Think Fink

When The Kid was the Champ

2012-02-16T23:24:00.000-08:00

They called Gary Carter the "Kid" for the enthusiasm that he brought to every game, that was as apparent as his curly hair and his movie star smile. But really, he was “The Man.” When he arrived in 1985, he was the final piece to a future championship team filled with shall we say a group of immensely talented, rambunctious young ballplayers (and a few assorted nut balls, delinquents and future convicts.)

He fit the team and New York like a catcher’s mitt fit his hand and his arrival gave the team a needed jolt like when the Big Man joined the band. I remember when Carter hit a home run during the first game he played for the Mets and will never forget the single he got that ignited the comeback in Game 6. This had me running up and down the steps in my house shouting “Oh My God,” "Holy Shit" and other nonsensical words repeatedly with unhinged exuberance, as the ball rolled slowly past Buckner and into history. It was a feeling that should never be condensed into an OMG text.

I also remember during that time back in the mid ‘80s, The Right Stuff had come out a few years earlier and it pitted John Glenn’s “Mr. Clean Marine” character against Alan Shepard and the other astronauts. I remember thinking that Gary Carter seemed to be the John Glenn of the Mets and Alan Shepard was akin to Keith Hernandez(although I'm pretty sure I never used the word akin in junior high, it was probably more "he's totally like Shepard.")

Even though Glenn didn’t approve of the extracurricular fun the other guys were having with the local Cape Canaveral space groupies, they knew when to pull together in order to achieve their mission of beating the Russians (and a chimp) into space. (1) That Met team pulled together in similar fashion to dominate the National League, before winning thrilling playoff victories over the Astros, the Red Sox and the mighty Joe Piscopo.

Carter’s swing was a compact force that propelled line drives to left field. He seemed to rely only on the strength of his arms, which made him appear imposing at the plate. That was during an era when ballplayers looked like regular guys and not muscle bound giants. I wouldn't trade being a Mets fan during the '80s as a teenager(even though they won just once) for all the Yankee championships that took place when I was a man in my 20s.

I should probably now resent the fact that I chose the Mets way back in 1984. Let's just say, I have gotten mad at women I have dated but I never shouted at them for wasting my F'in time the way I do while watching Mets games in recent years. But, the fact is the Mets weren't just good back then, they were fun and there's one thing you can always say about the Mets, when they win, it’s never routine, it’s always amazing. Billy Joel once sang “Only the Good Die Young” (2) but Gary Carter made sure that the bad guys won.

1) The Soviets did beat the Mercury astronauts into space but "Ham" the chimp beat both Shepard and the Soviet astronauts. Glenn, Shepard and the other Mercury astronauts came together like a team. They turned their capsule into a ship they could pilot instead of just ride in and Glenn did become the first human to orbit the Earth.
Of course, neither John Glenn nor Alan Shepherd ever had to deal with Mike Scott’s scuffed split-fingered balls (that sounds disgusting.) I’m not positive, but I’m also pretty sure that Scott Carpenter never almost blew Gus Grissom’s head off with a shotgun (Google Kevin Mitchell and crazy.)

I didn’t analyze the Mercury 7/ Mets comparison further and compare the more obscure astronauts in the film like Wally Schirra and Deke Slayton to Danny Heep and Tim Teufel. I mean, I was 14 and the only deep analysis I was doing was comparing Heather Locklear to Heather Thomas and Fast Times at Ridgemont High to Valley Girl (whole other post.)

2)
Of course, this was before Billy Joel slept with Christie Brinkley and lost his morose, darkly poetic, yet pop sensibility. After getting himself “in deep” in her swimming pool of beauty, he went from writing songs like "Capt. Jack" and "Pressure" to “Tell Her About it” and “Uptown Girl," which can only be listened to by 13 years olds, drunk 23 year olds and anyone drooling under heavy Novacaine in the dentist's office.

An Ode to Mediocrity or Jumping the Gun is Creatively Fun.

2011-11-15T06:26:00.000-08:00

And so it goes for the cursed New Jersey Nets that the last game played in Jersey gets no pomp and no circumstance. No ABA banners lowered, no cigars lit by Joey Pants.

No goodbye swamp song by Bon Jovi followed by a hello canal song by Jay Z. No graceful wave to the fans by Buck, just sorry faithful, you’re shit out of luck.

No final salute to Drazen Petrovic’s passion. Just a promise of Rocawear fashion. No recollection of what could have been with Michael Ray. Just a glimmer of the future along the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.

No video highlights of Jason Kidd’s no-look passes. Just moving trucks driving past Fairleigh Dickinson classes. No nod to the men who grew up cheering for Chocolate Thunder. Just the flashy new billboards we’ll soon be walking under.

No standing ovation for the gravity defying leaps of Dr. J. Just Brook scraping Park Slope’s sky and waiting to say hey. No final complaint about the wasteland once known as Brendan Byrne. Just an architectural wonder that shouts it’s our turn.

No laughing at Derrick Coleman and Whoop De Damn Doo. Just Prokhorov swooping in and ending the zoo. No honest emotion from the voice of Ian Eagle. Just celebrity row with Rosie Perez and quite possibly, Jason Segal.

No Bill Raftery call of one more kiss off the glass. Just faded memories whizzing by of childhood’s past.

No final season at all and to all fans it’s good night. Just hope along the horizon that Dwight Howard just might.

I took the bait, man or Lost in translation in my own city.

2011-08-12T00:24:00.000-07:00

This is my reply to a party invitation that I recently got on Facebook from people that I keep in touch with mostly because of Facebook.

August 19th.
Hmm, let me check my upcoming schedule for that week.

August 13th- I'll be attending a Jason Bateman look-alike-contest. This will be located somewhere near the Williamsburg Bridge on the Manhattan side that will make me feel old after I complain to a girl in an appropriately tight “Ithaca is Gorges” t-shirt that there’s a line to get into a bar that’s above a Burger King. This prompts a blank nod from her, which in turn piques my Bateman in “The Sweetest Thing” attempt at flirting with the line, “I think I once saw Grimace do a Jell-O shot at the Lansky Lounge.” She then will turn around and let out a wispy “cool,” while the kid behind me in a t-shirt and shorts who is eating a Bacon Double Cheeseburger asks me “What’s the Lansky Lounge?”

I’ll soon be pondering the fact that not only am I surrounded by 24 year olds who don’t remember a popular 90s bar that I went to in the early 2000s but I will have a realization that my participation in this whole Bateman Bonanza was an attempt to act like a spontaneous youth while dressing up like someone who is actually my age and would never be waiting on line to get into a dive bar with a rooftop view that only two people and Kate Moss can access at one time.

A cute 20-something girl with short brown hair and a small hoop earring in the middle of her lobe that levitates parallel to the ground like a halo will glance at me at the bar and flash me an Alicia Silverstone smile. “Alright, Hogan Family,” she'll say to me and we'll begin to chat for a while about things I won’t remember later as our eyes and smiles connect. We’ll start talking about music and she’ll tell me that Kings of Leon are better than U2 and I’ll laugh and say “I'm not sure that they're as cool as Arcade Fire but neither band could compare to U2 or the Police.” “The Police, huh. My dad used to sing Roxanne to me when I was a kid,” she’ll say while she pokes me in the chest and laughs in a mocking, yet adorable way that will make me want to make out with her more.

“Really, your dad sounds pretty cool. Is he Eddie Murphy?,” I’ll say as I inch closer to her and gently rub circles into her lower back before she closes her eyes and grabs my hand. “Who’s Eddie Murphy?” she asks with a quizzical look on her face.” “Wait, really. You know the Hogan Family but you don’t know who Eddie Murphy is,” I’ll say while shaking my head. She’ll then smile and say “Of course I know who Eddie Murphy is. My older brother had “Raw” on DVD and we used to get Hogan Family reruns on channel 5 where I grew up. It’s no Family Ties but I did have a brief crush on Jason Bateman as a girl. You know before my Pacey phase.” We both laugh and I’ll say “Alright, we can go on.”

"Pictures of You" by the Cure will then start to play in the bar as if my own iPod was being used to facilitate our affection. Her eyes will light up to the song, (which reminds everyone of being a teenager, even if you are still a teen when you first hear it) and we will make out briefly but passionately until she receives a text from a friend in Brooklyn and her attention spans another borough as she apologizes and tells me she has to go.

Before leaving, she’ll stick her hand in my pocket and grab my license out of my wallet and say “Holy Fuck Hogan Family. I thought you were 30 tops.” “I know. I am 40. I can’t even say 40 yet. I still feel 32ish. Consider me 38 and 24 months. ” “32ish. Aww. That’s cuteish,” she‘ll say while pouting naturally with her lips and eyebrows and rubbing my hand. I will take her number in my phone and then blow her a kiss with my eyes as if I’m saying goodbye to my 20s along with her. Then I will make a pledge to avoid the Lower East Side for a while and realize that she didn’t pick up on the fact that I was clearly dressed as if I was in Arrested Development.

For a moment, I’ll worry if being single at 40 has put me in my own state of arrested development. My youthful appearance can be a passport to blend in to the young, single post-college New York bar scene that I no longer belong to or have the patience to be in (without a couch to sit on.) Then, a few guys in my age range who look like they came out of their mother’s womb with a conservative side part and a pair of khakis will pass me and make me wonder if they even had to try to capture Bateman’s uptight, stick-up-the-ass character in Couples Retreat. I won’t stand a chance in the Jason Bateman contest but will head out the bar and back towards Houston St. while wearing a confident grin as I whistle Peter Bjorn and John’s “Young Folks” and quickly untuck my polo shirt from my pants.

August 14th- I'll be lamenting my loss at said contest while going about my day but I will stop suddenly while crossing the street to sigh when I see two buses go by that have billboards on them for Bateman’s latest films Horrible Bosses and The Change-Up.

August 15th- I will be over my poor showing as Jason Bateman and will sit with my laptop at Starbucks and notice that the man sitting in front of me is actually French Director Roman Polanski. Apparently, he too appreciates the sweet goodness of the mocha frapuccino, except he will voraciously devour his frosty beverage and try and lick the whipped cream mustache off the corners of his mouth with his tongue, which makes me push my drink to the side in disgust.

I’ll want to tell the young Asian girl sitting across from him to grab her smoothie and run and I’ll attempt to motion to her as she turns around with not so subtle head jerks to the left. This will prompt her to stare at me and then pick up her drink and leave. She won’t know it but I might have saved her from a painful night of Quaalude-induced anal sex with a creepy old French auteur. I’ll have my Polanski spotting confirmed when I see him using a pay phone on the street (I mean who uses a pay phone anymore besides international fugitives and crazy people who talk to cheese.)

August 16th- 17th - I'll be depressed due to the rainy weather and the general monotony of life and sleep most of the daylight away before emerging from my apartment cocoon to perform my duties as the dog's chauffer around the block. For dinner. we'll both eat what is left of the slightly soggy Corn Pops I bought on the 12th in anticipation of my victory at the Jason Bateman look-a-like contest.

August 18th- I'll wake up to a beautiful day and a narrow glimpse of the blue sky through my bathroom window will put a skip in my showering and I’ll sing a medley of Bryan Adams' 80s hits that I have continued to sing on occasion since junior high. I will mangle the lines seamlessly from “It Cuts like a Knife” to “Somebody” to “Summer of ‘69” as my dog pays no attention. I will later compliment random women in the street on their smile or hair style as I walk with a strut to my step. I will bump into a 40-something divorced woman in the hallway of my building who always seems over-stressed but still manages to look good in a sun dress.

I’ll spontaneously avoid my natural spider sense to not get involved in a neighbor’s life and offer to take her ten year old son (that I nod what’s up to whenever I pass by him) to a movie at the theater across the street sometime. I’ll be surprised when she hands me twenty dollars and shouts his name. We’ll watch Mr. Popper's Penguins in a theater filled with divorced dads and stroller moms where we will laugh together every time the penguins slip away from Jim Carrey's grasp. Then I will take him for ice cream and home to his appreciative mother where she will thank me and smile at me sheepishly.

She’ll show up at my door an hour later with a bottle of wine and proceed to tell me her whole girl from the Midwest-meets NYC guy who becomes lawyer and proceeds to spend more time with clients than with her as she spends more time as an emergency room nurse with doctors who she hates and patients that she loves- and they both end up screwing other people and fucking up their marriage- life story. Inevitably, we end up finishing the bottle and having sexually frustrated single mom Monster's Ball style sex for the next few hours until we both crash curled up together like a Rubix snake.

August 19th- I will awake to find a Post-It note stuck to my ass telling me that she had fun and that I’m sweet but it would complicate her life too much right now to see someone who lives in her building. I’ll think she’s right and admire her penmanship before noticing a belly ring on my floor and a hickey on my neck and stomach. I'll then brush my teeth and go back to sleep for the next 6 hours or so before taking a long shower and going to the local diner to get an egg sandwich.

At this point I’ll be feeling unusually relaxed for a 40 year old man with the neck of a teenager. I'll remember that I have this party to go to and will text my friend that I’ll be there around 9. At home, I’ll turn on the TV and notice that The Sweetest Thing is on, which not only marked the comedic film comeback of Jason Bateman but Christina Applegate as well. “Now she is the sweetest thing,” I will think to myself, as I realize that instead of texting my friend, I texted the girl from the bar. I’m too relaxed to ponder her response and feel a well-deserved nap coming on, so I set my alarm for an hour. As I lean back on my pillow and thank the god of late afternoon weekend naps, I’ll notice Jason Bateman doing a damn fine cover of The Bangles’ Eternal Flame. As the credits begin to roll and my eyelids try to close, I’m as comfortable as I can be.

Lazy things are afoot at the 7-11 or It’s easy being green.

2011-08-04T03:56:00.000-07:00

Most crack heads love two things, smoking crack and finding more crack to smoke. But I have noticed in my limited travels on my nightly dog walks within a few blocks from my apartment that a crack enthusiast will always take time out from his busy crack scavenger hunts to stop whatever he is doing (i.e. muttering to the woman behind the counter at the bodega while she has her back turned that she should stock up on Dr Pepper and string cheese) and point out to you how cute your dog is with childlike innocence. I guess sometimes crack isn't always whack.

Sometimes, for a brief moment it can aid in reaffirming your belief in humanity and remind you of the love you have for a pet that gives you unconditional affection. This is the kind of drug that Huey Lewis sang about, the kind that makes a man without a home find momentary solace in the cuteness of a Daschund’s seemingly soulful eyes.

Of course after such an encounter with a crack head you’ll want to wait at least three minutes after he leaves the store you're in before you exit it, because he'll probably toss a dead pigeon at you and steal your wallet and your cute ass dog so he can trade them for more crack.

Tonight I ventured into a 7-11 near me and even though there has been 7-11s in Manhattan for around six years or so, I had my first 7-11 suburban/ college town moment. As I waited on line to buy my late night essentials (paper towels, contact lens solution and a Naked Green Machine smoothie) I noticed a college age Asian stoner with long hair and a tie-die shirt (looked like he was an extra in the movie PCU) behind me who offered to give my dog a bite of the half-eaten breaded chicken cutlet that he was holding in his hand.

He wasn’t on line behind me. He was just standing behind me eating a breaded chicken cutlet with a wrapper nowhere in sight that I could only hope he bought at the store (only a college stoner would bring his own food to a 7-11 just to use their microwave.) After I kindly explained to the dude (if you’re a member of the male gender hanging out in a 7-11 at 3 am eating a chicken cutlet that looks like it came from a vending machine in your dorm, dude is the only term that can be used to describe you; as opposed to man or gentleman or aristocrat) that my dog is on a low protein-high kibble diet. I nodded to the dude and then to the dog and rushed home to satisfy my own smoothie addiction( or as close as you can get to rushing while walking a dog that needs to stop every five feet to check its mental Blackberry to decide if the spot needs to be peed on or not.)

Now that close encounter of the idiotic kind would never happen at my local bodega, as the Koreans who run the place would not stand for a stoner loitering in their store. I respect that though. Those men work so many hours, I’m sure they sleep standing up at the register. They always recognize me and other regulars in the neighborhood and are nowhere near cold or constantly leery of being robbed like they are portrayed in black gangster movies of the 90s. On the flip side, a homeless crack head would never linger in a 7-11 too long.

The ridiculously bright florescent lighting that’s about as aesthetically pleasing as the inside of a high school class room bothers their eyes much the same way it would affect a vampire or a magwai (When was the last time you saw a vampire in a movie or a TV show eating beef jerky?) When it comes to awkward interactions with the general public that I can’t avoid while walking the dog, I’ll take a homeless crack head any day of the week over an NYU college stoner. It is dudes like that who give the majority of the civilized, occasional marijuana smoking population a bad name. I can’t think of anything more whack than eating a chicken cutlet out of a 7-11 microwave. For Christ’s sake those microwaves only have one setting. Hot Pocket.

If you had told me in 1994, that I would one day pay $3.99 for a beverage that contained blended fruit, broccoli, spinach and blue green algae, I would ask you to pack the pipe with more green algae so we could smoke the rest of it. You know you’re over 35, if you’re only addiction in life is a smoothie. To put this in perspective, the only reason I might watch porn more often than I drink these Green Machine smoothies is that porn is free and the Green Machine Smoothies are $3.99 for a 15 ounce bottle. I don’t know what kind of hidden ingredient (probably sugar and caramel) they add to the Green Machine smoothies to make them so good and I don’t care. It’s also an added bonus that they are named after the greatest present I have ever or will ever receive.

The Green machines were to Big Wheels in the late 70s what BMW’s were to Buicks. Sure they both had a seat that you sat on and two big wheels that you manipulated by peddling, but there was something cooler about the Green Machine. You felt like you knew what it was like to be the Six Million Dollar Man on a Green Machine. On a Big Wheel, you felt like you were Richie Cunningham.

For most of my childhood and into my adult life I have been more of the Richie Cunningham /Herman’s Head/Chandler/Whiny Doctor on Scrubs who amazingly found the time from working in a hospital, pining over a cute but neurotic doctor and seeking the approval of his boss and cool, black best friend to date beautiful women /Ted from How I Met your Mother type. But when I was on my Green Machine, I was the Steve Austin/Fonzie/Jim Rockford/Burt Reynolds type, even though I was 7 and ran home for dinner whenever my mom shouted my name out the front door. As I made sharp turns with my friends on the cul-de-sac and I gripped the handles, I could imagine myself moving in slow-motion while wearing a red jump suit as Jamie Summers waited for me on my driveway with lemonade and a frozen Charleston Chew. As Archie Bunker used to sing on TV when I was a kid “Those were the days.”

Mounds has a heap of issues or Confucius say "He who loves peanuts is fucking nuts."

2011-08-03T16:49:00.000-07:00

Mounds is Almond Joy's red-headed step child. Mounds was never picked to play in any candy bar reindeer games. If Mounds was an elf, it would be the one who wanted to be a dentist. Even the Clark Bar gets more action at a bowling alley candy machine than Mounds. Parents who put Mounds in trick-or-treat bags usually wind up having their house egged.

