You may be completely unsurprised to learn that the new Oxygen! network program The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency obscenely straddles the fine line between hilarious camp (see: ANTM) and unwatchable dreck (see: The Surreal Life). If you are a fan of the elastic-faced antics of The World's First Supermodel, it might be more rewarding to buy her forthcoming book -- which she discusses at length in this hilariously stupid interview -- than to actually watch this tv show, because the production values are so crappy. For example, in all the pre-recorded segments in which the producers try to give the show a narrative arc by making Janice explain herself directly to the camera, the focus is so cottony-soft that the shot is actually blurry. Seriously -- so blurry that you'll think, "Did my contact just fall out?" Also, the Oh! audience apparently is very old and poor, because most of the advertisements are for incontinence medication, debt consolidation, and Colonial Penn insurance. This can feel degrading. It can also remind you of how inadequate your Tivo-free lifestyle is. Strike two.

But here's the thing: I will watch a tv show just because a character continually spouts hilarious malapropisms. Imagine that! Here are the peak moments of last night's episodes (at least, those that I managed to watch before Henry's pleading that we watch anything, anything, even Rachel Ray but just please not this finally had an effect).

*Janice instructs the nervous models to take some "inhale/outhales."
* "I am so thrilled that you're from The Sudan, because Africa is my favorite place in the whole world."
* "I have two words for people who don't want to work with me. Out!"
* "Are we in agreeance?"

I also really liked the teaser before commercial break that went like this.
VO: "But before the Agency can even open for business, Janice must confront some profound challenges . . ."
(clip of Janice shouting): "YOUR FINGERS NEED BUFFING!"
VO: " . . . that will change everything."

Oh, fuck it, let's keep watching it. Are we in agreeance?

Two years ago, the Universal Review sprung, fully formed, from the wise and Zeus-like skulls of myself and Emily. For awhile, it was a good thing. We reviewed stuff, had a grand time, and got along great. Then a bunch of things happened, and the UR was killed off, never to be seen again. Call it laziness or call it infanticide—take your pick. Just make sure that, no matter how angry or unhappy with your life you may be, you never, ever, ever, ever shake a baby.

Months passed, and became a year and more months. Our weird, deformed love/hate-child was gone for good. OR SO IT SEEMED.

Our lives went on. Emily and I both took the opportunity to “take some Me Time.” There was much eating of chocolate and a certain amount of bathing in lavender-scented oils. (In separate apartments.) We exfoliated and discovered that, just as Dr. Hauschka promised, the new layer of skin was softer, more supple, and so much better than before! Time made us bolder. Raffles got older. We got older too. Grant this one last backslide into my old ways, and I promise never to quote Stevie again. (Fingers crossed.)

Emily and Henry left Greenpoint and moved into an electronic noise collective in Schenectady. Emily got her tattoos removed with state-of-the-art laser surgery and took up firedancing. Me, I took a personality test in Times Square one day, and FLUNKED! That’s right: my personality was just plain bad without Scientology. So I hit my parents up for the money, took a few Dianetics classes, and learned to fly a 30’s era Lockheed Electra. I felt more complete at cruising altitude, with L Ron Hubbard by my side. Then, one day, I looked in the mirror. Instead of my reflection, I saw Emily staring back at me, fingers pressed against the glass, with a doleful, longing expression on her face. This had to be a sign!

And indeed it was. Because something truly amazing had happened. We’d thought that the UR was dead forever. We had mourned its loss, moved on, and even-- in my case-- gotten married and adopted a small (but spunky) Korean child. But a few weeks ago, I got a call from a team of scientists who had been receiving unusual energy readings from out in Queens, and, with the help of a team of scuba divers and paranormal investigators, had made an astonishing discovery. Miraculously, it turned out that, all this time, the Universal Review had been alive after all—lying dormant somewhere at the bottom of Jamaica Bay, and being kept perky by a powerful and mysterious energy cocoon!

Well! Three weeks later, after a little bit of technical tweaking, the Universal Review is back and better than before, aside from a few unfortunate but ultimately negligible losses. It’s unclear right now how often we will be updating the site, but the archives are mostly all here. If you are new to the UR, you can read our mission statement and our history, to find out WHAT IT IS ALL ABOUT.

