- 3 minutes out the door I stepped in dogshit.
- My bike that has lay dormant for months at my girlfriends old place had the lock rusted through and now has to be cut...and i need a new tube.
- I get a serious case of the runs and end up asking my old super to let me in an abandoned Morrocan place on 3rd Avenue to use the facilities....disgusting
- As I continue to work on the lock a bird shits on my head.
- Crunch disallows me from terminating my contract once again until September 31.
 - I got drunk and lost my phone..wait...that doesn't happen until later tonight, nevermind.

The trek started with a parking attendant pulling my rental up to the front of a garage named aptly "The Parking Club" on Pacific Street. The rear window had been smashed so heinously recent that shattered glass littered the back seat. I navigated the Tacoma to 27th Street and 23rd Avenue in Queens without a hitch, for the most part.

Standing on the corner shit in hand . . . it's a smash and grab job. He tells me of undue back rent and incessant harassment. We are to be subtle. As we begin hurriedly moving oversize black garbage bags, cheaply made furniture and the like confrontation is behind every door. A man, 'the uncle'  as he put it, comes midway through the move to assure us things are changing around there. Attempting desperately to assuage my friend's, the tenant, reservations about continuing quarters there. I am walked through the bad to worse conditions of the apartment. A petite Russian girl interrupts politely in poor English, she came across some things in the shower. I am told this was a prostitute, one of many, that has lived there for days.

We drop the first load off fifteen minutes away and head back. The dense air thickens as the night begins to creep ever so slowly across a forgotten corner of nowhere. People are listening to our casual conversation, I could tell. Our chitty type chat is briefly suspended by an encounter with another tenant. An elderly latin women who my friend has actually never seen before and who undoubtedly speaks no English. A window above opens and closes. We shuffle a mattress covered in plastic out the door just as the landlord Mike approaches. In not so many words wants money. "Hold on, hold on, I'll be right back", I jump in the car and start the engine. 

MW has been in Brazil for months and he comes back to this piece of shit living in his room , sleeping in his bed, using his haircare products etc. I never felt better for someone else in my life than helping a friend out of that situation. Best of luck friend.

Very recently I had a conversation with an unnamed person, AH. The topic of the conversation was the lack of coups that have happening in the recent years. It is always an exciting thing, especially when it is one of those hostile but not deadly instances. I am not talking about the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, I am talking a little bit more cagey.

As of right now news pouring out of the oil barron country of Mauritania is that the military is or has displaced the current leadership after the canning of 4 military officals because of their support for politicians who were threatening to bring corruption charges on certain influential people. Now apparently the government is more friendly to hard line Islamists. People like NYP, FoxNews, NewsMax and CNN for that matter have all appeared to not care. Which I will say is not the field day/media circus I expected. We shall see in the coming weeks I guess. Last I heard the president is detained. That must be so shitty, going from the president of a country to captive of your own subordinates.

Read more here.

Above: Where my dry cleaning probably is.

The seemingly endless chess match I am embroiled in with the local dry cleaners has come to a head. What started with a simple next day pick up debacle that left me running for my flight to Paris (later to find it was delayed hours) was dismissed as a miscommunication. They also do not really deliver.

This latest episode was another simple drop-off wash 'n' fold with dry cleaning. After the customary 15 minutes of waiting the bill comes to 14.86. I pull a crisp 20 and 4 not so crisp, rather unsavory looking, 1 dollar bills. I grab my change and speed walk out the door. After conquering my 6 floor walk-up I pull out my change to find I never got $10 back. I run down to inquire and am rudely turned away. Sure, she gave me the 10. It blew away in wind/fell outta my pocket or another ridiculously unbelievable suggested explanation.

The next day I go to pick up my dry cleaning to find only my shirts are there. These people have my clothes. I am totally defenseless against these people. "Come back later, maybe later" they say. Fine, I take the high road. I prepay to expedite this process.

'These people have my clothes. I am totally defenseless against these people'

I go in the following day  before my morning meeting. The pants are there. I grab them and head off .. . a disgruntled customer. Hold on now. What's that? I did not pay? I owe 9 dollars for these 2 pants? Fuck you! So now they are almost $20 ahead. It's like an onion, the more you peel it, the more it stinks. After minutes of waiting for them to verify what I know is wrong I ask, Can I just grab them and bring the money by later? No.

So now my pants are there. I'm out $20. These fucks.

As we are approaching the 7th anniversary since 9/11, the ever-stalled construction project that is the World Trade Center has been cast as a failure at every level in various NY-area and international publications many times over. Leave it to the interns at Time magazine to dig up some priceless comparisons to remind us that the people responsible to recreate the WTC are comprised of 19 agencies that are running nothing more than their very own den of bureaucrats. Here are some excerpts from the story. 

I'm talking about global competitiveness. It shouldn't escape anyone's attention that in half the time it has taken us to get where we are today at Ground Zero, China has completed construction on the equivalent of a dozen World Trade Center sites in the furiously efficient run-up to the Olympics.

The former Deutsche Bank building at 130 Liberty St., empty since the attacks, still hasn't been demolished. Just safeguarding it has cost the government more than $150 million, and it took the lives of two firefighters in a construction fire last year. The rest of the 16-acre site is a tangle of more than 100 contractors and subcontractors without any real central guidance.

Nobody is arguing that the rebuilding effort, which will add as much new office space as exists in all of downtown Atlanta, is simple. But it should be a national project, a priority for government at the highest levels, something that voters actually hold politicians accountable for.

Focus should shift to this Lower Manhattan site before New York City's downtown becomes a Boston-esque Big Dig.

Sources: Time, NYMag

A while back I wrote a commentary on the general demise of television programming. Save for a handful of shows the quixotic persona that is the PRR still agrees with that post. The return of the award winning show Mad Men based on advertising execs on Madison Avenue in the 60's comes this Sunday with moderate fanfare as many have still not given this show a good look. I will be watching, sans jazz hands, as they kick off their second season following the troubled ad man Donald Draper (John Hamm) and his quest to find himself while forgetting his past. I played poker once at this place called The Pub,  that was it. There was a guy there. I think his name was Mick. Anyway point being every hand he played before he'd call or raise or what have you he would always say, "ehh, give it a shot, give a shot", his gruff, weathered and vaguely Irish brogue trailed off like it does. He never won a dime, but I guess that's not the point. The point is give it a shot and tune in. I'll end with this quote from, of all people, Jimmy Carter.

“The three-martini lunch is the epitome of American efficiency. Where else can you get an earful, a bellyful and a snootful at the same time?"

Mad Men on AMC premieres Season 2, July 27 10PM Eastern.

Photo courtesy of Vanity Fair

NYT article

It has the taste of the forbidden, the illicit — the subversive, even. Eating with your hands, it’s pure regression. Naturally, everyone wants it.

Some of these burgers are not what you would call a traditional burger by any stretch. A wagyu beef patty with black ketchup that is comprised of blackberries and black currants....c'mon. Signs of progression from a city where a chef once sued (2.7 M) McDonald's for an advertisement insinuating he was dreaming about a Big Mac...some audacity from McDonalds godamm. Speaking of the golden arches....

Creepy...

Enter the re-introduction of a classic McDonalds big-mac-related jingle. Excerpt below via this NYT article

The year was 1974: gas prices were high, inflation was rampant and an unpopular Republican occupied the White House. McDonald’s introduced a spirit-lifting jingle: 'Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame-seed bun.'

Online contestants were enlisted to write a new jingle using the same words. I'm loving it.

Info and Photo Via: NYTimes