Manhattan Transfer

Wedding Dress For Sale:

This dress cost me $1200 that my drunken sot of an ex-father-in-law swore up and down he would pay for but didn’t so I got stuck with the bill. Luckily I only got stuck with his daughter for 5 years. Thank the Lord we didn't have kids. If they would have turned out like her or her family I would have slit my wrists. Anyway, it’s a really nice dress as you can see in the pictures. Personally, I think it looks like a $1200 shower curtain, but what do I know about this.

[Ebay--One Slightly Used Size 12 Wedding Gown. Only worn twice: Once at the wedding and once for these pictures.]

The Red Flags Of An Online Relationship

Everyone knows the internet is for porn and perverts. The most important thing about internet dating is that you shouldn’t do it. Go out to a bar, get drunk and make out with strangers like a normal person. You might end up in a motel room in the meatpacking district beneath that guy who used to be your doorman before he went to jail but...oh, fuck it. How much worse can it be than real life? Might as well give it a go.

There are, however, a few things you should be prepared to look out for. While each and every psychopath, pervert and loser you meet on the internet—and let’s be honest, that’s who you were meeting in real life and the internet is not going to make things better—is unique, and it is important that you not develop any hope whatsoever that this is going to work out, the following list should help you spot any red flags you might encounter.

RED FLAG #1: Offers to show you current “full body photos.” What sort of maniac sends naked pictures to total strangers? The sort who is sending naked pictures of other strangers to strangers. That’s right. It’s not him. It’s his neighbor, son, mechanic or something he downloaded from the internet. And, to be perfucktly clear, it is certainly not her. There are no “hers” sending you pictures, my friend. It. Is. Always. A. Man. At any given moment there are thousands of online lesbian relationships being conducted between pairs of hairy little men with damp palms and salvia stained beards. If looks are very important to you—and unless you are a recent parolee, they better fucking be important—I’m afraid you’ll have to go back to meeting people in reality.

Bonus tip: If a girl ever sends you a disposable camera with a self-addressed, postage ready envelope with instructions to take pictures and send the camera back to her, call the police immediately. This is my ex-girlfriend and she will slaughter you like a pig.

RED FLAG #2: Their email address is a bit off. You've progressed to exchanging personal emails, but the problem is you can't quite make sense of their email address. It’s on AOL or Compuserve and it looks like this: 696969anal@aol.com. Congrats. At least you haven’t wound up with an internet virgin. This person is built for meeting people on the internet, getting to know them over time, developing a romance and then contaminating them with nine types of venereal diseases. The other possibility is that the person you are talking to is a teenager. This means you are going to jail. Where you will get a nice bed, three squares a day, and be able to use the internet to write dirty things to more children

RED FLAG #3:They ask you for money. Actually, this is okay because it’s me. Send me $25 now. Thanks.

RED FLAG #4: Reality VS. Fantasy Let’s say you meet a nice guy online. It’s possible he will tell you that he has a job or isn’t ugly. Now you know he is lying. No one on the internet has a job. Everyone is ugly. But since you are also ugly and unemployable, you might make a nice pair if the two of you can stop lying for each other.

RED FLAG #5: One night on instant messenger, he says "I can't wait to slice your tits off. JK.” This is a telltale sign of things to come if you develop an off-line romance. No relationship should be solely one person giving and the other taking. If you find this happening to you, talk about it to your partner and ask them to meet you half way in your efforts.

RED FLAG #6: Their venue suggestion for your first real-life meeting is a public park restroom at 2 a.m. Despite news accounts to the contrary, this is not actually a good way to meet celebrities. Trust me on this okay. Public restrooms, however, are preferable to invitations to the following places: Avalon, the Village Idiot, Iranian folk dances done on horseback in tents outside of Lincoln Center, anywhere Donald Trump knows about, the bar at the Soho grand and pretty much any place in the meat-packing district.

Remember, any relationship will have its red flags. But if you pay attention to these red flags, you might not end up in a mason jar in a basement in Astoria. When it all ends horribly, just remember the most important thing. Drink to forget. Drink. To. Forget.

[Loving You: The Red Flags Of An Online Relationship]

[This blog post was made possible by a grant from a comedy professional.]

They're All Smiling At Us From Beneath the Glass Ceiling: Finally we know why men are paid more than women: men's jobs suck.

Service Journalism from Manhattan Transfer:

I am the fourth hit on this Yahoo search: How do you sneak drugs airplanes. Hurrah.

