Saturday in New York

Saturday was passive-aggressive day here in New York.

I was blithely wandering around enjoying the unseasonal coolness when I ran into a street fair. It was sponsored by a soup kitchen, judging by the signs asking for donations, and one booth had a big tureen presumably to toss money in. Having an income lower than my IQ, I steered clear -- in fact, I started to wonder if maybe they had a little leftover soup or crust of bread to help a brother out.

I got about halfway through the fair when a fiftyish woman approached me. "Would you like to know more about the soup kitchen?" she asked, waving a brochure at me. Obviously she'd end with a plea for money, so I said no thanks.

She shook her head. "So tall. And such a closed mind. How did you get to be like that?"

I'm thinking by the end of the day she refined her approach to something like, "Gimme cash for the poor, buttwipe!"

I'm always annoyed by folks who criticize something but refuse to name the miscreant, so here are the gory details:

Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen

The theme continued at dinner. All my friends know how much I love fish tacos, so one gave me a gift certificate to Agave, an upscale Mexican restaurant on Seventh Avenue South, for my birthday. "Upscale" anything irritates me -- I prefer "authentic" or "unpretentious" -- but it's the thought that counts. Still, I knew something was wrong when I heard waiters assure two terrified people that no beans would appear on their plates.

I invited an old friend I hadn't seen in a while, thinking it'd be fun to catch up. I said I was going to order the tofu enchiladas and he was horrified. "She gave you that gift certificate to get fish tacos! You HAVE to get the fish tacos!" So I did, and they were awful.

I told him and he laughed. "Well, what did you expect?" he said. "You can't get good fish tacos in New York."