Spotted In Stuyvesant Town, East Village NYC (Photo By Gail)
Seasons Beatings, Dear Readers. Is the sending of Christmas / Holiday cards something you enjoy doing? I generally do. I don’t think I’ve missed a year of mailing out dozens of cards to friends and family since I moved to NYC 32 years ago. But this year it’s been difficult to rustle-up the energy to get the card-sending thing together. Confession: that’s mostly due to my lack of a printer for creating the address labels, and the fact that my hands don’t work quite as well as they used to for holding a pen for hours on end. Just being serious! And it is an unfortunate truth that I have had to cancel my annual December trip to see my family due to the Covid, and the sad knowledge that Cali is locked down tight anyway, so there’s isn’t all that much to do out there anyway. Sadness. So, I’ve resolved to write a few cards each day to save my hand, and to make that extra effort to keep in touch with loved ones in a year where we were forced to be apart. You have ten more day to get your cards to their destinations. Don’t put it off.
Stencil Street Art By Adam Dare, Photographed By Gail on Bleecker Street
On occasion, there will be an article in the paper or on the web about a person who inadvertently falls down an open manhole or (and this is especially fun if there is Video Documentation) who trips and stumbles into a fountain in the middle of a busy shopping mall, because he or she is so enraptured with gazing dreamily at his or her smart phone that they forget to watch where they are going. Hilarious! When I read these articles or see these videos, I am filled with an overwhelming feeling of schadenfreude. Because it is my pleasure to see you injured because you are too brain dead to put your phone down and pay attention to where you’re walking.
Spotted Again on Bowery and 1st Street
Just this past weekend, I was exiting the L Train at 14th street and First Avenue when a women ascending the stairs in front of me decided that the smartest choice to make at the moment was open her phone and hold everyone up so she could check her FaceBook/ Texts/ Instagram/ Twitter/ Emailbefore she got above ground, instead of making it her priority to get the fuck out of the subway, like a normal person. While I’ll admit to entertaining brief fantasies of her tripping and smashing her stupid face on the concrete, as I stepped over her fallen body while she spit out mouthfuls of blood and teeth, that didn’t happen. And that’s probably fortunate, because it would have been a real tragedy if she had taken out an innocent bystander on her way to the ground.
I realize that wearing a scrunchie in the hair is verboten in accepted fashion circles. But fuck that: I have very long hair that needs to be tied up on my daily commute through the PATH train wind tunnels, or if I am in any kind of breeze at all, otherwise I’ve got my hair flying all over the place and sticking to my lipstick and all kinds of unacceptableness. So the scrunchie is pretty much a part of my daily accessorizing ritual, as it keeps the hair tied back neatly while adding a little splash of color to whatever outfit I am wearing. Generally, I like to get my supply of scrunchies at NYC’s many summer weekend street fairs, where they can be purchased in colors and fabrics too numerous to mention, for about $1 to $2 each, or occasionally something like 10 scrunchies for $8 – what a bargain! But the scrunchie only lasts so long before it’s all stretched out and needs to be tossed, so I was pretty excited when I found out that American Apparel now sells nylon tricot scrunchies online, in so many rad fluorescent colors it would make your eyes bleed. My excitement quickly turned to horror, however, when I saw that they are trying to sell what is basically a few inches of fabric sewn around an elastic band for the outrageous price of $6 per scrunchie, plus shipping! WTF? Did anyone tell these guys that we are in a RECESSION? The price comes down to $10.00 for package of two scrunchies if you are willing settle for a color selection restricted to black and white only. Ghetto! Scrunchie Fail, American Apparel. Scrunchie Fail!
Not My Broken Suitcase, But an Incredible Simulation
Baggage (mis)handlers at various airports across the country have finally managed to totally fuck the locks on my very expensive suitcase due to the constant re-opening and incorrect re-closing of my bag, necessitated by the endless “Security checks” that go on when you travel these days and have to check luggage. It was especially exciting when all of my shit fell out onto the rain soaked pavement as I got into my cab at LaGuardia. Thanks, assholes.
I just heard the most hilarious story from a friend of mine, who shall remain nameless to save him from getting his ass kicked for telling me this awesome story! It seems that my friend is out in Pennsylvania this weekend (from his home in LA) with his roommate to attend the wedding of, let’s say “a mutual friend.” Apparently the roommate is not the biggest fan of Barr declared “I’m going to go over there and tear that thing down!” What a total bitch right? It’s so typical of conservative blowhards to try and stifle freedom of expression when it doesn’t exactly align with their own propaganda. Anyway, stay with me because this gets really good. The roommate had been gone for some time and people began to speculate on where she was and why it was taking her so long to commit a simple act of irrational vandalism.
I think the happiest moment of my life so far happened when I moved to New York City in 1988. Not just because NYC is the Center of the Universe – and that’s where I want to be – but because moving from Southern California meant I could sell my piece of shit car and never drive again! Hurray! But even though I’ve long gone the way of the mass transit whore and my monthly commute is only $83, I’m not really able to enjoy a good, old-fashioned gloating fest. Because when oil prices go up, everything goes to shit. But I like to think positively and look on the bright side of every crappy situation, so I’ve come up with some benefits of high gas prices for your amusement and edification!