We Hate You, But You Hate Yourself Too. Buy Our Magazine.

Friedrich of Two Blowhards takes a look at the messages women get from the cover of the latest issue of Glamour.

1.“Dress and Feel Sexy At Any Size.” If sexiness is possible at any size, why do we mention size at all? Heh, heh.

2. “THE SCARY PAP TEST RESULT EVERYONE’S GETTING.” If everyone is getting scary results on their pap tests, they can’t be accurate…which means the reassuring result you got on your last pap test probably wasn’t accurate, either.

3. “Attention curvy girls, skinny girls, big chests, flat chests: instant confidence clothes inside.” Since you curvy, skinny, busty and flat-chested girls weren’t hip to our clothing-recommendations before reading this magazine, any confidence you had in your sexual attractiveness was obviously misplaced.

4.“The 31 SEX & LOVE thrills no woman should miss.” Since you can’t instantly rattle off 31 sex and love thrills you’ve ever had, your sex life is clearly inadequate. But we knew that.

5. “FREE! FREE! WE’RE GIVING AWAY THE WORLD’S MOST FLATTERING JEANS.” And the way you look, honey, you better pray that you get a pair.

We Lost Those Years to BlowMagic Wishing Dust Also:

The movie opens in 1987 New Jersey, where 13-year-old Jenna Rink is trying to make it with the "in crowd." After a disastrous birthday party, Jenna wishes she could be 30 -- which happens, sort of, with the help of a little magic wishing dust.

The now 30-year-old Jenna (Jennifer Garner) can't remember the last 17 years of her life.

Haiku for President George W. Bush, Inspired by Bob Woodward's New Book.

It’s a bit odd to think that God
Chose you to Free Iraq.
Wouldn’t he choose an Iraqi?

How the Existence of God Is Ontologically Proved Via the Medium of Very Good Stout and a Pretty Girl on a Spring Day.

We had been drinking most of day. The sun had vanquished winter, and the streets of New York City flowed with men in sunglasses glaring at young women with pleated, sorbet-hued skirts and bare legs. I was lying on the ground of the courtyard of the bar where we were drinking, in part because I had fallen off my chair and in part to get a better view of those heavenly bare legs.

Sully was lying beside me. After seven hours of consuming Irish stout and whiskey, he felt steadier on his feet when he was lying on his back. I could tell he was in a philosophical mood because he was talking.

“Do you think this is as good as it gets?”

I had to admit that this was pretty good. In the warmth of the sun, my pint felt cool to the touch. Beads of condensation arose and were pulled by the force of gravitation toward the largest body of mass in the vicinity, the Earth. I tasted the stout, and nodded.

“No, I mean, for real. Is this as good as it gets, or could you imagine anything better?”

I told Sully that I thought we should stay here for a while. The girls were pretty and the bartenders were still willing to serve us even though we had abandoned our table for the comfort of this lower perch. Also, I didn’t think I could walk.

That wasn’t what he was getting at. “This spot is good, the beer is wonderful and that girl who is wearing the Temporley ballerina skirt is amazing. I know we’re unlikely to find anything better around here. But we could imagine something better. And, look, our imagining better things presupposes an end, what the Greeks call telepathy.”

“You mean teleology,” I would have told him three or four pints earlier.

“This sun, this stout, her legs—our admiration for them is based upon their imitation of what is best. Do you know what that is called, MT?”

I smiled, knowingly. “Charlize Theron,” I offered.

“Please. She’s just Nicole Eggert with a career. It’s called God.”

Sully was drunk. I told him that I wasn’t sure that he could deduce the existence God from skirts and stout.

“That’s because you don’t understand the nature of God. God is the thing that is So Best, nothing else could be better. This isn’t something you can believe or not believe, because it is presupposed in the concept. How do I know that every point on the circumference of a circle is equally distant from its center? Because that is what a circle is. The question of belief does not enter into it.”

The girl with the ballerina skirt had decided to sit in the seat that Sully abandoned for the ground. She crossed her legs, dangling a sandal in front of us.

“The only question is whether it is better for something to exist than not to exist. If you agree that the existence of something good is better than simply imagining something good—it is better that this pint of stout exists, for instance, than that we are simply pretending it did—then God must exist, since if he didn’t he couldn’t be the best. There would always be one thing that could be better, a God that existed.”