Mounds has struggled its entire life to break away from its co-dependent relationship from Almond Joy. Mounds shows up to work with bruises on its ridges and tells a co-worker that it fell down the stairs. Mounds hears Almond Joy coming home drunk late at night angrily fidgeting with the keys at the door and begins to shake.

Mounds grew its hair long and died it blacker in high school and would lay in bed listening to The Smiths' “How Soon is Now” and shout the line “I am human and I need to be loved” in an overly dramatic way to get attention, even though no one was home. Then it would cut its side very precisely until its inner coconut bled out slightly and it could finally feel like a nut.

As children, Almond Joy got an indoor car racing track set for Christmas one year and all Mounds got was some Tinker Toys. In gym class, Almond Joy would team up with the Twix twins to run near Mounds and toss the ball as many times as they could to it in “Kill the Carrier.”It even got teased for being too dark by tootsie rolls which prompted Almond Joy to give it the nickname "Dikembe," which stuck through all of 8th grade.

Almond Joy lost its virginity freshman year of high school to a Blondie in the backseat of her white Volkswagen Cabriolet Convertible after getting her drunk on Bartles and James wine coolers; while Mounds was tricked into playing seven minutes in heaven in a closet with Twizzler black licorice who laughed at it for not knowing how to French kiss.

Don’t judge Mounds too harshly for its lack of a spine(or hard candy shell). If you were told you would never accomplish anything over and over again for 40 years, you too might wind up in a dead-end job with a girlfriend who is 30 pounds of nougat overweight and takes you for granted while she's cheating on you with a Watchamacallit. When it comes right down to it, Almond Joy's got almonds. What does Mounds got? Mounds got “Don't.”

It’s amazing, it’s stupendous, but it’s not bullshit 2 Electric Bugaloo or Captain Kirk boldly goes where every man has gone before

2011-06-16T00:39:00.000-07:00

Canadian genius (holds status at all Toronto Mac stores) /actor/producer theologist/ all-around swell guy and former neighbor to a friend he called "Boner," Kirk Cameron, held a press conference on the steps of his palatial estate to refute the statements of quantum physicist (and some my say also a genius) Stephen Hawking. Cameron deemed Heaven to actually, physically exist in the sky. To show what Heaven might look like, he displayed to the lone reporter a diorama that includes a pearly gate made of toothpicks glued on cotton balls placed in front of a Papa Smurf action figure. When asked why he thinks he knows more about the universe than Hawking, Cameron just pointed at his Canadian Oscars on the mantle behind him and smiled.

Cameron also added that legendary scientist Isaac Newton was addicted to a hallucanagenic chemical found in a rare fig tree and that gravity is indeed “hogwash.” To prove it he plans on dropping his Alan Thicke vinyl albums off the roof of his house at the same time as a stack of Teen Beat magazines with him on the cover. Cameron is sure that God will aid in lowering the music of his friend and former TV father Alan Thicke (legitimate Canadian genius) down to the ground first. “God has already lifted my career up to make it light as air and I’m sure he’ll drop Alan’s music like a stone, or should I say stabone.”

Cock-A-Doodle-Doo or Kind Richard's Dick

2011-05-10T18:02:00.000-07:00

A few weeks back I was leaving my apartment on a Saturday night to take the dog for a walk and this young college-age guy approaches me from out of the shadows of the scaffolding next to my building and gets right up in my face. If you have lived in New York City for any period of time, your mind develops a Terminator robot way of immediately assessing all interactions with strangers or more appropriately “the strange.”

In this city, strange can cover everyone from the always out-of-breath woman in your building that asks you to help her lift her work suitcase every time she sees you on the stairs and whose cats are desperately trying to escape her apartment whenever the door opens a crack (which makes me want to distract her somehow in order to aid in their liberation, combined with this car wreck human desire to fight the urge to glance at the horrors that must exist behind the door as it thankfully slams shut); or of course, the man or woman you happen to be currently dating.

It was not hard to quickly assess the situation and downgrade it from menacing to amusing. Even though the kid appeared drunk and slightly glossy eyed, he did not exactly strike the fear into me as he was about 5’7" with thick black-rimmed glasses that I find incredibly cute on girls in a sort of a retro 80s Square Pegs look, a messed-up Bieberish flop of hair that hung down to connect to his eyebrows and shouted “I may have some bald friends with shaved heads but I still can’t conceive of male-pattern baldness in my future.”

What did catch me for a loop is how after appearing out of nowhere and getting right up in my face, he brashly says to me “Hey, where's the cock bar?” (As if it was around the corner) This is Murray Hill where the post college crowd hangs out. There are 5 different frozen yogurt shops but, alas, no gay bars. If there was a gay bar here, it wouldn’t have a blunt and direct name like “Cock Bar.” It would have a cheesy yogurt shop pun name like “16 Handles,” except it would be something akin to “Franks ‘n’ Jeans.”

The Terminator response part to my brain would normally print out possible answers in my head for me to retort with when approached randomly in the street, starting with the obvious “Fuck you Eishole,” but I was definitely flummoxed. I then noticed that he had two companions who were standing a little behind him; another short but heavier guy and a slightly chubby, but cute girl with the same glasses as the guy that approached me initially. She was wearing a Boston College t-shirt and I could tell they were not from NYC as the girl seemed to be looking at MapQuest on her phone to find directions to the bar. She told me they were in town visiting without lifting her head from the screen as the first kid asks me again to tell him where the cock bar was.

I had lived in the city long enough that I knew it was somewhere in the east village (bars with neon roosters signs on them tend to stick out,) but the guy was drunk enough that he had no force field up for possible homophobic assholes and seemed to enjoy fucking with me. He started whining “Come on, where is it?” possibly thinking in the back of his boldly soused mind that I'll say "Forget the bar- the cock is right here buddy." I made the face of a man in great ponder as it turned red and I rubbed my chin and gazed upwards trying to recall the exact address. He seemed to take great glee in my embarrassment and actually rubbed my arm for a second as I was trying to think of the right street(quite the cocky move, or should I say "very ballsy" of him.)

Even though I am 40 and have been properly beaten down by life in the work force I have managed to retain my youthful appearance and no matter where I am in the city, tourists come up to me and ask me for directions. I guess wearing my tight-fitting Express for Men zip down waist-length gray jacket with the black lion logo on the chest, being led on a walk by a dachshund-mix dog with an adorably cute face did not exactly scream “gay basher."

As a straight man being asked for the Cock Bar, I can't just blurt out the street off the top of my head as if I go there for brunch and blow jobs every Sunday." Oh the Cock Bar, why that's on 1st and 1st. Just look for the rooster sign above the line of guys wearing low hanging v-neck t-shirts and tell Steve the doorman you know me."

Surprisingly enough, as a single man with a lesbian roommate, I did not know the exact street of the Cock Bar off hand but knew it was near Houston on First Ave. or Second Ave. and was able to point it out to the girl as she held up her cell. At this point the original kid that asked me was finishing up peeing against the wall under the scaffolding and after wishing them well on their quest for drinks and most likely cock, I followed my dog around the corner and wondered why two hot women in matching tank tops never come up to me and ask me to take them to the Clit Club.

A Chip off the Young Block or An Actual Phone Conversation with my Dad that I Slightly Edited After the Fact

2011-03-05T00:27:00.000-08:00

Me: Hey, Happy Anniversary. I always forget that you guys got married on January 30th and not New Years Eve.

Dad: Well, we were rich and stupid then and should have made it a different
night, but we thought it would give people a day to make plans.

Dad: So, what's new with you? Are you still seeing the hickey girl?

Me: She faded away. I might have a date with a girl I used to work with.

Dad: You know after seeing my genes passed on in such a cute way with your sister’s baby, I'd like to see it again some day while I can still see.

Me: What if I end up with a buck-toothed blonde or a cock-eyed fat girl?

Dad: Don't worry, the Finkle genes are strong and the family cuteness will shine through.

(After a few moments of uninteresting talk about me looking for work, I change the subject back to my sister’s baby. In a Jewish family you can be arrested for shoplifting a sex toy but if your sister has a baby that week, it’s all good with new grandparents. Although, the statute of limitations on idiocy or laziness runs out after the bris)

Me: Do you consider it a Hanukah miracle that one of your offspring was finally able to spring out a baby?

Dad: I don’t want to consider it a miracle that would make its reccurrence unlikely.

Me: So, it’s not as impressive as the oil lasting 6 days.

Dad: It was 8 days and actually a rabbi told me a few years ago that that was all made up.

Me: I know. You told me already.

Dad: They didn't come up with the Temple miracle until 800 years later.
Hanukah was originally just a celebration of a battle victory. Even David leaving Israel was because Saul wanted him out.

Me: Was there even a Goliath?

Dad: Yes there was a Goliath, but he definitely wasn’t Jewish. You don’t see too many Goliaths walking around now.

Me: That’s because he lost. If he had beaten David, maybe you would have named my brother Goliath Finkle.

Dad: That does have a ring to it. There was a Goliath but he wasn’t a giant.

Me: What was he 5’9’’?

Dad: More like 5’6.’’

Me: It’s like when you watch movies from the 40s. Everyone was 5'6’’ back then.
James Cagney was like 5'4.’’

Dad: I used to be 5'9.’’

Betsy: (my stepmother can be heard faintly in the background ): When were you 5'9?

Dad: Ok, 5'8 1/2. Now, I'm 5'8. Grandpa shrunk almost 2 inches. I hope that
doesn't happen to me. See what you have to look forward to when you get old. So,
is this your Happy Anniversary call and your Happy New Years call?

Me: This is my belated Happy Anniversary call and I'll call you tomorrow
for New Years.

Dad: Gotcha my boy. I will speak to you later. I can't really talk now. We're at
the gym. Love you.

Me: OK. I'll speak to you later, bye.

My favorite thing about the conversation is that my Dad ended it with “I can't really talk, we're at the gym" and I only imagine him sweating on a stationary bike while holding the cell phone. He is in his early 70s and he is in much better shape than most people over the age of 35 due to an isometric routine that he has been doing for over 40 years. I started doing his routine ten years ago and I fantasize about doing an infomercial with him, but I’d be the one who would have to get in better shape to do it.

I do the timed workout routine along to quick rock/punk songs on Pandora and for every The Ramones-to-Rancid -to-Tom Petty song runs, there’s always that fourth Pandora out-of-the-blue song that cuts to Johnny Cash and songs of that tempo for the next few minutes to take me out of my rhythm.

Nothing against the man in black, as he is the guy you want on the radio when you’re a production assistant on an extremely low budget action movie and you’re being driven back to the city from upstate NY by the cool DP in his car on a summer night and you’re in the back seat next to the laid back prop girl with the sly smile who was born to wear a tank top and jeans (and you’re 95% sure is not a lesbian) while you’re both vaguely stoned but more comfortably tired after a 15-hour shoot; but try doing squat thrusts in your bedroom to “Delia’s Gone.” It’s not ideal.

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Blow or Catch Me I’m Falling

2011-02-17T19:33:00.000-08:00

I was walking Ty the dog through the falling snow late at night last week and when I got halfway through what I assumed to be the sidewalk, I noticed a well made snow angel. I stopped to admire it as it cut an impressive image in the middle of the virgin snow fall. All of a sudden it started to move, which shocked me as I realized there might be a frostbitten homeless man being buried in his own tomb by falling white grave dirt (of course my initial, less eloquent thought was really more like “holy shit”.)

I started removing the snow that had enveloped him and turned him over. His face was covered in dirty snow and I leaned him up against a nearby mail box. When a huge snow bank begins to dissipate from a Manhattan street, what’s left behind is the remnants of the discarded cigarette butts, random pieces of trash and dog crap bags that were tossed into it as the snow developed and formed various layers of crud between the snow. It’s a New York City version of an uncovered igneous rock formation.

As I began to wipe the groggy, but surprisingly alive man’s face clean, I lifted up his slumped-over head. I imagined myself on the cover of the Post with a headline: “Hero Stays Cool, Saves Freezing Man,” or better yet “Snow Angel of Life.” My dog was starting to join in on the excitement at the prospect of witnessing the visage of Murray Hill’s mystery man and began to prance back and forth like he was a daschund mixed with horse instead of terrier. Of course it could have been because he was discombobulated due to the lack of scent from any other dogs in the snow and didn’t know where to unleash his paint brush on the pure white canvas.

The man began to cough or possibly snore as I dried his face with some Kleenex that I always keep in my jacket pocket to prevent the awkward one-hand-over-the-face walk into the grocery store after a sudden sneeze attack that would momentarily reduce any man to Timmy Lupus status. I leaned in to ask him if he could talk and his hair looked like he had tiny brown dreadlocks from the caked-in snow. I noticed he was a white guy, probably in his mid-40s and that he didn’t smell like a homeless person.

He gave off a distinct odor I had smelled before and tried to pinpoint as I waited for his labored response. And then it hit me, it smelled like the Glade Angel Whispers candle my roommate bought (OK, I bought it, but only because I noticed in the store that it captured the essence of a stripper without the feigned interest and avoidance of eye contact) and then it really hit me.

This guy reeked of stripper perfume. I mean, it was coming out of his pores and was seeped into what looked like a silk shirt he was wearing under his coat. As I glanced at Ty, I noticed him staring silently at the man with his head turned and what appeared to be a quizzical look on his face. Suddenly, the disheveled, but well dressed man shook his head violently (kind of like what a cartoon character or Pauly Shore in one of his early 90s films might do after being hit in the head with a frying pan) and kicked me in the shin as he opened his eyes wide momentarily and his besotted brain regained semi-consciousness.

There are a few things an adult can pretty much count on not having to deal with after graduating from the childhood world of purple nurples, noogies and wedgies and getting kicked in the shins is one of them. When your wife finds a condom wrapper in your coat pocket, she doesn’t kick you in the shins; she calls you a scumbag, checks your blackberry for female names she doesn’t recognize, and then whips it at your 42-inch HDTV screen while shouting at you to get the fuck out as you try to explain that someone at work put it there as a joke. That would be one of many expected outcomes to a situation that an adult might get into. Having an inebriated stranger with a likely penchant for women named Amber kick you in the shins, is unexpected.

Getting kicked in the shins, for those of you who also had forgotten the painful stinging feeling is somewhat akin to when you would get snow under your gloves as a kid while out playing. The sudden rush of pure, unadulterated cold against your wrist would spur that quick hsssssss sound as your mouth closed and grinned simultaneously in pain. Except, I let out a quick high-pitched shriek that was somewhere between Michael Jackson on top of the car at the end of the “Black or White” video and a 10 year old girl bumping into Justin Bieber on her way to homeroom.

As I clenched my fist and the pain began to subside, I realized that this guy was wearing black Ferragamos that cost more than everything I owned in my tiny walk-up apartment bedroom. I figured he was some banker type who pissed off a stripper he had paid to go home with him and was kicked out of a cab for being too much of a shitfaced asshole to fuck. I felt like punching the ungrateful bastard but had another image of a Post cover act as my conscience, except this one was titled “Jerk punches drunk.”

I had wiped most of the snow off his 6 o’clock shadow but it still looked like he had a thin white goatee. He came to life again, this time slower and almost in a cute way like a baby awakening from a nap as he stretched his arms out slowly in front of his face. I watched him lick the white stuff surrounding his lips and he smiled widely, and spoke clearly when he said “Hey man, this sure is pure snow.” That’s when I realized it wasn’t a banker, it was Charlie Sheen. It all made sense now, the smell of stripper, the silk shirt, the $500 shoes; the ability to sleep off a high on a sidewalk as snow blankets your limp body. I guess I didn’t expect to see a celebrity in a snow storm on my block, but hey, this is Manhattan.

“Having a rough night,” I say. “Oh my head,” he says, while shaking the icicles out of his hair.” Where am I? Where’s Candi,” Charlie mumbled. “I don’t know any Candi. It’s 1 in the morning and I found you passed out in the snow on my street in Murray Hill,” I replied calmly. “Who the fuck are you and who's Murray? What happened to Candi”, he growled while checking his pockets.”

I clenched Ty’s leash a little tighter and say “I’m Jeff Finkle. I live on this street. We are in the section of mid-town called Murray Hill. I don’t know who Murray is. I’m guessing he doesn’t live here anymore since nobody under the age of 60 is named Murray and no one under 30 lives in Murray Hill. I’m actually 40 and I didn’t move here until I was 32. I’m a writer and I’m kind of a late bloomer but it’s a long story and you probably want to get back to your hotel Mr. Sheen." He then loudly blurts out “Jafinkle” repeatedly as if it was one word for about five seconds and starts to laugh as his saliva parachutes out of the whiskey-stained ashtray that is his mouth and lands onto my jacket sleeve.

I lift him up and he leans back against the mail box to prevent himself from falling over. I tell him I’m going to hail a cab and to stay where he is and he points at Ty. “He’s got a white line on his chest, just like Candi did.” He was referring to the white stripe of hair on Ty’s chest that stands out like a tie in his surrounding black fur. Ty is still staring at him in silent judgment, except now he tilted his head to the other side. A tear begins to slide down his cheek and he pulls me close. “I really do miss Candi. Get me out of here please,” he whispers in my ear.

I hold him up with one arm and with the other loosen the leash on Ty (apparently, I can only multi-task in times of need) and walk him to the street. I have my arm raised as snow is falling on my head, Charlie Sheen is leaning on my shoulder like I’m his date and it’s after midnight on New Year’s Eve; and Ty is behind us trying to find a garbage bag under the snow. I see an on-duty cab at the light and wave frantically, even though it is the only vehicle on the road and we are the only people on the street.

“Thanks a lot kid, Charlie says.” “Actually, you know you’re only about 6 years older than me," I say. He turns his head and grins. “Really. Dude, you don’t look a day over 28. What’s your secret?” “I have been using facial moisturizer since I was 18,” I say with a smile.” “Me too”, he quickly retorts. “And, I’ve never been married,” I say as I open the taxi door and help him inside. “Well, you got me there,” he says with perfect timing.

As I turn my head to tell the driver to take him to the Plaza hotel, the driver’s eyes light up. He wags his finger at us and says “Two and a Half Men” in an Indian accent, as if he just guessed an answer on a game show. I realize he thinks I’m Jon Cryer and I have a sudden flashback to being called Ducky for a week in high school by an unusually short wrestler on steroids with a Napoleon complex (he forgot about me once he discovered a freshman who had a stronger resemblance to Lucas.) This prompted me to imagine another Post headline. One that read “Sheen and Cryer caught with two and a half ounces.”

I shook Charlie’s hand and told him to take care. He nodded his head and said “Good night Alan,” before slumping over in the seat. After some pleading, I signed one of the driver’s receipts “To Salil: Stay Safe. Watch out for bumps in the road. Your pal, Jon Cryer.”

As the cab headed uptown through the winter wonderland that was a perfectly angelic New York City snowfall, I let Ty off the leash and watched him jump through the fresh snow back to our apartment. He enjoyed the soft mounds of white powder like a kid in a candy store.

