My Little Tracy's a clean teen!

Now, I'm not generally one to send Valentine's Day cards or candy or any of that bullshit. I find the entire holiday to be a giant pile of Number Twos manufactured by corporations in order to scrounge money out of suckers. HOWEVER. When I saw this promotion, I knew I had to jump at the chance to participate.

The Bronx Zoo is sponsoring a "Name a Roach" campaign. They say they have over 58,000 Madagascar hissing cockroaches on display in their Madagascar! exhibit, and I believe them. I've seen their hissing cockroach tank, and those little fuckers are just all over the place. (I've also seen them in their natural habitat, under the bark of baobab trees in Madagascar, but that's another story.)

Meanwhile, never one to pass up an opportunity to do something repulsive to shock my parents, I "adopted" one of these bitches and named it for them.

Just take a gander at this little number:

Y'all should adopt one too. Roaches need love just like the rest of us.

The Future Is Ugly.

I'm on the A Train - which can in itself be a trial. Any subway ride opens you up to an assortment of derelicts, perverts, hobos, shrill bitches, thuggz, turkeys, evangelical douchebags whose outfits and demeanors always raise the question in my mind - "Really? If you represent God's Chosen, then I'm glad I ain't going to Heaven," clits, scabs, vermin, hipsters, and parents with babies. Parents with babies. Yes, I said it twice. Why? Because this is a tale of a parent with a baby.

I'm minding my own business, attempting to traverse the subway system to West 4th Street in order to meet some friends for a light dinner at Sacred Chow - when I spot it. A baby, lying completely ignored in its stroller, is eating out of a sack of Cheetos. GOD DAMN CHEETOS. This baby could not possibly be more than five months old. Its mother, completely oblivious to how foul and counter-healthy this gift of "food" to her child is, sits entranced by her iPod, bouncing her head back and forth to whatever brainless crap music is pumping into her earbuds. Her gunt drapes over her lap like an apron. Her sleeveless t-shirt is split in stripes horizontally down her back to reveal more of her stretched flesh. Her roots betray her hair's natural color, but the tips are dyed to resemble an unholy mixture of dung and earwax.

Once the baby actually tries to engage in a parent/child exchange, the way it's supposed to, by attempting to pass this gargantuan whore a Cheeto, she pauses from staring at her mobile device long enough to check the child's ass crack. Is it dirty? Why yes, it appears it is! So what does Ms. Guntalong decide to do? You guessed correctly. She actually changes this child's diaper right there on the train in front of a gaggle of horrified onlookers. She then proceeds to remove a moist towelette from her purse and swab down the hapless tot's butthole in plain sight of just everyone in the subway car.

Once that little task is done, she decides it would be a great bonding moment for her and her child if she shares her music with him - she made it perfectly clear to everyone on the train what sex her child is - so she crams the earbuds into this baby's ears and jams to the Phat Beatz with her baby.

And this is our future.

Diggin' Fer Gold.

There's gold in them thar hills!

Picture it - Manhattan. Polly Prissypants and I are attempting to have one final luncheon before he deee-parts New York City for that Swirling Vortex of Hippies known as the Bay Area. (Yes, in California.) Now, we were planning to go to the gayest of all gay New York restaurants - VNYL - when we saw a notice from the Health Department slapped on their door. They done been shut down, y'all. It appears their pipes burst and flooded the joint with dookies and number ones. Ain't no one want to gobble a tofu wrap in that sort of mess, so we considered our options. I hate most restaurants in this area because I can't eat at any of them. But Polly Prissypants pleaded with me to peruse the menu at Eatery, one of his favorite luncheon diners in the vicinity - and, after glancing at it, I noticed they had added a tofu burger to their menu (a rather toothsome entree, I might add - try it out sometime. The shit was fucking good).

I agree to his terms, so we enter the establishment and are seated right next to a vacuous pair of twat blondes. Polly Prissypants had spotted them and very surreptitiously attempted to get me to sit elsewhere, but I didn't pick up on it. Down I sat, and then I heard one say, "Yeah, it wasn't like English as a Second Language, it was like ESOL - like to teach to people in like a totally different country. Like foreign." And I realized what PP had been trying to do. I said, "We need to move right now." He replied, "I tried to tell you..."

