Take on the mugshot

I read about some woman who threatened to shoot up an entire Burger
King over a stale Cinnabon. This seems a bit ridiculous on a ton of
levels including the fact the woman herself looks a bit like a stale
Cinnabon. Actually, most of the time in click on a headline like
this, it is just to see the low life mugshot which is almost always
more entertaining than the actual shot. I mean this chick looks like
a turtle crossed with a donkey, the last thing she needs is a Cinnabon

Secondly, I feel really bad for the Burger King people being that she
wasn't complaining about an undercooked Whopper or Filet of Fish

Take on the funky wiring

When we bought our house we thought it was awesome but a few days into
it we noticed that the light all seem to be funky. We had lights in
the living room which would only come in if the kitchen lights were
on. When using the toaster, the lights would dim and when you went to
the upstairs hallway there was some combination of on/offs that had to
be done to get the lights to turn on and that code proved harder to
crack than the DNA code.
Five hours and $500 later, I got a light bank that works, a huge hole
in my wall and still a couple of funky outlets but at least the lights
don't turn out when I am on the shitter

Take on the latest porn study

So not only does watching porn cause you to indirectly grow hair on
your palms, there is a new study which suggests it can also be bad for
your brain.
The article (http://time.com/135853/porn-brain/) which was sent to me
by a concerned porn addicted friend said that there seems to be a
correlation between brain activity and amount of porn watched although
it cautioned to say that the decreased brain activity was a
correlation but was not specifically saying anything about causation.

This was a small scale study and very preliminary in terms of results
but I'd take the researchers to task on one thing...when I am watching
my share of porn, I tend to not have a lot of brain activity going on.
I am not thinking of quantum physics, global warming theories or what
I had for lunch that day. Like to see them study me about two hours
afterwards when my head is actually clear.

Take on de ferret ban

Mayor de Blasio's had an interesting few inaugural months including
some good (universal pre-K), some not so good (snow removal), some
Albany dust-ups (charter school), some campaign promises delivered
(housing for people suffering from HIV) and some not delivered (vision
zero) but this week he changed everything. Somehow he was able to
reverse a seemingly century old bad against ferrets.
I can't say I care but do find these things are absolutely disgusting.
I don't know why anybody would want to have a huge river rat living
in their house but I guess they are allowed now.

One more question cause I can't seem to figure out if it is de Blasio
or De Blasio or Di Blasio but I do know that he could stand to lose
about 40 pounds

Take on the Facebook dinosaur

I haven't been in Facebook in two and a half years but did read today
that in order to woo people like me back into the fold with a mascot.
The company which many people called tells most powerful and
influential in the world has resorted to Barney which should tell you
which way their arrow is pointing.

I said it a long time ago, Facebook is about as cool as the Lifetime channel
which is coincidental because they attract the same audience

Take on the UCSB murdere

I can't believe that we are back at the crossroads with another mass
murder...wait that is not true, I can totally believe it.
I don't know what the answer is but it has to start with mental health
because it is sickening how many times some loner can kick in our
sense of security and we stand there and do nothing. I watched the
press conference of another tearful father crying out for help and I
know it won't make a difference because as a country we have accepted
these massacres as a part of life we should accept. Gun lobby is too
strong, mental health care too weak and young men too prone for this.

Something should be done but we all know there won't be.

Take on the 3am coffee

There are only a few places in this works where I think a pot of
coffee should always be ready: flight control towers, military
operations and hospitals. I have never been in either of the first
places but having been in a few hospitals, it is shocking that you
can't find a cup of coffee anywhere. Yeah, if you make it to the gift
shop on the ground floor you can get a caffeine kick and the cafeteria
offers it but omit when they are open. But at 3am when you need to be
awake and are dead tired, there is no coffee anywhere.

Take on the Greenwich parking sign

Can somebody explain to me how to make sense of this sign?
Last week while driving through Greenwich, I came across a sign which
stated there was 12 hour parking allowed and later in the same sign
said it was enforced from 9am and 5pm. Now my math skills aren't as
great as they we're pre baby#3 but there are only eight hours of
enforcement for this, so you could leave your Winnebago parked there
for eternity because if a 12 hour parking limit is only enforced for
an 8 hour stretch daily, you can't ever get a ticket.

No complaints today

See you tomorrow

Take on the AAA affiliate

I've always wondered if having The Broadway Dance Company and Private
Eyes as neighbors on 45th street between 8th and 9th avenues were set
up to have the equivalent of the Columbus Clippers around the corner
from the big club. I have to think there have been more than a few
ladies who have cut their teeth at on the stage with the lights.
The best thing about they block is that around 5:45, the place is
swarming with hotness.
One of the best games to play is guess which door she'll walk into
when you see a chick wearing tights, a belly shirt and their hair
teased up with rock hard body. The only way you can tell is to guess
which one is going to walk into the left door or the right door is
whether she has fake lashes and makeup

Take on the Bank of America fees

After over 20 years with Bank of America, I finally grabbed by sack
and closed the account. I opened my account when I was in High School
and the bank was called Natwest before it was bought by Fleet before
being gobbled alive by the BoA behemoth. All the while they got less
customer service oriented and I became less and less important to
them.
I closed my account mainly because I stopped using it as my main
account but the straw that broke the camels back was that they have
been charging me $14 a month as some kind of bullshit maintenance fee
for not having enough money in my checking account. So not only do
they keep my money without paying me any interest, they want to hit me
up for an additional fee. I am paying them to hold my money and that
is ludicrous. With a bank at every corner, there is no point to
getting banged in the ass by a big bank, so I walked out.