(Instead of showing you a blitzed photo of Charlie Sheen, I figured I'd end this story with the image of a young Jon Cryer in the forgotten 80s film "Hiding Out." I couldn't grow a beard like that if I stopped shaving for 20 years.)

40 is the New 23, or Write Me a River

2011-02-04T01:08:00.000-08:00

Being out of work I can handle. Being out of work at 40 and writing freelance articles about high school bowlers I can handle. Being a freelance writer who rediscovered his talent for writing in his 30s and is trying to break into advertising while simultaneously getting people to read my blog, I can handle. Being 40 without so-called true love in my life or a cute little newborn son who relatives I barely know, say has my ears, I can handle.

Being a freelance writer and sitting at a coffee shop while a woman sitting behind me asks an acquaintance with an obvious stutter and minor palsy to keep repeating himself while telling a story, I can handle. Being a freelance writer at a coffee shop and being constantly distracted by the barista who looks like a 21 year old college guy and sounds eerily like celebrity Chef Paula Dean while chit chatting with customers about the weather and recommending the yummy Pumpkin Pie Chai tea, I can handle (he was right about the tea.)

Being 40 while living in a 5th floor walk-up in New York City, I can handle. Being recently laid off from a job that failed to challenge me and now trying to get work as a freelance writer at 40 and having to read on Facebook about people who only post about the good things in life and seem to have jobs that allow them to vacation constantly and do things like go to wine tasting events in the Napa Valley, in March, I can handle.

But (come on, you knew there would be a but), although I can handle being a recently-laid-off-and-currently-single freelance writer at 40, living in a 5th floor walk-up next to a depressingly old shut-in neighbor whose very existence is like a scary Ghost of Christmas Future, what I could not handle was noticing the dog pee for what seemed like two minutes in the living room as I stood in the kitchen watching my take-out lasagna rotate in the microwave.

I stood there helpless and too stunned to react as he relieved himself on the floor like an old Jewish man at the movie theater urinal after 3 hours of Schindler’s List and a mini keg of Diet Pepsi. As he was releasing onto my floor, I was filling up with rage. I shouted an incoherent curse word that sounded like “Faaargh” and I felt like Charlie Brown if Lucy had pulled the football away from him and then proceeded to kick him in the balls. As I cleaned up the mess on the floor and the dog rolled around on my bed without a care in the world, I broke a piece of the mop off as the frustration level rose in me like the steam in my bedroom heat pole that keeps my room a Tucson-like 90 degrees and dry in the Winter time.

I was a moment away from putting a hole in my closet with my foot and muttering to myself for an hour while rocking back and forth on the floor, when I imagined Rob Lowe bursting through my door to calm me down with the story of St. Elmo guiding sailors with flashes of light, before revealing to me that it was a made-up tale to get them through tough times. In order to get the image of the young Rob Lowe in a half shirt, playing the saxophone out of my head, I briefly imagined myself as Kevin (Andrew McCarthy’s character in the film St. Elmo's Fire) finally getting to have sex with Ally Sheedy in the shower. As I pictured myself ravishing Ally Sheedy in while trying not to knock her pearl necklace off her neck and down the drain, I began to smell the lasagna from the microwave.

I had forgotten about the lasagna that I had started re-heating as I watched the dog do his outside business inside. You don’t have high hopes for lasagna at a bagel café. I walked in looking for my usual chicken or baked salmon salad and was intrigued by the lasagna behind the glass counter looking freshly made, as if it was prepared by a guy named Sal, instead of a mensch named Saul.

The aroma of the lasagna reached my nose as I sat on my bed and I followed it into the kitchen. As I began to devour my comfort food, I noticed that it did just that. All the stresses of being a 40 year old freelance writer, who wasn’t satisfied with his life in its current state, began to melt away. You try not to let the little things in life drive you nuts but it can be hard when the little things seem to blend into one big thing. Sometimes, a little thing like ricotta cheese blending perfectly with meat sauce in layers of ribbon pasta, can bring you back from the edge.

In the post-post-college coming-of-age film that is my life I know there’s a happier ending than lamenting my lost 30s while mopping up piss on the fifth floor of my walk-up apartment building at age 40, I just haven’t finished the script yet.

Cue John Parr.

Ok,I kind of wish that was me singing. I thought that was kind of awesome. For you John Parr fans, here's the real John Parr in action.

Oh Yi of Little Faith or Tally Ho!

2010-11-06T03:34:00.000-07:00

I have a friend who is a crazy basketball fan. The kind of fan who would convince his fiancé to plan their wedding so that it would not conflict with the NBA's regular season. He is the world's biggest Nets fan (the guy went to Las Vegas just to see summer league practice.) Let me repeat this statement. He is the world’s biggest New Jersey Nets fan. Being the world’s biggest New Jersey Nets fan historically, would have been like saying you are the world’s best Pachinko player or the world’s most functional crack head. It’s not something you would be boasting about while eating fondue at a party. (I have never been to a party with fondue. I just assume that there are some people who still have fondue parties, where they presumably eat melted cheese with tiny forks, play Jenga and swap wives.)

The Nets although a laughingstock last year, are primed for future success due to an influx of new talent, a new coach and a new Russian billionaire owner whose so cool strippers toss money at him. I actually am also a Nets fan and have recently re-connected with my friend over this fact. His name is Wally Ho.

Wally Ho grew up with me in my suburban NJ town, where he was one of about six Asian kids, but he was not “off-the-boat.” He and his family are Chinese but he was “off-the-cul-de-sac” like the rest of us.

So, about two years ago, the Nets traded for this 7 ft Chinese basketball player named Yi Jianlian. He is skilled but has not developed his game and plays soft for a “power” forward. Yi was traded to Washington after last season (where you need to be a quick shot on and off the court.) If you think LeBron James is (or was) popular here, Yi's fame not only supercedes sports in China but he's probably the third most well known person in a country of over a billion. In America, Yi blends in with all the other 7ft Asian guys, but in China, Yi is so popular he probably has his face on everything from water bottles to condoms (would give a whole new meaning to the saying “Haven’t I seen your face before?)

Anyway, Ho knew someone who was connected to the Nets and told him they were looking for an interpreter for Yi. Wally urged him to tell the Nets’ front office people that he speaks fluent Chinese, when he really spoke about as much Chinese as I do Hebrew (Like most Reform Jews my age, I can recite the Hanukkah prayer, but can no longer tell you what it means.) So, Ho got a meeting with executives of the Nets. They met him, saw that he was Chinese and basically said “You’re hired”

After getting the job of being Yi’s interpreter, which would enable Wally to live out a dream and travel with the Nets, he had two weeks to prepare. He spent that time immersing himself in the language of his ancestors. Ho hired a tutor and studied Chinese phonics tapes. He managed to pull it off too. For four months, he went to press conferences with Yi and acted as the link between him and the media. He basically made up half of Yi’s answers when he spoke to the Nets beat writers and knew enough about basketball that it sounded right to them.

He was walking a constant tight rope as he didn't want to get too close to Yi or else he'd figure out he barely could speak the language. The guy probably thought he was an idiot after about a week. Wally had to do assistant-type things for him as well, like help him look for an apartment. Yi eventually learned how to speak more fluent English and they didn't need him anymore, plus he was always injured. The beat reporters didn’t need to interview him after games to hear him say "I should be back in two weeks".

Wally did say one time he had to call up his mother right before meeting reporters to interpret something and his mom told him a mom version of what she would say if she were Yi, like "Well, I really do think the boys played swell tonight and I hope I didn't hurt that boy's arm trying to grab that ball away from him." After he told this to Yi in Chinese, Yi looked at Ho as if he was a four year old scribbling his name in crayon for him to read.

There is definitely a sit-com or bad buddy film in the Ho-Yi relationship. I imagine Wally helping Yi pick out his jumbo-sized condoms at Rite Aid (without his face on the box of every product, Yi would not be able to buy things as easily as he did in China.) I’d like to think they went to amusement parks where Yi would hold his hand over Wally’s head, wave his long, ET like finger and tell him he was too short. I’d like to believe at one point they rode down a casino elevator in the same suit as “Iko Iko” played over the speaker system. Or, they were at Yi’s home watching Lost, while Wally tried to explain who the smoke monster is in broken Chinese.

I can see there being a night when Yi insisted that Wally accompany him to see Twilight. Yi whispers to him halfway through that he really associates with Jacob, because he too had to put on a lot of muscle in order to perform on the court and that he also has pined for a girl who he felt invisible to. Wally then admits that he is definitely in Camp Edward and that he knows what it's like to not be able to get too close to someone. He then begins to reveal to Yi that he used to have a crush on a girl named Lynn in high school who broke his heart when he caught her making out with J.T. Liebowitz behind the soccer field in gym class. "I was heart broken. I swore off tall black girls and soccer forever and have not been able to give myself emotionally to a woman since."

The duo look at each other and Yi says “It's ok, Joe. It's ok.” They give each other a man hug and Wally says "Wait a minute. You know my name is Wally right." Yi says "I call all American guys Joe because you all look alike. Then he pauses, smiles and says "Gotcha." Their friendship is sealed as they both laugh spontaneously.

At this point a guy with a goatee sitting behind them with a barrel of popcorn in his lap and a date that looks like she was rejected from the Real Housewives of NJ, kicks Wally's seat hard and shouts at them to "shut the hell up." He tells Yi to move his giant head, so he could see the damn screen, and a kernel flies out of his mouth on to Yi's shirt.

Wally and Yi, give each other a quick nod and then hop over the seat and proceed to give this guy a pummeling the likes of which have not been seen in a Paramus multiplex since a showing of “Booty Call” broke down in the final reel just before its comedic climax was revealed. A riot ensued and the projectionist was pelted with goobers and ju-jubees. (I'm not sure if ju-ju-bees are spelled ju-ju-bees or joo-joobees, but I'm 98% sure they're not spelled jew-jewbees- at least not in New York)

The new pals then leave behind a few hundred dollars with the guidette girlfriend as she tosses popcorn at her obnoxious boyfriend, to get him to wake up. They proceed to put on sunglasses and strut out of the theater in unison as they exuded coolness as if it was the ending to Pulp Fiction. Young men in the theater looked on in awe as their girlfriends were transfixed on Bella and Edward gazing longingly into each others eyes.

This story has the makings of a typical Hollywood buddy comedy. Of course in the film, Yi would be played by LeBron James and Wally Ho would be played by Joseph Gordon Leavitt, whose almond-shaped Caucasian eyes are sure to bring in the coveted teen girl Twilight crowd.

Close Encounters of the Yenta Kind or The Bride of Frank N. Stein

2010-10-30T22:09:00.001-07:00

The story you are about to read is true. The names have been changed to protect the oblivious.

I had what can only be described as a close encounter with the yenta kind the other day. It was so bizarre and so scary that I expected to have nightmares where I would frantically mush together matzah ball dough to replicate a mountain in Boca Raton that I had never been to; and that I would have an uncontrollable urge to travel to, in order to meet the alien yenta ship.

I was on line at my local Murray Hill pizza place waiting to order my usual margherita slices ( I convinced myself it’s less greasy that a regular slice, but who am I kidding, it’s still pizza for lunch.) This woman behind me as I'm paying for my food interrupts me and says “Is that the wallet you use?" I look at my wallet (which is a standard black wallet but a few years old), look back at her and cautiously reply “yes.” She then begins to explain to me how a shabby wallet is representative of a guy who doesn’t have his shit together and how too many guys make the mistakes of not caring about the little things that women notice.

At this point I realize that this woman is every man’s nightmare. She might possibly be cute, but her mannerisms and her in-your-face, jap-next-door personality make her seem like a 60 year old in the body of a 30 year old. I found her kind of curious at first and responded back to her brash interruption of my lunch by admitting that maybe I should get a new wallet, thinking that would end our interaction. So I sat down ready to read my Post and enjoy my slices at my usual table by the window and she moved from the counter area to stand directly in front of me,ensuring that I was her captive audience.

She continued her self-indulgent diatribe and started blabbering on a mile a minute. She began to lecture me on men and appearances and at this point (my pizza is getting cold) I begin to get more upset than amused and I ask her if she's single. She tells me she has a lot of male friends and she seems to be the person that guys date before they meet the woman they marry. I made the face that Ferris Bueller made when his sister (Jeannie/Shauna) stuck up for him in front of Principal Rooney, trying to hold back his feelings. Hoping that would imply “well, that should say something to you now, doesn't it” without having to tell her directly that she inadvertently turns men off.)

I asked her if she was Jewish (knowing she would say yes). She goes on to tell me that she is from NJ, but when I tell her the town I’m from, she went on to say how her town is “real Jersey” in that it is filled with more trashy people and that she grew up with Italian girls that you see at the Shore who have sparkly nail polish (which she then pointed out on her own nails.)

The whole time she's talking I'm looking at her and I felt like Grammy Hall in the film Annie Hall. I literally pictured her with big, curly hair, an ankle length skirt and an even larger nose than Barbara Streisand, singing songs from “Yentl”( I combined multiple images of Streisand into an uber yenta jap in my head that made me tolerate her clueless yammering.) She reminded me of the way Barbara Streisand talked in the film "What’s Up Doc," except when you watched that movie you definitely wanted to have sex with Barbara Streisand. I have never encountered a relatively attractive single woman in my life that I couldn’t imagine sleeping with. The more she talked the more my penis was crying out “I’m melting, I’m melting” as it protected itself by shrinking as much as it could.

Now I had grown up with jappy girls in camp, but this was a whole new level. This girl thought she was the millionaire matchmaker and felt the need to point out to a random stranger everything abut herself that she thought made her unique and guys clueless(ironic, considering she was socially clueless.)

She starts rambling on about how she doesn't listen to music and is stuck in the 80s, so I see an opening for a quick jab and say “Your jean jacket looks like you might have worn it in the 80s but it’s a style that has come back.” She replied "really, I don’t think so. I just bought this the other day at the Gap."

My attempt at insulting her style to combat her original dig at my hobo-like wallet went over her head like the strong smell of garlic in the air. She continued her self-induced rant on herself, by telling me that most people in this city are morons and that she is an “educated Jew." Again, when I told her that her own statement of being an educated Jew is actually an oxymoron and that all Jewish parents stress education(doesn't mean we don't have dumb asses like any other group, it just means they most likely attended college. Although ASU really shouldn't count,) she doesn't listen. After making the mistake of telling her I'm a writer, she gets even more excited and starts telling me she's a writer too. She has a blog and wants to blog about her organizational business (which depressed me at the thought that more people will probably end up reading her blog for advice on how to live, than might read my stories.)

Finally, after splattering verbal diarrhea all over my lap for ten minutes, she hands me her card which indeed states that she's a life organizer. All I can think is how could someone who doesn't get basic social norms or realize the boundaries in human interaction,organize other people's lives? I guess if Charlie Sheen can star in his own family sit-com, while enjoying coke-fueled nights with porn stars, anything’s possible. On that subject, you know you're a public menace if you are scaring porn stars. He is real closing to killing a hooker and I know there has to be laws against that, right.

After she left the restaurant, I looked at the card she gave me and it said her name was Traci with an "i" Tackowitz. To my non-Jewish, non-New York readers, this is about as stereotypical Long Island jappy a name as Sherri Schwartz. It makes my obviously Jewish name look as Waspy as Trevor Stone.

I looked up to realize that everyone in the pizza place was staring at me. This laid back, slightly older man with a graying, well groomed beard breaks the silence by saying " Now there's someone who is deep in serious therapy. She must be on something. I have never heard anyone talk that fast (obviously, he wasn't Jewish)" I agreed with him about her being in therapy. We developed a brief bond that can occasionally occur when people share an “only in New York” moment. He asked what kind of writing I do. I told him essays and copywriting and he said, "well, there's a character for you."

I nodded my head, we shared a laugh and I finished my margherita slice. Then I wished him a good day. He said "you too" and I walked out into the warmth of the Fall Day with a smile on my face, knowing that I just had a normal conversation with a fellow New Yorker.

Late Night Shownanigans or Book er’ Danno

2010-10-18T19:12:00.001-07:00

The other night I happened to be watching a few minutes of a George Lopez interview with the young, cute, adorable, bubbly, zaftig, black actress from Glee. I looked on the cable guide to check out the guests for the other shows and it said that Jimmy Kimmel had on Gabourey Sidibe. Gabourey Sidibe. God I love saying her name. I put it right up there with Nikolai Khabibulin, the goaltender for the Edmonton Oilers, as two of my all-time favorite names to say out loud. “Hello sir. I am Nikolai Khabibulin and I am here to escort your lovely daughter to the Ball. Maybe I can be of some assistance Madame, I am Nikolai Khabibulin, and I once delivered a baby in a Moscow Sizzler with some napkins, a wet nap and salad tongues.” I’m telling you the name just rolls off the tongue, like Gabourey Sidibe.

After I was done pondering the sound of Gabourey Sidibe’s name, I realized she is the young, cute, adorable, bubbly, zaftig black actress from Precious. I could be wrong, but it just doesn’t seem like it’s a coincidence that they would both be on competing talk shows at the same time. It's not like there's 20 young, cute, adorable, bubbly, zaftig, black actresses that are currently famous to choose from. They are the only two.

I started thinking that the talent booker for Kimmel found out the girl from Glee (Amber Riley) was on Lopez and shouted to her assistant to get the agent on the phone for another Glee cast member. She pointed to her chart of “Celebrities of Equal Importance” or “C.E.I.” that she made up on Excel to ensure that the other talk shows would never one-up her with a booking. It’s a pretty simple formula. If Leno books one member of an ensemble show than she would book another member of that show or an equivalent show. For example, if Leno booked Mathew Fox from Lost, than she would try and book the actor who played Sawyer from Lost and if they couldn’t get him, they would possibly book Simon Baker from The Mentalist, who has equal sex appeal and TV show status.

Sometimes, they can go with someone who has an equal audience attraction but to the opposite sex. So, if Letterman had Simon Baker, Leno had Mathew Fox and Kimmel had David Boreanz from Bones, she might go with Jennifer Love Hewitt, who has the same appeal to men that Mathew Fox does to women(and was also his co-star on Party of Five which would add symmetry.) Now, Michael J. Fox would not be considered as a match for Mathew Fox, but he is one of the few matches for Muhammad Ali. It’s a delicate system of checks and balances, not unlike our own United States Congress, she once told her assistant.

The creation of the C.E.I. chart is what got Amy Fuller, Jimmy Kimmel’s talent booker, her promotion. After paying her dues in the industry; spending six months as the craft service person for Leno, where she had to keep the fridge in his office stocked with Mallomars and root beer and then two years as his assistant talent booker, she had perfected her system before taking the job with Jimmy Kimmel. There was only one famous person in Hollywood who had no C.E.I. match. David Caruso.

David Caruso's overt belief in his own perceived greatness and his continued insistence on talking like Adam West’s more serious asshole brother in roles, is quite apparent in interviews. Since this persona can not be duplicated by other crime show actors and can only be compared to agents, producers and British oil company CEO’s, he is usually booked against animal trainers and country singers.

