Need someone to kiss on New Year's Eve? Avoid these girls...

With the days so short many NYC men are looking for someone to keep them warm during the long winter nights. Gawker has come out with a list of girls to avoid dating during this holiday season. Before you ask out your favorite bartender/sex blogger/Kirsten Dunst take a look at their list. Or at least the first half, which is the funny one.

Weekend Snapshot

Ah. It's Complicated. Another chance for us to like Alec Baldwin. He's likable, right? Not according to our second installment of subway graffiti art, courtesy of one fair rider of the F train. Feel free to check out this in-depth analysis of a long-forgotten voicemail anytime you are at the 23rd St F train subway stop.

NYiR's 100th post: The Jersey Shore

Okay, let's call a spade a spade. New Jersey is sorta a part of New York City. I mean, it's just as much a suburb as Westchester, only dirtier and no one actually wants to live there. How many times have you run into a friend at a party in Manhattan and you ask what's new and after exhausting every topic under the sun they mutter, "Oh yeah, I moved last week." Where? "New Jersey." Then they launch into a diatribe about how it's not that far and it's just as close a commute as Brooklyn and how you wouldn't believe the space you can get for the money. It's just sad really.

However, there is a bright side. Since New Jersey is sorta part of New York City we can lay claim to the best show since Six Feet Under. Just kidding, that show got pretentious. I digress. The best NYC-based show of 2009 is... (drum roll please) a three way tie between Gossip Girl, NYC Prep, and Jersey Shore. And 30 Rock. I forgot 30 Rock.

The Jersey Shore is a brand new Real World-esque MTV show that takes eight self-professed guidos and guidettes and puts them in a house together on the Jersey shore. They work selling t-shirts to pay rent and drink and work out and show off their abs and then go home and eat ham.

For example, take a look at JWoww (yes, she calls herself JWoww):



And now, for an introduction to the cast of the best thing to happen to Jersey since Springstein:




Taa-daaaaa. Oh, btw, the cast was at Marquee last night. Marquee. Ha.

Museum of Modern Art? More like Museum of Monkey Art

Yes, I realize I made that joke last time I poked fun at MoMa. But this time I mean it. Monkeys really could do some of this stuff. Let's take the piece above. What is it? A slide showing tiny life forms artfully arranged? An open-ended dream catcher meant to signify the uninhibited status of the American dream? A mirror reflecting the viewer's own beauty? No. It's a yogurt cap.

This piece at MoMa, entitled "Yogurt caps," takes up a full room. With four yogurt caps. One on each wall. This is a tribute to the artist's first exhibition in a commercial space in New York City where he showed this piece some fifteen years ago. For years Gabriel Orozco has been praised for the ballsy move of displaying these everyday objects as art for his first major show.

However, it does make me come back to my point about the monkeys. If you happen to own one can you bring it and some weed over and we can get the monkey high? I'll arrange for him to have a major gallery show the next day. I'm 99% sure he would watch Spongebob Squarepants for the first 23 hours then freak out, grab some yogurt from my fridge and say he has a genius idea. Well, a bunch of them, but he's gonna start by displaying yogurt lids on a wall. Then as soon as he leaves we can turn to one another and say, "Man, that monkey was a real douche." Then we'd go to his show and praise his "appetite for risk" just like MoMa did. Looks more like a case of the munchies to me.

Macy's in December

In keeping with the spirit of this holiday season New York is Ridiculous would be remiss in not mentioning the wonder that is Macy's in December. Take a look at the view above. Click on the picture. But in a new window. Don't close us! Go on, click. Wondrous isn't it? You walk in the door and can't help but have Christmas cheer shoved down your throat. What's that? Oh, nevermind. You just can't help but get shoved.

Jean-Paul Sartre once said, "Hell is other people...at Macy's." It's true. Macy's pays off all the major media companies to leave that second part out. But our investigative journalism/coat shopping team discovered this:This is a line. A line for what? The escalator. Not even to check out. To get upstairs. Sometimes that Sartre guy is just right. He should run for mayor of this town after Bloomberg's 12th term. I'd definitely vote for him. Unless I was busy that day. In which case I'd probably forget and go to Macy's to buy a new coat.

OMG! So many Santas!

We know you're not over Santa Con yet so HERE is a super terrific slide show for you courtesy of Time Out NY. Thank you to Victoria Gerstman for sending it in. We have never met Victoria before but hear she's very good-looking.

Weekend Snapshots

If you were anywhere in New York City on Saturday you know that Santa Con was a rousing success. Starting in five locations and converging at different times throughout the city Santas ran amok being lost, calling their ex-girlfriends while drunk, and getting "mad munchies yo" when they drank/smoke too much. Basically all the things the real Santa does.

