east village idiot

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.

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.

In case you were wondering.

Hey, here’s a brilliant idea! Threaten to kill the mayor of New York in the comments of a relatively mundane article on the Daily News’ website. Lay out your entire plan, including your defense in court, and then attach your name and a phone number to it.

People in the psychiatric wards of our city’s hospitals should not be allowed near computers.

If you have such a problem with your college’s leadership, leave. You chose to go there in the first place.

From today’s issue of my hometown newspaper, the Providence Journal:

Really? Barry Manilow? I hear the Captain & Tennille are pretty mainstream these days, too.

It appears that Rhode Island is perpetually trapped in 1974.

The New York State DMV has held me hostage for six days now. On Sunday, I placed an order online for a reprint of my license, because I lost it in an unfortunate incident at an out-of-state bar on Saturday night.

As of today’s mail delivery, I still haven’t received it. I was holding out hope that I’d get it within a week. Although, they quote on their site that it could take “4 weeks for delivery.”

Four weeks. An entire fucking month. And there’s no way to rush the delivery.

For the record, I received my brand-new U.S. Passport in the mail exactly seven calendar days after I applied at the Post Office - without rush delivery. The Passport Service had to process my application, review all the materials, make sure I’m not a terrorist, print out the Passport, and send me back my birth certificate along with the finished document. This is just a fucking driver’s license.

What is the hold up? You have all my information stored. I paid you your fifteen bucks, now print out the license, put it in an envelope, and send it to me. This is not a very difficult process. So, DMV, I have one question for you: WHY DOES IT TAKE FOUR WEEKS?

What if I drove and relied on a car to get anywhere? I don’t have a license to my name. I would be a prisoner in my own home. The DMV’s solution is to get a temporary license at an office with inconvenient hours (still, you have to wait for a real license to show up in the mail). Of course, that temporary license is a flimsy piece of paper with no photograph. What if I didn’t have a Passport? I would have no photo ID right now, and from my experiences last Sunday, it’s very difficult to get into bars with no photo ID, even at 27 years old.

There has to be an easier way to do this. But knowing how New York’s bureaucracy works, I doubt they’ll offer up a solution anytime soon.

The Scene: Pizza shop on Avenue A. I’m quickly grabbing a slice before I host trivia. I run into the shop from the street, since I left my coat at Arrow. A guy on his cell phone is sitting inside the shop, but is not eating anything (nor is he waiting for food, as the shop is empty and I discover later that there’s nothing else in the oven).

Guy (pulls cell phone away): Hey, brotha, do you like hip-hop?
Me (matter-of-factly): Sorry, man, not really.
Guy: You sure?

(I nod. Guy puts the cell phone back to his ear. This is not an unusual experience. He’s obviously hawking a CD. I order my pizza, wait for it, pay for it, get my slice, throw some grated cheese on it, and head towards the door.)

Guy: Brotha man, I’m sellin my CD. It’s hip-hop.
(Guy shows me something that looks nothing like a CD or a CD sleeve)
Me: Sorry, man, I’m not interested.
Guy: Come on, it’s hip-hop, did it myself.
Me: Sorry, man, I gotta go.

To this point, all of this is fairly commonplace. Guy hawks a CD, I say no, he gives up. But this guy took a different tact as I walked out.

Guy: FUCK YOU!

So, guy in the pizza shop, fuck you, too. That’s no way to get new fans. Although, if someone discovers you and you blow up, I’ll get to brag to people that back in the day, you said “fuck you” to me.

At bottom left, my crappy Time Warner HD cable box freezing up on the on-screen program guide and reminding me for several minutes that America’s Next Top Model is on Bravo today at 5pm.

At top right, an ad for Verizon FiOS that happened to air on the channel I was watching while I was frantically trying to exit the frozen program guide.

