People: It is a bad mood of historic proportions over here. If a normal bad mood is…I don’t know, a votive candle, then the current bad mood is the Hindenburg. And it’s not even a bad mood, exactly, because it’s not all-pervasive; I still find joy and contentment in chocolate-covered peanuts, skirt-with-boots-and-no-tights weather finally, Montepulciano, and The Future Mrs. Stupidhead’s super-sparkly diamond engagement ring — sibling wedding fun times hooray!

It’s a short list, but it’s enough to keep me going, and thank God, because the list of things, people, and concepts that need to shut up before I hunt them down and hit them with a rake made of jalapenos and fire? Long. Back Of My Hands Across America long, okay, and we can start with foods that have stupid names that make you embarrassed to say or order them — like the most visible brand of chocolate-covered peanut, the Goober. The…Goober. Shut up, Nestlé. Don’t give a delicious food a name that is an anagram of “booger” and a synonym for “dipshit.” I like to eat, uch, fine, Goobers at the movies, but I hate hate hate having to step up to the counter and order a soda and some Goooooooberrrrrs and then do that little eye-roll all “haw, I said ‘Goobers,'” the same one you do when you trip on the sidewalk and then you turn around and glare at the spot where you tripped, and then you roll your eyes, at yourself…just call them “ChocNuts,” I have enough problems. You can shut up too, bagel shop in Boston that insisted on calling a roast beef and horseradish cream cheese on a bagel with tomato…The Udder One. Back when I used to eat meat, I got that sandwich almost every weekend, and every weekend, the counter guy refused to just let me order a bagel with roast beef, tomato, and horseradish cream cheese, or to point to The Udder One on the menu…oh, no, I had to say it out loud. Anyone who has ever tried to gesture in the direction of a Moons Over My Hammy, only to get hung out to dry by the Denny’s waitress, is totally feeling me right now. Shut up, Denny’s.

Shut up, cat. You got your orange ass up on top of the cabinets; you can get your orange ass down the same way. I have no idea what way that is, actually, and I’ve been standing here with a slide rule for half an hour trying to figure it out, so I can’t help you, but if you knock that avocado off the microwave again, I will hide a family of scorpions in your kitty litter and wash my hands of the entire affair.

Shut up, “health” “insurance” “industry.”

Shut up, runaway goddamn bride, and shut up, news outlets who continue to insist that this is a story — which, I guess, according to the dictionary definition of “story,” it is, but the story goes like this: “A bride ran away.” Okay? And then? It’s over. So stop telling it. Find an actual story to air, about the environment, or the subway, or the orange cat trying to hide in a blender in Brooklyn, or how I sent a bee up your pantleg using a travel hair dryer and a bendy straw.

Shut up, knee. I’m sorry I cut you in two different places while shaving, but I do that every time, practically, so just get over it.

Shut up, Olsen trolls. Shut up about people not calling you the Olsen twins anymore. Wash your hair. Buy clothes that fit. Date boys your own age. Lose the giant Diane von Furstenglasses and the sack maxiskirts and once in a while, at Starbucks, settle for the grande instead of buying everything in a cup bigger than your giant apartment that is now on the market because you hate each other, and leave some bangle bracelets for the rest of us. Knowing enough about you to tell you to shut up in such detail makes me want to spike your chai with asbestos. Go away and stay there.

Shut up, the word “bling.” Shut up, people who use the word “bling” unironically. Shut up, people who use the word “bling” ironically but then think it’s okay to leave the air quotes off. And while I’m up, shut up, stupid commercials for bling with that stupid lady all whispery “I love this man” because he got her a diamond, when mere seconds before that she was totally ashamed of him for making a scene. Distract uptight bitches with shiny shit! Shut up, fuck off, blech.

