As my last post led more than a handful of female readers to write in saying how ‘sweet’ the sentiment was, I spent a drunken train ride back from Connecticut last night brainstorming potential posts about beating children and small animals, as a way to counterbalance and regain some semblance of masculine street cred.

If anyone has a baby seal for me to club, say, send it along.

Another recent favorite:

A: Knock knock.

B: Who’s there?

A: Control freak. Now you say “control freak who?”

Two quick bits of inappropriately juvenile humor:

1.

A man goes into a psychiatrist’s office, dressed only in Saran Wrap.

The psychiatrist says, “well, I can clearly see you’re nuts.”

2.

A pirate walks into a bar with a steering wheel in his crotch.

The bartender says, “hey, pirate, is that a steering wheel in your crotch?’

The pirate replies, “arrgh, it’s driving me nuts.”

[My apologies in advance.]

A man went to his optometrist to have his eyes examined. The doctor told him, “Listen, you’ve got to stop masturbating.”

“Why, Doc?” the man asked. “Am I going blind?”

“No,” said the optometrist, “but you’re upsetting my other patients.”

If you just sent me Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, in its specially remastered Bueller… Bueller… Edition:

1. You rock.
2. Email me so I can beam thankful karmic brainwaves in the right direction.

Thanks.

I would have titled this post ‘happy holidays’, but I don’t need the War on Christmas again pegged on us Jews (as it was by Henry Ford).

Besides, today, for the first time since 1929, Christmas day and the first night of Chanukah coincide.

So, everyone should be in the holday spirit. [Aside from Muslisms, Buddhists, Hindus, Pagans, atheists, agnostics and Pastafarians. But I digress.]

Enjoy your eggnog, fire up some latkes, light the menorah and tinsel the tree. Best wishes to all my friends in Cyberspace,

joshua

Following the last post, logging Underground in my living room kept going, and going, and going. We’re still not quite done, but as Colin is off to Michigan through New Year’s, I at least have a two week reprieve.

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Just in time, too, as my parents are now in town, availing themselves of the Joshua Newman Hotel. Replete with mints on the pillow.

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And replete with soothing lounge music.

Or, with not-so-soothing-half-assed-attempts at lounge music. Keeping alive my great-grandmother’s tradition of buying herself a Chanukah present (so she’d be sure to receive at least one gift she really wanted), I headed out to Sam Ash Music, picked up an inexpensive Yamaha CG-111S classical guitar, and set back upon my earlier mission to become the next AndrÈs Segovia. As I haven’t played since moving out from my prior, guitar-owning roommates a year back, I may hold off a bit before booking my Carnegie Hall debut.

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Also, I think there was a transit strike here or something.

As Cyan / Long Tail is moving in to the Actor’s Equity Building, on the corner of 46th and Broadway and a scant five blocks from my apartment, I wouldn’t know.

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Lest I gloat too much, I should point out the new commute, while just five blocks, passes directly up Times Square, and therefore consists of perhaps the five crappiest blocks in all of New York City.

Seriously, I should start taking horse tranquilizers before setting out in either direction.

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I was happy to head just a few blocks up from there, however, to pick up a quart of pickles at the Carnegie Deli. A guy in Boston had posted on Ask Metafilter to say how much his wife loved those pickles, and to see if there was a New Yorker who’d be willing to purchase some on his behalf, then overnight them up to Boston in time to make a truly excellent surprise Christmas gift.

As a pickle-lover myself, and having, while still living in California, once similarly been on the receiving end of a pickle package sent from Gus’s by my grandmother, I had no choice but to play good briny Samaritan.

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And, finally, the New York Times name-checked me at the end of an article about fitness ‘cult’ CrossFit, whose New York branch I help run.

It’s not the best researched or most accurate article, and kind of makes us all sound like a bunch of masochistic wack-jobs, but it could have been worse. At least, as a result of the article, I’ve been getting emails all day from New Yorkers interested in joining the CrossFit fray.

If your New Year’s resolutions include kicking your lard ass into shape, you should be to.

Memorize this equation:

Younger brother in town + five nights out consecutively + five or more drinks each night + five or fewer hours of sleep each night = disaster.

Just returned from a weekend jaunt down to Florida, for my grandfather’s 85th birthday. And while my canasta and shuffleboard skills are duly honed, I’ve also scored the sort of fire-engine red shoulder sunburn only possible after beach front hours in the mid-day sun deep in a summer previously spent entirely t-shirted.

As typing requires moving, further dispatches await purchase and copious application of industrial strength aloe salve.

Until then, I’m off to take a bottle of Advil.