We needed more stout. I waved to the waitress, and indicated that I’d also like to buy the ballerina a drink. I’d been thinking of what to say to her, and decided that it would be far better to actually say it to her than just imagining it. And I was happy to know that this proved the existence of God.

Hillary Clinton--Big Pimping: According to the Jamaica observer, Mrs. C has just wrapped up a holiday in the islands, where "her aides, friends and Secret Service protectors Rodham Clinton's entourage occupied 40 rooms."

Damn, yo. We knew Hill had a crew, but we didn't know she travelled this large. The Muthaf'ing Hill was in the house. A word to the wise, Mrs. C.: watch that the VHI MC Hammer documentary to see what happens when you've got too many heads pecking at your feed.

As It Happens, Tara Reid Is Still Alive:

Kill The Bird provides stumbles across the evidence that Tara Reid is alive and, uhm, perhaps not exactly "well" but at least semi-concious at Spice Market:

"I went back to that little known restaurant Spice Market last nite. Perhaps you've heard of it but doubtfully. They're not big on PR. Tara Reid was there. She was dining with Noah Tepperberg (uber-promoter turned Marquee club owner) and one other chick. A few investigative phone calls later, I found out that he'd already consummated his relationship with her a while back and his passion for her continues unabated. I can't quite recall what either of them were wearing, drinking or eating. I was quite drunk. But I think Tara looked pretty hot. More power to Noah. I understand she's remarkably prudish and nun-like in her dating life. Wooing her could take months if not years."

On the other hand, D-Nasty's observations may indicate that Ms. Reid's encounter with conciousness may have been brief and passing:

"Her head rolled upon her neck in drunken epicycles. Like a well-tanned buzzard hovering over a wounded antelope, an Enrique Iglesias look-alike sat next to her and smiled. I found it very sad."

[Spice Sighting--Killthebird]

[How I Saw Tara Reid, Found Her To Be Haggard-Looking, and Questioned My Own Faith in God--D-Nasty]

We Always Knew She Had It In Her:

Maccers Can't Get Enough!
April 16, 2004

It's likely that you've never heard of Maccers, but soon people all around the world will be talking about her and watching her naked on the Internet!

Maccers will be the star of her own all-free / all-the-time adult web site showcasing her wild sexual desires that can no longer be contained, supported only by advertising revenue. Maccers looks like your average woman, but she says that she's been living a double life of wild sexual exploration.

When interviewed by UJ reporters, Maccers said, "My friends and family will be shocked by this news, but I can no longer pretend to be a by-the-rules average person who they all think I am! I love sex and I can't get enough! If a day goes by without sex, it's a wasted day. Whether it's a stranger I met at a bar, another woman, or 3 men filling every hole at the same time, I'm happy and feel satisfied."

Maccers said that getting laid everyday by dozens of men, and making money doing it via a web site is a dream job! This is what made her decision to launch this venture an easy one. "I really had no idea how much money you could make on the Internet until I started selling personalized porno videos and pictures to lonely men on eBay. I made a lot of money very quickly.", said Maccers.

Maccers says that she practices safe sex and always requires her partners to wear a condom when being penetrated, but loves the taste of semen and usually asks her partners to ejaculate in her mouth or on her breasts.

The beta launch of her web site can be found here, with a full launch expected later this month.

[Maccers Can't Get Enough--Global Associated News]

The King of Pop is Dead? Gawker's being coy with the link so here's the story dredged up from somewhere on the interweb. Probably nothing to it.

In what appears to be an apparent suicide, musician Michael Jackson was pronounced dead as a result of cardiac arrest after consuming more than two-dozen sleeping pills.

[Breaking News : Musician Michael Jackson Found Dead--Global Associated News]

[Ed. "Global Associated News"? What the fuck is that?]

MT Update: Phony news source. Check this out.

The madness of George II:

We must first deal with the problem that George seems genuinely mad. There was a riddle in nearly every sentence. He spoke like someone dramatically out of touch with what everyone else knows. The whole scene was a bit wacky, as if the uncle who everyone knows is crazy came to the family reunion and was humored because he is family. People were going easy on George just because he seemed like he was speaking about another planet.

[Ed.: Isn't this how you get treated at your family reunions? MT: No. There's a difference between maddness and drunkenness; they're not even spelled alike. Ed.: Actually, madness isn't even spelled like that either; it's only got one 'd.' MT: It's Friday. Where are we drinking?]

