July 22, 2011

Shit, this is a first. I’m just getting ready to go and I went to get my camera out of my bag and I must’ve forgot to pack it and left it at home. I had a plan for tonight, but I’m not going all the way home and then going out again, so I’ll do what I was going to do next week. So what about tonight? Well, I guess you’ll get some shots of my apartment. Hey, what are you going to do?

Okay, first things first, time to finally drink that Sol after repeated urgings from Britta and Clacky joined in last night.

And here it is, the lone bottle of Sol, finally out of the fridge.

And here's the oblgatory mirror shot of me drinking the beer. Cheers to Britta, Clacky and to all of you. And to Shawn Chittle for buying the beer in the first place!

A sip for Gumby.

And a shot of Gumby in the cup. He's a little more eliusive than the other Gumby and is reluctant to have his photo taken, so enjoy this rare shot.

This air conditioner is 8-years-old. I got it on sale from PC Richards for 93 bucks. I can't believe it still works, but it does. And on a scorching night like tonight, I'm thankful for it.

I think I've posted this picture before, but it's worth posting again, the "Funny Cry Happy" store on 14th Street. Sadly it's now a cell phone store. Ecch.

Joan Jett and a couple of Handcuffs buttons.

X-Ray Gogs, a present from Frank Scott, he'll probably be amazed I still have these. Maybe we'll even get a rare comment from him, but probably not.

Here's a Shamwow animal from my friend Ash.

A pile of books.

Here's an issue of Time Out New York where I wrote a story called, "16 Beers in 16 Bars in 16 Hours." Kind of a precursor for my 99 Beers book and 365 Bars. I got a cover line on the issue, so I was happy with that.

The first page of the article. Look at me with no grey hair!

Look at this old Life magazine with Charles Manson on the cover. I remember reading this as a kid and it kind of scared me.

Susan Atkins and Charlie Manson on the lead pages of the Life story.

A picture of a fat cat is the last page "Parting Shot" for the issue.

My two heaters, I won't be needing these guys for a while. Hey, what's that in-between them...

Aaaahhhh!

Further reading: MedicineNet.com, FamilyDoctor.com, About.com - Psychology and NY Apartments.

You Might Also Like: Rubber Biscuits, Plastic Donuts and Velvet Apples.

Four Famous People Who Suffered With Alzheimer's
Glen Campbell
Ronald Reagan
Perry Como
Shit I Can’t Remember the Fourth One!

You're just a memory of a love,
That used to mean so much to me.

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Bonus Magazine Cover From Jaws!

Jaws sent in this magazine cover from 1979. It's the Progressive letting loose with the H-Bomb, a distant cousin to the F-Bomb if I remember correctly. Thanks, Jaws!

May 31, 2011

I had a big day yesterday and put up a huge post. It took me over two hours to do, so today, since it’s a holiday, I thought I’d take it easy. I was going to go somewhere and get something to eat, but since it’s Memorial Day, I thought I’d have a cookout. I was out all day yesterday, so I’ve decided to have an indoor cookout. I’ve got the indoors, all I need now is something to cook. To the Food Emporium!

And through the magic of the internet, here we are.

And, again, through the magic of the internet, you're spared the shopping experience and get to gaze at this pretty woman who rang me up.

It's warm out tonight and the streets are still somewhat deserted, thanks to the holiday weekend.

Here's the inside of Union Square Park. I'm so happy summer's finally here!

Now it's time to show you the ingredients for tonight's meal. First off, I thought I'd have an appetizer and for that I got some shaved ham slices, Genoa salami, Italian crackers and Velveeta cheese.

For the main course, I decided I would make my own version of a Sloppy Joe. So I got two ground beef patties that have cheese and bacon mixed in with them, and for the sauce I got Stubbs Barbecue sauce, spicy mustard, A-1 Sauce and Italian dressing. In the bag is a fresh croissant. Let's get cooking!

But first...

Let's uncork a beer! I think I'll have the giant Budweiser.

Okay, first we'll brown the ground beef. I've also seasoned it with pepper and Coleman's mustard powder.

Okay, now I've added all the sauces and mustard and poured a splash of beer to turn the beef into a Sloppy Joe mixture. And by God it does look sloppy!

We'll cover it up and just let it simmer for a while.

Okay, while that simmers, I'm going to have the appetizer. It's a simple one, I just stacked Velveeta cheese, Genoa salami and ham on top of four Italian crackers and added a dollop of the spicy mustard to each one. (Sorry, Kari!)

Here's a fuzzy shot of it, delicious and went well with the giant beer!

Okay, three beers later and everything's ready! The Sloppy Joe mixture smells great!

For a twist, instead of a hamburger bun, I sliced a croissant in half and covered them with Velveeta cheese and toasted them.

And here's the finished product. Oh look, they're spooning, how cute! It was delicious if I do say so myself and I just did, so there! Hope you all had a nice Memorial Day, now I have to get ready for work. Ecch! Goodnight everybody and see you tomorrow after dark.