Shut up, Desperate Housewives. The show is wildly overrated, Eva Longoria is just not that pretty, I don’t c– look, she isn’t that pretty. She isn’t. She’s not ugly; she’s just that Hollywood kind of pretty where it’s all hard and hydroponic and focus-grouped, like that girl in the old Pearl Drops ads — she’s fine-looking, but that doesn’t change the fact that she just licked her teeth on TV for money, you know? And she’s got that kind of face (Longoria, not the Pearl Drops girl) where, when it goes, it’s going to go. When she hits that wall, the wall is going to hit back, is what I’m telling you. She’s fine, she’s cute, whatever, I just don’t know why all of a sudden she’s the Everywhere Great Beauty like we plebes have never seen a bony sternum before.

Shut up, Affletus. I wish your parents the best, because I kind of like them both even though I should be sick of them by now, but until you come out and get stuck with an obnoxious name designed to imply that Mom and Dad know fuck-all about jazz, I just don’t care. Good luck to you, watch out for that cord, love you, mean it, shut up. And shut up, celebrity parents who give their kids obnoxious names. In fact, shut up, all parents who give their kids obnoxious names. Don’t name your kid Brando, or Coltrane, or Miles unless it’s a family name, or a regular name where you then explain that Little Timmy is actually named for Timothy Leary, like, do you hear yourselves? No Dylan references, no Fellini references, and no naming the kid “Ringo,” ever. EVER.

Shut up, guys with “La Cucaracha” car horns. It’s not funny, I hate you, I hate your cheesy Escalade and your ass face, and the next time you blare that thing at three in the fling-flarn morning instead of getting your lazy track-panted ass out of the fucking car and ringing your girlfriend’s doorbell, I am going to come down to the street and jam an evil clown up your tailpipe. She’s putting on some lip gloss, dude. Give her a minute. And SHUT UP.

Shut up, everyone who keeps fanning the flames of the Brooklyn-vs.-Manhattan “war,” because if I read one more “I feel so betrayed” op ed, from either side, about how the Brooklynites abandoned me to move to the ‘burbs, boo hoo, the Manhattanites just don’t get it and hate produce and Labrador puppies and justice, boo hoo, everybody just take a fucking pill, my God. I don’t want to pick a side, because I don’t have a side, and nobody wants the Jersey girl on their side in the second place, but I lived in Manhattan for years and I loved it, and I live in Brooklyn now and I love that too, and I love Jersey still — home is home. Wherever the pizza guy already knows “not too hot” is whose side I’m on, is my point, but if you think guys have “La Cucaracha” horns in the suburbs, you clearly have your head up your ass, first of all, and second of all, enough with the “that’s not What New York City Is All About” rhetoric, for the love of Mike. Seriously. Because the people who want to tell you some shit about What New York City Is All About? Almost never from here. Almost never from anywhere close to here. It’s always the people from West Truckstop, Ohio who get all defensive about What New York Means and don’t want it to change because if it becomes too much like where they came from what’s the point, and — okay, I totally get that, and it’s true that one of the great things about this city is that it can save your life, but whenever somebody’s whining about how 42nd Street is too “sanitized” now? It’s somebody who didn’t see it twenty years ago, which — it smelled like rotting squirrel, and a junkie tried to bite my mom. Okay? Broad daylight, active putrefaction, chomping faces, it was not a good time. The Port Authority was like Beirut, but with scarier bathrooms. People got hit by cars indoors, and I’m talking about the early eighties, which compared to the early seventies was a Montessori school. The whole “if you can make it there…” mythos, you know, I get that, I do. I get not wanting it to turn into Darien; I get wanting it to stay bad so you can tell yourself you’re awesome for surviving. (Nothing against Darien, obviously, it’s very nice there, but it’s two different experiences and you don’t get to go to a lot of Queers shows in the 203.) I’m just saying, stop acting like your New York is the only one, all of you, on all sides, because it’s exhausting for everyone involved.

