It is hard out here
Oh snap, oh snap, oh snippity snap snap, Torn Slatterns and Nugget Ranchers
Rosie meltdown watch
On Friday’s “The View” Rosie O’Donnell demonstrated how she treated her depression with inversion therapy. In a related story, millions of people reveal that they treat their depression by not watching Rosie O’Donnell on “The View.”
So there
Los Angeles Laker Kobe Bryant has been suspended for a game for slapping a player after his shot which the NBA claims he does intentionally but Kobe denies it. Kobe said that if he wanted to slap someone around he would order room service.
A familiar pattern
The French have attacked Apple Inc. demanding that Apple allow iTunes songs to download on music players other than iPods. In response, Apple said they would oppose France’s attack, at which point France immediately and unconditionally surrendered to Apple.
A new look
Madonna has a new line of clothing. The perfect gift for a woman who wants to adopt a new look, a fake British accent and a starving African child.
Madonna’s new line of clothing is available at K-Mart in the Aging Skankwear section.
So mean
Kevin Federline has shaved his head in support of Britney Spears. No word yet if that show of solidarity also extended to K-Fed shaving his vagina.
Again, mean
James Brown’s body has still not been buried. The man died on Christmas. On the bright side, Brown will revive the role of the Crypt Keeper on “Tales From the Crypt”.
Now this one is just stupid
“Titanic” director James Cameron claims he has discovered the tomb and body of Jesus Christ. What makes him think its Jesus? The holey hands and feet.
Rosie again
The US Mint accidentally printed an unknown number of the new George Washington dollar coins without the phrase “In God We Trust.” Instead they say “Rosie Is Nuts.”
Since you asked:
Not meaning to get all Billy Joel on your narrow behind, but I was in a New York state of mind yesterday.
Living in New York City is like having a scorching hot but insane girlfriend. She drives you nuts, she causes nothing but problems, all you do is complain about her, she’s expensive beyond belief, and all you do know is someday soon you are going to leave her for good.
But the sex is scary great and you can’t help but fall in love. And when you do finally leave, you miss her like crazy. (Is it me or do I suddenly sound like Carrie on “Sex in the City”?)
Like the time you were headed home to break up with her for climbing the fire escape and breaking your window to get a pair of shoes she left behind, only to discover the window is now fixed, Tony Bennett is on the stereo and she is in your candle-lit bathroom soaking in a bubble bath next to an iced bucket of champagne, roses, two flute glasses and two cartons of Chinese food. You know, those cartons.
In a split second she went from an Ex-girlfriend to a New York 29: a nine with two orders of #10, the cold sesame noodles.
Living in New York City should be mandatory for young Americans, like military service is in Switzerland. When I graduated from UCSB, I stuck around Santa Barbara for a couple of years and, like a lot of guys in their early twenties, I was pretty damn full of myself. Mainly I was so full of myself because I didn’t have any basis for comparison.
In my little Santa Banana world I was a big fish in the proverbial small pond. Between the restaurant where I waited tables, the track team, the college, the fraternity and living and working in –for lack of a better word – downtown Santa Barbara, I knew everybody and felt like pretty hot stuff. What I didn’t know was that I needed to come down a peg or two for my own good.
And boy is New York City the place to come down a peg or two.
How I got to New York was like a weird dream.
Working as a broke-ass young computer salesmen in Santa Barbara for my second-way-ahead-of-it’s-time-but-about-to-go-out-of-business computer company in as many years, I took off for my best friend’s wedding in New York.
Next thing I know I am at the wedding reception at the amazing Explorer’s Club and my buddy’s boss, the big and powerful and now famous Hilliard Farber, sort of offered me a job at his rapidly up-and-coming firm as a bond broker on Wall Street. It was more of a nice “Hey if you come out here I might use you” gesture than a job offer but little did he know I would take him up on it.
A day later I went in for an informal interview and Hilliard Farber proved that he was, and always has been, a man of his word.
When I got back to Santa Barbara it became clear there was no future with my current company, a side store shell of a business trying to pretend to be a top notch independent personal computer company. It was owned by a group of dorky doctors who even the snottiest doctors thought were snotty. All they had in common – besides terminally bad bedside manners - was they knew nothing about owning business and even less about computers.
