From the Bottom of the Stairs (77th Street)

Global Citizen's Festival - 2017 - Central Park

On September 23, 2017, I was fortunate to be able to attend the Global Citizen's Festival in Central Park. Rather than post shaky clips taken from pod 3, I share these highlights:

The Killers performing "Mr. Brightside":

The Lumineer's covering "Have You Ever Seen the Rain":

Andra Day covering Queen in a blistering rendition of "I Want it All":

Green Day's entire set:

And the legend of Stevie Wonder, with Pharrell Williams:

And if you have 6 or 7 hours to spare, watch the whole concert here:

Cool Shit My Aunt Sends Me: Flying Over America

Diamonds are Forever (52-Card Pick-Up, Continued)

We recently renewed our game and on August 9, I found another, in the street near the corner of  5th and 90th in Brooklyn.

The following cards have been found previously:

The Jack of Clubs (August 6, 2017)

The King of Clubs (July 25, 2010)

The Ace of Hearts (March 27, 2010)

The Five of Clubs (February 20, 2010)

The Two of Spades (August 17, 2009)

The Ten of Diamonds (July 2, 2009 - found June 1, 2009)

The Five of Spades (June 18, 2009)

The Eight of Spades (January 6, 2009)

The Eight of Diamonds (December 5, 2008)

The Two of Hearts and the Queen of Spades (November 1, 2008)

The King of Spades (October 26, 2008)

The Ace of Spades (September 22, 2008)

The Jack of Diamonds (September 18, 2008)

The Six of Hearts, Queen of Hearts, and Eight of Clubs (August 10, 2008)

The Six of Clubs (July 21, 2008)

The Seven of Hearts and The King of Diamonds (April 24, 2008)

The Three of Clubs (March 29, 2008)

The King of Hearts
and the Three of Spades (February 28 and March 25, 2008)

The Ace of Diamonds (July 7, 2008)

The Jack of Hearts and Five of Hearts (July 19, 2008)

View the whole set here.

And here's the scorecard with the latest addition:

Found Hearts: 2,5,6,7,Jack, Queen, King, Ace
Needed Hearts: 3,4,8,9,10

Found Diamonds: 8, 7, 10, Jack, King, Ace
Needed Diamonds: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, Queen

Found Clubs: 3,5,6,8, Jack, King
Needed Clubs: 2,4,7,9,10,Queen, Ace

Found Spades: 2,3,5,8,Queen, King, Ace
Needed Spades: 4,6,7,9,10, Jack

Puka Shell Tour Guide

In honor of Glen Campbell passing today. Rap Reiplinger, Hawai'i's Weird Al:

The Return of 52-Card Pick-Up

I'm reviving my old game, picking up where I left off in July 2010. What's a 7-year gap, anyways?

For those of you who don't remember, if I find a playing card, I'll capture it and add it to my virtual deck, one card at a time.

This was on my street, on August 6, 2017, near the intersection of 5th Avenue and 80th Street:

The following cards have been found previously:

The King of Clubs (July 25, 2010)

The Ace of Hearts (March 27, 2010)

The Five of Clubs (February 20, 2010)

The Two of Spades (August 17, 2009)

The Ten of Diamonds (July 2, 2009 - found June 1, 2009)

The Five of Spades (June 18, 2009)

The Eight of Spades (January 6, 2009)

The Eight of Diamonds (December 5, 2008)

The Two of Hearts and the Queen of Spades (November 1, 2008)

The King of Spades (October 26, 2008)

The Ace of Spades (September 22, 2008)

The Jack of Diamonds (September 18, 2008)

The Six of Hearts, Queen of Hearts, and Eight of Clubs (August 10, 2008)

The Six of Clubs (July 21, 2008)

The Seven of Hearts and The King of Diamonds (April 24, 2008)

The Three of Clubs (March 29, 2008)

The King of Hearts
and the Three of Spades (February 28 and March 25, 2008)

The Ace of Diamonds (July 7, 2008)

The Jack of Hearts and Five of Hearts (July 19, 2008)

View the whole set here.