I'm going to put a greatest hits page up soon, but in the meantime, here is a selection of our choicest old reviews:

DIET COKE by Emily
COURTNEY LOVE'S NEW ALBUM by B
THE LOBBY OF 190 EAST 7th STREET by Normandy
COMMERCE BANK by Alice
KENYON COLLEGE by Emily
LIZ PHAIR 2.0 by B
TROY by B
ADRIANA RIP by Emily
GAY PRIDE by B
SAD SONGS by B
GREENPOINT AVENUE BUMS by Emily
BRAIN DRUGS by Emily
QUIET PAD WRAPPERS by Emily
STARTING OVER SEASON 2 by B

I have to tell you that being reborn is amazing. The last few years have been rejuvenating and educational, and Emily and I are finally back in fighting form. I fully recommend the whole messy process to all of our readers. And if you sometimes find yourself wondering, like I used to, if the modern "prisons without bars" system is doomed to failure, I urge you to follow Xenu to this lifechanging link.

GRADE: A+

We went to Savannah, GA over the weekend! Bonus capsule review: Savannah is beautiful, with lots of very impressive architecture and lore and spooky old Spanish moss-covered cemeteries, but it loses a couple of points for being home to flying cockroaches and the bad kind of southern people so A-. Anyway, while we were in line to tour Jim Williams (from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil)’s house, a fat, gorgon-faced lady waddled over to her daughter, who was unsuccessfully trying to pique the interest of one of Savannah’s many giant black cats. “What’s wrong, sweetie?” she drawled.
“The cat doesn’t like me,” her pudgy spawn whimpered.
“Well, you know what, honey? Every dog in this town loves you. Some people are dog people and some people are cat people. You’re a dog person and that’s better anyway.”

Being a nonjudgmental Libra, I am very understanding about differences of opinion. Generally, it doesn’t offend me too much when someone professes a dislike for a thing that I find eminently likeable. Chocolate, the Universal Review, democracy, my outfit: I’m willing to concede that there are valid points of view on both sides of all of these issues. But the one thing I will not budge on is cats. HOW THE FUCK CAN YOU NOT LIKE CATS? Not only are they fucking adorable, they’re entertaining and clever, too. At the risk at coming off like a lady in a puffy-painted sweatshirt whose prize-winning Maine Coon has a ghettofabulous name like Princess Trixibelle Regina Regalness, I have to say that I love cats so, so, so much. I’m sorry if you had a bad experience with a cat when you were a little kid. I’m sorry if the first cat you knew was bitchy and mean. That doesn’t change the fact that the vast majority of cats are awesome and if you don’t get to know one eventually you are only cheating yourself. Good cats aren’t hostile or standoffish or food-mercenary. They’re loving and much more rewarding to be around than most dogs (or people). So learn to love cats already, because CATS TOTALLY RULE.

PS: I like dogs just fine, and people. But cats are so much cuter. Especially giant fat ones.

Since the N is now my favorite TV network, I am seeing a lot more ads for menstrual products (and hair-braiding kits, and the upcoming season of Degrassi in which someone is totally going to die because Degrassi GOES THERE!) Most of these ads are for a new innovation from Kotex: Ultra-Thin, Ultra Quiet Pad Wrappers. These pad wrappers are so quiet, no one but you will ever be able to hear their delicate crinkle. Because we women hate having other women know that we bleed from the vagina each month. Wait, what? I'm sorry, but other than the poor insecure 12 year olds that this product is clearly targeted at, I am having a hard time imagining a consumer who would actually give a fuck about pad subtlety (besides ninjas). In fact, I don't even really understand why anyone uses pads. But more to the point: of all the embarrasing noises that can emanate from a bathroom stall, why is Kotex focusing on this one? MENSTRUAL SHAME, that's why. I think that this product was invented by the angry woman in my office who sends out a company-wide email every time she encounters an unflushed tampon. Ladies, we need to come to terms with the fact that our bodies do something a little bit gross, but that ALL OF US DO IT (except for the pregnant and postmenopausal) and therefore it is nothing to be ashamed of.