Less car exhaust spewing into the air means lower pollution and a cleaner planet!
Reduced noise from honking horns and dicks that think it’s cool to disturb my quality of life by drag racing up and down 14th street! Continue reading →
It Means There Will be Tasty Mexican Food in the Cafeteria Today!
Happy Monday and Feliz Cinco De Mayo to all of my Hispanic readers! Who else besides me is all ecstatic about This American Life returning to Showtime? Oh, happiness and joy. At the moment I am amused at a “news” article I found through Obscurestore about a woman in suburban Washington State – obviously with a lot of time on her hands – who objects to Urban Outfitters selling dirty books to her kids, or some such whiny, censorship-oriented nonsense. I mean, jesus god lady, learn how to be a parent and stop trying to inflict your moralist hoo-ha on those of us who are busy trying to hold on to what few freedoms we have left. Anyway, the best part of the story is that the woman complaining is named Marci Milfs. M-I-L-F-S. You can’t make this stuff up.
I just started reading Patrick Hughes’ completely hilarious memoir, Diary of Indignities, a copy of which I strongly recommend you pick up if you, like me, enjoy laughing your ass off at other peoples’ ridiculous misfortune.
One of my favorite parts of the book is a chapter where Patrick talks about the various negative and super annoying characteristics of vegetarians, and how the behavior of said vegetarians tends to alienate everyone around them. I can relate because I once had a close friend who claimed to be vegetarian because it was such a healthy life style. And yet she had no issue with the fact that she was a chemically dependent, bipolar, chain-smoking mess who had been in therapy for ten years.
So, yeah, she was insane on top of being a militant vegetarian, and maybe she shouldn’t have been condescending to chastise me about eating a few slices of bacon on a nice juicy burger. Mmm…burger.
But I digress. Here’s an entertaining passage from that chapter of Hughes’ hilarious book:
“I was a vegetarian for more than a decade. My crazy mom decreed us so when I was eleven or twelve, and I just sort of eventually went along with it. As my mom no doubt knew, being vegetarian was a good way to get attention and act all self-righteous and morally superior. When you’re vegetarian, everyone has to fuss over you, make special plans. When they don’t it gives you an excuse to sulk, especially during Thanksgiving or Christmas, when the rest of the family has eleven different dishes they can eat and you only have two, corn and cranberry sauce, and you know this because you sat there and counted.
And you can get even sulkier when nobody pays attention to you mewling out questions like, ‘Was this corn boiled in ham water?’ Because they’re all too busy eating delicious regular food to care. Also, when you’re vegetarian you always get to decide where to go eat, because the place all the normal people want to go, the place with “BBQ” in its name, ‘Doesn’t have anything you can eat.’ That’s a funny word, can.”
Yeah! It is so totally true that when you’re trying to decide what restaurant to go to with a group, and somebody in the group is a vegetarian, you have to surrender the restaurant choice to the food Nazi, which is totally unfair and means you can’t go anywhere good. Like these people forget that it’s a choice to not eat normal food.
I always used to say to my crazy ex-best friend that if it was so difficult for her to find stuff she could eat (because she was a particular kind of vegetarian who did not really like vegetables – crazy!) she should perhaps “investigate adding more stuff to [her] diet.” Duh.
She would also not allow her saint of a husband to eat meat in front of her.
Despite the fact that Psycho Vegan dumped my ass as a friend because I, honestly, forgot to buy her one year old son a birthday present, being as his birthday fell at a time when I was basically living hand to mouth as a starving Rock Critic and had to often choose between buying food and paying my electric bill, at least my painful experience with her taught me a valuable lesson: don’t be friends with crazy people who are also vegetarians. Because they will add zero value to your life.
I hate Daylight Saving Time because it is retarded and fucks up my body clock. There is no reason for the government to play god and fuck with the time like this. Plus: Getting Up in the Dark is the WORST. Furthermore, it is stupid. Thank you.
*SPOILER ALERT* Survivor fans who have not yet seen last night’s episode are advised to read this blog entry post-viewing.
Last night, before the snow started to come down really heavy, I made the two block journey over to Tracy’s for our weekly Survivor: Fans Vs Favorites viewing ritual. Because when you live in an apartment the size of large, furnished shoebox, a change of scenery is always welcome. We are only three episodes into the season but I think it is starting to get good. While Malakal, the Favorites Tribe (whom Tracy and I are both enthusiastically routing for over Airai, the Fans, who are totally lame) viciously kicked ass in the Reward Challenge, they did not fair so well when Immunity was “Up for Grabs” and earned their second trip to Tribal Council.
Now, I really love a Survivor player who gets into a serious, mind-fucking “head” game right away, but honestly the amount of post-Immunity Challenge bickering-slash-strategizing that went on amongst the Favorites started to give me a “god, please make them stop” kind of stomach ache. And although there may be more than a couple of brain dead doofuses on Malakal, the big idiot of the night turned out to be Cirie. Despite the fact that she proved herself to be one of the better strategic players on her original season, “Survivor Panama: Exile Island” – making it as far as the Final Four – this time around Cirie has lost her rational mind completely. Tracy and I agree that she’s also gotten kind of uppity, which puts me off right away.
