way for their own things? The insurance companies are a bunch of crooks who will use their deep pockets and gigantic lobbying reach to try to reach the general public through scare-tactics and then strong-arm the legislation. What I find to be the biggest scam is that they keep trumpeting the private-option and keeping the governments hands out of health-care while in actuality they are in bed with them. The major insurance companies lobby the government to force small-and-big businesses to offer health-care to their employers which is almost always delivered by….the major insurance companies.

Regular drinkers are more likely to exercise

Regular drinkers are likely to do more than tone their biceps with 12-ounce curls, according to a new study. Those who imbibe -- regardless of how much -- get more exercise than teetotalers, researchers reported in the current issue of the American Journal of Health Promotion.



Surprisingly, the effect was strongest with heavier drinkers, who "were more likely to exercise than light drinkers and exercised for more minutes," said lead researcher Michael French, a professor of health economics at the University of Miami.

Now the fact that heavy-boozers are bigger exercisers than the average Joe is pretty surprising, it seems to be kind of conflicting behavior. Boozing obviously not being great for your body while exercise being pro-body. 
But as I read this study yesterday and thought to myself that I have already proven this myself. The more I booze the more I feel the need to exercise. One reason is guilt, I feel like I have to work off the extra pounds those 10 Blue Moons I had last night put on but my bigger conscious decision is that I feel the need to detoxing the booze out of my system after a hard night of drinking.  I have often thought about runnng one of those pub-races where you have to run about 10 miles stopping every mile to have a beer, this way you have no time to let the booze ruin your body but it can also be a clear subsitute for drinking that god-awful Gatorade they usually offer at the NYRR races.

I have often said that the best thing you can do when you are hung-over is a 4 mile run; now I prefer to run this outside as the stench of the hung-over Jack Daniel’s stinking dude on a treadmill with bad ventilation is really not pleasurable for anybody around. I can’t say I’ve never done the treadmill thing and exposed people to the noxious odors coming from my body but in general I try to keep it outside.

So what I do is lace up my sneakers, head outside and by the time I’m done the booze has basically evaporated through my pores.

The biggest issue is of course the old Bud-Mud which follows me after a night of unfiltered beer drinking and then I tend to have experiences like this


http://takeonrighetti.blogspot.com/2008/09/serenity-now.html

The Wrestler

 I know what Randy ‘the Ram’ Robinson felt like

There is something that has become abundantly clear recently.. being able to run 18 miles does NOT mean that I’m in shape and at 33 years old most people are pretty much done with my act. The Righetti-wedding dance made its season debut this weekend out in Seattle and was received with some fanfare although like seeing a medicare receiving Mick Jagger this wasn't exactly the kind of thing you could truly say was still great.

But I saw Frank Sinatra live when he was about 85 years old and although he forgot half the lyrics and performed for no more than 30 minutes, it was worth the $50 it cost me for the ticket. I figure that there are still people who haven’t seen the Jon Bon Righetti experience and may want to tell their grandkids that they did. I get a bunch of people to tell me they look forward to it before it happens, although at the end of every show less and less people come up to me to show their approval.

Although my knees kind of creek, my back aches and the body is not looking so great, when the lights go down and JBJ whispers “once upon a time not so long ago”and the baseline starts pumping, I know that it’s show-time. Within 30 seconds into it the dance floor opens up for me, most people happy enough to see some drunk-fool make an ass of himself. I look around and see a few mothers covering their daughter’s eyes, a couple of Dudes head to the bar, some cougars shriek and most of the crowd looks at their watches just counting the seconds till the end comes.
Sadly the ‘wow’ factor is gone for 95% of the crowd and since the act really has only 3 moves, most of the audience is bored almost immediately. The crowd sings along about being ‘half way there’ which in this case might have a double meaning since the song is about half-way done.

But still the music crescendos as I run across the stage for the big finale, ripping the undershirt and revealing a one-too-many-Big-Mac body and for a few seconds I feel like I still have it. Sweat pours off my face as I go into the one-legged push-ups as the crowd sings along

“We’ve got to hold on to what we’ve got

cause it doesnt make a difference If we make it or not

We’ve got each other and that’s a lot For love - well give it a shot”

Most of the crowd applauds but gone are the days when people scream. The song starts to fade out as one drunk girl breaks a glass on the dance floor and most of the crowd heads back to their seats. I pick myself up off the floor trying to bask in the sunlight for just a few more seconds but my knee hurts from the slide and my friends aren’t even looking anymore. I try to find my tattered t-shirt and tuxedo vest and I get a couple of high-fives and one wedding guest offers to get me a drink although he never comes back with the Coors Lite I order

The Peach

I've read this theory a while ago while flipping through Cosmo, Elle or US Weekly a few years ago as one of these things that women all around should we well aware of.

