Sign this electronic petition to stop the impending obscene fare hikes! Don’t let them punish us, the paying riders, for their incompetence and avarice.

You be the judge.

And, for what it’s worth, I once saw the drummer from Blondie give the light man at a show the worse public profanity whipping I’ve ever seen. Let’s just say he had a real flair for creative use of the word sucker.

TGR’s new one,  Light the Wick, looks promising. Check out the trailer below. If it doesn’t give you ski fever, you’re not a skier.

Weather.com posted a link to what their site looked like in 1996: http://www.weather.com/newscenter/slideshow/preview.html

My latest discovery is Marshall Tucker Band’s Can’t You See and Velvet Underground’s Oh, Sweet Nuthin (which will also totally make you realize the Dead were influenced by VU).

You be the judge:

Looking back, I think it was the mob-glam suits Robert DeNiro wore in the movie Casino that made me realize how transfixing a slightly over the top tailored men’s suit could look, even if it was in hellishly dizzying monochrome. My interest in men’s suits continued to develop throughout high school, reaching its apogee my Senior year. I remember appreciating the tastefully commanding iridescent fabric of Stone Phillip’s Dateline haberdashery. And never mind David Letterman’s very expensive 3 piece double breasted bespoke jobs. I’m sure they all cost far more than I ever imagined, and these guys were wearing a different one every night, almost. The closest I came to getting a righteous suit of my own was when I visited my fried Scott at Legigh University in Easton, PA in 1998. At the time, in addition to harboring a Crayola Factory and flocks of post-steel, impoverished crack people, Easton boasted an impossible number of pimp suit shops, which sold all sorts of zany Michael Irvin Deon Sanders suits. These suits weren’t too far from the ones Bobby DeNiro wore in Casino. I wanted one, but I needed to buy beer and $50 worth of fastfood that weekend so it didn’t materialize.

Tonight I’m sitting here watching a very old David Letterman doing his monologue and he’s not wearing one of his signature,  razor-sharp 3 piece getups. Instead, he’s rocking a baggy 3-button thing you’d expect to see on a pimply, post-creatine bloat ivy banker douche riding the 6 train.

If I wanted to buy a cool suit now I could, but I don’t even want one.

Here’s an old 90s video of  D Letterman in a fine suit introducing the equally once fine band, Megadeath!

Item 1

Yesterday, my friend Joe took me with him to go pick up some video game I’d never hear of at the chain GameStop. While we were there so was a family of 3 shopping for some game the parents had promised the boy, I gathered. Judging by the boy’s obvious consternation and the frustration clearly worn on the parents’ faces, I sensed that the boy either wanted more than what the parents had promised or the parents were not keeping their word and the boy was calling them on it. Maybe they said he could have Madden ‘10 (highly unlikely with Madden ‘11 around the corner) and now they were only willing to shell out the clams for a beat-up copy of Madden ‘08, or something. Either way, this situation was getting pretty intense and smartly the mother decided to assess the situation aloud.

“We’re getting into a communication snowball.” A what? I thought after hearing the odd, nonsensical declaration.

“A communication snowball is happening.” She repeated, in case her husband missed it the first time.

Apparently, for this family, the phrase ‘communication snowball’ is the cue that signals what ever it is that’s going on right then is getting shut the f down. Because immediately, the family of 3 packed it in, no game in hand, and headed out.

On the way out of the store the plaintive father only had this to say on in his most puerile voice, “I hate it when we get into communication snowballs.”

Amazing. That’s all I can say.

Item 2

Simple eloquence is the best way to capture this particular tableux.

Man outside of office building wearing a suit, wearing a SMOKING GLOVE, smoking a cigarette.