I was thinking about the Journey song, "Don't Stop Believin'" and how condescending it is -- in particular, the line "smell of wine and cheap perfume."  Steve Perry is out there committing some of the most gruesome musical atrocities of the 20th century, and he has the nerve to look down on the characters in his song because their PERFUME is CHEAP.  Apparently, he knows about perfume.  What an asshole.  Let's get him. 

When I get a few in me (and even when I don't), I have a tendency to beat a joke into the ground.  It must be very irritating to the people around me, but I can laugh a hundred times at my own joke told a hundred times.  To sober people who cross my path and inevitably fail to see the humor in these performances, it must be doubly annoying.  Here is an example of one that kept me going for hours at a party in Wisconsin circa 1991.  The joke was a modified version of those old Reese's Peanut Butter Cup commercials -- in this one, two guys accidentally bump into each other on the sidewalk, and as they separate themselves, one guy goes, "Hey, you got your cock in my peanut butter."  And the other guy goes, "Nah, dude, you totally got your peanut butter all over my cock." We look down, and one guy's cock is indeed all up in the other guy's peanut butter jar (which people carried down the street all the time back then, check those old ads).  Then they give each other a "Eureka!" look and you cue the theme song:  "Two great tastes that go great together...Reese's Peanut Butter Cock."  It was SOOOO funny to me.  OK, it still is a little bit.  You have to actually sing it. 

I just got a new computer, and it took me a couple of days to get all that shit up and running.  I got the wireless connection going, I also just picked up a DVR (Tivo-like recording drive) from the cable company, so my technologies are all strong right now.  Don't fuck with me.  I will beat your ass with some equipment and record it somehow, then broadcast it as a warning to others.  It is all part of the gradual replacement of social contact and rewarding human interaction with cool gizmos.  It's part of life, it's perfectly natural, don't fight it.

He's not that exciting, but Andy Pettitte is one tough pitcher and we will all miss him when he's gone.

8/28/3:

I know that I am a lesser man for watching shit like this, but I can't help but tune in the MTV Video Music Awards/train wreck when it's on.  Well I flipped it on for a few minutes tonight,  and it was worse than anything you can imagine -- "train wreck" is a completely inadequate term, really.  It was as if a train of babies collided with a train full of hungry tigers, and then a truck full of toxic waste rolled over on top of the whole thing -- it tears you to pieces if you watch it, but you just can't stop staring.  The opening number was basically a who's who of overexposed semi-talents from 1983-present.  Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera came out and sang "Like a Virgin" with Madonna, and eventually Missy Elliott came out and joined in.  Britney Spears kissed Madonna; Madonna kissed Christina Aguilera, whose ass was hanging out all over the place. Nobody kissed Missy Elliott. During this number, the camera cut away to the "queer eye" guys singing along in the front row.  At this moment, I actually cried tears of despair as I realized that our way of life is indeed wrong and we are all going to hell, if we're lucky.  I looked away for a moment, and then back, and there in the corner of the stage, right next to Kurt Loder's decaying corpse, I saw a five-legged tiger polishing off the last bits of a baby skeleton.  And the show was barely 5 minutes old. 

8/27/3:

I will defend Joe Torre pretty much to the end, but I have a hard time understanding how he could leave David Wells out there twisting in the wind tonight.  The Yankees got massacred by the White Sox for the second straight night, so I know the bullpen needed a rest, but Wells had nothing.  He let up 10 earned runs in 5 1/3 innings (the previous night they scored 9 off Clemens in 4 2/3).  In the 4th inning tonight, the White Sox scored seven runs, and they were just hammering Wells all over the field (he let up 6 doubles and 2 homers).  Both of these pitchers are in their 40's, and Wells has a bad back which just flared up last week.  They needed to get him out of there tonight, it was humiliating and irresponsible.  There are a number of useless relievers on the team who should have been in there taking the beating instead.

Speaking of Wells, I remember when they shipped him out of town the first time, there were stories about what a dick he was in the clubhouse, refusing to turn down his lousy music, etc.  It reminded me of the story about how Sammy Sosa blasts salsa music in the Cubs clubhouse all the times, and that's just the way it goes.  This seems pretty fucked up -- everybody, down to the most pimply-faced rookie, should have their turn playing DJ.  I wonder if his teammates hate Sosa for this.  I would.  But I probably wouldn't say anything.