Amy Fuller, the senior talent booker on The Jimmy Kimmel Show looked at her C.E.I. chart and realized that Glee’s Amber Reilly had not been added to it. “Either the gay guy, the dumb jock, the cheerleader, the Asian girl, the Jewish dude in the wheel chair, the Jewish hot guy, the teacher that gets way too involved in his students lives, or Jane Lynch will do”, she told Beckly Slater, her protégé/assistant. When Becky told her that the rest of the cast of Glee were busy in rehearsals for “Glee On Ice” Amy thought out loud "Ok, who can we get that will compete with this young, cute, adorable, bubbly, zaftig, black actress. Then they both turned to each other and said “Gabourey Sidibe.” Amy called Gabourey’s agent and booked the appearance on the show.

They relaxed for a moment and Amy Fuller, a 32 year old woman with Tina Feyish glasses, tells Becky how Harrison Ford talked to her for a half hour before a show the other night thinking she was S.E. Cupp. (1) Becky Slater, a 25 year old dead ringer for every 25 year old blonde girl in LA whose face is prematurely thinned out, pursed her lips and said “weird.” Amy replied “Yeah, that’s the second time this week. My friend who works at Bill Maher says she’s not really the uptight conservative bitch she seems to be. I mean she’s uptight and conservative. She’s just not a bitch.” Well that’s cool, Becky said in between sips of her mocha frappucino. “Plus, guys really want to do her.” When I was 13, I looked like Fiona Apple. You know what it’s like to have 8th grade boys tease you about being a bad, bad girl? It’s no fun having a doppelganger whose bat shit.”

I did notice a day later that there were two movies on at the same time that used the Kiss song Beth as a plot point. The first was the appropriately titled “I Love You Beth Cooper,” the other was Role Models (which I consider to be the slightly less funny Paul Rudd vehicle than I Love You Man) I’ll give Kiss some credit. It’s not easy for a rock band to have a romantic ballad sung by a man with cat whiskers painted on his cheeks and still look cool. If you were magically transported to a Kiss concert in 1978 and had never heard of Kiss before and Peter Criss came out from behind his drum kit and sat down and crooned Beth, you’d expect Rum Tum Tigger to dance on to the stage and lick his face.

(1) I recently saw S.E. Cupp on Bill Maher and although she is a conservative capitalizing on Republican men who seem to love having sexy, snooty women represent them, I actually was taken aback by her hotness. She reminds me somewhat of what Grammar Girl might look like in real life. I have a huge crush on Grammar Girl, the Web site and her sexy librarian cartoon representation. Mignon Fogarty, the woman who created the Grammar Girl site comes off on her pod cast as not only cute, but genuinely sweet. She would probably approve of my dorkiness but disapprove of my overuse of parenthesis. I can picture her pointing out to me the fact that S.E. Cupp was not actually physically on Bill Maher. At that point, I would probably imagine myself physically getting off of her.

Manny being Manny sounds cooler than Fink being Fink or The Windy City just got some more Hot Air

2010-08-31T21:55:00.000-07:00

The following is a statement read by Manny Ramirez in Spanish at his press conference to the Chicago media, following his trade to the White Sox:

Manny es Manny. No hay otro Manny, que yo sepa. Si hay otro Manny, que hable ahora o calle para siempre su paz.
Te lo dije.

Manny No necesito que me cortara el pelo. Tengo que ir a cortar la hiedra fuera de la pared del outfield como estoy terriblemente asustado de las orugas. Cachorros son los osos bebé y yo no soy un bebé. En el Bronx llegamos a las ratas gigantes con palos que es como yo aprendí a batear como un bebé. Puede ser que también se conoce como las ratas de Chicago. (Oficial de equipo le susurra al oído) Oh, espera un minuto, este es el equipo blanco Calcetines. Bueno, no me gustan los calcetines blancos. Ellos se ensucian cuando estoy de pie en los jardines. Yo no me gustan en la hierba. No me gustan como una muchacha. Me gusta el color naranja. A partir de ahora, somos los calcetines de naranja.

Harry Caray está muerto. Llévenme al partido de béisbol será reemplazado por Rico Suave. Mike Ditka puede besar el culo. Tengo que ir a fijar en mi bañera de oro de nuevo en mi habitación de hotel y el resto de mi dolor en la ingle. Creo que hay un diferencial de queso blanco y las galletas en mi vestíbulo del hotel y algunas botellas de mi bebida favorita, el Sr. Pibb. Por favor, disfrute ya que hay mucho para todos.
Despedida

English Translation:

Manny is Manny. There is no other Manny that I know of. If there is another Manny, let him speak now or forever hold his peace.
I told you so.

I don’t need to cut my hair. I need to go cut the ivy off of the outfield wall as I am terribly scared of caterpillars.
Cubs are baby bears and I am not a baby. In the Bronx we hit giant rats with sticks, which is how I learned to swing a bat as a baby. We might as well be known as the Chicago Rats. (Team official whispers in his ear) Oh, wait a minute, this is the White Sox team. Well, I do not like white socks. They get dirty when I stand in the outfield. I do not like them on the grass. I did not like them as a lass. I like the color orange. From now on, we are the Orange Sox.

Harry Caray is dead. Take Me Out to the Ball Game will now be replaced by Rico Suave. Mike Ditka can kiss my ass. I have to go lay down in my golden bathtub back in my hotel room and rest my sore groin. I believe there is a spread of white cheese and crackers in my hotel lobby and some bottles of my favorite drink, Mr. Pibb. Please enjoy as there is plenty for everyone.
Goodbye

English Translation has been provided by ESPN Deportes.

He Ain't Crazy, He's My Brother. or Always Look On The Sweet Side of Life

2010-07-29T17:51:00.000-07:00

Some people go about their lives and don't appreciate what they have. Some people go about their lives and wish they had more. Some of us dream big but struggle to do what comes naturally to others due to human frailties that can weigh them down like an anchor. I lost a friend and a brother yesterday. He had more personality than most people and a youthful energy for the wonders of life. Alot of people can't help falling into the traps of going about their days routinely like drones in a bee hive. That was never his problem. He took pleasure in all the little things that life and people have to offer. He disliked no man who wasn't named George Bush or Dick Cheney. He would stop a homeless guy in the street and talk to him for an hour. Some might call that crazy. And maybe it was, but it’s what made Brian Holtzman "Brian" to his family and “Holtz” to his friends. It’s what made him somebody everybody remembered. He sought out those that the rest of the city avoids and challenged them to get help for themselves.

He wanted me to live the life I was meant to live and I'm going to spend the rest of my life trying to do that and to avoid being average. He was never ordinary. He was a one-of- a-kind-guy that made every one who knew him glad that he was in their life. When he was healthy, he would always be there for you no matter what kind of emotional state you were in. As he would joke "misery loves company". And he was only miserable when his illness clouded his thoughts and altered his ability to think clearly.

He was a friend who became a brother and struggled to just be himself, something most people can’t even comprehend. That's all he ever wanted to do; to live a life that let him devour everything that was interesting about the world. And he did that in only a short time. He didn’t just meet people. He digested everything they had to say and absorbed the information in order to understand everything about what made them tick. You couldn’t lie to him, because he would call you on your bullshit in a second. If you were truly in his life than he knew you as well as you knew yourself.

Holtz could be a walking contradiction sometimes. He hated the trappings of wealth but spent $40 on hand lotion at Kiehl’s. He would spend his days working at homeless shelters but loved being in a Vegas casino with his friends. He resembled a young Tim Robbins and had the thickest hair of anyone of my friends, yet he started taking Propecia, as a precautionary measure. He leaned towards the darker subjects in books and movies. He might be the only man who could watch a double feature of Ordinary People and Schindler’s List. Yet you have never seen anyone laugh harder at something as goofy as the Ali G show or as funny as Eddie Murphy Raw. He didn’t like being called crazy and would debate me over who was crazier, which made me feel nuts for arguing with someone who was mentally ill. He would joke about his condition but never joke about others who had mental illness. He was an excellent social worker but due to his illness he had trouble in certain social situations. He hated racists but loved the Redskins.

I happened to have lived with Brian at his happiest and at some of his worst times. He kept me on my toes sometimes, not knowing how he would react to things when he was in a highly paranoid state. He loved everything about the energy of New York City, but the stimulus of all the people could occasionally get overwhelming for him(which is not uncommon.) I always felt like I could bring him back from getting too close to the edge, until the part of his mind that was sick took over the rest and pushed him over.

One day I came home from work and I heard a shuffling noise from his room. I knew he wasn’t home yet and when I entered his room, there was a pigeon perched on top of his book case and papers strewn about on the floor. After slamming the door closed and saying “holy shit” out loud about three times fast, I grabbed a broom, went back in and proceeded to poke at the bird from a way-too-safe distance. I shouted in a high-pitched yelp that must have woken up every sleeping dog in Murray Hill. After getting the pigeon out the window, I cleaned up his room and tried to relax on the couch wishing I had a drink harder than Pepsi.

When Brian came home I told him the story and because of the paranoia that his illness bestowed upon him (he would be very impressed with me that I used words like bestowed, by the way) he thought that I purposely let the pigeon into his room in order to mess up his stuff. Eventually, he realized it was an incredibly unlikely occurrence and we would eventually joke about it. This is just one story of how his mind would alter the way he would perceive things occasionally. Holtz knew me so well that I know if he read this, he would point out that I included a story showcasing my own dorkiness in a eulogy for him.

If you’re lucky in this life, you might have a handful of people that come into yours and truly impact you. Truly make you a better person for knowing them. The people you can call up after ten years without any communication and go right into a conversation that you had when you were every day friends. My friend Brian Holtzman was one of those people. We all need people like that in order to get through this crazy thing we call life. Shit, every day would be a hell of a lot more boring without them.

He once wrote a screenplay called “Could you be loved?” which he never showed me, partly due to the fact that he did not want me to judge it negatively and partly because of his dyslexia (it would have been like deciphering the scribbling of a fifth grader) It’s funny that he chose that Bob Marley title. With a title like that it could actually be sold and probably pitched to Leonardo DiCaprio, even if it had been just a one sentence outline of an idea and 100 blank pages. It was also ironic because he was so easily loveable to anyone who knew him.

Nothing relaxed Holtz like Jazz and we both were big fans of The Allman Brothers. One day I came home and he had the Lucinda Williams “Sweet Side” song playing on a continuous loop to take his mind off whatever his mind was focusing on.

“You run yourself ragged tryin' to be strong .You feel bad when you done nothin' wrong” The lyrics, the perfect bluesy hook and the pain in Lucinda Willams’ voice resonated with him.

I am breathing heavy right now and my chest is pounding (as I sit at the end of my bed and type) at the thought of his family’s loss and not having him in my life, even though he had not been a part of it for years now. I hope I will have a family of my own to tell stories of my friend Holtz to keep his spirit alive. My friend Brian Holtzman always showed his sweet side.

Reading is Fun and I am Mental or The Most Interesting Man in My Neighborhood.

2010-01-10T16:34:00.000-08:00

It was a sunny Fall Saturday and I figured I’d take advantage of the beautiful weather by taking a walk to the Borders book store in my area. Some people on a day like this like to drive up state to go apple picking (don’t have a car and don’t like apples), others like to go to the park to watch the splendor of the foliage as the autumnal leaves change from green to red (color blind with shades of green) but I love going to the book store where I can wonder the aisles seemingly aimlessly until the right book quietly calls out to me, like a drug dealer in a park, except instead of weed or Klonopin, it pushes the wholesome thrill that won’t leave you with bags under your eyes and a hangover during a Wednesday morning conference call. It’s the thrill that is consumed by pre-pubescent children as imagination and adults 27 and over (this number may vary by a year or two) as a way of taking their mind off the monotony of their daily lives.

Reading is fundamental. They weren’t lying to us as kids in those corny 1970s-‘80s TV ads of my childhood. As a child it is fundamental to get lost in the world of books. It builds your imagination, develops the way you think and can also help you forget the fact that the pre-Ritalin, hyper kid in your school impulsively pushed you into a garbage can because he found out the lunch lady was serving meatloaf instead of Stromboli that day. A good book is also an excellent companion piece for the 30-year-old single woman who has to fly to be in the wedding party of the overly-dramatic girl she roomed with in college, but hasn’t seen since. Although for that specific occasion, I recommend also purchasing about four or five mini-bottles of vodka on the flight.

As I stroll through my local Borders looking for a new book, I tend to people-watch like I do when I walk down the street. I have always wanted to meet a woman in a book store and sometimes while I’m walking around I’ll notice an attractive woman and I’ll have the urge to recommend a book. I have often envisioned myself standing near a cross between Kate Winslet in "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and Pam from “The Office”. While she glances at the back of David Sedaris’ “Holidays on Ice” I ask her if she’s read “Me Talk Pretty One Day” and she says “of course”, as her eyes light up.

We begin to chat and the conversation switches to John Irving books and I ask her what her favorite novel by him is and before she can answer I say “let me guess, “ A Prayer for Owen Meany.” She then looks me up and down and responds by saying “Yeah, I cried reading that in college.” I tell her that for some reason, women seem to love Owen Meany. She then brushes away a long strand of her auburn hair that is dangling ever so cutely on her eyebrow and says “So, you think you know a lot about women.” To which I quickly respond “Oh, I don’t know anything about women. That’s why I’m at a book store alone on a Saturday afternoon instead of finishing a brunch in the West Village with my girlfriend/fiancé/wife.” We then end up taking a walk where we point out a couple walking awkwardly together while holding hands in the street and laugh at them.

Before we know it, we’re enjoying a lovely brunch somewhere west of Park Avenue, when she tells me how she loves waffles but hates pancakes and I reveal to her that I eat my Cocoa Puffs without milk. “That’s a damn shame. You’re missing out on fully capturing the chocolaty goodness experience, she says before suddenly shouting out “Fuck. Blossom! I totally forgot about her!” To which I reply “Whoa!” in my best Joey Lawrence voice.

As she breaks into an unabashed, adorable giggle that makes me wish I knew more Joey Lawrence sayings she holds up a cell phone photo of her two-year old puggle. She then asks for my number and tells me she has to run because she forgot she has to take Blossom out and doesn’t want to return home to find her sneakers peed on. After I give her my number, she immediately sends me a text back saying “We forgot to exchange names”. “Christopher Moore”, I type in. “You suck. You’re lucky I like dorks,” she types back. She gets up to leave and I sit there and finish my waffle with a goofy grin on my face.

As you can see I have a vivid imagination that tends to over take me when I am alone with my thoughts, but alas my life is not a Nora Ephron movie. I have never been on a date at Katz’ Deli with a woman who showed me how she fakes an orgasm, although I did once get a momentary erection while eating their pastrami sandwich, but that’s because I was drunk and it was damn good pastrami. I have never had an encounter at a book store either, except for today. Today I saw what I can safely assume is the most interesting man in my neighborhood.

He walked through the doors with an elegance rarely seen in an area predominantly known for its abundance of frozen yogurt shops. The man had (I shit you not) white-blond curly hair, a top hat with yellow feathers protruding proudly out, a red velvet coat, black boots and of course he was holding a cane. For a split second, I thought he was either Colonel Sanders’ cooler younger brother or maybe Dan Akroyd from Doctor Detroit. I was looking at the inside flap of “The Life of Pi”, before putting it back like I always do (it’s one of those books that I have almost bought a dozen times), and thinking that no book would call out to me that day. I caught a glimpse of him strutting through the doors and I literally froze with my mouth open.

His face was weathered like he had spent his life working the winters as a deckhand on an Alaskan fishing boat. As he walked by I spun my body around without thought and as amazed as I was at this pimp out of Savannah’s water, I was more amazed that nobody else turned around and looked. I mean the store wasn’t packed and I know New Yorkers are conditioned to walk by homeless schizophrenics cursing at their imaginary enemies, but we were not in the street, we were in a book store and this man was no ordinary New York freak. He was unique.

The man was a living, breathing Foghorn Leghorn and I immediately felt like I had stepped into the pages of one of the many novels that adorned the shelves of the store. I just had to play Harriet the Spy (I probably shouldn’t know that reference, but it fits) and glimpse at someone who was so good at standing out in a city where standing out is hard to do. I imagined him going to a Starbucks and tapping his cane on the counter while asking for a mint julep, until the girl behind the counter turns around and in a routine manner offers him the choice of their seasonal Pumpkin Spice Latte.

“You sure are a pretty young thang. Missy, Why I do believe you have the most exquisite set of ta-ta’s I’ve seen in all my years of purchasing percolated potions from pleasant young princesses. Well, north of Kentucky that is.” “I’m in the pleasing business myself” he boasts as he touches the brim of his hat. She then looks him up and down and then up and down again and asks him if he would like some whip cream, before motioning to the barista. “The whip cream is on me, she says, while proudly sticking out her chin and adjusting her cleavage.” “Much obliged. I believe in rewarding kindness but I don’t believe in giving anything away for free. Here’s my card, in case you are looking for work with a little more perks,” he says before leaving his card on the counter, taking his Pumpkin Spice Latte in one hand and his pimp cane in the other. While smiling the smile of the mostly innocent she thanks him for the offer and tells him “I actually get pretty good benefits here.” As he uses his cane to push the door open she looks at the card which reads:
Phinneus J. Whoopee. Purveyor of Poonani - Connoisseur of Coochie.
917-You Cumm (917- 908-2866)

He strutted down the aisles with a sense of purpose. Unlike my haphazard way of letting my new soft-covered friend find me, he looked like he didn’t want to be friends with his book. He looked like he wanted to own it; to take it back to his home, handcuff it to the bed and dominate it. I tried to be inconspicuous while following a man who obviously didn’t know the meaning of the word. So I stopped by the $8.99 CD section and skimmed through the lonely selection of CD’s by random artists that are no longer culturally relevant and pretended to look at one as I saw him tap his cane gently on the shelves as he walked with his chest, on the hunt for the object of his desire.

I admired his sense of purpose in knowing exactly what he wanted, although I do enjoy my process of wandering around the store in a carefree manner, gazing at the book shelves, until a book hones in on me. It's like the surrounding books are blurry and this one is perfectly clear, prompting me to pick up a story that I’m going to get lost in. Possibly, it might revolve around the mind of a unique child like in “A Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime” or exist in the world of Christopher Moore, where fuckups can become heroes and where an emperor can rule a city and eat out of the trash.

I could not help but stare at him as he discarded each aisle in the store with each tap of his cane and I only looked down to notice I was holding a CD titled Mama’s Big Ones: The Best of Mama Cass, which made me think that Borders should just leave these island of misfit CD’s in a bin upon exiting the store, kind of like when my childhood dentist would have a box of random trinkets for the kids to grab after an exam.

