areyoulistening

It’s always weird when you go away somewhere and their Fox channel isn’t Fox 5, it’s like Fox 76 or some shit. It just makes sense that the major networks are 2, 4, 5 and 7, you know? All close together living in the same television neighborhood, no the same television building. No wonder these other areas in America are all off kilter, they spend most of their times trying to memorize what channel is what. UPN 87, come on!

My sister gets the magazine “Cosmo” and I always end up thumbing through it for one reason or another (mad hot chicks on the covers, brah). Anyway, they always have articles like “43 Hot New Sex Postions That Will Blow His Mind! (Plus 4 That Will Really Get Your Motor Running!), which seems like, “43 ‘new’ sex positions, really? I mean, okay you got me.” I can only assume that there 39 sex positions that only men will like and 4 that women will like.  Even better are the “Find Your Man’s G Spot!” (Yes, they have one too!). Yeah, it’s called his fucking dick, idiots! Do sexy things to a man’s penis and you won’t need a magazine to tell you to do so. I know what to do with a dick…wait, what?

 I like Esquire magazine (even though I think I really just like what the magazine used to be back in the day but I digest). However, they have a monthly feature called “10 Things You Don’t Know About Women” and it is pretty awful. I can think of a whole lot more than 10! Am I right guys? All I want to do is watch the game and she wants to go Applebee’s or something, am I right? No, but I love women. The thing about women is…okay, I’ll stop.

The Esquire thing, right. They have a guest woman writer make up a list of their “10 Things” in each issue. This month’s gems were provided by a woman by the name of Andea Savage who will be onscreen with Will Ferrell screaming at her in Step Brothers:

1. Wedding rings need to be sparkly to remind us not to have sex with other people. (Well Andrea, sex needs to be sparkly to remind men not to have sex with other women)

2. Completely shaving your genitals does not make them look bigger. It just makes you look gayer. (Gayer as a negative term in a national magazine, huh? All class Andrea, all class)

3. And if you do shave it all off, fair warning is essential. Otherwise, it’s as startling as a hairless cat jumping out of your pants. And no one looks sexy being startled in the nude. (I got nothing here)

4. Murdering someone because he snores should be admissible in a court of law. (Shut the fuck up)

5. We hate baby showers as much as you assume a sane person would. (If that were true, which it doesn’t appear to be, than wouldn’t there be fewer baby showers?)

6. After being married, hearing “You’re hot!” from a total stranger means a hundred times more than hearing it from your husband. (Well, that just makes me feel all warm and soft on the inside! If hearing “You’re hot” from vagrants on the street is so meaningful to you, who is to say giving blow jobs to some jerk that told you he liked your eyes isn’t next! Huh, who says it isn’t?)

7. If teenage boys knew that no matter what they look like, knowing how to dance will get them laid at every wedding they attend in their twenties, cotillions would be wait-list only. (She may right about this one)

8. We don’t understand your fascination with boobs, but we’re happy you have it. (I mean, I feel like most women do get why men like boobs)

9. A rebound relationship has only one true purpose: Just be interesting enough to keep me from having sex with my ex. (Again, you act like you’re calling like it is but it just makes you seem shallow, Andrea)

10. We love that you are reading this to learn more about us. You’re adorable. (Oh you!)

I don’t know who Andrea Savage is but I can only assume she is Macho Man Randy Savage’s daughter (Man, I would love to see his “10 Things” list) and I don’t mean to attack just her here on this. It is really the magazine’s fault because every month the lists are basically the same type shit.  You know “Don’t leave the toilet seat up,” “Close your eyes when you kiss me,” and “Don’t sweat on me when we make love” type stuff. So Andrea, I know you’re reading this, don’t take it to heart. That would be so gay of you.

The Beatles were almost always on in my house when I was a kid. My father likes The Beatles an insane amount. He is one of these guys that thinks the universe can thank them for every note of music played after their first show in Hamburg. I used to argue the same point with people at one point in my life. In fact, a good friend of mine in Riverdale (the world famous Joey Farin) would get into fights with me all the time about the Beatles. He loved Led Zeppelin and I loved the Beatles and I’m pretty sure we ruined both bands for alot of our friends. He said the Beatles didn’t rock hard enough and I said if it wasn’t for the Beatles Led Zeppelin wouldn’t be around. It was two 15 year old kids arguing about music from the late 60’s and early 70’s in 1995.

For those of us who did like the Beatles growing up, we would go to Agnes’ house in the heat of the summer, sit in air conditioning and listen to the Beatles. For some reason, “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite” always reminds me of those afternoons. In fact, the whole Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album reminds of the summer of 1995. The Yankees were good for the first time in forever, I was spending more time in Riverdale than at home and we were all at the age where you decide what kind of music you’re going to be into.

