November 2011
1 post
Watch
August 2011
1 post
January 2010
1 post
1 tag
The Jesus Pizza
A few Sundays ago, my sister ordered a pizza and we took it over to my Grandma’s for lunch. We got it from the place down the street, where we’ve been ordering from basically our entire lives. While chewing on garlic knots and flipping between postseason NFL and Asian cooking shows, the neon yellow flier scotch taped to the pizza box caught my attention. Written in all caps was an...
August 2009
1 post
1 tag
The Meat Thief
The Meat Thief is a customer from one of the Staten Island branches. He’s a benign white guy in his 60s, maybe even his 70s, his hair’s all white and he’s got a distinguished mustache. He looks like someone who might get pissed because you’re taking too long at a golf course. And he steals meat. If you’ve never been to Staten Island, you’ll know you’re...
July 2009
1 post
1 tag
The Fourth
I hope you all had a fun Fourth of July. I didn’t. Originally I was going to work a short shift near my home, then head out to a barbecue, but at the last minute I was called to do a double shift in the city. This sort of thing happens. OTB is actually open 362 days a year, the only three excluded being Christmas, Easter, and of course, Palm Sunday. On the bottom of the totem pole,...
June 2009
1 post
1 tag
Bad Day
I’ve been busy. Last week, I had a bad day. In the traditional sense of the term, where you wake up Irish, a son of Murphy, unwavering in your adherence to his Law. Tragedies, not so much. Just several tiny catastrophes, rocks just big enough to leave ripples, bouncing off each other and distorting your reflection in so many ways you can’t even recognize yourself. A bad day....
May 2009
1 post
1 tag
REPRINT: So you want to bet at OTB...
[In honor of my one year anniversary of writing this blog, the upcoming big race, and the fact that I’m too busy to write anything new leads to this reprint from last May] The Belmont Stakes is coming up (Saturday, June 7) and Big Brown could become the first Triple Crown winner in decades, [actually now it’s June 6 and Big Brown is dead… or not racing, one or the other…]...
April 2009
7 posts
NHL Doubles Ratings from 2 to 4 (my new article) →
My Newest Article →
my new article is here →
1 tag
Staten Island
Disclaimer: I was born and raised on Staten Island and just like black people can call each other ‘nigga’ I can call other Staten Islanders ‘big dumb retards.’ Because they are. I’ll be the first to defend the many hidden pleasures of the misunderstood borough, but I won’t deny that many of those unfortunate stereotypes non-Islanders have about us are, in fact,...
my new sketch →
1 tag
Dirty Squirrel vs. Fake Guard Lady
First off, a prologue: It’s been three years to the week that I’ve been working at the OTB. It’s scary how fast the time’s gone by and how ridiculous it seems that I planned to only work there for six months or so. A co-worker congratulated me by telling me that we’d probably die together. Prologue over. Dirty Squirrel is one of the least liked—no, most...
March 2009
2 posts
New Sports on a Stick Post
Read my stuff, here:
http://www.sportsonastick.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=282
1 tag
The Bland Man
Who is the Bland Man? He is an enigma. A mystery. A man beyond conventional understanding. Or he’s just really butt ugly, I can’t tell. He’s a customer—that much is sure—but he appears at many branches. There are several customers who are multi-branchers, even cross-borough multi-branchers, but usually they stick to two or three—one near home, one near work, one...
February 2009
3 posts
1 tag
No, Man
This has absolutely nothing to do with OTB except that I saw it on my way to work, but I have no idea where else I could mention what I saw and express how it makes me feel. It’s actually a little dated, because I forgot about it until just now: So going to work Manhattan-bound on the R train I saw a movie poster on the wall of the Bay Ridge Ave terminal through the train car windows. It was...
my new article is up here →
www.sportsonastick.com
i got another article published today →
January 2009
13 posts
Shameless Plug →
This is a satricial sports website (think The Onion) that I was just published on. Check it out if you want.
1 tag
Year of the Ox
The Ox is the sign of the virtue of fortitude. Men and women born in the year of the Ox tend to be logical, intelligent and patient. They are positive and caring people, who believe that hard work is the righteous path to make one’s way through life, and are rarely driven by greed. This should have nothing to do with OTB. But, every twelve years, this year included, they become inextricably...
1 tag
George His Mother Is 84 Years Old
Working at the Brooklyn Borough Hall branch today, I had the pleasure of meeting George, a customer I’ve never seen before. I’m not sure if he’s new to the game or if we’ve just been star-crossed until now, but here we are. George is white, healthy looking and relatively clean, and seems to be in his mid to late 50s. Like your typical OTB regular, he has at least one mental...
119
Originally Written: December 8, 2008
Branch 119 is the quintessential, definitive OTB parlor. It’s one of the biggest, one of the busiest, one of the loudest, smelliest, angriest, disgusting, exciting places to place a place bet. If you really wanted to grasp the concept of everything I’ve been spewing forth up to this point, 119 is the one to visit. It’s not a coincidence this...
