Planet of the Grapes

1) Bathing in agony and/or ecstasy, I have become blind in three ways:

-I cannot see fish, or any representation of a fish
-I am not considered attractive by Yugoslavic codes of beauty
-I cannot see inside my throat, thus dashing my dreams of becoming a gift horse.

2) “Purple rain/purple rain
Piglet’s blood/ labor pains
Money’s black/white man’s shame
The ghost of Thomas Jefferson/stares back at me/ in the clean linoloeum floors/ of my kitchen”

Re: the above. Prince has been praying up the wrong tree. Recently.

Kanye West: “Funny, the same wrongs help me write the songs!”
Prince: “Stop whining and suck my uterus!”
Nietzsche: “Of course. Now, really… Why am I here?”

(cue the theme of “The Never Ending Story,” sung a capella by a Colombian drug lord’s talented but doomed wife).

3) Thomas has shared his English muffins with too many children. With each muffin eaten, he gains a delusion.
He believes, for example, that umbrellas were a conspiracy designed to block rain from seeping into the skull,
“God’s detergent for the cerebral cortex.”

Please donate to the high fructose corn syrup debate here:
730127007 Robert Redford’s Weight
Skull Kingdom, FL
Mmmmmbop205

4) Camillaveals (n.): statues who are afraid of the delete button and everything it represents.

PLEASE USE IN A SENTENCE

Sentence: “These camillaveals are making me horny”

Michael Jackson: “I didn’t do it!”

5) My mother gave me “Personality Grades” every three months during my youth.
A sampling from Period Two of Year Ten:

Ability to carry on entire conversations in the second person: C+

Abstract thinking about deep space: D

David Bowie impression: F

During parent-teacher conferences, my mother would lick vodka off of a mirror and yell at herself

6) The Yakluzanot Brothers (accent on the LOOZ) have challenged my great-grandfather to the
200th power (a swordfish, or, for those of you who don’t believe in evolution, Abel) and I
to an “African Night Shade” contest.

Such a contest requires that you successfully get permission from an attractive woman
to pop any blackheads she may have on her face.
The hotter the woman, the more hate mail you receive from men who claim to be feminists.
And I’ll let Gonzo take the rest so as to avoid bags of hate mail being dumped
on my doorstep daily:

Gonzo: “Fine, I’ll say it you weakling. Men who write feminist literature arelike all other men, except for some godforsaken reason, they have a dry pussy fetish. There, I said it. And fuck the Yakluzanot Brothers. They owe me two hundred rubies.”

7) CUT TO:
INT. High School Gymnasium
Gonzo is being crucified as the half time show for Grover Washington High’s semi-final
basketball game against A.C. Milan
Gonzo( on a roll): “And another thing…Jared’s father is a ghost!”
(Grover Washington’s skeleton at this point accentuates the preceding statement by
jumping off of a trampoline and performing a reverse slam dunk).

Marv Albert: “And the audience is going into hysterics…they are
canceling their New Yorker subscriptions in order to have
more money for Playstation games!”

(At this point, a mascot representing Truth orders another cranberry juice)

GONZO IS RAISED FROM THE DEAD)

In the third installment of our Gonzo followings, the present author
does this resurrection  in order to not, ultimately, punish Gonzo for his remarks, because
“Punishment is soooo passe.”
-Britney Spears’ suppressed intelligence (could compose music
as well as Mozart had, if only we were already in the Age of Aquarius).

9) The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man is having many problems with his new roommate,
The Lazy Kreem Filled Croissant Boy. Semen samples have confirmed that Stay Puft
has been masturbating not out of lust, but out of rage. Here’s what a hidden canary overheard at
their shared duplex:

Stay Puft: “I just don’t GET you!”
Lazy Kreem: “Let’s throw I Ching coins to find out when the sun will implode…”
Stay Puft: “Do you work!?”
Lazy Kreem (momentarily distracted by a piece of lint): “Mmmmm…the year 500 billion…”

(Further data was lost after the canary saw that a documentary about euthanasia was playing on a TV in an apartment across the way and decided to fly over)

10) Public Hair

11) Valley Girls who get STUNs are like camillaveals who can impregnate regular statues.

(written in pink on a hot pigeon’s ass): It. Just. Doesn’t. Happen.

12) The Universe doesn’t like you. Have you tried the Sorbet?

