Open Notes to Persons in and around a Park Slope Coffee Shop

Preface: This is the third installment in my Open Notes series, where I talk to people around me but on my blog because I lack the guts/interest/pickup lines necessary to actually converse with other people.

"Art of Unknown Origin Stolen for Blog"; Anonymous, Oil on Canvas, 1997

This evening, after a particularly erratic day of substitute teaching in Manhattan, I returned to lovely Brooklyn and strolled over to a distinctive coffee joint in the quaint yet eminently mockable neighborhood of Park Slope.  People here are known for being liberal, wealthy(ish), and trendy, and most residents struggle to hide their often overwhelming whiteness.  My neighborhood is no slouch, but this part of town is most certainly out of my price bracket.  Thus, while it may be a perfectly pleasant place to reside, it's easier and more self-assuring to ruthlessly rend it asunder with smug keystrokes while chuckling about how intellectually superior and more worldly I am.

To my roommate: Spot me a few bucks?  Cool.

To the chipper barista girl: You're adorable, but I really do think that your hat falls under the "trying too hard" category.  It probably looked stylish on the wooden rack at the second-hand store next to the other second-hand store where that better second-hand store used to be, but you don't need a hat indoors.  However, I have a long history of falling for waitresses and female bar staff, so I'm going to let it slide.

To Customer #7: Whoever told you that beard looked good was lying through their java-stained teeth.  When you trim the edges every morning for that perfectly symmetrical look, do you use a ruler?  A protractor, maybe?  Also, this morning routine must give you ample time to consider your beard at length.  Apparently, you still think it's worth it.

To the freeloading suit who walked in, sat down, went to work on his laptop, and didn't buy anything:  Don't worry about it. Wi-fi should be free. Hey, I'm sure you voted for universal public health care, too.

To literally four other customers who have entered since I started:  Please explain to me the appeal of offbeat hats and poor facial hair decisions.  Please.  I'm so lost.

To Customer #15:  You are cute.  Please look at me again now that I'm sitting up straight.

To Customer #15's boyfriend:  I will fight you right in the face.

To Rota Fortunae:  Why do girls go out with clowns like him?  What is it?  I see more girls hanging off the shoulder of slouchy, half-awake, vacant looking dudes who kind of just stand there consuming oxygen.  What are you contributing to the relationship, guy?  You look like the kind of person who hopes McDonald's makes home deliveries.  It's very perplexing.

To Wikipedia:  Whoa. "Rota Fortunae"?  Thanks, Wikipedia! I sound so cultured and smart.

To the insufferable mouthpiece behind me:  Keep talking.  I find it fascinating that you could "know" so much about so many things and yet state everything in the simplest terms possible. Call me crazy, but does it occur to you that most political issues and social science-related events are just a little bit more on the complex side? Listening to you explain it all--with scoffs to spare--is nauseating.  The groans!  The sighs!  If eye rolling made a sound, I'm pretty sure that I just heard it.  Were you planning on giving a chance to either of the ladies accompanying you?  They may want to speak at some point.  I know that you think that you're intelligent and sophisticated and miles ahead of the other lemmings you are forced to associate with, but there's a reason that some individuals become famous talk show hosts or essay writers while others sit in coffee shops pontificating.  You suck.

To the girl blogging two tables away: I have no idea what you're writing about, but I will preemptively propose a truce.

To whoever wrote this "How to Piss Off a Park Slope Resident" viral blog post:  Good show!

To the bro who almost walked in with his acoustic guitar:  No! Get out!! NO ONE LIKES YOU!! WHATEVER ARTIST YOU ASPIRE TO BE LIKE SUCKS, TOO!  Sorry about the caps.  Typed too hard again.

To management: Please play something other than Adele.  It's been like an hour and forty five minutes.  C'mon.

To the Mac user next to me:  You have literally nine applications running and you're flipping through them seamlessly; meanwhile, I attempted to open iTunes and my laptop reacted like I jammed a butter knife into the USB port.  This is stupid.  PCs are stupid.  Any computer I ever buy is stupid.

To my snarkier readers:  Not stupid by association.  Just stupid.

To the lower-middle-class, blue-collar local making a modest wage who came in and ordered a... nah, just kidding. He's not allowed to live here.

To the cafe business at large:  Why is decaf iced coffee impossible to find?  No one has it and I don't understand that.  If I wanted a decaf hot coffee, I would have made it at home. Decaf iced coffee isn't even hard to stock--just double brew a pot and refrigerate it.  It stays good for days!  There's no excuse, service industry.  Step it up.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Pennies Saved (which are pennies earned, of course)

As I procrastinate at Union Square's Barnes and Noble, which is something I cannot afford to do, I am sitting next to a fellow who apparently has trouble affording things as well.

Exhibit A: Prohibitively expensive materials.

This guy is using his iPhone to photograph recipes in cookbooks that he won't buy, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. I mean, recipes really don't strike me as the best example of intellectual property, but this bistro burglar is just copying entire cookbooks wholesale. My mom occasionally photocopies a dish from a library cookbook (please don't tell on us), but she doesn't do it at the library. There's a pile of ten books and like four magazines here, and he's got every page! He's like The Pirate Bay of the kitchen.

Exhibit B: What a dirtbag!

I assume that his name is Albert, because it's written on his coffee cup (but by that logic, his name could also be "Made with 60% post-consumer waste"-and oh man, that would be awesome). Just watch out for this guy, ladies, because when he offers to cook dinner for your first date, it's not just because he's got a stack of recipes, but also because he doesn't like to pay for stuff. He can't take you on a harbor cruise, but if you'd like, he's got a great picture of one on his iPhone.