He stopped as confidently as he seemed to be moving and I could tell he had honed in on his plunder. I walked over to the New Non-Fiction section to get a peek at the booty he seemed to be taking for his own. He was standing in the adjacent Fiction section and I imagined him regaling his bitches as he tucked them into bed at the end of a long night of whoring with passages from “In Cold Blood” or “Tropic of Cancer”. I looked over to see what he had chosen and my mouth was once again left open as I gripped a book that was in front of me and processed the fact that he was skimming through “The Secret Life of Bees”.

The jar of honey sat on a windowsill on the cover of “The Secret Life of Bees” and an image of his wife gazing out the window as he read the heartbreaking story of sisterhood to his daughters on a porch swing filled my head as my perception of this man’s lascivious life shattered like Dakota Fanning’s heart after her daddy told her she was broken (saw the film, but never could bring myself to buy the book.) In my head, I actually said to myself the clichéd phrase "I guess you can’t tell a book by its cover."

The most interesting man in my neighborhood then awoke from the spell the book had over him and noticed me. He looked me up and down, checked out my Gap sweater and jeans, my Costco jacket, my awkward grin and then looked me up and down again and gazed at the book I was gripping tightly. I glanced down and realized I was holding Sarah Palin’s “Going Rogue”. He shook his head at me as if I was Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh’s preppy love child and walked up to pay for his book. As I put the book back where it belonged, alongside “Eat This, Not That!”, I noticed the most interesting man in my neighborhood approach the cute, young redhead cashier. He placed his regal cane against the checkout counter, tipped his top hat with the yellow feathers proudly protruding out and took out his card.

The Greatest American Zero (Celsius)

2010-01-06T21:32:00.000-08:00

Believe it or not, I was asked a few weeks back by my roommate, who is a woman who likes women, whether or not men ever have a cold penis. I actually had to think about it. I mean her reasoning was that men always complain about freezing their balls off, but never about having a cold cock. I literally paused for a while and realized I have never complained to my buddies “man, my snake is shivering”, or said “I’ve got an icy icicle”, or even nervously told my doctor “my bishop is turning blue.” I mean you would have thought I would have at one time told a girl I was dating, on a cold winter day, “God, my little Fink is frigid”.

After a while of deep thought, I couldn’t really come up with specific memories of when my penis was cold. I mean, my fingers get cold every time I touch a drink at a bar. My feet are cold during the winter time in bed and it usually takes a couple of minutes of canoodling, massaging, spooning, caressing, undressing, and probably any other fun thing that you can do with a woman that ends in “ing” for my body to really warm up. The fact that my ears are painfully cold in the winter time is the only reason I wear a hat (I look like a 12 year old in a hat due to youthful face and tiny ears). I guess you can chalk it up to the male body, like any other dumb animal’s body, having built in defense mechanisms. When we are outside in freezing conditions (or if we are thrown into a lake in the summertime as an eleven year old by counselors at a Jewish sleep-away camp who are drunk with power and boredom) the dreaded shrinkage occurs.

Ah yes, shrinkage, the act of the penis shouting “help me, I’m melting” during drastic changes in temperature or when surrounded by water for long periods of time. I’m sure shrinkage exists to protect the penis from the elements and not just because there is a God and he does indeed smoke weed. Ah shrinkage- the physical act that inspired a popular toy in the late ‘70s and ‘80s- the Shrinky Dink. Even the name sounds like shrink dick.

Shrinky Dinks were these plastic sheets that you and your mom would put in the oven and they would shrink down to hard plastic, but retain its original shape. This might be a nurture reason for boys growing up not naturally inclined for cooking. Watching the plastic shrink like that in the oven might have subconsciously reminded us of our already tiny penises getting smaller when we took our forced baths. The Shrinky Dinks (great name for a band) came in images of popular characters of the time like Superman, E.T. or possibly “The Fonze”. Actually, Fonzie is the only man in history to have never experienced shrinkage. That’s how he was able to satisfy the Polaskey twins, Pinky Tuscadaro and thwart the “Malachi Crunch” (another great name for a band) all in one night. Not only did his dick never shrink but it could probably start a ‘57 Chevy and switch the song on the jukebox to “Blueberry Hill” with one quick pelvic thrust.

I remembered the conversation between me and my roommate this past week as I walked home from work in 17 degree weather. I felt the sensation of not only being smacked in the face by the frigid air, but my tallywacker felt like it had been wacked by a popsicle. Anyone in the northeast knows that it’s been unusually cold this past week. I have a ten minute walk home, and it felt so cold that I was literally muttering ”Oh my god. Are you fucking kidding me” out loud while walking through the wind. New York is a walking city, and you know its freezing when you take momentary refuge in the a supermarket on the way home just to warm up your ears and you end up grabbing a pack of gum and a box of Cracklin’ Oat Bran.

On the walk, all I could think about was the fact that my penis was indeed cold and that cold penises mean frostbitten toes. Luckily I have a heat pole in my room which spews out steam that makes my room dry, but on nights like this, it was exactly what I needed to raise my body temperature. The next morning, before I layered up like the little brother in “A Christmas Story”, I was taking a shower and thinking. I get some of my most random thoughts in the shower, usually when I’m singing bad ‘80s songs. Now, I know that I sing horribly out of tune as I’ve been told by my roommate on many an occasion, but to me the acoustics of the shower turn my voice into Bryan Adams, the year into 1985 and a need to express my memories of the summer of '69.

This morning, after almost a week of freezing my ass, balls, feet, ears, Adam’s apple, and finally my penis off, a song came to me. It was the theme song to “The Greatest American Hero” and new lyrics spoke through my mouth as if they had been given to me by the same aliens who gave William Katt his suit. I toweled off quickly and went on Youtube with the song fresh in my head and played the video while matching up my own lyrics to the song. Unfortunately, unlike the fleeting cold sensation in my penis that day, the theme song to the Greatest American Hero is stuck in my head like a bad cold that I can’t quite shake.

Here is my version of the Greatest American Hero theme song. For those of you old enough to remember the show, this should bring back some fine memories of a time when a superhero could have a dorky suit and a blond afro and still be cool.

The Greatest American Zero (Celsius)
Lyrics by Think Fink.

Look at what’s happened to my balls
I can hardly feel them myself
Suddenly I’m starting to look like a girl
It should’ve been somebody else

Believe it or not I have a cold penis
It does not want to hang so freee
It’s shrinking fast in the frigid, cold air
It’s inside of meeee
Believe it or not it’s in meeee

Looks like the chill of a cold day
Hit me and made my balls blue
Breaking me out of the mood I was in,
Making me one freezing sterile Jew.

Believe it or not I have a cold penis
It does not want to hang so freee
It’s shrinking fast in the frigid, cold air
It’s inside of meeee
Believe it or not it’s in meeee

Why can’t I peee?
Believe it or not it’s in meeeee.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9Q3orQhEcA

Don’t Cut Down the Nyets Just Yet. Or What a Borough!

2009-09-25T03:49:00.000-07:00

I just read that Mikhail Prokhov, the Russian billionaire has just reached an agreement with Brett Ratner and the ownership of the New Jersey Nets basketball team to help fund their Brooklyn arena and take over controlling ownership ship of the team. As one of six Nets fans who live in New York City, I am excited about the team getting an owner who is a passionate sports fan and has the money to spend to make the team better. That said, the first thing that came to mind after hearing this is what Russian comic Yakov Smirnoff would think of this news.

Yakov Smirnoff ,whose popularity is as connected to the 80s as Steve Guttenberg, Mr. Belvedere and that #5 robot from “Short Circuit”, owed his career to Mikhail Gorbachev’s mid 80s Glasnost era of openness and Ronald Reagan’s “Evil Empire” rhetoric which helped eventually bring down the Berlin Wall. It also ended the need for Smirnoff’s social commentary on Soviet society in the form of 1950's style “Borscht Belt” jokes. Smirnoff’s popularity may seem ridiculous and his material may appear to be outdated now, but back in the 80s , we couldn’t get enough of him and some other WTF performers of the day, like Howie Mandell(back when he had the jew-fro and the hospital glove on his head), Boy George(back when he looked like a woman and not Darth Vader after the unmasking in Jedi) and Jim J. Bullock( back when obviously gay actors had to play asexual neighbors on sit-coms that would rather hang out with a father who draws cartoons while wearing a hand puppet than his two beautiful twin daughters who wear nothing but short shorts.)

So, in honor of Yakov Smirnoff, ThinkFink hails the end of the ineffective Ratner regime and welcomes the new era of Glasnost in Brooklyn. I’m sure in 3 years, Smirnoff might be persuaded to dust his old act out of moth balls and do a tour of NBA arenas around the country. I can see him at the Staples Center performing before a Nets-Lakers game and it might go something like this:

“Thank you Los Angeles, you’re a wonderful crowd. Let me be the first person to say, Let's Go Nyets. What a country we live in! In America, you watch basketball players on TV. In Brooklyn, the basketball players watch you on TV. What a country you have in America! Back in Brooklyn, it takes four hours to wait on line for the bathroom at a Nyet game. In America, you eat hot dogs. In Brooklyn, dogs eat you. I was so thrilled to meet the starting point guard for the Brooklyn Nyets: Devon Denisovitch. I think this season the Nyets have the teamwork to make the collective unit complete its government assigned task.”

I had planned on ending this essay with the previous line and then I figured I would google Yakov Smirnoff just to see what he was doing with his life now. I’d like to picture him living with Paul Hogan and Mr. T in a large house in Miami where they argue over whose turn it is to do the dishes. Paul Hogan would hold up a piece of cutlery and go” You call that a clean knife.” Mr. T would grunt and go “Hmmm. That’s not a knife. That’s my salmon slicer. I use it to slice my smoked salmon. You know I love my nova and cream cheese on a bagel every morning. I pity the fool who can’t appreciate a good nosh. Mmmm.” Then Yakov would smile and say “ In Russia, salmon does not swim up stream. You swim up stream to cross the Bering Strait. How do you think I came to America.” And then they would all laugh and Paul Hogan would point out that they have a washing machine as they continue to laugh. I assumed that they would occasionally hop in their van or maybe a boat and solve mysteries or maybe go back in time and “put right what once went wrong”.

As crazy as my “Dream-On” like sit-com saturated thoughts may have been, Yakov Smirnoff has actually been in Branson,MO since 1992. He opened up a theatre and has been performing to a packed house ever since. Yakov Smirnoff went from Red Square to being a red-neck and I think that’s unbelievably perfect. He wouldn’t even have had to to change his material that much. “I love the country out here in Branson. If a giant rat scurries across your property you can shoot it. In New York City, giant rat shoot you.”

I hope the Nets get the funding for their stadium in Brooklyn and the deal with Mikhail Prokhov is finalized or else I might actually get to see Yakov Smirnoff perform before their game when they start the 2011 season as the Branson Nats.

The Night is Shifty or Happy Trees Done Dirt Cheap

2009-09-21T03:42:00.000-07:00

I went to a birthday party for my friend’s two year old twins last Sunday. It made me momentarily re-evaluate the course my life has taken thus far(I do this a few times a day) when my friend who is my age has a birthday party for his kids and when I got the e-vite the first thought that came into my head was how it’s going to be hard to wake up before 9 a.m. on a Sunday morning.

In defense of my apparent laziness and seemingly twenty-five year old guy lifestyle(I’m in my 30’s), even though I do still go out drinking on the weekends , it is my night job that has altered my body clock. It’s gotten to the point that even on nights where I don’t work or when I get home before 12 a.m., I have become programmed to race the moon to sleep when I get home as I am wired and no one in my social universe is up to hang out or talk to after work. It’s a bizarro-world way to live your life that usually only emergency room nurses, people who work from home, astronauts and adult, out-of-work,daytime stoners usually experience.

Sometimes I’ll go on facebook at like 3 a.m. and I’ll actually see that I currently have no friends that are online and available to chat(including West Coast friends) and I’ll hear a whirling breeze against my window and look over my shoulder for a tumble weed to go tumbling by me in my fifth floor walk-up bedroom. So, instead of getting home and going to sleep by two in the morning, I end up doing non-productive things like reading about the Mets’ woes online, skimming through personal ads on Craigslist and watching the final hour of The Perfect Storm at 4 a.m. just because I’ve never seen the whole movie(it was kind of like Titanic, except without the happy ending.)

I realize that by extending my nights all I’m doing is shortening my days, which isn’t a good way to find another job. The only positive to getting out of of work after midnight, besides the short lines at Duane Reade is the people watching on my walk home. Every once in a while besides the various random drunk people that always seem to be staggering alone on third avenue in Murray Hill on a Sunday night, I will have the random encounter with the prostitutes that seem to occasionally leave their forbidden zone (which stretches from Broadway to Lexington Ave. in the upper twenties) and enter the suburban stretch that is third avenue.

They look kind of like lost puppies without their pimps as they realize that most twenty-somethings who live off of that avenue can meet someone at the Joshua Tree or other not-so-cleverly named bars in the area as it is not as deserted as Lexington Avenue is at night and therefore not ideal for their line of sales. I have had a few brief interactions with hookers in my area before and I was surprised and impressed that some of them now have business cards that they hand out to potential clients. I recall one industrious lady of the night used the Helvetica font and had a cool logo of a hotdog sliding into a bun.

One night a street walker told me to walk on the other side of the street after she realized I wasn't going to rent her for the hour and she thought I was hurting her business by walking near her. I obliged her request but it seemed odd considering A. she wasn't getting any business anyway on a residential sidestreet filled with people sleeping in their brownstone apartments, and B. I was walking my dog at the time.

You can’t really tell a prostitute nowadays from how they dress due to the fact that most 24 year old girls pretty much dress the same way. The difference is if you suddenly slow down while walking on a street late at night on the weekends a hooker will approach you and smile and a regular girl with a short skirt and heels will bump into you while crying into their cell phone. God, I wish it was the other way around.

I do seem to have occasional eureka moments of creativity at night, whether they stem from me staring at the way my dog is sleeping next to me on the bed and coming up with a perfect ad for match.com for my portfolio or switching channels from a Showtime soft porn to become momentarily engrossed in something like Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium and realizing that the line “We seem to have a nervous slinky” is as brilliant a line and a concept as there can be in a movie that is set in a toy store that comes to life(actually, that would work in most soft porns as well). (1)

I have recently finished my copywriting portfolio and am ready to take on the world of advertising. I can’t wait to get paid for coming up with ideas and work as part of a team to create advertising campaigns that will lead to me winning awards, getting a promotion, crafting a life, meeting my wife, working too late, buying a home, worrying about bills, sleeping with pills, getting burnt out of the city and moving to L.A. , working even later hours before calling it a day, going on on my first book tour and having an affair, coming home to find my wife is no longer there, feeling down and feeling blue, feeling like a waste of a jew, bumping into my one true soul mate, having a second chance at fate, doing an exercise informercial with my dad, unexpectedly starting the next big fad, looking young at forty-five, and loving every minute of being alive. Or, I could try writing for an online magazine, but really, who knows where a job in that unstable industry will take you.

It could take a while to start my career with this whole recession thing going on, so taking any other day job would definitely help end my nighttime addiction. The only good thing about being single and living paycheck-to-paycheck in a recession is that you don’t really have to change your lifestyle that much. It’s not like I now need to cut back from two vacations a year to one, or sell my villa in France for a share at the Jersey shore. In fact, most people have actually begun living more like me. Sure doing your own laundry in the city sucks, but it saves you around forty bucks(sorry, I had one more rhyme left in me.)

At the birthday party for my friend’s kids, they had a singer whose job it was to sing to a room filled with two-year olds and their parents, who after a year and a half of watching Dora the Explorer cartoons, were numb to all things goofy and Disney. The singer was dancing back and forth with a guitar and swinging his hips violently as if he had just drank six red bulls and experienced seven flags of fun before showing up. He performed with a constant Joker-like smile that only overly-medicated schizophrenics and people who entertain toddlers possess.

As I stood in the back of the room of the party with my friends, talking sports and checking for any cute moms, I observed the man singing with glee to the kids and gained a momentary sense of glee myself in thinking there was a guy with a worse job than my night one. Until I saw the cute mom slip him her number at the end of the party, which broke the illusion that he was gay , but made me think he must either be a serial killer or a severe alcoholic.

While watching him perform I was able to somewhat decipher what he was singing about. I believe he was singing “Happy Trees, Happy Trees, Happy, Happy ,Happy Trees . Who wants to climb a happy tree? Have you ever seen a happy bee? They make really sweet honey.” The two year olds were dancing and bopping their heads like those flowers with sunglasses that were popular in the early 90's that shook back and forth when put next to a speaker. As he was singing I realized that this guy doesn't need to be singing about "Happy Trees". He could easily be singing “Crack. It’s whack. It’s whack, it’s whack, it’s whack. I sold the TV for more smack and my wife’s not coming back." Or, even better, “Beat on the brat with a baseball bat, Oh yeah, Oh yeah Uh, oh."

Well, I guess I’m not the only one in this economy who is doing a job that is more 5-to-9 than 9-to-5, and I’m sure the toddler party singer also aspires to be maximizing his skill set on a grander scale. To become a star in his chosen industry. I’m sure just like I will one day soon be creating ads for an advertising agency, he will be working the really big arenas. I’m talking the Woodcliff Lake Hilton or if he has the right connections, Tavern on the Green. I’m talking the Bar Mitzvah circuit.

The Bar Mitzvah circuit has to be the dream job of child party entertainers. Forget performing in dive bars, you can make more cash in one day singing in front of Grandma Sylvia than in a month of playing clubs in the east village. You just have to keep 13 year old Seth Weinstein and his friends dancing and happy and you can ride the wave of good parent reviews all the way to a new condo in the Upper West Side. I’m sure he could put himself on the path to success with some new business cards. I happen to think a sharp font and an photoshopped image of a rabbi breakdancing would really stand out. But what do I know? It’s 4 a.m. and I’m awake, the dog is asleep and the moon is right on my tail.

1. True story. When I used to work as a set production assistant on independent films in New York I somehow ended up working for two weeks on a film with Marilyn Chambers called “Marilyn Chambers’ Desire”. This was a soft porn, but the sex was simulated and it was basically made to end up on Skinemax. Now for those of you who do not remember the late, great Marilyn Chambers, she became famous because she starred in “Behind the Green Door”, which was to the porn industry in the 70‘s what “The Wizard of Oz” was to colorized films. It is quite bizarre to hang out at the craft service table eating chips and dip with top-less stripper/actresses. The movie was only memorable because it had the greatest line of porn dialogue ever written down (I somehow doubt Marilyn improvised it).
A man complains to Marilyn ”I have a case of a cute angina” and Marilyn says ”You should see mine.” Although Marilyn delivered the line in perfect May West form, it took the male actor around four takes to pronouce angina properly.

Wrong Turn Clyde or My Not-So-Great Adventure

2009-09-02T01:04:00.000-07:00

I once climbed into a giant barrel of monkeys on a college dare and was instantly frozen in fear. If it wasn't for my accidental discovery that monkeys love the taste of CornNuts (apparently even more than skinny Jews), I would have been torn apart faster than a Wonka Bar by Augustus Gloop.

