I'm A Burger King kind of guy anyway

So this happened a couple of days ago, but that doesn't make it any less true:

On Friday, I was mugged in the parking lot of a Brooklyn Wendy's. . The perpetrator stole a bag containing:
one (1) Wendy's Jr. Cheeseburger
one (1) Value Size French Fries
some (3-7) napkins

The worst part is that the cheeseburger and fries weren't even for me, they were for my long-suffering Director (she insists on the capital letter), Jess. If it was my cheeseburger that was stolen, I would have slowly walked home while that melancholy Charlie Brown theme song played. But since this was someone else's cheeseburger that I was supposed to be getting for them, I had no choice but to go back and order another from Wendy's.

(If you gave someone $10 and told them to buy you a cheeseburger and that person showed up empty-handed a full half hour later and told you that he was robbed for his fast food order, would you believe him? I thought so.)

I also got into a fight with a woman in line who punched her toddler in the face with a closed fist. But that incident does not fulfill the criteria of a Neighbor Steve story, which are:
A) Me getting hurt
B) Me being mortified/embarrassed
C) Me being weird
D) Michael Baltus saying something extraordinarily stupid and then making me blog it.
E) Drunk men on the subway
OR
F) Burritos

So let's just say I don't like it when people hit their children very hard and some people don't like it when I don't like it when they hit their children very hard.

Subway Encounter

I was riding the subway earlier this evening when a friendly drunk old man sat down next to me. After a few moments, he began to nudge me in the side with his elbow but I was pretending to read. I ignored him the first two times he did, but when he did it a third time, I figured it was either very important, very funny, very scary, or that he was very drunk. Regardless, I had no choice but to acknowledge him.

Since sometimes I pretend I'm a playwright when I'm drawing with my crayons, I've decided to tell the next part of the story as a play:

DRUNK OLD MAN nudges STEVE again. STEVE looks up from his book.

DRUNK OLD MAN

I'm gettin all Iron Man up in here.

STEVE

Sorry?

DRUNK OLD MAN

Iron Man. Tony Stark.

STEVE looks baffled. DRUNK OLD MAN points to the seat across from them where a woman wearing a skirt is sitting. She kind of has her legs open and you can see a bit of her underwear.

DRUNK OLD MAN

I'm like Tony Stark. Iron Man y'all.

(beat)

I'm hard as shit.

STEVE looks embarassed and goes back to his book. OLD DRUNK MAN nudges him again.

DRUNK OLD MAN

(whispering in STEVE's ear)

You know what I'da like to do?

DRUNK OLD MAN then makes a real disgusting "la la" sound with his tongue hanging out of his mouth for the next two stops on the train.

THE END.

I really hope I never hear that sound ever again in my life.

A Fun Game I Play Sometimes

It's called "Red Ink or Blood from a Papercut You Didn't Notice You Had?"

Did You Know...

My friend Michael was appoined the Arbitrator of Skinny Jeans on April 5, 2008?
Maybe you didn't. But it's true.
He also has the self-declared title of Captain Reach Around. At least he says so.
So, what I'm trying to say here is that this guy is a lot of things. But most importantly, he can tell you if your skinny jeans are hot or not.

The Folding Machine & You

When in the course of human events, your folding machine eventually gets a paper jam, I have some advice for you: please don't let me try to fix it. It will just end it tears. Probably mine because I will accidentally flip the power switch and turn the machine on while my hand is wedged between two of the rollers trying to pry a wad of paper loose. And then the machine will try and fold my hand.

My hand does not fold. I have definitive proof of that now.

It was like that scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom where that bad guy gets his cape caught in the grindstone at the end of the conveyor belt.

Adventures in Plumbing

At approximately 11:42 this evening, my toilet began to overflow.

Regretfully, no one noticed this was happeing until approximately 11:44 this evening

I just got a new subletter Tuesday. By the time I got home last night (after surviving The Great Burrito Debacle), he was in bed. Which meant that within 5 minutes of actually meeting him tonight, he had to bashfully walk into the living room and tell me he had clogged the toilet and the bathroom was full of water. I ran into the bathroom to shut off the water only to discover that he had left out one important detail: namely that he had been- ahem- using the toilet before it had overflowed. This is probably a lot of people's worst nightmare; breaking a stranger's toilet before you're able to flush.

I felt for the kid, I really did.

Neither one of us really spoke much for the next 15 minutes. I don't know what we would have said anyway. We just rolled up our pants and waded in. I like to think that this was a bonding experience for the two of us and that in a few weeks, we'll remember tonight and laugh about it. But then again, maybe my roommate will cry himself to sleep tonight, utterly mortified at the situation.

It's really touch and go.

My phone rang twice while I was plungering the toilet. I wasn't sure at first if I should answer my phone considering the situation I was in. I mean, I was ankle deep in some dirty water. And then I realized, whoever is on the phone can't see me. But the entire time I was talking on the phone, I thought to myself, "If I drop my phone right now, I'm not going in after it. I'll just buy a new one."

Thankfully, I didn't drop my phone.

Data Entry Eulogy

When not getting into wacky burrito-related adventures, I work for a magazine where the average age of the readership is somewhere around 64. That's the average age, but most of the people who call on the phone seem a lot older than that. I am constantly being told to speak up.

Another hazard is that almost every day, I get a letter or a phone call telling me that one of our subscribers has died. When I first started working here and somebody called to tell me that one of our readers was dead, I would always express my condolences. And I would feel very sad for a moment. I don't really do that anymore.

What I do instead is give the person a data entry eulogy.

The program we use to track subscribers is much more complicated than necessary. It was clearly created for a sales team that wants to keep track of all of its clients. So there are lots of unnecessary fields that I don't normally touch. Now, when someone dies, my only responsibility as an Editorial Assistant is to open this program, open their file and check a little box that says "Deceased." It's a bit impersonal, so I've started playing around with the files, imagining lives for our deceased readership. Like inventing their Personal Interests (though strangely enough, the only options in the pull-down menu are "Golf," "Sailing," and "Tennis.") , their Alternate Nickname (nearly always "Hoss"), and the Other Country in which their Primary Residence is located (which I often fill in with a metaphysical state. Metaphysical "state," get it?).

Anyway, when this is all done, I feel like I actually know the person a little better. Or, at least, I can pretend like I do. And then, finally, I check the "Deceased" box and whisper "Bye, Hoss."

The Great Burrito Debacle

At approximately 8:15 on April 1st, 2008, I was given the wrong burrito. Or rather, I asked for a burrito and I got a salad instead.
It was the worst April Fools joke ever.

I would have chased the delivery man, but I didn't have any shoes on. Elizabeth, my imaginary girlfriend, did not have any shoes on either, but she chased after him anyway. Either I am a big pussy (this is her theory) or she likes burritos a lot more than me.

I think she likes burritos a lot.

I also have moral qualms about eating the salad (but this is probably just related to my irrational and crushing Catholic guilt). Elizabeth has no such qualms. She also scooped out the guacamole for me to eat. These are two reasons why I like her.

UPDATE: At 8:23, Elizabeth spilled the salad all over her lap. Clearly, it was actually immoral and she was punished by the Baby Jesus.
We can't give the salad back now!

UPDATE UPDATE: Sometime much much later (9:30-ish), the delivery man finally returned with our real food. And then he asked us to give him the salad back. Elizabeth told him "It's a salad. It went bad." And then I guiltily shoved the half-empty salad container into the bag (upside down with no lid on), handed it to the delivery man and closed the door in his face.
The burrito was pretty good though.