8/25/3:

I think everyone should read Pete's take on the flash mob "craze."  He dissects this incredibly annoying trend with precision and humor, and I think it may be time, as he suggests, to create an army of anti-flash-mob flash-mobbers.  Of course, if we did that, the flash-mobbers would have already won.  Anyway, it's goddamn funny and you should look at it before he removes it.  Al Gore is probably regretting inventing the internet right about now.

Did anyone catch Dan Patrick's interview with Mark Cuban today?  It was cruising along cordially until they started talking Kobe, and then it suddenly got quite nasty, making for some riveting TV.  If they had been in the same room, it might have degenerated into Jim Rome/"Chris" Everett territory.  Hard to watch, impossible to stop watching.

Even though I have recently come to terms with being a lowdown Yankee fan, I still find their announcing crew completely sickening (and by "crew" I really mean Michael Kay in particular, Singleton and Kaat are perfectly acceptable, and Murcer is just a harmless yokel).  Tonight, Kay referred to lumbering dullard/DH Nick Johnson as "New York Nick" in a blatant attempt to increase his own notoriety by coining a nickname for a potential star.  Never mind that Johnson has given little indication of becoming a star thus far in his two-year career, or that two years just isn't enough time for anyone not named Michael Jordan to earn a nickname, or the fact that Johnson hails from Sacramento, California -- forget all that stuff. Just consider what a lame nickname that is.  Kay is a disgrace.  It's almost as bad as coining your own nickname.  Jay Gibbons, the Baltimore RF, made a terrific leaping catch against the fence tonight, which Kay calmly described as "nice." Had a Yankee made a play half as good, it would have been, "Oh, what an incredible  play by Hideki Matsui blah blah blah."   It's gotten so bad that I find myself randomly hitting buttons on my remote, hoping to stumble onto an "Opposing Team Audio" button similar to the SAP button.  I don't care how bad the Oriole announcers are, anything is an improvement over Kay and/or  John Sterling.  At least when they were on the radio together you could avoid the both of them by watching on TV.  Now there is no escape.  I may need to brush up on my Spanish.

8/22/3:

I know spam email always comes with ridiculous, eye-catching subject lines, which are of course there to get the recipient's attention.  And my list of spam titles may only be amusing to myself, but my friend Deion just forwarded me one that just kills me: "Break walls apart with your huge cock."  Imagine a guy sitting in his room, nursing his sore, regular-sized cock, which he has been bashing against the wall all day in a futile attempt to break the thing apart.  Then he sees the email, and says, "All my problems are solved!  Once I order this cock medicine, I'll finally be able to break the wall apart. Plus, my cock will be HUGE!"  (Or, perhaps, the ad assumes your cock is already huge, and only promises some shellac-like topical ointment to make it indestructible.)

No, obviously, the spammer is speaking metaphorically -- you won't really be able to break walls apart with your huge cock.  In fact, by "huge" he probably means "exactly the same size as it is now." But imagine if you could break walls apart with your huge cock?  I would buy his product just to terrify and amuse people at parties.  "Oh, here comes Steve, you know what that means...he's gonna break that wall apart with his huge cock. Dude, let it go -- it was funny the first time, and that was it."

And no jail could hold me.

8/21/3:

It was my birthday today, and I saw Phoebe Cates on the street.

8/20/3:

Isn't it pretty amazing that when you ask people what's the worst song of all time, out of the billions and billions of possible answers, 7 out of 10 people will say, "We Built This City."  I can't argue with the choice; it might be mathematically provable. As an alternate, I offer Cat Stevens' "New York Times."  Go ahead and download it from Kazaa; the RIAA would never consider taking action against you for fear of a countersuit (your grounds: it is physically unsafe and irresponsible to release music as bad as that).  I remember harassing my friends by playing that one like 8 straight times one drunken evening (note to person who owned the CD: you know who you are).  Anyone else have a candidate?

I was just checking out Vinny Castilla, and wondering how can he leave that nasty little too-long shock of hair hanging out the back of his cap.  Why doesn't he just cut it?  And then I realized I am currently sporting almost the exact same look.

