The Accidental Breakdancer

The body is a gyroscopic miracle. Even my body. Even yours. 

I know this because I was in New York’s Penn Station the other night, talking on the phone to my wife. There was an unexpected hangup as Kathy and I were saying goodbye, so I was sending her a text to explain. (This is not the miracle. This is just me setting the scene.) I’ve got my phone in my hand, my earbuds are still in my ears from the conversation, my backpack is around one shoulder. It’s a warm night; warmer inside the station than outside. My thumb is telling Kathy to say hi to our ferret, Charlie.

Behind me, as I text, I hear a buzzing. “Excuse me, sir.” Bzzzzzz. “Excuse me, sir?” Buzzzzzz. I don’t know what this is, but I do know I’m out of the way, tucked into the side of the hallway, leaning against the wall. There are a bunch of late-night commuters walking past, so I assume the voice is talking to someone else. I look behind me anyway, because you never know.

It’s a guy riding one of Penn Station’s floor-polishing zambonis, basically the size of a golf cart, moving slowly toward me. 

I startle. I realize he is talking to me, and he needs me to get out of the way. He’s hugging the wall, same as I am. I reach down to pick up the bottle of water and the banana at my feet. There is literally a banana peel at my feet, but it is wrapped around a banana, so I don’t immediately clue in to the type of situation I’m in. I am still holding my phone in my hand, its earbuds connected to my head. My backpack, loaded down with a Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook, a bag of dice, a crime novel, a notebook, and a half-dozen comic books, is slung over one shoulder. It is full of the pressed pulp of dead trees; it isn’t light.

I’ve got one hand free to grab the banana and the water bottle. The backpack is keeping me off-balance, but I manage to lean over and pick up both items with my left hand, like some sort of boardwalk claw-machine miracle. This is a feat any schoolkid could do. I feel like an acrobat. 

As I start to stand upright. bringing the banana and bottle up from the floor, my glasses slide down my nose and off of my head. Warm night; sweaty bald man.

The polishing zamboni maintains its approach.

I have my phone in my right hand. I have my backpack over my shoulder. There is a banana and a water bottle in my other hand. I am off balance. I am bending over again. I am on one foot. There is a zamboni bearing down on me.

I try to slip my phone into my shirt pocket to free my hand. The pocket is unhelpfully horizontal, rather than at its normal vertical orientation, because I have bent over at the waist. I am balancing on one foot. I don’t remember putting my other foot up, but I am on one foot. I think it’s to counterbalance the backpack, pulling me to the right. Toward the zamboni. The inexorable zamboni. I think about my crime novel. Cause of death: Inexorable zamboni.

The guy driving, dreadlocked and smiling, says, “Take your time, take your time, man.” He’s chill, but he’s not stopping. And my glasses are on the tiles he’s about to polish. 

Somehow, bent forward and on one leg like an impossible backpacked flamingo, I manage to slide my phone into my horizontal shirt pocket. With my now-free hand, I bat at my glasses, my fingers suddenly unwilling to grip. The glasses move a few inches, still in the zamboni path. I teeter from the effort, a middle-aged example of Newton’s third law. Swat glasses, wobble: an equal and opposite reaction. The weight of my backpack sends me listing to the right. I flap my arms like a cartoon duck that realizes he can’t fly. I spiral toward the floor, Swan Lake–style.

A second swat sends my glasses out of the path of the zamboni and toward the center of the corridor, where people are rushing to catch their trains. I jettison my cargo: Backpack, banana, bottle all gone. I spring after my glasses among all the high heels and sandals. Did my upraised flamingo foot ever touch the ground, or was it a one-legged spiraling leap? Grainy Penn Station security camera footage will have to tell the tale.

Afterward, it’s all anticlimax. My glasses back on my head, the backpack around my shoulder, the bottle and banana tucked within. Phone miraculously still in my pocket.

“Take it easy, man,” the zamboni guy says. “Don’t hurt yourself.”

I wake up in the morning and wonder why I’m sore.

Rob

At least it wasn't a cricket.

This morning I was on the train, trying to concentrate on a little editing, when I heard a little voice.

"Rob? Rob?"

It was saying other stuff, too, but I couldn't make it out. But I heard my name, clear as day.

I'd just gotten off the phone with Kathy, so I checked my cell to make sure we weren't somehow still connected, despite my having hung up and closed the phone. No dice; it wasn't my phone.

