The World Needs A Stronger Blog...: 1/1/08

31 January 2008

Henri Matisse Was Serious About His Coffee

I think it was the great Henri Matisse who said, "What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter - a soothing, calming influence on the mind, rather like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue." I think Henri was talking about U.S. coffee conglomerates.

Starbucks said yesterday they would be closing 100 underperforming U.S. stores and slowing domestic openings in the face of a likely consumer recession and "cannibalisation" from overbuilding. Meanwhile, across town, Dunkin' Donuts said it plans to open its first shop in Shanghai this spring, with 100 more Chinese franchise locations planned over the next 10 years.

The Big Event

I don't think I've ever written about the barbershop I frequent around these parts. It's an old school spot, been there since the late 50's, haircuts are $12 and that's all they do. Simple and effective. Old cash register, old rotary phone, lots of Marvy - you get the idea.

I often wonder what the Israeli guy thinks of the "Meat is Murder" tattoo on the back of my neck. Sometimes I think he just sees the "meat" part as the rest disappears under my collar. Either way, he always looks equally confused.

Most awkward thing I've heard so far today, another barber asks his customer as he's just getting settled in the chair:

"So... Are you ready for the... the... big event on Sunday?"

"The big event"!?!? What, so now barbers can't say Superbowl either?! It was like Eddie Murphy talking to John Amos in Coming To America,

"Sir, did you happen to catch the professional football contest on television last night? ... Oh sir, the Giants of New York took on the Packers of Green Bay. And in the end, the Giants triumphed by kicking an oblong ball made of pigskin through a big "H". It was a most ripping victory."

The "big event". Hysterical.

Related: Don't Say Superbowl, Superbowl also, Origin of the Barber Pole

ASPCA Fundraiser, Spread The Word

The ASPCA is hosting a Valentine "FUR-tography" Fundraiser with, the Ansel Adams of pet photography, Geoffrey Tischman.

So tomorrow February 1st and Saturday, February 2nd from 9A-8P Tischman will set up his studio at the ASPCA's Manhattan HQ. For a $75 donation to the ASPCA, people and their pets will receive a 30-minute private photo sitting, along with a free 5x7 portrait. Tischman will also give 50% of the sale of all custom prints and Valentine's Day cards back to the ASPCA.

To schedule a sitting, please call 212-876-7700 ext. 4586. Appointments are first come, first served. You snooze, you lose.

Animals confirmed for photographing will need to be on a leash or in a carrier, spayed/neutered and up-to-date on all vaccinations.

ASPCA HQ is located at 424 East 92nd between York and First, 5th Floor

Food Puritanism and Food Pornography:
The Gourmet Semiotics of Martha and Nigella

From Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture (1900-present), Fall 2007, Volume 6, Issue 2 by Richard M. Magee

Many of the food icons that capture our attention appear at first taste to fall easily into two opposing kitchens: food Puritanism and food pornography. These two terms, though, are much more complex than they might indicate, and, when we consider them carefully, the terms collapse into each other as they are propelled by the same sets of cultural anxieties and nutritional superstitions. On the one hand, food Puritanism can be represented by a wide variety of cultural markers ranging from Morgan Spurlock’s self-flagellating documentary Supersize Me to the latest scientifically-based, strictly tested diet book. Food pornography, the obvious counterpoint to the Puritanical trend, takes the form of glossily lush photographs of voluptuous and sinfully rich desserts, or of fantasy recipe and lifestyle images that, in the words of Molly O’Neill, are “so removed from real life that they cannot be used except as vicarious experience” (39). Martha Stewart, with her faux-Wasp name and carefully cultivated image as doyenne of New England über-domesticity, seems to be the perfect candidate for the voice of food Puritanism. Her past legal troubles and incarceration even reinforce this notion: her much-discussed legally imposed ankle bracelet became the scarlet letter whose ultimate significance became unfettered from its legal meanings.

Standing at the other side of the kitchen divide, apparently willing to wear the apron of food pornographer, is the saucy Brit Nigella Lawson, who once called her show “gastroporn” (Hirschberg). Lawson’s interest in eating the food she cooks competes with her joy in cooking it, and she seems to derive more sensual pleasure out of the taste of good food than any famous cooking figure since Julia Child. However, despite the apparently obvious dichotomy separating Stewart and Lawson, the categories will not stand. By carefully reading the images that each author creates to construct a personal mythology of food and domestic labor, we can see that Stewart’s Puritanism becomes a sort of pornographic and obsessive fantasy that has as little to do with the real pleasures of eating as the other pornography has to do with the real pleasures of sex, and that Lawson’s highly eroticized postures tend to break down the barriers between sexual and gustatory pleasures.

As Steve Jones and Ben Taylor have pointed out, much of the scholarship done on food up to this point has focused on sociological or cultural analyses of food cultures, that is, on the food itself, and relatively little on the rhetoric of food (171). Nevertheless, the anthropological approach does provide ample background to the study of food writing, beginning, where much food analysis does, with Roland Barthes’s Mythologies. Barthes’s approach is particularly useful when considering the cookbooks that Stewart and Lawson have written based on their carefully constructed respective myths. Barthes points out that ornamental cookery is “supported by wholly mythical economics” (79), and, indeed, the economics of the two writers, Stewart in particular, are based more on a fantasy unapproachable by most American readers.

