Tag Archives: bmj2k

Monday Night Was Magical

19 Dec

December 19, 2009

Monday night was magical. My sexy girlfriend and I (she’s a model) took a limo into the city, ate a fabulous dinner at a fancy restaurant, saw a Broadway show, and spent the night in a luxurious mid-town hotel. At least that is what I’ve been telling people.

Truth is I did no such thing. Well, I did go into the city, I did eat a meal, and I sort-of saw a Broadway show. You see, I tend to stretch the truth. Makes me feel like a big shot.

In reality, my brother and I took the train into the city to see the Rangers, AKA “The Broadway Blues” at MSG. So I say I did see a “Broadway show.” Sue me.

We started our Mid-Town sojourn at one of the greatest gifts Manhattan can bestow: Mid-Town Comics. They don’t need me to plug them but for the sake of taking up space in this blog I’ll do it. If there is something comic book related, they have it. If they don’t have it you don’t need it. They have two floors full of stuff that just compels the money out of your wallet. You don’t even know it. Walk in and ten minutes later you are standing at the register behind a pile of stuff Webster couldn’t see over while the guy behind the counter calls in your credit card and asks for a credit line increase. It is that good. There must be some magic in that old silk hat they found, how else to explain all the people buying $100 Wolverine busts?

If Mid-Town Comics has a problem, it is the one thing they don’t have and desperately need: a way in. As I said, they are two floors of the best stuff a comic book nerd could ever want. Trouble is, the two floors are the second and third floors of a building. The first floor is taken up by souvlaki stands, fake Rolex shops, the World’s Smelliest T-Shirt Shop, and an unmarked door guarded by a large bald man in sunglasses and a leather coat that must have taken the combined hides of four cows to make.

To get to the comics shop, you have to climb up a staircase to the second floor, a long straight climb without a landing. I assume there is a handicapped entrance somewhere- maybe the bald guy is guarding it. Aside from the long climb, the main trouble with the staircase is that it is too narrow. I hope no building inspectors are reading this. The staircase is too narrow for two people to pass. If someone is walking down and you want go up, you have to wait for the person to get to the bottom. Even if the guy going down the stairs is 96 years old, takes the stairs one step at a time and then waits to catch his breath, you’re stuck waiting.

I stepped on the bottom step to go up at the same time as someone stepped on the top step to go down.

We stopped.

I stared up.
She stared down.
I squinted at her, Larry David style.
She kept staring.

My brother said “oh this is bullshit!” and pushed past me and went upstairs. I followed along, and when we got to the top the woman kept staring at me. Who cares? I was where I wanted to go.

A lot of people have a wrong idea of comic book readers. They expect fat guys in Fantastic Four t-shirts and old baseball caps. Nothing could be further from the truth. Mid-Town Comics was crowded with men in business suits, guys in casual office wear, women in smart skirts. In fact, the only fat guy in a Fantastic Four t-shirt and an old baseball cap that day was me.

I spent about $80 to stimulate the economy (including a George Perez JLA collection and a hardcover of The Return of the Sinister Six. I tell you this in case you were going to get me either of these as a Christmas present.) and somehow managed to avoid the allure of the $100 Wolverine busts. We went to go back down the stairs and damn if there wasn’t a 96 year-old man coming up the stairs one at a time, catching his breath at every step.

Twenty minutes later we were down the stairs and on our way to eat.

TO BE CONTINUED

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No Toilet No Bride

13 Dec

December 13th, 2009

Who doesn’t trust The Washington Post? For journalistic integrity they are right at the top of the list. Are they? I don’t know, I never read that paper. I prefer to peruse the British press where I can catch a glimpse of a Page Three girl. But this article comes from one of my favorite American News Sources, News of the Weird (Their motto: “For journalistic integrity we are second only to the Washington Post, we think.”).

It is from the November 22nd edition, and credited to the Washington Post of November 12th. So if this was first reported in the Washington Post and then picked up by the News of the Weird, you can be sure this will be high on the agenda at the next session of the UN General Council.

An unprecedented toilet-building spree has taken hold in India over the last two years, spurred by a government campaign embraced by young women: “No Toilet, No Bride”

Now I am nothing if not a credible journalist, so I did a bit of research and found this bit of info on CNN.com, squeezed between a picture of Tucker Carlson’s bow tie and a sidebar about how highly polished Obama’s Nobel Prize is:

“No toilet, no bride,” has become a rallying cry for women raising a stink about the lack of a basic amenity. (Ha ha! Who says the news industry can’t be funny?)

They see it as a human rights issue, especially in villages where plumbing can be nonexistent.

It was that way in Sunariyan Kalan in the northern state of Haryana. Sumitra Rathi said village women had no choice but to relieve themselves without privacy. They would go before sunrise or hold it in until darkness fell once again to avoid being seen. Or they would walk out to the fields and endure embarrassment. They don’t want their daughters to face the same indignity.

“Many of them do make serious inquiries from the families of grooms about latrines,” she said.

Personally, Mr. Blog stands with his sisters on this one. “Places of poop” (as a friend once called them) are vital to the general well-being of every man woman and child. At least in my neighborhood. But I’m not sure everyone agrees with me. About five years ago, I was parked in the local Toys “R” Us parking lot waiting for someone to come out when I saw a woman and her son, who was no more than four, exit the store. I was parked very close to the exit, as it was quiet and I didn’t have to steal a handicapped spot, so I saw the whole sordid scene. The woman held the boy by the hand and marched him to the nearest lamppost where she pulled his pants and underwear down around his ankles, pointed to the pole, and yelled “pee!”

Yes this is true and yes I watched it and no I am not a pedophile.

The kid, without batting an eye, peed, and in quite an arc I must say.

I was appalled. The store they just exited had a bathroom!

So now the kid finished peeing and is standing there, full frontal nudity, in a puddle, in full view of all the perverted trash in the parking lot, and me, when the mother, who had turned her back on this, turned around and asked the kid if he was finished. He said he was. So she reached around, grabbed the kid’s gear, and gave it a few vigorous shakes to get the last drops out. Yes, she gave the kid a reach around in the parking lot.

This kid has a great future as a foster child ahead of him.

She pulled up the kid’s pants and they walked back into the store.

Did I mention there was a bathroom in the store? In fact, two. The kid could have gone himself into the men’s room or, he’s still young enough, with his mother in the ladies room.

So I wonder if that woman came from a non-toilet country, like India? Perhaps she was not yet acclimated to all the wonderful plumbing our great culture has to offer? It could be that, as yet, she was not yet used to the American way of defecation? From youth, I have been privileged to live in houses, and have relatives who live in houses, and shop in stores that have, and work in buildings with, TOILETS. They may not have always been clean or had toilet paper, and they may have looked like an elk was eviscerated in them, but they were good old American toilets and I was proud to pee in them, even in winter when, quoting my friend once again, “heated toilet seats are like a gift from the gods. I really wish that they were the norm in all places of poop.” (She is quite the philosopher. I only hope she’ll speak to me again.)

“No Toilet No Bride.” I can only hope that this wonderful slogan takes root in America.

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