Now the reason there was a barrel of monkeys on a college campus is that I went to the University of Arizona and they had a large carnival every year known as the Spring Fling. The carnival seemed to get bigger each year, as did the campus, which is why they started adding animal acts. I guess someone thought college students would appreciate the irony of monkeys coming out of a barrel. This is probably the same person who thought Zima would become a lasting alternative to beer, forgetting the all too important fact that men like the taste of beer and Zima tasted like flat Mountain Dew. But, I was not your typical college male in that I didn’t like the taste of beer, so I took to Zima like freshman girls took to bulimia. I drank them mostly in my apartment before I went out for the night to get drunk early and then held a cup of beer at parties to keep up the illusion.

But, this was the night before Spring Fling and I had one too many Zimas along with a few jell-o shots, the perfect combination to give a man the false confidence to climb into a barrel of monkeys (and in most cases, a woman to take home a guy with simian features). Needless to say I was easily convinced by a few of my friends to climb up the ladder on the barrel and get a photo of the sleeping monkeys. As I climbed down from the top of the barrel, they seemed so peaceful I relaxed my hand a little and began to lose my grip on the ladder. Even though I landed on my feet, I let out a high-pitched shriek that had the same effect as Chevy Chase’s shout of “collld!” in the movie “Vacation” that woke up the motel and his wife (the incredibly sexy Beverly D’Angelo, whose character epitomized the phrase MILF to all young teenage boys in an innocent way, years before Craigslist made the word seem creepy).

Suddenly, the monkeys woke up and began to hop up and down, so I began to do the same, frantically trying to remember the movie “Tarzan: The Legend of Greystoke” hoping Christopher Lambert’s acting would jar some hidden monkey whisperer ability that was genetically embedded somewhere in my highly evolved animal brain (but probably lost after filling it with one too many Brady Brunch episodes as a kid). They looked at me and one of them threw a half-eaten banana at my feet. For some strange reason, probably due to my foggy headed state of inebriation, I took that as somewhat of a sign and I grabbed my packet of CornNuts that I had bought at the Circle K earlier and threw it in the direction of the monkeys.

As the CornNuts floated out from the package and landed at the monkeys’ feet, they pounced at the CornNuts and sniffed before devouring each nut (I’m not sure if a CornNut belongs in either the corn or the nut family), creating loud chomping sounds as their teeth clamped down on the ultra hard snack. This was my clue to hop on the ladder and climb to the top. It wasn’t until then that I noticed that I had dropped my camera upon falling into the barrel and would not be able to capture the moment for posterity.

Of course, my friends had run off and I was left to ponder my actions alone. I mostly came to the conclusion that jell-o shots should never be mixed with malt liquor. When I told my story to a cute girl later at a party in my apartment complex she didn’t believe me, but she did laugh and say “that story’s about as funny as a barrel of monkeys”. “They’re not that funny, but you do want to let sleeping monkeys lie. Now sleeping dogs, you can mess with. They’ll just roll over, shake their legs and look cute," I replied. As I made a panting sound and stuck out my tongue, she smiled and then kissed me. I looked into her playful eyes and almost forgot about my close encounter of the monkey kind earlier that night, until we both began to realize that I smelled like the inside of a bird cage. She suddenly began to believe my story and gave me her number, but the only clothes my opposable thumbs removed that night were my own.

The Survivor: A brief, short story

2009-09-02T00:54:00.000-07:00

They say it's the little things that get you, well I once killed a man for snoring. We were the only two survivors of a plane crash over the Andes Mountains. We had been there for over two months, living in the one small section of the jumbo jet that was not destroyed in the crash. Ironically, it was the First Class section, which I only caught a brief glimpse of during the actual flight as the blissfully ignorant flight attendants pointed me towards my seat in the back of the plane. I imagine the experience of being in First Class must have been quite different during the flight than it was for us after the crash. For one thing, the seats no longer reclined, and secondly, the body temperature dropping, appendage-numbing winds that swept through the now open-air feel to the cabin, could not be stopped at the press of a button.

After two months, my fellow survivor and I had consumed all the bags of peanuts and cheese and crackers from the plane. I soon entered a downward spiral and started to become delusional from the cold. The lack of any real sustenance had begun to make me crave meat of any kind. I debated my future action in my head for a few more weeks, but after living on a diet of maggots and condiments, I eventually let my survival instinct take over. I lunged at him in the cold, dark night and suffocated him with one of the little pillows that we kept from the plane's wrecked overhead compartments.

Luckily for me, there was a group of extreme skiers who happened to be heli-skiing in the area and they saw the small fire I had made in order to barbecue his ribs. I told the skiers who found me that I did what I had to do to survive, that I had developed a bond with this man who had shared the same horrific experience with me up until the day before; when I munched on his charbroiled thighs like they were the Colonel's original recipe. But, I swear he had the most annoying goddamn snore I have ever heard. It was this loud, honking Felix Unger type snore.

To tell you the truth, I wanted to kill him during the flight. Not only was he snoring loudly, but he fell asleep with his fat, dandruff filled head against my shoulder, forcing me to press my body up against the window the whole flight. He didn't respond to any of my subtle nudges and even drooled on my shirt. Luckily for me, the oxygen masks fell down over our heads, and the screaming of the terrified passengers knocked this disgusting sloth out of dreamland and off of my shoulder. Finally, as the plane started falling out of the sky, I felt like I could breathe again.

The End.

Thank you John Hughes.

2009-08-06T15:53:00.000-07:00

"And these children that you spit on. As they try to change their worlds. Are immune to your consultations. They're quite aware of what they're going through........"

Thank you John Hughes for holding a mirror up to our teenage selves and letting us realize that we are all, a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal.

No Trouble in Little Korea. or What’s up Kim Jong II?

2009-08-06T12:07:00.000-07:00

I heard that Al Gore was all set to free the hostages in N. Korea himself until former Pres. Clinton found out that the reporters happened to be a couple of hot asian women and offered to make the trip himself. After Laura Ling shook the former president's hand for coming to her rescue, he slipped her his card which simply read:
William J. Clinton Esq.- Capricorn.

As the door to the private jet closed behind Pres. Clinton, Kim Jong II began to run after the plane as it picked up speed down the runway shouting in a screetchy- voiced, broken-English wail “Take me with you. You promised I would get to meet one of the Kardashian girls. I don’t care which one. Bring me back a Kardashiaaaaan.” While gazing outside his window as the jet soared up through the clouds on its way to a country where any man or woman has the right to write a story lampooning any leader, no matter how powerful , Bill smiled, lit a cigar and said “I love it when a plan comes together.”

Upon landing in America, he walked to the back of the jet and woke up Sec. of State Hillary Clinton. She got up slowly while holding her head and in a groggy state said to him ”Huh. Where are we? Bill, Did I black out again? This happens every time I’m supposed to meet a foreign leader.” “It’s allright honey, the former president said in a soothing tone. I talked to Kim Jong II for you and we got Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee back safely. That’s what’s important. Now , let’s go reunite these girls with their loved ones. OK.” As the former president gazed into the eyes of his wife and current Sec. of State, he rubbed her hand gently and said “You might want to fix your hair a little before we meet the press though. “

As Laura Ling and Euna Lee embraced their families and told the members of the media about their harrowing experience in captivity , Bill watched in the background and began to feel the wave of freedom rush over him as well. He nudged the pilot of the plane and asked him how much gas was left in the tank. When the pilot told him that the plane was being re-fueled and could fly anywhere he wanted, he then asked the pilot if he’d like to accompany him to Las Vegas. Bill then smiled slyly and said, “I might have to broker a deal with Steve Wynn to free a couple of strippers from their g-strings at the Crazy Horse.”

Before writing this story, I had just spent a weekend hanging out with my family and an ex-baseball player who used to play for a New York team and had become friends with my father due to the fact that they both had at one time had homes in the same development and the fact that my father is the world’s youngest 72 year old. He told me a story about how former Pres. Clinton had visited the stadium while he was a player on the day of a game and one of his teammates, a well known veteran player on the team was preparing himself to discuss politics with Pres. Clinton while he, a young guy in his early 20’s at the time, was unfazed. As Pres. Clinton arrived in the clubhouse, he looked up from the video game he was playing and said “What’s up Bill?”

Pres. Clinton proceeded to sit down next to him and talk sports with him for a half hour. I have heard that one of Pres. Clinton’s greatest strengths is his ability to communicate with people as individuals. He engaged the younger player over the star player, because he was cool enough to appreciate his relaxed candor. As I listened to this story beng told to me, I could only imagine my new acquaintance, a laid back
guy from SoCal, had been dipping tobacco, as ballplayers tend to do, while in the company of a President. I’d like to think that he asked the former President what he’s been doing with himself now that he’s out of office and Pres. Clinton responded by cracking open a beer and with a hint of his once more prominent Arkansas drawl said, “I’m just livin’.
L I V I N.”

Maybe,Baby. or Love, American Movie Style

2009-07-21T02:51:00.000-07:00

I am watching the film Serendipity at three in the morning and it would truly be serendipiditous if at the same time my soul mate was also watching this movie. Maybe she is a bartender getting home from work after spending her Monday night serving drinks to banker types at a cheesy bar. Possibly, she is a single mom and woke up to feed her baby before turning on the TV. Or, she could be currently dating a guy that she is already thinking about breaking up with and got out of bed after a night of sex that has become routine, went into the living room, turned on the TV and started watching the movie.

I’d like to think she’s single, probably between 5’ and 5’5'',has brown hair, big brown eyes, and has the kind of unassuming beauty that people don’t notice at first glance. I’d like to think she has the kind of laugh that makes me want to send her funny texts at random moments in the day. Maybe we haven’t met yet. Maybe we have. Maybe we dated and the twisted timing of life broke us up too soon before we both could admit to the other how much we truly cared for each other. Maybe she is watching this movie as the new boyfriend is sleeping next to her. Maybe she is thinking about how I'm just dorky enough to be watching this at 3 a.m. and she has a momentary thought about texting me, but resists and feels an emptiness in the bedroom that she never felt with me.

Maybe she sat next to me in seventh grade English class, but I was too nervous to talk to her. Maybe I had one date with her when I was 24, and was still too inexperienced in dating to say the right things. Maybe she asked me to skate at the roller rink when I was 13 and I lied and told her I was going to play Donkey Kong because I didn’t see her beauty through her giant 80’s style glasses, and I secretly wanted to skate with the girl who had the developed chest of a 17 year old- except she was skating with my best friend, who was an athlete and didn’t have braces.

Maybe I walked right by her in the bar on the New Years Eve that I ended up kissing the woman at midnight who took me back to her place to fool around for a few hours before she would look at the clock after orgasming and utter the surprisingly blunt words ”I’ve had enough”, before kicking me out of her place. Maybe, she is the girl I used to work with who I had the office crush on and then a month later, forgot why. Maybe she is the 20 year old intern at my old sales job that I fooled around with after an office party only to find out a few months later that her college foray into lesbianism with a member of the field hockey team had not been just a "college thing" and that she was happily dating a woman named Joan(ok, I’m almost positive, she’s not the one.)

Maybe she was that brown-eyed girl that taught me that a night that starts out talking and people watching in a dive bar and ends up with us eating waffles in bed can be more fun than a week in the Bahamas with a girl that forces you to drink daiquiris all day and Mai Tai's all night in order to avoid the fact that you can't stand the sound of her voice anymore. Maybe she was the girl I felt many "moments" with during our relationship and that within 15 minutes of knowing each other we both were enamored with each other’s smiles and personalities and just knew there was a special connection between us, until suddenly, after a few months of enjoying every minute of each other's quirks, she disconnected from me.

Maybe it was the first girl I ever went home with in the city, who unlocked a passion in me that had been waiting to explode for years. She was moving out of town in a week and our dual sexual frustration had conspired to bring us together for one night of rolling around on her bed until I walked out foolishly without staying for the night and then forgot which apartment she was in when I got to the street and had the impulsive idea to knock on her door for one more round of rolling around.

Whoever it is, I hope she will realize the connection we currently have or will have after we meet, so I don’t have to go barging into her wedding shouting her name, before running away with her until we catch a city bus and then look at each other and wonder if we made a huge mistake.

Until then, I will continue to watch the occasional late night romantic movie, continue to go on match.com and continue to wait for that time when I bump into a cute girl with big brown eyes at an ice cream parlor, or she bumps into me. I just hope we’re not both engaged to other people at the time, because that can get messy. But, what’s a little ice cream spilled on your shirt when it comes to finding that one, true soul mate.

Fink’s Rules to making Summer Concerts Rule. Or The Do’s and Don’ts of De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da

2009-07-20T21:09:00.000-07:00

10. When going to an indoor concert, never wear flip flops or open-toed shows.

9 When going to an outdoor concert, apply facial sunscreen and bring sunglasses.

8. At an outdoor concert, if you are a man and have a flabbier chest than the girl you are with, do not walk around without a shirt on. It doesn’t matter how pumped you get when you anticipate Dave Mathews coming on stage or how hot it is outside, the rest of the crowd does not need to see your body in sunlight or any light. Conversely, if you spend half your life in a gym and pop steroids as much as you drink red bull, there is no need to be walking around without your shirt on. This also applies to half shirts, too-tight tank tops and mesh tank tops, but that goes without saying (Unless the concert is being held in a gym in Chelsea, then all of the above are acceptable.)

7. Now if you are a woman at an outdoor concert that is nowhere near a beach, do not show up in nothing but a bikini if your body jiggles like a paparazzi shot of Kirstie Alley as she shakes her arm at them like some sort of hairless Sasquatch walking away into the woods.

6. At any concert, if you are a twenty-something Asian dude, do show up with a huge afro, while wearing over-sized gold sunglasses, a vintage Beastie Boys tank top(1) and carrying a 1970’s plastic lunch box. Note: This look can only be pulled off by Asian men in their teens or early twenties.

5. If you are a guy at a Jonas Brothers concert with your girlfriend, (hopefully, that’s the reason you are there) do wear a Ramones or a Rancid shirt. If you are at a Rancid concert, do not wear a Jonas Brothers shirt. Actually, if you are at a Jonas Brothers concert, you probably shouldn’t wear a Jonas Brothers shirt, unless you plan on going to the Dateline NBC house after the show, where you will awkwardly explain to Chris Hansen that the condoms you brought were not for the fifteen year old you met at the concert and you were just being a good Samaritan by driving her home.

4. If you are at a concert and a beautiful girl walks up in the crowd alone and stands beside you while grooving to the music, do give her a slight glance and smile as you rock out yourself, but wait until she brushes up against you and you start talking before going into your patented Axel Rose dance.

3. If you are at a punk concert, do engage in the mosh pit if you have done it before and know when to rush the pit and release some of your pent up frustration on your fellow moshers. Don’t attempt to walk through it quickly after feeling the aggression of the music, if you are not prepared to do some shoving and if you bruise easily. In fact, if you have ever told someone that you bruise easily (me) or have gotten a hickey that lasted a week (me again), than you are probably not a candidate for moshing.

2. Whenever possible, no matter where the venue, always try to avoid spilling beer on the neck of a man who has a tattoo on his deltoid muscle that reads “Only God Can Judge Me.” The results will be dire and unless you have a joint and another beer immediately handy to offer up as a peace offering, you will probably not hear the last few songs of the show after your ears swell up from the violently swift and humiliating blow you will receive. You can be sure that he will not spill his beer while he spills your blood.

1. And last, but certainly not least, if you happen to find yourself at Summer Stage and you are in the section near the stage and Q Tip tells you to wave your arm along to his melodic beats, you wave that arm in the air and you wave it like you just don’t care.
You are lucky to be spending a beautiful summer day (for free) with your fellow New Yorkers sharing the experience of witnessing possibly the greatest performer in the history of hip-hop raising the roof to the sun.

If you follow these simple rules, your summer will surely rock.

1. I'd like to wish Adam Yauch (MCA) all the best and a speedy recovery with the treatable lymphnode illness he has(Jews have a hard time typing the word cancer, much less saying it) and I'm sure that he's got better doctors than Manny Mota and he will live way longer than Abe Vigoda.

Bad Samaritans. or Blinding me with science- fiction!

2009-07-08T02:09:00.000-07:00

While entering my apartment building today I noticed my senior citizen neighbor carrying a few bags and walking slower than usual. I saw a chance to be a Good Samaritan for the first time in a long time and offered to help carry his bags up to the fifth floor. Six minutes later, he arrived on the floor and insisted that I have a glass of water. As he was in another room putting away the bags, I noticed what appeared to be a very old Snapple bottle on a shelf next to other assorted chotchkies. After reading the label I realized that the bottle was about as old as my father and that the beverage company was apparently known as Schnaupple and was originally manufactured in Germany. I felt this urgent curiosity sweep over me that quickly got the best of me. When I unscrewed the cap, and wiped away the dust, this is what I read:

Schnaupple Real Fact #46
A Jew can hold more food in its beak than its belly.

A rush of questions filled my head: Was this man whom I had only previously nodded at in passing, a former Nazi? Was he just a twisted man who collected anti-Semitic objects? And then I briefly wondered what 70 year old iced tea tasted like before nervously putting it back on the shelf and shouting out to the man in the other room that I forgot I needed to take my dog for a walk. As I closed the door behind me, images from the movie “Marathon Man” flashed in my head and I imagined myself tied up to a chair in a poorly lit room with my neighbor dressed in all white as some sort of Dr. Mengele, forcing the 70 year old Schnaupple bottle into my mouth and repeatedly asking me ”Is it safe?” as I swallowed the horribly sour concoction.

I sat on my couch and began to calm down and think rationally again. He’s probably just some collector of weird artifacts. I’m sure not all of his chotchkies are racist mementos of a bygone era. I doubt he has any Hitler alarm clocks(Waaaake Up!!!) or Aunt Jemima bottles that show her with a big grin and a watermelon where her teeth are supposed to be. I grabbed my leash and took the dog down for a walk anyway, just to keep up appearances. When I reached the first floor I noticed that a woman who was getting her mail had dropped her wallet. I put my head down and kept on walking out the door. This is New York anyway, who says you have to be neighborly? Besides, look where that got Poland.

Now, you’re asking yourself “Fink, Why did you write a story like this? Is it because you’re Jewish and you think that entitles you to use your religion/ethnicity for cheap laughs? Aren’t you more of an expert on the every day trivial experiences of life? Why don’t you stick to writing about the things you know like teenage virginity, air hockey, and 80's music?” These are all valid points, but the idea for my story originated when I was drinking a Snapple and was looking at the cap and had a “eureka” moment that usually only occurs at 4 am when I’m trying to sleep or during the rare occasion that I smoke pot (every couple of months I come down with a bad bout of glaucoma).