I checked my mp3 player. I've heard voices from it before, but it's never said my name. But I'd been listening to a podcast, so it would have been speech, at least.

But, nothing.

So I thought, This is how my mind finally snaps. At least I'll have someone to talk to.

And then I heard the woman in front of me talking on her cell phone. She mentioned someone named Rob, and I realized it must have been the person she was talking to that had said my name. Twice. Miles away.

So good news! I have super hearing!

Rob

Rob's Temporary New Adventures

Yesterday, my mom told me I should blog more. Since my posting has dropped off, she has no idea what's been going on with my life. So, by popular-mama demand, here are today's Adventures in Temping.

It's my first day at this place, so I really don't want to be late. I wake up early (on my drive to the train station, the raido told me what time the sun would be rising) and take a train that will get me into the city an hour before start time, allowing me time for a leisurely breakfast at the shop where I would get my traditional Steve McQueen before going into work. New work, same shop -- I just turn left and walk two blocks. It's good to see the owners and cooks, and for once I have a coffee and sit down, and work on a little One-Eyed Jack to get to Mike. Then, sandwich eaten and coffee half-done, I stand up to get to work a little bit before on-time.

And the belt buckle pops off my belt. Or rather, the edge of my belt that's supposed to stay affixed to the buckle comes free, leaving the belt hanging awkwardly open around my waist. It's happened before, and ever since it was first fixed it hasn't gripped as well. So I leave the shop and pull the belt off on the sidewalk. I try to fix it right there, but can't manage it, so I stuff it in my bag, hoping to fix it later in the day.

Happily, my pants stay up.

I get to work, and to my relief, the job I'll be doing is a sitting-down sort of job. (Otherwise I'd be working all day to make sure no one saw my Simpsons boxers.) What I'm doing is examining neurological textbooks, going illustration-by-illustration, determining which of these charts and diagrams and photographs need to have their reprint permissions secured before the books are posted online. It's not hard work, but it has to be done with care, since the citations I'm transferring to the art log can come attached to five authors and are citing journal articles with titles like "Recovery from axial apraxia in the lateral hypothalamic labyrinthectomized rat reveals three elements of contact-righting: caphalocaudal dominance, axial rotation, and distal limb action." (My doctor pal Christoph knows I'm not kidding, and is probably shaking his head in recognition. He has my deepest, deepest sympathies.)

On the plus side, I learned the word "labyrinthectomised," (possibly with a Z, as it was spelled in that title), which as far as I can tell, means taught to run through a maze. Or maybe "removed from a maze" (since the ecto root means removed, if I recall correctly). Or heck, maybe "having had a maze removed from one's body". Which seems impossible, but I bet ER surgeons can tell you stories: "Yeah, last Friday this guy came in, he had two dozen word searches shoved up his ass. Not one of em completed."

So anyway, I did that for a while. Pretty much all day. Which is why when I got home, I cracked open a beer pretty much first thing.

Ahhh...

Rob

Brother, Can You Spare A Cap To Bust In Your Ass?

Just enough time for a quick post while I take my lunch:

I’m on the train home last night, nearly three hours before the last-call-for-homebound-drunks train at quarter to two. And yet, in this none-too-crowded NJ Transit car, one finds me. He’s an older guy, and he apparently want to go to Atlantic City (which the train does not go to). Or Philadelphia (which the train does not go to). Or Hamilton (which the train does go to, but somehow this also dismays him. “Not Hamilton,” he says. “HAMILTON. In South Jersey.” Ohhh-kay.) We discuss a few different ways he can get to wherever he’s going. I have little confidence he could pull any of them off.

Apparently he’s lost his debit card, and some of his money (I’d have thought all of it, though through some transaction with a none-too-sympathetic conductor, he manages to buy a ticket). And he also can’t use his cell phone. Perhaps he broke it, since he mentions he needs to go to the Radio Shack in Hamilton (or wherever) to get a new one, but he also mentions something about “not being able to see the numbers,” which I find entirely plausible.

He carries with him a Starbucks bag with a pound of ground coffee, and an assortment of other plastic bags, which he arrays along the aisle next to him, between him and me.

The conversation bounces along, and I quickly resign myself to not reading about Spider-Man as I had planned. Eventually, my new friend says to me, “If I robbed you, you’d have to give me all your money.”

“You don’t want to rob me,” I say.

He cuts me off, somehow offended by the subject that he brought up. “Oh, I ain’t gonna rob you. I don’t even have a gun.”