So I decided to try and get fired so I could prepare my trip out to New York leisurely on unemployment. Turns out I was pretty good at getting fired because it happened a day or two before I even started trying.
In the meantime I had simply called my best buddy’s boss, the aforementioned Hilliard Farber – whose Hilliard Farber and Company is now one of the most successful bond houses on Wall Street – and told him I was coming out. Simple as that.
Apparently Mr. Farber graciously said yes, because the next thing I know I am selling everything I have – it wasn’t much, including my red Volkswagon Dasher - and buying one-way tickets to Chicago – to visit the folks, my Dad thought I was nuts, my Mom thought it was great– and then, gulp, to New York City.
If there are two more contrasting locales than Santa Barbara and New York City, I sure don’t know about them. It was like going back in time and going ahead to the future at once all while on a bad acid trip. (Even though I have never taken acid)
In just one day in New York City my brain was over-heated with over-stimulation. This truly is a great country when somebody can develop severe culture shock in less than twenty four hours.
Do you remember those Mister Magoo cartoons where Magoo mindlessly careens from one near disaster and certain grisly death to the other, the entire time oblivious, cheerful and happy? Or when Charlie Chaplin got caught in the gears in “Modern Times”?
That was me in New York.
In a hazy, humid cab-and-bus exhaust blur, I was working at a desk on Wall Street answering phones and buying and selling ten and twenty million dollar blocks of investment products (Domestic, European and Japanese bank issued Certificates of Deposits) I knew absolutely nothing about, eating foods I couldn’t pronounce while sleeping on the hardwood floor of my new buddy-from-work- Hondo’s upper west side apartment.
One hot summer day I come back to the office, my pinpoint oxford cotton shirt drenched in sweat, after handing over what-seemed-at-the-time an obscenely large check to an upper-crusty New York real estate broker. She seemed put out and annoyed at having to take all of my money for her exorbitant fee for doing nothing, in addition to the deposit and the first and last month’s rent on a hot, tiny, and dusty roach trap fifth floor walk-up studio apartment in Greenwich Village right next to New York University.
123 West Third Street across from the Minetta parking garage where the sign boldly said; “Open 24 Hours a Day, Honk Before Entering.”
It seemed like yesterday I was windsurfing at Goleta beach, my beloved U.C.S. B watching over me on the distant hill. After that it was off to scarf down avocado bacon cheese burgers and frosty beers at a heavenly outdoor wooden bohemian joint called Durf’s in the warm company of a pretty, tan, pony-tailed U.C.S.B. sorority girl wearing nothing but a spaghetti-strap t-shirt, wayfarer sunglasses, flip flops, aqua-blue Dolphin shorts, Channel perfume and a pretty smile.
And soon enough she was just wearing the perfume and the smile.
Boo yah. I say give me a boo yah one time.
Next thing I know, I am in the hot, dank bowels of Manhattan sweating through my charcoal- black wool suit while combating to squeeze into a jammed-as-sardines filthy subway car frantic to get to the twentieth floor trading floor office where screamed obscenities, shoving matches and phone hand sets shattered in a fury were as common as the wail of the ambulances carting away casualties in the heart attack epidemic of early eighties Wall Street.
The nights were spent in smoky dark upper East and West side bars getting ignored by not-near-up-to-Santa-Barbara-standard girls whose thick tri-state accents made them sound like teamsters.
“Maybe Dad was right” became my mantra.
Ah, but that is exactly where that crazy bitch New York City can fool the hell out of you. Before you know it she has you back in the bubble bath eating #10 and sipping Champagne.
One second you are stuck in rush hour traffic in a cab driven by a b.o. reeking terrorist wannabe, feeling your blood pressure rise in your neck, the very next you are screaming through beautiful empty Central Park at night, the surrounding city lit up and sparkling like a great dream as Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” blasts on the radio.
To say it is a city of contrasts is quite an understatement.
In one second a crazy woman is screaming at you in broken English because you can’t find the ticket for your shirts, the next your eyes are swimming in your head in garlic ecstasy over the angel hair pasta melting in your mouth at the tiny and wonderful Italian restaurant, El Molino.
