Double Down

So I know that I'm about a month late to this party but this needs to be discussed. KFC recently announced their newest sandwich

"The new KFC Double Down sandwich is real! This one-of-a-kind sandwich features two thick and juicy boneless white meat chicken filets (Original Recipe® or Grilled), two pieces of bacon, two melted slices of Monterey Jack and pepper jack cheese and Colonel's Sauce. This product is so meaty, there's no room for a bun! »"

These savages have packed bacon, cheese and more cheese between two pieces of fried chicken!?? I know that KFC has gone through a few image make-overs but this just seems like suicide. Years ago the dropped the name "Kentucky Fried Chicken" because of the health implications of fried food but now they have again rebranded themselves as the most gluttonous choice in the fast-food arena. I have also noticed that there are a number of KFC's which have gone back to the old name with the Fried Chicken back on their signs, napkins and menus

I haven't yet indulged but i know the TOR readership is looking for a review so in the next few days I will be indulging although maybe they can feed it to me intravenously.

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53

So I've been following the forensic trail the FBI used to eventually capture the failed Times Square bomber. I know the show 24 is immensely popular but if they could have broadcast the 53 hours it took to find Faisal Shahzad from the smoking Nissan to the smoking gun would have been the best piece of reality TV since the OJ chase.
Looking over the Times article over the way the case broke open would have been better than American Idol and the British Office combined.
After the original threat was called in by some vendor selling 'I Love NY' tshirts, it took the NYPD and FBI some 8 hours to disarm the car. After they disarmed it the FBI found the hidden VIN # on the 1993 Nissan Pathfinder on the axel of the car at some forensic lab. From there they found the original owner who recently sold it to a guy of "middle eastern or hispanic" dissent whose name she didn't know. The transaction of the Pathfinder happened in a parking lot, in $1300 cash after they negotiated down from the original $1800 asking price without a bill of sale. Although she didn't know his name and there was no paper-trail, investigators were able to trace the prepaid cell-phone he used to call her had been used a number of times for calls from Pakistan as well as having been used in Pennsylvania near a place that sold fireworks, the type which were meant to ignite the fertilizer stowed in the back of the rusty SUV. They then somehow got a sketch from the seller of the SUV of the buyer and used that to get to some apartment in Bridgeport CT. Once they got there the landlord told investigators that on Sunday his tenant called him from the train out of NYC saying he had lost his keys.

Back in NYC there were surveillance tapes showing the car pulling into the city, a guy walking away from the car and changing into a red shirt and they were investigating which entry way the car used to get into the city using license-plate recognition software.

I can't even imagine what it took to pull all these leads together although while under surveillance the FBI lost his scent for a while as he drove himself to JFK, buying a one way ticket in cash and boarded a flight to Dubai before he was apprehended just as the plane was ready to take-off. With some technicality were able to question him without reading him his Miranda rights and get what Attorney General Eric Holder said was valuable information.

Now obviously this is a mouthful but the few things I noticed that should have gotten some people's ears up included

- I'm not into racial profiling but when a Pakistani guy buys a one way ticket to Dubai in cash at the last minute it maybe time to do a cursory check to make sure he wasn't on America's Most Wanted last night.

- how does an idling car sit for even 5 minutes unnoticed in Times Square. I have had the try to tow me as I sat waiting for a red light to switch.

- how much does a one-way ticket to Dubai cost last minute, can you negotiate it at the counter? I mean they aren't going to sell the ticket anyway, maybe you can get a deal?

- who the hell still buys those I Heart NY tshirts?

- with all these cameras everywhere picking up every movement somebody makes, I gotta stop picking my nose and scratching myself in public.

Then of course I have a question of motive.

The initial suspicion being that this was some retaliation against South Park which had recently had a few episodes mocking the reaction to those Danish cartoons of the prophet Muhammad, we live in a sad world when some poorly drawn cartoon on Comedy Central can get some radical Islamic extremist to try to blow up a bunch of fanny-pack wearing tourists in the name of his peaceful religion. First of all those two guys that draw South Park probably don't work in Times Square location and chances of them being there on a Sunday evening is slim to non. Plus you gotta have bigger fish to fry than the guy's who end every episode with Kenny's Dead.

RANT/ It would be nice if at some point people stop being so damned sensitive about themselves and it might be time for the legitimate leadership to stop sitting idly on their hands and start calling these lunatics out for this crap. /END RANT

But what the hell do I know but maybe Mr. Shahzad who had recently lost his house to foreclosure was pissed that main-street wasn't getting the handouts wall-street was, maybe he was pissed at those guys handing out the fliers for $10 haircuts or he was protesting Bloomberg's conversion of Times Square into a pedestrian walkway or maybe he was trying to plant tomato plants in his truck using propane and then setting off some fireworks to celebrate Golden Week..

The other though I had was what a loser this guy must feel like after he lugs 250 pounds of fertilizer into an old SUV without realizing that his fertilizer is not the bomb-making type. I get annoyed if I forget to put my newspaper subscription on hold when I head out of town, I gotta imagine this dude was furious with himself as he was driving down to JFK knowing he bought the generic tomato growing type.

But my main thought the entire time is- who the hell would ever consider paying $1800 for a 1993 rusted out Nissan Pathfinder with a bad chassis? This in itself should have prompted officials to know something was rotten in Denmark.
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100+

I haven't played golf in a few years which I attribute to a number of issues the biggest of which is that as both a resident of NYC and a father, I can't seem to justify spending the 8 hours it takes to drive to a local course, wait to get onto the course, hack it up for 4.5 hours and then drive back. I know there are people who can find time for it but at this point in my life, I cannot.
But with that said, I have not given up on the game and after having hit a large bucket of balls out on the driving range this weekend, I have decided that I am not totally done although I will never play golf with the same level of butchering I have done so in the past. See when you are bad at golf, I mean REALLY bad, the joy is gone by the time you have hit it into the woods for the 10th time. There is no fun when you are constantly dropping your ball in the water hazard drop-zone or playing from behind a tree and the cost of losing 20 balls per round makes it that much worse

I remember there was a statistic on Pedro Martinez years ago when he was the ace on the RedSox. The book on him was that her had 100 pitches in his arm and that after that he fell apart and there were complete strategies (which the Yankees perfected) where they would take so many pitches that he'd hit the wall in the 5th inning. Martinez had to compensate knowing this and try to throw strikes early and often which sometimes worked and sometimes didn't. Well golf is the same way, any swing after 100 is miserable and at that time I am so tired, cranky and overheated that the chances of a decent shot are about as good as me holing one from 125 yards out.

From this day forward I have decided that I will no longer take 130 golf swings in a round, my limit is 100 and my goal is to be significantly underneath it.
This is how I will achieve my goal is that I'm going to have to conserve my shots and will not fall into the Grady Little fiasco where I'm facing Jorge Posada with 120 pitches under my belt. Basically when I hit 100 swings then I'm taking myself out of the game, no questions asked. If that means I am stranding on the 10th green so be it, I'm just walking off and I don't give a crap what gentleman's code I am breaking.
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89, 9/10th of a penny and the top-off

I’ve ranked the top scams at gas stations

• - The $0.009/gallon addition they all use to try to steer business their way. Round the sucker up to the penny and be done with it
• - The whole 89 octane thing.. This is like not deciding if you like cowgirls or Indians. I mean you can love both but you should really decide at one point and if you are an Indian who happens to love cowgirls you should embrace it and not hide it from your parents.
• - Cash or credit scam, yeah I know this is really not a 'scam' per-se because the greedy banks are banging the gas-stations for some outrageous costin fees but I’m getting hoodwinked into the place because of the sign that advertises the cash price.
• - The entire ethanol additive thing. You are charging me more for getting less and you are getting all the credit. Corn Based ethanol is about as efficient as pissing into the wind.
• - Topping off.