You can read the rest of the essay here

Sometimes It Sounds Like He's Got
A Mouthful Of Actual Legos!

He just smacks and smucks and chews and chunks on his Chuckles and rustles his wrappers and talks with his mouth full of muffin and sometimes he'll just hum to himself with a mouthful of whoknowswhat and you can hear him chomp and shuck and suck his teef and muck and his meef as he opens and closes his mouth to chew. Then he'll grunt and groan, huff and moan to let you know he's working hard, even though its a white collar job. God he drives me fucking insane!

For fucks sake, I know dogs more refined !!!!!

Stomach Flu Runs Rampant, New Fetish Born: Girls With Gastroenteritis

The winter months are notorious for providing a breeding ground for diseases, viruses and head colds. But once again this year a particularly ferocious illness is running amuck from coast to coast. The norovirus!!!! AGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

The repulsive sound of the word goes hand in hand with the nature of this extremely infectious virus. Doctors everywhere have warned those struck down by the violent stomach bug sweeping the country not to return to work to prevent the virus from spreading.

The norovirus is the leading cause of gastroenteritis, more widely known as the stomach flu, according to the Center for Disease Control. In the UK it is also rather poetically known as the 'winter vomiting disease '.

Symptoms usually start a day or two after a person is infected. They experience a sudden onset of nausea, followed by vomiting and watery diarrhoea (I love how the Brits spell that). Other symptoms can include fever, stomach cramps, aching limbs, nose falling off, etc. Most people make a full recovery in 48 hours and there are no long term effects from the virus.

The best, and really the only way, to treat the virus is to let it run its course. Buy lots of toilet paper and drink plenty of water to replace fluids lost by vomiting and diarrhoea. It is not possible to prevent getting the virus but good hygiene can limit the spread of the infection.

The virus can survive for several days in a contaminated area. You should wash your hands frequently and thoroughly, particularly after going to the toilet or preparing food. Avoid eating raw, unwashed produce. Yes, I know how we all love not washing our hands after using the loo and sure I love a good unwashed tomato as much as the next guy, but let's be careful, lads!

So I searched "stomach virus" and then "gastroenteritis" on Google images to prepare some visual aids for my entry and, as usual, I came across some weird stuff.

This appears to be the fevered sketch done by a lad clearly caught in the deranged, delirious and hallucinatory throes of gastroenteritis.

A side effect of gastroenteritis becoming so popular these days is a brave new fetish for men who love girls with stomach bugs, as seen in the pics I found below. Girls With Gastroenteritis.com anyone?

There are even cartoons about it!

Just when you thought you'd heard it all, right? Who knew there was such an underground pipeline of gastroenteritis paraphiliacs!

Well, be safe out there, lads!

30 January 2008

Stock Futures Trader Having Rough Day - Watch more free videos

Scientology: Defined

Int'resting little tidbit from Lost City about the history of hard boiled eggs in bars. Go see!

Woman's Body Parts Found Strewn Along I-80

Oh, I-80 what have you done now?

Apparently a woman's severed head was found yesterday in a Hefty bag along I-80, one of 8 bags containing body parts discovered so far beside the road running through northeastern Pennsylvania. The parts are believed to belong to the same victim but it was unclear whether all the body parts had been found. The first bag was found Tuesday morning near the Mount Pocono exit of I-380 by a worker salting the highway.

I've seen all sorts of crazy shit traveling God's Great Black Way but never an errant body part or human head. One time I saw the truck that goes around collecting all the roadkill and it was really fucking depressing. This big dump truck just brimming with a giant pile of lifeless deer. So awful. Can you imagine the spirits? It was sorta like seeing the secret "money train" that collects all the money at night like a phantom from the stations, except really sad and bugged out.

Streets is Watching

Technics 1200 turntable watch $65 from Fluid

33 1/3rd watch, $60.00

Status Symbols: Shopping and Schlepping (Reprise)

People like to reuse shopping bags and those little gift bags from fancy stores. Its a status thing; I get it. Its free advertising for the company and, more importantly, you get to remind people where you shopped for a few extra days as you carry your tuna fish tupperware to and fro.

But when did those brown Starbucks bags become part of the pack?!

Sephora I can accept, Saks, Lord & Taylor, whatever, I'll even give you on a pass on the old school Bloomingdales "Medium Brown Bags", arguably the first status symbol shopping bag, but other than that, thats it.

A Starbucks bag does not qualify. You can throw that out after you've transported your coffee and scone to your office. Your 85% Post Consumer Recycled Paper Starbucks bag is not a status symbol. Throw it out so it can be consumed again or use it to pick up your pooches post consumer poo.

