I had a conversation with one of my more favorite cohorts the other day about a particular business with which we are both familiar. We are both incredulous at how many bad decisions are made on a daily basis and how no consequence ever seems to come of it. At one point, he dubbed it insanity per the definition of “doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.”

Maybe it’s masochism, but I am sometimes compelled to pore over the shit that is purveyed to women about men. Insipid, shallow, stereotypical drivel like: 5 Types of Guys to Avoid at all Costs and 10 Things he’s Thinking when he Sees you Naked.

Now, do I agree that Bluetooth- and popped-collar multi-polo shirt-wearing douchenozzle cuntbags aren’t worth a woman’s time? Yes. Absolutely. But this article doesn’t share anything insightful at all … and it doesn’t call women out for their habitually stupid behavior of going for exactly the guys they complain about. All the while these insane — per definition above — women decry the lack of good men out there, while intentionally overlooking the ones that fit the criteria they condemn the dipshits for lacking.

(more…)

So, bread is up to $7 a loaf at Whole Foods. I’ve been wringing my hands about this tidbit for a while, so if I’ve already circulated my discontent, I apologize to my reader.

I heard a rumor it is possible to bake one’s own bread. Hogwash, you say? Perhaps. Still, it seems plausible … I mean, how else do the companies that sell such a fine product obtain said product? Yes, I suppose magic is a possibility, but as much as baking and magic may seem like the same thing, I say the former is more akin to alchemy. And everyone knows how easy that is!

(more…)

I’ve never really lived anywhere else than in the area of New York City. I spent a few summers in the bucolic Upstate countryside, four years amidst the flat nothingness of mid-Michigan … but I spent an entire childhood and adolescence amidst the flat nothingness of anti-urban-but-not-quite-rural Long Island only 38 miles from Manhattan, and have now spent close to a decade in Brooklyn.

New York, when I was a kid, was the place where my dad worked and where the Rangers played hockey. It was the place where my poster of John McEnroe walking through a smut-filled Times Square was photographed. But I had no concept of the city as a grand and dangerous place. It was Barclay Street and Madison Square Garden. For a long time.

The nature of this place in the ’80s was lost on me because I was never permitted to be subjected to its vagaries — except to witness what seeped into my limited locales. Unlike the cougar I dated who romped and stomped through the Lower East Side in the Koch years, I was watching Thundercats and Transformers in a cookie-cutter house out east.

(more…)

I’ve been on a movie watching kick lately, since my girl is out of town. She and I were watching ‘the Shield’ and ‘Deadwood’ religiously, so there was no room in the queue for anything else. When ‘Deadwood’ started sucking, we just switched over to non-stop ‘Shield’ … that show is amazing.

On the agenda for today was, effectively, a pornographic movie called ‘Shortbus’ … which was so awful I turned it off after less than ten minutes. It’s a bad sign when a movie consists entirely of fucking (and hokey changes of character that involve panning through a pastel drawing of New York), complete with ejaculations, and it’s not even remotely erotic. Plus, I don’t even like white people, let alone watching them fuck … and the token Asian woman doesn’t count, fill in your own aspersion. If there’s an option on Netflix to give a movie no stars, this one’s got it coming… hardy, hardy har.

(more…)

It’s been a little more than a week since I attended my niece’s baptism. It was the first such ceremony for me in at least four years and my first ever non-Catholic baptism.

The ceremony was held in this quaint little Episcopal church, upon a bucolic little plot in the southeastern hinterlands of Long Island. Now, my sister was raised Catholic, which I fault as the inspiration to baptize her child, but I don’t quite get the Episcopal thing. I don’t know to which brand of religion subscribes her husband, but I didn’t think it to be King Henry’s American variety.

Which sect of Christianity, though, is rather moot. In my experience, the degrees of Protestantism do not absolve the faith of its nascent ties to the Roman Catholic Church, which I fault for many of the unconquerable ignorances of the theologically persuaded.

(more…)

I dislike very many things, but I like what I like, no matter how uncool, ridiculous or risible it may be. There are also things towards which I am ambivalent. I dislike Incubus for many reasons, most of them related to the exes of mine who loved them but, at the same time, I do enjoy some of their music. Right now, I’m thinking of the lyric: “To resist is to piss in the wind / anyone who does will end up smelling.”

It is simultaneously insipidly puerile and insightful. I think that description can be universally applied to all of their music. Not to delve too deeply into something about which I have no insight, but I wonder if that dichotomy is the result of the songwriter’s urge to be meaningful while unable to avoid stooping to superficiality, hedonism and inanity.

(more…)

I dislike Roger Federer. I don’t like his beady eyes. His raptorish nose. His floppy hair.

I don’t like his steamrolling dominance in his sport. Don’t mistake me; I admire a great talent and he is certainly that. I respect his ability. I think he has great skill and he uses it incredibly well to be so indomitable.

But I still don’t like him. In fact, I dislike him most of all because of his dominance.

In my professional duties as a soccer blogger I once wrote that rooting for Manchester United is like rooting for the A-Bomb. You know it’s going to decimate its opponents. Is it really that much fun to witness total devastation? Would it not be a much more uplifting and human story for the target of such a rending catastrophe to survive and prevail?

(more…)

I love breakfast. I love lunch. I make a killer breakfast and my sandwiches are nonpareil. One might think that a person who so fully enjoys two meals that, when combined, make something (in the parlance of our time) called “brunch” … would also enjoy the combination.

I don’t. God, I fucking hate brunch.

Brunch is neither breakfast nor lunch. It is a misbegotten concept of taking only part of what is good about either (breakfast food and lunch time) and coupling them long into the afternoon, depriving the opportunity to those of us who might want to actually eat fucking lunch food at fucking lunchtime.

(more…)

The prevailing thought on my mind has been: “Wow, amazing that someone can be accused of being a pedophile, be so odd that eccentric doesn’t quite cut it, mangle their appearance with surgery to the point of abject disfigurement … yet still be mourned by millions. It says a lot about one’s accomplishments.”

Or, it at least cites how highly suspect is the value of public opinion. People, in general, have notoriously bad judgment and dubious taste.

(more…)

Humanity is ugly. At least, looking through a negative lens, it could be seen that way; there are so many unattractive people … they are asymmetrical, overweight, have distorted features, poor hygiene — bad teeth, body odor, bad breath, are extremely flatulent, etc. — and there is so much crime and vice in the world.

There is avarice, exploitation of others, crimes and general ignorance of other people’s obviously not inherent “human” rights. The list of wrongs is far longer than the list of rights.

One way to combat that ugliness is with beauty. We could treat everyone well despite how abhorrent they may appear or may smell, no matter what ugly actions they perpetrate. Sure, we would still have to punish criminals and sequester them, but they could be treated with dignity and respect and their arrest and eventual incarceration could fill us with sadness and regret that a human life has gone so wrong.

But, many of us choose instead to say “Fuck that.” It is much easier to be callous than it is to be caring.

(more…)