 As much as i'm pissed at the first four, the last one really sits with me like a bad hot-dog

How often does this happen to you? You fill up your tank and the total comes out to some odd number, $26.63 for example and the gas-station attendant (in a full serve station) brings the total to $27.00. I’m sure that years ago rounding up may have made sense when you were paying cash and having the total rounded to the nearest dollar meant having less change to deal with, but in today’s world where everything is on a credit or debit card rounding up to the nearest dollar makes absolutely no difference.  It has just becomes a way for the gas-stations to suck you dry even more. See I have a thousand items on my credit-card bill and which I pay online from my checking account so having $26.63 or $27.00 appear on the credit-card statement makes absolutely no difference to me.  It's even worse when the gas stops at $26.03 and the ahole tries to bring it to $27.

I’m not 100% sure but it seems to me that everytime somebody tops off your gas-tank that ¾ of  a gallon doesn't ever end up in the tank it just pours out of the spout into the gasline and then regurgitates onto the floor.
I’m also convinced that this can’t be good for the car, there is a reason the automatic stop-valve kicks in when the gas is full, this is like me sitting at an all-you-can eat feast and then some jackass egging me on to have another bowl of the endless pasta like me my gas-tank belches and then my shoes or its tires are covered in 89 grade gasoline mixed with 5% ethanol.

In and Out of SYNC

One of the best inventions of the 21st century is this SYNC thing I got in the old Hybrid Escape. Now not only am I cruising at 29mpg's but I'm also not running over kids because I got my hands tied up with some cell-phone. See this SYNC thing basically feeds your cell-line through your stereo system, so it's like being on a speaker phone without it sounding like you are talking into a paper bag. What makes it great is that you don't have to fumble with some earpiece with those wires and you don't feel like you need an interpreter with those terrible cellphone speaker-phones although it brings the entire car into the conversation which obviously can also have its drawbacks especially if you are a gossip seeking chick like me.
But more than anything what it helps out is that with the SYNC has this voice recognition software where you can ask it to "call home" or "call mom" and it works really well. I have long argued that the bigger danger in the talking on the cellphone while driving thing isn't the conversation but it's the fumbling with the receiver to dial or answer calls. Of course the SYNC voice recognition is far from perfe0ct because everytime you try to call somebody with even a slightly ethnic name it screws it up. I can't tell you how many times I have called. Leyla Mattel.


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Two Terminals

As a guy who travels for work, I spend too many nights sleeping at Holiday Inn Expresses, too many meals at TGI Fridays and too many hours at the airport waiting out the countless delays.
There is no bigger dichotomy than when you see one guy sitting quietly reading his Blackberry. with a complete dejected look on his face and right next to him is some kid on his way to Disney World bouncing off his chair. For the one guy it is a way of life and he's got the frequent flier card to prove it and for the other it's an extraordinarily cool experience.

I don't hold anything against those traveling for fun although I never seem to find time to do it myself but there really needs to be two terminals, one for the ones who are wearing a Hawaiian shirt and the other for the people who want to smash their laptops through that guy's head. If you have traveled for work you know that there is no fun to it at all, any luster and excitement has worn off years ago and anybody who looks they are even having the least bit of fun needs to slip and have their scrotum torn..

But even amongst business travellers there are two types.

The ones lie myself who just hurry through it, hating the schlep but realizing that it's a means to an end. Most of the time these are the people with their face buried in their laptops, newspapers or most likely their BlackBerry's

And then there is another breed of business traveler who acts like a total buffoon because he has made it his personal quest to make every person aware that he's at the airport.

This week I had the misfortune of sitting next to some balding dude who must was using the down-time while we were waiting for a delayed flight from Chicago to LaGuardia to call every ahole in his rolodex and then made it a point to let whoever he was talking to know exactly where he was as if he was sitting behind the dugout at Yankee Stadium and wanted his friends to turn on the TV to catch a glimpse of him.

"Hey Jill, it's Marc just wanted to let you know I'm at the airport and will be flying in 30 minutes"

"Hey Tony, yeah I'm just sitting waiting for this flight delay and wanted to ask you if could borrow your lawnmower"

"Hey Bill, Marc here just checking in, yeah I'm delayed over at the airport, wanted to make sure you got that fax I sent.... Oh yeah I remember we spoke about this already, well yeah so I'm at the airport and there is a delay and......."

This guy found some way to shoehorn the fact that he was delayed for 30 minutes into 5 different conversations.
Dude get a twitter account or post it as your status but stop with the conversation clutter as I am trying to blog
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So your mother's a whore

There has been a major uproar in the sports-world when Dolphins GM Jeff Ireland (no relation to Kathy) asked Dez Bryant a potential draft-pick if his mother is now or as ever been a member of the prostitute party. I've listened to 3 days of sports-talk and although 90% of sports-fans find the question despicable (and if you included non-sport fans that number may rise to 95%) there are those who defend it. This is not far from sitting at a job interview in corporate america and the HR guy asking if your dad beat your mom. It might be interesting information but probably not relevant to your job description and definitely not appropriate.

One of the reason's how they defend is by mentioning that the player will hear much worse on the football field or that the GM was trying to entice the player to see if he would have a short temper. Now I get that a team will invest heavily into a first round player both financially (tens of millions) but also in terms of the direction of his team and I also understand that this isn't a typical job-interview and wouldn't be your standard job. But I do see one greater difficulty for teams after the en Roethlisberger , PacMan Jones, Michael Vick, Donte Stallworth and the whizinator incidents. See Roger Goodell is the judge and jury when it comes to personal conduct rule and he takes less crap than Vlad Putin, so if you are an NFL team you better make sure that your players aren't going to give you issues. I don't blame Goodell but his strict mentality when it comes to his players behaving leads to GM's delving deeper than they have ever before.

But I ask one thing, this question only seems insulting if Bryant's mom was actually turning tricks. I gotta imagine that there will be some reporters sniffing out Bryan's hometown to find anybody who will cop to having paid for a BJ from Mrs Bryant. Talk about something that may be hard to prove though, you gotta think anybody who will admit they paid for sex has to probably not be the most well regarded member of his community. Most of the time these guys are trying to cover up not expose their late night behavior.

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On Tuesday Lloyd Blankfein and a bunch of other Goldman $achs higher-ups were called in front on a Senate hearing committee do discuss their role in the financial meltdown on 2008. Of course TOR was watching as our beloved Senators tried to outdo one another for a little bit of prime-time glory.

At one point during an exchange with some senators I couldn't avoid thinking Blankfein would channel Vizzini and start screaming out "inconceivable"
Now nobody should feel that bad for "doing God's work" Blankfein who collected $9 million in compensation last year as the crisis which he helped create, drove the national unemployment rate to 10% and destroyed 401k's, retirement values and ostensibly housing values. Yeah I understand that in capitalism you have to be one step ahead of your competition but when you are selling jive to your own customers as Abacus was, you can't be sleeping well at night. This is the equivalent of trying to shark some 90 year old grandma out of her fixed income check by lying, cheating and scare tactics.. I understand that everybody should be doing research before they invest but isn't this exactly why you hire Goldman Sachs? who the hell could know that they are setting up financial IED's? Aren't they the ones that are supposed to be working for you, not setting up complex derivative cocktails intended to explode in your face.

Every radio-ad you hear about any investment tool concludes it ad with 'prior outcomes don't guarantee future results' but GS's ads should have said that the only certainty there was is that somebody will be pissed off and it won't be Goldman.