[Lew Rockwell on the President's Press Conference--LewRockwell.Com]

Today's Hangover is A Little Worse Than Usual.

Egging the Patio'd Class is the New Beating Up Hipsters:

From an unseen source high up in the shadows of nearby buildings, eggs, dozens of them, rained down on the patio, threatening to turn the party into a sad, soggy, albeit very well-dressed omelet.

Guests ran inside, but not before a few of them met the business end of "a good three dozen eggs," Ms. Menocal said.

Hazy reports surfaced during our investigation that LAUREN BUSH, presidential niece and model, was a victim of the egging.

This is going to be big.

[Did You Get a Good Look at That Police Officer? Campbell Robertson, Bold Face Names.]

So What Are You Trying to Say? The good ladies over at TMFTML had blogged about this long before my hangover had retreated far enough to let me read but after dozens of emails proclaiming "Heavy social drinkers show brain damage" I can no longer afford to remain silent.

Look, people. I am not a heavy social drinker. I tend to drink alone. Early in the week. By the time the social drinkers roll out on Thursday or Friday night I'm typically so far into the bender that I can hardly socialize at all. So I'll be fine. Really.

Jimmy Breslin, Proto-Blogger? Everything old is new again. Rachel Donadio's article in todays Observer proclaims the death of the Mitchell-Liebling-Kempton-Hamill school of New York journalism, and their "terse, atmospheric writers who celebrated ordinary people in the bars, offices and waterfronts of a New York where the Irish, Italians and Jews were still considered ethnic."

"The signs, then, indicate that there’s less of a place for columnists like Mr. Breslin, or for atmosphere-heavy narrative writing in general," Donadio writes.

That may be true for newspapers or magazines but what about blogs? It may be that newspaper editors and readers have lost their taste for this kind of writing but there's plenty of it on this interwebby thing. Want a celebration of ordinary people? Go read the Gothamist Interview. Stories of bars and offices? Try Maccers or Dnasty. (I try to do a little of it around here also.) This stuff may not be indentical to Breslin journalism but it's taking up similar themes and voices.

And there are another, less literary, resemblence. I grew up around Hamill and Breslin, and drinking played a large part in their gig. They met, gathered, bragged and fought together in bars like the Lion's Head and Costellos. New York bloggers tend to drink. A lot. In bars. Together. I've had the hangovers to prove it.

Although from the outside they might have appeared to be an exclusive clique, the ink-stained ones were also very much a meritocracy. You were only as good as your last story. You only counted if you were writing. And this, in my experience, is how the bloggerati operate as well. The entry requirements are simple: write something bright and witty and new. The dues are only that you keep writing. And that you step up when it's your round to buy the fucking drinks.

"Humor can win everything," Mr. Breslin said. "That’s the difference between anything that I do, frankly, and anybody else. I can get now and then something humorous, and nobody else can. There’s one accusation they can hurl which is deadly, which is ‘boring’! If he’s boring, that’s a major sin. That’s a felony."

Spoken like a blogger.

And Afterwards We'll Grab Cookies and Milk at this After Hours Joint I know:

Late Night with John Kerry
Wednesday, April 14, 2004
7:30 PM

Crobar
530 West 28th St (between 10th and 11th) (Yahoo! Maps, Mapquest)
New York City, New York

Mix and mingle with Presidential hopeful John Kerry and ketchup heiress, Teresa Heinz Kerry at this campaign fundraiser. Open bar 8-9pm. $101.

Latenight?
7:30? Open bar 8 until 9?

[Gothamist--Events Calendar.]

Like Twelve Monkeys, When All the Zoo Animals Get Loose and Run Around the City:

The New York Nightlife Association (NYNA) is having our first annual Bartenders Ball on Monday, April 19, 10 Pm - 4 Am at Marquee on 10th Avenue.

Admission: $10 for industry members, $20 for non-industry guests.
3 hour open bar from 10 - 1
Admission automatically entitles you to Affiliate Membership in NYNA.

It's best for folks to pre-register by sending an email to events@nyna.org with their name, address, phone number and the name of the bar/club they work at. They will then get an automatic response which they should print out and bring with them to the event.

Warning: If you spend your evenings flirting with bartenders for free drinks, this may be too much for you.