8/17/3:

One of the most rampant fashion trends of the last few years is the throwback jersey.  I guess it's been going on for years now, but lately it's gotten completely out of hand.  It's pretty annoying when guys try to go obscure and they come up with stuff like an Adrian Dantley Utah jersey, or a Joe Namath Jets jersey (although the Calvin Natt Nuggets jersey I saw in Montreal brought a smile).  I discussed the situation with my friend Benjy, who almost immediately came up with a potential throwback that stands out above the crowd: a 1963 Houston Colt .45's John Paciorek jersey.  For the few out there who don't know, John Paciorek is the oldest of three major league Paciorek brothers, the most famous being Tom.  18 year-old John came up for the last game of the 1963 season, went 3 for 3 with 2 walks, four runs scored and 3 RBI's, and never made it back to the majors for another at bat.  You can read his story here, and take some delight in his immodest quotes, but also check out the tragic tale of the Paciorek brothers' abuse at the hands of a wayward priest.  I think we should all rock some J. Paciorek gear at our next Hamptons shindig, and we should  definitely celebrate each September 29th with a tribute to the most perfect career in baseball history.

If anybody has any other suggestions for throwback jerseys, I'll start a list.  Somehow I can't get Ed Delahanty out of my mind:

"Men who met Ed Delahanty had to admit he was a handsome fellow, although there was an air about him that indicated he was a roughneck at heart and no man to temper with. He had that wide-eyed, half-smiling, ready-for-anything look that is characteristic of a certain type of Irishman. He had a towering impatience, too, and a taste for liquor and excitement. He created plenty of excitement for opponents and spectators when he laid his tremendous bat against a pitch."

The possibilities are really endless.

Does anybody hit uglier home runs than the combination of Alex Rodriguez and Rafael Palmeiro?

8/16/3:

So what do y'all think of that blackout shit? I really don't know quite what to make of it; most of my ideas about it are obvious and have been said better by others.  Walking around in the pitch black definitely had a "28 Days Later" vibe.  I solicit your thoughts on the matter.

Partly out of respect for all the NYC residents whose asses got stuck on the trains during the blackout, and partly out of an inflated sense of pride in my city, I rented "The Taking of Pelham 123" last night.  It had a great New York feel, and some good performances, even if there was some obvious stuff in there by contemporary thriller standards (I know, contemporary thrillers and movies in general suck these days, but there were about 10 times in this movie where I knew what was going to happen and I wasn't even trying).  The main thing is: Walter Matthau was da Manthau.  I haven't seen vintage Matthau in years, and I forgot what an effortless, natural actor he was.  I was more excited to see Robert Shaw, but Matthau totally roasted him.

8/13/3:

Bernie Williams, God bless him, throws like an old woman.  It looks like he's scared his arm is gonna fly off if he really lets one go.  Which might actually be kind of cool, assuming he could just go pick it up and pop it back into the socket.

I always felt it was OK to be stupid, as long as you were really nice and good.  Granted, it would be better to be smart, but being dumb and kind is acceptable.  Similarly, if you are really intelligent, you can probably get by with a little sarcasm and nastiness, because people will be drawn to your insight and wit.  But one thing you just can't be is stupid and mean -- when someone gives a really stupid answer, and does it with a condescending little grin, wow -- that person is a certain failure in life.  So explain to me how an angry nitwit like that got to be President of the United States. Just watching his little mannerisms -- the way he bobs his head, squints and smiles when he talks down to the press, while clearly terrified that the next question they ask may involve a country he's never heard of -- if you worked with a guy like that, you'd probably staple his newspaper together just to screw with him. 

In sports, is there anything more satisfying for an old guy than beating a young guy? Similarly, is there anything more infuriating as a young guy than losing to an old guy?

1993: It seems like another lifetime ago, a lifetime in which hitting 33 home runs was enough to make you feel good about your job, a lifetime when we still thought the Knicks were a threat to win it all, a lifetime when Ace of Base was all we had to worry about.  I guess you could say, "It was a simpler time."

I had just gotten back to NYC from Madison, WI that August and I was still going to the kind of bars I hadn't yet realized you didn't have to go to.  It had been a great baseball season, like all baseball seasons, and it ended in that classic 6 game series between the peaking Blue Jay dynasty and Lenny Dykstra's slovenly, nouveau-mulleted Phillies.  This was the last World Series before the year when there was no World Series.  Do you remember how much fun it was?  I was still such a naive young thing that I could watch every game of a World Series even when my fucking Yankees weren't in it. 