It was suppose to a fool proof way to tell a chick how happy she would be with a specific dude. It was basically a test where a woman should observe the way a dude eats a peach cause it would tell her how he would eat her peach. Now this is a great thing for chicks to know and not that different from a guy observing how a chick eats a popsicle but I was sitting with a buddy yesterday as he made sweet love to his fruit and it was disgusting to see his entire face covered with nectar juice.. The issue is that seeing any dude in this state must be music to a chick's ears but when it's a one of your buddies that visual is enough to make you want to lose your lunch or your buddy.
So now that I have planted this visual in your mind you will probably never offer a peach to a buddy again but worse yet realize that when your girlfriend offers your buddy one she may have an hidden motive..
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Pulling Out Sucks

Two days in Seattle and all the major sights covered (Mariners, Bruce Lee grave Jimi Hendrix statue, the troll under the bridge) and now off to a banquet with 240 chinese wedding guests and my back feels like Kung Fu Panda tap-danced on it.
Imagine running 18 miles then flying 3000 miles and when you hit the hay that night you realize you've gotten screwed by having drawn the short straw and stuck on the pull-out couch. As much as an air mattress sucks, some how a pull out couch is worse. That bar is perfectly positioned for the small of your back; guaranteed to have me walking 3/4 crouched the rest of the night. It's a cruel trick because if I were to just sleep on the couch itself I'd probably feel great, but because its a transformer I feel obliged to sleep on it when fully pulled out.
I an convinced people buy these things to LIMIT the time house guests will stay over; it's the perfect unvitation. 'Come stay over our place, you can sleep on the pull-out.'
When you are given this invitation just realize that your suitors are not interested in having you stay over and there are good chances they'll ask you to help with house chores.

How the hell do they expect me to drop to my knees and rip through my undershirt when I am walking around like an 80 year old incontinent man?

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Jet lagged

I have a theory about jet-lag and what it takes to get over it.

When traveling east-to-west it will take the same amount of days as time-zones you traveled to completely get onto your new time-zone rhythm.
So if you fly from NY to LA, you are moving three times zones so it will take your body three days to adjust.
Now each day gets slightly easier but you aren't fully on schedule till day 4.

When flying west-to-east it takes the same amount of days as time zones PLUS 1 for your body adjusted.

What this means is that when you fly from NY to London you are changing five time zones, so it will take six days to recover and get into your new England time zone.

Now the inevitable question is
If I fly from Boston to London and then back to Boston three days later what happens.
In this case you can actually take the amount of days you were there (3) subtracted from the time-zones (5) and then subtract that number and subtract it back from your time-zones back (5) you can get back to your normal rhythm in 3 days. (The extra day gets cancelled out)

5-3= 2
5-2=3

So remember this next time you fly.
East to West. (Total Time Zones)
West to East. (Total Time Zones plus 1)

BUT when you are flying back to YOUR original time zone you can always divide by 2 since sleeping in your own bed can in itself help your recovery.

So if you leave home, fly from NY to Amsterdam and then back 4 days later it will take you

6 (time zones)-4(days in Amsterdam) =2
6 (time zones) -2 (recovery #)=4
4 (recovery #) divided by 2=2 days and you are gold!!!

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Battle Lines Drawn

Obama ran on a new kind of politics, a different view and although his supporters hoped that he would be an idealist he has proven that he really is a pragmatist. The torture memos which seem to getting leaked like the names of the 103 baseball players who tested positive for steroids in 2003 have been coming out with 3/4 of their content blacked out are shining new light on the abuses authorized under Little Bush.
I understand Obama's 'need' to put this behind us but I think it's pretty clear that although the White House is publicly at odds with Eric Holder's investigation, that behind closed doors Obama is vehemently behind his AG on this issue and this allows him to prosecute while keeping his own hands clean.
Where it gets tricky is that Obama cannot publicly back the investigation as it would cut into his very limited bipartisan support. This is total garbage; we al know that every concession he has made to the republicans has only been met with a stronger insurgency. He may as well bank on the hope that the American Public wants to improve their image worldwide as they know this will only help our national security than be pragmatic on an issue like this.
I'm no bleeding heart but torture is reprehensible and when its not only authorized from the head of the state it is Stalin like and should be prosecuted.


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I only fly direct!!!

I have a good friend who on her return from Ireland, in order to save a couple of bucks, got on a flight from Dublin to Frankfurt and then from Frankfurt onto New York. I am as frugal as they come and will tell you that at the age of 33 I would rather use an ice-pick to scratch my nuts than fly non-direct to a place which offers direct flight-options. With that said I will get on a 6AM flight which some other people think is ludicrous but you will never see me sitting at the Memphis McDonalds waiting for the connecting flight to St. Louis.

Now maybe I’m jaded or pampered or both but I have done more flying than most of my friends combined and it’s not uncommon for me to fly back and forth to Europe in 3 days, so you know where my head is with this thing. I want to maximize my time on the ground and minimize it at the Hudson News Stand.

But as if a non-direct flight isn’t bad enough when you get a connecting flight which actually takes you completely out of the direction you have to go in; that is where I totally draw-the-line even for others. This poor (or cheap) soul flew 2 hours from East to west to Frankfurt to hang out there for another few hours and then got back onto a plane basically flying back over Dublin to New York City which has to be a 9 hour flight. Poor girl probably saved $45 which I’m sure she spent while waiting for 4 hours in Germany.

Shit if I am on 45th street and am heading to Brooklyn I will walk to the 42nd street station vs. the 47th street one because I don’t want to put any energy in walking away from the direction I’m heading to.

I had a friend who flew to Alaska for a wedding and went from Hartford to Kentucky to Detroit to Fargo and then onto Anchorage. It took him about 40 hours to get there; I think that if you had flown into Seattle you could have rented a car and driver there in less.

