Three cheers for the red white and blue

We always like to dress patriotically on the Fourth. I always wear my patriotic Hawaiian shirt. And Lisa also dressed in red white and blue. But you have to show the colors so we need to bring out the red.

If you know what I mean?

It was Calabria night at Marco Polo!

So we were stuck in the store on Wednesday night before the holiday because it was pissing down rain. We did a bunch of work but we also cranked up the ipod and put on some disco from back in the day and took periodic dance breaks. We were dancing to the Bee Gees and people were looking pressed onto the glass and wanted to come in but we shooed them away.

Since it was too late to cook we decided to go across the street to Marco Polo for a cocktail and some appetizers. Well Lisa had a cocktail and I had cranberry juice. As we are sitting at the bar we notice that there are a bunch of regulars sitting at the tables and Joe the owner is about to make a speech. Our friend Nancy comes over to tell us that it is the annual "Calabria" dinner where they promote the products of Calabria like pasta and olive oil and what not. It is a free dinner paid for by the promotion board of Calabria and they invite a bunch of the regular customers for free food and drink. We had one question:

"WHY THE FUCK WEREN'T WE INVITED?"

Of course it was an oversite on their part and definitely not intentional. We have been very irregular patrons lately and they just forgot. Joe and Marco were very embarrassed. So they came over and loaded us up with free stuff to make up for it. Pasta, crositinit's, crackers, olive oil and something I never heard of:

Donkey chocolate. That's right chocolate made from donkey milk. Eat one piece and make an ass out of yourself!

Joe sent over this great dessert of fig ice cream in a waffle cone that was out of this world.

You can see all the business men from Calabria talking with Joe in the background about how the night went. What was really great about this dessert beside the ice cream was the candied fig that they stuck in it. That was superb.

Check out all of the booty behind the fat guy in the neon Hawaiian shirt with the alligators in it.

I was one happy fella!

Reason 10691 why I am not allowed to have a gun.

So there is a new move in Carroll Gardens to ban gates in front of your store. They feel that since it is so much "safer" that we don't need to have gates in front of our stores. It is bad enough that the city council mandated lattice work instead of solid gates but now the move is a foot to ban them altogether. So anybody who touches my window can set off the alarm. Or just smash and grab whatever they want while the dirty hippies are asleep in a legalized pot induced haze.

They want to tell me how to run my business. How to protect my business.

It is a good thing I am not allowed to have a gun.

We miss you Boss!

Yesterday was the celebration of our nations birthday. And the birthday of the greatest owner in the history of sports: George Steinbrenner.

He is hated by so many who hate the Yankees and all that they stand for. Tradition. Pride. Capitalism. Winning. They knock him and spew hate while they copy his business model. Almost every successful baseball operation has an ultra high payroll and big time free agents. Moneyball is a big bag of bullshit as the hapless Met fans are learning with that "genius" Sandy Alderson.

George has been gone for a while now and his family is carrying on the tradition but not in his inimitable style. I mean George would never have stood for A-Rod's bullshit not for a minute. He either would have went full retard in supporting him or he would have cut him loose. Not then namby pamby shit that they are doing. He would have spent enough to get us to the series again. I know he would.

We won't see his like again for quite some time.

If you thought you were getting a tip you really are a sap!

So there was a little bit of a contretemps with former football star Warren Sapp. It seems he was at a sports bar and when the check came he refused to leave a tip.

Now he said it was because the waitress called him "boy." She said that she went over to the table and said "Do you boys want another drink?" So he decides that he wasn't going to leave a tip.

Now we know that is not the reason. Black people and Germans never tip. When they used to come in the bar the waitresses never wanted to serve them. So why this girl thought that he would ever leave a tip is beyond me.

Suck it up baby and do what the girls in midtown used to do. Spit in his chicken fingers and put some snot in his guacamole. You won't get any money but you will feel better about yourself.

One of the Manning's is being stalked!

No it is not Eli. Or that loser Peyton.