In a misguided attempt to move forward in the New Year, I decided to join eHarmony last Thursday. After all, communication was free this weekend! If it wasn’t, I probably wouldn’t have bothered. After all, it seems a bit ridiculous to put a price on the prospect of getting a date. Especially when that price is something in range of $20 to $30 a month. I’m not that desperate. And what if I commit to six months and I find my perfect match in six months and two days? Even worse, what if I commit to six months and I find my perfect match on day two? You just wasted money that could have paid for a fancy date for you and this perfect match. This is a clever business model they have, but it’s for suckers. And I am not a sucker.

Anyway, the first horror story I had heard about eHarmony was that it was far too easy to be rejected. Now, there are some very easy ways to get rejected, but I played it safe and answered the questions they asked in a very conservative manner, careful not to slip up and get the a big shot of the rejection juice before I could even get started. For example, my religious beliefs? “Spiritual, but not religious.” I’d say that’s fairly safe. I could have paid respects to my baptismal certificate and claim to be Catholic, but I may have ended up with a match that was pro-life and saving herself for marriage.

Once I was approved, I was excited to get online and meet all these people who matched me on 29 different emotional levels, a special matrix based on closed-ended questions, numerical representations of our personalities, and an algorithm of six ranking systems that drops the highest and lowest rankings of six coaches’ polls.

Total matches within 60 miles of New York: 2.

Both of them were in New Jersey. And not like Hoboken, but rather in distant towns I had either never heard of or had no idea how to pronounce. Clearly, this computerized data is flawed. I would never date a woman who lived in New Jersey voluntarily. And if this matching system is so sophisticated, it would have inferred that I don’t cross state lines to date. Unfortunately, it didn’t ask a question like that.

Dismayed, I decided to edit my profile a little bit. The profiles that eHarmony displays are so closed-ended that you can fill them to the brim with information and still feel as though your Facebook profile is more reflective of who you are as a person. For example:

Three things I am most thankful for:
1. My family
2. My friends
3. My job

Just about every single profile I ultimately ended up reading had precisely these answers. How else are you going to answer these questions? You’d pretty much be obnoxious if you put anything else. I am thankful for cable television. I am thankful for beer. I am thankful that I didn’t get jacked walking home drunk last weekend.

After revising my profile, I decided I’d try to add a bit of personality to these responses. For example, I answered:

Three things I am most thankful for:
1. Having a supportive family, i.e. my mom, who makes a mean chicken soup
2. Having great friends who have helped me through the thick, the thin, and the cheese-stuffed
3. Having a job, given the way I watch a friend get laid off nearly every week lately

This didn’t last long, because two minutes after submitting these responses, I got this e-mail:

Dear Chris,

During regular site maintenance, we noticed some content written by you that violates our terms and conditions. Here is what we found:

{ABOUT ME}Having a job, given the way I watch a friend get laid off nearly every week lately

Because this violates the terms and conditions that you accepted when you joined eHarmony, we have turned off your matching. You will not receive any further matches.

Yes, “get laid” is a phrase that is absolutely banned on eHarmony. Never mind that the next word is “off.” Never mind that the words preceding it are “watch a friend.” Oh, well, yeah, that’s pretty dirty. But if I was into that sort of thing, wouldn’t my matches have a right to know?

So, I was no longer receiving any matches. It’s eHarmony’s equivalent of getting put in time out. And that’s about when I threw in the towel.

Except that one of my matches contacted me. I felt obligated to answer her questions and send a set of my own. eHarmony forces you into this ridiculous and repetitive line of closed-ended generic questioning that, once again, gives you no opportunity to show your personality, wit, or charm. One of the questions I chose to ask:

2. On Saturday night, would you rather go to:
A) ballet/theater/symphony
B) a professional sporting event
C) a popular new movie
D) the latest dance club

She chose answer D. I don’t usually make snap judgments, but considering that any dance club - regardless of being the latest or not - is pretty much my own idea of hell, that was the end of that.

By Friday afternoon, eHarmony and I were through. I quit. I’ll stick to meeting women through more traditional channels. You know, like Twitter, Facebook, and this blog.