Then on Sunday you may have been one of the lucky few to catch this random F train. Yes, this is a real-live subway running the tracks of New York City. It first went on the rails in 1931. It has temporarily (?) come out of retirement to take you back to a simpler time when after shave adds included words like "romance" and not random big-busted blonde girls falling into guy's armpits because of their scent (what? we only tried Axe once, we can make fun).

There are gaps in between the cars so you can see the mole people of the tunnels too. Riding this baby feels like a cross between the Tower of Terror ride at Disney and sitting in a movable museum. If you see a green train hop on it.

It's that special time of year again!!!

Trees are being sold on every corner, the homeless man on your block has stuck branches in his hat and pretends to be a reindeer, and there was a half hour of snow. That can only mean one thing: CHRISTMAS TIME!

What better way is there to celebrate the holiday season than to dress up as Santa and drink till you fall down (a chimney)? Some people have been waiting for this opportunity for awhile (hello, Santa at the Met in July pictured above) while some of you may only now be hearing of SANTA CON.

Click on the link to be transported to a magical bar crawl made up only of Santas. But hurry because it's tomorrow! So get out your costume (and make it good) and join hundreds of other Santas for a drunken trip to the North Pole.

Here's suggestions from their website:
Get creative: be a Secret Santa, a Santasaurus, Candy-cane, a Reindeer, a Chanukah Chicken, a goddamn latke, Stewardess Santa, Knight Rider Santa, Crusty Peace Punk Santa, the occasional Legless Reindeer, Chanukah Squirrel, Emo-Elf, or the Santichrist.
Just don't wear your fucking jeans.

They clearly have yet to see my candy cane jeans.

Dick Chicken

Once in a great while New Yorkers will see a tag that stops their mind. Dick Chicken is just such a tag. While primarily located in Williamsburg and Bushwick Dick Chicken is making his way all over the city. A preliminary sketch appeared in Park Slope the other day:

Not his best work, sure. The best of Dick Chicken is not hard to find though. In the "real world" the word on the street is that Dick Chicken is a bouncer at Crash Mansion. He also has a gf called Pussy Ham. Here is a picture of them together:

HOW CUTE!

The Park Slope Co-op (and the new tees)

Does this image strike fear into your heart? Then you are one of the veggie-lovers of South Brooklyn who have fallen into the cycle of terror and panic and squash that is the Park Slope Food Coop. These nazis have taken over the town. Try this: go to google. Now type in "park slope " and look at the first potential search term: PARK SLOPE FOOD COOP.

I attempted to infiltrate their ranks when I first moved here but nooo...they would not have me. Okay, they had me but then I missed a shift working there and then I was suspended and I was all like, "Hellz no I'm not doing a double asking every SloBitch whether their avacados are organic or non-organic because there's a 13 cent difference and the SloBitch is gonna call me on it." Then I was put on alert. Then I felt ashamed of myself and left the coop in disgrace.

If your life partly revolves around salads (ahem, you know who you are) then this is a great place. Who cares that you have to work there once a month? It's worth it for the carrots. However, if you are like me and appreciate the fact that there are 343295 Chinese restaurants within six blocks of your home that you do not have to work at in order to enjoy their food then you may feel that you have other options.

Seriously, can you imagine going to your grocery store and someone saying "Sorry, you can't come in. You're suspended from eating our food." Only in Park Slope. Anyway, some genius has produced shirts to commemorate this horrible feeling of shame that comes from not doing your coop shift. Check them out.

Moishe's self storage: because you just don't have a closet

New York City is the easiest city to navigate; it's so well laid out. It's like our founding fathers knew that someday you would be drunk on W. 23rd and 7th Ave and would have no clue what to do when you had to meet someone who was also drunk and kept yelling, "I'm 6 blocks south! 6 BLOCKS SOUTH!"

However, they were founding fathers. And, as men, they did not have a lot of clothes. They weren't big shoppers. So they didn't need a lot of closet space. Flash forward to present day New York living situations and you are hard pressed to find an apartment that has more than a hall closet. FOR REAL out of towners, this is a fact. No closets in all of NYC.

That means that more and more people are turning to Moishe and his competitors to store their junk in Queens, the Bronx, and even that mythical land of Long Island. I myself just let boxes accumulate around the house but it's my understanding from the 3594372530948 subway ads that every New Yorker except for me looooves storing their belongings far away from home at the low monthly rate of $29/month.

Then again, the only time I've seen the inside of one of these NYC-based storage facilities was on T.V. and that was only when the hero discovers a body. So maybe Moishe is secretly storing bodies for all of New York. I'll just keep mine on the mantle and save myself some money, thanks M.