[New York Bartenders & Patrons: Be the Belle of the Bartender Ball]

As It Turns Out, Dead People Are Very Peaceful:

But I want to understand about strategy. Yesterday, it said on CNN, the White House bombed a mosque full of people and killed forty of them, to make them democratic. It was because the two terrorists or maybe the outside agitator was inside. Being as I am unwashed and don’t know much, I’d have said it wasn’t the shiniest thought in the idea basket. You got a country full of people who take religion real serious, and so you bomb a church in the middle of services.

But what do I know? Somebody called Mark Kimmitt, a brigadier general, said to CNN, "When you start using a religious location for military purposes, it loses its protected status.” If they hid in mosques again, we’d bomb them again, he said.

Now that he has explained it, it makes sense to me. If bombing one church doesn’t make them democratic, and love us, then bombing some more churches will. It wouldn’t fly in West Virginia, but that’s a different culture. Arabs like being bombed.

[Fred Reed--Democracy Explodes Over Iraq: Few Survivors Expected].

The Negotiator: The orange digits on the cell-phone scurried past three in the morning sometime during the last glass of whiskey. The bar is nearly empty, and smells of a rainy night in New York City. There haven’t been many drinkers in here tonight, and there are only a handful left now. There’s the Australian couple—he’s wearing an ugly baseball hat to cover an extreme form of male pattern hair loss and she’s too pretty for him by half. There’s Andy, who like cartoons, especially Cowboy Bebop and the Big O, a cartoon that takes place in a New York City where everybody lost their memories forty years ago. It always ends in a giant robot fight. A tall girl, a bit awkward in a short skirt and heels leans against juke box. There’s the bartender, who is telling racist jokes but intentionally confusing which race of people is the butt of the joke. This makes the jokes not funny at all. There’s the bouncer, who is asleep on a stool against the back wall. Two lonely drinkers nurse their Rheingolds at the far end of the bar.

Andy hasn’t had a television since he moved to New York a year ago. He doesn’t mind except for the Comedy Channel and the Cartoon Network.

“The mythology of the Big O, that’s what’s so impressive. It’s a city, this city, where everyone lost their memory forty years ago in some unknown cataclysm. The main character, called Roger the Negotiator lives in an abandonned bank. Nothing exists outside the city, supposedly. It’s the last outpost of civilization, but somehow foreigners keep showing up,” he says.

The rain has mostly stopped but the streets still shine, like sweat on a post-coital belly or tears fallen on a bare shoulder. Rainwater gathered in puddles makes little black patches reflecting the starless night.

“Keep an eye on my drink,” I say to Andy. I don’t really need another cigarette but something about this time of night makes it seem like a good idea. There’s no wind, and no one on the street. Two blocks down I can see a group of small, dark men gathered in the light of a bodega window, drinking beer and laughing.

“Hey. Got a light?” The girl in the short skirt has stepped outside just behind me. I hold out the purple Bic and toss the flint with my thumb. “A gentleman should look a lady in the eye when he lights her cigarette,” she says.

Her eyes are brown and flecked with gold. The whites cracked with red. She’d be pretty enough if she wasn’t tired. Or hungry. Or fiending for something stronger than a Marlboro Red.

“Can I ask you a question?” she says.

“You can ask.”

“I’m pretty hot, right? How much would you pay to sleep with me?”

“It depends.”

“On what?”

“Would I be drunk?”

“I don’t think so. You seem fine.”

“No, I mean would I be drunk?”

“Uhm, no?”

“Why not? Why wouldn’t I be drunk? Would there be something wrong with me?”

“What?”

“Would I be on medication that doesn’t mix well with booze? Because you know, usually even when they say you shouldn’t drink--especially when they say that--it usually means that you're going to get amazingly high. So why wouldn’t I be drunk? What’s wrong with me?”

“Nothing. I don’t get it. Nothing’s wrong with you.”

“Well, if nothing's wrong with me then I’m not paying to sleep with you. Thanks anyway.”

“I think maybe you are drunk.”

She’s right. I am. I walk off in the direction of the bodega. It’s time to get some sleep. I wonder how long Andy will stand vigil over the last bits of ice and whiskey in my glass.

I tend to lose my cell phone every seven weeks. It's good to know this means I hate myself:

"People become irrational when it comes to their cellphones," said James Rosenfield, a California-based expert on human relationships with technology. "Because phones now hold so much information, people think, 'My cellphone is part of my identity. I can't let go of that.'"

[Why Owners Put Lives On Line--Bridget Harrison, New York Post.]