So FU BoA and your fees. FB you are next

Take on the van

There are so many things that are miserable about being the guy who
drives a minivan but nothing is worse than pulling up to a gas station
and dropping nearly $60 to fill up. I pull up today and dropped my
jaw when the dude told me that my kid's college education was just
sent down a pipe.
So not only do I have to deal with the indignity of driving a minivan
but now also have to pay 11 dirty-gyros worth of paycheck to fill the sucker up...

Take on 46th and 8th

Nowhere is construction a bigger pain in the ass than in NYC.

Take the case of the corner of 46th and 8th, they
have been building this new building on this corner for what seems like a decade.

Forget the impact the new tenants will or will not have for the neighborhood, the impact
this stupid building has had on the traffic has been ridiculous.
They can't build these things without basically planting their asses
and rigs right in the middle of 46th street and it forces a backup all
the way to the West Side Highway. So they inconvenience the entire
midtown population so that some developer can get rich...
I am sure by the time they open up, they will be happy to invite us all in to use their crappers

Take on the smartphone usage

Sometimes you read something that should surprise you but somehow
doesn't at all. I read some 'fact' that said that 9% of people admit
to using their smartphones while having sex. I guess there are people
who are having so much sex they can afford to multitask though it but
for the average married guy with a bunch of kids, I cannot imagine
doing this and I am completely addicted to my IPhone.
But past not wanting to miss out on any part of it, I just can't
imagine somebody's partner being all that pleased when you start
watching a video of a cute cat, checking on Jeter's hit total or
bidding on a Righetti Bag of Crap.

Take on the Flash Flood Warning

Last night at about 9:25pm, I was shocked when my phone started
buzzing like somebody had set off a fire alarm. I was driving so when
I finally got to a light, I saw it was some emergency alert for flood
warnings in "this area". Since it is so unspecific, you don't know
whether to be worried or not.

Before Snowden I may have asked how in hell anybody would know where I
am right now but that kind of innocence is long gone. I know of at
least two others who got the same message, one of whom was nowhere
near is house and also nowhere near me, so the real question is...did
be entire metropolitan area get bombarded with this, was it only
people with area codes like 917, 201, 718, 516 etc or was it sent to
people who were in the immediate vicinity?

For example, did a tourist from Indiana staying in midtown with his
260 area code get a beep?
Did a guy originally from Long Island now living in Houston get beeped
because he never got himself a new number?
How far out were these things sent?
How the hell do I get onto the do-not call list for this thing?

Take on the $24 entrance fee for the 9/11 museum

This week the 9/11 memorial museum finally opened and the world (or at least some dignitaries) got to explore through a place we've heard about for almost 13 years.  It sounds like it's tastefully done, well received and a wonderful commemoration for those lost (even if they moved a bunch of unidentified human remains in the process)

What bothers us is that with all the billions of dollars raised by various 9/11 charities, they are still banging you for nearly $25 to walk through the doors.  I get when their are charities like the cancer, Autism, domestic abuse ones where your donation should be going to really helping people or funding research but in this case the money raised should have gone toward things like the museum.  If the goal is to make sure people 'never forget' why make it a small fortune to visit the dedicated museum? 

Nobody would think to charge to see the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.  The Holocaust museum does not charge money, so why should the 9/11 museum come across like a bunch of capitalistic Scrooges?

I'd accept a small fee for maintenance or a recommended donation but to hit up a family of four for $100 seems ludicrous

I wonder how much they charge for a soda in a commemorative cup. 

Sent from my iPhone

Take on Macy*s furniture

A few months ago I had the displeasure of going couch shopping. It's
not just that I hate shopping but shopping for furniture is
particularly terrible. You are buying an item which will serve as a
centerpiece for your living room and one you'll hopefully have for a
decade. And by the way it's going to cost a fortune and oh and there
is no way to do this reliably online

We went to Huffman Koos, Raymore and Flannigan, Bob's discount and any
one of ten different Italian leather dealers on the local highway and
yet finding a couch which looked decent and didn't feel like you were
sitting on a bean bag or stone steps seemed impossible.
We finally found one that served most of our needs (light brown
leather, low back, modern style, small profile etc.) but were told by
the Huffman Koos guy that we'd be looking at a six month delivery.
This sounds great if you are planning a trip around the world but for
somebody who needed a place to park my ass tonight, it just didn't
work.
We found a similar, albeit not as perfect a couch at Macy's a few days
later and when the told us it had a 10 week delivery it felt like we
were stuck in an endless loop. I spoke with a few people and most
agreed that furniture from a place other than Ikea would take that
long to be delivered..and I should expect delays

I spoke with the sales guy at length and he assured me up and down
that the 10 week lead time was realistic. He said he sold hundreds of
these couches and the delivery date was always met

Fast forward 5 weeks. I get an automated call saying delivery had
been pushed back by a month, so our 10 weeks all of a sudden turned
into 14 weeks. I'm annoyed but with little desire to go out shopping
again, I eat it.