Years ago it was a popular notion that what was "good for GM was good for the country", you may argue against it but it's surely more true than GS being good for this country (or the EU with Greece for that matter).

I know one thing, when push came to shove it during war-time Detroit outfitted their plants to aid the war effort while 70 years later Goldman Sachs along with their fellow banking buddies stalled the economy to near Depression levels. They couldn't turn their machinery over to help the country because they don't make anything, this is where the US economy will continue to be fragile and vulnerable. When everything you "make" is smoke and mirrors and when all your gains are only gains on paper you are not only not adding anything of value but actually diluting the little value of actually creating something. . We already have a Fed who prints money and the FBI trying to stop counterfeiting and but somehow our banks are essentially printing and counterfeiting billions by the day.

So I implore everybody who says that regulation of the financial sector will crush innovation in the sector to answer one question.
What kind of innovation are you creating when it's all built on quick-sand anyway?
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We can invent a telescope to view the surface of the sun yet my ass is still a mop

How exactly am I supposed to feel better when all I got between my ass cheeks and a piss covered public restroom seat is this flimsy piece of recycled paper. I know these are supposed to be hygenic solutions but how about an engineered one, shoot it won't take an engineer to realize that sitting on one layer of toilet paper means that you are sopping up the piss with your ass. I know this is a pretty common issue for us at TOR but I travel a lot and we use a lot of public rest-rooms and I don't have the quad muscle strength to squat and I am not about to carry a plastic toilet cover seat

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Somebody explain this to me

I have asked before but as I have never gotten a reasonable answer I will ask again.

Why are you forbidden from using a cell-phone after the doors on an airplane have closed in preparation for departure BUT you are allowed to turn it back on the second you land.

There isn't anything drastically different in taxiing for takeoff and taxiing after landing, the doors are shut both times, the interference with other planes cannot be considered higher and the inconvenience to other passengers is not increased. What it is though is yet another way to keep people in line.
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the drop

The Drop


There is nothing you can do where you are more vulnerable than when you are standing at a public pisser and all of a sudden you hear the creak? I’m not talking about your knees or the creak in your crank but the creak of the toilet seat coming down. We can put a man on the moon but we still haven’t been able to design a toilet seat which can stay up all on its own.

This is one of those life-or-death dilemmas which test your will-power, intestinal fortitude, dexterity, reaction time and level of care for other people.

The dropping toilet seat has many repercussions.

- Avoiding pissing on the seat: As somebody who takes pride to never piss all over a toilet seat, as I know that sometime in the future I’ll be forced to plant my ass on said-seat.

- Avoiding pissing on my pant leg

- Avoiding touching anything with my hands what so-ever



One of the only ways you can avoid getting piss all over the place is by stopping mid-stream but with a falling seat this is like trying to hit Randy Moss in stride when you have Jason Taylor breathing down your neck

The other thing you can try to do is try to pin the seat back with your foot while keeping balance and continuing a steady stream which means you will likely be lying in a puddle of piss within ten minutes

Or lastly you can just let her rip and let fate take control. Maybe you’ll get some back-splash, maybe you’ll get decapitated but at that point you are likely to get piss on your shoe at minimum and if you are in a place –like work—you may be forced to bring out a mop too.

This is why it’s so important that every public bathroom starts investing in one of those foot-levers which lifts the toilet-seat, it’s sanitary, easy to use and will most likely ensure that I’m not covered in piss

Help

Coffee addiction is nasty, not just because of the withdrawal headaches. Coffee addiction leads to many difficulties because you because you become dependent on the caffeine to get yourself through the day. When it's bad it feels like a relay race where you race from one cup to another but unlike a relay race there really isn't a finish line. The problem is trying to find the fine balance between the needed caffeine boost and the line where you are bouncing off the walls with caffeine overload.

This is my ONLY issue with brunch, they keep serving coffee and I am so easily distracted that it's not uncommon for me to have 5 cups in an hour and a half which means I'm gonna be pissing like a racehorse for the next five hours and because I'm over caffeinated I'll probably spray the walls and the entire pisser will look like it's a Starbucks bathroom.
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what ever happened to RollerBlading?

I clearly remember a few years ago having to dodge the hordes of people zipping down Park Drive on their inline skates.   Basically with the conversion of four wheels in a box format to four wheels in a row turned the dying act of roller-skating and made it the biggest fad since velcro sneakers.  Well a fad is really all it was, I noticed today that although biking and running seem to fall in and out of fashion, they are both incredibly popular methods of exercising.    Maybe it is the fact that you needed to have every stupid accessory including the shin-guards, the wrist-guards, the helmet and the face mask to feel somewhat safe doing it but rollerblading had a shelf-life of about 2 years.    Any sport where you have to dress like you are going for painball really doesn't have much of a chance, people just don't want to look that stupid

A decade ago it was so popular it seemed like they needed their own lanes in the parks for it and people would roller-blade to work in a full suit, now you only see a couple of chicks in their late 40's still using it

Rollerskate had a small revival with the disco-dance thing but rollerblading seems like it's died a very quiet death.

license to print money

Traffic was a total mess in NYC yesterday and it wasn’t only because Obama was speaking in the Great Hall at Cooper Union. When I left work 6th avenue was blocked off since an even bigger event was being held at Radio City.


So as President Obama spent the morning chiding the banking industry for trying ruining the US financial markets while at the same time the NFL doing what they do best.. basically printing US Currency.

The NFL took their annual rookie draft and broadcast it in prime-time which basically meant every red-blooded American male (and some females too) said no to date-night and spent four hours glued to their televisions sets. The NFL draft was once held in some conference room at an airport Holiday-Inn to an all-out must-watch event broadcast live on two channels each dedicating 100’s of hours to its full coverage and analysis. After all the mock-drafts, the speculation, the combine, Gruden’s QB school and putting my daughter to bed it’s finally time..

I’m not a big enough nerd to give you an analysis on every pick and trade that happened but I can give you some of the blow-by-blow from watching the boob-tube.

TOR blogging the draft on ESPN

7:30 pm the draft starts as I crack open a cold seltzer water with my omelet.. It’s going to be a crazy night and I need to stay hydrated

7:40 pm. The Rams draft Mathew Stafford….. or maybe it was Sam Bradford, everybody yawns.. If you scramble their letters you can almost come up with “hard strap-on”

7:50 pm After Suh goes to the Lions, Gerald McCoy gets picked by the Bucs and nearly tackles commissioner Roger Goodell on the stage.

8:00pm Righetti takes a long leak

8:10pm how many players out of the state of Oklahoma will get taken in the first two hours???

8:20 PM first view of Jimmy Clausen’s war-room.. it looks like he needs to take a shit but at least he’s got Erin Andrews to clean up the mess.

8:30 PM some LB from Alabama named McClain gets picked by the Raiders, my buddy who is a Giant fan just had a coronary. I did notice that when they cut to his war-room out in Alabama somewhere that he was surrounded by hot young white-chicks. I don’t trust any player who doesn’t have the sense to sit there with his parents, you can’t be sitting there with only entourage, not in Goodell’s league Something tells me that although he wasn’t at the draft to be personally congratulated by Goodell, he’ll be having some conversations with him soon.

8:40PM The Bills take CJ Spiller which now means they have drafted a first-round RB every other year although somehow they haven’t been able to amass the next Jim Brown, Barry Sanders and Ladanian Tomlinson. Spiller’s fantasy value goes into the sh!tter.

8:50 PM.. they just cut to the Tim Tebow war-room, it looks like an outtake for Jersey Shore II.