And here's the scorecard with the latest addition:

Found Hearts: 2,5,6,7,Jack, Queen, King, Ace
Needed Hearts: 3,4,8,9,10

Found Diamonds: 8,10, Jack, King, Ace
Needed Diamonds: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, Queen

Found Clubs: 3,5,6,8, Jack, King
Needed Clubs: 2,4,7,9,10,Queen, Ace

Found Spades: 2,3,5,8,Queen, King, Ace
Needed Spades: 4,6,7,9,10, Jack

Cool Shit My Aunt Sends Me: Fwd: Deeply Philosophical Random thoughts

THOUGHTS FROM THE SHOWER

 - If you attempt to rob a bank you won't have any trouble with rent/food bills for the next 10 years, whether or not you are successful. 

- Do twins ever realize that one of them is unplanned?  

- What if my dog only brings back my ball because he thinks I like throwing it?  

- If poison expires, is it more poisonous or is it no longer poisonous?  

- Which letter is silent in the word "Scent," the S or the C? 

- Why is the letter W, in English, called double U? Shouldn't it be called double V?  

- Maybe oxygen is slowly killing you and It just takes 75-100 years to fully work. 

- Every time you clean something, you just make something else dirty  

- The word "swims" upside-down is still "swims". 

- Intentionally losing a game of rock, paper, scissors is just as hard as trying to win. 

- 100 years ago everyone owned a horse and only the rich had cars. Today everyone has cars and only the rich own horses.  

- Your future self is watching you right now through memories.  

- The doctors that told Stephen Hawking he had two years to live in 1953 are probably dead.  

- If you replace "W" with "T" in "What, Where and When", you get the answer to each of them. 

- Many animals probably need glasses, but nobody knows it. 

- If you rip a hole in a net, there are actually fewer holes in it than there were before.-

If 2/2/22 falls on a Tuesday, we'll just call it "2's Day."

(It does fall on a Tuesday)

Funny Shit My Aunt Sends Me: Never Trust a Dog

Funny Shit My Aunt Sends Me: Lie Detector Robot for Sale

Robot for sale.

A father buys a lie detector robot that slaps people when they lie.

He decides to test it out at dinner one night.

The father asks his son what he did that afternoon.

The son says, "I did some schoolwork."

The robot slaps the son.

The son says, "Ok, Ok. I was at a friend's house watching movies."

Dad asks, "What movie did you watch?"

Son says, "Toy Story."

The robot slaps the son.

Son says, "Ok, Ok, we were watching porn."

Dad says, "What? At your age I didn’t even know what porn was."

The robot slaps the father.  Mom laughs and says, "Well, he certainly

is your son."

The robot slaps the mother.

Robot for sale.

Cool Shit My Aunt Sends Me: Shangri-La TV Ad

Just watch:

And then the making of the ad:

Ear Worm of the Day: Warren Zevon

This song has been running through my brain all morning. Not sure why. I insist on sharing it with you since there are not a ton of Warren Zevon fans out there, and this is not considered one of his "hits." Enjoy!

T-Shirts I Have Known: Sriracha

Here I am enjoying a beer and wearing one of my new favorite t-shirts:

This is the shirt in it's full unobscured glory:

I nabbed it at a thrift shop, but it is a-plentiful and can be purchased at Amazon here.

I love hot sauce and sriracha is pretty darn tasty.

My only complaint about this shirt is that it's not uncommon to see other people wearing it.

My Low-Grade Video Archives: Iron Maiden

Here's a huge chunk of Iron Maiden performing "The Trooper" at Barclay's Center in Brooklyn last weekend:

T-Shirts I Have Known: International School, Brussels

Here's another  long-gone shirt from the 1980's:

That's me, circa 1983 or 1984, straddling a guard rail on the island of Kauai. That's the Hanalei Valley behind me.

My cousins lived in Brussels in the early 80s and I got this on a visit there in '81 or '82.

I know you can't see the shirt very well, but I knew it.

Funny Shit My Aunt Sends Me: Tech Support

A young woman who submitted the tech support message below (about her relationship with her husband) presumably did it as a joke. Then she got a reply which was way too good to keep to herself.