It is their third cousin Taryn who plays “Pennsatucky" in the popular Net Flicks series "Orange is the New Black." She is being stalked by a former "friend" named Jeanine Heller who allegedly sent her hundreds of text messages and social media contacts over the past few week.

Now Pennsaatucky is a paticularly unattractive character with her bad teeth and stringy hair although the actress cleans up pretty good when she plays Steve McGarret's sister on "Hawaii 5-o." So it is pretty amusing that she is the member of extended Manning family that is getting stalked. I guess there is only one thing we can say for sure since she is a cousin of Eli and Peyton.

They both fucked her.

Why this blog exists

One of the first plugs I got for this blog came from Michael Haz who said he liked it because it was about tits.......and sandwiches.

Lisa sent me some enhanced photos of our trip to Brennan & Carr's so I wanted to share them with you.

Of course she had to give me some embarrassing candid shots like this one of me slurping down a mozzarella stick.

She loves to get those shots where I look like a big dummy. It makes her giggle when I look stupid. Which I have to admit is most of the time.

So enjoy the sandwiches. Oh yeah. And the tits!

Remembrance of Things Pabst

I haven't been feeling well with all of the stress and worry about the store and the Japan order so we decided to go to the doctors today. The only problem is that he is not in his local office at Atlantic Avenue this Friday because it is the 4th of July. Plus he is going on vacation for three weeks so I had to go to his main office on Flatbush Avenue which is all the way on the other side of Brooklyn new Kings Highway off of Avenue U.

I called my faithful Bengali companion to drive us there first thing in the morning. Luckily everything was fine and I just have to take more water pills. Since we got up so early and have been working so hard we decided to give ourselves a treat. We each got to pick an activity that would make us happy.

Lisa picked the make up counter at Macy's so she could replenish all of her perfume, eyeliner and mascara needs. She had a lot of fun buying stuff and handing out cards to the chubby sales girls.

Then we turned to my pick. That was lunch at the best roast beef place in NYC. Brennan and Carr's on Nostrand Avenue.

They have a small menu but everything on it is great. The best thing of all is the roast beef sandwich. It is a pile of rare roast beef covered in melted American cheese on a soft Kaiser Roll. What makes it particularly good is that they dip it in the Au Jus drippings. The entire sandwich. It is just perfection.

The sandwich is just soft and delectable and wonderful. The melted all-American cheese gives it that cheese steak feel but without the onions. It is simply the best roast beef sandwich in NYC.

They used to have great hand rolled mozzarella sticks that were crusty with batter and as thick as a hot dog. Alas they went to the regular commercial ones but they were still tasty.

There wasn't a lot of them so we got a couple for the table. Of course in honor of Tony Soprano's last meal we had to order something else for the table.

On of the funny things that happened was Omar told me "Jim these people all give me funny looks when I come and sit with youse guys. These dirty yuppies all look at me funny."

You see he mistook my "dirty hippies rants" for "dirty yuppie rants" and now he goes off on them all the time. He hates the hipsters more then I do. But he loves all the food I take him to eat.

I told him "Well they don't understand how we can have a friend who looks like you. You see they are full of a lot of talk but in real life they hang out with lily white people." I had to give him a strategy. "Just tell them you are our adopted son. Tell them to think of me as Madonna."

Because I am a material girl. So Papa don't preach. I want to vogue with my sandwich and my onion rings.

I had to call out my Minions.

I had to call out for reinforcements on Tuesday to get ready for the work to be done on the store. Omar had to call Hassan to come help carry the furniture and use his cab to move some of his pieces. It's pretty funny that I use cabs instead of rental trucks to move stuff but that is how we roll.

I have a whole platoon of Bengali workers who will come at a moments notice to help me out. Of course that means that south Brooklyn is missing a bunch of car service drivers but hey waddayagonnado?

My needs come first.

They took the table apart so we could paint the two halves so they can be affixed to the wall as decoration and as a selling platform. To think I didn't have to pay a high priced consultant to come up with that idea.