Pooping, on the other hand, is still strictly for men.

“I just did a rail of, like, the purest snow, man. It’s like, the best shit I’ve ever had, and, like, now I’m just flying, man.”

“I’ve been in therapy since I was five. Five.” (holds up fingers)

“Next semester I’m leaving NYU and I’m just going to work and get therapy. That’s all I’m going to do. And I’m going to be a model because I love fashion. And because I don’t eat, well I mean I eat every few days because I start to feel really weak and sick and then I know I have to eat, but I’m like, really skinny, and I don’t feel hungry anymore like, ever and I’m on this medication that makes me really hyperactive and that kind of energy, well, going to the gym is like the perfect release for it, so like I’m getting some really good definition.”

It would be nice if I was making these quotes up but you know what I’m talking about. They're out there. They are a variation on the people who like to talk about how they got sooo wasted last night, except dumber and more annoying. Yes, I am talking about the people who corner you at a party and then feel the need to brag to you about how many psychiatric issues and drug addictions and pathological behaviors they have. Then they proceed to remorselessly act soooo crazy. Well, speaking for all the people who try desperately hard to conceal their neuroses, I really object. It's rude to completely ignore other people's conversational preferences in order to jabber at them about your particular level of crazitude. You will notice that the real crazy people never do this, only the upper-middle-class learning-disorder-addled kids. Guys, I am speaking to you right now. NEWSFLASH: Nobody gives a fuck. Shut up, and then ask people questions about themselves. Be polite. And please, please, do not talk about ‘snow.’

GRADE: not good

Here’s the question: do we want to dilly-dally around with Canadianness, or just go ahead and start a moon colony? Maybe we can get Lance Bass to fund it, and then once we’re out of the earth’s atmosphere we can jettison him into the cold, dark vastness of outer space. Or: maybe the coastal regions of America should just go ahead and secede from that horrible middle part. Sure, we’d get our asses kicked by the south and midwest in the inevitable ensuing civil war, but maybe we could somehow join forces with Canada/Mexico and then the red states would be barricaded in, with no access to supplies. And then we would starve them until they surrendered. It would probably take a while because don’t those people all weigh like 800 pounds?

Despite the mad-maxy fun of all these scenarios, I think the most likely one is that we will all continue to experience the scary future here, and that it will suuuuuuuuck in all kinds of ways.

What the fuck, America? What the fuck, The Future? Where is my robot car? Where is my flying skateboard? Where is my government-mandated daily happy pill? Instead all we have is the totalitarian regime part. Can we at least have the cool silvery costumes?

UPDATE: for those seeking vaguely realistic or at least fact-based options re: renouncing your citizenship, you might as well check out this article.

ANOTHER UPDATE: In the interest of balanced pseudo-journalism and, you know, sanity, I recommend that you incorporate a healthy dose of these Top Ten Reasons Not To Move to Canada into your worldview, too.

GRADE: B+

We really try to avoid politics here at the Universal Review, because, ew, who cares? But everyone seems to be really riled up about the election that is supposedly taking place next Friday! All the fags from Friendster are totally getting involved, and, as you know, I never met a bandwagon that I didn’t like. I even once went to a Howard Dean rally because my then-boyfriend told me everyone else was doing it. How embarrassing. Those Friendster types really know how to pick a loser, huh?

Anyway, when Hurricane James informed me that all of Brooklyn was heading to Pennsylvania to be all civic-minded and politically active and everything, I immediately asked him if there was going to be a hot gay singles scene. He said yes, so I of course I was totally there. And was he ever right! When we arrived in Allentown, PA, all the regulars from Metropolitan were milling about on the streetcorners, looking dyspeptic and half-drunk as usual as they chain smoked and handed out John Kerry flyers. Of course you can be sure that that guy with the big nose was there. You know who I’m talking about! You have seen him everywhere too! Did he also Friendster message you, back in the heyday of April/May’03? I bet he did!