Further reading and listening: Home Alone, Home Cooking, Home on the Range and Little House on the Prairie.

You might also like: Pickle Juice, Pickles and Juice.

Three Other Sloppy Joes
Joey Buttafuoco
Kangaroo Joey
Joey

I'll build a bonfire of my dreams,
And burn a broken effigy of me and you.

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Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Fireside Chat @11:00 pm
My Apartment/Chelsea
As I wrote on Monday, one of the pleasures of doing this blog is I can do whatever I feel like doing, as long as it’s after dark. So I can go wherever I want and do the night’s post and then put it up the next day. And that includes my apartment, which will be nice for night’s like tonight. As I wrote yesterday, I had to go to work early today and this process is going to happen all week. Anyway, I’m really beat tonight and thought I’d just go home and make a fire and have a few beers and so that’s tonight’s destination and after hours journey. I’ll take some photos on my walk home and think about something to write about on my laptop while sitting in front of my fireplace.
And here we go. It's straight up 6th Avenue and then we're home.

Sandwiches, bagels and coffee, the holy trinity of delis.

Same caption as the last, just replace sandwiches and coffee for paninis and wraps.

In case you're wondering if this store is closing...

Just check out their other windows. Gee, this is just  a guess, but maybe you mismanaged yourself. You know, like maybe just puttting up one big sign saying you're closing as opposed to a thousand hand written ones all over your four windows.

Oh no, another one of these, let's just get home, I think the dollar pizza joints have officially outnumbered bedbugs at this point!

Ah, the log is in the fireplace and all is well. Let's fire it up.

There we go, now we're talking. Well, not yet, let me think of something to write about.

Tonight I thought I’d write about the very thing you’re on if you’re reading this: The internet. I have a love/hate relationship with the internet. What I love about it is the wealth of information that’s available to you at the tip of your fingers. Google didn’t even start up until 1998 and now I probably go there at least a dozen times a day. In fact I had to Google the word “Google” to see when it started. I was half afraid I’d turn to dust while doing that, but I survived.

For all the good the internet has done for the world, it’s also fucked a lot of shit up. Record stores are becoming a dying thing now because everyone downloads music on the internet, no one buys albums or CD’s anymore and it’s killing the thing that we knew as the record store. Going to the record store was a social thing. Even if you went alone, maybe you’d strike up a conversation with someone looking at the same record as you were, or you’d talk to the person behind the counter about the music they were playing in the store that you had never heard of. I had a conversation with two kids in a bar last year (where else) and they tried to tell me that going to the Apples iTunes store was the same thing as going to a record store. I told them it wasn’t a social thing to go to the iTunes store and they argued that it was, because you can leave comments and communicate that way. I gave up and went back to my beer.

And speaking of comments, that’s another thing that bugs me about the internet. It used to be if you wanted to sound off on something that was in the paper, you had to sit down and compose a letter to the editor of that paper. And then the editors of that paper would decide if they would run it or not. Doesn’t sound democratic? Well, that’s because newspaper editors are smarter than most of the people writing in to them. Most people read their news online now and almost every paper online has a comments button after every story. And you don’t have to leave your real name. This has turned every half-brained, drooling idiot out there into an instant critic and pundit and they now can have their inane and imbecilic thoughts plastered out there for millions of people to read. The only problem is a good portion of these nitwits don’t know how to spell. The New York Post’s gossip column ran an item today on Rosie O’Donnell breaking up wth her girlfriend. Someone who’s handle is “a2z” left this comment: “I lost 25 lbs All you need to do is think of being stuck that discusting beast. YOU EAT ALL YOU WANT THEN THROW THE FUC UP” I swear to God I didn’t alter that comment one bit. I was written up on somebody’s blog for my 365 bars blog last year and I was called an “alkaholic looser” in someone’s comment. Skary...I mean scary stuff!

Another thing that the internet is affecting is porn. I’m not saying it’s ruining porn, it’s hard (no pun intended, okay pun intended somewhat) to ruin such a time-treasured part of our society, but I think there’s so much of it readily available in the privacy of your home or apartment that it’s making people numb to it. I was on a porn site a couple months ago...doing research of course, thanks for that excuse, Pete Townshend!, and you could click a button and see what the most watched video of that day was. Know what it was? Two obese women shitting into their hands and spreading it on each other. It was discusting...I mean disgusting. When that’s  the most popular video of the day, I think we’ve all seen a little too much porn.

The internet also takes a lot of the excitement out of porn. I think we’ve all had that moment in the past when you’re renting, “Titty Titty Gang Bang” at the video store and your next door neighbor comes up to say hello. Awkward! But it led to the excitement of getting the tape. Now all you have to do is type in the word “porn” on Google and a whole universe of porn awaits you. The only trouble is, a lot of people these days don’t know how to spell porn.

Okay, I have to run. I haven’t checked my email in ten minutes. I’m way overdue.

Further reading: The Telegraph, NY Times and Hub Pages.

Nightcap

The sunshine bores the daylights outta me.

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