Reason 10690 why I should not have a gun

We had to stop by the store yesterday even though we were off. We went in the morning to pick up the furniture we were taking to the factory to be spray pained. When we left everything was fine. We got back about six o'clock and this had happened:

Somebody had gratified the side wall between the two stores. He had bombed up and down Court St and tagged my store, the UPS box and the condo across the street.

The last time this happened was about six years ago. Then I was able to have a film of the perp that I handed over to city wide graffiti but nothing ever came of it. I wasn't able to tape it this time because my camera is out and I am repositioning it for the new store so I didn't get it fixed yet. So this asshole had free reign.

I took all of the appropriate steps. I called 311 to report it. I called the precient. But nothing is going to happen. This is just another quality of life crime that is going to go unpunished.

The mayor won't give a shit. The bad times are back and it is only going to get worse. Of course the perp probably looked like his son. It actually probably was his son.

I need to get out of Brooklyn. I am tired of cleaning this shit up.

Reason 10689 why I shouldn't have a gun

Hipster douchebag helicopter parents in Park Slope want to ban the ice cream man from the park because they don't want to have to tell their children no when they cry for ice cream.

Hipster cunt Dorothy Scanlan was quoted as saying: “I should not have to fight with my children every warm day on the playground just so someone can make a living!"

Let alone that maybe other people want to have a fucking ice cream on a hot summer day.

You know who hates the ice cream man?

COMMIES I TELL YOU FUCKING COMMIE CUNTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is the color scheme

This is the Erte print on our wall that is the basis of the color scheme for the new store.

It has bright yellow, hunter green and grey as part of the color scheme. The dresser is a focal point in yellow.

The wallpaper will be grey to serve a frame for the other colors.

The two half tables will be green.

It has been an interesting process.

Dummy Up!

Work continues on the new store. We had to go to the dummy factory and being a big dummy I fit right in. As usual I had to carry Lisa's purse as she ran around picking stuff out to fix up the store.

Lisa is kind of like Cinderella. Only instead of birds and mice to do her bidding she has a gaggle of homo's and Frenchmen who rush to help her spend money on the new store. The manikin store actually has a huge warehouse in the Brooklyn Army Terminal in Sunset Park.

It is huge factory with tons of stuff in it. This company is a big deal since they have contracts from Macy's and Walmart and Bloomies. We know them because we filmed in their store on the show. Joe the Manikin guy was on the show and we invited him to the premiere party with his partner. He loves Lisa so he is helping us out. They have a painting room where they can spray paint some more of the furniture without us paying a mint to Sean the refinishing guy. These aren't separate pieces that would be worth refinishing so we are getting them done in one shot.

The color scheme is very important to designing a store. We are using an Erte print as our guide. The wallpaper will be grey and we will have bright yellow and green accents.

But not yellow dummies. Only the furniture and other accents.

You just have to get the right pieces to show off the naughty bits. Or at least what you going to use to cover up the naughty bits.

A lot goes into getting a store right.

New York Knucklehead Councilmen wants to stop gun violence but not by stop and frisk

Brooklyn Councilman Jumaane Williams, noted liberal knucklehead who lead the fight against stop and frisk wants to start a group to end gun violence. He says he doesn't want stop and frisk back even if it helped end the gun violence that has really spiked in NYC this month.

There were 21 shootings this weekend with three deaths. It's the summer when the knuckleheads are out and they will be killing people left and right. De Blasio and his pet police commissioner Bratton will claim that the end of stop and frisk has nothing to do with that Crime is on the rise and a new wave of violence will engulf NYC this summer. There is nothing you can do. It is Dinkins redoux. You just have to ride it out. Or move. 

I can't move yet so I have to hunker down and just institute stop and frisk in my store.

Palate cleanser

Here is a rib eye properly prepared at Marco Polo's. I meant to take a photo of it before I started eating but I got too hungry.

Of course I prefer meatballs.

Evi you higher price who-a you!