THE QUERY:

Dear Tech Support:

Last year I upgraded from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 and noticed a distinct slowdown in overall system performance, particularly in the flower and jewelry applications, which operated flawlessly under Boyfriend 5.0. In addition, Husband 1.0 uninstalled many other valuable programs, such as Romance 9.5 and Personal Attention 6.5, and then installed undesirable programs such as: NBA 5.0, NFL 3.0 and Golf Clubs 4.1. Conversation 8.0 no longer runs and House cleaning 2.6 simply crashes the system. Please note that I have tried running Nagging 5.3 to fix these problems, but to no avail. What can I do?

Signed,

Desperate.


THE RESPONSE (that came weeks later out of the blue):

Dear Desperate:

First keep in mind, Boyfriend 5.0 is an Entertainment Package, while Husband 1.0 is an operating system. Please enter command: Ithoughtyouloved me.HTML and try to download Tears 6.2. Do not forget to install the Guilt 3.0 update. If that application works as designed, Husband 1.0 should then automatically run the applications Jewelry2.0 and Flowers 3.5. However, remember, overuse of the above application can cause Husband 1.0 to default to Grumpy Silence 2.5, Happy Hour 7.0, or Beer 6.1. Please note that Beer 6.1 is a very bad program that will download the Farting and Snoring Loudly Beta version. Whatever you do, DO NOT, under any circumstances, install Mother-In- Law 1.0 as it runs a virus in the background that will eventually seize control of all your system resources. In addition, please, do not attempt to re-install the Boyfriend 5.0 program. These are unsupported applications and will crash Husband 1.0. In summary, Husband 1.0 is a great program, but it does have limited memory and cannot learn new applications quickly. You might consider buying additional software to improve memory and performance. We recommend: Cooking 3.0.

Good Luck!

Cool Shit My Aunt Sends Me: The Best Body Art You've Ever Seen

Cool Shit My Aunt Sends Me: Corporate Logos

HERE ARE A NUMBER OF CORPORATE AND OTHER LOGOS THAT YOU HAVE SEEN MANY TIMES BUT ONCE YOU SEE THEM HERE YOU WILL NEVER LOOK AT THEM THE SAME AGAIN.

Check out the FedEx logo:

Do you see the arrow between the "E" and "x" (in white)? I had never noticed it before.

~ ~ ~

How about the Tostitos logo?

The 2nd and 3rd "T's" are two people sharing a tortilla chip and a bowl of salsa.

Look again at the logo for The Tour de France:

The world's most famous bike race. The "R" in "Tour" is a cyclist. The yellow circle is the front wheel of a bicycle, the "O" is the back wheel.

What about the Amazaon logo?

The arrow means Amazon has everything from A to Z!

Fans of chocolate will appreciate this fun fact:

There is a dancing bear above the "ble". Toblerone chocolate bars originated in Berne, Switzerland, whose symbol is the bear.

And did you notice something obvious in the Baskin Robbins logo?

How about the "31" embedded in the "BR"?

This is a cool one from the Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium:

See the gorilla and lioness (in white) facing each other?

Lastly, look at this one from Goodwill:

The “g” is also a smiley half face!

T-Shirts I Have Known: Detroit Tigers, ALCS Champions 2012

I am a Detroit Tigers fan and I still remember fondly the 1984 World Series, when Motown last won a baseball title.

This thrift shop find is in my current circulation, and marks the last time the Tigers went to the Fall Classic.

Alas, they were mercilessly swept by the Giants.

In the 2012 ALCS, however, Detroit swept the Yankees, which caused much chagrin in my home.

This baby is currently a bit snug, but it still brings back fond memories of winning!

Cool Shit My Mother-in-Law Sends Me: An Amazing Cat House

Just wow.

T-Shirts I Have Known: Metal Up Your Ass

I like to use this photo to prove to people I was a Metallica fan before they became a monster band:

That's me at some random hotel in Waikiki on May 18, 1985, after my senior prom date ditched me. I outgrew this shirt in a year or two from when this was taken. Recently, an old classmate sent me this photo on Facebook, and I am guessing it was taken maybe a month later.

This was the first Metallica "Metal Up Your Ass" shirt before this one really took off:

I remember thinking the original was so scandalous. I would have been suspended if I had worn it to school. It seemed appropriate party gear after shedding the tuxedo.