Heres a general rule: Any bag where you'd have to shake the crumbs out of before reusing should be off the list. Just because your venti pumpkin spice latte cost $6 doesn't mean its fancy.

Do you see people reusing their plastic Dunkin Donuts shopping bags? Well, follow their lead.

Ooh, maybe I'll get 50 munchinks and reuse the munchkin box as a lunch pail!

First January in 75 Years Sans
Significant Snowfall in New York

Lack of January Snow Is a First in 75 Years {NY SUN}

Disenchanted, Mellow Intern Sets Radio Station On Fire

Wow, who hasn't wanted to do this before? But this dude really went and did it!

24-year-old Paul Webster Feinstein was an intern at 91.7 FM KOOP, a small station out of Austin, Texas.

Police said apparently Paul set the station ablaze because he was upset that his song selections for an overnight Internet broadcast were changed. Hahahahahahhaa!

Paul Webster Feinstein (if thats not a name begging to be changed to a radio name I dunno what is) has been charged with second-degree felony arson for the 5 January fire that caused $300,000 damage to the 91.7 FM studios. If convicted The Webman faces from 2 to 20 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Feel N. Fein told investigators that he was "very unhappy" about the changes to his playlist. The songs were intended for a broadcast that occurs when the station is off the air, with probably 3 to 4 people listening, including Paul and one dude passed out in a dorm somewhere.

"He had a dream of a career in radio and was very disappointed about where it had led him," said Austin Fire Department Battalion Chief Greg Nye. I guess Nye is a psychologist, too.

Yeah, well Paul what can I tell ya. I'm sure you had big dreams. Radio isn't the place for big dreams.

91.7 FM KOOP GM Andrew Dickens said Paul Fine had been in a dispute with another intern about what kind of music should be put into a digital library for the Internet program.

Feinstein was a jazz & blues fan and his Internet program was called "Mellow Down Easy," Dickens said. HAHAHAHAHHA! Sounds like a real mellow dude, burning down a radio station!

"We knew there was a disagreement, but I would characterise it as a little clash of personalities over types of music to be played and not a big blowout," Dickens said.

Feinstein, who had interned at the station for about a year, quit a week before the fire, saying he was going to do other things. "He seemed like somebody who was young, enthusiastic, had a life, was a professional and was educated," Dickens said.

Austin Fire Department Battalion Chief Greg Nye said Feel N. Fein acknowledged making a copy of the station key and then waiting for the station to clear out on the night of Jan. 5.

Feinstein then poured gasoline on the board in two studios to start the fire. Wow. The fire department's trained dog smelled gasoline at the scene, tipping investigators to the arson.

The fire knocked the station off the air for over two weeks. It resumed broadcasting last week in donated space.

"We are kind of worried that people will look at us like a bunch of idiots," Dickens said. "This is really just one of those out-of-the-blue situations. Who the hell would have thought somebody would have snapped?"

Hahaha! I guess my man has never worked in New York radio. Then again, in NY radio Paul Webster Feinstein would've been applauded for his wacky morning zoo antics and promoted to overnights.

I checked the KOOP site and they've still got Paul's show up there in the schedule grid with past playlists to boot. Check it out. They're smokin!

Ten ideas for Paul Webster Feinstein's radio name:
1. Feel N Fein.
2. Paul Fine.
3. The Webman
4. Web E. Fine.
5. Webby or Webbo
6. Spy Webster or Web Spider
7. Paul Ster
8. P.W. Feinstein
9. Webster Fein
10. F. Paul Web

Synonym-Challenged Kravitz Still Singing About Love

When the foremost Jimi Hendrix/Bootsy Collins impersonator says it's time for a love revolution, you had better act accordingly and revolt!

I'm all for music about love, in fact I think music should be about little else, but Lenny is just so fucking cheesy. If there's such a thing as retro-retro, that's Lenny.

Lenny is retro like The Black Crowes were when they first came out, in 1989. Remember when Sony had those "My First Walkman" things? Well Lenny Kravitz is like "My First 60's Retro Band".

Lenny is retro like that first pair of Gap bell bottoms you wore in 7th grade and that Navajo Indian turquoise peace sign bolo tie you bought at the mall in '91. The same day you bought that Ying-Yang baja jacket.

The dude is barely poetic. The man cannot sing about love without actually saying the word!

I took a look back into this numbskull's back catalog to see how many songs he had that mentioned "love" in the title. I count 13:

"Anti Love Song (Sung with Skin)"
"Battlefield Of Love"
"Come On And Love Me"
"God Is Love"
"If I Could Fall In Love"
"Is There Any Love In Your Heart?"
"Justify My Love", yes he wrote this with/for Madonna
"Let Your Love Come Down"
"Let Love Rule"
"My Precious Love"
"My Love"
"Sistamamalover"
"Your Love Has Got A Handle On My Mind"

This doesn't include tracks from his new record "It Is Time For A Love Revolution". This baby has three songs with "love" in the title consummating with the first single, the skillful and replete "Love, Love, Love".

God, sometimes these things just write themselves.

Will someone please buy this poor man a thesaurus?!