The night of that final game, I went to one of those bars that you don't have to go to -- Shades of Green on East 15th Street.  It was a little too brightly lit, rarely populated, with a totally unhip jukebox that kept all the young cool dudes away -- a  pretty charmless place, really, with just a few small things going for it:

-the Party Mix, which was kept in giant clear plastic bags under the bar
-the $2 Miller Lite pints every night
-Mary the young Irish waitress with the ample bosom
-two different Irish bartenders named Pat, who never seemed to be there on the same night and seemed unaware of each other's existence
-always a couple of seats within eyeline of one of the TV's
-the totally unhip jukebox, which kept all the young cool dudes away

That night, my friend and I sat at the bar next to an incredibly obnoxious drunk in his late-50's/early 60's.  Smelly, opinionated, obese, saturated with liquor -- he was like a giant mirror tilted partway towards our own future, and we didn't like him one bit.  When the Phillies rallied from a 5-1 deficit to head into the 9th up 6-5 (thanks in part to a three-run HR by Dykstra, his 4th of the series -- does anyone remember what a tremendous player that little bastard was? How could the Mets let him go? He played in 2 WS and hit 6 HR's.), the loudmouth started flapping his stinky gums about how there was no reason to watch the end of the game, because he knew we'd all be back the next day for game 7.  "I guarantee it," he yelled, offering to bet anybody who had the nerve to shake his greasy hand (which turned out to be nobody).  He said he was going home, as this one was all over (what had he seen in Mitch Williams' performance so far that gave him such confidence?).  He stumble-waddled out the door, and we all sat up straight to watch what promised to be a tense ninth.

Then Carter hit the famous HR to win it, and we all went crazy.  Better yet, God sent the jerk back into the bar (in hindsight, I realize he had probably just been outside vomiting), and he was still in "I guarantee it" mode.  He hadn't seen Carter's HR, and we all informed him of the details as he walked by to get his umbrella or whatever he came back for.  It was sort of an anti-victory lap.

Just a couple of thoughts on that series:

-Carter's HR has been played over and over, I guess, but it's really one of the most dramatic home runs ever, if not THE most.  Mazeroski's in 1960 was a game 7 series-ender, but that game was tied -- Carter's team was trailing, although it wasn't a win-or-go-home situation, like Fisk's was in 1975 (although again, that game was tied, Fisk's team wasn't behind).  Still, I can't help thinking that Fisk's HR has gotten way more attention than any other, and his team didn't even win that series. You can speculate why Carter's isn't discussed the same way, and maybe part of it is the fact that the '75 series was so even all the way through, and it went 7 games, like all great series are supposed to, and it came on the ass-end of Vietnam and reminded people how much they loved baseball and America and white guys named Carlton Fisk, but I think 1993 was pretty special as well.  It's coming up on ten years ago, and I hope somebody still comes up to Joe Carter every day and asks him about that moment.

-I remember just being shocked at how bad Mitch Williams was, but also kind of feeling sorry for him, especially when Curt Schilling would appear wearing a T-shirt, in the dugout, that said, "I survived watching Mitch pitch."  Schilling is scum, and he showed it there, especially after he had safely pitched his masterpiece in game 5 and knew that the cameras would be on him.  I might be wrong about when he wore the shirt, but he definitely had it on in public during that postseason.  Great teammate.

-That Blue Jays team was loaded with talent, too: Carter, Alomar, Rickey Henderson, Molitor, Devon White, Olerud during his monster year, Fernandez, Sprague (didn't he have a hot wife the cameras kept showing?), Hentgen (who made $182,00o that year for 19 wins), Guzman, Stottlemyre, Al Leiter, Ward and Eichorn.  Perhaps even more interesting are the names of the hangin'-around old-timers and the not-quite-ready rookies on that team: Jack Morris, Dave Stewart, and Alfredo Griffin, who all got to drink a last little bit of champagne.  Shawn Green and Carlos Delgado, who shared a cappuccino that September and watched the series on TV. And...Luis...Sojo.

I stopped by Shades of Green last Friday, even though I didn't have to...it hasn't changed much.  Mary's about 26 months pregnant, but still looks young and pretty.  When I asked if the kitchen was open, she said it had closed already.  I resigned myself to my hunger, but then she came by a few minutes later with a bowl of that unmistakable mix.  If you go there, don't be calling out for the "mix," unless you gesture towards a bowl of it or something.  They might take it the wrong way.

