Hurricane Stock-Up: Sprinkles Cookie Crisp

Possibly the BEST CEREAL EVER MADE.  Well, not health-wise, or even happiness wise.
(I just ate half-a-box and I feel pretty depressed)
But if you were trying to calculate which was the best, like, most cracked-out, like
most sugar-y sugar cereal ever invented, I'd have said Cookie Crisp.
But now they have SPRINKLES COOKIE CRISP! 

I've dipped out on the Cookie Crisp mythology in recent years.  Back in the day, there was a Wizard named
Cookie Jarvis that magically made the Cookie Crisp.  Then Jarvis died in a magic battle with Lucky, the Leprechaun from Lucky Charms so they hired a duo - Officer Crumb, a cop, and the Cookie Crook --who was this little 1950's style robber that wore a chef's hat with cookies on it and a little Zorro mask.
At first the Cookie Crook would triumph against Crumb, but soon General Mills went soft and didn't think it
was cool to show cops getting duped by cookie thieves.  So for most of his reign, much like the Trix rabbit,
the Cookie Crook never pulled off another caper.  But in the end of the Cookie Crook's days, before he
went to prison for life, he had a dog named Chip, who took over for awhile.  Then they hired this
Wolf guy, who's also called Chip, but who was originally called Howler.  It's like the longest, most
confusing story in history of cereal.  

Reds, Oranges, Greens and Blues.

Hurricane Stock-Up: Brownie Crunch

Made by Cocoa Puffs.  Tastes EXACTLY like Cocoa Puffs.  Which is delicious.

Sonny's on the box, with chocolate on his face.  He's also wearing a potholder.

Detail of a Brownie Crunch.

Kid Struggles In Incredible, All-Felt E.T. Costume!

Even his finger-light is made of Felt!

And here is an excellent rendition of E.T.'s smash hit, Please Phone Ring-a-Ling.  Well, it's the only rendition, and it wasn't a smash hit, and neither E.T. or Stephen Spielberg had anything to do with it.
But it still slams.

Hurricane Sounds and Pictures

Hurricane Sandy is coming.  Here are some Sound Effects to get you more in the mood.

2nd Avenue in Manhattan.  It Could Almost Be The 70's.

Girl In Raincoat Photographs Fallen Tree Branch.

Last of the Water at the 9th Street Deli.

St. Mark's Place in Manhattan.

Weird Man Fights With Pink Umbrella While Crossing First Avenue.

No Title

The most not Halloween Song

Bunny Bop by Buddy Barnett.  There's still something off about this incredible moment in music.

A Perfect Name For A Perfect Product

This was the piece of cardboard that came with the Knife Thru Head.  From a 99¢ Shop in Diker Heights.

INTERN DIARY: October 13th, 2012

THE STORY SO FAR:  Luca, my intern, is a skateboarder from Astoria, Queens.  He's 17 years old and goes to Essex Street Academy in the LES. A little over a month ago, he busted his leg and has been sending me text updates to his diary for the shlog.  One side, William Safire.

Alavell.  Luca had to give him a dollar to take his picture.

Hurricane Post: Umbrella Man

Ok, so he's more of a beach umbrella.  Still, anthropomorphic Umbrellas are
hard to come by.  They know all about how to prepare for hurricanes.
That's what they learn in middle school.  It's like our version of
Social Studies.

The Greek Comic Seal of Approval

Rainy Day Fun.  Some Kid already did the Connect-the-Dots duck-bird.

All I'm saying here is that this guys got some cool-ass posters.
And he's wearing gloves to bed.

Funkiest Maze in all of Greece.

