Mention your love of hamburgers, and some people will proselytize about Shake Shack the same way America’s Generation X enthralls itself with the seamless digital/analog convergence found in Avatar, the 3D feature film.

Shake Shack is a half block from my current workplace, but the lines are far too intimidating for me to ever venture near in temperate climes.  Given my inexplicable love of cold weather and far more easily understandable Christmastime goy aversion, today, the freezing day before the day before the two thousand and tenth year anniversary of the birth of our savior (when will he finish battling the aliens and come back?), seemed like the perfect opportunity to skip the fuss and buy a slab of ground meat.  Even my office, teeming as it is with dollar bill-eyed Jews from New Jersey, was relatively empty.  And so, there was no line at Shake Shack.

Shake Shack in Madison Square Park

A brief survey of the menu made my order clear: one Shackburger, and a Shackmeister Ale.  In exchange for $10, I received a vibrator and a receipt.

Unsanitized Shake Shack Vibrator

I gripped the vibrator tightly, and waited.  About five minutes later, I felt a single prolonged buzz, then nothing.  My food was ready.

Shackburger and Shackmeister Ale

Quite the presentation.  The bun was extremely soft and pliant, so much so that the bread was depressed and obliging before I had even had a chance to put it in my hot and steamy mouth, anticipating, as it was, its own unavoidable absorption into my greedy Semitic stomach.

First impression: the taste of American cheese.  Second bite: lots of mayonnaise….  and so it went.  The meat replicated perfectly the texture and flavor of the textureless and flavorless bun.  A swig of beer:  market research indicates that Generation X likes hops.  No discernible flavor, good or bad, beyond the uber-infused hop essence.  Further reflection on hamburger: lettuce was latticed on top of the burger in clear full-leaf form, and a real slice of a real tomato was purposefully placed between.  The meat looked very fatty and pale, well done.

The aesthetic and genius of Shake Shack couldn’t be clearer.  Shackburger is a McDonalds burger made with upscale ingredients.  That is its ironic design, get it?  Shackmeister Ale is Budweiser pumped full of hops, i.e. microbrew.  Compared to the eating habits of the typical office worker, this is gourmet food at its finest.

Within minutes, I had retreated back to the comfort of the office.  I emailed the client and my entire team a new user flow diagram with the image of a cute girl representing their company’s typical “content editor”.  This based on a conversation I had had before lunch with the client’s chief technologist about the flow, not about the girl.

User Flow

The client immediately sent a response, insisting that their content editors were not nearly as happy nor as enthusiastic as this girl, and demanded that this fact be properly accounted for in future revisions.  I quipped in response that this was because they had yet to use the system I was designing, and asked him to be patient.

At Benny’s troubled request, I removed the inappropriate girl from the next revision.

Neuter Actor

Then Benny invited me to join him and Brian, the front-end developer who loved Avatar, in a three-way of Super Mario Brothers on the Wii by the jelly bean machines.

At 6, I left, encountering our Director of Emerging Technology twiddling his phone by the elevator.  I asked him politely what his plans were for the holiday.  He’s clearly Jewish, but kept reticent about that fact.  We entered the elevator with a black man and two goyim.  I explained my own modest plans: “I’m heading up to Westchester, where it’s safe for Jews on Christmas”.

No response.  The doors opened.  I wished him well, and exited.

Thank Otso and family for these photos from the early 80’s.  I have just remembered that I slept on a blanket in our dining room while our families lived together.

Brothers

Parents

Fathers

A Thanksgiving overview of the past year’s blog statistics:

Growth in visitors over the past year

Traffic sources

Click here to see a full list of search terms that have led people to this site.