8/11/3:

More distasteful YES Network Yankee propaganda: tonight they were talking about Frank White and Willie Randolph, two classy, smooth second basemen who anchored the Royals' and Yankees' infields, respectively, for a good part of the 70's and 80's.  Murcer said something about how great a fielder White was (he really was, too), and what a great pair of second basemen they were, and A-hole Kay goes, "And Randolph has a couple of World Series rings," as if to separate the two of them as players.  Never mind the fact that Randolph played for Steinbrenner's bottomless-pocketed evil empire, which allowed him to win those two rings (the second of which he missed with an injury, while his replacement, Brian Doyle, hit over .400 in the series), but he's also ignoring the fact that White was still very much the Royals' second baseman when they won the World Series in 1985, a series in which he hit a home run and knocked in 6 runs.  I guess other teams' championships don't count enough to mention, or maybe they don't even count enough for a professional broadcaster to recall that they ever  happened. 

When the Yanks lost to Seattle the other day, I wanted to see the joyous handshake between the Seattle closer and his catcher -- it's traditionally the shot you see in those situations, and it's a pretty uplifting scene.  Instead, we missed out on all the happy Mariners exchanging whatever the current Major League high-five alternative is, so we could see the miserable Yankee dugout as the players filed out.  It wasn't even a well-composed shot.  The message was, "The Yankees lost today.  How could they let that happen?"  The Mariners barely entered into the equation.  If a Yankee broadcast is a sitcom (and it's getting to be), their opponents are the annoying neighbors who stop by occasionally to ruin the backyard barbecue.

You know it's trouble when the network that broadcasts the teams' games is owned by the same people who own the team -- what hope at objectivity do we have?  God Bless Singleton and Kaat, who do the best they can amid the mounting piles of sticky-sweet Yankee worship -- sometimes you can actually sense them shaking their heads in disgust.  I recall a particular exchange last season or early this season, when Kay was reverentially describing what a player who had once played for the Yankees had apparently told him earlier that day: "He told me, 'You're not really in the big leagues until you put on those pinstripes.'"  In other words, Ken Singleton played 15 seasons of minor league baseball.  Singleton basically told him it was the stupidest thing he ever heard.  It was great.

I think this season is it for me as a Yankee fan -- I need to be de-programmed.

8/10/3:

At work, we sometimes come across a colloquial expression or a foreign word that has become part of the English language, and we're not quite sure how to spell it, and it's too new or too slangy to be in any dictionary.  So we do a google search for both possible spellings, and we go with the one that turns up more results. Thus, something completely unscientific can end up becoming fact. Sure, it may not be right, but it’s what most people think is right. You could kind of see how a religion could get started this way, or a lot of other scary things. The internet is rife with examples of good ol’ random bullshit being recited as authoritative fact, and I think that makes it kind of fun. You don't really have to know anything, you just have to say you do.  Similarly, I have determined that google is a great tool to check the impact an individual has made on humanity. I say, if you type your first and last name, in quotes, and you get over 200,000 hits, you’ve arrived, baby. Or at least somebody with your name has arrived. Sure, most of those 200,000 are geeky fan/stalker sites, but I still declare that from now on, this system should be used to measure a person’s worth. 

Some examples:

“Jesus Christ”: 2,730,000

"Treat Williams": 34,100

Seems to work.  This should be used to settle arguments forever:

Who's funnier, Eddie Murphy or Joe Piscopo?

Murphy: 328,000
Piscopo: 7,010

Who was the better Star Trek Captain?

Jean-Luc Picard: 49,500
James T. Kirk: 40,800
Patrick Stewart: 150,000
William Shatner: 94,900

OK, this might be a little tainted because there are probably other assholes named Patrick Stewart who bring up results, while there is only one William Shatner, right?  Still, pretty compelling numbers for Picard.

If you're under 1,000 hits, it's time for you get busy -- Pauly Shore is at 19,900.
 

8/9/3:

MEMORANDUM

To: John Ashcroft, Justice Department

BCC: Al Qaeda

From: Steve C.