Fast forward another 5 weeks and another automated call comes in
saying that on-top of the first month flea they were pushing it back
another six weeks. On the day I was suppose to get delivery I was
told to expect it in 10 weeks which was the same timeline they have me
when I showed up 10 weeks earlier. So in two and a half months, I am
back at square one.

I called and complained to the Indian call center girl who read
directly off of a script about how bad and personally felt and said
"if I could deliver the couch myself, I would do it today" fifteen
different times as if she was caught in a script loop.
She offered me a $100 gift card which for a delay of $800 worth of
luggage might have been acceptable but when talking about a nearly
$4000 couch is like throwing in a free cup holder on a Lexus

F you Macy*s, your crappy delivery, your Indian call center, your
cheap suit wearing sales-staff and that stupid * in your name

Take on MadMen's Michael Scott

We've been huge fans of MadMen since catching season 1 on DVD right
before season 2 was about to start but this season 7 has really
started to be the suck. It's not just that the characters have all
sort of okayed out their arc and usefulness, it's that a show which
was smart, funny and weirdly timeless has become a basic sitcom.

Long gone are the compelling story lines, the clever and well timed
1960's references and maybe most importantly the captivating
characters. They've taken our characters around the world and back
and can only think to do it all over again (sort of like Don's trips
to California). We had compelling storyline a of changing times now
we have a computer, we had Roger Sterling at his best and now we get
Ginsberg, we had Don Draper advertising extraordinaire now we get Lou

Lou Avery is the guy who took over Don's seat both literally and
figuratively in the corner office and has turned into Matthew Weiner's
little Oliver moment. They have run out of ideas, probably have a
huge payroll of actors to pay and instead of going all in they give us
a guy whose entire character and storyline is like a long clip out of
a bad sitcom.

Between the wacky side story of the comic book, the two guys getting
caught talking crap about it while he was taking a crap, his
anti-hippy rant on patriotism and of course his over the top
managerial style, the entire show is now just the Office set in 1969.
They have the crazy ensemble with all the quack-quack wacky
misunderstandings and intertwined story lines

Peggy is the lovable loser Pam

Ginsberg can be the crazy Dwight

The sarcastic guy with the beard can be Jim

He little nerdy guy in SC&P creative lounge can be that doofy guy Toby

Cooper can be the fat guy in accounting

Harry Crane can be the little Spanish guy who is so misunderstood

Joan can play Jan

Ted Chaough can be that dude David Wallace from corporate

Angela can be Jim Cutler

and of course...


Taking over for Michael Scott is Lou from 1968. He draws wacky
cartoons, makes his underlings do outrageous things, dresses like Mr.
Rogers and then catches them in hokey situations. His managerial
style is 1960's, his heart is 1950's, his getup is 1940's but he's all
man..oh and he might be a computer turned homo



If it walks like a duck

Take on the selfie

When I heard that Joe Biden started posting selfies I knew the entire
phenomenon was doomed. The way I see it when Rachel Rae, Ellen and
Joe Biden start doing something, it has lost all sense of cool and
should be grounds for divorce. Well not only has it been proven to be
lame, the American Psychiatric Association has actually classified it
as a mental disorder with an official name (Selfitis) and an entire
spectrum although so far no treatment. So not only has it become not
cool, it now also can classify you as a mental patient for doing it.
The entire thing has to do with low self esteem and having see
somebody near and dear to me take fifty pictures to be able to post a
single one to facechat, I can see the issues.

The spectrum goes like this

Borderline Selfitis. Taking three selfies per day but not necessarily
posting them to social media.

Acute Selfitis. Taking three selfies and posting them to social media

Chronic a Selfitis. Taking upwards of six selfies per day and posting
them to social media.

Take on the dude kissing the other dude

When I saw the ratings for the first day of the draft when you combine
the ESPN and the NFL network was an 8.5 rating. The NHL playoffs
routinely get a 1 rating, the NBA is in the mid 3's and even be World
Series doesn't approach this number. The Combine a few weeks ago
moves the needle, ESPN covers it and the NFL Network covers it live.
It's hours of men measuring the size of the legs, arms, hands and head
of other sweaty men and then watching them run an obstacle course in
skin-tight -clothing. Between the combine, the Pro Days and then the
individual workouts, it's like watching three months of Hunkamania and
we as a nation love it. It all culminates in the hunks being
auctioned off and we treat the event like it's the last episode of
Mash ..yet when a man kisses anther man, twitter blows up

Oh well