One Week, Minimum. Obvs. Bridget Harrison goes to a party, meets a guy, gives him her phone number and has a lingering goodbye with him. [Ed. What's a lingering goodbye? I think it means she blew him in the stairwell.] Then our Bridget proceeds to go crazy for the next four days waiting for him to call her.

Listen up, ladies. Unless you've woken up beneath him in a motel room, no man should ever call you earlier than one week after you first met. That's right. If you've not been undressed in his presence, he shouldn't call to chat, he shouldn't call to say it was nice meeting you, he shouldn't call to ask you out. He should not call.

If he does call there is something wrong, desperate, awkward about him. Even if you think it's nice that he called, you aren't going to like him because you'll smell his hunger and it will turn you off. Eventually you will hate him.

When he calls you sometime after one week has passed he should not linger on the phone. He should say exactly four things:

"Hello."
"It's [_________] from [______] the other night."
"Do you want to go to [________] with me on [_______] night?"
"Great. I'll see you at eight."

Anything more and he's a nervous little bugger who doesn't know when to shut up. Eventually you will hate him.

Again, the rules are different if you are already sleeping with the guy before you've already been on a date.

Who's on First No Longer: One of the great dives of the upper east side has shut its doors forever. Who's On First opened its doors in 1996, competing with downtown dives such as the Village Idiot for the title of raunchiest, scantly-clad barmaid, beer-and-shot soaked bar in New York City. When the Idiot's Tommy McNeil needs new bartenders he puts out a sign that says, "Shameless sluts wanted. No experience necessary." Who's on First often hired those shameless sluts once they had a little experience working for Tom.

Bartenders at Who's have included Chaundra, Amy, Timmy and Carmit. Goodnight, girls. And thanks for all the hangovers.

Chaundra and Amy


Timmy & Carmit


As always, thanks to NYCBP.Com for the news about the dives.

Shard and Ruins:

IMBD Search Results: It doesn't beat being the number one result for Richie Sambora, but I'm proud that ManhattanTransfer is the number one result for Jill Halfpenny naked on IMDB.

Overserved vs. George Bailey: "I know I'd choose Pottersville. So there would be some suffering. Harry would have drown in the pond in a sledding accident, causing all the soldiers on that transport to die in flames. Donna Reed would have ended up as a spinster of a librarian and Uncle Billy would have ended up a homeless bum, but come on the guy was an idiot anyway. All that aside life would be a lot more fun in Pottersville, with the booze and the hookers." Read the rest on Overserved.

Winning: I've won something over at Paul Frankenstein. Not quite sure what it's all about, but I think he's telling me I left the best comment of the year in 2000. Was that on usenet?

Fodder for DC Bloggers: Someone please, please get a copy of the manuscript for Kristen Gore's new chick-lit novel, set among the wonks in Washington, D.C. to Wonkette and Swamp-City. The novel had its genesis in the niche marketing department of Miramax, whereupon Harvey went out and found what passes for a celebrity in Washington, D.C. to write it. "There was no, what we call in house, D.C. Bridget. All these chick-lit novels were set in Manhattan, usually in the office of a magazine or a publishing company. And somehow the trend missed Washington D.C." D.C. Bridget. Let the bloodshed begin.

Toothpaste For Dinner:







Oh, man. I love this guy.

Lots more here: Tooth Paste for Dinner.

Never Staying in Again. Ever. Ash first said it in my comments, and the wisdom of these words was proved again last night. After a weekend which began on Tuesday, involved too much liquid self-medication, and had left me feeling as if my insides were rotting out, I decided to have a quiet night at home on Sunday.

This morning my cell phone is full of evidence that this was not a good decision. Texts and voicemails full of sound and fury signifying fun. Friends played pool with an Oscar winner until 3 in the morning. Sully celebrated the end of Lent by leading an entire bar singing Frank Sinatra songs. The Columbia graduate who used to be a stripper and now is going to law school was out celebrating her birthday and new breasts.

Never staying in again. Ever.

You Are Manhattan Transfer: Guest bloggers are so buzz right now that I've decided to take a vacation just to create an opportunity for guest-blogging. Let me know if you are interested in playing ManhattanTransfer on the blogosphere next week.

Spanish Blackjack: It’s the middle of the week and you’re in a dive bar just off Thompkins Square Park. The jukebox is rattling with trucker music. A few cute, blond and very preppy girls are playing pool against their investment banker boyfriends. You take a stool two down from an old man in Yankees cap.

“Hey kid. You gotta be twenny-one to drink in here.”