Date: August 9, 2003

Please stop issuing warnings about terrorists taking over planes/crashing into buildings. Yes, it is quite simple to smuggle weapons like knives and box cutters onto planes (and there are entire websites devoted to pointing out how flawed our measures to prevent it are), but, speaking for my fellow passengers, we got the shit under control from here on out. Now, I am not a brave man. In fact, I am so afraid of confrontation it usually takes me several days to get up the nerve to ask for my boss's approval on my vacation request. But if I am on a plane, and one of these Al Qaeda fellas stands up with a sawed-off sprite can or even a machete, I am charging him like a fucking rhino and I am taking him out. He may or may not kill me, but I am gonna yoke him up fierce until my fellow passengers contain and kill him, and he will not get near the cockpit. So start concentrating on other shit, like how they are gonna blow our asses up with nukes or poison us on our subways or infect us with a deadly plague. Now, if you are worried about them blowing up planes, keep your boys on top of that. We can't do much to stop the shoe bombers and such from destroying planes in flight. But I feel strongly that a terrorist attempting to access the cockpit with any of the following will fail, and receive a potentially fatal beating in the process:

-knives
-jagged, torn open soda cans, juice cans, etc., up to and including V-8
-baseball bats: real, inflatable, or souvenir size
-paper clips/office supplies in general
-sharp objects made from any of the above

They caught us sleeping the first time, but it won't happen again. Now get back to whatever other scary shit you've been up to.

8/7/3:

This California recall thing is really troubling. Gary Coleman's candidacy is as obvious a punchline as Jay Leno's monologue writers could have come up with, same goes for Larry Flynt.  And now, from the sledge-o-matic party, Gallagher has thrown his oversized couch into the ring.  I wonder if there are people who voted for Gray Davis the first time, and are so dissatisfied with his performance, they now firmly believe Gallagher is the man for the job.  "Damn, I wish I had this choice the last time.  This Gallagher fellow is gonna straighten out this mess."  I wonder if Gallagher's brother is going to continue to tour as Gallagher the comedian, or if the two of them will alternate days as Governor Gallagher.  I also wonder which is ultimately more damaging to humanity.

You know how sometimes you look back at your life, searching for little clues as to what turned you into the quivering screwup you are today?  You don't? Oh.  Well, I do, and sometimes I can't figure out a damn thing, other times I hit on something so obvious that it's easy to connect event A with neurosis B.  Here's an example:  when I was about 12, I got the Colecovision home video game system.  One of the best games available for that doomed system was Ladybug, which was a lot like Pac-Man but somehow a little more fun. 

Anyway, in this game, if you ate these little letters when they turned the right color, you could spell out the words "Extra" and "Special."  "Extra" was pretty easy to spell, and gave you an extra man (lady?).  "Special" was mad difficult to spell, and if you ever did spell it, you got sent to this bonus screen where you had a certain amount of time to eat as many little floating vegetables as you could.  Of course the bonus screen had no bad guys on it, so it was like a perfect little buffet.  These vegetables were worth insane amounts of points, so getting to this screen (which we called the "cabbage patch"), where you could just chomp away on them with impunity, was a sure way to get one of the highest scores ever, and it has been demonstrated in several independent studies that high scores in junior high home video games lead to dating hotter chicks in high school, getting into top colleges, marrying compatible mates, achieving great wealth by age 35, and dying at an old age with a huge grin across your face.  Or so we thought.  Anyway, in the entire time I owned this game, I may have gotten to the cabbage patch four or five times -- it was hard as hell.  Even before any us had gotten to the screen, we had heard about the cabbage patch through whatever prehistoric non-internet means of exchanging information existed back then, and it had taken on a mythic importance for our group.  Of course, as we got closer and closer, our excitement grew out of control. 

Finally, it happened.  I made the breakthrough to the patch, and I ate about 15 delicious veggies, each loaded with nutrients and bonus points.  I only missed out on about 2.  It was glorious.  We wanted to get back really badly, but before I did, I got some disturbing news from my friend Michael Sheinheit.  Apparently he had heard that during the cabbage patch screen, one of the vegetables sometimes contained a razorblade, which would cost you a life if you ever bit into it.  Without stopping to think about how creepy and inappropriate it would be to put that kind of a thing in a kid's videogame, I took Sheinheit at his word.  From that point on, whenever I was nearing the cabbage patch, I was filled with both awkward, high-pitched pre-pubescent giddiness and harrowing trepidation.  What if I got the razor blade?  How fucking shocking would that be?  Would I die the regular ladybug death (which I think involved a pair of wings flying reassuringly off to heaven) or would it be something more hair-raising and grisly?  One minute you are parading around in a dreamlike cabbage patch shoveling goodies into your bottomless ladybug belly, and the next you lay dying, blood spraying from your throat.