An FD Christmas

I love life, I love living it, I love talking about it and I love being part of it, I love throwing singles in the air but more than anything I love feeling loved.

If you remember by review of the movie The Hangover from a few weeks ago, you will remember that one of the complaints I had was that I didn't think the crew of friends was very realistic. The one guy’s too cool, the other guy was too dorky and the fat guy too weird.

A regular TOR reader made the observation that this hangover crew is not that different than my own bunch of high-school guys. The whole crew has a bit of a 'Revenge of the Nerds' feel to it, which I mean in the most endearing possible way as they all fight to compete for the crews biggest jock or the biggest dork. The funny thing about this is that although we all claim to not be dorks we all realize we are loveable losers.

The theme going through this collection of freaks and geeks is this sort of charming level of dorkiness but get them into the seedy underground of a good NYC strip-club and the real personalities come out. It doesn’t matter if they are the let-it-all-hang-out type, the star-trek type, the pizza in the pool type or whatever they all enjoy the same fun and enjoyment.

I’ve been to a couple of strip-clubs and honestly there are two types of guys in this world: The type who love seeing naked chicks dance for money and the kind who are secretly gay (not that there is anything wrong with that). But within each category there are levels and it basically comes down to what kind of control they want to have.


The ones who love-love strip-clubs are generally also the ones who love to be in control; now I’m not talking S&M stuff but just daily needs and wants, they want to be the driver in the car, the guy making decisions but sometimes their controlling personalities are a bit more hidden.  Now this might not something you can figure out just by looking at somebody and only comes out when they are sitting bellied-up at the FlashDancers stage with a handful of singles.

The ones who only love strip-clubs like the male camaraderie and don’t’ mind seeing a couple of naked women but don’t foam at the mouth for them.

The ones who just like strip-clubs are just lying to you

The ones who don’t like strip-clubs are the same kinds who like walking around bottomless at NYSC.

Stinky Tofu

You know I've had my battles with chafing which I try to blame on the running but probably has more to do with my big fat chick-thighs than anything else. The chafing I'm suffering from has spread from the inner thigh area to the other day having this nasty chafing on my upper arm from the rubbing of my shirt during my 12 mile run in the 100% humidity. But there is no worse chafing than that of a man who had some bad shrimp at a popular NYC restaurant and then spent the next 2 days staying within shouting distance of the can as he ass-pissed for 36 hours.


Now I have taken a turn on the whole 'my stomach can't handle this kind of food anymore' angle as I have spoken with the other people who I had dinner with and they too have been suffering from the runs. Now this could mean nothing but in this case I can comfortably blame it on some pretty bad fish as I saw them once gorge themselves on Stinky Tofu which was described to me as a delicacy which tastes and smells like rotten garbage. Taiwanese people take to bad seafood like Native Americans take to heights.

Now the runs is no fun especially if they come after having spent $100 on dinner but what is really a pain in the ass is the chafing you get from the persitent wiping. Now if this isn't a big enough problem, you go running afterwards and the salt from your sweat rolls into the chafing cuts and before I know it I'm running a 12 minute mile and getting passed by old ladies in wheelchairs with fat ankles.

Well back to my Saturday Night bathroom events and the ensuing hours of me wallowing in pain from the ass-chafing rash. So I did what any self-respecting 33 year old man does and went to the Rite Aid and bought some diaper cream which I spread liberally over my ass cheeks and have since felt a lot better...although i'm a bit afraid when I have to re-apply it later today at the New York Sports Club

MLIA

unlike wine I don't age well

I'm still a bit confused about a few things but one of the things I'm very sure about is what happens to people when they get hammered... They do funny things..not funny ha-ha but funny "I took your Mahi Mahi and then told you that they ran out and instead you got my cold herb-crusted chicken"

I've been a big drinker since I was about 18 years old when I really fell in love with beer at that Yankee game with my buddies but since then I've given up wine and almost all hard liquor. My body just doesn't seem to handle other alchohol well, the hangovers are so much worse now that years before and nothing gives me a bigger morning headache than shitty chardonay. I can't kick the beer although I was able to make it 2 weeks without a beer recently. Alas it was a short-lived streak as it came to a bitter end last night and for the first time in a while, I suffered from booze not from a lack of booze. See I got to dinner, put down a couple of Brooklyn Lagers (a beer which is way too dark and heavy for a lazy humid Saturday) and then finished if off with a shot of sambuca in my double espresso. The problem isn't so much the two beers, the one shot or the 2 pounds of pasta I consumed but more the combination of all of it. Somehow in the last couple of years I went from dude with an iron stomach to a guy who wakes himself (and his poor wife) up by flatulence and the runs. I was laying awake last night wondering what happened to the good old days when I used to have eating competitions at Sizzlers and Gray's Papaya cause cause now my stomach can't even handle a cozy dinners of Shrimp Fra Diavolo.

It's like I got old overnight, my knees hurt, I wake up to take a leak and I complain about the modern athlete being a bunch of lazy slobs.


but i'm not ready to go into dirty-old man territory quite yet, I read something on the interwebs just last week which I totally agree with

there is no doubt in my mind that a hot 30 year old woman is more attractive than any 18 year old can be.

