The MTA can’t coherently explain why entire lines are taken out of service with no notice. A little menstrual blood on an L train seat would attract about as much notice to them as it would to me if I bothered noticing that the McDonald’s trash wafting around my subway station suddenly contained a napkin from Domino’s.

Dr. Zizmor, who looks like he could be the COO of the Island of Dr. Moreau, is a dermatologist who has been advertising on the subway for, literally, decades. I defy anyone to tell me that his before and after acne ads have nothing to do with excretory activities.

What is that art piece hanging to Jeannie’s right? Did the Major scotch tape six handguns to a piece of red felt? Did Jeannie?

Don’t you think it’s interesting that at least 20% of his donors (two people) are in Atlanta? I wonder what the connection is. Did he go to Emory or something?

Speaking of Chair, I hope everyone has seen Comedy Central’s “Another Period.” You can stream it from their website.

The tip sheet to the Saturday night jai alai games down in Newport.

I’m pretty sure people with military backgrounds are preferred candidates for most if not all police forces. And tons of POs are in the National Guard and regularly rotate into foreign war zones. I don’t know that the Virginia ABC force would necessarily need someone who did a couple of tours of duty in Fallujah or…

You know, God bless, but I lived in DC for a while in a black community. My husband is black (and his mother was a DC native) and I can just imagine her and her relatives dealing with the white-guilt do-gooders with the upspeak. “So we [we?] decided to? Bring healthy food? To Ward 8?” “The White Man’s Burden” indeed.

I have no useful advice but I’ll pass along this:

I just learned recently that Thomas Jefferson invented the swivel chair, without which modern cubicle life would be impossible. It is thought that he wrote “The Declaration of Independence” while sitting in one. So the USA has that going for it!

These are not new and probably you and everyone else has already read them but I loved Special Topics in Calamity Physics and A Visit From the Goon Squad and Heft. Loved them. And for non fiction just read everything by Erik Larson and by Bill Bryson, if you haven’t already. That should keep you busy!

You’re too late with your Apothecary hipster bar. Damien Hirst and Matthew Freud pretty much did it in London in 1998.

I am very late but wanted to address two very important points that you brought up:

No, pies all year long! I’m inept, so I make crumbles (there’s a crust on the bottom, and then some more crust on top, and they’re easier big delicious gooey messes.) I am also not ashamed to sometimes use canned fruit so apple, peach, blueberry, any and all of it 365 days a year.

I think what’s really important here is that I’m in the process of shifting clothes around now that it’s getting cooler and I have both of those sweaters. Like many men I never throw any clothes away and if it was good enough to wear during the GHW Bush administration it’s good enough to wear today. Hell, I may be…

I would run for president as an unpaid intern as long as someone provided lunches and a discounted MetroCard/Amtrak vouchers. I know PowerPoint!

I love time shifting stuff like this.

I checked out Machurian Candiate myself. Lawrence Harvey was born in 1928, and Angela Lansbury in 1925. So three years!

She was only three years older than her son in The Manchurian Candidate. Although I don’t recommend that movie for children.