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Smoking-Pipe-1263579

Put that in Your Pipe

Everyone wants to be a leader. Bloomberg is the leader of the smoking Nazis: "Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed legislation into law today that bans smoking in many public spaces around the five boroughs. Under the new law, smoking will be banned in the city's 1,700 parks and 14 miles of public beaches. City pools and recreation centers will also be smoke free. The bill bans smoking in city pedestrian plazas, like in Times Square, as well." Link. I detest cigarette smoke, but this kind of legislation can be explained with only one word: pettiness. Its advocates are neo-Puritans, kept awake at night with the fear that somebody, somewhere, might be having fun--or having a smoke in a place that might possibly, maybe once or twice a year, touch their nostrils for a millisecond, thereby throwing them into a tizzy for the next 72 hours, as they grouse around, complaining to their acquaintances about the vileness of it all. To Bloomberg and his ilk: I loathe your pettiness. I bought a humidor and a batch of cigars last Summer. I give them to my male clients when they come to the office. But now I think I'm going to start buying cartons of cigarettes and leave them lying around high school campuses, just in hopes I'll hook a new generation of smokers to torture the Bloombergites. * * * * * * * Idiocy Redux. Do you have any guilty pleasures, things you enjoy but hate to admit it? It could be almost anything: disco, Oprah, LA Clippers. Here's one of mine: Beavis and Butthead. I probably watched fewer than a dozen episodes back in the 1990s, but those morons cracked me up every time (is that the sound of hundreds of loyal TDE readers removing this site from their bookmarks?). Imagine how stoked I was to see that the duncical cartoon is scheduled to return later this year. Link. Aside: I also greatly enjoyed the cult movie Idiocracy. I didn't realize that its director is the same guy, Mike Judge, who created B&B. * * * * * * * West Side, South of 57th. In preparation for my upcoming trip, I'm reading everything I can about New York. Last night, I ran across this interesting item: Nobody seems to know how "Hell's Kitchen" got its name, but it's probably named after a 19th-century gang of hoodlums. Link.

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