(Confidential to my boo: you know I love you, baby. I would never go to Pennsylvania looking to hook up with politically minded gays.)

Anyway, the activism part of the trip was sort of a drag. If I had known it would involve so much walking around I would never have gone. At least I would have worn better shoes. Basically our job was to trudge around, door to door, and remind the beleaguered citizens of Pennsylvania that there is, in fact, an election on Wednesday. Most people had already heard this news, although several ladies in sweatpants aggressively announced things like, WE DON’T VOTE IN THIS FAMILY. I told them that that’s fine too. I am not someone who criticizes anyone else’s lifestyle choice. People in houses of gay anal sodomy should not throw stones.

None of the people we had to bug got too sassy with us, but no one wanted to give us our propers for caring about their vote, either. I was expecting people to really appreciate that we had come all the way to boring, provincial Allentown from exciting New York City just because we care about Pennsylvanians. Unfortunately, none of the people that we were reaching out to seemed to make the connection. Mostly we got a lot of blank stares. James had it a little better than I did, because his canvassing partner was a sexy young lady with a beautiful, velvety speaking voice. Of course people wanted to listen to her lecture them about civics! My partner was the considerably more skittish Bobo, and much as I love him, I don’t think the sight of two giggling faggots on the doorstep encouraged any potential swing voters to suffer through our spiel.

I thanked God when the canvassing was finally over. There was more work to be done, but, instead, James and I went to the mall while everyone else was hard at work. Some things are just important. After we had shopped for a bit and gone to the food court, we went and sat in an empty parking lot, in Bobo’s sister’s Saab. We hadn't been there for 5 minutes when some really scary male hooker tried to climb in through the window in order to give James a hug! I am not joking. We had a time.

But the next day was more of a let down. We mostly sat around in the local steelworkers’ union because the official activist headquarters burned to the ground (for real) and the people in charge kept telling us they were going to give us something to do and then they didn’t. It was okay, because we didn't have to walk around, but not great.

That said, I am more than confident that I have made a difference in this election. If I managed to convince just one person to head to the polls this November 12th and cast his or her vote for Al Gore for President, I will consider it a job well done. For this reason, I am giving ACTIVISM a solid B+. As an activist, I give myself an A+. I could not be prouder.

Lucky is the least annoying of the horrible mailmen. He’s very ancient and weathered, kind of Ansel Adams –looking. His real name is Lucky, like a dog or a Mafioso. He is neither – we think he used to be a Greaser in the ‘50s. He still smokes a lot of cigarettes (possibly Lucky Strikes). He is the best mailman because he hardly ever asks what box to put something in. The only downside of Lucky is that he is sort of starved for social contact, so if you start talking to him about anything other than mail you can expect to spend the next fifteen minutes listening to him spout nonsensical folksy adages (‘People feel bad for me, deliverin’ all this mail, and I tell them that if it weren’t for all this mail I’d be out of a job’) while you nod politely and pray for him to go away.

By way of contrast, the worst mailman is Sex Offender. He has close-set, squinty eyes made owl-like by his round little glasses, and there’s an ingratiating syrupy fakeness/ Hannibal Lecterishness to his tone of voice when he says, “Hello, Miss Gould.” He stands too close when he makes me sign for packages and the smell of his cologne lingers long after he’s made his rounds. Sometimes he makes me sign for things that it’s not my job to sign for BECAUSE HE KNOWS THAT THIS PISSES ME OFF. Whenever I give him the slightest bit of ‘tude in return, he affects an incredibly fake polite tone and pretends not to understand what I’ve just said. I hate him so much, but he’s never done anything wrong enough for me to complain about him, and anyway that would be kind of admitting that he has the power to affect me, which is just playing into his hands. I know that I am coming off as the crazy one in this situation, but believe me, HE IS THE CRAZY ONE.