I, Portal

I'm being a lazy sod today and simply directing you to articles I'm finding interesting, we'll call it portaling, but now if I were British and rich and possibly a biologist or a psychologist, I'd write a very long and verbose book which would pose the intricate question "Why Do We Like What's Popular?". It would be a huge hit and years later would be used as a textbook at places like Dartmouth and Cornell. I'd wear +1.50 reading glasses constantly and I'd prefer a talented Cutty Sark over a di Saronno with ice.

I've always believed that people will like what you tell them to like. People will "get into" whatever you're selling them as long as you completely inundate them with it. Sort of like how politicians can buy their way into office. If you've got the cash, you can create the trends.

Let's talk a band like Cannibal Corpse. They're probably one of the most abrasive and least "accessible" bands on the planet. However, if I had a few million to burn, I could have the white- Gamecocks-hat-crowd loving Cannibal Corpse. Cannibal Corpse would headline all those alt-summer festivals, radio stations would play them once an hour and MTV would follow them around.

If you've got the money, you can dictate whats popular. It's simple. The guy with the biggest oar stirs the sea and makes the waves.

It's all about inundation and ubiquity. Deluge the "target audience" with your product and they'll be forced to like it. They'll have no choice but to play along because once the train starts rolling, its on auto-pilot. It doesn't matter what it looks or sounds like, it just needs to silently start somewhere and it'll pick up steam like a snowball in an avalanche.

The dog pile mentality is absolutely rampant in music. Most people like what's cool. Most people like what other people like. But what came first, the chicken or the egg? Who cuts the barber's hair? Who made it cool before the bandwagon started rolling? The guys with the money, that's who, motherfucker. The rest is completely psychological. Leave it alone and let the human gang mentality do its job. It's a nature thing, we all do it. Humans, monkeys, fish, giraffes, goats, its hard wired.

The days of payola and Top 40 Wolfman Jack may've passed but that's doesn't matter. There are new routes, new avenues, new ways to scientifically and psychologically make you like something.

So buried in the bottom of Clive Thompson's interview with the man who rebutted The Tipping Point (I just wrote about this dolt the other day actually, Malcolm Gladwell) is a description of a neat little study of how music catches on in subcultures.

Research scientist Duncan Watts gave eight online groups of people the same collection of songs and let them rate and discuss them. As people rated and talked in each group, certain songs became popular hits — but each time it was different songs. But wait, it gets worse.

Watts also set a control group, who rated the songs on merit without knowing anyone else's ratings. Ratings were much flatter in this group, with a few songs recognised as especially bad or good.

Meanwhile in the social groups:

"Nor did there seem to be any compelling correlation between merit and success. In fact, Watts explains, only about half of a song's success seemed to be due to merit. "In general, the 'best' songs never do very badly, and the 'worst' songs never do extremely well, but almost any other result is possible," he says. Why? Because the first band to snag a few thumbs-ups in the social world tended overwhelmingly to get many more. Yet who received those crucial first votes seemed to be mostly a matter of luck."

I'll leave you with, as I've oft before, some wise words from D.Boon and The Minutemen:

"SHIT FROM AN OLD NOTEBOOK "
let the products sell themselves
fuck advertising and commercial psychology
psychological methods to sell should be destroyed
because of their own blind involvement in their own conditioned closed minds
the unit bonded together
morals
ideals
awareness
progress
let yourself be heard!

Science Proves You Just Like Music Because It's Popular {Gawker}

Third Time's A Charm For Brooklyn Bridge Park

Brooklyn Bridge Park Construction Begins... No seriously, we're really gonna do it this time. This is the third groundbreaking for the project since 2001.

So ground broke this week, once again, for the construction of Brooklyn Bridge Park, a 1.3-mile park on the Brooklyn waterfront along the East River. Apparently the first phase of the park's nine-month construction started on Monday. But we've heard that before.

The third-first phase will include the demolition of five pier shed buildings — Piers 1 through 6 — with the exception of a few elements that will be incorporated into the park. It will also include demolition of the Purchase Building and three adjacent sheds, demolition of three buildings adjacent to Piers 2, 3 and 6, and the removal of trees, vegetation, and some miscellaneous elements, like the homeless and some cobblestones and stuff.

The planned 85-acre waterfront park would stretch between Brooklyn Heights and DUMBO. More specifically Curbed says the sprawling park will also include luxe condos running from Dumbo to One Brooklyn Bridge Park near Atlantic Avenue.

Here's some artists renderings of the proposed park:

actual size

Hysterical from The Onion, "Jakob Dylan Still Not Convinced Father A Better Songwriter"

Photo Of The Author On South African Safari

Representing GoAnus, Brooklyn, New York

8,300 miles from home in Durban.

HOLLA!

Vous Bâtards! (You, Mongrels!)

Remember that rogue French junior trader we told you about last week? You know, the 31-year-old being accused of causing about $7 billion in losses at Société Générale?

Well now he's saying his bosses were aware of his massive risk-taking on markets but turned a blind eye as long as he earned money. Yeah well, duh!