Nothing. And I mean NOTHING - gets on my nerves faster than these airheads who have descended on New York City like a plague since that Sex and the City bullshit made being an upwardly-mobile idiot trendy. GOD DAMN IT. Why can't there be a resurgence in crime so these assholes run back home to their rich parents???

So we move. And then it happens. Behind us, a man in his 50s is flossing his teeth. Not casually - not this one. He is GOING TO TOWN. As if his life depends on getting that strand of food out from his dentition. Back and forth he motions, and despite the fact that he's covering his mouth his his hand, we are HORRIFIED.

Who the fuck goes to a restaurant and flosses their fucking teeth at the table? If you can't wait til you get home, go to the god damn bathroom! No one wants to have to worry about plaque or semi-masticated pasta flying around the joint and potentially landing on their sleeves, their caesar salad, or their face. Just plain gross.

And yes, example no. 432 of why our society needs to crumble. And I mean right now.

Your Ass Is Grass, Kid.

This is a very old post from a long-defunct blog I started in Los Angeles, but VOX (the host site) is closing, and I wanted to keep this around because it is important to me. So y'all just pretend like it's March 28, 2007 for a while.

My aunt Linda passed away yesterday. While her later years suffered from ignominy and a strange penchant for avoiding and abandoning her family, up til that point she was a bright light in my life and in those of many others. I don't plan to blather about how terrible it is that she's gone, but I want to share three stories.

One. When she was a child in Sidney, Ohio, Linda decided that it would be a good idea to rush out into traffic and smash a tomato against her chest and then hold an arrow to the tomato as if she'd been shot. She staggered dramatically and then collapsed in front of passing traffic. Of course, this caused quite a commotion.

Two. Linda used to come down to visit us from Chicago every Christmas. It was the high point in everyone's humdrum lives - the big city family member was coming to impart her sophistication and wisdom on those left behind. She had been visiting for a few days when somehow we wound up lost in the seedier part of town - white trash central. Mobile homes teetered on the brink of collapse while inside 19 babies were subsisting on one can of baked beans, cars were piled up on cement blocks, refrigerators doubled as lawn decor. We were driving slowly when Linda stopped the car. We looked over, and there were two gangly, scummy teens chasing a rooster with a cinderblock. The rooster, neck bobbing frantically, was dodging and darting away from those two hooligans, who were laughing hysterically - apparently traumatizing farm animals is big fun in the hillbilly set. My aunt feverishly tried to unbuckle her seatbelt, jostling back and forth in the car , and then finally screamed across the passenger seat, "YOU HURT THAT CHICKEN, KID, AND YOUR ASS IS GRASS!"

Three. She loved Nina Simone. LOVED HER. A friend of hers in Chicago happened to be acquainted with Ms. Simone and, after a performance, took Linda backstage to meet the chanteuse. As Linda stood nervously outside Ms. Simone's dressing room, she heard her friend inside say, "Nina, I have a friend who wants to meet you," to which Dr. Simone replied, "I hope it ain't no HONKY!"

(yes, you are supposed to click on the link below to listen to and reflect upon the following song.)

So, I always idolized her. For some reason, screaming at children, causing panic among the innocent and being the victim of racism at the hands of a superstar always inspires in me a sense of reverence. I will miss her.

Times Square Can Fuck Off.

What does Times Square need?

Well, let's see... It's got a Hershey's super-store and an M&Ms World, T.G.I. Friday's, Olive Garden, 982 fucking sneaker kiosks that all sell the exact same thing, a motherfucking RED LOBSTER. oh - and absolutely NO SINGLE SHRED OF EVIDENCE that it was once anything other than a god damn shopping center designed for inane tourists who flock to New York City in droves to waddle around and wonder at shit they can see in their own cities. So, what can we add to this miracle knoll of assholeism geared toward the insatiably dull?

That's right. A POP TARTS RESTAURANT. Mmmm!

Yes! Brain dead tourists, weary after shuffling through this blocks-long maze of mass consumerism Hell, can plop their chafed, aching thighs down in this Nutrition-Free Cess Chamber and order Pop Tarts - a food that has NO BUSINESS being associated with breakfast for it provides little but the opportunity for shitheads to gorge on crap - in oh so cute ways, like 'pop tarts sushi.'

I mean, FUCK OFF.