“And I am a master of karate,” I tell him.

“But if I could impinge on your generosity to give me a little of your money,” he says.

“Sir, I’m unemployed.” I say. “I need what money I’ve got.” He looks me over, and I don’t look unemployed to him. Meanwhile, he looks to me like a guy who the fates have given precisely what he's been asking for all his life.

“But you can work,” he says. “You’re young.”

We go on like this for a minute or two, until a conductor announces that people getting off at my stop will have to file up to the front of the train. So I gather my things, wish him good luck, and happily take my leave of him.

When I’m walking on the platform, I catch sight of a conductor helping him off the train. So, I think, hustling to my car before he spies me, now this guy is lurking around near my town, threatening to rob people he intends to just to ask for money. The hamhanded panhandler of New Jersey Transit.

Rob

Rain, Rain, Go Eff Yourself

Upon exiting Penn Station this morning, the first of a considerable stretch of freelancing, I discovered that my umbrella had pretty much decided to give up the ghost. So, considering the fact that the sky was dumping 50-gallon drums of rain on me from every angle, I decided to make a desperate little purchase from one of the many helpful umbrella salesmen that sprout like mushrooms when skies turn gray. And considering how big the rain was, I decided to go for one of the bigger umbrellas. He kind of had me over a barrel, and I paid ten bucks for it. But it was a big umbrella, the kind you can comfortably fit a second person underneath if need be.

I walked to my place of temporary business, stopping on the way to get my customary egg whites/hot sauce/whole wheat toast sandwich that for some reason I've taken to calling "the Steve McQueen" in my head. When I got to the little deli, I noticed one of the guys up on a ladder trying to keep the place from flooding. One of the big ceiling tiles was gone, and water was pouring out of the hole. This guy, meanwhile, was trying to attach a hefty bag to the ceiling with some red Christmas ribbon. You go to war with the army you have, I guess.

McQueen in hand, I wished them good luck and went to work.

Later on, I brought my umbrella outside for a walk to lunch to celebrate our friend Mike actually leaving the magazine voluntarily. (I know!) Not five seconds out the door, a gust of wind turns my brand new umbrella inside out, rendering it useless as anything but a warning to other umbrella shoppers. I stuff the warning in a trashcan, and it stretches out its cone of useless nylon ominously at passersby. By the time we get back from lunch, the umbrella is gone -- probably flipped back around and sold to another rube.

Rob

My Tribe

Walking up the steps out of Penn Station this morning, I passed a man riding the escalator down. He looked to be in his mid-fifties. We were both wearing Phillies caps. We shook hands as we passed each other. "All the way," he said.

Best moment of the day, today. It usually is, when a stranger takes a moment to shake your hand.

Rob

Sorry, Right Number

I left my phone on the train. It fell out of my pocket, and headed south.

So when I got home, I called it. And thankfully, someone picked up.

This person did not speak English. And try as I might to get him to hand the phone to someone who I could communicate with (I recognized a few words in Spanish in what he was saying, and used what little Spanish I could muster, although now I realize I was saying "Please say my telephone to someone who speaks English" instead of "please give my telephone"), he seemed either unable to understand me or just unwilling to hand my phone over to anyone else. Hey, free phone.


Crapshacks. I think I have to get a new phone.

Rob

Old Dog

Thirty-eight is too goddamn old to be learning how to drive.

Rob

Vacation Overload

So we’re driving to North Carolina this weekend—the last leg of our first-and-only August Vacation Overload. Three vacations in a month, scheduled so close together to accommodate a lot of diverse schedules. Speaking for myself, my wife, and our two lonely ferrets, We Will Not Do This Again. We’ve had fun on our trips, but it’s not so much fun doing laundry from the suitcase to load it into a backpack to unload it, wash it again and load it into a suitcase. And I hate seeing Gus and She-Devil settle into their comfortable routine in our living room, knowing that in a few days they’ll be having to adjust to new surroundings again.

This is wearying on a number of different levels, even before we get to the ten hours of driving.


But ten hours of driving is exactly what’s looming in our future. Luckily, we’re breaking it up, stopping over with family on the way down, and friends on the way back. But that’s still a lot of driving, and we’re taking Kathy’s car because she has air conditioning. My car used to have air conditioning, but it’s been fixed and refilled a few times now and somehow the freon keeps leaking and I’m sick of wasting the money and putting freon into the world for no good reason and anyway my windows roll down so screw it.