New York, New York. So nice, they should have named it thrice.
Rosie meltdown watch
On Friday’s “The View” Rosie O’Donnell demonstrated how she treated her depression with inversion therapy. In a related story, millions of people reveal that they treat their depression by not watching Rosie O’Donnell on “The View.”
So there
Los Angeles Laker Kobe Bryant has been suspended for a game for slapping a player after his shot which the NBA claims he does intentionally but Kobe denies it. Kobe said that if he wanted to slap someone around he would order room service.
A familiar pattern
The French have attacked Apple Inc. demanding that Apple allow iTunes songs to download on music players other than iPods. In response, Apple said they would oppose France’s attack, at which point France immediately and unconditionally surrendered to Apple.
A new look
Madonna has a new line of clothing. The perfect gift for a woman who wants to adopt a new look, a fake British accent and a starving African child.
Madonna’s new line of clothing is available at K-Mart in the Aging Skankwear section.
So mean
Kevin Federline has shaved his head in support of Britney Spears. No word yet if that show of solidarity also extended to K-Fed shaving his vagina.
Again, mean
James Brown’s body has still not been buried. The man died on Christmas. On the bright side, Brown will revive the role of the Crypt Keeper on “Tales From the Crypt”.
Now this one is just stupid
“Titanic” director James Cameron claims he has discovered the tomb and body of Jesus Christ. What makes him think its Jesus? The holey hands and feet.
Rosie again
The US Mint accidentally printed an unknown number of the new George Washington dollar coins without the phrase “In God We Trust.” Instead they say “Rosie Is Nuts.”
Since you asked:
Not meaning to get all Billy Joel on your narrow behind, but I was in a New York state of mind yesterday.
Living in New York City is like having a scorching hot but insane girlfriend. She drives you nuts, she causes nothing but problems, all you do is complain about her, she’s expensive beyond belief, and all you do know is someday soon you are going to leave her for good.
But the sex is scary great and you can’t help but fall in love. And when you do finally leave, you miss her like crazy. (Is it me or do I suddenly sound like Carrie on “Sex in the City”?)
Like the time you were headed home to break up with her for climbing the fire escape and breaking your window to get a pair of shoes she left behind, only to discover the window is now fixed, Tony Bennett is on the stereo and she is in your candle-lit bathroom soaking in a bubble bath next to an iced bucket of champagne, roses, two flute glasses and two cartons of Chinese food. You know, those cartons.
In a split second she went from an Ex-girlfriend to a New York 29: a nine with two orders of #10, the cold sesame noodles.
Living in New York City should be mandatory for young Americans, like military service is in Switzerland. When I graduated from UCSB, I stuck around Santa Barbara for a couple of years and, like a lot of guys in their early twenties, I was pretty damn full of myself. Mainly I was so full of myself because I didn’t have any basis for comparison.
In my little Santa Banana world I was a big fish in the proverbial small pond. Between the restaurant where I waited tables, the track team, the college, the fraternity and living and working in –for lack of a better word – downtown Santa Barbara, I knew everybody and felt like pretty hot stuff. What I didn’t know was that I needed to come down a peg or two for my own good.
And boy is New York City the place to come down a peg or two.
How I got to New York was like a weird dream.
Working as a broke-ass young computer salesmen in Santa Barbara for my second-way-ahead-of-it’s-time-but-about-to-go-out-of-business computer company in as many years, I took off for my best friend’s wedding in New York.
Next thing I know I am at the wedding reception at the amazing Explorer’s Club and my buddy’s boss, the big and powerful and now famous Hilliard Farber, sort of offered me a job at his rapidly up-and-coming firm as a bond broker on Wall Street. It was more of a nice “Hey if you come out here I might use you” gesture than a job offer but little did he know I would take him up on it.
A day later I went in for an informal interview and Hilliard Farber proved that he was, and always has been, a man of his word.
When I got back to Santa Barbara it became clear there was no future with my current company, a side store shell of a business trying to pretend to be a top notch independent personal computer company. It was owned by a group of dorky doctors who even the snottiest doctors thought were snotty. All they had in common – besides terminally bad bedside manners - was they knew nothing about owning business and even less about computers.
