And Boom Goes the Dynamite

July 4th, 2006 - East River

Full Gallery of July 4th Fireworks

Pimp My Conestoga Wagon

Your wagon has reached a posting. You may:

1. Continue to work at a grueling pace with meager rations
2. Stop to rest (and play Oregon Trail)
3. Trade for supplies
4. Hunt for food

You have chosen to play Oregon Trail.

You are 2 minutes away from fun.

Before you have reached the game, your keyboard has broken and 2 speakers have died. A robber has stolen half of your files and 2 cans of Red Bull. Would you like to fix the keyboard?

You have chosen to fix the keyboard.

You were unable to fix the keyboard. You must replace the part.

You are 1 minute away from fun.

You have approached the installation screen. You may:

1. Try to ford the river
2. Caulk your computer and attempt to float across
3. Ask an Indian for advice on installing the game
4. Install it yourself

You have successfully installed it yourself.

You play the game all day and all night.

Your health is fair.

You have lost your job.

You are not eating.

Your health is poor.

You have caught dysentery.

You continue to play at a grueling pace.

You have died of dysentery.

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Anway, thought you'd all enjoy this blast from the past: A free version of The Oregon Trail. Say goodbye to all free time...

Sincerely,

The Banker from Boston New York

Coming Up on The Ocho

Am I the only one who thinks it's odd how many competitive domino matches have been broadcast recently on ESPN2??

Danny Meyer & Credit Suisse sitting in a tree...

C-U-T-T-I-N-G

Shake Shack is entirely too sacred for a couple of unscrupulous (however resourceful) bankers to tarnish its rep.

This is a slippery slope. We all know the rules of the line. First somebody cuts, so pushing begins. Then yelling. Then tattling. Within minutes, the angry mobs arrive donning hockey masks and wielding pitchforks and/or torches. The witch hunt ensues, a hideous monster with a heart of gold is demonized, someone is burned in effigy, an innocent is trampled, cars are flipped, riots spread, martial law is enforced, babies start crying, the skies go dark, and then in this order: frogs, boils, locusts, American Idol in syndication, and the plague.

This is a death spiral, my fellow bankers, and all I'm saying is no cuttsies, no backsies, or I'm telling.

...And the 10th Blade Might Nick Your Skull

How do you beat the ever-loving crap out of the Schick Quattro? You hit them with 5 blades of pure shaving glory in the form of the Gillette Fusion.

The first time the Fusion commercial came on during a friend's Super Bowl party, I loudly announced mid-commercial that now they've packed FIVE blades into a razor, and it's gonna be awesome! The crowd laughed, because clearly I couldn't be serious.

3 seconds later, they learned how serious I was.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, it turns out that this was an old joke. The Onion, both poignant and prescient, called it WAY early. Almost 2 full years early, in fact!

These guys are good. Really good.

Next time The Onion calls the 2008 election in favor of Soupy Sales, I might not be laughing...

It Really Takes 24 Hours to Stop This Guy?

I need to point two things out to fans of "24":

1. Peter Weller, the guy who plays Christopher Henderson, was RoboCop. Terrorizing L.A. is very un-RoboCop. Frankly, I'm a little disappointed in him. Bad, RoboCop. Bad.

2. Does this look like someone who would conspire against America? This guy couldn't conspire against his own waredrobe:

There Has to Be More to Life Than Being Really, Really, Ridiculously Good-Looking

New Rule:
Fashion models are not allowed to be offended by the "models are stupid" stereotype as long as things like THIS continue to occur.

Do we need to start installing model-proof locks into car doors?

Timeless Terminal

The Birds and The Bees

It’s beginning to look like a jungle out there.

With the beginning of summer rapidly approaching, a slew of new movies are slated to bring people back to the box offices after a multi-year slump. Production houses are pulling out all the stops to lure people back.

