IPhone Nerds!

I was in the mall with Mrs Chainik Friday, just chillaxin. We bought some maternity stuff, and I am just going to have to take my wife's word for it that simply buying normal stuff in larger sizes will not be sufficient.

While we were there, we passed by a group of hippies sitting in lawn chairs in front of the Gymboree. This confused me, as I hadn't heard that Phish was reuniting and playing the Freehold Raceway Mall (which has its own Wiki page? of course it does, what doesn't?). More hippies and nerds of various descriptions lined the walls of the mall. The mystery was solved when I got to the Apple store and remembered about the iPhone (looks like Apple has an employee in charge of editing wiki pages).

I went into the Apple Store to look around. I've never been to an Apple store before but I figured it couldn't be very different than any other of the countless computer stores I've ever been in. Boy was I wrong.

Have you ever seen an iPod? It was like that but in retail form. Everything was clean and white and perfectly proportioned and beautifully lit. The bright lights illuminated squeaky clean, helpful, knowledgable, interestingly multiculti staff. I looked at some of the computers there. Did you know that Apple laptops only have one mouse button? How the hell does that work? And the computers look pretty, like desk lamps designed by Frank Gehry. What in the hell? Computers need to look big and clunky and kludgy and functional, like they came out of the boiler room of a Russian submarine. This place looked like Dell had been bought by Ikea.

What a good metaphor. I need to write that down somewhere.

My cellphone is the Motorola Q. It's PC based, with Windows CE (which means it crashes about three times a week, badum-pshh!). It's very awesomely cool, and I get compliments on it wherever I go.

Okay, that last part was a filthy rotten lie. But I still like having a cellphone with an enormous screen and a full sized keyboard and a 1.3 megapixel camera and rotten battery life and the ability to hack into the registry and change stuff.

Mrs Chainik couldn't understand why people would stand in line for a $500 cellphone.

The lonely, misunderstood life of a nerd, I suppose. If only they had girlfriends.

On a related note, some lady in Texas decided to buy a whole big bunch of iPhones so she could sell them on eBay. She got $10,000 in cash and drove to an Apple store, where she paid the nerd who was first in line $800 cash to take his place.

The punchline?

Apple, unlike Sony, placed a 1-per-customer limit on purchases the first day to ensure everyone got one. Mwahahahaha, lady got iPowned. Watch the video here:

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Havel Havelim #122 is up.

Good stuff, maybe the best one yet. Check out this post from blog-I've-never-heard-of Circus Tent: Money talks at BMG (the other gimmel tamuz)

I was wondering what shaichus a (not the... there is no the) Satmer Rebbe had to the BMG. The comments, as always when you get to any sinas chinam post, are fascinating.

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Restaurant Meme (in which I cheat).

It's the restaurant meme, yay!

Add a direct link to the post below the person who tagged you. Include the city/state and country you're in.

Jacob Da Jew

Lakewood, New Jersey, USA

List the top five favorite places to eat at your location.

(Which doesn't parse very well. Maybe "the top five favorite places in your locale." Or perhaps "your five favorite local eateries". See? It's awkward.)

Anyway, Lakewood (Ir Hakodesh) doesn't exactly overflow with restaurants, which is incredibly odd to a person coming from Flatbush, as I am. Nevertheless, I was able to assemble six good places.

In no particular order:

J II Pizza:

This is one of the few places in Lakewood that could survive on its own merits in a more cutthroat restaurant environment, like Brooklyn for example. The pizza is good, New York style pizza- thick, chewy crust, thin dough that gives a satisfying snap! when you fold the slice in half, plenty of cheese, and good sauce. They have an adequate selection of pizza toppings, like green pepper, red pepper, onion, chewy canned tin flavored mushroom-like food product, and onion. You can also get calzones, cheese pretzels, and what is in my opinion the best falafel in Lakewood. The new location is huuuuge (by Lakewood standards) and looks nice. Seven out of ten.

Glatt Bite:

Good old fashioned fast food. Wants to be Kosher Delight when they grow up. They never will be, but it isn't bad. The lunch specials are incredible- a huge amount of food for a reasonable price. Get the Double Delight with Fries and a Small Drink for something like six or seven bucks. Also, try the sesame chicken, the pastrami schnitzel, the hot wings, and the chicken ceasar salad. Stay the hell away from the fung wong guy and the beef ceasar salad. Six point five out of ten.

SubStation:

The first kosher sandwich place located in a gas station in America, to my knowledge. A foot long sub (deli, schnitzel, steak, or grilled chicken) is like eight bucks, and comes with unlimited
toppings. The bread is delicious, not the flavorless meat-and-vegetable container most sandwich places give you. The cholent is flavorless. Never ever order the egg roll. Six point five out of ten.

Circa-NY:

The morons who run this place looked at Lakewood and saw a town full of hungry snobby Jews desperate for a restaurant where they could see and be seen, and responded with a beautiful, soulless place which is like the Soviet Union's version of Orchidea- whatever you want, they're out of, but LOOK AT THAT DECOR, WILL YOU, I BET IT COSTS A FAWTUNE, IT'S GAWGOUS, GEVALT I FEEL MAMESH LIKE A ROCKEFELLAH!

Then why is Circa on this list? Simple: Their world class sushi bar. Better than Tea for Two. I recommend the Lakewood roll. Eight out of ten.

Pittaleh:

From it's top secret, highly classified location (in the parking lot behind the jewelery store across from the post office between the refrigerator and the wall), Pittaleh makes the best schwarma in New Jersey, possibly the country. That's right, I said it: it's better than Famous Pita. All pita and lafa is made on -site, and they keep it in a Styrofoam thingy so its warm. Mrs. Chainik is partial to the schnitzel. Nine point two five out of ten (they lose points for not having falafel... in a freaking Yemenite/Israeli restaurant).

Tasty Bite:

Pretentious and annoying women living off their Tatty's money while their husbands drink coffee in the BMG and smoke and shmooze love Tasty Bite. Since firing all the nasty waitresses and hiring all of Uncle Mike's old staff, service has done a 180, going from "worse than a Ben Yehuda coffee shop" all the way to "deserves a higher-than-usual tip". A tip, btw, is added to your bill, because these nasty JAPs do not have the requisite empathy and/or brainpower to understand the concept of tipping. Go on Wednesdays; they have a Couples' Special: two salads, two entrees, two drinks, and two deserts for thirty bucks. For bonus funny points, watch the yeshiva boys come in and try and get the couples special.

Tasty Bite allegedly has sushi but they are always out of sushi whenever we go there. Try the nachos. The teriyaki salmon and the greek salad are both excellent. The cheesecake is less so. Seven out of ten.

Yes, that's actually six restaurants. So sue me. I'm a nonconformist, baby.

Dishonorable mentions:

Falafel and Chips

Effin' Chips is actually not that bad, but the place is unbelievably filthy. To walk in there is to contract a minor but annoying GI infection. Try the cholent, but not during summertime.

Summertime is when the bacteria come out to play.

Negative three out of ten.

Kol Tuv Pizza at the Capital Hotel

The Crapital is the worst food vendor to ever exist in Lakewood, and if you've ever eaten at the now-defunct Madison Pizza you'd know that that is one heck of a contest. If you have to choose between eating a falafel from The Crapital or starving to death, go with The Crapital... but think long and hard if its worth it. Negative seventeen out of ten.

Now, I'm supposed to tag five lucky bloggers, but I doubt I have that bug a readership. Five? What am I, Instapundit?

Here goes:

Brooklyn Wolf

Ahistoricality

Dofun Akuma

Da Litvak

And... oh... I don't know

Rubin.

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