SfanGoch

Are you allowed to use "straight" here?

After you pay your taxes, you have pocket change left over, right? Sounds fair to them what robs you in the name of the law. Don't forget the Dept. of Taxation & Finance's official motto: "What's mine is mine, what's yours is mine." The lion's share of municipal budgets go toward pension funds.The actual operating budgets are just a small percentage. Heck, NYC's FY2016 Executive Budget is $78.3 BILLION! That's more than the annual budgets of 90% of the nations on this planet. A giant chunk is for pension funds. I have no problem with cops and firefighters getting paid well or receiving nice pensions. They put their lives on the line every single day and deserve to be compensated for what are, short of combat duty, the most hazardous occupations to work in. Every other civil servant.......keep walking.

It pisses me off to no end when POS skels use their kids as props in order to play on people's sympathies and shame them into coughing up money out of some misguided guilt. I was riding the subway earlier today. Two stops into the trip, a guy and a little girl get on. The guy starts his prepared spiel about their being homeless, hungry, etc. Then, he walks through the car shaking a ski cap under passengers' noses for "donations". The suckers tossing in bills didn't seem to notice that the guy was wearing brand spanking new Air Jordan 4 Pinnacle sneakers, which cost around $650, holding an iPhone worth at least another couple hundred and the little girl was also dressed in expensive clothes. Years ago, there was a guy who used to pull a similar scam on the F train to Queens. He would walk through the car wearing a cardboard sign reading, "Please help my family" with a "photo" of two smiling little girls and Mom taped in the middle. I thought there was something very familiar about that picture. I knew I've seen it someplace before. It was one of those generic inserts you find when you buy a picture frame. I got a hold of one of those inserts and carried it with me, hoping I'd see the guy again. I got my chance a few weeks later. He got on the subway and went into his routine. When he reached my seat, I said, "Man, it's hard to believe that your girls are in such a bad situation." "What do you mean?" "Well, you must be doing pretty well with your daughters being famous models." "Huh?" "C'mon dude, don't be so modest. I see their faces all the time." "I don't know what you're talking about." So, I pulled out the insert and asked him if I could have his autograph. Everybody in the car started yelling at him and proceeded to pelt him with coffee cups, soda cans, food and newspapers. I never saw him on the F train again.

Somebody's gotta pay for all those "free" social programs in the Great White North. Here in NYC, one goes to state licensed service stations/repair shops for inspections and emission tests. In the past, it was never a problem passing even if your car blows smoke like a steel mill. There was always a properly tuned vehicle in the shop that the mechanic, after getting his already greased palm regreased , would use.

I built a Tamiya 4x4 Bruiser R/C truck in 1986. I tested it out on the pier down the block from me. After about five minutes, it stopped responding to the transmitter, drove straight off the pier and is still somewhere at the bottom of the East River. All 650 bucks of it.....

My first guess was Ed Norton.

Didn't he co-star with Jack Klugman in "Quincy, M.E."?

I taught him all he knows about Turbo Tax.

Yup, that's me, the human bullseye. Just the way I like it.

Personally, I'm a big fan of confrontational microaggressive post modifiers and suffixes, know what I'm sayin'?

And it landed upright. Elon Musk needs to hire these guys.

Not one, but two R/C gas turbine powered B-52 Stratofortresses!

Rémy Julienne was driving. This is how he pulls out of parking garages.

Alan Freed and Morris Levy were pros at adding their names to writing credits and leaving artists and writers broke. An old friend of mine, the late Raoul Cita, didn't play along with them. He was the writer, accompanist, pianist, arranger and founding member of the classic R&B vocal group The Harptones. Raoul made sure he got what was coming to him. Every piece of work created by him had his name on it. Raoul is the fellow in the lower right corner of the photo: Yeah, I dig them Doo Wops too.

"Friends" on Facebook is somewhat a stretch. You may personally know about 25% of those people who are in your "Friends" list. Every other "friend" is picked up along the way during postings on different FB pages. Just because you might have 567 "Friends" doesn't mean that they really are. If your family is on Facebook, time to tell them to put the dammed phone/tablet down and engage in some real face time, especially if you're all in the same house. This reminds me of that stupid Time Warner Cable commercial where there's a family of four sitting in front of a flat screen TV and each one has his/her face buried in one device or another.

Go through their discography and you'll see how often that was the case. I was never a fan of Zep, even though I saw them in concert numerous times. I thought they were pretentious and really in awe of themselves. I always thought Deep Purple was better.

Led Zeppelin opened for Vanilla Fudge and Spirit at The Auditorium Arena (what a catchy name) in Denver, on Dec. 26, 1968. This was the first show of Led Zep's North American Tour 1968-1969, which was also their first ever concert date in the States. Spirit's setlist from that show: "Intro Jam", "I'm Truckin'", "Fresh Garbage", "Poor Richard", "Caught", "Ground Hog", "Policeman's Ball", "Drum Solo", "Mechanical World", "I Got a Line On You", "Aren't You Glad", encore "Nature's Way". Led Zeppelin's setlist: Train Kept A-Rollin' (Tiny Bradshaw cover), I Can't Quit You Baby (Willie Dixon cover), As Long As I Have You (Garnet Mimms cover), Dazed and Confused (Jack Holmes cover), White Summer/Black Mountainside, How Many More Times Play Video

It took us that long to come down from the 4 Way Double Dose blotter acid we dropped in 1968 and realize we were ripped off, maaaaan. Who bogarted my Annie Green Springs?

I like parlor games. Lemme guess.....my mind has gone...............fishing.

Boy, this is the perfect opportunity to sit back, have a Maple Bacon Bear Claw and enjoy "The Three Little Pigs", as retold by Brother Theodore.

Beautiful, Bill! Your work is simply amazing!

I graduated Airborne School in Ft. Benning (11B1P1); that qualifies me for the former. I wanted the 100 bucks jump pay (tax-free btw) because my monthly regular pay was $300 after taxes in 1979. That went pretty fast in Clarksville, Tn. bars. That's what some do on their first jump, in addition to wetting themselves. They always end up blaming that on a busted or open canteen.

Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Technology allows everyone the delusion that they are cinematic/video geniuses in the same way that someone wearing red double knit pants with blue, leopard pattern brothel creeper shoes thinks he's the next big thing in men's fashion. Which reminds me, I need to renew my Players Club membership.

I have two first issue Chrysler Turbine kits and the chrome is the best I've ever seen. I also have a 1970s issue of the same kit and the chrome is absolute dreck.