Now I know why I got slices of filet mignon on my last trip to Incognito. Beef prices have skyrocketed to 11% more than a year ago. So you burgers and steaks are increasing drastically in price. Or they give you smaller pieces or cheaper cuts.

I think they just gave me less than the 8oz filet that I paid for because the increase in price has just hit them too hard.

Com'on Evi where is the cheap little cud chewing we know and love?

Tragedy at Boy Scout Camp

A 12 year old Scout shot himself in the head at a Scout outing in San Diego. There is some dispute as to whether it was an accident or a suicide attempt. His father and grandfather were both on the trip.

I remember how careful we always were on handling guns when we went to the rifle range. Most of the time it was with 22 rifles and the strict guidlines were handled by the instructers. But every once in the while one of the Dads might have brought up their "personal firearms" to the range and you got a chance to fire a 38 or on one memorable occasion a 45. Fire arm safety is a vital part of the experience.

So the poor kid must have did it on purpose. What a shame.

Terrorists murder Jewish Kids...Obama warns Israel

Those three Israeli teenagers who were kidnapped were found dead today. Killed by Hamas a terrorist group that Obama enables. He issued a tepid statement but warned Israel to “I also urge all parties to refrain from steps that could further destabilize the situation.”

In other words don't strike back at the murders. Where's the hash tag about "our children?" Or is that only for black or Muslim kids? We know that Obama only cares about his tribe. The question to me is how do Jewish voters accept this shit from this moron.

It never ceases to amaze me.

Ripper Street

Another show I am enjoying is a BBC production called "Ripper Street."

It is set in Whitechapel in London after the end of the "Jack the Ripper" murders. It has really great stories and excellent production values. It kind of reminds me of "Deadwood" and I can not think of any higher praise.

The back store project continues

Today we worked like dogs to get the back store finished. I got all of the back stock put in the cedar room and started cleaning up for the contractors. Lisa is planning out the layout and we are figuring where we can get the racks and so forth.

Lisa had a great idea about the table. It is a little too big for the store so we are going to split it in half and affix the two halves to the wall to serve as a selling area. We can put a mannequin or just pile up panties and bras and stuff. She got the idea when we opened it up in the room.

The table is in pretty good shape and will look great once we refinish it. Pretty good bargain at $75. It will look cool stuck in the wall.

We still have to organize the back "Wall of Bra's." That is about half of the stock of Prima Donna that we will have available. We are also putting in a new step between the stores.

There is still a lot of work to be done.

I had a good night last night

The wife was busy working on the website putting up photos and new products. I wasn't feeling well so after I cooked dinner she told me to sit with my feet up and watch some of my favorite tv stuff. I caught the Yankee/Red Sox game which was exciting but a disappointment. Then I went to Amazon Prime. You see she gave me permission to watch a Western.

It's not that I really need permission. But I normally watch them when she is not watching with me because she claims it is boring. Of course if she ends up watching them she always enjoys them and asks a million questions but still the idea of it bugs her for some reason.

So I decided to catch one of my old favorites. "The Sons of Katie Elder." From the Duke's later period costarring Dean Martin and Earl Holliman the luckiest man in show business. Also with great supporting actors like James Gregory, George Kennedy, Dennis Hopper, Strother Martin and Paul Fix. I first saw it with my Dad and a couple of friends of mine in the theater back in the day.

What is funny about the story is the fact of who the historical Katie Elder was in real life. Big Nose Kate who was Doc Holliday's mistress and a pretty famous whore. I guess they just appropriated her name and stuff.

The Duke is old and creaky. Bad fitting hair piece and a double for almost every scene. I think he had his lung taken out by then so he was in tough shape. Dean Martin played the same cowboy role he always plays by ripping off the performance that Howard Hawks got out of him. Everybody does what they usually do. It was comforting.

Like a warm blanket on a cold night.

I felt like the "Responsorial Psalm" was in repsonse to my musing.