Eddie
Originally Written: October 26, 2008
Eddie’s a longtime customer from Bay Ridge. He’s got a slow, clear way of speaking, layered with a thick Brooklyn accent. “Gimme da TWO. On top of da FOUR. On top of da SIX TREE.” At first, I didn’t like him— I had grouped him with the other scumbag Bay Ridge goons. Eventually I realized he was harmless and just wanted to...
Circle of Complaints
Originally Written: September 10, 2008
There are two things that come out of a bettor’s mouth: bets and complaints. And smoke and pieces of food, if you want to get technical. Many of the complaints, naturally, relate to horse racing. Jockeys who held their ponies back too long, horses that wouldn’t let their jockeys ride them, tracks who messed with the odds, etc. Even when they win,...
Ghost
Originally Written: August, 4, 2008
Ghost is one of the good ones. One of the great ones. If all customers were as nice as him, the job would be so much easier and so less interesting. To be honest, I have no idea how he got his nickname. I’ve asked a few times, gotten unsatisfactory answers that I don’t remember, and then went back to my crossword puzzle. How best to describe Ghost?...
Tin Can Louie
Originally Written: July 12, 2008
This is and will most likely remain my classiest story to date, so it only makes sense that I use British English spelling rather than American if I want to do the post justice. So here now is the not-so-humourous tale of how Louie got his nickname ‘Tin Can Louie’: Decades ago, in the centre of Staten Island, Willowbrook State School was built to...
Unhappy Meals
Originally Written: June 25, 2008
Maybe because they try to put OTBs in commercial areas, but there’s always a ton of fast food joints around us. Especially Subways. Is it because there’s Subways everywhere anyway, or is it some vast backdoor conspiracy between the New York Gaming Commission and Jared Fogel? (It’s because there’s Subways everywhere anyway.) However, Subway...
State of the Union
Originally Written: June 17, 2008
In case you haven’t heard, OTB was about to be closed but then wasn’t. The politics and mechanisms behind all this is kind of complicated, so I’m not really going to go into it. Instead, I’m posting a letter I wrote to newspaper editors that was (not surprisingly) never published. It was written a couple days before we knew our fate and...
Sleeper
Originally Written: May 30, 2008
I hate Sleeper. He’s a middle-aged-going-on-senior homeless man who sleeps in people’s doorways and under cars and stuff. One time in the deli across the street I opened the fridge to take out a Vitamin Water and I saw him sleeping on the other side. I got nothing against homeless people—in fact I’m pretty passionate about the...
So you want to bet at OTB...
Originally Written: May 27, 2008
The Belmont Stakes is coming up (Saturday, June 7) and Big Brown could become the first Triple Crown winner in decades, so horse racing has been thrust in the spotlight even more so than the usual May. The Triple Crown (the Kentucky Derby, the Preekness and the Belmont Stakes) and to a lesser extent October’s Breeders’ Cup are the biggest races in the...
'Celebrities'
Originally Written: May 14, 2008
Work at an OTB long enough and eventually someone there’s gonna mention one of the celebrities who bets at their window. Usually within the first two to three minutes of working at an OTB, actually. Then after about two to three seconds of conversation, you’re disappointed by how your co-worker defines ‘celebrity.’ Sure, a few A-listers...
December 2008
5 posts
And a Happy New Year
Originally Written: December 28, 2008
I’ll make this quick. I’ve got a little post-Christmas annex post that involves, in no means a coincidence, what happened at work the day after Christmas. I’ll keep names out of it, because I have a feeling what I’ll be describing is potentially illegal. Anyway, some branches are friendlier with the customers, and some clerks are very...
Merry Christmas
Originally Written: December 18, 2008
In the spirit of the season, here’s a short vignette of what happened on a night shift earlier this week: You may have noticed that a lot of basic cable networks like to use December as a dumping ground for all their syndicated films and crappy made-for-TV movies, typically assigning these marathons a random number. (See: 25 Days of Christmas, 15 Days...
The Good Ones
Originally Written: May 8, 2008
We don’t hate all the customers. There’s a lot of decent people who just have gambling problems. (Just kidding of course, every ticket has a number for Gamblers’ Anonymous on it just in case they realize how they’ve ruined their lives mid-race.) Instead of playing the Lotto everyday, they do this. Decent is the word, here. Not normal. I...
Mumbles
Originally Written: May 6, 2008
Mumbles is one of the customers from Brooklyn. He’s in his fifties or sixties. I mean, he could be in his forties or thirties, with alcohol aging him an extra decade or two, but I doubt it. Though, I wouldn’t be surprised. Mumbles falls into a small but significant category of bettors—the drunks. As in the man is always drunk. Daytime, nightime....
1 tag
Introduction
Originally Written: May 6, 2008
First things first: I’ve never really read a blog before let alone write one, please excuse any crudeness in my evolving style. And I don’t need to be condescending or elitist there—I’ve never read blogs for a specific reason. I find individual lives extremely interesting, and with my addictive nature my life would be consumed with absorbing...