Somewhere in between is Crippled Mailman. “Ok,” you are thinking, “how can you not feel some amount of sympathy towards someone who perseveres at his difficult task despite his physical handicap? Emily, you are a monster. This is worse than when you hated on pregnant ladies.” Well, I may be a monster for being annoyed by the incompetence of the crippled mailman, but you know what? I kind of think that if someone is physically incapable of doing their job, MAYBE THEY SHOULD HAVE A DIFFERENT JOB. The crippled mailman has a bad back, for which he wears one of those wide leather back-support belts. He is always making me sign for the big heavy packages of people in different departments who sit nowhere near me, which I then deliver to them. Thus in effect he is actually forcing me to do his job for him. If this goes on any longer, maybe our roles will be reversed and he will be the full-time bitter assistant and I will be the full-time Crippled Mailman.

GRADE: F

Oh, it seems like I’ve been dying to rest my head on something real – too bad ‘realness’ is barely a concept anymore. It’s been replaced by ‘reality,’ which is scary precisely because it pretends to be realness, but isn’t. For example, Ashlee Simpson’s scary fake-realness. Here’s a girl who’s been marketed as the ‘gritty,’ ‘edgy’ ‘punky,’ (and other stripped-of-meaning words) alternative to her prissy, shiny sister Jessica. As everyone over fifteen deduced long ago, Ashlee’s rock realness exists on a purely follicular level – basically, she is Jessica, just with a bad black dye job. But this facile repackaging of the blonde pop ideal was enough to push Ashlee to the top of the charts – and to get her insidiously catchy single loads of insidious airplay. Then, this weekend, she pulled a literal Milli Vanilli, blatanly getting caught lip-synching on Saturday Night Live. She then compounded the heinousness of this embarrassing moment by issuing a bratty ‘apology’ during the traditional SNL all-cast hug-and-laugh closer, in which she blamed her band for starting the wrong song (yeah, blaming your band is so punk rock). Oh, wait, did I mention that she also did a stupid jig? All in all, it was a real catastrofee, as Ashlee’s parents would probably spell it.

There are two scenarios which could play out in the next few days/weeks for Ashlee’s career. One takes place in the land of ‘realness,’ and it goes like this: Ashlee’s integrity-free performance is correctly decried far and wide in the mainstream (read: non-online) media, and her one-hit-wonder days are over. But in ‘reality’—and remember, this is the ‘extreme makeover’ variety of reality we’re talking about here – Ashlee’s sad-face apology will garner sympathy and articles of the ‘I make mistakes – see, I’m so relatable!’ variety in all your fave magazines.

Sigh. Something real . . . I like the way that feels.

Grade: B-

We don’t usually do restaurant reviews at the UR because, except on the rare occasions when our parents or sugar daddies treat us to fancy meals, we don’t dine at the kind of restaurants that there’s anything to say about. I mean, I could do an in-depth review of the Whole Foods Salad Bar, but it would probably turn out just as dry and boring as their pasta salad. But this week I somehow managed to pay my own way at a restaurant of the someone-asks-if-you’d-like-fresh-ground-pepper variety. Here’s the poop:

Hipster date spot DuMont can be a little bit intimidating. When you first step past the velvet-curtained doorway, you’re greeted by a long banquet table full of first-class Williamsburglars, all gleefully chowing down on giant burgers and steaks and platefuls of thick, golden fries speckled with parsley. It’s as if you’ve died and gone to a very self-consciously cool Valhalla. However, if you’re lucky, a waitress will lead you to a secluded table for two that’s crammed into a niche in the hallway on the way to the back bar. Here, you can focus on the food (and on your dining partner, of course) instead of on the hairstyles of the people on either side of you. The food is standard-issue steak-frites stuff, but it’s well executed and only a little bit pretentious (example: the waitress who recited the specials spoke in the third person and called the acorn-squash risotto ‘autumnlike’). I ordered the lobster bisque, which was yummy if a bit too much like drinking a bowl of half and half. Normandy had a nice crisp green salad that seemed to have been assembled from real lettuces and not mass-produced bagged mesclun mix, which always tastes a little bit mossy to me. Then we split a plate of salmon, which had a crunchy, buttery exterior and a slightly translucent middle. It was situated on a bed of crisp fingerling potato slices, rich sautéed mushrooms, and chewy, bitter kale. Really we should both have gotten the burgers, which looked and smelled fantastic, but we were trying to be healthy or something. We also had glasses of the cheapest variety of red wine they had, which cost $7 and was not particularly exciting. Neither is this review, I realize, but I figured I might as well give it a shot. At least I did not mention cats. Wait . . . shit.