--Thanks. I’m alright. Just look young. Clean leaving and all that.

“Heh. That’s good. Clean living.”

He gets off his stool. Because he’s a small man, he has to hop down on to the floor. He walks toward you. You wonder if you can take him. He doesn’t look like he’s fought in any wars. You find yourself thinking of the opening chapter of Everyone’s Burning, where the old drunk bites a girl until she bleeds. You notice that he’s got very good teeth. He climbs up on the stool beside you. “Wanna hear a joke?”

--Sure.

“What three two letter words mean small?”

--Got me.

“You’ve probably heard this from your girlfriend, kid. The three words are: Is. It. In.”

Heh. Not bad. Your turn to tell a joke.

--What do people of the Greek orthodox faith call tonight?

“Greek Orthodox? No clue, kid.”

--Tuesday.

“Ha! Here’s another. Not really a joke but a test. What is two and two and two?”

--Six.

“Thanks. Now this time don’t say it. Just think the answer but don’t tell me. What is one thousand forty and one thousand forty.”

--Okay.

“Now add to that ten and ten. What do you get? This time tell me. You have five seconds. One, two, three…”

--Three thousand. Shit. No. That’s wrong. It’s two thousand one hundred. That is a good trick.

The old man is drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon from a tin can and his name is Phillip Hellman. Phillip means horse-lover in greek. He was born on Pearl Harbor day, and is pleased you know that this was on December 7, 1941. His father was an engineer. When he died, following his wife into Neverland six months after her death, he left his four children a million dollars to split among themselves. Phillip takes his money and went to Las Vegas.

“I take fifty thousand dollars in cash. Stupid thing to do. I should have brought a check but I was in a rush. I’m good with the cards, and I was flush. I needed to get to Vegas. So I’ve got my money in my coat pocket. On the plane I get up to take a piss, and so I’ve got to take my coat. When I get back the guy sitting next to me says, ‘How much money you carrying in your coat?’ Stupid thing, carrying that much money.”

Things go well for Phillip at Spanish blackjack, the game where the player beats the house if the dealer draws a twenty-one to match his twenty-one. He gets up about eighteen thousand and decides to call it a night. He’s been playing for twenty-five hours.

“I was playing progressive. You gotta have at least ten thousand dollars to play progressive at a five dollar table. But that’s how you win. So I take my money and I get on the elevator to go up to my room. It stops on a floor and on walks this woman. She’s dressed to kill. Professional, no doubt. Out of nowhere, she starts sniffing me. ‘What is that you’ve got on?’ she asks me. I look at her and say, ‘It’s a hard-on, baby, but I didn’t know you could smell it.’

“I got together with her that night. Had her sucking my balls. Suck. My. Balls. She wouldn’t let me blow my load in her mouth, though.”

Phillip tells you about buying pot in the early sixties on Avenue A. The time he was a waiter in Palm Beach and a woman asked what the fly was doing in her soup (“The backstroke”). He keeps saying that the preppy girls have wandering eyes and encouraging you to talk to them. You wonder if Phillip is gay or only lonely, and decide that a gay man would have better breath. It doesn’t really matter. He’s bought you a whiskey and you’re willing to laugh at his stories in exchange.

I'm Thirsty A Day Early: I can usually hold out until Wednesday before the urge to pour poison through my viens becomes irresistable (seeing as I'm typically palatic from brunch on most Sundays this is perhaps not such a great feat). But by midweek I'm starved for action and thirsty for whiskey.

Which is typically awful because as far as I can tell there is nothing to do in this city on Wednesday. I try to plan around it by arranging dinners and after-dinner drinks. Often enough, these evenings are a little tame for my tastes but marginally better than cruising the dive bars on my own.

Well, guess what people? It's Tuesday. The thirst has come a day early. Where are we drinking tonight?

Because, you know, we are drinking tonight.

We. Are. Drinking. Tonight.

Geordie Buzz:

In attempting to translate some recent yarblings emanating from Maccers, I've spent a good deal of time researching Geordie kultchur. Not sure I've made much progress with the dialect. But I've discovered a television show called Byker Grove, which has produced these specimens of Geordie hotnizzy.



Jill Halfpenny, who played Nicola Dobson.



Donna Air.

The investigation of the Geordies continues. Obvs.