"The angel of the Lord will rescue those who fear him"

It was pretty funny that was the psalm this Sunday. I had described the scene I witnessed on Friday on my way to the store. There was the hipster tattooed mom with a seven year old son who refused to do whatever she wanted him to do. It looked like he wanted to dash across Court St. She had a hold of him and they were struggling. She lifted him up in her arms and started to carry him down the street. He hauled off and started punching her. Really hard. In the back. In the head. It must of hurt but he was still a scrawny kid so she just kept walking. How in any universe is it ok to put your hands on your mother?

I mused that we have gone to much to one side of the spectrum. All love all the time without any fear. There has to be a healthy fear of consequences for bad behavior. I think the Church went away from that starting in the sixties. Once they dropped the Latin Mass and started playing guitars and all of that nonsense more and more people started leaving the church. Everyone who thinks they are smarter then me is saying that the old way was the wrong way. That it is much better to have this new way (well not so new way of doing things since it is fifty years old now) is so much better. So what has it meant? Many fewer people in church. Fewer priests and nuns. The end of Catholic education. People saying that they don't have to find God by going to church. That they only had to show up for marriages, funerals, Christmas and Easter.

The thing is there might come a time when they want to go to the church and it won't be there anymore. 

I am not saying we should go back to the nuns beating the crap out of you for your transgression. Necessarily.  Although there are many, many kids that need a ruler across the head now and again. But the way things are now is too far the other way. Every kid and every transgression is fine and dandy. Everybody gets a trophy and a ribbon no matter what they do or how badly the behave. There is no accountability for anything. Without a healthy fear of the consequences it will all go to crap. The President will break the law with impunity. Legislators will get into phony marriages to become resident aliens so they can run for office so they can give their tribe more free stuff. Nobody would pay their taxes. People love their country but they fear the IRS.

Aridog said much better than me: "I think when Trooper refers to "fear" he is really referring to an imbued sense of consequences. Failing to respect others may one day find you face to face in battle, trying to kill each other. Consequences. Failing to be reliable, from a kid's perspective, usually means they won't find adults reliable either. The STFU lesson in discretion is best learned on the block IMO, among your peers. Consequences...trust is a two way exchange. A reliable adult will more easily influence a kid to be the see way...they see positive consequences."

That is the nub of it I think. There is no fear of consequences anymore. So haul off and punch your mother in the face. Nobody is going to say anything. Nobody is going to do anything. Nobody is going to think it is anything out of the ordinary.  It is all of a piece with these couples I see every night sitting in front of the bar with one kid in the stroller and another in papoose sack with their dog tied to the table while they drink beer.  

This is going to be a really messed up place when these kids are in their teens.

Because those precious darlings will have been loved to pieces. But soon enough they will be feared.

Just a little musing on a Sunday afternoon.

The shop is an ongoing project

We were out most of the week trying to get the rest of the stuff we needed to get the back store ready for then new lingerie store. This is the new wallpaper that we are going to put on the walls. We went out to get some track lighting. It looks like we are going to use a black track since the silver or stainless steel doesn't work.

We decided to go to the dirty hippies to see what they had on hand to see if we could get any new pieces for the store. I have been taking them and sending out to Jersey. This Vietnam vet guy I know refinishes them and takes a cheap piece and makes it look like an expensive item of furniture.

It's a goof to go to this joint. They have a bunch of stuff that they sell dirt cheap. My favorite place is all of the books they get donated. You can find some great stuff. Real cheap. I can't buy any because I went strictly kindle but I like to check them out while Lisa wanders the store.

She found this piece. It cost about $100 bucks. It is going in the middle of the back store.

It is the bottom one of course. We are going to refinish it to match the rest of the decor of the store. Not bright yellow like the first piece you saw. That is the showpiece and centerpiece of the store. As well as being storage.

We are going to make it black like the other pieces we got. This is the new one that Sean brought today. It is going to be great to store bras and will be a great place to put bra manikins and displays.

Looks great when it is all painted up. Much better than that Ikea crap made out of pressed wood that you have to put together yourself.

That new table is going to be just the ticket.