Grade: A, probably

August in New York City. Prime time to get reservations at fancy restaurants, baby, cause everyone who’s anyone (including B) has fled this town. Me? Oh, I’m holding down the fort. It’s the first vacationless summer of my life.

Via office small talk I have heard a lot about how great other people’s vacations were. This has only exacerbated my desire to vacation, potentially forever. The real question here is, if the country (beach, mountain) is so great, why don’t we just go live there all the time? It’s a question I’ve been asking myself with alarming frequency lately. Usually late at night, in a tone that’s more like “why, WHY???”

Okay, here is why: For one thing, the city is where you go to Make It Big. Also, you never have to worry about drunk driving, or, for that matter, driving. There is unsurpassed access to comestibles of every description, whether your tastes run to fast food or organic soy yogurt. Some of the architecture is very grandiose and pretty. The skyline is nice, especially on a clear day. Also, the faded advertisements painted on the sides of old buildings never cease to thrill me for some reason.

But then there are the downsides of the city. The chief one is the other people who live there, many of whom are loud, obnoxious, ugly, smelly and depressing. Others are quiet, beautiful, impeccably dressed, and depressing. Other downsides include: commuting, pollution, expensiveness, implicit danger lurking around every corner, and unavoidably running into people you don't like/once loved.

So we escape to the country, get our hands dirty, perhaps begin some sort of organic farming venture. Maybe we take up Reiki or glass-bead blowing. And even though no one can see it, we will be living a perfectly happy life. If we are living a perfectly happy life in the forest, does it still count? Or would we find ourselves missing the crowded avenues, the dungeony bars, the everyday D-list celebrity sightings, the little perks that enable us to convince ourselves that we still want to be here, want to be a part of it? Sigh. New York City vs. Perpetual Vacation Elsewhere: the lifestyle choice to end all lifestyle choices.

I am sorry to have to give pregnant ladies such a low grade, but there it is. It’s not really anything they do that upsets me (other than the occasional eye-contact guilt trip for not giving up my hard-won subway seat), it’s just that, frankly, they creep me out. I mean, they are walking around while slowly growing a little being inside their bodies. There are two ways of looking at this: way one is, awww, the precious miracle of life, how beautiful and mysterious. Way two is like in the Alien movies. Aieeee!

The ickiest part of procreation is that it has become a fad. All the weekly gossip magazines are currently focusing way too much of their coverage on baby joy, which comes in three flavors: 1. speculative (“Is Britney/Whitney Houston/some Reality star you’ve never heard of/ Jennifer Aniston Pregnant?”) 2. illustrative (“Liv Tyler’s Bump Takes Fashion Week By Storm!”) and 3.recuperative (“Debra Messing Finally Loses The Baby Weight”) I know I speak for everyone when I say that I doooooooon’t caaaaaaaaare. I mean, I care if someone is ruining their life by getting pregnant (like, if Paris Hilton was pregnant, that would be sort of awesome, but I think that she probably just lays eggs owing to the fact that she is a praying mantis). Or if it’s Cathy Zeta-Jones and she’s pregnant, smoking, topless, on a yacht. But if it’s just some random celebrity’s distended tummy on display, count me out. Looking at these magazines is now more than ever a big fat reminder that human civilization has not really progressed since fertility-idol-worshipping days.

Even creepier than pregnant ladies, however, are the ladies who are totally obsessed with trying to get pregnant. I feel sympathy for these ladies because I am not oblivious to the fact that I might eventually be one of them. But even if I am, chances are that I will not have a blog about it.

I don’t even want to think about what this review has done to my reproductive karma. On the bright side, maybe it will save me some $ on condoms?

