Tag Archives: factory wrapped douches

NYC

A One-Way Street

Recently, I was reiterating my pet theories on city traffic. I was reiterating them to my wife, because I’m sure she loves hearing me say the same thing a million times. I’ve held for a very long time that, of the five boroughs, Queens has the worst drivers while Brooklyn has the worst pedestrians. These theories have been arrived at following years of both driving and walking in New York. Queens has a deadly mix of aggressive louts and the dangerously clueless behind the wheel, while Brooklyn pedestrians love to pop out from between parked cars and get within a hair’s breadth of your car as they amble across the street. (Don’t believe me? Try driving down Bushwick Avenue some evening. Go ahead.) I shouldn’t call these “theories,” since all my evidence is circumstantial and I have no idea what the root causes might be. Regardless, experience convinces me of their absolute truth.

While I expounded on these theories, my wife asked which borough had the worst bikers. I thought about this for a few moments and then realized it was a trick question. The answer is, they all do. Bikers in all parts of the city are completely terrible.

Spiritually, I am pro-bike. They’re obviously much better for the environment than cars, and you burn more calories pedaling than you do steering. Critical Mass? Sure, go ahead. But in reality, 99.9% of my interactions with bikers, as a pedestrian, have been miserable.

Perhaps because there is an assumed superiority of bike ownership, at least in this city. Sometimes it’s implied, sometimes it’s stated outright. Proclaiming that a bike is your primary mode of transportation is often said in the same manner as one might say, I don’t own a TV. It reminds me of what Paul F. Tompkins once said of San Francisco residents, that they’re very proud–not of the city, but of themselves for living there.

It is often stated by bikers that cars need to share the road, and drivers in this city definitely need to work on pretty much every aspect of driving, from signaling to not zipping across five lanes of the BQE at a 45-degree angle. The problem is, bikers in general do not extend pay that courtesy forward to pedestrians. I can not tell you how many times I have nearly been mauled by a biker who decided to ignore a red light or a stop sign, or to drive the wrong way down a one way street, or to hop the curb for no good reason. And in the vast, super-majority of these incidents, the biker will give me the stinkeye, like I’m the bad guy for getting in their way.

I was reminded of all of this yesterday as I walked up Hudson Street on my way to the L train. A good chunk of Hudson Street has a bike lane, and that’s perfectly fine. Considering the homicidal proclivities of cabs and trucks in this town, bike lanes are a legitimate public safety measure.

There is one awkward spot where Hudson meets Bleecker and becomes Eighth Avenue. Hudson curves eastward a bit, forming a weird little cobblestone triangle. This triangle has a tree and well manicured island surrounding it, guarded by large black pylons that I presume are meant to guard this elm from terrorist attack. It all conspires to leave very little room for a pedestrian to walk.

As I reach this junction, it is necessary to step temporarily into the bike lane. There is simply no way to walk this along this street without doing this, unless you want to go out of your way to a ridiculous extent.

Before I step off the curb, I give a quick glance behind me to make sure there’s no bikes coming, as a courtesy to bikers and my own neck. I see nothing, so I proceed. I take three steps and am literally angling to get back on the “sidewalk” at a more accessible point, when a chunky blur whizzes past my ear.

It’s an older gentleman on a well-worn bike, with a large gray Jansport backpack strapped on tight. As he zips past me, he says Get out of the bike lane. I would have put this in all caps, but his voice wasn’t quite an all-caps voice. It sounded more like Droopy Dog, or, if you listen to The Best Show on WFMU, frequent caller Spike. It dripped with harassed annoyance, even though I feel I’d taken all necessary precautions and was literally one step away from stepping back onto the curb.

Something about this guy’s voice absolutely infuriated me. Maybe it was the tone, the weirdly wimpy aggressiveness. Getting “yelled” at by such a voice was so weird and grating; imagine being reprimanded by Truman Capote. But I think, ultimately, what I found so galling was the idea that, by virtue of riding on a bike in a bike lane, this schlub felt instantly superior to everyone in his line of vision. Oh, how DARE I tread on the majestic and sacred BIKE LANE, me a common flesh-bag with not even a single wheel upon my lowly frame! A thousand pardons, fat guy with rusty old Schwinn!

Unfair? Trust me, if this guy had hissed get out of the bike lane to you as you were in the process of exiting said bike lane, you’d want to crush every Huffy in the world under a Hummer’s wheels, too.

Baseball, Politics Schmolitics

America Owes Curt Schilling

If you ask me, we did not deal with Osama bin Laden’s body properly. What, nobody asked me? Whatever, never stopped me before.