Were-Squirrel

There's a Were-Squirrel that lives in this hole.  That's right, a were-wolf squirrel that comes out
on Halloween (and Thanksgiving) to strike fear into the hearts of sparrows, stoop-pumpkins and ants.
He's really just a disgustingly filthy old squirrel that won't die.  He yells at anyone that
comes near his hole and is always trying to get the kids to turn down that "rock and roll racket".
 The guy who sealed up the hole thought the squirrel would starve to
death, but he was a miser of a squirrel in his hey-day.  He's like Scrooge McDuck with nuts
instead of coins.  No one's seen him for awhile but you can hear him swearing at his
television set while he watches Game Show Network.

Halloween Decorations

This guy's putting up a spooky Orange Juice "Sale" Poster.
Even scarier London Broil is next.  

Batman Baby

Disembodied Leg Neon

This place was closed but apparently they specialize in cutting people's legs off.
Maptleton, BK.

Silver Shamrock

If you're a real tv/movie-head, you like Halloween III.  It's the Halloween with no Michael Myers and a bunch of masks that turn your head into snakes and cockroaches.  

BONUS: Insanely, the pumpkin mask from Halloween III's Silver Shamrock product line made
an appearance in a Halloween episode of Knight Rider.  It has the Silver Shamrock logo on it and
everything.  In Halloween III, the little logo-badge was the thing that had a microchip in it that
was set up to receive the satellite signal from Easter Island where there was a bunch of bad Irish guys.
Something very close to that.

Here's the full studio track of the Silver Shamrock Theme.



The Knight Rider info comes from http://www.flickr.com/photos/billypolard/ and www.freddyinspace.com.

3 More Days Till Halloween

New Balance Bootlegs at NWL

NWL, or National Wholesale Liquidators, are the kings of close-out.  They've got everything.  From 70's Spraypaint to cheese-cracker brands you've never heard of and well past the expiration date, NWL has something for everybody be they a cat or a horse.

Today's NWL special is a fine pair of New Balance cross-trainers.  Oh wait, that's not an "N", it's an A and a slanted line with a line connecting it back to the A.  Maybe that's not an A.  I don't know what that is.  

It's a little bit like the Flux Capacitor.  Whatever it is, I couldn't get the florescent light out out of my eyes
for two days.  This symbol is burned into my retina.

Please write in and tell us about your favorite Lin Shi product!

MC Gigs

In the year 2000, my girlfriend at the time, Rosalie, had family who lived on Roosevelt Island.  Her little brother Willie, age 14, had this little hip-hop crew going and they'd visit my apartment from time to time. They were just sort of doing it as a fantasy thing -- I think all their friends were part of some sort of rap group even if they barely listened to rap, never mind rhymed. Willie was supposed to be the DJ, Willy Wonka, but he couldn't really cut, and I don't think he had any records. The other 3 maniacs in his crew were rappers, led by a 16-year-old Polish kid who went by Arcane. They didn't have a name for the group, so I offered up the name Ghettoblasters, which they were happy to go with.



To the young ear, Arcane could rap.  Freestyle even.  He was hype off the recent success of Eminem, but was more into the underground stuff, like the backpack rapper Esoteric.  He looked in Roget's Pocket Thesaurus for synonyms of the word esoteric and found his name, Arcane.  He was a very nice kid, and pretty focused, but his rap style didn't interest me at all.  I recorded a bunch of his rhymes, but I didn't wind up using them.

The next up rapper was age 15 and called himself Gigs.  Gigs was a Black kid, with a lisp, and a raspy voice.  He looked like Grover.  To me he had a natural, excellent rap skill and easy charisma.  He was funny.  But he was the opposite of focused and he definitely didn't have the rhyme or vocab skills necessary to step up and annihilate Arcane -- but I sat with him for two afternoons, recording a little bit at a time -- and the rest of the crew were good enough to contribute to his notes and get him through enough passable raps for the two Gigs tracks that I wound up stitching together.

It would be criminal not to mention the other rapper, Big Mike, a chubby 13-year-old white kid, born and bred on RI, who I think was probably the most into hiphop out of the 4 of them.  He was wild and funny but he just couldn't deal with the mic when it came down to actually recording.  I barely have his voice on any of my old Zip Disks.