The truth is, I love Snapple, and it was the first iced tea I had ever enjoyed, but if Snapple was a German company in the late 30’s, early 40’s, this would have actually been written on their caps. Except in 1943, most people wouldn’t have laughed at it. That is how fast the institutionalized hatred and Nazi propaganda of Jews being less than human was spread throughout Germany in the late 1930’s. Hell, there was institutionalized racism in parts of this country into the 1960’s. Of course it’s ridiculous, all racism is based on ignorance. It's usually passed down from generation to generation like luggage or genetic birth defects. Hating people because they have a physical characteristic is completely illogical and I doubt in the universe according to Gene Roddenberry there were non-pointy eared Vulcans that had to sit in the back of their Vulcan buses.

Harboring hatred towards people solely based on the fact that their religious beliefs are different than yours is also ridiculous, but we do have the right to think a group of people are idiots for believing every single word that their religion tells them. Like, believing that you might get 200 virgins in Heaven after you die, or that humans came to be on Earth 75 million years ago after Xenu the ruler of a planet in another galaxy, used psychiatrists to get all his people together before freezing them (probably after prescribing Diprivan), capturing their souls and taking the alien souls aboard a 1950’s style airplane to Earth. As crazy as that may seem, walking around with ash on your head, never experiencing the pleasure of a glazed ham, and wearing thick black suits and heavy coats in the summer time while isolating yourselves in a community in Brooklyn is pretty idiotic as well.

So, as long as idiots are not looking to harm other people, there is no reason to have actual hatred for them. Now, when someone has done other people harm they need to be punished by society, but when one person has done so much harm to so many people, well there needs to be a special sort of justice set aside for that person. It is definitely ironic that no one person has caused more suffering to more Jewish people than Bernie Madoff. If Hitler had not left this Earth in such cowardly fashion, he hopefully would have been drawn and quartered and left in the town square for every person to whack at with a stick daily. Something unique and original should be done as a form of punishment for Bernie Madoff, the greedy weasel who stole people’s life savings, even though he was already making milions off their investments.

My recommendations for punishing Madoff, as opposed to letting the taxpayers pay for him to be in prison for 150 years (his corpse will no doubt be left in the cell to set an example) is to make him the star of a Japanese game show. I watched the show “I Survived a Japanese Game Show” the other night and found it equally surreal and somewhat brilliant. The American contestants willingly submit to the will of the Japanese game show for the chance to take a trip to Japan and hope for some sort of poor-man’s “Big Brother” type of fame. The whole point of the Japanese game show is to humiliate its contestants and the host is like a Japanese version of Monty Hall, the host of the 1970’s game show “Let’s Make a Deal”. Only this man and the audience takes incredible glee in humiliating the contestants and threatening to send them back to America if they fail to survive the bizarre tasks like catching fallen milk off a conveyor belt with boxing gloves on while wearing a mouse costume and dark goggles.

Although for Madoff, I do believe we ought to step it up a notch and have him do things each week like sit in a dunk tank filled with jelly fish while dressed in nothing but a diaper and holding a rattle as the Japanese game show host calls up people from the crowd to try to knock him off his platform. The Japanese Monty Hall would probably tell him with a smile to stop acting like such a baby, or else he will have to breast feed from a wild boar. At that point his wife will be sent on stage dressed in a pig costume. I’m sure this would get the best ratings of any show on TV, but there will always be some people, who simply would not approve of this form of televised reality justice and would turn the channel back to CSI Miami, where they will shut their brain off for an hour in order to watch David Caruso give fake criminals their weekly comeuppance?

Midway through writing this essay, I turned my TV to the Twilight Zone marathon and happened to catch the last episode that was shown in the marathon, entitled “I am the Night. Color Me Black.” It was a brilliant tale of a white man in the early
1960’s about to be executed for shooting and killing another white man who was a racist cross-burner and due to the majority of the town’s blind hatred for the man in prison waiting to be hung, the sky stayed dark the morning of the execution and got darker after he was put to death. That was not only thought provoking but ironic considering that I was already in the process of putting down my thoughts on hatred. Is it possible that at 5:30 am, I’m stuck in my own personal “Daybreak Zone”? Luckily, the sun is beginning to shine through my window. I can’t believe I’m still up. Maybe I should switch to an herbal tea.

Trip her. She's drunk, and it's not Christmas.

2009-07-07T03:04:00.000-07:00

I read in the news today that Joyce DeWitt got arrested for DUI last night. In my sit-com soaked brain, I immediately imagined after getting pulled over that she said to the officer: “Officer, I know what this looks like, but you see this is just a misunderstanding. I grabbed my roommate’s glasses instead of mine off the counter when I left the house, which is why my vision is blurry and I swerved off the road and hit those stop signs.” To which the officer replies, “Sure. Look lady I’m guessing at the bar the beers were yours, and yours and yours. I’m going to take you to the station, and until someone posts bail for you, you will be staying in a not-so-lovely space, that just happens to need your face. Oh, and there will be no Jack Daniels to keep you company, too.”

Embracing Your Inner Dork. or Tina. Hey, How You Doin'.

2009-07-02T18:36:00.000-07:00

I just realized why women like 30 Rock so much, and why guys like Tina Fey, as well. Tina Fey's character basically gets to do every awkward thing that women fear they will do in front of a guy,(and what guys do do in front of women) like having the door fly open while she's sitting on the toilet on a first date. But, she's a controlling person who runs the staff of a TV show, so in order to make her character more likeable to everyone; she is the woman whose social life is always in upheaval. It's basically the same thing that Holly Hunter personified when she was the perfectionist, yet spunky news producer in “Broadcast News”. If overachieving women with type-A personalities who have achieved incredible success at an early age career wise, weren't loveable dorky former childhood nerds, they would appear to be bitches, total bitches actually, (see any woman who runs a fashion magazine).

This is why she was smart enough to make her character a hyper-reality version of herself. She is probably a little quirky, and assuredly a very funny woman who ran a live TV show for years, but I'm pretty sure she can talk to men without accidentally cupping their balls in an elevator, or something quirky to that effect. Lucille Ball portrayed a wildly popular goofy character that was funny and got herself into many sticky situations, but the audience laughed at her and said "That's our Lucy", as opposed to watching Liz Lemon and going "Oh My God, that's so me". Tina Fey has become a one-woman "Seinfeld".

But, the so-called point of my story is that if you are going to be a walking with a coffee cup down the street while checking your blackberry and fitting in gym workouts in between meetings- before taking flights back and forth for a day to give presentations-type of woman; then it helps if you don't also try to come off as being perfect to men and the people in your life. People like that are just naturally presumed to be assholes. Luckily, most people are not assholes,and we all have a hidden dork side that makes us unique. Putting up facades only works for buildings(Wow, that sounds like something Tony Robbins would say. I guess I'm extra dorky when writing about being dorky).

I think one of the big differences between men and women is men pretty much want to forget about their day at work(men expect the people they work with to be idiots and are not surprised by it) and women can't leave behind the fact that their counterpart would show up to an important meeting dressed like she's trying to pick up a sailor on shore leave. If my grandmother died and I got fired that day and I had a first date, I would smile and act like nothing happened, because I know how important a good first impression is to women. I had a woman break a first date with me recently and then the makeup date a week later and give me a rain check both times because it was actually raining and she didn't want her curly hair to frizz up.

That's why it helps to show up to first dates with the occasional bloody nose or to spill a drink on your own white t-shirt and laugh about it on a date. We, and I'm speaking for all men (not just NYC dorky, cute Jewish guys with warm smiles, endearing eyes and a surprisingly hot body, who exude a laid back, go-with-the-flow attitude, and enjoy making women laugh as much as orgasm) find that totally cute and adorable and will be smitten every time. Plus it helps, if you can fling off your glasses and pony tail and reveal an even hotter version of yourself when we're not expecting it.

My Face My Book or SereNitee NhowW.

2009-07-02T12:39:00.000-07:00

I was on Facebook today sending emails and making comments to Facebook friends(guy I haven’t seen since the sixth grade, and girl I met at a party three years ago but haven’t seen since) and I had to fill out these word puzzle security checks. It’s bad enough that I have to do that when signing into Yahoo occasionally, but I’ve noticed that I am being asked to do this every other time I comment on someone else’s comment(there’s way too much commenting going on) in order to send someone an email on Facebook after already being signed in. What is Facebook the airport check-in of social networking now? I have to spell out MiscterMytczlePlick in order to send my dangerous clip of cats falling off a treadmill.

What is actually the point of these so-called security password oral puzzles? All it’s proving is that I can read jumbled English. I’ve already put in my password, so it’s either me or some lucky cyber thief who gets to read annoying forward emails from my mom on my Yahoo account. All these time consuming word puzzles do is frustrate the person whose account it is. A cyberthief would have to be the laziest thief in the world to give up after seeing the letters NanCey DrouGh and not being able to re-type them. All this does is frustrate the actual user who can’t believe they have to retype a new group of letters(written even smaller) because they didn’t press the Caps button while typing.

I think I know who came up with this security system. Osama Bin Laden. It makes perfect sense. He’s hiding out in his duplex cave somewhere in the hills of Afghanstan, watching re-runs of M*A*S*H on his TV, bored out of his mind waiting for the cable guy to come and upgrade him to Digital cable; so Bin Laden figures what better and cheaper way to fuck with Americans than to slowly drive them crazy and make them pissed at the institutions they hold so dear. And so, our precious online security checks were designed by the one man who poses the greatest threat to our collective security. oSammHnA ViN LaddeMn.

It’s Amazing, It’s Stupendous, But it’s No Bullshit. Or is it?

2009-07-02T04:17:00.000-07:00

Gerry Blank, 14, was on his way to school when he saw a "ball of light" heading straight towards him from the sky. A red hot, pea-sized piece of rock then hit his hand before bouncing off and causing a foot wide crater in the ground.The teenager survived the strike, the chances of which are just one in a million - but with a nasty three-inch long scar on his hand. He said: "At first I just saw a large ball of light, and then I suddenly felt a pain in my hand.

Gerry’s mother did not believe the boy’s story at first and demanded to see the crater herself. “That boy spends every waking moment in his room doing God knows what. The one time he takes the garbage out without me asking him to, now that’s a one in a millon chance” , said Mrs. Judy Blank. After neighbors arrived on the scene, Gerry noticed the burn marks on his right hand and raised his left fist to the sky before shouting “Why God? Why Me?”

Gerry then ran into his home and locked himself in his room for the next twenty-four hours. Gerry’s mother called the local police in order to remove him from the room. Sgt. Frank O’Leary was the first officer on the scene. “I knock on the door asking the kid to let me in and I don’t get a response, so I tell him to open the door or else he won’t get his name in the papers for witnessing the meteor. See, I took a psychology course at the juco before joining the academy. But, the kid shouts at me to jam my baton all the way in an area that I know it won’t fit, so I bust down the door. Well, how do I put this, the kid is having his way with a pillow and seems to have cut a conveniently placed hole in the Miss November fold out, which he has placed on top of the pillow. Now the door has slammed down in front of him, but the kid is still going at it like a jackhammer. I gotta give it to him. That’s dedication. He also had his right hand covered in Bugs Bunny band-aids,” recalled Sgt. Frank. O’Leary.

After being pulled kicking and screaming by two police officers from his room, while wearing nothing but one sock and clutching the torn upper torso of Miss November, Gerry then proceeded to erupt into a profanity laced tirade before bursting into tears. “My one in a million boy. Looks like you just became the one millionth customer in your own amusement park,” shouted Mrs. Judy Blank. After a few weeks Gerry’s scar had healed completely and he bought a telescope for his room, to further pursue his newfound interest in Astronomy. “Hey, my mom took away my computer and my magazines, so I needed something to do”, said Gerry Blank. “Luckily, there’s plenty of heavenly bodies for me to discover.”

Mo Money. No Problem. or Youth is Wasted on the Young

2009-06-30T15:59:00.000-07:00

As I sit here at the end of my bed typing this, I’m being bitten on my legs by a mosquito which I can swear is giving off the faint sounds of insect laughter while buzzing nonchalantly around my room, as if it is checking it out to see if it (or me) is worth renting for the night. My minor itching and feelings of helplessness makes me long to experience just a bit of the carefree existence of my youth, or at least the temporary moments of childhood enthusiasm I used to have for the kind of things that would barely register with me as an adult. Remember the feeling you would get when you saw your report card in the mail, well the Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes and the American Family Publishers envelopes gave me the exact opposite feeling and was the closest thing to a “Ralphie” from “A Christmas Story” moment that I would enjoy. I’ve actually in my 30’s recently rediscovered the chocolate malt-goodness of rich, creamy Ovaltine and have incorporated it into my nighttime pre-sleep routine. Usually after I have given up trying to kick the dog off the bed and am finished with watching late night sit-coms, sports highlights and porn(in no particular order).

I can see Ed McMahon now looking up at me from the thick manila envelope, as I bring it into my home’s all white living room to get down to business. Now, my house was the house that every kid hung out at in the neighborhood and my den was where we played, ate, watched TV, caused mild mischief, the occasional ruckus and basically lived in after school. Right next to it was the room with white carpeting and a white couch, which was my parents way of designing a room that would not only show couch stains but footprints as well, which is why we rarely went in there. It was hardly a lived-in room, not much fun to be in and since my mom basically let us turn the den into the neighborhood playground, we obliged her request to avoid the white room(although I don’t remember her spending much time there either).

After tearing open the Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes envelope, I would carefully go through it and look at all the possible prizes I would be winning. I’m not sure what I thought I would be doing at eleven years old with a 30 ft. yacht in the New Jersey suburbs, but I was pretty sure I would probably be taking it out to the Caribbean with either Heather Locklear or Heather Thomas(1) during my winter break. I remember there were different prize choices and the envelopes contained these golden seals that I would carefully place on the prize packages I wanted while plotting what I would do with my inevitable winnings. It definitely gave off a “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” golden ticket vibe. Only, I didn’t grow up in a hovel with both sets of bedridden grandparents(God, Charlie really did deserve that chocolate factory for all the bed pans he must have removed), I grew up in a spacious suburban home on the nicest block in the nicest small town in Bergen County, NJ.

As I closed the mailbox and walked back into the house, I knew it was just a matter of time before I saw Ed McMahon or whoever gets sent to hand me my oversized poster board check and inform me of the fabulous prizes and vacation get-aways that I have won. It just seemed logical that I would be winning some prizes since I did everything in the instructions and mailed back the envelope in a timely manner. Of course I would share it with my mom and dad, who even though divorced had managed to keep me living the good life in the house I grew up in (not that I realized what a gift that was at the time). I’d get my kid sister a new ET doll. Apparently, someone ripped the stuffing out of the old one and told her that it “went home”. My older bother would get a new humidifier to keep his room from smelling like an eight grade gym locker room. Most of the money and prizes would be for me to enjoy and to share with my friends, so they would know how cool and generous I truly was.

Unfortunately, I never did hear back from the people at the Publisher’s Clearing House, which probably was a good thing, because too much of a good thing at a young age can be a bad thing (I think Yogi Berra might have said that once.). Although, what made filling out those sweepstakes forms so fun was in believing that I was definitely going to win if I followed the proper steps, which is somewhat of a model for adult life. I might be sitting in a tiny apartment talking to my dog while rubbing calamine lotion on my legs, but if I keep on writing and doing what I do best, I’ll one day be sitting in a large house, smiling at my wife while begging her to rub calamine lotion on my legs.

1. In case you are reading this and are under the age of thirty-five, you may not remember that almost every twelve year old boy in the early 80’s had swimsuit posters on their wall of either Heather Locklear, Heather Thomas or Christie Brinkley. Christie Brinkley jumping into the pool in the film “Vacation” will forever be embedded in my mind. Now, Heather Locklear and Heather Thomas were the two blondes that simultaneously starred on TV shows at the same time. Heather Thomas was on “The Fall Guy” with Lee Majors, formerly the Six-Million Dollar Man, and had amazing blonde wavy 80’s hair and a body like the woman in the “Hot for Teacher” video. Heather Locklear was on T.J. Hooker with William Shatner, of Capt. Kirk fame, and had blonde wavy 80’s hair and a smile that made you think she was the sweetest woman in the world (this is pre-Tommy Lee). The Heathers' posters made the walls of many a 13 year old boy much cooler to be in. I had no posters on my wall which led me to being a late bloomer until I started getting the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue at 14.

Finkle Got Fingered or Never Drink And Write

2009-06-27T01:27:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when I go out for drinks without eating dinner, I don’t get my usual mellow buzz from the Capt. and ginger ale’s that normally sustain me throughout the night. Instead, the alcohol goes straight to my head and after a few drinks I feel it in my stomach, which is rare for me. Ever since I stopped drinking Jack and coke’s years ago I hardly ever get hung over anymore. But tonight I realized the perfect cure for a hangover, when I came home with my stomach rumbling as if I had a little Capt. Morgan pirate poking me from inside my belly while shouting “aaargggh, let me out you scrawny Jew boy”(1)
Luckily, I turned on HBO and “Freddie Got Fingered” happened to be playing. Within five minutes of first hearing Tom Green's voice, I was running into the bathroom. After another five minutes of facing the bowl on my knees before emptying my stomach, I splashed water on my forehead, brushed my teeth and noticed that the coloring was starting to come back into my face. After a few Tums, I was feeling back to normal and the headaches had completely subsided. I would have slept like a baby too, if not for Tom Green appearing in my dreams with an umbilical chord taped to his belly button, chasing me around his house and shouting at me to eat his cheese sandwich.

(1) I have not done the proper research to validate whether or not pirates have showed any anti-Semitism in the past. I just figured if you’re living on the high seas in the Middle Ages and you enjoy raping, pillaging, and plundering, you probably don’t encounter too many Jews. Historically, Jews only spend long periods of time in ships unless they are shaped like an arc or they offer some form of shuffleboard on the lido deck. So, I want to reiterate that I did not want to offend the descendants of pirates, I just made the general assumption that there would have been more than a few Jewish jokes told on those ships, especially while the pirates were counting the gold that they stole while raping, pillaging and plundering.

Ma Ma Se, Ma Ma Sa, Ma Ma Coo Whaaa?

2009-06-25T15:48:00.000-07:00

I know that I should wait a few days before saying this but somewhere in Heaven there is a luminously beautiful blonde angel named Farrah who is wearing a red bathing suit, sitting on a cloud and is saying "What the hell?" Are you kidding me? I can't even get top billing today? I fought bravely against a long, excruciating emtionally and physically painful illness. And to make matters worse, I take Ryan Freakin O'Neal back as a way of creating the ultimate "Love Story" ending for my life and now when people think of June 25, 2009, all they will ever think about is Michael Jackson." To which Ed McMahon puts down his drink, lets out a big laugh and tells her "Hey, I just became a third banana. Hereeeeeeeeee's Michael!"

As for Michael Jackson, I'm sure most people will think of him the way he was when he was the most dynamic child performer of all-time and his early Off The Wall/Thriller years. As opposed to his later freakish physical transformation and his exposing of his emotionally stunted/warped personality to the public while spending a "Dangerous" amount of time with young boys, before deciding to pay a woman to have some for him. As with any acclaimed singer who dies before their time, it is always the music that lives on.