9:00 PM.. First of all Steve Young looks like he should be part of a class-action suit against the NFL for how they ignored the after-effects of concussions on their former stars. Steve Young is about 9 yards short of a first down, he’s completely lost any sensibility or rational, it’s as if you are sitting in a room with your 90 year old grandfather who keeps yelling random comments out. It also doesn’t help that for some reason he needs to wear TWO ear-pieces. Fellow ESPN analyst Tom Jackson who kept getting interrupted by Young looked like he was going to stab Young in the throat with his BIC pen.

9:10pm .. there are a ton of trades and ESPN keeps screwing them up, either the Broncos are trading up or down but they are moving. It’s like Josh McDaniels and Bill Bellichick are playing a game of trading chicken. Neither guy may make a pick at all today.

9:15pm. Jimmy Clausen still looks like he is taking a shit. Goodell snickers as he reads some pick. John Gruden is the best guy on this set, I think there might be Weekend at Bernie’s situation going on with Mel Kiper.

9:30PM.. some RB from Fresno State goes to the Chargers and everybody's Fantasty Rookie drafts are thrown for a loop

9:40 PM  I make it over to the Pictures that May or MayNot Rule and somehow I lose myself for about an hour. I check the draft-board and there were a bunch of defensive players taken all of whom could suck

10:30PM.. Adam Schefter reports that if the Bengals draft Dez Bryant that Ochocinco has offered to live with him. I’m not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing.. instead they take a Tight-End because taking a TE in the first round always works out so well.

10:40PM.. After the Cowboys draft WR Dez Bryant, Steve Young keeps referring to Miles Austin as Austin Miles. Tom Jackson starts applauding in the middle of it.

10:50PM. The Packers take some big white lineman from Iowa.. Nobody says it but everybody thinks it makes sense and I’m not talking about the need for a lineman.

11:00PM WOW.. "TIM TEBOW IS NO 1 MILE CLOSER TO GOD"…RaiderNation

11:10PM The Jets are about to draft.. I crack open another Seltzer water

11:20PM.. Righetti is excited about Kyle Wilson.. not exactly sure but I like the fact the Jets draft towards their strengths. Sexy Rexy is the man

11:30PM.. The Colts keep getting better ..and more boring

11:40PM.. how great would it be if Drew Brees turns over that card and it says “Jimmy Clausen”

11:50 PM Although Jimmy Clausen had a tough night, I hope he built a peep-hole into the guest bedroom

Midnight.. Post Game Live with Bill Daugherty has been superseded by a special edition of NY Football tonight on 1050.. I’m a happy camper.

Is that a coffin?

I oftentimes see cars with these huge plastic things strapped to their roofs and wonder what the hell compels anybody who is not on a camping trip from driving around town with some plastic coffin tied to the roof. I see them everywhere lately as if they are procreating like Gremlins which has done nothing to make them appear slightly hip which has not deterred anybody apparently.

As if there isn't enough indignation in driving a Volvo or a Subaru this thing makes you look like you are driving a double-decker station-wagon. You have five rows of seats, a trunk the size of a dumpster and you are driving back and forth to ballet lessons and tee-ball practice, what do you need an extra 40 cubic feet of space for?

These thing offer nothing in the way of aerodynamics so you are probably crawling down the highway in the center-line at 15mpg but I wonder what exactly are people lugging around in these things?
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A good deal

Nothing makes me more convinced that I am getting ripped off then when somebody tells me that they can make me a good deal. This has to be the oldest trick in the book and makes you feel more ripped off that anything else. If you walk into a BestBuy and you see a TV for $1800 you may realize you are getting ripped off but that price can’t really be negotiated. The concept when a salesguy offers you a ‘good deal’ usually means that the only deal you are getting is a thorough colonic. A few months ago I got this treatment while trying to buy a car but it doesn't seem to end with shady car-dealers.


I have spent the last few days getting some price quotes for some scaffolding to be put up in front of a building and getting a price quote for something you know nothing about is near impossible because you have absolutely no idea what a fair price should be. I don’t need the cheapest thing in the world but want to feel like I have some idea about price quotes. I can’t even imagine what the price for something like this could be, the guy can quote you $2500 or $25000 and either way I would have no idea if it’s a good deal.

You’ve heard about bait-and-switch well what some people do is bait and rubber-glove but these things usually come from two fronts. First they stroke your ego and then they confuse you, basically they tell you that you look pretty and then stick an ice-pick into your five hole.

This is basically how my conversation goes

TOR: I’m looking for a sidewalk bridge and scaffolding

Scaffolding Guy: OK we can do that.

TOR: The building is five stories high and about 60 feet across.

Scaffolding Guy: oh you will need ____________ plus ____ and _____. (I am leaving this blank as I have no idea what he said)

TOR: OK, I guess so what is the price?

Scaffolding Guy "For you my Friend, I will make you a deal, 225 and three months free, it is usually 240".

Mind you I had never spoken with him before today, so starting any quote with “my friend” basically means he’s going to bend you over. Then he quotes me something ‘225’ which means nothing to me, is that $225 for the entire tower, $225 per day, $2.25 per foot? If it is per foot I have no idea if that’s $2.25 or $225 and how the hell is it measured by linear feet or cubic feet???

TOR: What does that mean, how much in total?

Scaffolding Guy: well the cost of the tower and the plants (typing away at a calculator) and taking it down and putting it up, plus you’ll need a X4509 and a 3Y26 permit plus the insurance because you don’t want somebody to fall but don’t worry we got a net and that will be extra but worth it and you will have two or three decks and you have to figure that there are costs but I’ll give you a good deal for you my friend. It should be $22250 but for you it’s $22000

So now I know what one price is, I guess, I told him that you and I would get back to me

Since then I’ve gotten two unsolicited phone calls from him, first one to tell me that it would be ‘only’ $20000 and then that he can make me a special deal for $17000. I haven’t so much as thought about the quote and he’s come down $5000..



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Hey Beamer, stay your lane

There can’t be anything more frustrating than sitting in traffic waiting to get off an exit when some ahole cuts in front of the entire lane and tries to merge right before the exit. Everybody else has had to sit in this traffic for the last hour but there is always the one guy (it’s almost always a dude) who feels like he is above waiting with the rest of the simpletons.

I’ve always found this some of the most despicable behavior which is only marginally made better when the culprit waves you a thank you. But have you noticed that a disproportioned amount of times that you get cut off on line you are being cut off in a guy driving a German automobile.   It's never a woman in a mini-van driving her kid's to school or even a schmo in an SUV, it's always a guy driving some fuck-me three-series with the leather gloves on

It’s been well documented that guys driving Beamers have smaller winkies, so maybe this is their way of getting back at the rest of the world. There is something extremely pompous about the nonchalant way these guys cut the line too, they never creep in and at least act gracious, they race to the absolute front and then cut in without so much as a hand-wave.

The funniest thing about it is that these guys think they rule the road, although they often times are driving a 3 series. Come on man, if you are going to act like you got a big dick, at least drive a 5 series

the RightNetwork

Apparently FoxNews isn’t right-wing enough… Just this weekend a new addition to the cable-news wars entered the fray and I have to imagine it will make some waves. It already has a catchy name The Right Network and it’s got some celebrity oompf with Actor Kelsey Grammer as one of its financial backers. It is flaunting that it will have opinion based programming which is more conservative than FoxNews, which basically means they will have to bring in David Duke on steroids in their attempt to out-fox Fox. Rupert Murdock isn’t this arch-conservative using his own empire to get out his views; he’s a shrewd businessman who is preying on the stupidity of the American public.

