I rarely make it to Brooklyn, but I like the few areas there that I’ve been. It’ s a nicer place than blogs make it sound (I think, judging by friends who live there and love it), but some of its residents sound pretty freaking nuts. I laughed pretty hard when I read this post on Gothamist. The Double Windsor, a Winsor Terrace bar, has banned the entry of people under 21 after 5 pm. And some parents are upset about that. Why?? That’s the whole point of bars; it’s happy fun adult time, with alcohol. I feel like the mouth of hell is about to swallow us all or something, because for once all of the Gothamist comments were 1) on topic and 2) coherent.
Why don’t I feel bad about this? Kids get everything. They get toys, they take naps, and they don’t have to pay taxes. Can’t we grown-ups have something of our own?
Jack McFadden, a man who cause an uproar in Park Slope when his restaurant, Union House, banned strollers thinks this makes perfect sense. And he’s the father of a 10-month-old baby. He even said one of the smartest things I think I’ve ever read: “If people would just use some common sense and consideration, there wouldn’t have to be rules.” I totally agree with this, as it is applicable in so many situations. Sadly though, common sense just isn’t as common as one might hope.
As is to be expected, there are some parents aren’t happy about it. I don’t get it. I never went to a bar until I was old enough to drink. It wasn’t a big deal. When my parents went out to n0-kids-allowed type places, I’d go visit with a relative or a babysitter would come over to my house. Babysitters! Remember those?? Stimulate the local teenage economy and hire a babysitter already!
I think the TSA keeps doing really stupid things because they know I’m too lazy to look for good posting material. Anyway, this time they detained a college student who was set to board a flight for having Arabic-language flash cards. How do they think that native English speakers are going to learn Arabic? Magic?
I saw Brandi Carlile this past Saturday, and she was every bit as awesome as I’d hoped. She played for nearly 2 hours (which does not include the time taken by the also good opening act Greg Isakov), and seemed to be having a great time. She said that she loved New Jersey about a million times, and avoided making any Jersey Shore jokes, which I really appreciated. At first I thought that maybe she says that everywhere, but she did stay for a really long time, so even if she tells every crowd that they’re her favorite stop on tour, I don’t mind. Plus, maybe wherever she is is her favorite place to be. Some people are easy to please like that. I took a boatload of pictures, many of which didn’t come out as well as I’d hoped, and a couple of videos. The first, of “Dying Day,” which is my favorite song on her newest CD, Give Up the Ghost, was by itself worth the price of admission, since she did it entirely unplugged. The second, “Caroline,” was interrupted by an overzealous security guard, but that actually ended up being okay, since if I’d gotten the entire song, I would have run out of space on my memory card; I had 20 megs left when I got home, and that was with me deleting especially awful pictures right after I’d taken them. Close call! So many thanks to OSG, without whom I wouldn’t have my best shots of the night, which came toward the end of the evening.
I don’t care about football. At all. But I was happy that the Saints won, because I have an irrational hatred for the many Mannings, and also because I love it when the underdog triumphs. So here’s a video of New Orleans fans celebrating their team’s victory.
ACK! I thought I posted this on Saturday, so that’s how I’m going to date it. You’re not hallucinating, this post wasn’t always here. What gives, WordPress??
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Although it isn’t snowing here (yet?), it started to snow during the middle of the day in parts further south. For the people of Washington DC, who greet every snow storm with great trepidation, today’s forecast of approximately 30 inches of snow produced supermarket runs and staple-hoarding rivaling only the bomb shelter preparation of the 1950s. Shepard Smith, one of the few cable newsdudes whom I can identify on sight AND don’t hate at all, basically laughed at the nation’s capitol throughout the entire segment on DC’s weather.
As loath as I am to agree with the New York Post on anything at all, I have to say that they got this story right. Why is Mayor Bloomberg’s technology commissioner claiming to live in Florida full time? And to save $3,000 a year in taxes? That’s insane. She makes over $200,000 a year by herself, and I’m sure her husband has income, too. There’s no excuse to be so cheap. Of course, today her husband informed the good people of Florida that she is not, in fact, a full-time resident, and hasn’t been since 2001. It’s not as though this was a case of oversight; they actively claimed that she still lived year round in Florida; she had a Florida driver’s license; and she voted in Florida elections. Seriously???
Was it worth the talk of fraud and loss of reputation? I will never understand politicians.
I’m sure that many drivers have sat alone in their cars in bumper-to-bumper traffic and looked longingly over at the cars whizzing along in the HOV lane. They probably wished for a friend or coworker to be in the car with them, both for conversational purposes, and also to get in that fast-moving lane. They maybe even thought that, in a pinch, a doll or mannequin would do. The difference between these imaginary drivers of mine and Kathleen Frascinella is that she actually went that extra step and put a mannequin in her front passenger seat so that she could use the HOV lane. I know that’s an abuse of the system, but that kind of cracks me up. Still, I hate it when people think that rules that others follow shouldn’t have to apply to them, so I think it’s awesome that she got a ticket and 2 point on her license.
Although…who’s to say that the mannequin doesn’t come to life when nobody else is watching??
Proving that the law 1) doesn’t have a sense of humor and 2) isn’t always about fairness, a judge who made what I thought was a pretty brilliant ruling was censured yesterday. Los Angeles County Judge Brett Klein ruled that the plaintiffs’ lawyer in a class action case, a man who stood to make $125,000 while the members of the class each received a $10 gift card good only at one store, should also be paid in $10 gift cards. That would have given him 12,500 gift cards for women’s clothing store Windsor Fashions, who also happened to be the defendants in this case. The judge thought that if it was legal and fair for the plaintiffs to have to use gift cards to the defendants’ store in order to receive anything, the same rule should apply to their lawyer. I can see where he was going with this, but apparently the state of California disagreed, and Judge Klein, who’d retired before this decision was made, was found to have shown “a failure to be patient, dignified, and courteous to those appearing before him.”
Bollocks. I think his original ruling was a good one, and that the courts should think about it: if it’s not fair for an attorney to be paid in a way that makes him spend gift cards in order to reap a benefit, then plaintiffs in similar class action cases should not be paid in this way, either. It seems wrong to rule that a company has done something wrong, and then reward it with money received from the plaintiffs’ gift cards. How are you going to teach companies that bad behavior will not be tolerated, when it actually ends up being rewarded?
Amusing, Food and Drink, Seriously??, This is why we can't have nice things | Nicole | 
February 17, 2010 3:57 pm | 
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