So I decided to try and get fired so I could prepare my trip out to New York leisurely on unemployment. Turns out I was pretty good at getting fired because it happened a day or two before I even started trying.
In the meantime I had simply called my best buddy’s boss, the aforementioned Hilliard Farber – whose Hilliard Farber and Company is now one of the most successful bond houses on Wall Street – and told him I was coming out. Simple as that.
Apparently Mr. Farber graciously said yes, because the next thing I know I am selling everything I have – it wasn’t much, including my red Volkswagon Dasher - and buying one-way tickets to Chicago – to visit the folks, my Dad thought I was nuts, my Mom thought it was great– and then, gulp, to New York City.
If there are two more contrasting locales than Santa Barbara and New York City, I sure don’t know about them. It was like going back in time and going ahead to the future at once all while on a bad acid trip. (Even though I have never taken acid)
In just one day in New York City my brain was over-heated with over-stimulation. This truly is a great country when somebody can develop severe culture shock in less than twenty four hours.
Do you remember those Mister Magoo cartoons where Magoo mindlessly careens from one near disaster and certain grisly death to the other, the entire time oblivious, cheerful and happy? Or when Charlie Chaplin got caught in the gears in “Modern Times”?
That was me in New York.
In a hazy, humid cab-and-bus exhaust blur, I was working at a desk on Wall Street answering phones and buying and selling ten and twenty million dollar blocks of investment products (Domestic, European and Japanese bank issued Certificates of Deposits) I knew absolutely nothing about, eating foods I couldn’t pronounce while sleeping on the hardwood floor of my new buddy-from-work- Hondo’s upper west side apartment.
One hot summer day I come back to the office, my pinpoint oxford cotton shirt drenched in sweat, after handing over what-seemed-at-the-time an obscenely large check to an upper-crusty New York real estate broker. She seemed put out and annoyed at having to take all of my money for her exorbitant fee for doing nothing, in addition to the deposit and the first and last month’s rent on a hot, tiny, and dusty roach trap fifth floor walk-up studio apartment in Greenwich Village right next to New York University.
123 West Third Street across from the Minetta parking garage where the sign boldly said; “Open 24 Hours a Day, Honk Before Entering.”
It seemed like yesterday I was windsurfing at Goleta beach, my beloved U.C.S. B watching over me on the distant hill. After that it was off to scarf down avocado bacon cheese burgers and frosty beers at a heavenly outdoor wooden bohemian joint called Durf’s in the warm company of a pretty, tan, pony-tailed U.C.S.B. sorority girl wearing nothing but a spaghetti-strap t-shirt, wayfarer sunglasses, flip flops, aqua-blue Dolphin shorts, Channel perfume and a pretty smile.
And soon enough she was just wearing the perfume and the smile.
Boo yah. I say give me a boo yah one time.
Next thing I know, I am in the hot, dank bowels of Manhattan sweating through my charcoal- black wool suit while combating to squeeze into a jammed-as-sardines filthy subway car frantic to get to the twentieth floor trading floor office where screamed obscenities, shoving matches and phone hand sets shattered in a fury were as common as the wail of the ambulances carting away casualties in the heart attack epidemic of early eighties Wall Street.
The nights were spent in smoky dark upper East and West side bars getting ignored by not-near-up-to-Santa-Barbara-standard girls whose thick tri-state accents made them sound like teamsters.
“Maybe Dad was right” became my mantra.
Ah, but that is exactly where that crazy bitch New York City can fool the hell out of you. Before you know it she has you back in the bubble bath eating #10 and sipping Champagne.
One second you are stuck in rush hour traffic in a cab driven by a b.o. reeking terrorist wannabe, feeling your blood pressure rise in your neck, the very next you are screaming through beautiful empty Central Park at night, the surrounding city lit up and sparkling like a great dream as Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” blasts on the radio.
To say it is a city of contrasts is quite an understatement.
In one second a crazy woman is screaming at you in broken English because you can’t find the ticket for your shirts, the next your eyes are swimming in your head in garlic ecstasy over the angel hair pasta melting in your mouth at the tiny and wonderful Italian restaurant, El Molino.
New York, New York. So nice, they should have named it thrice.
posted by Alex at
4:24 PM
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