SO the way I see it my love of older women is keeping me young!!!

Status Update

So I've had a facebook account for about a year or two and although I didn't exactly 'get it' originally, it's starting to make sense.

I think the status updates part is actually the best and worst part, I like people's random thoughts and funny observations about sushi but I hate the updates that are just calls for sympathy like

"finally put Billy to sleep, still have lots of work to do!!"

Actually when I first read it I though she was talking about putting her dog down which is status-update worthy but this pandering for sympathy about having to work is pathetic.
We get it, you work and have a kid but when every stupid status update just tells us that your kid is sleeping and you have so much work to do proves you are an unoriginal goon.
We did not tell you to get a kid/dog so stop bitching to us about it cause nobody cares.

A good status update would. have been

"Just put left my kid at the in-laws and put my dog to sleep and now I'm Eight-Balling down route 95"
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Humidity

don't do well in the heat especially if there is a lot of humidity but what gets me is that our air has gotten so thick that even when you strip down naked there is no relief.


Just yesterday I was standing on the street and felt some drops which I though were a precursor for a much needed shower, then I looked up and realized it was air-conditioning piss dripping down on me. It is just disgusting to think that in this city you get absolutely no relief. The air is muggy, the pavement feels like it's generating it's own heat and all the tall buildings just seem to lead to stagnant air.

It wasn't like this when I was a kid, I remember NYC was hot but not so humid all the time so people who say there isn't climate change should spend three hours on a NYC subway platform. You just look up in the sky and realize we never get those clear blue skies anymore, they are always foggy/smoggy and if I feel this miserable to stand outside imagine how my lungs must feel, cause it's like breathing through a plastic bag

Jean Claude Van Haircut (take 2)

Obviously I have derided Jean Claude Van Haircut for their $27 haircuts but today even I have to admit that the place has something to it. Now it's not like I got a better haircut (I look like the Red Rooster) or that I got a good deal (cost me $33) but I took the experience and twisted it in my mind.

Exhibit 1
I sit down and some young russian chick runs her long finger nails through my hair and then massaged my scalp while she shampoos. She keeps talking but I can't really understand her.

Number B. The chicks all kind of hang out in the pit drinking diet-cokes and all get a little pep in their step when a new customer comes through the door. When a girl is chosen they announce "Briahna to the chairs"

Number C. The entire experience last about 10 minutes when you feel like the most important man in her life and at the end of it you hand the chick a couple of $20's and as soon as she takes it, all interest in you is totally gone.

it occurred to me that this really isn't that much different than FD's

Every chick in this place is of Eastern Bloc descent, you pay in cash and the music is kinda dancy euro-trace crap.


The funny thing with the Russian accent is that when a dude has it you wonder what it would take for Obama to go under anesthesia so that Biden can get his hands on the nuke button but when a 20 something ruskie chick speaks the only thing I hear is "want another dance!"
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Take on Subway Confusion

I'm a pretty smart guy and very rarely get totally stumped but this sign on the subway today really threw me for a loop.

Apparently it isn't enough to force your customers to melt in 120 degree temperatures on your platforms or have you dodge poodle sized rodents but now you will confuse us even further with advisory signs that don't actually advice of anything.

Apparently on Tuesday through Thursday there will be Q trains running but it will only be going straight

Yet another example of how bad the NYC commuter has it relative to the rest of the world. Unlike every other city we actually use public transportation offered to us and at a decent buck I might add but they insist on having us figure out a brain-teaser to know when we can actually utilize the service we pay for in both our taxes and our metro cards.

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you people have to get real

I have accumulated the worst looks for a dude to have and am in the process of ranking them.. Many of these have already been chronicled in previous TOR’s but a comprehensive list is necessary.. As most of the TOR lists are, this will be a work in progress and we invite you to come up with some updates

1- The cell-phone clipped to the belt thing. Listen dude you are not robo-cop, you don’t need to have your cell-phone in a holster ready for a duel. Shove your electronics into your pocket so that the antenna can poke you in the dick and the radiation can give you ball-cancer like the rest of the real world

2- Goatee’s. Unless you happened to be a lumberjack or just came in on the Bill-and-Ted’s time-machine from 1995 there is NO reason you should still have what looks like a dead rat on your face. There probably isn’t a worst look than this anywhere and anybody sporting this who is not doing it as a total goof on the rest of society needs to be put out back

3- Ugly shorts. I’m all for the comfortable summer look (shorts, t-shirt and flip-flops) but this new obsession I’ve been seeing where one preppy idiot tries to outdo the rest of his idiot friends with these god-awful plaid shorts is really troubling.

4- Long Hair on Fat Guys. Unless you are hosting a Dungeons and Dragons luncheon in your parent’s basement, go to the barber and shave your head.

5- Ed Hardy anything..

6- Those clog shoes that dudes wear.. what the hell is wrong with you? Unless you are hosting a cheese party with a bunch of dutch-farmers this should not be something a guy should ever be caught dead wearing



By the way this blog entry serves as a warning to all you cell-phone belt clipping, goatee having, ugly shorts wearing, long-haired fat guys…. Get out of my way cause I’m coming at you.

Irritable Booze Syndrome

Not exactly sure what does it but like a bowel syndrome I’ve been irritable lately.