The Failure Flavor should suit you and your (barely unattractive) spouse perfectly.

The man at the Pasta Factory is my Mom’s “Special Sleepover Friend,”
Doris “Diamond” RedaJ

503 Broadway

Located past the fitting room like our previous Banana Republic review, the sibling company “Old Navy” doesn’t care if you sneak in by yourself. Gap, Inc., designed Old Navy like the ratty younger brother who perpetually lives in the mental state of freshman year at college. That way, if Banana’s upscale image turns you off, the company still gets your money in the end. However, Old Navy settles into the neighborhood of SoHo comfortably and embraces the space it occupies by leaving it looking like a warehouse.

Their acceptance of the industrial look would benefit them quite well in their facilities, had they gone all the way with it. But only going halfway with the Bohemian look is the same as when an uptown banker tries to come down to this neighborhood to “pick up artsy chicks”–all the cool kids see right through it. Sorry, but the INC is still the biggest part of Gap, Inc. The bathroom is lit brightly by caged, industrial fixtures. The top third of the wall is left as exposed brick to “legitimize” things, and the floor has a brushed concrete look with half a coat of paint on it. But the stalls, gray as they are, look a little too polished for the image they were going for. Also, there is an odd smell lingering in the air, something that will never be cool no matter how uncool it is. Overall you get the sense that they could have done much more to make it “look the part.”

Rating: 6.5

552 Broadway

Banana Republic has always kept a stiff upper lip when sneering at its rivals in the retail clothing industry. No matter where you go, you can always count on BR to sell the “safe” look. Its presence alone can deter the marginally adventurous shopper from experimenting at the next door leather shop. It comes as no surprise that the establishment is very guarded about their image, but the measures to which the SoHo branch’s bathrooms are kept secure is a bit too much to swallow. When we asked for the bathroom we were lead individually by an attendant through the fitting rooms to a locked restroom where only employees had the key. Once inside, we were able to lock it, though that didn’t make us feel any more welcome.

There are two oners here, and neither one passes the mark of impressive. A brushed marble green tile hugs the lower half of the walls, the only sign of color, the lone plant growing through a crack in the city sidewalk. To the establishment’s credit, the room is kept clean and functional with a few amenities such as toilet seat covers. We were starting to see that the “conservative-with-a-hint-of-personality” aesthetic that informs the clothing also applied to the bathroom design. At least they’re consistent. At the washing station a very wide half-length mirror offers more than the idea that you’re just in a public bathroom; it also works well for people who are only trying on tops (or, people whose legs are not their best feature and want to focus of their well-proportioned torso). However, the sink and counter top, and almost everything on it, is made of industrial brushed steel and reminds us that the public bathroom designers care only about one of the “F”s: function*. Thankfully, they care enough to do it right.

*The other three being feng shui, feel-goodedness, and fornication.

Rating: 6.0

8th Street and Broadway

Just like the surplus of men named Ray who open pizzerias in New York, there are also many pizzerias that are “famous”…but they can’t all really be this famous. Perhaps pizzerias are to NY as people are to LA. Anyway, the most striking thing about this bathroom is the amount of graffiti–easily enough to fill a novella (that’s a fancy way of saying short novel). At least there was a small degree of entertainment value. One tidbit read, “Whores don’t get a second chance- God.” Correct us if we are wrong, but that’s from “Taming of the Shrew”…or Joey-from-Queens-after-he-found-out-that- Samantha-was-cheating-on-him-with-his-best-friend-can-you-fucking-believe-it-I-mean- I-thought-he-was-gonna-marry-this-chick-ya-know…

The ceiling was only half painted. Oh, those Italians! (we can say that, our last names end in vowels). The clay-colored tiles that run up the bottom of the wall are taken over by a matte green paint that consumes everything in its path. The bathroom at one time clearly sported one of those vintage silvery hand dryers, but even that is covered in the stuff, as if some wall fungus took over half the bathroom. The owner of Famous Famiglia might tell you the bathroom is green for good luck, like the color of money. We think it’s the color of envy: this place actually does not measure up to the bathroom at the previously reviewed Ray Bono pizza uptown on Lex and 82nd St, which was not an ideal rest stop itself. At Famous Famiglia, everything in the bathroom works right for the median rating of “5,” but major points are deducted since it is just so abominable looking. Perhaps this “famous” family should have went into landscaping.

Rating: 3.0