What is incredibly smart about going head-to-head with Fox is not that you’ll beat them right away but I think the total pool of people who are interested in opinions on cable-news seem like they are 3-1 in favor of the right.

What I like about The Right Network is that Kelsey Grammer probably looked over the empire that is NewsCorp and decided to beat the Foxies as their own game. See MSNBC and CNN have been getting trounced in the ratings by FoxNews for a decade and –especially MSNBC- tried to become as politically bias as FoxNews but coming from the Left Side with the hope that the other half of the country would tune in. The issue is that liberal programming doesn’t resonate on cable-television, there is no shock-factor to saying “people should be guaranteed health-insurance’ or ‘stop this war.’ Where MSNBC really got it wrong was the fact that they spend half their programming day calling out FoxNews for its lack of credibility and then spend the rest of the day proving that they have no credibility either. When your entire day revolves around making fun of somebody else, it becomes very clear that you aren’t bringing a lot of original thought to the medium yourself (note to self..)


So this is what TOR recommends for The Right Channel. If you are going to succeed you will first need to get yourself some loud-mouth talkies.. I think that Mark Levin and Michael Savaage are available past that you need to have a few vital ingredients to the recipe

1- Programming aimed at the lowest possibly denominator, ever wonder why there are more combined copies of the NY Post and NY Daily News sold than the NY Times? It has nothing to do with views but rather these two tabloids exploit the fact that the average person doesn’t care to think when they are sitting on the train.

2- A conservative message with a hawkish foreign policy

3- An army of people who will believe treat your content as gospel

So if you are going to go into cable-news it makes sense that you don’t follow MSNBC into the kiddie pool but try to dive into the deep end of the Shark-Pool and feed off some of the scraps left over by the Great White while you bide your time to eventually take out the big fish. The issue though is that if you hope to go further right than Fox than Levin and Savage might not be good enough, maybe you can dig up Goebbels.

I am like an 80's rock-star except the rip in my jeans isn't in the knee

For all the fun I poke at the overweight, I have finally been put in my place. I did what is only supposed to happened in sitcoms and I can only assume there is a laugh-track in my life.
Two weeks ago I put a freshly washed pair of jeans on and noticed they felt a little tight around the thighs. Now I like tight-jeans on chicks but can't fathom a reason a guy would ever go this route. I kicked myself for having let myself go as I haven't been running as regularly as I should while increasing the amount of crap I ate. Add to this the fact that have picked up a nasty dark chocolate habit and that I a lazy slob it wasn't that surprising that my 33x34 jeans felt a little tight around my fat thighs.
I vowed to get back in shape as buying a larger pair of jeans is akin to letting the terrorist win and I hit the road running but after a couple of weeks I noticed very little difference in my thighs or gut and everything on my felt sloppy while everything I wore felt tight.. I plopped down on the couch discouraged when all of a sudden RRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIPPPPPPPPPP. There was no laugh-track, no music, no candid camera nothing just a guy sitting on the couch with his head hung in shame.

My first fear was that I had ripped my boxers again or worse yet ripped my sack but this time the item that ripped was the denim from my crotch to my seat. How does somebody become so heavy in such a short period of time that their fat ass can literally bust through the seat of a piece of denim?
There I sat like a fat Bret Michaels with no real talent, a sloppy belly and ripped jeans on and only hoping for somebody to take me away.


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is it 2012 yet?

The Mayan calendar has long predicted the end of the world in 2012 which a few years ago (Y2K not withstanding) seemed ludicrous but with what we have seen in the last years maybe it's time to pack up and get ready.

We know our infrastructure is crumbling, our government is spying on us, we are in debt to the Chinese, our bodies are getting bloated by sugars, our banks are getting bailed out, the insurance companies are ensured profits from the crooked health-care bill, more people read US Weekly than do the NY Times and the only thing still 'green' is the color of money.  Our air is thick in smog, our rivers are infested with chemicals, Katrina from a few years ago, the Great Recession, Katrina, Britney Spears being photographed in a bikini again and the fact that the Knicks haven't had a significant run in a decade, something major is about to happened you can just feel it.

The Icelandic Volcano eruption which by all accounts wasn't even a very large one just took down all air-travel in and around Europe for three straight days and virtually brought all commerce to a screeching halt.     The last time that Iceland was responsible for this kind of havoc was when that Icelandic banks collapsed which crumbled the Icelandic economy and then threatened to bankrupted the rest of Europe and forced  the Dutch and British governments to try to recover it from the tax-payers of Iceland which will only force them into more isolationism.

See it's crazy how intertwined we all are when you see the havoc that a small volcano can do, Al Qaeda could only hope to do this.  What the hell would have happened if it was a bigger volcano, I mean that Tsunami took out the entire southern hemisphere. Maybe out battle isn't with extremists as much as it is with the extremes of our own planet.  

Big Brother is watching

As the TOR faithful knows, I am addicted to the Blackberry even with all its warts, flaws and hiccups. I have my issues which mostly stem from the fact it is not an Iphone but also Verizon has inexplicably turned off the WiFi option while 3G is AOL slow and the CAP and ALT keys are reversed but considering it all I am more than content.
I should rephrase that... I WAS content until I noticed that a new icon for an app had magically appeared onto my screen. Somehow without my knowing or doing, BlackBerry had added Skype to my phone. Now I like the Skype product but I felt an invasion of privacy. I am not sure why it is in either BB or Verizon's interest for me to have Skype but I am sure somebody is greasing somebody's palm Pre.
Now I wonder if they are adding apps without my consent, what else are they doing? I know the government is listening into my conversations and monitoring my internet usage already but maybe Skype is their newest incarceration of domestic spying.
I realize that nothing I do online is completely safe and I can live with that but when the invasion is so blatant and in your face it gives me reason to worry. Now had they put a YouPorn icon I may have felt differently (mostly more worried) but this had the whole Internet Explorer on Windows feel to it and when it comes to my privacy I am Anti Trust
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Return to Sender, Address unknown

Some Chico American woman named Torry Hansen from Tennessee who adopted a Siberian Boy a few months ago has sent back the seven-year old by himself with a note pinned to his chest that read

To Whom It May Concern," the letter reads, "This child is mentally unstable. He is violent and has severe psychopathic issues/behaviors. I was lied to and misled by the Russian Orphanage workers and director regarding his mental stability. ... After giving my best to this child, I am sorry to say that for the safety of my family, friends and myself, I no longer wish to parent this child. As he is a Russian National, I am returning him to your guardianship and would like the adoption disannulled."

Now I understand that this having a kid thing may have been more than Ms Hansen realized but this just returning the kid for credit seems like it’s gone overboard

First of all I didn’t realize that adopted kids came with a warranty? I can’t even send back a pair of running shoes from Amazon without paying some kind of restocking fee and people are sending kids across the globe with a simple letter

Now I can see where this stems from, people like Miss Hansen probably saw that people routinely adopt a young puppy or a couple of cats and after a few weeks decide that this is no longer something they are interested in but we have to be better than that when it comes to a person right?

First of all, what the hell do you expect when you take a seven-year old kid from Siberia and plop him down in the south. It takes most people a few weeks to wear in a new set of shoes, maybe you should give the kid some time to assimilate to the fact he’s surrounded by a bunch of hicks.

Lastly this kid was from Siberia but Torry Hansen sent him back to Moscow, that’s like dropping a seven-year old from Tennessee off in Alaska and ask him to find his way home

so who exactly is paying for all this tea?

