“Never eat at a restaurant where the waiters wear spoons around their necks.” That was the cost-conscious advice my rabbi proffered as I was trying to decide where to celebrate the first day of my girlfriend’s Rumspringa. I met Abhilasha Maddox online through Hotamishsingles.com and wanted to mask my stinginess by treating her to an upscale dinner at Reynaldo’s. My hope was that she would abandon her religious way of life to come live with me in the room I rented from my parents. As it turns out, my rabbi wasn’t referring to a waiter – the correct term is sommelier – and Reynaldo’s was crawling with them. Plus, those…
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Golf Course Thugs The subtlties of contact golf, pilfering balls and napalming fairways
I love sports. And, considering there isn’t an athletic gene in my entire family, I manage to do pretty well at anything I decide to try – except golf. Looking back, I’m not really sure why I took up golf in the first place. It’s the one sport that, the harder I tried, the worse I got. I was in high school at the time and started hanging around a tough bunch of thugs. Well, not really thugs as you know them. We weren’t covered with tattoos, didn’t wear smelly leather jackets, take drugs or hang around street corners fleecing old ladies of their social security checks. None of us…
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Disneyland… The Happiest Summit on Earth Greetings and salutations from the highest peak in Anaheim, California
By the time the kids were let out for summer vacation, the climbing window for summiting Mt. Everest had already come and gone. I promised Shimmel that I would take him and his 8-year-old sister Toiba to the top of Mt. Everest to celebrate his circumcision, but none of the guide companies would have anything to do with a middle-aged, sedentary writer and his two irascible children. So, we shifted gears and made plans to climb The Happiest Peak on Earth – the Matterhorn. Not the legendary mountain in Zermatt, but the steel and cement behemoth located in the center of Disneyland. At 147 feet, the Matterhorn towers high over…
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Sweeping Rule Changes for Eating Competitions International Federation of Competitive Eating adds new categories: insects & reptiles, animal sweetbreads and non-organic hardware
New York, New York – The world of competitive eating shocked the sports world yesterday when the IFOCE (International Federation of Competitive Eating) announced widespread changes to the sport of professional gurgitation. “Due to the cutthroat nature of some of our competitors, the IFOCE has been forced to up the ante in all its sanctioned events by adding several new categories,” said George Shea, Chairman of the IFOCE. In an update posted on the Federation’s website, Major League Eating, Shea wrote, “Up until now, natural food products in various forms and methods of preparation were sufficient to challenge professional eaters from around the globe. But with the records falling at…
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Television Shows that Didn’t Make the Fall Line-up Beyond reality TV: what you probably won't be watching on televison anytime soon
It’s that time again. The time when television network executives decide which shows will make their fall line-up and those that won’t. Here’s a brief list of what you won’t be seeing on the major television networks this year: CSI: Proctologist – CSI: Proctologist follows Dr. Sam Sloan, accompanied by hard drinking, divorced New York City Detective, Mitchell Perez through a typical work day. The opening scene shows Dr. Sloan and Detective Perez standing over a bullet-ridden body with a 12-inch Bowie knife protruding from it’s back: Detective Perez: “So, Doc. What do you think was the cause of death?” Dr. Sloan: “It’s hard to tell, Mitch. I’ll have to…