Cup of John

Missing Ampersands Piss Me Off

John — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 20:00:18 +0000

For years now I have been frustrated by a local auto-body/used car business near a train station on my daily commute home – D&P Auto Sales & Service. A couple of years back, they underwent a big renovation installing new signage on the building’s front and side facades. Beautiful new facility with big bright, red letters for all of middle Long Island to see.

But, perhaps due to financial constraints or the sign company running out of stock, they neglected to insert the second ampersand in their name between “Sales” and “Service” on the front facade. Instead, there is an obvious, ugly space in the business title.

This ampersand omission pisses me off.

That is all.

C’mon, dude. Put your shoes back on.

John — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 19:49:40 +0000

Hey A-Hole, Move Your F-ing Bag

John — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 00:11:23 +0000

Or, that’s what I should have said.

Long Island Golf Reservation Links

John — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 12:28:41 +0000

After searching for quite a while on different golf courses to play on Long Island, I kept running into the same problem – trying to find golf courses that offer online reservations. There are plenty that do, but finding the actual link or area of the site dedicated to the online reservation system was a pain in the ass.

So, I decided to post a few of the courses that offer an online tool for booking tee times and a direct link to the reservation page:

Rock Hill Golf & Country Club (Manorville) - http://www.rockhillgolf.com/
- Click Book Tee Time Button on front page
Middle Island Country Club (Middle Island) – http://www.middleislandcc.com/online-tee-times
- This one requires you to setup an account to book a tee time
Long Island National Golf Course (Riverhead) – http://longislandnational2.ezlinks.com/
- Uses a 3rd-party site for booking the times
Swan Lake Golf Club (Manorville) – http://www.teeitup.com/golf/course.wpl?C=900618
- Uses a 3rd-party site for booking the times
Great Rock Golf Club (Wading River) – Tee Time Reservation System
- Uses a 3rd-party site with a really huge URL address
Cherry Creek (Riverhead) – http://cherrycreeklinks.ezlinks.com/
- Uses a 3rd-party site for booking the times

Bagel with a schmear of whale

John — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 23:21:58 +0000

For a number of years my daily morning routine includes stopping at a deli near my office in Manhattan for coffee and a bagel. The deli is a typical short-order city eatery where they offer every type of food, with numerous counters, salad station, and hot buffet. Pretty good deli by all standards. Plus, they have fantastic coffee and that’s why I go – I refuse to drink the burnt, bitter, awful-tasting Starbucks coffee because of all the reasons mentioned and because I’m still convinced that humanity has had the hat pulled over the eyes and simply go to Starbucks because of over-hype and elitist pop-culture propaganda pushed and exploited by Starbucks. It’s just not good coffee, period. And it’s ridiculously overpriced – it’s stained water! It shouldn’t cost that much!

Anyway, while I was waiting for my bagel to be toasted (that’s what she said), I noticed a confusing sign on the wall near the counter:

As you’ll notice the sign indicates that they have lox available. If you’re a customer that is not familiar with lox, then the sign has a qualifier, “(salmon)”, which would help IF they didn’t show a picture of a whale diving into the water. I can only imagine a confused non-English-speaking tourist wondering if the establishment serves whale.

Nothing like a little bagel with cream cheese and whale meat.

There is something surprisingly satisfying about…

John — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 05:18:10 +0000

1. Whistling in an empty, commercial bathroom.

2. Writing with a pen on the outside of a styrofoam cup

3. Using really new scissors to cut paper

Will We Live Up to Back to the Future, Part II?

John — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 02:06:20 +0000

One of my favorite movie series of all time is the Back to the Future trilogy. Pretty revolutionary ideas and cinematic achievement for the 80s and thankfully, the movies were left as a sacred trilogy, instead of destroying it with half-assed follow-ups 20 years later like with Indiana Jones, Star Wars, and pretty much anything George Lucas touches (note to George Lucas – I’m honored you’re reading my little blog, you suck, and stay away from the Back to the Future franchise)

With the onset of the 2nd decade in the 21st century, I can’t help but reflect on the second installment of Back to the Future, which sent Marty McFly, Doc Brown, and other characters off to the year 2015 in order to prevent Marty’s future child from getting thrown in jail, and also take an extravagant cinematic swag at predicting the future and touting mid-to-late-80s special effects.

Specifically, I can’t help but look at the level of technological advancement that was dreamed up by the writers/directors/producers/lunch staff of Back to the Future 2 and wonder if we as a society will meet those expectations in just 5 years. Yes, believe it or not, the world portrayed in the movie is just 5 years away, and so far I haven’t seen anything remotely close to futuristic flying cars, highways in the sky, robotic waiters, over-inflated prices (i.e. a can of Pepsi for $100), and of course, hover boards.

Based on where we are today technologically, I’m sad to say that we are not going to meet the expectations set by this movie. That’s not to say we haven’t made amazing advancements since the movie debuted in 1989 – proliferation of personal computers and cell phones, the Internet boom, amazing graphical capabilities, mobile media revolution – but for the most part our advancements are predominantly in the virtual world.

Within tangible, everyday life, sure we’ve got very advanced ovens, refrigerators, and washing machines and cars have unbelievable features for comfort and entertainment, but they sure as hell don’t fly! It’s depressing that the future template created by our 1988 counterparts envisioned us all driving flying cars, talking on video phones exclusively, eating absurdly micro-dehydrated foods, opening doors with finger scans and we’re all still stuck driving with tires, talking on voice-only phones, eating absurdly fatty and largely unhealthy foods, and opening doors with knobs. Knobs! What are we kidding? Knobs…..

I really think this should be a large part of President Obama’s State of the Union address tonight to help inspire innovation, challenge America to set the bar high, stop using door knobs, and live up to the expectations set in 1989 by Back to the Future, Part 2.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsgIzU51Mr0

Trying on clothing when needing to urinate

John — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 17:26:06 +0000

Don’t go to a clothing store where you anticipate trying on pants if you have to mildly go to the bathroom. As soon as you take your pants off your body gets all confused and you suddenly change from thinking you’ll need to go in an hour, to looking for a drain in the changing room.

Bill Smitrovich

John — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 19:27:18 +0000

James Rebhorn

John — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 19:24:55 +0000