I have to think there are people everywhere who will try to make things happened. I know that people are generally in it for themselves but I really laugh when i see this Tea Party movement

Now I applaud the concept, the organization of it and the way they are trying to keep people accountable. Honestly a lot of what is on their platform resonates with the public and most people agree with the concept of no corporate bailouts, weeding out corruption and even the Reaganomics theory of smaller government but what gets me is who the actual Tea-Partiers are..

The Times had an extensive piece on them recently where they interviewed a bunch of guys at rallies across the country who were up-in-arms with the fact that the Banks, the car companies and the Insurance companies were getting bailouts, handouts and sweetheart deals. The article gave a good cross-section of the people who identified themselves with the TeaParty movement and the cross-section of people was fascinating. Obviously many were white and older although there were a lot of younger people, a scattering of minorities and at least a representation of people who would identify themselves as liberal. The head of one of the initial movements is some chick with crazy tattoos and a nose ring,

But one other identifying characteristic stuck out. There were many people out of work which with 10% unemployment doesn't seem out of the ordinary especially since those unemployed may have more time on their hands and feel the most disenfranchised. But what struck me was how man people were depending on government assistance and how nobody saw that as even slightly ironic.

This is a movement of people who talk about accountability, personal responsibility and minimum government interference yet the amount of people 'benefiting' from extended unemployment benefits, food stamps and other government assistance was staggering. I won't even go into the over 65 year old crazies who bitched about government takeover of healthcare while they themselves receive Medicare. As you can imagine nobody they interviewed saw the irony in this.

See it goes back to the old concept of people bitching about their neighbors yard while their own house isn't in order.

There are tons of radio commercials villifying the greedy banks taking bailouts and then ask the rhetorical question "where is the bailout for the regular people?". Then they go on to describe ways to cut your credit-card payments in half, or find ways to avoid paying them all together. So a bailout for a greedy bank is bad but when the bailout happens for a guy who put $30,000 on his Visa for a vacation to the bahamas that should be taken care of..

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You can't say they are athletes and then get annoyed when they act like athletes.

You know what annoys me the most about this Tiger Woods thing? It's not the fact that the media wants him to grovel for forgiveness which is so ridiculous it doesn't deserve more of our time and it's not that a sport story has now become great fodder for TMZ and US weekly.

 

What annoys me is the following

 

I heard Jim Nantz the blowhard lead play-by-play commentator for CBS Sports complain that Tiger cursed on the course this past weekend which Tiger had vowed not to do anymore and to be more respectful of the game and its traditions. My opinion about showing emotions in a sporting event is that it is par for the course, some people may overdo it but it's part of the game

The issue for Nantz was that Tiger was caught cursing on the golf course after a bad shot which Nantz found an offense more egregious than if Tiger had verbally assaulted Nantz' mother and then kicked the Nantz family dog for good measure. Nantz went on to say that other top golfers like Phil Mickelson and Ernie Els don't have these emotional outbursts like this and never curse and Tiger doesn't want it any more than his contemporaries.

 What annoys me is that I don't believe for a second that Vijay or Ernie or Phil has never cursed, they probably don't do it as often as Tiger does but they also aren't being watched like a hawk. How about other athletes? Roger Clemens, Kobe Bryant, Brett Favre, Usain Bolt, David Beckham are they all choir-boys or are golfers held to a different standard because they wear khakis in their sport?

What really annoys me is that you can't have it both ways; the golf community always argues that golf is a sport but when their players start acting like athletes the old-guard gets their panties in a bunch.

If Tiger is to be considered an athlete than you can't be surprised when he acts like one. Athletes are emotional, they have disappointments and they aren't always the nicest guys but that's OK.

Hey Nantz have you ever hear of a guy named Michael Jordan? MJ was ruthless and did more than curse if he was pissed off he verbally assaulted everybody in sight.

If you are disappointed because they are ruining your precious sport then it might be time for you to start covering an even lamer excuse for a sport. What Nantz sees as Tiger's immaturity is what he would identify as Jordan's incredible drive to be the best. Jordan isn't just Tiger's idol, he IS Michael Jordan with all the accolades, trophy's, extra-marital affairs, warts, bad habits and need to be the best.

 But because Tiger plays a white-guy country club sport he gets vilified. Tiger is an athlete playing (and dominating) a fat white-guys game and this annoys Jim Nantz and his buddies.

 

So once and for all.. is golf a sport or a game?

 

-The way I see it any 'sport' where people go and sit down for a hot-dog and a beer at the turn is not much of an athletic event, I've never decided to crack open a Corona while running the marathon.

 

-During a baseball game there are 40,000 people screaming at the top of their lungs and a batter is asked to hit a ball flung from 60 feet 6 inches at 98 miles per hour, in golf if somebody sneezes in a guy's backswing he can be thrown out of the event.

 

-In football guys grind it out in full gear for 60 minutes leaving their blood, sweat and tears on the field played in temperatures from 90 degrees during the summer to -20 in the winter, in professional golf they don't even carry their own bags.

 

-In basketball players are asked to shoot a 10 inch diameter ball into a 20 inch hoop which is propped 10 feet in the air with a guy jumping in his face from 25 feet away, in golf the other guys on your foursome stand far behind you so their shadow don't interfere with your read.

 

-In Soccer guys are in phenomenal shape, running up and down for 90 minutes, in golf guys routinely look like they swallowed a soccer ball.

 

-In Hockey the champions hoist Lord Stanley's cup, in golf the winner gets a blazer.

 

I love golf and its traditions but I also know that calling it a sport is lunacy, it's a skill mastered by elitists and the golf community wouldn't have it any other way

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I might be a bit skeptical

Like everybody else TOR was shocked to hear about the plane-crash over the weekend which took the life of the Polish President Lech Kaczynski. The issue wasn’t just that the president perished but that the plane carried a large delegation of senior officials and cabinet members so the plane crash single-handily took down almost the entire Polish government. This is the reason that during the State-of-the-Union there is always some mid-ranking schmo who hides in some bunker in case the capital went down in flames taking out the entire leadership. Of course this contingency plan probably means that Dennis Kucinich becomes the leader of the free-world which will not make anybody sleep well at night.


The thing about this crash was that the delegation was en-route to Russia for the 70th anniversary of the Russian massacre of Polish prisoners of war in the village of Katyn where 20,000 Poles were executed there during World War II. Up until recently the Russians/Soviets had denied any responsibility until the 90’s although there were mass-graves discovered in the 40’s but now nearly ¾ of a century of denial later it was supposed to come full circle as this trip was suppose to be a consolatory moment for Russians and Poles.

Russian President Dmitri Medvedez immediately went to the Polish Embassy to offer his condolences and put Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in charge of the investigation which is like having Pope Benedict investigate the pedophilia scandal

So for 70 years the Russians deny any involvement for 20,000 people being massacred then they decide to reverse course and invite a delegation of Poles including anybody who is anybody in the government to and all of a sudden said Russian Built Plane crashes in some Buddy Holly fog.

I bet that if we got the Google-Earth images and zoomed in we would see Vladimir Putin with a grenade launcher on his shoulder overlooking the runway. TOR now increases the Katyn Massacre total human-toll from 20,000 to 20,096.

WhiteBoy accessory

We've often heard about women accessorizing with handbags, earrings, necklaces etc but I have been noticing more dudes doing the same. Walking through the shopping center in Brooklyn yesterday, it occurred to me that 9 out of 10 white dudes apparently won't leave the house with at least one head-accessory. The most obvious choices are the dirty baseball-cap or maybe the white guy with the Samuel L Jackson cap (which by the way is a horrible white-guy look). But it doesn't end with hats, white guys are wearing bandannas like they are rocking Poison, head-bands like they are rocking John McEnroe and Sun Glasses like they are Don Johnson. Now it's not that I'm anti accessory, I am a main culprit when it comes to the baseball cap but the level of accessorizing is getting dangerously feminine or at least Latino Gay.. Although not a 'new' look more and more dudes are rocking sunglasses on top of their heads, long gone are the sunglasses that are functional or sweat headbands which I guess are necessary when building up a sweat while buying a 48 pack of toilet paper at Target.
Look around and a white-guy will be wearing one of these things and if not sun-glasses or a hat of some sort, he's probably got some scruffy looking white-guy beard.