It could be the heat, it could be the running, it could be the running in the heat but one way or another I can only say that I am irritable. I get annoyed when things don’t go as planned, I get angry when people don’t get up for my pregnant wife on the subway and I even get irritated when I hear about people going on vacation.. So what I tried to do is see what has been different the last week than others, as it might give me some insight into why I’m so annoyed. I’ve been eating about the same, getting exercise and have had my normal blog as an outlet for my annoyance so there was nothing that I could really tell and then it hit me… I haven’t had a drink in over a week.

The last beer I had was at the wedding I went to last Saturday Night and even then I kept myself so busy that the Coors Lite I had was probably more hydration than a method to get funky . So I’m going on nine days of no alcohol which to some people might seem unimpressive or even ‘the average week’ but for somebody like myself who usually doesn’t allow a single day break in a good week, this is like Joe DiMaggio except unlike having to hit a little baseball this is a real challenge.

Now I am not going to turn over a new leaf, this hasn’t been a challenge to myself (although I am sort of impressed by it.) I just see this as an unfortunate set of circumstances which has led me down this week-long alcohol free path and with any luck I’ll be shit-faced sometime tonight

A couple of observations which should otherwise be relegated to twitter.

I- there used to be a section in the "metropolitan" section of the Sunday Times called FYI. People would send in random questions about New York City like "what are those funny wall-paintings in the subway tunnel as you go into the city over the Manhattan Bridge" and some expert would answer. The thing is that the section just disappeared, which I find strange because it was a great little read and just could not have cost the Times that much money. By bigger issue is the irony of the only place I could think to ask what happened to the FYI section would have been in the FYI section.

2- staying on the NY Times beat, I remember an editorial a few months ago where the Times wrote about a proposed tax on those flimsy plastic bags you get at Bodegas because they were so environmentally damaging (petroleum needed to make them, getting stuck in landfills where they could never disintegrate, potential suffocating wildlife). I agreed with the premise but then realized that the only plastic bag I ever get and cannot make use of is the blue one that my NY Times gets delivered in.

3- whenever I walk outside and don't see my NY Times delivered on my stoop, I am forced to call their 800 number to report it which is already a pain in my ass but what really gets me is that they credit $1.22 to my account which I'm sure is the prorated amount per paper. The problem is that I then pay $2 at the Bodega for a copy of the same paper which wasn't delivered. So I'm inconvenienced by having to call, inconvenienced for having to go elsewhere to buy your paper and then I'm also losing $0.78. It's the principle here, you screwed up and I have to suffer.

4- It is a near daily occurrence that you will find a tag line under another columnist's work that reads that Thomas Friedman or Maureen Dowd " is off today". No explanation and always kept vague. So basically the people who write about hard working Americans are only working 1 day per week themselves!!!

They actually might be on some kind of work furlough which would at least show them to suffer the same difficulties as the rest of the country.

What the hell do you expect from a publication which proudly states that it published "all the news that's fit to print"

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this is our country

Sitting at a renowned Brooklyn seafood restaurant it dawned on me that the entire experience is just not that pleasant. Between the terrible food, the terrible service and the terrible atmosphere these places have some balls to ask for $30 a plate for dinner. Maybe describing the food as terrible is a bit of a stretch but I would say the menu at Blue Ribbon is tired and played-out. The restaurant is good but the menu is very ordinary and often times they are way to conservative with their specials/ They never go out on a limb with anything out of the ordinary and the fact I've actually ordered a piece of beef at a seafood place when none of your specials sounded even remotely interesting tells you what how appealing your regular menu is.

Now my first complaint is the kind of steak you offer: somebody has to tell these people that hanger Steak tastes like dog-food and has the consistency of big-league chew. Need you be reminded that the ONLY time you should even offer this bologna tasting thing is with steak-and-eggs and even then it ruins the eggs. What really gets me is that the best thing on the menu is the fried chicken; now I'm not complaining about fried-chicken because this is one of my favorite foods in the entire world but a seafood place should be renowned for it's stripped bass or rainbow trout not it's deep friend poultry

But my biggest problem has to do with the acoustics at these restaurants. I have some terrible hearing from my years of playing in a garage band but I literally have to cup my ears so that I can hear my wife speak from across a two-top. These restaurants are so concerned about atmosphere that they seem to forget that most of the time people go to dinner to enjoy each others company, not to be deafened by Coldplay or Bjork.

And lastly please do us a favor the next time I come into your overpriced hanger-steak serving wind-tunnel, seat us somewhere away from the bathrooms so that I don't have to see every dirt-bag walking in to take a dump.

when is a nazi also a socialist? when they are pushing for health-care reform

I know the American Public isn’t all that bright but this ‘Death panel’ thing is really showing how gullible people are. I am not one who says we should move to socialism but there are obviously a lot of things wrong with our health-care system today. The costs are running away from us and the argument I hear from my Insurance buddies is always that the private sector can do a better job controlling costs than the public option will. This might be true but you can’t use this argument and then also say that the public option will limit your choices when obviously this goes against the entire thought of the kind of socialism that these people preach against. See you can’t have it both ways; you can’t call people a socialist and then say that their ‘socialist’ plans will be Nazism. For one thing you can’t take two political philosophies which are more contradictory and secondly when you throw around words like that it usually means your arguments are weak to begin with.