(Years ago, my family had a car with a broken A/C and windows that could no longer roll down. My friend Chris and I took it car shopping one July day; it was our only way to the dealerships. At every red light, we opened both doors wide so we could get some sort of a breeze through the sweltering hotbox of the Reliant. It was so hot I was actually slowing down so I would miss green lights. When we stepped out of the car, it looked like we were climbing out of a swimming pool.)

Anyway, we’re taking Kathy’s car. Which has one obstacle:A stick shift.

So I suggested that this week we trade cars, so I can drive to work in her car and get used to the controls, since it’s really unfair and impractical to make her do all the driving for this vacation. And if there’s one thing I know, it’s that it’s easier to seep into my unconscious mind when I’m sleepy than at any other time of the day.

So this long post all comes down to the one point I wanted to make: There was a little bit of nervousness to my morning because of the stick shift, but nowhere near the white-knuckle terror of parking in the Canyonero.

This was really going to be a one-sentence post. Boy, did it go off the rails.

Rob

Cocooned

A couple of weeks ago, I downloaded Kevin Church's mix, Music For Reading 001. It's ambient music of the sort that plays on Echoes on xpn. Music I never had much use for, to be honest, because Echoes was always on the radio late at night, and it would always lull me into sleep while I was driving. I can hear the deejay's dulcet tones: "I'm John Diliberto, and you're listening to Echoes, music to scrape the guardrail by." So smooth you're dead afterward.

But this mix... it's something else. The music is the same sort of ambient (Ambien?) stuff, but the context in which I'm listening to it makes all the difference. Instead of controlling a ton of bone-crushing machinery, I'm sitting on a train. I read for a little bit, as Kevin suggests... and then I put the book or comic down and close my eyes.

The first time I did this, the conductor had to bang on the train window to wake me up. I was in the soundest sleep I've ever had on a train. It was winter-coat, cocooned bliss. Since then I've queued up the mix a half dozen times, and each time found myself drifting off as the music drowns out the other passengers, including a cell-phone woman next to me this morning. It's wonderful.

And waking up with these swirling, engulfing sounds in your ears? It's like being born into a science fiction movie. Everything is new. For a while, you have a hard time distinguishing which sounds come from life and which are only in the headset. I keep the music going through my walk through Penn Station, only switching to other, more worldly stuff as I emerge onto the New York City streets. I drift past the pretzel stands and magazine shop neon, my eyes full of wonder.

One word of caution: This mix is powerful stuff. Don't listen while operating heavy machinery. Prepare to take the train to the end of the line.

Rob

Putting the Sub in Subway

I heard on the traffic & transit report on the radio this morning that the B & D lines were suspended.

I didn't know there were B&D trains! I'll have to grab a studded collar and ball gag and head on down.

Rob

Ho Ho Hurrrkkk!

A nice little train ride home, at 10:30 last night. I caught one of NJ Transit's fairly new double decker trains -- a rare treat for me. Plus, I had new comics to read; always a plus. And there were some tween girls a few seats ahead of me, every now and then singing Christmas carols, but not being obnoxious about it. They wore reindeer antlers. It was nice.

Then, as the train stopped in Newark, someone either stepped onto the train and started vomiting, or just sat there and started vomiting. However it happened, we couldn't see him; we could only hear. Loud, heaving...um, heaving. The entire upper deck of the train cringed as a single unit.

Eventually the heaving stopped; the people would could see out the windows said the guy was escorted off the train.

As we got moving again, the conductor walked up into our car, and said "I bet you all could hear that."

"The whole train could hear it," someone said.

"Well, I'll say one thing for the guy," said the conductor. "He sure chews his food well."

Rob

I Need Happymaking!

Ugh.

After a long night of D&D this Friday, we pulled off the turnpike on our way home and noticed that a) my check gauges light was on; b) there was a funny smell; c) my car's hood was smoking; and d) my temperature gauge was through the roof. So we pulled into the driveway, opened the hood, and found coolant all over.

The next day we refilled the coolant and drove it to our mechanic. He replaced the radiator on Monday, and that was that.

That's what I was hoping, anyway. I noticed a strange, fishy smell as I pulled into the driveway after work last night, but thought nothing of it. This morning, as I was climbing floor after floor of my parking garage, I heard some sort of grinding sound. I opened the hood once I parked (missing my train as I looked), and noticed, yes, coolant leaking all over. I restarted the car briefly, and the temperature gauge was nearing the danger zone.

