east village idiot

Also, I imagine PETA would take offense to serving up vegetarians on pita bread.

This morning, I spotted a maintenance worker watering the garden at the corner of 14th and 1st in Stuy Town.

This would not seem particularly abnormal, except that this guy apparently didn’t see the weather forecast for the next five days.

With waste like this, no wonder their rents are so high.

So, the Transport Workers Union is supposedly going to “give us hell” with a work slowdown today.

Which makes me wonder: how could MTA employees be any slower?

And how effective is a slowdown if subway service feels just as slow as any other day?

I went to a beer festival over the weekend and was inebriated enough to tempt fate by breaking the rules.

I’m usually all about the original content, but it’s hard to pass up an opportunity to show one of the most hilarious examples of MTA employee incompetence, from the folks at The Awl:

There’s some bum information on the MTA’s web site right now.

Price of a slice of cheese pizza on Ray’s Pizza’s 45th anniversary: 45 cents
Regular price of a slice of cheese pizza at Ray’s Pizza: $2.50
Savings per slice on Ray’s Pizza’s 45th anniversary: $2.05
Length of wait in line: roughly 40 minutes
Hourly wage needed in order to make saving $2.05 worth 40 minutes of waiting in line: $3.08 (less than half of New York’s minimum wage)
At minimum wage, number of slices needed in order to justify 40 minutes of waiting in line: 3
Based on New York City median income, number of slices needed in order to justify 40 minutes of waiting in line: 8
Average number of slices each customer carried out (based on one minute of observation): 2
Number of people who were wasting their time in this line: all of them, except that one homeless guy who usually hangs out on the corner

At a friend’s dinner party last week (which included far more wine than dinner), I kept some of the partygoers amused by drawing the outlines of all 50 states and having friends name them. I would then add the two-letter abbreviation and move on to the next outline.

I’m no Al Franken, but I would say I did a pretty good job.

The only state I had trouble drawing was New Jersey. After several fruitless attempts to draw it accurately, I resorted to old stereotypes.

At that point, two players guessed it correctly right away.

Sorry, New Jersey.

I’m wearing button-fly jeans today. I hate button-flies with a passion, but these jeans looked too good on me and were too good of a deal to pass up.

I’m just wondering why anyone makes anything with a button-fly anymore. It’s not like a zipper is unsightly. It kind of just hides out there, behind that flap. The invention of the zipper made the button-fly unnecessary. Does anyone own a rotary phone anymore? No. So why does anyone still own a pair of button-fly jeans?

One of my friends tried to defend the button-fly by telling me it was easy to pull down during those, you know, important times. Easier than a zipper?! Absolutely not. Now, admittedly, some people - especially men - could argue that a button-fly is helpful for avoiding those extremely painful incidents when their junk gets caught in the zipper. But that’s generally only caused by carelessness and drunkeness - and a drunk probably couldn’t button up a button-fly to save his life.

I know this from personal experience. Last week, while I was wearing these same jeans, I went into a bar restroom with two urinals and a sink. While I was doing my business, another guy came into the restroom to take care of his own. I finished up my business, and went to zip up - but then remembered I had a button fly. At that moment, I knew this was going to be the beginning of a long ordeal.

First, I tried to squeeze the first button through the buttonhole to no avail. I would push it through, and it would pop right back out. I would squeeze it through halfway, and with just one simple movement, it would slide right back, exposing my boxers for all the world to see. This button was not going to button. I was flailing my arms in all directions trying to get this button in place. I can’t help but wonder what the other guy in the restroom thought I was doing behind the urinal divider. I gave up on the first button for the time being and moved onto the second one. This button was easier to handle and went through on the very first try. But my first button was still unbuttoned. I went back to it again, but it was no use - this button was not going through anytime soon.

At this point, because it took me so long to button up my fly, the other guy in the restroom was standing there awkwardly, waiting his turn to use the sink. Eventually, I just gave up, washed my hands, and walked back out into the bar with my fly unbuttoned. At that moment, I realized that it’s a wonder why I - or anyone, really - ever buys button-fly jeans. And after that, I realized how grateful I should be that I wasn’t freeballing.

The Blimpie on 4th Avenue and 13th Street is looking for a salesgirl. I guess the position of salesboy has already been filled.