How to apply for a rifle and shotgun permit from the New York Police Department (NYPD)

Insights from this analysis:

• There are definitely things I can do to optimize SEO keywords on this site to bring visitors in from Google.
• Forgive the use of big fonts, redundant text, and unnecessary links – I’m optimizing my keywords in this post.  In case you didn’t know, that is why most websites are so irritating, poorly designed, and badly written – they want more visitors.
• It seems like searches for my full name are leading some people to this site.  I don’t mention my name anywhere, and this site doesn’t show up in my own Google searches for my name…. what’s going on here?
• Thank you Handy for all the traffic – you’re a popular guy.
• Clearly there is a dearth of information online about how to apply for a rifle and shotgun permit from the NYPD.  I’m going to see how much of that traffic I can grab by optimising further for those keywords, so forgive me for redundant content.
• But don’t forget to check out my post: Acquiring a Gun, Part I (How to Apply for a New York City Rifle & Shotgun Permit from the NYPD), which goes into great detail on how to call the NYPD to get information on how to call the NYPD.  Part II is coming.

Ramen Noodles:  Rai Rai Ken, Setagaya, Menkui Tei, Bibim Bar

• There is a significant number of people looking for a good ramen.
  
• Rai Rai Ken is really not very good ramen.
  
• Bibim Bar is ok for a quiet Korean meal.

Russian Baths – Banya – Sauna

• There is room for a competitive site with information about banya (Russian baths) locations and reviews.
  
• BRC Sauna amd Spa (the New Jersey Banya), Mermaid Spa, and the Wall Street Banya (i.e. Spa 88) all feature strongly in the search terms that have led people here.
  
• However, the search terms used to find Russian baths are not standard, probably because the word banya is not familiar to many people, and there is no good translation, although sauna is the closest.
• Have 42 people really searched for “Paul Glimcher what kind of person is he”?

My ribs are bruised. When I breath, it’s a bit painful, but not terrible. When I laugh there’s a sharp but not unbearable pain, and when I walk I feel something not quite right in my hip. Last night I stream-rolled over an opponent as four of their players had passed our defense and were on the way to an easy goal.

I didn’t like the way they were sauntering lazily towards me, as if they had all the time in the world. It’s respectful to everyone if these things are done quickly. They put me in a very bad position with few options and plenty of time. If the poor guy was smart, he would have gotten rid of the ball before I reached him. He had plenty of time – didn’t he think about what I could possibly do to prevent them from scoring? Couldn’t he deduce the result of a 210 pound white gorilla lumbering towards him at full speed?

I thoroughly pummeled him into the ground by simply occupying what had previously been his physical space. Two people can’t occupy the same space at the same time, and the laws of momentum make it clear what the rebound of two unequal masses at differing velocities will look like after collision.

The look on his face as he lay on his back wasn’t one of pain, fear, or anger. It was utter confusion. I think he didn’t know where he was or what had happened. I squatted over him, patted his chest and added one more disingenuous swipe at his dignity: “Sorry…. I didn’t mean to do it so hard.”

No response… He lay like a helpless lamb separated from its herd, and you know what happens to stray lambs. His woolly blond hair packed close to his head with a protruding nose and wide nostrils.  What pity can one have for such a creature? Eventually he wobbled back to his feet and walked shakily about for a few minutes as the penalty kick was taken and play continued (and they didn’t score).

We lost anyway.

GPS Statistics courtesy of Chris Hall’s iPod

It was after escaping to Tangier that I discovered Rouicha.  I was sojourning in the Hotel de Paris, venturing out into the evening streets only to watch the jalaba’d men walking hand-in-hand down the avenue while the kids hawked contraband $1 marloboro reds from tea salon to salon.  After a few days, they knew to leave me alone.  I  would venture out to the outskirts of town on my thousand dollar Seattle-bought Bianchi Volpe by day, finding refuge in the mint tea cliffs of the slums overlooking the deep blue Mediterranean waters by eve, only to return to pick up a  tape each night from the local music shop down the street. They quickly learned my tastes, and I would steal away after a seamless transaction in the late hours into my hotel room playing Gnaoua, Rai, and classic Berber hits as a result of merely being there.  But it was all Rouicha, all the time.  Nobody plays the turtle hide quite that way.

Gnaoua isn’t bad, but a bit African for my tastes.

It was only when flying through the Algerian border in my over-rented Land Rover digging deep into the Sahara (and eventually running randomly into old pal Brahim in Rissani) that I was properly introduced between oases by hired hand Abdullah to Cheba Maria, the mistress of Rai.