But for the sake of argument lets discuss it all.

1- What is so ironic is that the defenders of the private sector will tell you that the public option will limit your choices…. What is funny though is that if you are running a ‘for profit’ company, it is your job to find ways make more profit whether this is through cost-savings or cost-cutting. So it is ironic that the private sector derides the public option because they say you will be limited in options knowing that if the private option is doing what they should for their shareholders than of course they would be limiting expensive options.



2- The entire socialism thing falls on death ears if you are also going to say that this public policy will force death-panel’s upon the sick, elderly or weak. Isn’t this what true capitalism is based on? Survival of the fittest. The complaint about socialism is that the lazy and weak people will get the same kind of health-care that the hard-working ones will.. but then explain the death-panel argument?



3- People who will argue that you should be allowed to carry a concealed gun as this is a basic human right will also say that Euthanasia should not be a human right. How can carrying an Uzi into a church be considered a right but a person riddled by cancer can’t make the humane decision to end their lives. We do this for dogs or cats why not for humans?



The entire Death Panel thing is totally idiotic and proves how dumb the people who regurgitate talk radio really are (from either the left or the right). If you don’t like the public option that is fine but don’t bullshit about it. If the public option is so bad, how hard could it be to convince other’s of that fact without making up pure lies.


Here is the Righetti Death Panel
“pro-death across the board”:

pro death-penalty, pro choice, pro euthanasia

Let people who should die...DIE (just make sure they did it)

Let people who want to die...DIE

Let women make their own choices about their bodies

and while we are at it

Somebody set up some traps to kill those poodle sized rats I’ve been noticing in the subways.

The Wallet of the Future

I was awaken today by the CNN headline

“the wallet of the future….your cell phone”.

As you read through the article it explains that soon you will use your cell-phone for your credit card purchases and that somehow you will be able to use it to open up your front door.

I know this is obviously the direction we are going into but at some point aren’t we afraid we are going to put too many eggs in this one electronic basket? For me my blackberry already serves as my: phone, calendar, address book, email hub, internet port, camera and place I often blog TOR’s. I have buddies who use slingbox to watch TV on their IPhones, others who use their IPhones to pick restaurants or find recipes. My blackberry contains almost every important part of my life not to mention the distractions like Word Mole and BrickBreaker while I’m taking a crap and now you are going to also make this my wallet and my keys too?

I heard this Connecticut morning DJ tell this story once about how everything comes with a camera now, your laptop can come with a camera, your cell-phone comes with one, you can get a keychain which can be a camera and that soon you’ll be able to get a grape-fruit with a camera attached to it. I’ll do one better, I’m looking forward to the day that the point that you can buy a digital camera with a camera on it.

The point is that when I invariably drop my BlackBerry in a porta-potty one night, I won’t be able to get home because my metro-card is now floating in the bowl , I won’t be able to take a cab because my credit-card # is now covered with piss and even if I do get home I won’t be able to get into my house cause my keys are now part of my urine smelling electronic live hamper.

my life will be awful

So I've gotten a lot of flack about a TOR entry from about a month or two ago about chicks who wear flats with dresses.

First of all this is a horrible look but more importantly it is a terrible look but we digress

But people got very upset about it implying I was a sexist pig because I wanted chicks in 4" heels. I may be a sexist but this point has NOTHING to do with sexism. So let me clarify because you people are way too sensitive but a chick should NEVER wear straight flats. I am NOT talking about slippers or sneakers which is different but I am talking about those chick shoes that look like they should have a heel but don't; the kind that look like one of banana boats except for your feet.

Ladies time to shape up and get to looking hot

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Take on Ovations

With a record of 4-7, a 3.67 ERA and a WHIP of 1.24, the Bump has been used by his manager in a couple of tight ball-games lately and with the added confidence of a succesful blog http://www.bumplovestv.blogspot.com/ he has become a fan favorite.

Today he serves as a relief bitcher for TOR

i am really sick of the overuse of curtain calls. did anyone see the yankee game yesterday?  They gave a curtain call to a-rod for tying the game up and one to texeria for taking the lead. it seems as if yankee fans feel a curtain call is part of the admission price. it is the further disneyfication of sports. when mickey mantle hit his 500th he ran the bases with his head down, shook hands with the guy on deck and sat down on the bench. I know that carlos delgado caught some flack last year when he refused a curtain call. he didn't think the situation warranted it. it's too much already. a curtain call should be for a guy who hits three homers in a game or hits for the cycle, or takes his last at bat after a long storied career.   People aren't content anymore with just attending a game, they all want to attend the greatest game ever. at $250 a seat, you sorta can't blame them. but stop the curtain calls, they are ruining an already steroid infused, watered down talent game

The TOR take
This standing ovation crap does get out of control not just in baseball, I remember being at some piano concert at Lincoln Center and they gave the pianist 10 ovations where the guy kept coming back and playing one more piece.  It's so contrived and so lame because these performers know that they are going to get called back for encore after encore, there are no theatrics left to it.  They just walk off stage and wait for 30 seconds and come out again and I swear there were a number of times that the applause was really very tame and the guy came out anyway.  It wasn't that show wasn't good (it was) but that they needed this self-justification bullshit at the end which annoyed me and honestly the encore part was longer than the concert.