What is it about white people? Are we sop insecure with our white-washed looks that we feel we need to now jazz it up. The problem is that the accessories are so common-place that it has lost any concept of uniqueness. It's as if we use it to try to look more like one another.
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Chris Rocking

Chris Rock has made the point that the most important role of a father is to keep his daughter off the pole. I have to think that this has to be the biggest fear for any father of a little girl but I have come up with a few sure-fire ways to make sure you sleep well at night

-Broken Home
make sure you as a father stick around, there is no such thing as a stripper who came from a steady normal family.. There are no strippers who spent vacations in Disney with her dad or had he dad watch every softball game or piano recital. Broken Home = Singles in the G-string

- names matter
Stay away from names like Barbie, Candy, Sapphire etc. Give your daughter a name like this and you may as well put neon lights in her room.

-Tattoos
No ink near the Pink

- "Acting"
Unless she's Katharine Hepburn don't send her off to the wolves in Hollywood.

And the most important rule

Do everything you can to avoid being from an Ex Soviet Satellite state..


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No Smoking or Peeing

So the papers had two main stories the last few days that caught my attention and neither was about Tiger Woods. The first story was about the false terrorism alarm on the flight to. Colorado. Apparently Mohammed al Madadi a low level diplomat from Qatar got busted smoking a pipe in the shitter and when he got caught he did really decided that just breaking the no-smoking rule wasn't enough fun, he made a joke to the Air Marshalls who approached him about setting of a shoe bomb. Now it didn't help that this dude was on route to see some convicted al Qaeda operative in Federal Penitentiary for his involvement in 9/11
Now you can't be any dumber than this especially if you probably already on the Federal Watch List with a name like Mohammed al Madadi

The Second Story was about airlines finding ways to charge extra fees including one airline who wanted to charge for carry-on luggage and since they probably already charge for checked luggage you will be getting banged by this fee unless you can carry all the clothes and toiletries you will need shoved into your five-hole. Well they were outdone when RyanAir, the European budget airline announced they will be charging people for using the bathroom. The thought is to charge 1 Euro to use the can, which will either generate about $40 per flight or cost them about $250 per flight in cleaning-bills.

Maybe if Mohammed al Madadi had flown RyanAir he could have convinced them to let him smoke his pipe for an extra $300.

Now I don't mind paying if it ensures the bathroom isn't nasty and stinking like urine but I tell you one thing, if I am going to pay to use the can, you better believe I'm dropping a deuce to get my money's worth.

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Pocket full of Kryptonite

I love the spring time, love the smell of the grass, the start of the baseball season and the eye-candy in the parks. I love the fact that I can go running in shorts, that it's still light out when I leave work and that I don't need a jacket when I do.


There is one issue with the no jacket thing and I have yet to come up with a real solution. For people like me the jacket serves two functions: heat and storage. I wear a jacket mostly to stay warm but also use it to keep my keys, wallet, newspapers, walkman and anything else I need to shuttle between home and work. Sometimes I carry a messenger bag but most days I try to avoid it since they themselves are bulky and annoying. I realize that this is not an issue that afflicts everybody because if you work and live in the suburbs you are able to use your car for storage but when you leave work on a subway and won’t be back for 10 hours you have to bring everything you will need with you.

You can see the issue here:

If I don't want to carry a big messenger bag, it’s too hot for a jacket, I will not use a fanny-pack, I am too old for cargo-pants and I am not ready to embrace the man-purse thing I am forced to shove everything into my pockets so I walk down the street looking like Hip-Hop Horolombe.

You can't fight CityHall

We know this recession is hurting everybody and the city of NY is not exempt from the pain. I haven't seen total tax receipts for 2009 yet but I have to imagine the total amount is way down with 10% unemployment, 20% underemployment and the closing of Scores East. It has also become very obvious that the city will find ways to get their money even if raising taxes during a recession is a non-starter.
I am not sure if you've noticed but NYC is on a full-out battle with it's residents to find new ways to generate income including, but not limited to, increases in water-rates and replacing many of the old coin operated dial-turning parking meters with new electronic meters which will ensure that people find safe-haven at "out of order" meters plus adds paid parking spots.

Well what I have seen lately are petty fines for minor offenses including a guy I know who got a ticket for occupying two seats on an empty subway car at 4 in the morning. There are tons of examples of this and frankly it's a disgusting example of the government putting a ridiculously large indirect burden on it's citizens.

Another example is what happened to our building this week, with their sights on some quick income we were fined for a recycling bag on the stoop on a non-recycling day. Now I'm not one to flaunt disobedience and I appreciate some of the 'quality of life' concepts but sometimes it goes overboard. I am sure they figure that most people aren't gonna put the energy into it and just pay it so if you find enough minor violations you can pay for an entire police force.

What is most frustrating though is that this bag didn't come from building it was dropped on my stoop by somebody else and now I am the clown who has to spend time and money to fight it. How do you prove that you didn't do something? I know in my heart it wasn't from our building because our maintenance guy who handles the trash doesn't work on Tuesday's and nobody in the building will stoop so low as to actually throw out their own garbage when there are receptacles in the hallway. I also know it didn't come from us because it was a blue bag (we have only clear ones) and it was a single bag while a good tree-hugging building like ours produces 10 recycling bags weekly..

What gets me is that NYC doesn't make it easy to contest it. You can contest it two ways: in person on a weekday which means I got to take a day off of work or via registered mail with a notarized formal written appeal with full photographic evidence. It's not that this is so much different that other tickets but the fact that you have to defend your innocence because some ahole left his garbage bag on your stoop just feels unjust.

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Tiger Woods

Yesterday Tiger had his first full-on press-conference since the revelations of his infidelity and of course the entire world decided this was the time to overanalyze every word out of his mouth. The feeding frenzy is ridiculous and you won’t see TOR defending his actions but honestly this has got to stop, the guy plays golf for a living.

What gets me is that the media is going crazy about this, saying he was too evasive, his tone was too robotic, he wasn’t genuine, maybe it was because he was rooting for Duke, maybe he kicked a dog and maybe he didn’t show enough contrition but the media is never satisfied..

Personally I think that there is a point where I can see him not giving a crap anymore what the media thinks because I don’t. They are hunting for a story which they don't want to end while golf fans are just interested in seeing him play golf.

I understand that in this TMZ/US Weekly world that his ever indiscretion makes front page news but for Tiger it’s more than sensationalistic journalism, the media treats it as if he cheated on every single person out there. He's asked to live to a higher moral level than anybody else and it's either because the media is full of white guys who are probably pissed that he's dominating their sport and tagging their women

You don’t get this with other celebrities and I can’t seem to put my finger on what the difference is when Tiger cheats on his wife or when ARod cheats on his. Although both make front-page news, people’s reactions are so much different. ARod is probably as close to Tiger in terms of fame, money and coverage as we have in this country, the difference though is that after a few days people think ARod might be scum but they realize it’s something he has to deal with within his own family while Tiger has to deal with it at a press-conference. ARod has to make peace with his wife while Tiger Woods has to make peace between Israel and the Palestinians

It is not like this happens because Tiger is a celebrity because this type of scrutinty doesn’t happened to other athletes, rock-stars or politicians. When Brad Pitt rocks Angelina Jolie while married to the chick with the big nips from Friends people embrace it with ‘Team Angelina’ and ‘Team Jennifer’ TShirts.   When Mick Jagger tags that Brazillian model, he’s not vilified he’s envied. When David Bechkam is pictured with another chick it makes headlines but doesn’t bring out vile and hatred, it just gets written off as celebrity activity. I guess they are all examples of Hollywood royalty and although we might be disappointed in the transgressor, we don’t take it that personally. Nobody else has to pass the moral-compass of the free-world.