And when you lost them 5 BILLION Euros with the click of a mouse they decided to pull your card. That's how the petit gâteau crumbles, mon frère.

Read: French Rogue Trader Says His Bosses Knew {AP}

Send More Fig Newtons!

I've always fancied a Fig Newton, but I'm starting to think I may be the only one because on the rare occasion I actually buy some Fig Newtons they are always stale as fuck.

One year at the 3rd Avenue Festival when I was a kid I caught a band called Fig Einstein outside the Ridgewood Savings Bank. I'll always remember that day. I was into Teenage Fanclub and The Pixies then and watched 120 Minutes religiously. I had tight jeans, black Converse All-Stars or Oxblood DM's with green laces. An all-over Smiths tee and a backpack with The Ramones written down the straps. I also had a 'Silence = Death' pin that I'd bought on vacation in Binghamton which I'd altered so it now read 'Science = Death'.

So on the Nabisco website it said there are two theories as to the origin of the Fig Newtons name. One familiar tale says the gentleman who invented the machinery that makes Fig Newtons Cookies was so proud of his work that he named the cookies after the great physicist, Sir Isaac Newton. The second theory holds that the cookies took their name from the Massachusetts town of Newton, near the home of Kennedy Biscuit Works (forerunner to Nabisco).

"I thought: Theories?! We've got a product that sells in excess of 7.2 gazillion a year and the best we can come up with is theories? I decided to see if I could scare up somebody at Nabisco who had a clue.

By and by I reached John Barrows, senior manager for marketing communications. John was my kind of guy.

"There is no truth at all to the Isaac Newton theory," he wrote.

Fig Newtons had been introduced in 1891 by the Kennedy Biscuit Company, one of a number of regional bakeries that merged in 1898 to form the National Biscuit Company, later known as Nabisco.

"The Kennedy Biscuit Company named all their products after surrounding communities, including cookies and crackers called 'Shrewsbury,' 'Harvard,' 'Beacon Hill,' and so on. There is no doubt (in our minds) whatsoever that the Fig Newton is named for Newton, Massachusetts."

Studying my map of the commonwealth, all I can say is, thank God Kennedy Biscuit wasn't near Belchertown."

OK, so what about Lorna Doone's and Oreo's?

"Since John seemed to know what he was talking about I decided to pick his brain about other Nabisco cookie names before his bosses decided it was time for another round of corporate downsizing. This revealed how thin the veneer of knowledge is at even our largest corporations:

Lorna Doones: "No record exists as to the exact motivation behind the selection of that name, but in those days, the product was introduced in 1912, shortbread biscuits were considered a product of Scottish heritage, and the Lorna Doone character was symbolic of Scotland."
An obvious problem with this theory is that Lorna Doone, the 1869 novel by R.D. Blackmore to which John refers, was set in southwest England, not Scotland. One suspects that somebody along the line was reading the Cliffs Notes.

Oreos: "We don't know much about the origins of Oreo because it was one of three new products all launched at the same time," in 1912, John told us.
"The company thought the other two were going to be the big winners, and little was written about Oreo."

For the record, the main theories are: (1) Oreo was euphonious and easy to pronounce. (2) Oreo was inspired by the French word for gold, or, a colour used on early package designs. (3) The name comes from the Greek word for mountain, oreo, and was chosen because the first test cookies were hill shaped. (4) An O-RE-O consists of c-RE-am between two O-shaped wafers. Terrific, eh? Think what they could have come up with if they'd had two cases of Ripple.

Sympathy For Lonely Warships

The Intrepid has been in the waters off Staten Island for a while now. It's a wonderful angle to see the ship from, it almost looks vulnerable and naked. It's at an angle which was impossible to view when it was on West 46th Street.

The Intrepid is scheduled to return to Pier 86 in November of 2008. But while in Staten Island, The Intrepid will undergo the next phase of her refurbishment, and receive an $8 million interior renovation. She is a mueseum after all.

Never-before-seen areas of the ship including the fo’c’sle (commonly known as the anchor chain room), general berthing quarters and the ship’s machine shop will be opened to the public for the first time when it returns. The hangar deck will feature a new layout and design including new interactive exhibits.

The USS Intrepid is an Essex-class aircraft carrier of the United States Navy. The Intrepid participated in the Pacific Theater of Operations of World War II, most notably the Battle of Leyte Gulf, which is generally considered to be the largest naval battle of World War II and also, by some criteria, the largest naval battle in history.

USS Intrepid in the Philippine sea, November 1944

At war's end, she was in Enewetak and soon supported occupation forces providing air support and supply services before heading back to California. As a matter of fact on this date in 1944, The Intrepid raided islands at the northeastern corner of Kwajalein Atoll and pressed the attack until the last opposition had vanished.

Later she recovered spacecraft of the Mercury and Gemini programs and served in the Vietnam War.

Since 1982, Intrepid has been part of the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum in New York City. Because of her prominent role in battle, she was nicknamed "the Fighting I", while her often ill luck earned her the nickname "the Evil I".