Suffice it to say, I never bit down on that razorblade, but with each successive chomp on what should have been satisfying, point-total-boosting treats, my fear increased.  And I think to this day, whenever I find myself having too good a time, I start looking around for a razorblade.  Thanks, Sheinheit.

8/4/3:

Dear Neighbors,

I don't want to sound like a 33 year-old Andy Rooney wannabe (even if I do have the eyebrows for it), but it would mean a lot to me if the people of the Upper West Side Neighborhood of New York City (and everywhere else, too, I guess) would stop acting like such fucking weasels. 

The universe is a screwed-up place, and there's heartbreaking injustice everywhere.  I guess there are two ways a rational person might deal with it: 

1)Put your hands over your head and lament the sad fact that there's only so much one person can do, and therefore do nothing;
2)or take some action to make the world better, if only in some small way, like busing your own table at Blimpie's when it's not required.

Then there is a percentage of people, many of whom seem to live within a three block radius of my apartment, who are actively trying to fuck things up even worse than they already are. 

OK, here's the part where it starts to sound like Andy Rooney...

If there are two registers open in a store, and there is one long line, which happens to be positioned slightly closer to one register than the other, this is not your invitation to rush up to the register that appears to have only one person on line, the person who is in the process of paying.  Let me assure you that the reason all the people have chosen to form one line is not that they enjoy waiting in line, nor are they more inclined towards that particular register that you have so slickly avoided.  They are alternating registers, so that the people on line may approach the counter and pay for their goods in roughly the order in which they joined the line.  You are not smarter than these people, you are merely less decent.  Same goes for the movies.  If you've just bought two tickets to  opening night of Bad Boys II, and there is a huge line of ticket holders lined up outside the particular theater within the multiplex that is showing your flick, and you arrive about five minutes before they open the doors to let everybody file in, you have no business waiting until part of the line is in and then attempting to stealthily merge into the middle of the pack, assuring you a better seat than people who showed up before you and deserve better than you.  You deserve to be punched in the face for trying to pull that crap.  Same applies to you, shoulder-driving-late-merging motherfuckers.  Who are you kidding?  Wait your turn.

If your dog takes a shit, pick it up.  Every time you see a pile of dog shit on the street, you can be sure there's an asshole out there somewhere who thinks he's getting away with something.  More galling still are the fuckers who let their dog shit in plain view of other people, and then don't pick it up.  That's so wrong it's almost right again.  At least they are displaying proudly their appalling souls, instead of snickering off into the night, mentally high-fiving themselves for the fast one they pulled.  Littering is also unacceptable, and yes, throwing a Baby Ruth wrapper onto an already filthy subway track is littering.  Cut that shit out immediately.

I guess that old BS about "All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing" sort of applies here.  There are some people out there who are just not playing by the basic rules of society, and I think it's time for me and everybody else to get a little confrontational.  I hope I'm not coming across like Travis Bickle here -- I like most of you out there, but there are some people who need a little scolding.  Who cares if I come across as crazy?  Today, a guy was walking ahead of me up the subway stairs, and swinging his umbrella carelessly behind him, pointing up right towards my face.  I grabbed it and nudged it down like three times.  Either he didn't notice or he didn't want to look at me.  I think true assholes are afraid to look anybody in the eye -- it reminds them that there are actually other people on the planet who might be impacted by their secret agreement with Satan.

I understand it's a dog eat dog world and most people are more concerned with advancing their own station in life than they are in bettering the state of humanity.  I'm OK with that -- I don't expect anything better. I am not asking you to buy "Street News" or hold the ATM door open for more than one person at a time.  You can continue to be selfish pricks, to a point. All I am expecting is that you allow things to remain as shitty as they already are.  I request that you give me the bare minimum from here on out. Don't throw another minus into the decency deficit that we live every day.  Just go on your merry way and try not to adversely affect the rest of us. 

See you in line at Duane Reade,

Steve