Here are some of Gig's notes that I've saved over all these years. 

PARENTS BEWARE!  There are some bad words and a weird drawing of a building shaped like a penis.

That's Arcane's tag on the top but the raps are Gigs'.

Onion Crunch and Astro Diner

America's newest condiment is Onion Crunch.
I was in the Astro Diner on 55th Street yesterday and they had it right there on the table
along with salt, pepper, ketchup, and Sweet'N Low.

It's sort of like bacon bits, but more onion-y.  It's also sort of like confetti, but more onion-y.
If anything, I'm just glad there's an anthropomorphic onion running around now.

I like Astro Diner, but not that much. The fact that people review it on Yelp strikes an excellent sweet spot for me -- I think it's crazy and super funny.  It doesn't make me laugh out loud, but it makes me feel in a funny mood for, like a half hour after reading the reviews.  I think it shows that you are 100% insane if you actually go to Yelp, log in, and write up a review of Astro Diner.  It's so crazy to me.  It's just a diner -- it's definitely bad, but it's not that bad. It's kind of good. Do you like diners? I do, mostly because you can talk with your friends in an easy and carefree manner.  In a diner booth, you can get into it -- gossip, cursing, complaining, whatever.  But I hate diners too because they're kind of gross.  That's where I eat BLT's and french fries and stupid old chicken fingers.  Now, I can always get down on some chicken fingers, but they're fried and mostly frozen, and it's just stupid to eat them.  They're bad for you and make you feel like a jerk, but they're probably better than some of those dinner specials that the old people get at 4 in the afternoon.

Anyhow, here's my top four out of the Astro Diner reviews on Yelp.

I basically don't believe her.  I bet she didn't eat in there.

Big, juice and fresh!

This guys CAPITALS game is ON POINT.

11 dollars for a waffle sounds so funny.

Roto-Rooter Jingle

My new plumber, Al, came through the other day to service all of my toilets and to snake all my drains.
(NO THANKS TO MR. PARFENIX (my landlord).
When a plumber "snakes your drain", he kills all the mean snakes that live in there, that's why
plumbers make such good money and also why my old plumber was a snake-charmer - he
didn't even have any tools, just an old middle-school recorder.
Al works with Roto-Rooter, and he was terrific.  When I asked him about the old Roto-Rooter
commercials, he said he didn't think they ran on TV anymore, but you might catch them on the radio.
Then he told me he had a pen that played the jingle -- but he didn't want to part with it.
But at the end of his visit, he ran back out to his van and came back and gave me the pen.
He said, "With all that stuff that you got, it obviously belongs here."
A better man might have refused him, because it seemed like the pen held some genuine
sentimental value to Al, but I'm not a better man, and I wanted the jingle pen so bad that I
actually calculated that it probably already had more sentimental value to me.
Check the jingle below!!

Jack Sprat

The whole Jack Sprat thing is pretty minimal.  It's not like anything exciting happens or anybody learns a lesson.  It's not funny, or particularly sweet.  Peter Pan Records did their best when they recorded this little masterpiece, making something out of almost nothing.

Don't sleep on the little "mm-hmm" the girl gives the narrator in the intro.

The Senior Bowling League at Melody Lanes

That's Burt, Dan, Me (I was standing in for their missing teammate Regina), Marge, and Betty.
A swell group and a bunch of fine bowlers.  

Melody Lanes is open all the time in Sunset Park, BK.
The Senior League is always looking for more players.

It wasn't too crowded on Thursday.

The team.  

The scorecard and the Snack Bar menu.  They have fried raviolis! 

When we told Marge we were gonna put the footage and photos we took of them on the internet,
she said, "You gotta be kidding!"

Burt, who seemed to have excellent concentration, rolls.

Betty prepares.

Burt and Dan keeping score.

One of Burt's strikes.

I'm laughing because Dan said, "We don't play with kids."

Lockers.

Sign of the Day.