Mission Impossible III managed to yank Tom Cruise away from his soon-to-be-screwed-up child and visibly affected wife to trek across Manhattan in a multi-vehicle publicity stunt. Columbia TriStar (The Da Vinci Code) partnered with Google to create 46 puzzles that fans must solve between now and the movie’s premiere [ed: I think there’s a prize for this contest, but frankly I just like the puzzles – they’re terrific procrastination from work.].

On the other side of the scale, however, are a slew of smaller movies with much smaller budgets, but each has a chance at becoming the next big thing. In the end, which ones thrive and which ones fail comes down to the birds and the bees.

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According to Chinese tradition, last year was the Year of the Rooster; in America, 2005 was the Year of the Penguin. The trend started innocently enough with the unexpected popularity of March of the Penguins, a film about penguins looking for love which quickly went on to win the Oscar for Best Documentary. But since that fame, everyone in Hollywood wanted a piece of the penguin action ("paction"?). Quick on MoP’s heels came a mockumentary entitled Farce of the Penguins. Here’s what you need to know:

1. The tagline is “What Happens In Antarctica... Stays in Antarctica”
2. The film “illuminates penguin survival and mating rituals, as well as one bird's search for love while on a 70-mile trek with his hedonistic buddies.”
3. It was written and directed by Bob Saget. Because when I think hedonistic animals, oh yeah, I think Bob Saget.

Even the big studios got in the game, such as Warner Brothers with their children’s CGI movie, Happy Feet, about a penguin's search for a love (is this all penguins do?!). You might have heard it referred to by its original title, “Dr. Strangeman (or) How Robin Williams Stopped Doing Live Action and Learned to Love Hyperactive Voice-Overs Exclusively”. For more information, please see Aladdin, FernGully: The Last Rain Forest, Aladdin on Ice, Aladdin’s Math Quest (I can’t make this up), Artificial Intelligence: AI, and Robots.

Penguins became such big celebrities that scientists even created a runway for them to walk down!

But then an interesting thing happened to Hollywood’s penguins: Their celebrity dried up. Penguins became extinct.

With penguins out of the picture, Hollywood was in need of a new animal. They tried the exotic with Racing Stripes (zebra). They showed their ambivalence and indecision with The Wild (lion, alligator, panda, giraffe, etc.). In desperation (I assume), they even gave Larry the Cable Guy a movie. Alas, nothing worked.

Yet quite mysteriously, a new animal emerged with increasing popularity: The Bee.

But this isn’t any old bee. This bee is young, it's competitive, and perhaps it smacks of an early-stage antisocial disorder. The bee about which I speak, of course, is the great American spelling bee.

These swarms of bees have taken the country by storm, virtually stinging the masses with bee fever. From television, to theater, to the silver screen, bees are everywhere. ESPN broadcasts the National Spelling Bee each year like a competitive sport (Sidenote: People still ask whether golf is a sport? Seriously?). One of Broadway’s smash successes this past year has been The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. And of course, who can ignore the endless flow of “Bee"-movies: Spellbound, Bee Season, and the latest, Akeelah & The Bee.

As the Bee becomes more in vogue, there’s something oddly paradoxical about its timing in our society. As the last two presidential elections have proven, there is a strengthening anti-intellectual tone within our country. Reading and literacy levels have dwindled in the face of TiVo, instant messaging, and MySpace.

Yet in an age where the only geeks with popularity are the ones who are masters of Wall Street and Silicon Valley, the spelling bee has thrived in this unnatural environment. Much like our diminutive friends in the Antarctic, the bee comes back each season to brave the harshest elements of social stigmas, educational budget deficits, and a limited pool of interested parties. The young and motivated flock in droves, driven by personal visions of glory. Only the strong survive this competitive atmosphere, whether the goal is a penguin mate or a platinum trophy.

