Like “Sex, Sex, Sex,” “Live Donkey Show,” and “Ew Everything is Sticky.”
Say what you want about the mall-ification of Times Square, at least it’s less sticky now.
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I’m talking about above street level. And after the mallification too. It was already cleaned up when I was there for my honeymoon in 2000 and the advertisements were incredibly creative. There was a giant coke bottle that appeared to tip over, empty into a glass, then magically refill with liquid. It wasn’t a video on a screen, it looked like it was actually happening. Some real creative technical work went into building that. Now it’s just TV commercials formatted for an odd shape.
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The change I’m happiest about is the replacement of the pee smell with pee+weed.
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Can I just say that I’m glad you’re all here to talk to and that someone or other is likely to be around whenever I happen to be as well? Pretty much the only two humans I have regular face-to-face contact with anymore are my wife and daughter… and I’m fine with that most of the time, but when they’re here and asleep and I can’t talk to them, I somehow get more lonely than when they’re gone.
Also, the idea of it being a new year used to be enough to get me through a couple of weeks at least. These days, it almost feels like we’re in the ‘enforcers crash at speeds approaching 3’ scene in Space Mutiny. Instead of, “all right, it’s 2024!” it’s “okay, 2024, what fresh hell are you going to put us all through this year?”
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We get Enforcers for '24!?!!!?!1
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Yeah, there’s no hopefulness with a new year anymore. It’s all keep your head down and wait for things to start flying.
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Yes, but unfortunately the low-speed model.
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Perfect, the Mart Kart people are doomed now. I’m going to Disney World!
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Sorry, you need the high-speed model of enforcer to compete with them.
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My Mom, born in 1932, would have said “ah you’re just bored, you need something to do?”
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That’s basically why Gen Z humor is so abstract and absurd. They’ve only ever known the world as a traumatic place, and observational humor doesn’t work for them.
Before 2001, there were some good years.
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I know this is the gripe thread, but I just have to say it:
There will probably be some terrible things that happen in 2024. There have been terrible things that happen every year. But there will also be good things that happen in 2024. And while I’m not always the best at doing it, the key is to not let the horrible things be all you see.
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Well, I wasn’t giving orders so there. …if I was you’d be FIRED! 
Be well.
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Enhance your calm, everybody.
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Well, it’s a holiday, coffee’s gone, why not?
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Well, first words spoken to me on the New Year was a cashier who absented herself from the self-checkout position to go deal with some dude who decided to sidle up to one of the regular check-out lanes (none of which lights were on).
I ring up my food purchases then a bottle of wine. Automated voice: “Help will be with you shortly.” Repeated every few seconds.
After about two minutes, the cashier lady said, “Sir, are you having a problem?”
I didn’t respond. They had the original Bobby Hebb version of “Sunny” on the speakers, and I was playing air guitar to it. Very subtly, not like Bill or Ted, but I was grooving to it.
She repeated: “Sir, are you having a problem?”
Me, turning slowly to her: “No, but I think you are.”
Always like to start the New Year with a pleasant and professional exchange of mutual goodwill.
Slight non-gripe that still fits here because it’s an update to a gripe. Hooray. I convinced my mother that, whether or not she is going to fly to Rochester, I am going to drive there. I shouldn’t be in an airplane when I’m sick anyway.
Also, I want to know at exactly what point I’ll be able to read the word “Rochester” and not want to respond, “yes, Mister Benny?” Because even though I’m not doing it out loud, I’m being really annoying about it.
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I count that as a decided win! I don’t know how you managed that, you know, because sometimes close familial relationships can be fraught (as you know, I’m sure), but that sounds like a sound solution. Stay out of the Bronx airplanes! By any means necessary! Just as a general principle, egad!
And even better, it sounds like you’re confident about the drive and holding your lane and all that, which seems like pretty stable physical condition, which pleases me.
Gripe? What are you going to do, like not post any new out of context comics for a few or some BS like that? Can’t allow that!
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