Grade: C

Let’s face it: there is absolutely no reason to have Cable anymore. Every single good show on it has jumped, Evel Knievel-style, over a pool of a thousand sharks. Dave Chapelle and Sascha Baron Cohen and Jon Stewart are still funny, but not $100/month worth of funny. Adriana is dead. And I don’t even want to talk about Six Feet Under. Besides, as the number of people who have TiVo increases, we Cable subscribers are quickly starting to feel like the one person on the subway car who has a discman instead of an iPod. (What is up with the rAndOm capitalization in these technical innovations, anyway? Are they trying to be like a DuMb abbreviation for an NYC neighborhood?) Anyway, I am going to start weaning myself off of the dark box asap. I realized this last night while watching Duplex, which is a wacky caper film in which Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore try to kill an old lady.

There is no excuse for this sort of behavior (watching Duplex, not killing an old lady, although of course that is also bad). Except I guess being on an airplane. Duplex, though it sometimes seems like it’s going to, does not quite go so far past bad that it completes the 360 back to good. It’s just really, really bad and kind of fascinatingly ill-conceived: can you imagine people sitting in a boardroom somewhere saying: let’s make a fun comedy in which Drew Barrymore and Ben Stiller keep trying to kill an old lady but their efforts are always thwarted by a sinister black cop? Henry really enjoyed it, but that’s just because he likes watching people push old ladies down stairs. I felt dirty afterwards. Damn your molesting ways, Cable!

There are plenty of other good reasons not to have Cable, besides its way of being expensive and forcing you to watch bad movies:

the number one reason is: if you live in New York, you have to have Time Warner Cable, and though I enjoy their Columbus Center Mall (in spite of its being cursed), I really hate Time Warner. They use their cable monopoly to get away with ridiculously shitty service, chronic service outages, unreliable installers and repairmen, and general weirdnesses. For example, we used to have Showtime and then one day, it wasn’t there! Maybe they somehow found out how much we were making fun of the L word. I know that the normal thing to do in this circumstance is call and complain, but of course that will get you nowhere with these people. We are talking about the same people who make you haul your cable boxes into Manhattan, haul them back to Brooklyn because their office is closed on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, haul them back into Manahttan the next day and wait on line for an hour and a half JUST TO CHANGE THE NAME ON THE ACCOUNT.

I am starting to think that it isn’t enough just to give up Cable, because that might mean that I would just end up watching all the things I used to watch before I had Cable, such as Elimidate. I might have to give up TV entirely. Maybe this will usher in a new period of asceticism in my life. I have already given up coffee and being a huge bitch for no reason. I think I’m on my way to becoming some sort of holy person.

If you are going to be homeless, smelly, old, and drunk all the time, why hide your light under a bushel? Obviously the correct thing to do is get together with a pack of like-minded smelly alcoholics, find a likely spot of concrete with as much pedestrian traffic as possible, and set up a perpetual party there. You should also make sure to get into shouted, slurred arguments with fellow members of your bum-pack as often as possible, especially ones that involve staggering around the sidewalk while spouting incomprehensible gibberish and occasionally crying. And when your bloated liver has finally managed to transport some of your booze-only diet into your bladder, there’s no point in walking all the way to the McDonald’s across the street in order to use the facilities. In fact, don’t even bother facing away from the Sunday afternoon crowd of moms and babies and churchgoing old ladies. Just whip out your mottled, chicken-sausage looking weenie and let it rip wherever you happen to be standing.

It’s also probably a good idea to add new members to your bum party family when you can, just to keep the passerby from getting bored. It’s like when a flailing sitcom gets a new cute kid character: that new bum lady with the scary bruised face who likes to hang out in the deli and beg for juice is totally your Raven-Symone!

Okay, I know it’s kind of mean and wrong to, uh, mock the homeless. But these people aren’t your ordinary quietly miserable types who make cardboard posters and ask for change and seem legitimately disappointed in the hand they’ve been dealt. The Greenpoint Ave. Bums seem to really enjoy being homeless. Sometimes on my way to work I see them, already (or, more probably, still) stumbling and swigging from bags, as if they are in some sort of Broadway musical about being homeless, and I am seized with a pang of – oh god, is it jealousy? Wow, I must really hate my life.