Gullible’s Travels or Say it Ain’t Sosa

2009-06-22T05:13:00.000-07:00

I heard the news on TV tonight that Sammy Sosa did indeed take steroids. I was left in stunned, disbelief and I could feel a lump in my throat when I went outside and noticed for the first time that the moon was actually not made of cheese. Luckily, I wandered into a bar to get a drink when these women came up to me and were being really friendly, one even sat on my lap. After the dangerously titled song “Pour Some Sugar on Me” ended (I can't imagine the bee stings one would be asking for by walking through the park while covered in sugar), all three ladies were so enthralled by the details of my job as a media sales assistant that they offered to take me to a private room that they promised would provide a more intimate setting for the four of us to get to know each other better.

As I looked into my wallet, I noticed that I only had one dollar in it and before I lifted my head back up, my new friends had left my side like mice when the lights get turned on. Something seemed weird about this place and I began to think that maybe these women weren’t putting themselves through dental school by working there at night(you would think that dental students wouldn't be missing any teeth of their own). I got up and left and decided to walk back to my apartment. As I reached my street a slovenly dressed man was sitting on the pavement next to my corner grocery store. After I went to the ATM in the store, I handed the man precisely the seven dollars and eighty-one cents he had asked for. As I walked away I was comforted in knowing that he would indeed be warming his stomach with a shrimp salad sandwich at the diner down the block.

After tossing and turning in bed that night, I felt the need to put on my Sosa jersey one more time. How could a man who had hit so many home runs decide to use steroids all of sudden at the twilight of his career? It didn’t add up. I felt confused and somewhat betrayed, just like the time I had a blind date and she felt my face in the crowded restaurant before slapping it and pretending to be married(she refused to admit that she knew our mutual friend Sally). I awoke at 4 am to the sound of the buzzer going off in my apartment. I stumbled over to the intercom and pressed the button asking who it was. The man shouted “Sammy Fucking Sosa. Now, let me in, I forgot my keys.”

After buzzing in Mr. Sosa, I couldn’t believe that he had lived in my building and I had never seen him. You would think he could afford to at least live in a doorman building. The temptation was too much for me and I had to peer through the peep hole as I heard his foot steps getting closer. It kind of reminded me of waiting for Santa to arrive down my chimney, except Santa never stopped on the fourth floor of an apartment to pee out a window before yelling at his roommate to open the door. After witnessing this disgusting behavior and hearing the vulgarity that spewed out of his mouth, I felt like a fool for ever taking pride in being his fan. My only consolation was that I didn’t live next to Barry Bonds.

A Moment of Wonder

2009-06-16T01:45:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning and saw Zac Efron's face in the mirror and freaked out thinking I was a teenager again. I had thoughts of living in my mom’s house, feeling nervous around girls and driving a Buick Skyhawk to school. After I splashed water on my face I noticed that it began to look more like Mathew Perry's and I started to cry thinking I had been transported ten years into the future and had gotten too old to marry the girl next door and get my career off the ground. Finally, as I wiped away the tears and shook my head, the image blended back into that of my own. I relaxed and smiled, knowing that the past was behind me and the future lay ahead; knowing that I was still me, Fred Savage.

The Brooklyn Bodegas can really shoot or I got a cramp in my footnote

2009-06-16T00:43:00.000-07:00

I just read the New Jersey Nets are going to redesign their arena in Brooklyn to "evoke Brooklyn like never before", which I can only assume means that the building will be a giant bodega, and instead of hotdogs and beer, they will be selling queso cheese and weed. I would also presume that the players will now have to grow scruffy beards and in the place of headbands on their heads they will have DJ style headphones hung around their necks that serve no purpose.(1)

1. I debated whether to go with the old Italian John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever/any Danny Aiello role ever stereotype, or the current young hipster stereotype. Since I have encountered much more of the latter over the past decade working in film production and my current job, as well as living in the all-Dominican Sunset Park, Brooklyn, I chose hipster. I’m sure in a future blog I’ll be an equal opportunity ragger(not sure if that’s a word) and rag on the hipster’s mortal enemy, the young preppy guy that moved straight from the NJ suburbs into a doorman building in Murray Hill(in Manhattan) where he proceeds to exemplify deuchebaggery(definitely should be a word) by popping his polo shirt collar before eating at Pinkberry and heading out to really cheesy bars that play music from before they were born, because they know that their girls just wanna have fun.

I,as most people are, am somewhere in between hipster and preppy and since I remember the 80’s, 90’s and today, have learned to enjoy a more relaxed lifestyle. As a single man in his 30’s, this involves meeting women without having to ever play beer pong, learning to appreciate weekend naps almost as much football and of course writing the world’s longest footnote.

I'll have a Mocha Frappucino with soy milk and some fabric softener, please.

2009-06-10T15:20:00.000-07:00

Today I had a very Harvey Pekaresque epiphany while putting myself through the hopefully rare trauma of going to a NYC laundromat at 3 pm on a Wednesday. I realized that the only difference between people who regularly do laundry during the daytime and whose minds have become used to this 2 hours you’ll never get back, “time to make the donuts” weekly routine and the people who seem to hang out leisurely at the Starbucks next door long after their coffee is enjoyed, is a laptop and a liberal arts degree(although in this economy it might just be the laptop). I am not going to expand on the profundity of this statement as any more in-depth analysis will just expose my University of Arizona education.

Def-Con 5 or It's Always Darkest Before the Dawn.

2009-06-09T21:56:00.000-07:00

I just learned that Visa is everywhere you want to be, except if you want to use it to pay off your Con Edison bill, then you are in the dark which is where no one wants to be. Apparently, the good people at Con Edison don’t take credit cards to pay their bills, but the credit service they use that charges you a fee does, except they only take Mastercard, Discover Card and Diner’s Club.

How can the energy company not take credit cards as payments, when the cable company even does? Anytime the cable company appears more customer friendly than you, something is seriously wrong. We’re talking about the industry that randomly decided that access to the internet should add about $40 to your monthly bill, even though all they are doing is providing access to it, they are not coming up with the sites or services on the internet. This is like paying a $40 dollar fee to enter the mall on a Saturday and then go to the food court and stores and pony up whatever it costs for jeans, shoes and chocolate covered pretzels.

Every once in a while a financial emergency will occur where you will not be able to access your bank account and need to use your credit cards. Who cares that I used my Visa card to buy a cool new pair of jeans and got a good deal on shirts at Express for Men if I won’t be able to see what they look like at home after my lights are turned off. The reason Con Edison is able to do this is that even more than the cable companies, they have absolutely no competition. I would rather hear that there was no way to use a credit card at all, than have them refer me to a credit agency , wait on hold for ten minutes and have a guy tell me that they don’t take my American Express or my Visa card. Of course the guy dealing with customers has heard thousands of people have a “Me,Myself & Irene” kiniption, in which the drum beats go off in your head, so there’s almost no point in having one, except to let out much needed frustration, in which case the guy will call you sir and politely and calmly let you know you’re screwed.

The thing that will set off the kiniption in anyone who has ever had this experience is hearing something ridiculous like “well, we do take Discover Cards and Diner’s Club Cards sir”. First of all, taking only Discover Cards and Diner’s Clubs cards is the equivalent to going to a supermarket or neighborhood deli and only seeing Mr. Pibb’s and Tabs available.
So, long blog short, I’m going to try and get one more extension or maybe sell my body until I can get the money into my bank account and pay off the bill. I might be writing my next blog at night by candle light, or I can just get a Diner’s Club card and live in restaurants, which might work for dates but women would eventually wonder why I always want to sleep at their place.

5 is the evilest number.

2009-06-09T03:44:00.000-07:00

I picked my five top dictators of the day on Facebook and went with Hitler( I'd never be allowed in temple again if I left him off), Napolean(you gotta respect someone whose name became a psychological disorder), Ghengis Khan(hello, his name inspired Star Trek's Khaaaaaan), Idi Amin(so warped(1) he was rumored to have eaten people) and finally, I went with the surprise top choice of Oliver Cromwell.

Cromwell had panache(and a set of iron balls). After he died and Charles II was re-established as King, they dug up Cromwell’s body after a year and hung and drawn and quartered his long dead corpse. Now that is how a dictator is supposed to go. You’re so despised that they dig up your body and kill you twice.

Stay tuned for my Facebook top five Clog Dancing troupes.

1. As a copywrite by day, I just couldn't bring myself to write the tempting Amin/mean pun.

A weed grows in the Garden State or Reality TV Bites

2009-06-09T03:32:00.000-07:00

I just saw a link on Facebook to an article in Gawker.com about the First Housewives of New Jersey’s Danielle Staub. You know it's not a flattering article when the opening line labels you a former "coke whore". First of all, shouldn't the emphasis be on the "former" instead of coke whore, as in Danielle Staub, the woman that failed at being a succesful coke whore and then moved to New Jersey to to end up personifying an extra from a Sopranos episode.
Anyone who knows anything about this country knows that Florida leads the nation in “former” coke whores and “current” strippers. New Jersey leads the nation in producing actors, comedians, one iconic rock star, one average hair band(1) that somehow stayed popular years after the grunge era hit, and people who grew up to realize the universal truth that no town needs three malls.

1. I think it’s safe to say that more people who read this will be offended by the fact that I referred to Bon Jovi as an average hair band than the fact that I referred to a housewife as a coke whore.

She's my lady.

2009-06-08T00:05:00.000-07:00

Another night goes by and as the light bounces off the brick wall outside my apartment window I awaken to the fact that I am alone. I can still feel the imprint she left on her side of the mattress. It’s only been a week but I’ve yet to remove the strands of hair that I continue to find on my comforter, which I guess gives me a false sense of comfort, as if she was still here with me. Living alone when you’re used to being alone is a normal feeling; you go about your day, you look at web sites while bored at work, you meet friends for dinner, you come home, send text messages while watching TV and then do it all again the next day.

When I came home from work to the empty apartment I started to call out her name before stopping myself, which is when I realized that I was just me again, and that I had to get used to being me, and not me and her. That was a shock to my already wounded psyche. After the first two days without her, even little things like taking a shower and not having her in the bathroom there with me, reminded me of how much time we actually spent together. After five days of her being gone, I found myself doing some of the things we used to do. I even took a stroll through the park alone, which replaced the feeling of loneliness with a feeling that I was becoming pathetic. Before her I used to do whatever I wanted to, whenever I wanted to. I could go out with my friends drinking after work and stay out until four in the morning.

What the hell is wrong with me? Why does my happiness depend on her? Do you think she is feeling sad because she’s not with me right now? She’s probably having the god damn time of her life and I’m following other couples down the street and reminiscing about us. I can’t believe I’ve become so dependant on cohabitating with her. I mean she’s not that perfect and alot of times I feel like she doesn't even listen to me when I talk to her.

The really sad thing is that she hasn’t even left me for good, she’s just on vacation. I can’t believe how much I fell to pieces after a one-week separation. Next time my sister asks to take Lady away to her house in the country, I might have to go with them. God, I need a girlfriend.

Love yourself, within reason.

2009-06-07T21:25:00.000-07:00

Here is a horrible dilemna, that I hope very few people will have to ponder in their life. What would you rather find out about a family member, that they committed suicide in a hotel room in Thailand, or that they were found hung in a Bangcock hotel room’s closet after attempting autoerotic asphyxiation? I don’t think anyone should be surprised that David Carradine's death was not a suicide, as it was initially reported. It doesn't take a CSI team to realize that any man who is found in a hotel room in Bangcock with rope around his genitals is not exactly listening to a Smiths album and wallowing in misery. As David Caruso or any partner of Sarah Marshall might say "Atleast he still had the Kung-Fu grip".

I feel the need to say that I am a big fan of David Carradine as an actor as he had an on-screen persona which seemed to transcend the screen. He seemed to be one of those people that you would want to grab a beer with and listen to his stories about his life and career. The kind of guy that seemed to truly live life and not just walk the Earth(no pun intended-mostly). His death left me thinking about some things, like the appeal of autoerotic asphyxiation. I understand sexual kinks and the psychological need that certain people have to get off in different ways (as opposed to the norm of meeting a woman at a cheesy bar after reluctantly singing along to “We Built This City”, only to get her back to your fifth floor apartment and having her grind on you for an hour before she passes out and you realize that you need a new pair of jeans.)
Autoerotic asphyxiation. Even the name sounds scary (yet somewhat badass) but anything you do that involves asphyxiation, by definition, can not be too good for you. The point of this is to tie something around your neck and limit the oxygen to your brain as you are about to orgasm. And I assume to get that extra special feeling you tie a rope around your balls. I don’t know what’s crazier, cutting off the oxygen to your brain or to your testicles(imagine wearing a 5 year old’s tightie whities). The impressive/amazing thing about this story is that David Carradine was 72 years old. Shouldn't you just be glad you still have enough prostate to masterbate and have regular, non-testing your body's limits-sex at that age. Hell, I'm 38 and all I need to do to break my window when I orgasm is to go three weeks without masterbating. Any adult male whose ever gone three weeks or longer without masterbating(probably due to an injury resulting in a lower body cast), will know that you become so sensitive that your hand will feel like the inside of a vagina.

The most shocking part of this story was the fact that David Carradine was reportedly found in the closet. This means he was so into trying to pull off this act that he used the bar in the closet to tie the rope to and was not even able to watch any porn while he was polishing the bishop. I can imagine him suspended in the air standing on a chair while wearing a homemade nutcracker, before realizing he was not able to see the movie he had ordered in his hotel room(I’m guessing something with a local theme like “One Night In Bangcock”). If he’s going for the ultimate masterbatory experience and did not involve porn in any way then he truly had reached the ultimate level of spiritual power like his character in "Kung-Fu: The Series". I guess the moral of this story(if there is a moral) is that autoerotic asphyxiation, like bench pressing 100 pounds over your body weight, should only be attempted with a spotter(make that a team of highly trained spotters).

Movies for Guys Who Don’t Like Books

2009-06-07T21:21:00.000-07:00

AMC stands for American Movie Classics but I think it’s time to finally drop the classics from their name and call it the American Movie Channel, or better yet, go with MTDCS(Movies That Don’t Completely Suck) as in “Hey honey, True Lies is on AMC now, that’s a movie that doesn’t completely suck”. “True Lies” is a pretty enjoyable movie, but no movie with Tom Arnold in it, especially a film that has him playing an FBI agent, could ever be considered a classic(one great Jamie Lee Curtis dancing on a stripper pole scene does not a classic make). The closest thing they have been airing lately to a classic on this channel is the film “Roadhouse”.
Patrick Swayze must have told his agent after Dirty Dancing to find him the exact opposite movie role. The only one being put in a corner during this flick is a redneck that is thrown there by Sam Elliott. It’s definitely a movie for guys who like movies with implausible plots, although it lacks the memorable dialogue of another bad-ass cult film “They Live”, which has pro-wrestler “Rowdy” Roddy Piper uttering the legendary phrase “ I have come here to chew bubble gum and kick ass: and I’m all out of bubble gum”. This line is a favorite of many men who were teens in the 80’s (although I was probably quoting “Weird Science” at the time, which is a whole other blog)
As I write this “Die Hard 2” is currently playing on AMC, and further proving my lack of classics theory, considering I barely remember any part of that movie, except for the fact that it took place at an airport and Bruce Willis blew a lot of shit up while saving his wife again (no wonder they were divorced by the next film, he was driven to alcoholism while coping with the severe back pain he must have endured from falling off skyscrapers and planes every 2 years). Before I write an eighth grade book report on how the original “Die Hard” spawned every generic action movie that followed it, I’ll just say that Alan Rickman’s performance in “Die Hard” was indeed AMC worthy as opposed to Charlton Heston’s performance in “True Lies” which was NRA worthy. I once had an idea for a movie that should never have aired on a station called American Movie Classics. It was called “Die Hard Jew: Again With the Dying” and would definitely be worthy of a station for movies that don’t completely suck.

Gali G. WTF is going on or Gay Germans can’t fly.

2009-06-01T14:13:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty sure that Eminem suffered a relapse after Sasha Baron Cohen landed ass first on his face at the MTV Movie Awards and stormed out of the auditorium to down a bottle of Klonopin, or hallucinate on Mescaline, drink a few dozen shots of gin, then wipe off his face and chin, kick his mom right in her shin, try and lose his silly grin, deal with homophobia rumors all over again and rap about never becoming a has-been.

Hey, It's Enrico Zambrano. or Three Strikes and Two Balls.

2009-05-28T05:17:00.001-07:00

I was watching SportsCenter tonight and saw pitcher Carlos Zambrano completely lose it during a Cubs game. After the umpire threw him out of the game for arguing a call at the plate, Zambrano jerked back his thumb mimicking him, and seemed to shout "you're out!.” Zambrano then threw the ball into the stands. What happened next was even more bizarre. Zambrano grabbed a nearby bat and ran up to the Pirates' batboy, challenging him to a duel (in his enraged state he had assumed the skinny teenager was indeed a pirate). When the batboy shrugged his shoulders, Zambrano muttered something about the boy having scurvy and leapt on to the top of the dugout.

Zambrano let out a guttural scream and ripped off the shirt of his uniform (revealing a gold lightening bolt tattoo down the middle of his chest). He then ran up the stairs and climbed up into the announcer’s booth. Zambrano grabbed the microphone in the now empty booth and gazed out at the packed stadium. Carlos Zambrano then raised his fist in the air and proceeded to sing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game”, bastardizing not only the song (as has been become the custom at Wrigley Field) but the English language as well.
Suddenly, as Zambrano began to shout at the fans to root, root, root for the Cubbies, Cubs manager Lou Piniella appeared next to him in the booth. Piniella put his arm on Zambrano’s shoulder. Zambrano looked into Piniella’s eyes and Piniella said “It’s all right Carlos. It’s ok. The umpire knows you didn’t mean anything by it.” Zambrano looked into Piniella’s eyes and dropped the microphone. His massive shoulders slumped and his expression turned into that of a boy who knew he had let down his father. His eyes began to fill up with tears and Piniella (affectionately known as Sweet Lou) hugged him tight and said “Let’s go home Carlos.”

The cameraman went back and forth from capturing the two hugging in the announcer’s booth to showing people in the stands feeling the emotion. Within a few seconds the crowd erupted in cheers and began chanting “Carlos, Carlos, Carlos”. But Zambrano and Piniella had already left the announcer’s booth and could be seen by another cameraman walking slowly down a ramp together, heading out of Wrigley Field (I could swear I thought I saw Piniella handing Zambrano a Lifesaver.) The SportsCenter host then said to stay tuned for a report on an incident involving Terrell Owens and a waiter at a Chili’s in Buffalo.

Brooke Shields Shills for Eyelashes

2009-05-27T02:02:00.000-07:00

I just saw an ad for a prescription drug for people with eyelash deficiencies. Eyelash deficiencies- nobody has eyelash deficiencies; they have eyesight deficiencies or lung deficiencies, or a deficient kidney. If you're taking a prescription drug to grow eyelashes longer, it means you are the laziest woman or glam rocker in the world.