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At the end of this month, the E.W. Scripps Company will welcome 275 competitors to this year’s National Spelling Bee – this is the greatest number of spellers in the history of the event. Perhaps this trend, like so many others, will wane when something else grabs our attention. But perhaps there’s something more to the Bee. Does any other competition find children at such a formative period in their intellectual and physical growth as the Spelling Bee? Does any other competition challenge the very capacity of their memory like the Bee? Does any other competition embody such a combination of the artistic and the scientific, mixing linguistic history and cultural origins with the rules and exceptions of spelling as the Bee? And does any other competition screw up home schooled kids more then the Bee?

Perhaps we should take the time to ask “Why now?” What is it about our society allows us to find birds-of-no-flight so intriguing one moment, and spelling competitions the next? Are we more intellectually curious than we give society credit for? Are we just willing to accept entertainment in any form, even when it's wrapped in education? Am I just confusing passing interest with legitimate sustaining fanaticism? In the end, one question lingers as this year’s competition heats up on May 31st:

Are Bees the new Penguins?

Things You Don't Typically See On Water Towers

Go Bombers - 6th Ave. in Chelsea

Spring is Here

78th Street b/w Amsterdam & Columbus

Eggplant

I just heard that Otto has some fantastic eggplant.

So, just in case you just moved to the city from, oh, I don't know, New Zealand, and just happen to be looking for great eggplant...well, there you go.

And as long as I'm writing messages to specific people, here's something unrelated: Hello, Peter Chavkin!

Who Let the Jews Out?

Happy Passover.
This space is being held for Elijah:











Clever, eh?

If Your Hand is Bigger Than Your Face, Then You're...

I used handsoap last night to wash my face, and now I think my face smells like hand.

Frankly, I'm not sure if that's a step up or down. I typically use algae facial cleanser, but I'm becoming worried that I'll start to smell like phytoplankton. Plus there's some serious cognitive dissonance brewing when it comes to paying $20 for 4 ounces of face soap. And yet I continue to do so...

01:02:03 04-05-06

Thanks to Evan for pointing this out.

No, this is not 4-8-15-16-23-42.

The time and date is officially:
01:02:03 04/05/06

I should really get to sleep.

Sunday in the City

Atlas


Flatiron


Citigroup Center

More

L&O in the NYC

When people from elsewhere move to New York City, various metrics are employed to identify the moment they consider themselves "part" of the city.

For some, it's when they can freely travel via subway without consulting the map. For others, that moment is when they walk down the streets without staring up at the tall buildings like a tourist anymore. Or when they put their dishes into storage and start ordering in dinner. Or when they start eating that dinner at 10 o'clock at night.

All of these people have one thing in common: They are all wrong.

This morning I learned that there's only one requisite event that qualifies as the true New York living experience: when Law & Order films outside your building.

Yes, it has finally happened.

Which L&O? No clue. What actors were on scene? Haven't the faintest idea, they were locked up in their trailers. But the trailers were there, damn it, blocking traffic, looking important, and that is all that matters. Now I just have to watch all 300 versions of the show every week until my building is featured with that "dun dun" sound effect.

Why Is Bill Maher the Loudest Voice for the Environment?

While I don't have his permission to re-print this partial transcript, Bill Maher has managed to nail the pro-environment discussion better than any politician I've heard. I figure if one more person starts attending to this world's climate issues, this is worth it.

Now, without further ado, here is Bill Maher's closing monologue on "Real Time with Bill Maher", from March 24th, 2006:
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New Rule: Nobody can use the phrase “our greatest problem” anymore unless you're talking about global warming. President Bush has been saying we're in a war on terror, and now I get it. He's not saying “terror,” he's saying “terra” as in “terra firma,” as in the Earth. George Bush is an alien sent here to destroy the Earth! I know it sounds crazy, but it made perfect sense when Tom Cruise explained it to me last week.