In a strange and coincidental turn of events, this is my first time blogging from my new iPod touch. I then took pictures of his stuff when he got up.  That is almost ironic.  Technology high five!

EXCITING FOLLOW-UP! Turns out "Albert", or "Post-Consumer Waste" , is not only too cheap to buy things, but he left all of the books (and his trash) for someone else to clean up!  Nice. Take that, B&N.  Apparently, customer service is not just limited to customers.  Before exiting, he checked out the Spirituality section (he'll need to redeem himself someday), the Newly Arrived section (in case there was something that he didn't get photos of last Sunday), and the Men's Interest section (too easy).  I would have and should have called him out publically, and by name, too.  Ideal Me would have done it.  Goshdarn propriety.

An Open Letter to the Nigerian Email Scam Artist Posing as a Reputable NYC Landlord Who Woke Up This Morning To Find His Inbox Swamped with Dozens of Hilariously Annoying Email Subscriptions and Text Message Alerts, All Addressed to a Certain "Dr. Fake McScammypants"

You're welcome.
Love, Dan

Wrap It Up

Myself, to a few patrons, as an organizer of our Grad Hall Talent Show Preliminary:

"We're also giving out free care packages from the Health Center. And yes, those are condoms for those of you fortunate enough to have a use for such things. As for me, I like to blow them up into balloons and then Sharpie my hopes and dreams onto them. When they pop, you can really hear the symbolism. Anyway, thanks for coming!"

Balloon Heads

It is not often that we are blessed with the opportunity to laugh, guilt-free, at someone else's problems. That said, when the aforementioned Mr. Someone Else created all of his own problems, and has a hilariously bad haircut to boot, feel free to yuk it up. Ladies and gentlemen, Richard Heene!

Yes, when Balloon Boy's father was first suspected of maybe kinda sorta not really being all that surprised to find his son hiding in the attic, he asked the press to leave his family alone via the nontraditional isolationist approach of holding a press conference and dragging his suddenly cheered up family onto Larry King Live. Besides needing to be reminded to hug his son on TV, Heene seemed fantastically prepared for prime time. As for Falcon, or "Balloon Boy" as he will be known by his classmates, not so much. As you've seen by now, Falcon spilled the beans about the family's TV aspirations, the sheriff called them out, and finally today Balloon Mom came clean with the hoax.

So where does this leave disillusioned, jaded America? If the Balloon Boy incident of 2009 was a fake, who else is lying to us?!?! Not Anderson Cooper, that's for sure. Richard Henne's TV theme really is catchy.

What's that? Oh yes, Balloon Dad has a theme song. Please have yourself a merry little guffaw:

Alternately, just stare at Erica Hill and pretend that she'd rather flirt with you than Anderson Cooper. Or her husband.

So now that his dreams of "Richard Heene: Psyience Detective" (sic) are deflated (thank you, tip your waitresses!), we get the pleasure of having a good point-and-laugh over this buffoon. It's always okay to lie to people, you know, like police officers and eh... your own kids, as long as you get a TV show out of it. Personally, I'm proud of him for not settling for a mere appearance on Wife Swap (I wouldn't mind settling for Erica Hill, but that's neither here nor wherever Falcon is today). His family should be on TV, dammit. Just because they run the wrong way when they see a storm, are we going to call their nerdy, fringe science endeavors stupid?

Yes, yes we are. You're a douche, Richard Heene, and 300 million Americans know it. You got called out by the AP. Ouch. Hell, even Octomom can probably see how desperate for attention you are. Reality TV is slowly choking humanity, and even those bottom-feeders wouldn't sink low enough to follow your kinda weird family around. Your lack of self-perception is as staggering as your choice in hairstyle. Seriously though, 1997 called. No, that's not a TV station, calm down.

Profiles In Snobbery: Hingham, Mass.

Today, let's hear it for the snooty, snotty old town of Hingham. For those of you who might have missed this tremendous, late-breaking news flash from the lovely little town of 19,882, residents are up in arms and simply demanding a Special Town Meeting over the School Committee's decision to name a new elementary school after the superintendent who made it possible.

Well hold my pancakes and call me Petunia--what an earth-shattering issue! The outraged (outraged? really?) folks in Hingham have forced the town to hold a Special Town Meeting, to the tune of five to ten thousand dollars. That's right, in a day and age where budget cuts are forcing layoffs at all education levels, the upper crust in Hingham want to know that their money is well spent. The hell if they'll be sending their kids to Dorothy Galo Elementary School. No way, no how.

Hingham stinks. What kind of a Puritan, WASPy attic of a town spends thousands of dollars (which they want taken from the education budget) to debate the naming of an elementary school? Who the eff cares? It's an elementary school. The name might, just might, show up on a t-shirt. It's not like letterman jackets and diplomas will be printed with the name on it in bold.

Is it a bit weird to name a school after a living person? Sure. Is it a bit weirder for said person to be offering tours of the school? I sure think so. Should the naming have been discussed? Perhaps. Does it make a hill of beans of difference toward the quality of the education or the common good? Not one bit. Oh wah, we weren't consulted! Get over yourselves, Hinghamburgers. Taking thousands of dollars away from your children's education to air your squabbles with the education department's insulated but otherwise harmless decision is irresponsible and, frankly, childish.

You suck, Hingham. Glad I don't live there.

Editor's Note: Snobbery probably has very little to do with this story. However, I wrote the title first and the post went in a fairly different direction. Hingham really is pretty snobby, though.

Unfortunate.

One month after the opening her tarot card and palm reading boutique, a local fortune teller in Easton's Five Corners was forced to close her shop due to poor business. Apparently she never saw that one coming.