Whenever people talk about the Beatles, the idea of which Beatle is their favorite always seems to come up. I know they get alot of credit in the world of music and plenty of people think they get too much. However, what other band do you ask that question about? I can’t really think of any off the top of my head. I used to always say Paul was my favorite and he still is for the most part but I can now see why people dug John so much also. George is a good pick too; although sometimes I feel like people say George just to not say John or Paul. Anyone that says Ringo is trying to be cute.

I always liked Paul for songs like “She’s Leaving Home” and “For No One.” I always listened to those songs and thought about how good a job Paul does making you feel exactly what he is feeling.  John was great for songs like ”Across the Universe” and “She Said, She Said.” George’s songs were always solid and I always felt like he had to really show the other two that he could hang with them because they usually only gave him a song or two on an album. Ringo songs, for the most part sound like a song on Sesame Street. Has there ever been another person in history that stepped in a bigger pile of shit than that guy? I don’t dislike him…I’m just saying.

I just recently put a bunch of Beatle shit on my iPod and I’ve been listening to them quite a bit. When you rock as hard as I do on a daily basis, it’s kind of nice to take it down a notch.

A few words on Coldplay if I may? Yes? Okay.

Coldplay may be the most self important bad of all time. They make U2 look like a shy group of lads from whatever shithole they crawled out of in that bog they call Ireland. I understand you’ve had some hits here in the States; hell I even like the new single of this last album. Just take a step back and slow your roll a touch fellas. This guy Chris Martin thinks everyword he sings is on going to cure AIDS, cancer and blindness. So I say to Coldplay, “Just hold on, ok? Lets not get crazy. Just wait a minute.”

Check this out:

http://gawker.com/5030531/dead-monster-washes-ashore-in-montauk

The smell of cigarette smoke never really bothered me the way it bothers other people. That is because I grew up around people that smoked like they were in a Humphrey Bogart movie at all times. My father, my aunt and my two grandparents all stayed smoking cigarettes. My father and aunt used to smoke “reds” (my Dad took it down a notch to Merit Ultra Lights later on) and my grandparents were Marlboro Light people.

In fact, the smell of smoke at different points will remind me of several different people and how they smoked. Whenever I smell cigarette smoke in a room with air conditioning, it reminds of my grandparents apartment. These were the good ol’ days when second hand smoke was a cover band playing Dino’s Bar and Grill, you know what I mean? Anytime I get that stale smell in my nasal cavity, I can actually see myself sitting in their living room, drinking a Coke and watching Popeye cartoons. My grandfather would sit next to me on the couch with his legs crossed answering all my stupid questions and my grandmother sat across the room doing crossword puzzles as smoke filled the room.

When I’m around someone smoking outside like in the hot sun, it reminds of two things: being at the beach with my parents as my father sat back in his beach chair smoking “reds”, listening to the Yankees lose on the radio and drying himself off with a Marlboro towel and being at Disney World with them waiting for my father to finish up a smoke before we went on Space Mountian.

Whenever I get the urge to have a smoke the taste of it reminds me of my first girlfriend. You see she smoked and I would kiss her and, you know it would taste like a cigarette. I guess that is kind of a gay thing to write here but such is life. It never really bothered me either but I was a chubby 15 year old, so if a girl was willing to kiss me I kind of had to just go with it.

My sister smokes now and I don’t want her to smoke or anything but I’m not going to be one of those people that bothers people to stop smoking. She’ll stop when she wants or she won’t. I’d imagine having people on my ass to quit smoking all the time would make me want to smoke the fucking universe. That could also just be my punk rock aesthetic, you know? Just the way I am, bro.

 The smell of a just lit cigarette is pretty awesome. I don’t know what it is about it-but I love it! I can see why people love to have a smoke with a cup of coffee or after a big meal or with a few beers…it makes sense. Cigarettes after sex seems like a made up thing to me. You see it in movies (old movies, I guess) but I’m not convinced people do it nowadays. After sex, I usually just bite the head off the person I just had sex with…but that could just be me.

So go have a smoke.

On Saturday night at Delancy Bar, my friend Mike brought something to my attention…about 5 or 6 times. He pointed out that there were three bachelorette parties at the bar. He was saying stuff like “The city is dead” and “It’s all over.” I don’t know if I totally agree with him but he is on the right track.