Now, last week on “60 Minutes,” James Hansen, who is NASA's leading expert on the science of climate delivered the world's most important message. He said, “We have to, in the next ten years, begin to decrease the rate of carbon dioxide emissions and then flatten it out. If that doesn't happen in ten years, we're going to be passing certain tipping points. If the ice sheets begin to disintegrate, what can you do about it? You can't tie a rope around an ice sheet.” Although I know a certain cowboy from Crawford who might think you could.

And that cowboy and his corporate goons at the White House tried to censor Mr. Hansen from delivering that message, claiming such warnings were speculative. This from the crowd that rushed into a war based on an article in the Weekly Standard. This – this from the guy who thinks Kyoto is that Japanese emperor dude his dad threw up on.

Global warming is not speculative. It threatens us enough so that it should be considered a national security issue. Failing to warn the citizens of a looming weapon of mass destruction – and that's what global warming is – in order to protect oil company profits, well, that fits, for me, the definition of treason. And codified treason. [applause]

Please, wait a second. The guy in the White House who made the edits was Phil Cooney, who had been an oil industry lobbyist before given this job as head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. That's the office that is supposed to be watching out for us. But that's where Phil busied himself crossing stuff out in scientists' reports, because apparently in Phil's mind, he hadn't switched jobs. He was just doing his old job – oil industry lobbyist – from a different office. You know, in the “people's house.”

Republicans have succeeded in making the environment about some tie-dyed dude from Seattle who lives in a solar-powered yurt and eats twigs. It's not. This issue should be driven by something conservatives are much more familiar with: utter selfishness. That's my motivation. I don't want to live my golden years having to put on a hazmat suit just to go down and get the mail. Those are my Viagra years. When I'll be thinking about having children.

But I wouldn't know what to tell a kid about our world in 20 years. “Dad, tell me about the birds and bees.” “They're all gone. Now, eat your Soylent Green.” We are letting dying men kill our planet for cash, and they're counting on us being too greedy or distracted, or just plain lazy, to stop them.

So, on this day, the 17 th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, let us pause to consider how close we are to making ourselves fossils from the fossil fuels we extract. In the next 20 years, almost a billion Chinese people will be trading in their bicycles for the automobile. Folks, we either get our shit together on this quickly, or we're going to have to go to Plan B: inventing a car that runs on Chinese people.

Nappy Brown Is Smiling

Is it weird that whenever I hear Ray Charles' "(The Night Time Is) The Right Time", all I can think about is Rudy Huxtable belting out --okay, lip syncing-- "Bay-bay!!! Bay-bay!!!"?

You know, on The Cosby Show?

Season Two, 1985... the episode where they help celebrate Cliff Huxtable's parents' 49th wedding anniversary. It... single-handedly helped the show become a huge ratings winner!!

It was episode #27: "Happy Anniversary"

Seriously, nothing?

Fine, I'll answer for you. No, that is not weird. We all remember that episode, and we all think of it every time that song comes on. In fact, your detailed recounting of that scene is not only frightening, but also quite impressive!

Thank you. That was all I needed to hear.

I See You Looking At Me

It's been three weeks since I've posted anything new. Most likely, anyone resembling a regular reader has abandoned me. Serves me right.

If it's any consolation, I resigned from my job in favor of a new investment banking position. I rarely post anything personal here, so consider this an exception. Strike that. Consider this "excuse foreshadowing". If I didn't have time before to write regularly before, then investment banking is definitely going to be the nail in the coffin. Get ready for timestamps in the order of 4am.

To me, returning to writing is like getting back on a gym schedule after a hiatus. You can't expect to bench the same weight you did before taking time off. Instead, you have to pace yourself, and start slow. Otherwise, you could hurt yourself or accidentally offend countless minorities while attempting to be clever. In addition, this metaphor has reminded me that I haven't gone to the gym in a month; I should probably get on that.

Anyway, here's my metaphorical "10 minutes on the treadmill", just to get you all warmed up again:

What to Do if Your Eyeball Falls Out of Its Socket

This is pretty much one of the top 10 creepiest how-to's out there.