USS Intrepid in the South China Sea, 1968

Wikipedia has exhaustive service records of the Intrepid. In fact, The Intrepid has one of the most distinguished service records of any Navy ship.

I don't think anyone has ever been able to view her docked like this and unobstructed. It's quite interesting. You should all go visit her, she looks lonely out there. And this is her first trip in almost 30 years!

Find your way to Bay Street, then Front, then Edgewater on Staten Island and just follow the shore. You'll see her. Bring cookies. She likes Lorna Doone's best.

Pills-By-Mail Surprise!

Bush is talking a whole mess of shit for a dude with like 48 hours left in office. Whatever...

So some guys medicine was accidentally sent to my house! And one of the names starts with "meth" so naturally I was hoping it was something cosmic and illegal.

Suddenly my weekend started to take shape...

We'd catch a red eye to the Balearic Islands, listen to some mid-90's trance, swim in some turquoise and then pass out face first on the beach in Ibiza with a few bottles of misdirected pills-by-mail in our sandy palms.

Turns out my man wasn't ordering ecstasy and steroids but some sort of hypertension blocker and some pills used solely to control returning bladder and urinary tract infections caused by certain bacterias. WOOOO! JACKPOT!

Turns out "meth" is just a prefix meaning "one carbon atom". The prefixes begin: meth-, eth-, prop-, but-, pent-, hex-, hept-, and continue up. I just assumed "meth" meant "good times with Paul Oakenfold".

And so now I just feel bad and I'm confused why they were sent to me. Tmrw I'll send them back and hope whoever needs them will get them in time.

Sorry, Ibiza. Maybe next time.

All U Can Eat Blog Leftovers

1. Al Sharpton tells Bill Clinton to 'Shut Up'

Today on "The View," Al Sharpton said voters are hearing "race charges, race-tinged rhetoric" in the Democratic primary campaign, and called on the former president to cease. "I think it's time for him to just be quiet," said Sharpton, who was a Democratic presidential candidate in 2004. "I think it's time for him to stop. As one of the most outspoken people in America, there's a time to shut up, and I think that time has come." Hello, kettle? This is pot!!!! Fucking hell, I really, really do not like Al Sharpton. He's talking about "race-tinged rhetoric"!?!???! Every other word out of his mouth is somehow to incite racial hatred and riots. Al Sharpton incites racism under the banner of fighting it with misguided and ill-researched everything. And it's all only to further his own political agendas.

2. American Spy Satellite Loses Power, Plummets Towards Earth

What weights about 10-tons and is the size of a city bus? An American spy satellite that has lost power and could hit the Earth in the next few weeks, say anonymous, job-fearing "government officials". Bruce Willis, Armageddon anyone? Read what we said about it last night. We were panicking way before you!

3. Daily Mail accidentally puts Nigella's face on Jehovah's Witness child abuse sex torture story

Way to go, lads!

4. I Don't Even Collect Or Wear Sneakers And I Need This Shirt

$30 from PickYourShoes.com

Fate of Publishing Industry Depends on Dan Brown's Next Book... As A Man

Dan Brown's 2003 novel "The Da Vinci Code" was the biggest publishing event in decades, a global best-seller that spawned dozens of literary knockoffs, a cottage industry of explanatory nonfiction titles, and a vast European tourism business focused on sites mentioned in the book.

Now that stupid Harry Potter — the only bigger publishing phenomenon of the age —is retired, no book has been as eagerly awaited as Brown's next novel, "The Solomon Key", purported to be about freemasonry and the Founding Fathers. The problem is, it is still awaited...and awaited...and awaited.

Bob Wietrak, VP of merchandising at Barnes & Noble says the nation's biggest retailers can barely restrain themselves. "We're constantly asking", he says, as desperately as an overdrawn millionaire can sound.

And from today's Wall Street Journal:

“The whole industry is impatient. Book sales are generally sluggish, and one explosive, high-profile title can jump-start sales across the board as customers pour into the stores and walk out with a bagful of titles. When Bertelsmann AG reports 2007 results in March, it will be the first time since 2002 that it didn't get a boost from "The Da Vinci Code."”

Yes, yes, yes but did you know it wasn't always peaches and cream for Dan Brown...

In fact, unable to get a book deal from anyone and desperate back in 1995 he published the hideous "187 Men to Avoid: A Survival Guide for the Romantically Frustrated Woman" under the pseudonym Danielle Brown!

This was many years before Brown concocted the cozy and convenient memory that while he was growing up, on birthdays and Christmas, he and his siblings were led on elaborate treasure hunts to find their gifts following cryptic clues and codes left by their father and that led him to writing The Da Vinci Code.

Brown has since told fans that he uses inversion therapy to help with writer's block. He uses gravity boots and says, “hanging upside down seems to help me solve plot challenges by shifting my entire perspective.”