You know what will push this city over the edge, what will knock it down to just another city like Philadelphia or Boston? If scenes like the one at the Delancy Bar on Saturday night continue to be played out from Soho to the Upper East Side. You see it is these groups of shrieking women that react in a positive manner when “Pour Some Sugar On Me” or “Livin’ On A Prayer” is played by a dingbat DJ that will pull down the city.

The group always shows up with basically the same cast of characters. There is the bride, dressed with a veil with tiny little dicks hanging from her head (How the fuck did this get started?), she is usually wearing a white tee shirt, sometimes a wife beater (I’m serious) so that her dopey friends can write shit like, “Last night out!” “Fuck me!” or “I love blow jobs!” on it. Sometimes she is also forced to drink her cocktails with a straw that has a dick on the end of it.

Her best friend comes in behind her woooing and screaming, saying stuff like “Shit, yeah! Shots for the bride!” She is responsible for making sure the bride gets totally shithoused.

Somewhere in the group is the wacky aunt that dances like she is trying not lose her balance on a sinking ship. A sinking ship, that is a good way to describe alot of the evenings I’ve seen these bachelorette take part in. They all seemed to be trying to work quick.

The worst part about being around these people is that they usually have some kind of retarded game they’re playing. Sometimes they ask you if you have a condom (I think its part of a scavenger hunt)  and other times they ask you to eat a lifesaver off their shirt. No for real, they have lifesavers attached to their shirt and ask other human beings to eat them off them…and men do it because most people are fucking brain dead. Mix in her other friends and you have a good section of the bar being dominated by a group of people that are totally clueless. 

Don’t get me wrong, bachelor parties can be just as gay. I was just on one but we didn’t pull some of the shit other groups try to pull. If you go to places like New Orleans or Las Vegas, you’ll see lots of guys on bachelor party trips. You can usually pick them out by the fact that they are all wearing the same made up tee shirts: “Marty’s Last Stand! 2008! Drinkin’ Like Crazy!” They can usually be heard quoting Borat and screaming “I’m Rick James, Bitch!” These guys are as much a cancer on big cities as the girls are, so this is not an attack on women. This is an attack on stupidity dressed as having a night out or a good time.

So the next time you are invited to one of these things, stop and think: Do I want to be seen with dicks hanging from my head? Do I want a picture of a strange man biting a red lifesaver off my left breast? Do I want to be remembered for wearing that Borat bathing suit to the pool? If you have any kind of brain activity whatsoever, you will answer no to all these questions. Just go out with your friends and enjoy yourself the way you have for years with them. They’re your friends for a reason and they don’t need bells and whistles to have a good time with you.

Right across from the building I work in is the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel. About a month ago, a homeless man began collecting cardboard boxes on the sidewalk next to the entrance to the tunnel. He had one big box that looked like a fridge may have been in it. He laid that box on the ground and that became the main section of his shelter.

Everyday for the past month he could be seen making improvements that ranged from adding new boxes on the ends to make it longer to taping a blue tarp over the entire thing to stay dry when it rained. I think he may have been stealing packing tape from post office on 33rd and 8th because he seemed to have and unending supply of the stuff.

After a week or so of this constant fxing and adding, it seemed like he had a pretty solid little shelter. There were no other homeless people in the area, so he pretty much had the space to himself. It isn’t the best place for a homeless person to decide to live because it is so easily seen by the public and spends the hottest part of the day getting baked in the sun. However, he seemed to be thriving.

A week or so ago, someone had dropped off a box of 30 granola bars next to his box. He opened them and displayed them on top of the box. I couldn’t tell if he was hoping to sell them or if he was giving them away. I did see him eat at least one of them and you would think if he was keeping them for himself he’d hide them in his box. 

He wasn’t in bad shape for a person living in a box by the Lincoln Tunnel. You see homeless people wandering the streets of New York all the time and some of them look like they’ve been outside for years. I think maybe this guy was new to the homeless scene. His clothes were clean and he didn’t talk to garbage cans at all. People left him alone because “he don’t bother nobody.”

After work yesterday, I walked past his box and it was completely trashed. It looked like someone threw a stick of dynamite into it. I went over to the mess and noticed that the inside walls of his shelter were made from science projects from the girls high school down the block. He had displays about photosynthesis, a project on the planets and something about how solar power works. I don’t know if he was using them as decorative pieces or if were they strictly to keep out the elements. There was also writing on one of the walls that had kitchen with an arrow pointing to the left, bathroom with an arrow pointing to the right and bedroom with an arrow also pointing to the right. There is no way to know if the writing was already on the box of if he wrote it himself.