And on a not unrelated note, shut up, people who complain in a Rooseveltian accent that pronouncing “Target” “Tar-zhay” is “so over.” Bean got a rad purple tweed suit there for fifty bucks. Would you like to tell her how to pronounce “fifty bucks,” or can we get on with our respective days? Saying “Tar-zhay” is fun. Get off my back.

Shut up, Diet Coke bottles that promise “1 in 12 wins!” and then let me win one time in…I’m going to say forty bottles. (Shut up, everyone who just muttered, “Maybe you shouldn’t drink so much Diet Coke.” It is. The mead. Of. Life. Challenge me on this point and enjoy the sensation of a trout in your nostril. Mood: not in it.) The Pepsi people gave me like twenty free iTunes songs, and I don’t even like Diet Pepsi that much. And when I did win, I won…a liter. Nobody sells the liters, dudes! I defended Diet Coke with Lemon even though it tastes like oysters! Grrr…rrrrrrrrr!

Shut up, bedroom closet. I got the stackable doodads from Hold Everything, I’ve tried, but you still look like the inside of a broken Cuisinart. And you can shut up too, sticky bedroom closet door that ate my Doc shoelace and is now all dicked up and horky. I hate you, and if you could eat, I’d feed you a porcupine dipped in curare.

Shut up, scarf. It’s May.

Shut up, birds who won’t come to the feeder I almost perforated my liver hanging up on the fire escape. Seeds ain’t free. Get over here and have a snack, you chirpy bastards.

Shut up, Noah Wyle’s chins. You ruined his face. Go to hell.

Shut up, music reviewers who blather on meaninglessly for five hundred words about how great an album is, but not why it’s great, thus forcing me to buy it because if I don’t, I might miss something, and then I just kind of don’t get the album because you didn’t tell me what other music it’s similar to or which fans might enjoy it and which might not, so then I feel all uncool and lonely because I don’t really like the White Stripes, and I only keep trying to like them because your moistly inexact prose keeps telling me I should. Give me a good reason next time or I’ll shoot you with a potato gun.

Shut up, radio stations who overplay songs I like, thus making me hate them. Stop beating “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” to death or I’ll…I’ll kill this orange cat! Don’t test me, I’m serious! As soon as he gets down, he’s a dead man!

Shut up, Subway ads starring Willie Randolph and Joe Torre. You go on forever, your stars cannot act, and Joe Torre’s line reading of “Willie, I’ve got one,” in which he manages to emphasize all of the syllables and none of them at the same time, drives me crazy, like, Joe, a little more time rehearsing the line and, hmm, oh yes that’s right finding some starting pitching somewhere, a little less time making sure your giant World Series ringzilla is pointing straight into the camera like a The Team Doesn’t Suck Now No Really Giambi Will Start Hitting Hypno-Ray. Prime minister of Malaysia baaaaaaaaaaad!

Although I would like to point my Shut Up Hypno-Ray at all and sundry Yankee-adjacent pearl-clutchers, because it’s just totally out of control right now. On the one side you’ve got the defenders of the team getting all miffy “Brownie’ll shape up, HE WILL TOO, it’s only May they’re a better team than this, MOOOOOMMMM!” and on the other side you’ve got the doomsayers witnessing a squibby two-out single on the bar TV, walking to the front door of the pub, and slamming their heads in the door until the bouncer tells them to quit it. Neither side is wrong, but…folks, it is in fact only May, and it is in fact a lot worse in Kansas City, and the team is not in fact that bad. But…the team is in fact pretty damn bad, and we all knew this day would come, so let’s just enjoy the baseball and stop blaming poor Bernie Williams, who never did anything but bust his ass and play where Joe put him, for not staying 23 forever. It’s an eh team. We were due. I’ll write at more length about it next week when I don’t feel like launching the Everybody Loves Raymond promo team into space using a slingshot the size of the Orange Bowl, but remember, even bad baseball is better than none at all.

And on that note: shut up, Mike Piazza. Just because.

May 9, 2005

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