Instead of coming to New York with the sole purpose of getting your pictures taken in front of the H&M or retracing the steps of those vacuous cunts from Sex & the City ("Oh my god, they serve CUPCAKES!"), why don't you follow this suggestion (well, two):

1. Plan a trip that involves seeing things that ARE NOT available in your home town. Museums, plays, concerts, the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, Central Park - these are things you don't have in your city. M&Ms - you can get them at the grocery store. Nikes - yes, you can get them at the mall. Cell phones are available anywhere.

2. If you a) are coming here specifically to shop at mass market chains and b) are afraid to eat anything that doesn't come from McDonald's, Applebee's, Pizza Hut, P.F. Chang's, or Taco Bell and c) are not planning to take in any local culture or sights that actually made New York City the amazing place that it is and was, then why don't you just stay your stupid fucking asses AT HOME so I and others who live here don't have to circumnavigate your shit while you gaze unintelligently at your mobile devices and maps looking for the nearest Club Monaco?

Everyone here hates you because you suck, and TIMES SQUARE has become a radiant example of absolutely EVERYTHING that is wrong with this culture, and, in fact, the world, thanks mostly to people just like you.

Art.

Yes, y'all, this is art. This is part of an installation at P.S. 1, a branch of the Museum of Modern Art here in New York City. Also featured in this exhibit - Katie Couric's face and torso on top of Britney Spears' now-famous snatch-flashing shot, some pictures of Jane Fonda and Jerry Lewis, and a player piano that tinkles out, "Listening To You" by The Who. What kind of shenanigans are these? 

You'll Be Permeated By Its Odor - Further Travels In the Realm of Inappropriate Fragrances.

If you're walking in a mall and you come across a wretched stench that smells like a cross between hairspray and dung, then you've probably just walked in front of a Hollister Co. store. Not familiar with Hollister? Well, you can get an idea of what their attire looks like from the fact that their website refers to men as "dudes" and women as "bettys."

Now, I've only been inside a Hollister Co. store once - I was in the Glendale Galleria in, of course, Glendale, CA. They keep Hollister Co. stores very, very dark - perhaps so you won't realize that what you're looking at looks exactly like anything you'd find at any other popular clothing store - ugly, tan and boring. The generic and cheap-looking clothing wasn't what forced me to run screaming from that store, though. No, it was something much worse. They "fragrance" their stores - intentionally - with a noxious odor that could only have been generated in a laboratory in HELL. This fragrance doesn't contain itself in Hollister's walls. It pours out into the rest of the mall, stinking up at least a 30' radius with the Scent of Lame.

Why am I bitching about this particular chain of overpriced conformity? Well, specifically because they have brought their patented brand of shame to Manhattan.

I was reminded of the olfactory horror created by this purveyor of shitty clothing yesterday when a friend who is traveling to California in the near future (and who works in SoHo) posted the following status update on Facebook - "If California smells like Hollister Co. then I don't want to go."

Picture it - I'm going down to SoHo, a neighborhood I like to steer clear of in general due to its descent into Tourist Shopping Mecca, with Polly Prissypants who wanted to go to Pottery Barn to purchase a picture frame. We get out of the subway to find that not only is Pottery Barn gone, but a Hollister Co. store has been crammed in its place in order to appease the stupid tourists who come to New York City specifically to find and purchase the exact same shit they could buy in their own towns.

And then it hits me. Not subtly like in a mall. It's as if someone has smashed me in the face with a mallet, the stench is so strong. This Hollister Co. store is pumping their fragrance out into the street with such urgency that it obscures any other scent (no small feat in New York City) and hinders my ability to breathe. I immediately cover my mouth and nose and tell Polly Prissypants that I have to get out of here and I mean RIGHT NOW. The headache brought on by artificial odors is already threatening to render me immobile. I cross Houston Street and can still smell it, trailing after me like an obnoxious panhandler who can't take "no" for an answer. Barely making it out of there alive, I vow never to return to SoHo unless it is a life-or-death situation.

Who do these assholes think they are? Why are they forcing their "patented fragrance" on an entire fucking neighborhood? Isn't it bad enough that they've further shamed a dying New York City with their presence, allowing the vapid, rich, entitled shitheads who have moved here en masse in order to live out their dreary Sex and the City fantasies to dress casually in overpriced, poorly-made clothes that look like thrift store finds?

Fuck!