Dudes have bad-lives

Well I guess the hot air was about to come but now it’s a 1000 degrees after a July when the temperatures never actually hit 90.. Of course basically every single day in July did feature 100% humidity so it wasn’t like we’ve had a mild summer by any stretch. Well you get this kind of heat and humidity and it’s one of those times that dudes get totally screwed. Chicks have so many more options when dressing for work than dudes do (which sometimes is not such a good thing as too many choices make for long mornings). See dudes basically put on a pair of black, gray or black/gray pants, tuck their undershirts into their boxer shorts and then add a button down shirt and are off.   This makes shopping, dressing and laundry very easy.
For example I have 15 workshirts and they are all either blue, white, gray or a combo of them. I never have to think about what I have to wear which is exactly how I like it (and how Einstein operated I believe) this works fine until you get to the dead-of summer and you want to shoot yourself because of the unrelenting humidity.

Chicks have so many more options which when it comes to 1000 degree weather is really a big positive.


-Chicks can rock a skirt which I can’t pull off unless I’m marching in a Scottish Day parade.  

-Chicks can even get away with a tshirt which I can’t do unless I get a job at blimpies

-Chicks can rock flip-flops which I couldn’t do unless I worked as a life-guard

-Chicks can even get away with shorts and still look professional which of course I can’t do unless I get a job at a shop that sells pens and art-supplies

Well people will offer the short-sleeve button down as a summer option but since I don’t work for the US Postal Office this is not a realistic option.


So when it comes to working in an office in midtown Manhattan and having to deal with the dreadfully hot subway tunnels we are just screwed, I’ve had a few days when I’ve actually walked into work looking like I just got out of a pool, my shirt drenched through my undershirt and sweat dripping off my face like I’m the Ultimate Warrior without the muscles.

So for a change, dudes have a bad life and chicks have it good.

Drunk Drinking

Sometimes not drinking is so much better than heavy hard boozing especially when you see your friends the next morning looking like they went 12 rounds with Iron Mike and lost. Looking at one of these poor fools this morning who looked like a raccoon with his recessed eyes and his puffy face and the only thing that kept racing through my mind was why would you ever want to do this to yourself. When I walked out of the hotel and smelled some chicks puke from last night baking in the sun, I realized that hard booze should be banned from people who can't handle it



I have two rules



1- don't feel bad for anybody who is hung over. People say stuff like 'poor Betty she's sick.'. My take is that I have NO sympathy because they did this to themselves and number B this is not sick.. There are real diseases out there and being hungover is not one of them



2-don't ever claim that you'll never drink again. There isn't a more empty threat than this and the day somebody sticks with it, I will be floored



So when you are drunk driving, drunk dialing or drunk drinking don't expect any sympathy from you.





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Concerto

As you all know I am the defender of Rock & Roll against the estrogen fueled bullcrap like Coldplay and the Village People but I do have a confession to make, I really hate going to concerts. 


Now I have to give credit where it's due, this TOR was actually inspired by a conversation I had with a loyal TOR reader and occasional contributor who mentioned how idiotic people at live concerts tend to be mentioning that you just get a a bunch of rhythm-less white people embarrassing the entire race with their antics like the chick in the front who looks like she is having a seizure as she 'dances' or the hordes of dudes kinda swaying away.

He makes a great point and as a white person I have noticed that whenever I see live music I am sort of lost as of what to do, there really aren't any obvious ways for me to position myself at a concert.  I  obviously don't want to dance around like some kind of mental patient, I don't want to sit down as this is obviously not very Rock&Roll and I sure as shit don't want to do that lame lighter-less sway.

Live music for all it's appeal has this as it's major flaw; a lot of the venues just blow.  The small venues are cramped  and the big ones are not set up for music events.  Take a place like the Garden which for all it's history is a terrible place to watch music because if some ahole stands up the whole row behind him can't see.  The only thing you can hope for is that somehow he trips and tumbles down 10 flights taking a bunch of equally big aholes with him. Those arenas just have no place to move and you are left kinda doing the hokey-pokey in you 4 square foot spot


But even a small venue leaves me lost, I just do not know what to do with myself and usually try to find excuses to go to the bar, take a leak or hang out outside.  See if i just stand up my lower back starts to hurt, if I sit down people say I look bored there just is nothing that you can do unless you want to start a mosh pit which for an Erasure concert might not go over very well, although I probably do stand a decent chance at dominating it..



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July unemployment numbers better than expected

Employers cut far fewer jobs from payrolls in July, the government says. The unemployment rate fell to 9.4 percent from 9.5 percent in June, the first decline since April of 2008. The Labor Department reported a net loss of 247,000 jobs in July, the fewest job losses since August 2008. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com had forecast a loss of 325,000, CNNMoney reports.

First of all.. TOR wants to say CONGRATULATIONS TO THE ECONOMY  you suck a little bit less than you did last week.     Secondly I heard Larry Kudlow explain that the first thing that recovers after a recession is the stock market (check), then manufacturing numbers start looking up (we sold more cars so I gues that's a check) and finally jobs come back (sort of check)...  I gotta hope that this thing is turning around
if for no other reason than Goldman Sachs is reporting big gains and their executives are back at the Lamborgini dealerships.