I Kinja Know What Blogs You're Reading, Kinja Tell What Blogs I'm Reading? As far as I'm concerned the hottest thing about Nick Denton's bid to actually own all of the blogosphere, Kinja, is the way it reveals who is reading my blog in the referrer logs. If, say, the drunk Bush daughter were to throw ManhattanTransfer up on her kinja list and click through a link, and my referrer log will show something like this: www.kinja.com/user/JennaBush.

Of course, you don't have to set-up your Kinja account with a identity revealing username. I'm sure you can still sign up with Kinja as mixoplik if you want. But many people have not realised that Kinja gives away their identity, and haven't taken the precaution of registering with a psuedonym (especially if they are already blogging under a psuedonym).

Why would anyone care that their Kinja idenitity is revealed to the bloggers they're monitoring? For one thing, it strips away one level of anonymity from the blogosphere, and can even lead to a strange asymetry of information. You might not know the identity of the blogger writing your favorite blog, but if you register your Kinja account under your real name, the psuedonymous blogger knows yours.

For another, there's this neat trick. Once you've got someone's kinja name, you can click through the link to their account, and see what other blogs they are monitoring. Is someone keeping up on the latest Fleshbot posts? Or spending their time reading Instapundit? Well, now you know. (This little trick is easily negated by going into the "My Account" section and marking your Kinja account private. Not many users, however, seem to have caught on to this. Or maybe they don't care who sees what they see.)

On the other hand, it's a nice way to show your friends that you've put their blogs on your Kinja list.

Isn't It Ironic?

Swamp-City blogs about the antics of a Canadian songstress that I sorta remember from the nineties.

Wait. Alanis Morissette is still alive? I thought she died thanking someone in India last year. She still has a music career? Where have I been? You go girl. You tell those Canadians what's wrong with America. You are so right. And it's totally cool that you're wearing a naked body suit to show how open minded Canada is instead of actually being naked. Because you're still relevant. And Canada is totally it's own country. I don't care what anybody says.

[Ed.: Didn't she kill Kurt Cobain? Ombudsman: No, that was Avril Lavigne]

[Swamp City: Queen of Irony Stages "Naked" Protest]

News You Can Booze:

Two items of hotness from my friends in the dive bar world.

1. Even More Room to Get Drunk in the Shadow of the Port Authority. When my father was young he thought it was called The Port of Authority, and imagined that all authority over the seas emanated from that port. It was not entirely crazy since in those days the New York harbor often teemed with battleships. Uhm, I forget why I started talking about his.

Oh yeah. I know everyone knows where Siberia is (which is different from where it was before the Rockefeller Center Business Development Group found out that someone was running a bar from the subway station). Well, around the corner this is an even creepier place. Walk to ninth avenue and look for the hearse. The whiskey drenched dive to your left is a bar called Bellevue, which will reportedly be taking over the next door bar Dorothys, doubling its size. The bars will be connected by a doorway near the mens room (not in the mens room as some have speculated) so drinkers will be able to travel freely with drinks from side to side.

The site that was formerly Dorothys remains work in progress, but owners plan feature live bands early on the evening and present "lounge vibe" later on.

"Think a low key , less loud Bellevue," one owner has said.

Grand opening is rumored to be next week.

2. Get Your Tats Out At Red Rock West. It's probably your last chance to smoke meth up on the High Line before they turn it into a park for all the children of Chelsea's New Paltz marriages. Once you've sucked the last of your crystal, you might want to drop into Red Rock West for their tattoo contest tonight. Runs from around 10:30 and features prizes, motorcycle enthusiasts, drunk investment bankers having their shirts ripped open and bouncers who will kick your ass if you touch the scantily clad bartenders.

An Ode to My Cleaning Lady:

Ave Maria, thou Queen of Tuesday cleaning,
Thou, whose unseen presence drives from my home
The dirt of a decadent life, full of noise but little meaning.

It is six hour boozy brunches, unheard of since Nero’s Rome
Lit fire while the fiddler played a song we no longer know,
That prevent me from cleaning my two-room pleasure dome.

A week of the Times, where they lie cold and grey,
Each like a plagued corpse left out the street, until
Thy mop, ruddy sister of the spring, shall sashay

O'er the hard wood floors and tiled toilet, and sweep
(and I’m sorry for all the wine bottles I leave behind with regularity)
Away another weeks worth of promises I shall never keep.

Ave Maria, I’ve left some clothes in the hall for your church charity,
Be sure they ask a good price for the loafers, which are vintage Gucci.