As I walked to work today, I noticed that all the old boxes were gone and new boxes took their place. Nothing was built yet, but it looks our man is going to rebuild.

Have you heard about this guy that lost his prosthetic leg skydiving? He originally lost his leg when he got into a car accident with a dump truck back in November of 2007. In June of this year, he lost it while jumping out of a plane. Many people are asking the question, “Hey, why doesn’t this guy just buy another prosthetic leg?” But you see, it is the opinion of this blogger that people out there don’t realize how attached these people get to these things.

Jessica Alba said she named her baby “Honor” because she was “Always irritated that my name was Jessica.” Well you’re daughter is always going to be”Irritated that she is always bruised and beaten” because her name is Honor.

Let’s see what else we got in the news, Oh yes! There is a Queens man suing Subway sandwich because he had a little problem with his Tuna sandwich. He bit into the sandwich and noticed there was a huge knife baked into the bread! The man, who works as a designer for ”Homo Xtra Magazine” (I shit you not) said, “After taking a few bites I could tell something was wrong.” Oh really? After a few bites of a sandwich with a giant steak knife baked into you knew something was wrong? Get this guy a job with CIA, you know what I mean!?!?!?!

Also in the news recently was the divorce trial for Christie Brinkley and her husband Peter Cook. One of the reasons Brinkley wanted to get the divorce from Cook was because he was spending $3,000 a day on internet porn! Is this guy fucking kidding me? How does he walk? This guy locks himself in a room and goes to work on himself for who knows how long, looking at porn that costs him $3,000 a month.

From I hear from experts who study this type of thing, there is quite a bit of free porn to be had on the information superhighway. There are sites that you can just type in, oh I don’t know, let’s say “Lesbian Butts” and you will get an untold number of videos of lesbians doing things with butts. No questions asked.

Perhaps this guy had run through all the free porn out there? I can’t imagine that though because I’ve heard from people on the streets that many of the free sites update their sites daily and sometimes a few times a day. I guess the man knows what he wants though. Something tells me these pay sites were pretty crazy.

When I was kid, I would buy books about dead people. The kind of books that spoke about how they used to have such a big problem burying people alive, that they designed a coffin that had a string attached to a bell that ran all the way above ground. This way the person that had been buried a little too soon could wake up, pull the string and someone could come dig them out. From that point on, I was worried about the idea of being buried alive. Looking back on it, my father most likely should have looked closer at the books I was asking him to buy me. I can recall him looking at the front and back cover, looking down at me and shaking his head. I mean I know now with the internet and all that, people aren’t going to be buried alive anymore, right? 

There were also books on different funeral traditions in America practiced by different cultures. I was always weired out by the viewing of the body thing. When I was like 9 or 10, my Uncle had a heart attack while hunting upstate. They found him sitting against a tree hours after it had happened. At the wake, his grandson was like 3 or 4 and he started saying, “Wake up, Pop. Wake up.” It was a nightmare and ever since then I never got why we do that shit. What good comes out of it? I guess they say there is a certain amount of closure that can be had from seeing a loved one’s dead body but I don’t how much of that I buy into. I guess maybe the kid was too young to see his dead grandfather’s body.

 People always say shit like, “Oh, he looks good,” or “Look at her, she looks so peaceful.” Are you kidding me? This person has just recently passed away. They have never looked worse. And peaceful? That son of a bitch may have seen hell! Every dead person I have seen looks…well, they look fucking dead. All waxy, cheeks sunken in and purple lips.  

There are sports teams that now make coffins and urns for “superfans.” I really hope that the people that are buried in these things either don’t get into heaven or have to explain why they would be buried in such a thing. KISS also makes coffins. The Goddamn rock group.  

I still have no idea what I think happens when you die. Part of me thinks the lights go out and you rot in a box, while part of me wants to think you go to a magical place with friends and family where it’s outdoor seating at restaurants all the time and it never rains. There is the chance that before you are allowed into Heaven, they gather all your friends and family into a large theater and play on a large screen all the terrible things you’ve done. All the times you’ve lied, stole, cheated and God only knows what some of you people do behind closed doors. Well, all of it would be up on the big screen while Mommy, Daddy, old friends and distant cousins you thought about making out with watch you do terrible things to your body and who knows what else. If you do think there is a Heaven, start thinking now about what you’d say to St. Peter; because from I hear–he can be a real hardass.

 I gotta get going…this place is dead anyway.

I was in New Orleans this weekend and it was hot as a bastard down there. I’ve been to Florida in August and I don’t think anything was as hot as this weekend was. It is mad humid and the poor sons of bitches working at our hotel were all dressed up like ship captains or something. Jackets, long pants and hats with giant spikes coming out the top like motorcycle dudes.