Nigel Tufnel: "And then, we looked at each other and said..."
David St. Hubbins: "Said, look, why not?"
Nigel: "...we might as well join up. You know?"
David: "So, we became the Originals."
Nigel: "Right."
David: "And, uh, we had to change our name, actually."
Nigel: "Well, there was another group, in the east end, called the Originals and we had to rename ourselves."
David: "the New Originals."
Nigel: "the New Originals."
David: "Yeah."
Nigel: "And they became..."
David: "...the Regulars. They changed their name back to the Regulars. And we thought we could go back to the Originals, but what's the point?"

Some of the worst pizza can be found in Manhattan. And most of it is sold at "Ray's". Namely, the 238th "World-Famous Original Ray's" on the corner of St. Marks and 3rd Avenue.

Now, I'm no fool. I realise most of the Italian spots I frequent have their share of Guatemalans and Montezumians working in the kitchen and that's fine with me because they can cook better than I can, that's for sure, but I can't take these Original Ray's anymore and they're absolutely everywhere! And none of them are famous and none of them are original for anything except lousy pizza. Yes, lousy!

For a pizza place to be good, they need to sell pizza, and that's it. Not bagels and pizza. Not falafel and pizza. Not lox, salmon, cold cuts, deli salads and pizza. Ten times out of ten when a place tries to do the Mexican-Chinese-Italian-Middle Eastern thing, they excel at nothing and all the foods suffer and suck. Do pizza, do it right and shut the fuck up.

In New York it seems theres a World-Famous Original Ray's on every goddamn corner and it's the biggest sham this side of the Mississippi because these places do not form a franchise and are most often completely independent of each other even though they all look exactly the same and they're all called some variation of "World-Famous Original Ray's Pizza"!

Now, we all know tourists are notoriously naive. And if they aren't on the 4 train yelling across to each other about how much cash they've got in their wallets, they're busy eating some bad pizza from an "Famous Original Ray's" and taking photos of themselves like "Woo! Here we are at this bastion of New York City's world famous culinary lexicon"

I suppose its a brilliant scam by whoever started opening up these satellite wanna-be pizza spots but the pizza is disgusting and it's sending people back to Michigan and Utah with the wrong idea about New York pizza and it needs to stop!

There are only TWO Ray's in New York City proper that can be considered "world famous" or "original" or "world famous and original".

The oldest of the current Ray's Pizzas was opened by Raffie "Ray" Cuomo of Little Italy at 27 Prince Street in 1959 near the country's first ever pizzeria, Lombardi's.

27 Prince

Cuomo's pizzeria was probably better known for serving something other than pizza. Cuomo was sentenced to four years in prison in 1998 for running a heroin ring out of the pizzeria with the Lucchese's. HOLLA! Now out of jail he still operates the restaurant. He has never taken credit for the boom in the Ray's Pizzas. He does display articles in the restaurant noting that his is the oldest existing restaurant of that name.

The spur for "a Ray's on every corner" in the 1970's, was Ray's at 6th Avenue and 11th Street owned by two brothers who immigrated from a town named Roio del Sangro in the Abruzzi region of Italy. The marquee now has in big letters "The Famous Ray's Pizza" and in smaller letters "Famous Ray's of Greenwich Village." It served a thick "eat it with a fork" slice which overtook New York in the ensuing years for a time making a classic thin-crusted New York street slice difficult to find. Take that, Klum!

All the others simply poached the name "Ray's" and ran with it. They have no known affiliation with these two O.G. spots!

6th Ave and 11th street

There was a Ray's avalanche in 1980's and 90's and as of 2007 there were at least 35 fucking pizza places by some variant of that name as noted by the telephone directory.

Ray's Pizza pizzerias were so numerous that one pizzeria owner opted to name his pizzeria "Not Ray's Pizza."

The lunacy and ubiquity of "Ray's Pizza" restaurants in New York City, and the similarity of their names, has been spoofed all over pop culture from The Simpsons to Seinfeld.

I've been all over God's green and I'll tell you that the pizza in Italy sucks and save for a few spots, the pizza in Manhattan isn't much better. The boroughs took the torch and ran and that's where all the good pizza is hiding.

Generic, nasty, Times Square's very own "Original Ray's"

NOPE!

Gross

GRODY! (Note: stains on wall, proudly posing with take-out bag like it's some big deal she had a slice served up by a Tobagonian)

ATTN: TOURISTS!!

STOP THE INSANITY!!!

The Empire State Building Ate My Car

There's a bizarre story in the Daily News today about how 10 to 15 cars get stranded each day in a five-block 'Bermuda Triangle' near the Empire State Building; known for it's Art Deco mast and it's 203-foot-tall, antenna-laden spire.

Since 9/11, the building has regained its status as the leading transmission site for commercial broadcast outfits, with 13 TV and 19 FM stations mounting antennas on its spire.

The Empire State Building Co., which refused to provide the paper with a list of its antennas, denied it has created any “adverse impact” on automobiles.

“If the claim were indeed true, the streets in the vicinity of the building would be constantly littered with disabled vehicles,” the building’s owner said.

But according to many doormen in the area, they often are.

