Good God, no.

Starbucks announced today it was closing 600 stores. That's only 6500 Starbucks left. Unfathomable.

I'm not a man who can lay back and watch things happen. I need a boost and I need it now. What if I'm 100 feet away from a Starbucks and I feel my energy drop? Used to be there was a Starbucks in front of me. Now, God only knows. Maybe a pet store.

Where else can I get a three dollar cookie and an eight ounce bottle of lemonade? Besides the airport. I'm a busy man but I can't go into an airport every twelve minutes. 

Or maybe I want to listen to some new tunes. How will I check in with Josh Groban's playlist? Walk two blocks to the remaining Starbucks? That's like Russia.

You know I am not fond of the yuppies.  They say "401K" sometimes. Shut the fuck up.

One thing that yuppies in New York love to talk about are speakeasies.  A speakeasy was a Prohibition-era bar that secretly sold booze.  Hey yuppie dumbfucks!  There are no more speakeasies!

They don't care.  The like to go to bars that are unmarked and require some sort of password for entrance.  They like to sit in there and order two $9 beers.  Then they like to hurry out so they can call all their friends and tell them about the speakeasy they just got into.  Hey yuppie dumbfuck!  That was just a shitty bar!

I was walking down the sidewalk and happened to glance at my reflection in your car window.  I was checking out your interior leather, when by chance I caught a glimpse of my breathtaking countenance.  I could not look away.  Behold my jawline as I tilt my head just so!  My hair is blowing lazily in the wind.  How come it never looks like this in my bathroom mirror?  I wish all images of myself could be filtered through the delicate and flattering gaze of a passenger-side window.  From now on, all my films will include at least four extended shots of my exquisite car-window reflection.  I wonder if my agent could make that retroactive?  Good luck editing a Toyota Camry into Sleepy Hollow...
 
I am also partial to my elegant visage when mirrored off the black marble base of a Manhattan skyscaper as I walk by. Of course, it was never my intention to settle my measured gaze upon the cryptic yet timeless comportment of my Greek frame, reflected in the polished stone...I was just examining a crack. But once my stare is fixed, it cannot be unfixed.  One so infrequently gets to take account of one's entire constitution.  Is that really me?  Am I already so old?  Where have the years gone? 

So I finally got my tax rebate check last Friday. They had some trouble processing my taxes because in the section where they ask you to declare any children you might have, I wrote: "Do leftovers count?"

Anywho, this rebate is delightful. It is like free money. I did not have to work for it. I did not have to stand in front of that eye and those bright lights and say words from the cards. I hate that part. I prefer the part where they send me to my trailer and I sit motionless on the edge of the bed and ruminate on the essential futility of life. Then someone comes in and gives me a sandwich for in my mouth.

But I digress. I am going to do my part for America with this free money. I am going to go outside when the sun is up and exchange the money for goods and services like how humans do.  I am not sure what to get.  Maybe you have a suggestion?  Here are some ideas I have had thus far:

1.  A polygraph machine

I would like to purchase one of these and hook it up to some fucker who isn't really my friend but always smiles at me with their stupid face.  I would like to ask them uncomfortable questions like "Have you ever thought about cheating on your wife?" or "Where would you NOT like me to put this pinecone?" I think it would also be funny to hook it up to a baby and keep yelling "Are you a cop?!?! Are you a snitch?!?" right in his funny little face. I probably wouldn't eat that one, especially if it was a cop.

I'm a New Yorker, balls to bones.  I remember when New York was a gritty place.  We took pride in our toughness, our resolve, and our street smarts.

Today's New Yorkers, however, define themselves slightly differently. There is an unspoken ideal at the back of every young New Yorker's psyche these days. It is no longer mentioned explicitly, but at an almost subconscious level, all of today's New Yorkers look at their lives, and their circle of friends, and measure their worth with respect to the same rubric, guided by the same persistent question: 

"Guys, are we like Seinfeld yet?"

No longer is the prototypical New Yorker  a gruff construction worker with a foul mouth and a heart of gold, sitting on an I-beam high above the streets and whistling at a midtown secretary on her lunch break. 

No, today's New Yorker is haunted by the fading ghost of a horse-faced, high-jeaned, occasionally-hilarious manchild and his bumbling band of sycophants.

So my driver had the flu this past weekend, which means I had to take the train for the first time in a decade. I left Manhattan on the Metro-North line, headed up to Connecticut to shoot a delightful little independent film starring a villain who gives covert vasectomies to yuppies in their sleep. Guess which part I had. About an hour into the trip, I heard a notice over the conductor intercom that I recognized from my last train trip, ten years prior! It struck me, because I could not believe that after all this time they were still saying the same stupid shit:

"Only the front four cars will make the next station. If you are in one of the rear two cars, please make your way forward to exit."

What the fuck?!?

A train car is a self-contained, microcosmic universe. You sit in it, you look out the window, and you watch space-time fly by. Nobody has any fucking clue which car they in.  Asking me if I am in one of the rear two cars is akin to asking me if I am living after one of the final two Big Bangs. 

Hey gang.  Did anyone catch the story about the Maasai tribesmen who ran in the London marathon over the weekend?  A British charity looked kindly on these proud warriors and aimed to give the a warm welcome to the UK by furnishing them with detailed guide to city life in London.  They called this guide "Visiting England: A Cultural Briefing for the Warriors," and it includes gems like this one: "Even though some [Londoners] may look like they have a frown on their face, they are very friendly people. Many of them just work in offices – jobs they don’t enjoy – and so they do not smile as much as they should.”

[Original image courtesy of user at0m at flickr.com]