Author Archive

Urban Kvetch: My Belly

My Belly Hello, hairy stranger. I don’t recall inviting you to block my view of my penis for the past decade. Yes, I know that nobody pointed a gun to my head and forced me to march to the all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet. But it’s just too easy to bloat up in this starchy, sugary, Netflix-y...

Urban Kvetch: Greedy Wi-Fi Owners

Greedy Wi-Fi Owners Do you sleep better knowing your less fortunate neighbors and the patron at the downstairs café can’t get their claws on your personal stash of the World Wide Web? Why else would you opt to require a password to enter your network? Well, hopefully one of these nights, The Ghost of Internet...

Urban Kvetch: Skin Bronzer

Skin Bronzer Africans and Asians around the world spend billions of dollars annually on skin bleaching creams and white people think, “How sad.” Get real, you orange-glowing hypocrites. Bronzing creams make you look like an alien with a skin cancer fetish. Furthermore, there is nothing un-sexier than waking up from a night of passion to...

Urban Kvetch: Seinfeld References

Seinfeld References Don’t assume that because I’m a Jewish New Yorker I know what you’re talking about when you say, “It’s like when Jerry wore the puffy shirt!” and squeal with delight, pointing to my down jacket. Okay, maybe I have seen that Seinfeld episode, but come on—after 1,000 years of syndication, isn’t it time...

Urban Kvetch: The Homeless Guy In Union Square Who Asks Me If I Can Spare A Penny

The Homeless Guy In Union Square Who Asks Me If I Can Spare A Penny Who do you think you’re dealing with here? This is like trying to hit Superman with a baseball bat. My guilt-o-meter has been calibrated by pitch-perfect childhood angst. Come on. You don’t really want a penny. You want me to...

Urban Kvetch: Fat Personal Trainers

Fat Personal Trainers Is it too much to ask to be assigned a personal trainer who’s actually in shape? Maybe it’s just me, but I’m not really inspired to finish up my French curls when the guy cheering me on is the spitting image of Ernest Borgnine. In fact, the only thing less inspiring is...

Urban Kvetch: Pasadena

Pasadena If I got off on buying the same crewneck sweater in eight different colors at Talbots, this’d be heaven. I used to live within a mile of the beach and a 14-theater AMC; now I’ve got a giant sign that says, “God is Still Speaking” looming outside my bedroom window. They shot The Graduate...

Urban Kvetch: Girls Who “Already Ate”

Girls Who “Already Ate” I order a big hunk of lasagna and you get a house salad because you “already ate.” Excuse me? Either you’re a bitch for putting me through six different e-mail exchanges dedicated to finding a mutually acceptable restaurant in a mutually accessible location or you’re lying to cover for an eating...

Urban Kvetch: Wobbly Tables

Wobbly Tables This is a flipping four-star restaurant. The sauteed skate we ordered came with cauliflower that you spent a week and a half caramelizing and a caper-raisin emulsion that required a Ph.D. in Chemistry to produce. You could at least seat us at a table with four legs of equal length. We’ve spilled so...

Urban Kvetch: The Demise Of The Fortune Cookie

The Demise Of The Fortune Cookie Remember fortunes? Something that foretells a new job, love or financial windfall; a prediction that eerily rings true that you’ll superstitiously keep in your wallet; or at least something that sounds funny with the words “in bed” tacked onto the end. I didn’t wrestle with that cellophane packaging for...

Urban Kvetch: Dance Dance Revolution

Dance Dance Revolution Quit claiming it’s “just like Guitar Hero.” Dance Dance Revolution is to Guitar Hero what Napoleon Dynamite is to Justin Timberlake. Anyone who attempted their DDR “dance moves” in the real world would look like they were a contestant on Who Wants to Be a Jackass? Yes, GH and DDR have similar...

Urban Kvetch: The Locker Room At The Friar’s Club

The Locker Room At The Friar’s Club To all of those Christian groups dedicated to “curing” homosexuality through “reparative therapy”: just send Ted Haggard to the locker room at the Friars Club and expose him to all of those hairy bellies, veiny legs and tiny wieners, and he’ll come out as straight as John Wayne....