But back to the numbers because we hera at TOR have some questions.   First of all we read that the unemployment rate dropped from  9.5% to 9.4%although there was a net loss of 275,000 jobs. Now I’m no genius but I do know one thing that if you have a net loss of jobs how can you say that the unemployment rate has dropped.  That's like saying that your ERA drops although you gave up 10 runs in 2 innings.


Of course I know the answer which is that certain people will leave the workforce all together and stop looking for jobs as they feel disenfranchised and at this point are not considered unemployed anymore and I guess they just become homeless.  Poor guy is working for Shell one week, the next he's on the unemployment line and now he's picking through garbage and pissing on himself in the subway

What gets lost is obviously the fact that the rate of unemployment has dropped significantly as there were less jobs lost now than in the first few months which is kind of like getting excited because your favorite team lost the championship by 10 points not 20. Then again as one of my buddies over at Footballguys says you can have the glass-half-full approach and say that we beat the spread.

The Sports (talk) Leader

I have been a huge WFAN fan for as long as I can remember. I grew up waking up to Imus in the morning, listening to Mike and the MadDog in the afternoons and fell asleep listening to Captain Midnight. I have met Russo, Fatso, Benigno and Sidney Arthur Rosenberg and have listened so long that I feel like I know some of these people intimately (although they don’t know me from a light-pole). What is sad though is that through the many stages of WFAN’s history, it has never been as bad as it is now. The demise is hard to trace but it started years ago when they started losing talented hosts to other mediums and filled the slots with the kind of on-air ‘talent’ which lacks it.


I was such a big WFAN fan for years and whenever I’d travel around the country, I’d find their local sports station (usually called “The Score”, “The Zone” or “The Fan”) and feel badly for their regular listeners as most of their hosts would blabber on about non-sports issues for hours on end. WFAN was great in its heyday because they talked sports intelligently. As WFAN’s popularity grew there were obvious attempts at their throne from new upstart radio stations with big money behind them (Sporting News Radio and ESPN Radio for example) and every-time I’d find myself surfing up or down the dial, I’d be disappointed in their lack of understanding. Their on-air personalities were often national guys who I generally don’t like as they lack a local flavor and I often find that the production values in syndication are poor.

Well as WFAN started showing cracks with the departure of people like Sid Rosenberg and Jody Mac but the spot where it really started to break was when Steve Somers was moved from his role of zoo-keeper in the overnights to the 10-1 slot alongside Russ Salzberg. The midday show has been kind of a grave-yard since the departure of The Coleman and the Soul-Man but this was the worst. Somers schtick didn’t work in the midday and Salzberg was a pompous prick.

Although I believe that this is the point where WFAN jumped the shark, it did give Joe Benigno his original role as the overnight-host which somehow worked even better for him than it did for Somers. Benigno was brilliant as the obsessed Jets fan and there hasn’t been better radio than the 1AM hour after a bad Jets loss. The rest of the story can be read fairly in a billion places but Benigno was the last great find WFAN has had but his day-time tenure has been pretty bad. Imus leaving was rough and Mike and the MadDog’s departure was a sad day for both the hardcore and the casual listeners…

The problem for WFAN was that throughout all of their internal family issues, ESPN Radio started to get better…

The lineups today are clearly in ESPN’s favor

Mike and Mike, Brandon Tierney, Collin Cowherd are an awesome 6AM till 2PM grouping. The obvious weak-link is Michael Kay who needs to be put out to pasture. But ESPN really works well in the other slots. The most underrated sports-host in NYC is Bill Daughtrey, the overnight show AllNight is fantastic and Jody Mac on Weekend mornings is a pleasure.

WFAN can’t compete in any slot expect the midday (Mike Francesa alone is still miles better than Michael Kay) but in every other slot WFAN now loses out. Evan Roberts is horrible, Richard Neer is horrific, those Sunday morning guys sound like they are hosting from a Russian Bath House and Marc Mallusis and Tony Paige have the combined sports IQ of a donkey

Happy Birthday!!!!

365 days ago, we decided to start a little daily blog to talk about the events of the day both large and small. A place to discuss my fears and hopes, to give us an avenue to explore my dreams and talk about stepping in dog shit but more than anything else it was a challenge to myself to write a daily blog uninterrupted for one year straight and I am proud to say that this has been accomplished.

Looking back at some of the original posts (including this one about dropping my walkman in the porta-john), I was fairly amuzed but I guess we didn't really hit our stride until a few months into it.


Now, I’ve thought about taking a few days off to gather my thoughts, re-evaluate the situation and possibly come up with some better stories. Throughout the year I’ve had many comments that have said stuff like

1) Stick to the politics stuff, the rest of it is gross

2) Stay away from the politics stuff, you know nothing about it

3) You disgust me, does the world have to know about your bowel movements

4) Your blog posts have been particularly negative lately

5) You have really bad grammar

6) Your posts are too long

7) Your posts are too short

Hopefully I’ve taken it all in stride and have met your expectations, but as you are the regular TOR readership please realize that we are not going anywhere; there are many more puddles of piss to clear, cigarette smoking litters to complain about, television programs to make fun of and I’m sure there will be some Lamaze angles coming soon.

For now.. thank you for reading every day.. We’re one year old today and looking forward to year two.