Besides the weather, everyone that had been there before warned me about the smell and they were all dead on. I was told it smelled like “vomit” by one person and “Vagina and alcohol” by another. I would say it smells like a drunk person vomitted on a vagina until blood come out. I’m just saying, that is what it smelled like.

 Most of the bars that have those frozen drinks that make you act crazy also give you a free shot anytime you order one. They have names like “1-800-FUCK-MEUP”, “Drunken Smurf” and “Blow Job.” In fact, at one point we were at a bar and I heard A friend of mine ordered a blow job from the girl working at the bar and I thought we were going to have a situation on our hands. It turns out she hears that all the time. The shots come in test tubes and taste like ear medicine.

New Orleans is (or at least Bourbon Street) is like Seaside Heights on steriods. There are a ton more bars and it just has that “This is fun but I’m also worried about getting stabbed” kind of vibe to it. Which is good every once in awhile, ya know?

On a moral scale, it falls somewhere between what I imagine Ancient Rome was like when the senators got their load on and raided the boys club and a cell block in Hell. We didn’t see anything too outlandish but you could just sense that bad things were happening or were going to go down at some point. It seemed like there were underage girls in a good amount of the bars, there was the ”World Famous Live Sex Acts Show” place (where, from the looks of the low quality pictures hanging on the front doors, was a place were unattractive people simulate unattractive sex) and a “men dressed as women” stripclub (they advertised that they were better than real women). They also have bars down there with 2-for-1 and 3-for-1 drink specials. Thinking about it now is actually giving me a bit of a headache.

The city itself looks really cool and I’d love to go back to actually see some of it. There were a few places we saw that were still boarded up from Katrina and a couple of stores sold tee shirts that said “Fuck You Katrina” (which would been funny to wear around Riverdale in 1997, am I right?)

That guy I wrote about at work a few weeks back struck again. He missed dropping off my copy of the Onion back when it was Gay Pride week. It seems the Onion dedicated the entire issue issue to the homosexual lifestyle (Isn’t that what National Review is for? WHOOOOOOA!).  He stopped at my desk, smiled and said:

“Did you notice I didn’t drop off the Onion last week?”

“Uh, yeah. It’s no big deal.”

“Well, there was a reason for it.”

“Oh yeah, what is that?”

“It seems they dedicated the entire issue to the homosexual lifestyle. Noboday wants to read about that. Now do they?’

I laughed and said, “Well, I don’t know. I guess it is a little specialized.”

He stood there silent again…for way too long and you know what! I just came up with a something…I think. When he pulls that stand there in silence with the look of a baby that is shitting in his shorts, I am going to stare right back at him. Maybe I’ll give him a bored stare or I could go with the eyebrows pushed down angry stare; either way I have to do something.

He also speaks outloud to himself when he is looking through the paper for something or looking in a file cabinet like he is the only person on Earth that has fucking work to do. Thumbing through the paper with his fat little fingers saying :”Let’s see where this ad ran last week. Is it in the Queens section or Manhattan or…” It goes on from there until he finds what he is looking for and than he goes: ‘Ah ha, there you are–all the way on page 57. Let’s see, the colors look nice, okay. I will need to hold onto this for my files.”

I wrote that top part of this blog a few weeks ago and never posted this blog. This morning the guy pulled another creepy little thing on me. I was using the computer that is reserved for the promotions department because my computer was being an asshole and he sneaks up behind me and stands there…just breathing. I said:

“Do you need the computer here or what is the story?”

He opened his eyes wide and said:

“Yes, I do.”

“Well, I only be a few minutes more so how about I come get you when I’m done, okay?”

He continued breathing very loud and after a few seconds of soul crushing silence, he nodded and walked away.

I also saw him dip a banana in his cup of coffee at 11:30 am this morning. I don’t need to see shit like that.

The following people need to wipe that smile off their fucking face:

Red Sox fans.

People that are very tall and think it somehow contributes to their character.

Porn chicks posing for pictures. Just make a sexy face, please.

Cartoon woodland animals.

People looking at their Balackberries on the train.

Anyone waiting in any type of line.

People wearing very scary makeup on Halloween.

The guy that cuts the meat off that rotating meat thing at delis.

Dick Cheney.

Little kids that are smiling because they don’t know any better.

Monkeys in movies.

Soap Opera actors posing for covers of soap opera magazines.

Tiny Tim.

People watching the Olympics.

Dance contest losers trying to be good sports. Feel your feelings. You lost and it hurts.