MagiQuiz has a quiz that guesses what will cause your death. For Keith Richards the answer was 1997. 

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The sexual assault allegations against Matt Lauer are amazing. The hardest part for Lauer having a desk-button-door-lock installed? Convincing the installer he worked at a bank.

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Today is National Mutt Day. Or as Mutts prefer to call it: National Blended Pedigrees Day. 

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A giant San Francisco porn company, Kink.com, went bankrupt. And here I did not even know Donald Trump owned it.

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Monday was Cyber Monday. So that makes today, “I will never buy crap online drunk again” Delivery Saturday. 

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Two businesses not doing well featuring Trump’s name will drop Trump’s name. No word on what the Trump Custom Glove Co. and the Trump Hair Salon will be called. 

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The allegations against Matt Lauer are crazy. He had a button under his desk that locked the door of his office behind women. And if the woman turned him down, the floor opened up to a pool full of piranhas.  

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Dominoes now offers Carryout Insurance that will replace a pizza ruined on the trip home. Here’s some free advice: if you can’t get a pizza home without insurance? Maybe do not have any kids.  

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Guess it turns out Bryant Gumbel, with all of his unbearable pomposity, was the nice one. 

Since you asked:

These shocking sexual harassment allegations are reminding me of a woman I knew in New York circa 1985. I’ll call her Leslie. 

Leslie was quite a memorable friend. As my Boston friends would say, she was a wicked pissah. She took no crap. She gave plenty. 

Leslie had long, thick black hair in a widow’s peak, lily white skin, a prominent nose and a professional dancer’s body, which she had recently been for the New York Ballet. (She still got the occasional dance job in music videos, but when I knew her, she was going to NYU for grad school in design)   

Think Marisa Tomei in “My Cousin Vinny” with longer hair and a more pronounced proboscis.  

Leslie and I were a study in how different people can be friends. Never asked her if she had a boyfriend. She never asked if I had a girlfriend. We just cracked each other up. No strings. Not until way later would I find out she was from an old-school wealthy New York Jewish family. She gave no hint of old money at all. 

Leslie’s clothes tended to Springsteen-esque to punk. Torn t-shirts, leather jackets and frayed jeans and high top sneakers. Leslie just commanded attention wherever she went. And she was a classic New York born and bred girl. Big, huge, warm heart, but a mouth that could send sailors screaming from a bar and even offend New York Jets fans.

To go places with Leslie was a lesson in how utterly filthy and disgusting many, many men in New York are to women. Even with me with her, almost 6.2 and then in good shape at 200 pounds, guys smaller than me would still openly verbally assault her. And sometimes physically. And Leslie would hammer them with a quick “Go eff yourself, needle dick.” But not with eff. The real thing.  

One time in a bar I did have to throw a drunk, coked-up yuppie in a suit against the bar who grabbed Leslie’s butt. 

To be candid, I have not seen this same thing in Chicago, Los Angeles or San Francisco, but I am sure it exists.

Side note. Not sure if they got some sort of city-wide memo, but I never once heard a New York construction worker say something to a woman. They looked and looked hard, but I never head a thing. 

It was amazing how much verbal abuse Leslie took on a trip on the subway or in a bar. Every single time, at least one dickhead would make a crack. And these same guys, no matter how scrawny, would look me up and down as if it say, “I could take you no problem if I  wanted to, I just don’t want to.” 

Never in human history has a woman responded to a vulgar cat-call with “Wow, that was nasty, but, you bet, let’s have some real wild sex.”  

But the guys keep doing it over and over and over again. Genuine definition of insanity. 

During the entire time I lived as a fit and presentable suited-up straight young man in the epicenter of gayness, Greenwich Village, I never once felt threatened by a gay man. Hit on a few times, yes.

Absolutely nothing like what Leslie went through each time she went outside. 

Leslie had a lot to do with teaching me how to be a savvy New Yorker. Savvy New Yorkers are pretty great. They love to go to take full advantage of all the best things in New York: food fairs, museum openings, art galleries, small bar concerts, off-Broadway plays, street festivals. 

Leslie would comb the “New York Times” and “Village Voice” and find the coolest and funkiest thing happening almost by instinct. Twice we were at a thing with a Rolling Stone in attendance. Ron Wood at an art gallery and Bill Wyman at a coffee shop concert.  

But I digress. 

Maybe because Leslie dressed like a rebel and her body and hair flowed like a slinky when she walked. She appeared to have no bones. Whatever it was, guys could not contain themselves. And Leslie was not a flirt with them at all, she was just being herself. 

Leslie never gave the unwanted attention a second thought. She took the subway by herself late at night. New Yorkers pride themselves on their survival skills. 

Truth be told, the reason I stopped hanging with Leslie was she scared me. She had a hot temper and more than once, especially after she had a few drinks, I had to keep her from punching some idiot who said something to her. There was no question I would eventually end up in a brawl if we kept going. 

You know how some people have a thing? Everyone has quirks, eccentricities, but some people have a full-blown thing. 

Being a Rastafarian with dread-locks is a thing. Being a rock musician with wild clothes and long hair is a thing. Being a drag queen is a thing. For some, being a writer is a thing. Being a bouncer is a thing. Being a biker is a thing. Being a Hasidic Jew is a real big thing. Being a business man or woman is a little thing. Bike messenger. Cop. Judge. All things.  

The weather in the East is a thing. Traffic jams are a thing. Pollution is a thing. 

In New York City, being a woman is a full-time, big-time, not-going-away thing. From the time they walk outside until they go to bed at night, it is as if there is a sign on women’s necks that says, 

“Shout whatever dumb-ass nastiness pops into your horny, stupid head.”  

And it starts with scary, down-and-out types in the subway and obviously continues to the halls of NBC at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. 

And we men have no idea how bad it is. And we never will.