From top to bottom, this operation was handled all wrong. Look, I know these were Navy SEALs, some of the deadliest, most highly trained operatives on the planet, but I used to throw baseballs, okay? So I think I know what I’m talking about.

For instance, from all the reports I’ve read so far, not one mentions any of these operatives delivering a “kicker” line before sending Osama to kingdom come. Not even a “Message from Uncle Sam” or “Special delivery courtesy of the red, white, and blue!” If anyone had consulted me, I’ve got a 300-page Word document filled with such phrases, ranging from punny to ironic to righteously indignant. I have one for any conceivable scenario. If we found him on the moon, I would’ve said “The Eagle has landed–on your motherfucking face!”

Another failure of imagination: They didn’t booby trap his house, Death Wish 3 style, so when he tried to flee the scene he could be whacked in the face with a board filled with nails. At the very least, his demise could have been far more humiliating. For all their skills with the deadly arts, these Navy SEALs didn’t think to shove a hand grenade up his poop chute? Is this where our tax dollars are going?

So no, I don’t give so-called President Obama any credit for this. I agree with my good friend Rush Limbaugh; Obama acted like he was responsible for this operation just because he approved it and gave the kill order and monitored it from start to finish. It’s amazing–some people have to make everything about them, don’t they?

And don’t get me started on the Muslim burial thing. Honoring other people’s religious traditions, ugh, it makes me sick. I think we should have desecrated the body. And when I say we, I mean me. I think America owed it to me, a millionaire athlete who was nowhere near New York or Washington DC on September 11th, to exact my own personal revenge on someone who once made me nervous to fly.

Look, those are the rules. When you kill the bad guy, you get to do bad stuff to his corpse. Sure, it might not be “politically correct,” but that’s what war is like. At least it is from what I’ve gathered from Tom Clancy novels. Prime example: Mussolini, hung upside down. Now there’s a desecration you can set your watch to!

There are some who say that mutilating his body would have incited riots and endangered hundreds of thousands of American troops stationed overseas. Well, that’s a risk they’ll just have to take. What are we paying them for, anyway?

That’s why I’m leading a team of the world’s best deep sea divers to retrieve Bin Laden’s body. We’re renting a bathysphere and we’re gonna comb the ocean floor until we find that bastard’s body. Then we’re gonna bring it back to America and I’m gonna pose with it on a pier like it’s a huge marlin I just landed. Then I’m gonna hand out baseball bats so people can whack it like a piñata. Signature Curt Schilling bats, only $175 a pop.

And then I’m gonna fly a fighter jet and shoot all the other bad guys. Pew-pew! Pew-pew! Ack-ack-ack-ack! Nyow!

Politics Schmolitics

Trump vs. Romney: The Unfair Fight

Of course I’m a better presidential candidate than Mitt Romney. Why? Because I have more money than he does. It’s simple math, people. More money equals better than. And before you tell me that’s from an old Mr. Show sketch, just know that I’m currently suing David Cross and Bob Odenkirk for ripping me off. And for calling their program Mr. Show before I could think of that name.

It’s a matter of fact that every president elected in the last 500 years has been richer than his opponent. Reagan was richer than Jimmy Carter. JFK was richer than Eisenhower. Abe Lincoln was richer than The South. Do I have to go on? No, I don’t, because I’m rich and I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do.

How could Mitt Romney possibly be a better candidate than me. He’s never even had a reality show or coined a copyrightable catchphrase! And that hair! Have you ever seen such a ridiculous head of hair in your life?

Sure, he was elected governor of a state, I’ll grant you that. And he managed to get a big health care bill passed in that state, whichever one it was. (I wanna say Vermont?) But how many casinos did he build? None. How many 75-story glass-and-gold turds did he build on prime real estate bearing his name? Zippo. How many times did he go bankrupt? Zilch.

Me? I’ve built so many things with my name on it, I’ve lost count (and also because I can’t count very high). And every one of them looks like it was built by that Russian billionaire in the DirecTV ads. Plus, I’m such a shrewd businessman, I’ve been able to go bankrupt three times and still get cities to give me land. Let’s see Mitt Romney do that!

At the end of the day, this is barely a fair fight. I’m one of the most recognizable human beings on the planet, and all Mitt Romney has is a few decades of political experience. Plus, Obama is terrified of the thought of me being the Republican candidate. He said so himself! Sure, some people thought he was being sarcastic when he said that, but I doubt that was the case, mostly because I have no idea what “sarcastic” means. Seriously, I dropped out of school after the fourth grade.