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Heeb Issue #18 : Urban KvetchUrban Kvetch
Photo by Mike Garten, Styling by Jessica Becker
Crocs
You emerge from the locker room, warm smile, arms toned—an Adonis. Then my eyes fall upon your feet and those garish, rubber, sling-back clogs. Crocs. Simple slip-on sandals would not suffice? Some Havaianas, perhaps? No. Instead, you’ve opted for footwear intended for two-yearolds and menopausal gardeners. So daring you are with your brilliant post-workout sockless, rubber shoe.
MARCY KELLY
Your Voice Mail
Isn’t it enough that I endure the same ten muffled seconds of Lil’ Wayne’s “Lollipop” song every time I get your voicemail? Must that be followed by a half-hour of automated exposition on how to leave a message? I don’t need to send a “numeric page” or “mark my call as urgent.” I can also pass on the playback and re-recording my message options. I’m trying to remind you to pick up toilet paper, not rewrite the Emancipation Proclamation.
OLIVER NOBLE
Little Girls With Lipstick
Moms of America, I beg you: Stop putting makeup on your little girls. Your red-lipped three-year-olds don’t need pink nail polish to dig in the dirt for worms or run through a sprinkler. Do you know why women started wearing lipstick? The red color simulates how your lips naturally darken during orgasm. Ditto nails. It’s not cute. It’s stomach-turning.
MICHELLE QUINT
Comedians on NPR
Recently, NPR has become the go-to place for top comedians to explain all the funny out of their material. Listing to everyone from Matt Stone to Sarah Silverman play along with droll, stuffy-nosed correspondents, earnestly pontificating about their “process” is a bigger buzz kill than a stillborn. Can NPR please leave the comedy interviews to late-night TV and get back to what it’s good at. . .like solarpowered yurt glorification?
SEMITE-AUTOMATIC
People Who Don’t Cover Their Mouths When They Cough
If you slapped me in the face (lightly) as I walked past you at the intersection of Second Avenue and 11th Street you could be charged with assault and battery, but somehow you can cough in my face with impunity? What kind of world do we live in? Please just slap me in the face next time. I’d rather two seconds of sting, then the thought of whatever disease is festering in the cesspool of your being. Geez, my mouth was open and everything.
JOSHUA NEUMAN
Stamps
Am I seriously standing here on line while you contemplate whether to go with a book of Liberty Bells, American Scientists or Beautiful Blooms? It’s a postage stamp, not the name of your next child. Is your sense of self so fragile and so in need of constant bolstering that you need a one-inch-by-one-inch piece of adhesive to communicate your being? You’re the same fucker who puts Bible quotations in the signature of e-mails, aren’t you?
YID VICIOUS
My Yoga Instructor
With your dark hair pulled back, smoldering eyes, scrupulous Ashtanga technique and mild scent of patchouli, you, sir, are a walking cliché (from the ’90s no less), yet when you told me after class in your brooding, dead-ringer-for-Banderas baritone that next time I was holding a difficult pose that I should “feel free to cry,” I only wanted you more, damn it.
JAIME WOLF
Catholic School Girls
Who was the genius who thought up dressing Catholic school girls as Catholic school girls? Like the Gap is just too revealing for your precious daughter—instead, dress her up in a seethrough blouse, mini-skirt and knee-high socks. Real incognito. That’ll help her to focus on the studies. Why don’t you just put her in stilettos and a bunny romper while you’re at it?
DOV GILBERT
BALTIMORE, MD
(READER SUBMITTED)
Send your 75-word complaints to us at kvetch@heebmagazine.com and we’ll print the best one in our next issue.












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