In politics where we might expect more virtue the reaction is more of the same. When John Edwards gets busted with his out-of-wedlock kid, the entire world feels bad for his wife but they don’t feel like he owes them an apology. When Spitzer gets outed as Client#9 it becomes an instant joke. When Bubba gets a BJ from the fat chick in the oval office people were up in arms because he disgraced the office but nobody pretends that he did anything to them personally.  

In Tiger’s case it’s almost different. It doesn’t feel like people care whether his wife forgives him as much as they want a personal apology, the guy swings a golf-club for a living who gives a crap where he sticks his putter?

Getting egg on your face sucks but it does not compare to getting meatball on your shirt

Subway has been ahead of the curve on many things and has basically cornered the market on fast food sandwiches and there $5 footlong advertisement is brilliant
Although I won't splurge too often, today I broke open the wallet and sprang for the old $5 footlong meatball marinara and piled it high with every topping they offer, the problem is that the Subway Bread, although tasty doesn't have the tensile-strength necessary to hold everything they offer.

But what I don't understand is why they got rid of the Subway wedge. The concept was genius where they cut a triangle into the sandwich which served as a nice pocket for your meat, veggies, toppings and sauces but a few years ago they stopped this and went to the traditional cut-through the center sandwich.  The wedge cut was perfect because it ensures the the meatballs stay in the sandwich.

Well they must have done a market survey because a few years ago they got rid of this wonderful concept and now I got meatball sauce on my shirt as I am en route to see a customer.
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this seems a bit disingenuous

I drive a hybrid, I want to save the world and I like saving money but that doesn't mean that I will let people and companies slide when it comes to incomplete information.
Earlier today I walked past a Prius flaunting a 100+ MPG sticker on it's hatch-back and thought that this might be a little bit disingenuous, for one there has to be some kind of cost (both real and carbon-footprint wise) for the energy used in the plug-in state.  I have no idea what the cost of the electric energy costs or how many miles per watt you get but if you are going to brag you should be prepared to answer those questions.   This is like buying Vanilla Soy Milk with a 90 Calorie Sticker on the front before you find out it's filled with tons of sugar.    You can't talk about 100+MPG when your car is not running on gasoline, you have to put everything on the table

My bigger issue is that this same car came up behind me as I was crossing the street and because it was driving in its hybrid motion, I didn't hear it and the sucker almost ran this sucker right over.    How can you claim to be a car trying to protect the planet if you can't even protect the average idiot walking down the streets with his walkman tuned to SportsRadio?
 I hate noise pollution almost as much as I hate real pollution but I think I hate getting run over more than both combined.   I feel like a guy driving a hybrid must be forced to play that Ice-Cream Truck jingle or something to protect the innocent pedestrians   .

"A young girl's erotic journey from Milan to Minsk".

"We were planning on watching Hot Tub Time Machine but instead caught this three-hour foreign film"

There is just so much wrong with this statement it's hard to know where to start. I know I'm not exactly "cultured" when it comes to fine art or movie-houses but I cannot fathom spending a Friday Night at the Angelica theater on Houston surrounded by hordes of foreign-film snobs. My biggest issue here is that somehow my buddy got swindled from seeing a mindless belly-laugher to a three-hour ordeal with subtitles and it hardly phased him.

I realize that the rest of the world probably puts out very good movies but the pomposity of the whole thing annoys me, this concept that you are better than me because you will know who the next Benigni is before everybody else but I can live happily not knowing.

It's the same crap you get when people tell you how much better the British Office is than the American one or the guy who drops the names of microbrews like they are celebrity sightings. Just because it is made with hops grown in a guy's basement doesn't make it a good beer and just because it has subtitles doesn't make it a good watch.

Now this may make me a simpleton but the entire concept of a foreign film is just too much work for me. After working all week, why would I now feel like I'm doing work when trying to unwind at a movie, if I wanted to read, I would have picked up a book and if I wanted foreign I would have picked up Thai food.

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Taxes

There is nothing fun about paying taxes especially if by some quirk in the system you are lumped into the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). This was set up so that the ultra-rich couldn't take so many deductions that they weren't paying any taxes at all. The problem is that there are quirks in the system which pulls in hundred's of thousands of people under the AMT umbrella although the law was never intended for then.
The irony of the AMT is that it's like an ATM as it takes money out of your account except instead of it ending up in your pocket it is getting funneled into the vast bail-out coffers of the Federal Government. It's like going to baseball game and being told that after you paid for your ticket you would owe an additional 10% when you show up.
The second issue with taxes in this recession is that the money I'm due back has still not hit my account. Years ago you'd have your return in hand within days when you set up electronic transfer but not this year. After 24 days my account is still empty and the handy "where is my return" feature on IRS.GOV tells me that my return is being processed.
I guess they are waiting for all the people who owe money to pay up before I get paid out, this entire thing is an AMT scam and a giant ponzi scheme and apparently I'm Fred Wilpon

MLIA
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Time Warner

A few months ago, in order to get some of my monthly costs under control, I went to Time Warner and exchanged the second DVR I had for a regular cable box and cancelled HBO which together saved me $21 per month. I tried pairing my bill down further but the packages are basically $130 for the channels you actually want or otherwise $29 for channels 2,4, 7 and 11 plus dial-up speed internet. They make it so difficult to save money because all these channels come in packages with unrelated channels, so I may not want the Hallmark channel but it happens to be bundled in with ESPN, I may opt out of the Oprah channel but that also would mean I lose CNN.


So after tightening my belt my Time Warner bill went from $130 to $109, so a nice $21 savings. Getting rid of the 2nd DVR box wasn't difficult as it served a TV which we go weeks without turning on but losing HBO was slightly more difficult as I fondly remember the shows of my youth including Dream On and First and 10 as well as favorites like the Sopranos, Carnival and Real Sport but I had gone months without even turning to channels 201-208 and I figured that I could try going without it for a while.

A few months later, I can happily say that I don't miss either service and the $21 monthly savings is nothing to sneeze at...nothing till I got a notice in the mail that my normal monthly service had increased in price and that I would be looking at a bill of $130 instead of the $109 I have been paying, an increase of $21 per month in fees. I was suspicious but didn't say much but I was mostly annoyed because there literally is no other option for me when it comes to cable-service since TimeWarner has a 100% monopoly on cable-service in my neighborhood, FIOS is not available and our building doesn't allow for satellite dishes so they have me over a wheel-barrel and I have no recourse.

I was annoyed especially because my $21 savings had vanished into thin-air but didn’t think much about it until a coworker told me that he recently returned a cablebox for a TV he wasn't using and saved $6 a month on his bill. Well not a week later, Time Warner called him to offer a package of Starz and Skinemax for...you guessed it, $6 per month.

My guess is that TimeWarner is instructing its local operators that they cannot lose revenue and that they have to figure a way to account for every penny which means jacking up rates, offering other services or adding hidden fees.

Time for Andrew Cuomo to look into this Soprano type Monopoly.

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