A Special Message From the Gap

The lineup is like a chat room, but I'm with it. Mmmmmmm Freddy Rodriguez:

The Cop with the Lousy Beat

I don't live in a dangerous area per se. I mean on that "Who's a perv in your hood" site there are some local ones (my next door neighbor being one) and the city to my left is where Lean on Me was filmed. Other than that it's all gravy save a few cheap dime store hoods. The town is small, so a call to the cops would have one there in under five minutes. There are some cops scattered around the town at various bagel and donut establishments. Nothing stereotypical at all.

There is, however, one cop who patrols what I consider to be the bowels of any police beat worldwide. On the outskirts of my town is a large park. In the middle of the park is a softball field with one of those weird buildings in parks that serve no real purpose and look kind of creepy. This building was once a Meals-On-Wheels delivery hub, but now I'm not so sure. Officer Bad Beat sits in that parking lot. It's the same cop every day.

He looks like he could be one of the Lively children - he's not as pretty as Blake, nowhere nearly as ugly as Jason, so let's say he looks like Robin Lively. He sits in the park parking lot facing a strip mall that has changed stores more than the lineup of Menudo. He frequently looks down to jot notes. Maybe he's pretending to look busy. Or...maybe he's a writer working on his novel and this is his day job. If so, then I commend him.

I always wondered if he really did anything at all for the law. Well, the other day I found my answer. driving along the road BBC (Bad Beat Cop) patrols, I saw a car pulled over about 50 feet from the BBC Headquarters. I looked in the police car. He just pulled over the poor teenager for driving too fast or poor senior citizen for driving too slow. I couldn't tell if it was the cop of the Lively kin. I figured it had to be. So as I passed the building that once held Meals-On-Wheels, who is sitting in the lot jotting invisible notes - Bad Beat Cop. So he really does nothing at all. I'm looking forward to his novel, though. It can't possibly be about law enforcement.

How Did I Become So Technologically Pathetic?

I think it was around my Freshman year of high school when it all began. My grandfather (R.I.P.) was upgrading his beeper and offered me his old one. It was a black pager with the display on top and a big red button to check pages. When I received a beep it was this loud siren like I was being summoned to operate on someone's spleen or head to Broadway and 145th to finally catch that drug dealer we've been after. Either that or Big Sancho had several hundred kilos coming in from the shipyard and if I wanted in, I had to be there pronto.

Whatever it was, my beeper made me official. I changed the case to some ugly maroon looking one and then my clip fell off. That was the worst because you meant NOTHING without a clip coming out of your jeans pocket. I had no real desire to call back anyone that was paging me. I mean, the beep was the important part of it all, really. So then I upgraded to that slide out beeper with the display on the side. It was always fun to secretly check your pages in high school at your locker and be disappointed when you had none because hello, anyone who would actually page you was in class just like you were.

My friends and I would enjoy paging each other from payphones - stuff like 7734 2 06 (Go to hell), 14 (hi), 553l8008 (boobless). Then of course your man of the moment would send 143 (I love you) and you'd send it back. We all understood how exciting it was to get a page, not necessarily a phone call. I didn't actually get a cellphone until around '99. I had some lame one that would only call home...and like, the police. I also had an 800# to call home, so I was fine with payphones. My first cellphone was a Nokia. Not like the Zack Morris brick, but it was up there. Same cellphone number ever since, and Verizon was still my carrier. Then that damn two-way page me song came out. I was back on the beeper's d**k. I got the two-way to the left and LOVED it. Pre-historic Blackberry I say. It was LOVELY. I had my cellphone but meh. What's a cellphone when you have TWO-WAY.

So then the two-way fell off, obviously. I wasn't important enough for that brick BlueBerry that Hov had or even a brick BlackBerry for that matter. I wasn't an investment banker or in IT. I was just out of college about to take on some corporate American gigs before I realized I was meant to starve with my pen and my ipod. Then in '05 I bought a Sidekick 2. I bypassed the first generation and went for the cuter younger brother. That Sidekick 2 and I were in l-o-v-e. Wow. Unreal. So then the Sidekick 2 fell off and I went for the 3. We casually dated. I got too comfortable really even though he wasn't right for me. I bought a Blackberry Curve and then returned it for the SK3 again. Comfort. Settling. I finally switched my cellphone to a Blackberry and then my SK3 was dead to me. I originally had the BlackBerry World phone, but where the hell do I go? The furthest out of the country I travel to is the Bronx and it had no camera (ew); back to the Curve I went. So here I stand. In love with my Blackberry Curve just as this fucking Storm is about to hit and destroy the village of love I have built around my precious Curve.

I am about 15 years deep in the mobile technology game, starting with my beeper. I weathered the cellphone storm, complete with cute ringtones and that God awful stick-on bling. I had a charm hanging from that brain radiating antenna until I remembered that I am a grown-ass woman and shouldn't have a bedazzled bee dangling from my ear unless it is about to sting me in the skull. I have come to realize something, though. I have never really wanted to talk on a mobile phone at all. I like to type and text and type and text and type some more. Voice is so secondary. No wonder I stare at my phones and could care less, but put me in front of a keypad and I'm a hooker at Hunt's Point. It's my obsession with the Keys that makes me pathetic...and I don't mean Alicia (but she's up there too).

