Keeping this short for now!

MoCCA was great! Thanks to those of you who came out!

I’ll announce the winners of that free AvP video game contest tomorrow (Thursday)!

Oh look, Justin Bieber’s trending on Twitter! I wonder what people are saying about him!

Happy St. P’s Day!

Can someone tell me WHERE – if not in NYC proper, then anywhere near NYC – you can get a McDonald’s SHAMROCK SHAKE??

I’ve never even tried a Shamrock Shake before, but all I know is it looks really deliciously frightening, I’ve caught the fever from my buddy Dean, and I will not rest until I’ve had one. He found a website, shamrockshake.com, whose mission is to help people find McDonald’s locations that have it, but it’s almost completely useless.

In our research, we found a guy who’s apparently dedicating his life to uncovering the truth about why no McDonald’s restaurants in NYC carry them. He’s posted some variation of the following everywhere he could:

The reason NYC proper does not sell the shake has to do with political correctness. You have to understand how NY’ers are. If McDonald’s has a shake for St. Patrick’s Day, then they have to have one for every other ethnic group in NYC. Sounds nuts, but it’s true.

The “5 Boro” consortium of McDonald’s owners vote every year not sell the shake in the NYC area. That’s the real reason this shake is available in such places as Wal-Mart of Gibsonton, FL, but not on Fifth Ave NYC, home of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade.

People in NY are very race/ethnic conscious, and keep scorecard of every little thing that they can call “offensive”. Having a menu item for St.Patrick’s Day, but not the one for the Puerto Rican Day Parade, West Indies Parade, etc……..is just not how you do business in NYC in 2009.

Call me crazy, but that’s the truth people.

Each time he gets more and more impassioned; says Dean: “it’s like he thinks he’s breaking Watergate”.

All I know is we will find it, if it takes us years. If a McD’s near you has it, GET SOME FOR ME AND SEND IT TO ME IN A COOLER.

NYC cabs are allowed to carry 4 passengers max (1 in the front, 3 in the back), but here’s how you can fit more. Have 3 people pile in the back first, and the smallest member(s) of your group hang out nearby, nonchalantly (whistling is an excellent way to divert suspicion). Then have the 4th person get into the front, and say something to distract the driver, like, “47th & Broadway, please, and oh by the way, we’d like to listen to Randy “Macho Man” Savage’s rap album on the way.” Then while the driver is excitedly popping the CD in, have your small friend(s) jump into the back and scootch way down out of sight from the rear-view mirror. My friend Karen (of weird middle finger fame) is very small and pulls this off constantly. Get yourself a friend like Karen and you can save a bundle on cab fare.

Hey, new contest – The aLp Art Contest II – non-artists welcome! I need your help finishing this strip I wrote way back during the first roommate plotline (which ended up with Jesus moving in). It wasn’t my best work so I never did do the art for it.

Provide the art for this strip. It could be in any style at all, you can draw it, use action figures, use an Etch-a-sketch, or Play-doh, whatever. Note that I’m not lookin for GOOD art necessarily; the finalists are whatever I LIKE the best, and I like seeing both good, and comically bad, artwork. Go here for more details.

The winner gets a signed 8×10 glossy print of his/her choice of any of the recent 9+ panel comics, or “If You See Something”, or the Starbucks piece. I’ve been historically bad at sending out contest prizes but rest assured you will get your prize eventually.

I don’t have any really exciting taxi stories of my own, aside from run-of-the-mill incidents involving drunk, sick friends, and obnoxious drivers chattering on their cells in strange languages, and one driver once said to me, “You speak pretty good English.” But here’s two of the more interesting stories I found on nycabbie.com (which is otherwise unremarkable). The first is a driver from Hawaii that claims he picked up Mark Chapman in Honolulu 2 months before he shot John Lennon in 1980. According to him, Chapman told him, “I’ve got to kill John Lennon.” Kudos for accomplished goals!

The other one is, I quote:

One day I was driving and I let in this very large women. My suspension in my cab needed fixing and she weighed down the back enough to cause the muffler to drag. We started down the road to Central Park when this man in the cab in front of us threw out his cigarette. There was a big puddle of gas that had leaked out of my car and the sparks from the cigarette caused a small fire while we were at the red light. The fire crawled up my leak and into my gas well. Causing the backseat to ignite. And the large women clothes began to catch on fire. She leaped out of the car and into the fountain. In the park. I yelled out the window and said “This rides on me.” and pulled away.

If only all New York cabbies were that considerate!

What’s your favorite taxi stories?

Remember the “Talking Taxi” program in NYC cabs from like 3 years ago? Those recordings by celebrities they played when you got in and out of cabs that reminded you to buckle up and to take your belongings with you. They were totally unnecessary, and yet extremely annoying at the same time. But occasionally I find myself missing them. I only remember hearing the same, like, 5 recordings over and over again, which added to the nuisance, but according to the NYC TLC FAQ there were 39 celebrities who made recordings.

Some of the few I fondly remember:
- Yo-Yo Ma: “Don’t do what I did” (i.e. leave your priceless cello in the trunk of the cab)
- Paul O’Neill: “Hit a homerun for safety”
- Joan Rivers: “Can we tawk? About seatbelts?” Ok, if you let me strangle you with one
- Al Franken: “Ok, so I haven’t seen the back of a cab in a long time; I’m usually riding around the city in a limo” (the only one I recall that was actually funny)
- The Rockettes: This one started out with the sound of their tap shoes pounding like all bloody hell with no discernible rhythm; with how loud they played it and over the crappy speaker, I felt like the taxi was caught in a sudden and terrifying hailstorm of large cattle, every time. This one, I don’t miss.

Do you remember any others?

Bet you didn’t catch it – if you look closely at the background, they’re already in Times Square.