RF refers to radio frequency, the mode of communication for wireless technologies of all kinds, including cordless phones, radar, GPS, and radio and television broadcasts.

RF technology is so much a part of our lives we barely notice it for its ubiquity. From baby monitors to cell phones, Bluetooth to remote control toys, RF waves are all around us.

RF waves are electromagnetic waves which propagate at the speed of light, or 186,000 miles per second (300,000 km/s). The frequencies of RF waves, however, are slower than those of visible light, making RF waves invisible to the human eye.

So naturally people surmise that the high RF coming from the 102-story building is causing problems to the automobile electronic systems; namely the computers on new cars that now control everything.

The problem is that in this day and age, while you can still use "brute force" via an actual old fashioned key to open the door (in most cars), you can have something go haywire in the electronics. In that case, the "brain" of the car can more or less seize up and prevent the car from starting altogether.

A computer pretty much runs every aspect of a car these days from power & battery management, to anti-theft, transmission, etc. There are actually several systems with their own "brains" and they are all dependent on each other. So if there is so much as a blip in the wrong system at the wrong time, you are looking at a 2 ton paperweight. So, I can see how one may believe that a strong RF field can throw a wrench in the works.

Although most transmission systems are designed to NOT radiate directly vertical, there is no way to prevent some of the RF from spilling over into the vertical plane. High-intensity RF fields, regardless of frequency, do tend to "swamp" other, especially sensitive electronic equipment within RF fields.

And since the Empire State Buildin' is certainly is the Mecca of all RF sources in the metro area this is definitely possible. Along with FM there are now broad(er) band TV signals of both AM and FM components, and I'm sure more than one communications antennae located on the building. The overall RF levels on that building must be staggering.

So it would stand to reason that, especially a block or two from the base of the "tower" (the ESB is really just a tower, RF wise) I would assume a certain level of "swamping" to occur.

There is also a possibility that one of the antennae on the Empire State Buildin' might have gone out of tolerance. There are just certain laws of physics that no matter the design, cannot be eliminated; attenuated yes, eliminated no.

Homme de gomme means "Eraser man" in French

Jeff Nelson from Minor Threat, code name name "hommedegomme", is selling a bunch of old records and original flyers on eBay.

Check it.

Union Market: BUSTED

Exhibit A

Today my celebrity spy and I witnessed quite the scene. And what to our surprise did we see?

Well whaddya know, if it wasn't the old Union Market van double parked in front of Rossman's Discount Fruits; a wholesale/retail fruit market / grocery store on 3rd Avenue under the Gowanus in Sunset Park. I guess this is Union Markets idea of "locally grown".

So the next time you pay $15 for that independent-grassroots-organic-locally grown-farm fresh avocado or that artichoke direct from Castroville now you'll know where Union Market is really getting their produce from... straight from the bucolic farms and rolling hills of Sunset Park; 26th street and 3rd Avenue to be exact. Just steps from the live poultry store, the window tinters, the peep shows and the place where I get my dog food from the guy who looks like Harvey Keitel.

You've been briefed. Carry on.

P.S. - "South Slope" my fucking ass. There's Park Slope, Sunset Park and Bay Ridge. That's how it goes. There is no "South Slope". South Slope was a name created by real estate agents and developers to sell condos.

Someone Call Will Smith, There's A Satellite Set To Crash Into Earth

Ground Control to Major Tom

Yesterday government officials said a large U.S. spy satellite has lost its power and could hit the Earth in later next month or early in March.

The unnamed satellite, which no longer can be controlled, could contain hazardous materials, and it is unknown where on the planet it might come down, they said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the information is classified as secret. It was not clear how long ago the satellite lost power, or under what circumstances.

Everybody Panic!

He would not comment on whether it is possible for the satellite to be shot down by a missile. He said it would be inappropriate to discuss any specifics at this time.

Believe it or not this has happened before.

In 1979, Skylab, a 78-ton space station, fell from orbit, scattering debris over the Indian Ocean and remote western Australia.

In 2000, NASA was able to guide a 17-ton Gamma-Ray Observatory back to Earth by using its rockets to steer it to a remote area of the Pacific Ocean.

And again in 2002, the 7,000 pound Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer satellite fell out of orbit and apparently broke up over the Persian Gulf, thousands of miles from where scientists first expected it to strike.

No snow so far this winter but hey, we've got plummeting satellites!

Man Dyes His Dog Blue, Heils Hitler

Joe Gannascoli, Bay Ridge publicity whore and guy who played the gay dude on The Sopranos, has dyed his poor dog blue to show his "Giants Fever" for some Fox 5 Good Day New York contest. What a tool.

Also, they should've done a better job cropping this photo because it looks like your boy Joe is Sieg Heiling.

Give Me Rupert Sheldrake Or Give Me Death

It was S.R.O. on the bus back to Brooklyn tonight.

I was looming over a lady reading a book called "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking".

Are you fucking kidding me? I always wondered who read these books, and well now I know.

How do these windbags even get published?!

Malcolm fucking Gladwell? Oh, please.