A Reinactment of Spam

Daria was a visionary.

Some Vintage Jeremy Piven

Before he was the feverishly crass Ari Gold on Entourage, Piven was making an example of himself in many flicks including Cameron Crowe's Singles. Piven is proof that with age comes sexification. Yum. Here...not so yum. But this scene is funny.

You Know You've Hit Rock Bottom When...

...You become a Gold Member at Starbucks. Now look, there comes a time in every coffee addict's life when they must realize that spending $25 a year to receive 10% off every coffee purchase is actually a reasonable investment. The Starbucks barista (actually it was a guy, does that make him a baristo?) advised that if I spend $5 a week on coffee then the card will pay for itself in a year. Ha! I spend $5 a day on coffee, son! I already have the Gold Member card for Barnes and Noble, which works well for me since I buy magazines every other day and the occasional book that I may or may not read, but looks cute in my purse. I mean seriously, though. What a great way to keep my addictions going? My vices include coffee, leatherbound notebooks, and magazines (I'd include music, but that's for people who pretend to like music). Now I have two cards that fulfill my vices in every way. So I guess I am a Gold Member...not to be confused with Goldmember.

Sandwich Guy

There's a certain level of dignity that automatically gets lost when one eats a sandwich. It's no one's fault, really. We all eat them. But when eating a sandwich - especially a packed one - there's a series of facial expressions that look like someone, male or female, is actually giving birth under the table at which they are sitting. The grimace and the opening of the mouth like they're writhing in pain, following by the stuffed cheeks like they're storing ham for the winter. It's all so disturbing, and somehow we are actually enjoying what we're eating. And for God's sake people, do NOT take photos of yourself attempting to eat a sandwich, and don't take pictures of your sandwich. We don't need photographic proof of your clogged arteries.

Now look, there are some instances where these photos can be funny. I mean I have friends who take pics of their food and them eating it all the time. It's endearing sometimes. But fellas, showing how much you can fit in your mouth makes you look more like one of Adebisi's bitches in Oz than making you look like a seasoned competitive eater. On that note, I'd like to discuss "Sandwich Guy."

Throughout my working from home existence, along with the completion of my thesis, I began to frequent local cafes to sit and absorb the free Wi-Fi outside of home (Shout out to Panera! I see you pimpin'!) I've discovered the fundamental difference between cafes and delis. Delis attempt to kill you with sandwiches the size of your head and cups full of coffee grinds. Cafes attempt to make you poor - with overpriced coffee and little expensive sandwiches. Oversized/Overpriced? You pick your team. I've yet to experience a deli with free Wi-Fi (or a deli employee that owns a computer) so the cafe wins. People from all walks of life congregate here to look interesting at lunch, write a novel that will never get published, or in some rare instances, just want to have lunch in a friendly setting. Then along comes Sandwich Guy.

Sandwich Guy comes here once a week because he passes it on some sort of truck route - delivering bread, installing cable, fixing a faucet, landscaping a yard. He really wanted the deli, but the deli is too far and he's hungry NOW. He walks into the cafe with his rugged, brawny, physique. Sometimes he's kinda hot, other times he looks like a deranged lumberjack from the sticks looking for some bodies to burn in the furnace of his log cabin.

Sandwich Guy walks up to the counter and glares at the menu. He stares at the cashier girl boobs first and then meets her eyes and asks for the "italian" sandwich. See, the "italian" sandwich at the cafe is there for the husbands of the women who frequent the cafe. It's a false representation of manhood because it's half packed with cold cuts but served on sliced bread. Real men use rolls. Husbands feel a sense of security as they eat their italian sandwich with their penis resting in their wife's purse. Sandwich Guy wants NONE of that. He orders the italian sandwich but then demands it on a roll. A big old italian roll. He means business.

He doesn't want soup or salad and he's never heard of flavored coffee. He just wants his big ass loaf of cholesterol. He feels a sense of accomplishment for turning his bridal shower sandwich into a "hoagie," a "sub," an edible model of the size of his genitals. He's very proud.

Sandwich Guy brings his big sandwich to a booth and shoves it in his mouth at the speed of light. The time it took for the high school student to make the sandwich is doubled since the cafe kids don't know how to use a "slicer." Their pre-packaged free-range turkey gets delicately placed on the loaf of bread. This isn't a hash house, and now Sandwich Guy lost most of his lunch break because of it. He swallows the sandwich whole and while there are still pieces hanging out of his mouth, he looks at YOU and smiles. You feel bad...like, awwwww Sandwich Guy just wanted a quick bite before installing DSL. Then he notices YOUR DSL's and turns this into a cruising for sex mission. You shake your head because it isn't that kind of a party and you pack up your laptop and move to the back of the cafe. He nods as you walk away...Marie from the deli is wayyyy hotter and she probably makes a better cup of coffee anyway.