Whatever the busted radiator was, it didn't bust on its own. It was a symptom of some other problem. Hopefully that will be fixed tomorrow, and I can drive this car a while further down the road.

Until then, I need happymaking.

Rob

Egg FU

My usual breakfast stop has changed managership (as a lot of immigrant-run businesses do; I think person A goes back to the old country while person B takes the reins here, and then vice-versa -- or should I say Visa versa?) and has decided to raise the price on my egg-white & hot sauce sandwich (at first offering the specious claim that two egg whites cost more than two eggs, and then just flat-out telling me I'm not paying enough). So, I'm pricing egg-white sandwiches, to see if I can get one cheaper than $2. I'll show them... I'll show them all!

Rob

A Boot Full of Blood

A train was stuck in the tunnel that connects Penn Station to New Jersey at rush hour tonight. No sense griping in these situations, and waiting around only gets you frustrated, and then onto the most crowded train you've ever been on in your life. So I delayed my commute and went to see a movie. Lemons, meet sugar and water.


I was just able to make* No Country For Old Men, the new Coen Brothers picture, based on a Cormac McCarthy novel. It's tense and terrifying. It concerns a Vietnam vet (Josh Brolin) who finds the carnage after a drug deal gone sour, and a satchel full of money. There's an assassin sent after him, played by Javier Bardem, who's probably the most disconcerting serial killer since Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs. Meanwhile, Tommy Lee Jones plays the aging sheriff piecing the whole case together and fighting his own repulsion by the crimes he faces.

I don't want to say much more yet, but it's certainly one of the best movies I've seen all year -- and one of the Coens' best films, period.

Rob
*Actually, I missed a minute or three of the opening monologue. A perfect reason to see it again!

Is It Just Me?

Whenever I make my sleepy-eyed way out of Penn Station to walk to work, I'm confronted with a billboard across the street. Lately, the most prominent one has been for a shoe company, Aerosoles.

And every time—every time!—I see that logo, I misread it as "Arseholes."

Rob

Weekend Update

Warning: This post rambles like whoever it is that sings “Ramblin’ Man” that I’m too lazy to look up right now. Strap yourself in: It’s going to be a bumpy post.

Coming off a good weekend today. It started out early, strangely enough, with a train delay. Somehow fate had contrived to seat me in the same booth as a woman I talk to on the platform and one of her friends, and we had a good conversation about horror movies at 8-something in the morning, As they described some horrific details of Hostel, and I mentioned some skeevy goings-on in The Ruins, I had to wonder—was anyone listening to us?

I’m reminded of a line from Jo Carol Pierce’s musical, Bad Girls Upset by the Truth: “Friends are great, but to have a truly exciting life, you must have strangers.” Here’s to that.

Saturday night, Kathy & I hit TheatreSource’s Estrogenius festival for the closing night of the Week One one-acts. Our friend Jen Thatcher had written a play for it, and it was good to see her and her husband Jesse (and their friends Greg and Beth) for dinner and theater. In between, we caught some talented singers busking at Washington Square, and Jesse explained some math priciples to us (including how the sum of a certain infinite sequence of numbers comes out to Pi squared over six, which is brilliant in a way that only Jesse can see).

The festival provided a fun night of plays, with Jen’s “The Wedding (Re)Gift” being one of the strongest of the night—it was written and acted very naturalistically, about a very human problem (a couple’s marriage gets off to a rocky start). It was funny and genuine, and well-acted by Denise Fiore and Elon Rutberg.

The other standouts were “Swan Song,” a heartfelt musical about aging and caregiving by Andrew Frank and Doug Silver, and “After People” by Fiona Jones, which absolutely kicked my eyeballs in. Set in a post-apocalyptic future, a group of clone-grown women are setting about to rebuild the devastated planet. It sounds like too big a concept to fit into a one-act, but Jones narrows the focus perfectly on a specific problem, with implications for the future of society as a whole. The ensemble (Elizabeth Rosengren, Carla Hayes, Judy W. Chen, D’Vorah Bailey and Brie Eley, directed by Mhari Sandoval) buzzed around the stage with urgency and purpose, deflty handling the exposition necessary in a piece like this without ever making it seem like an information-dump. It was a great piece to close out the night with, and has enormous potential for expansion to a full length play or a movie.

Afterward, there was a week-one closing party at the Source, and we hung around gabbing until a lucky glance at the time made us realize we’d have to scamper to make the last train home to NJ. After trying unsuccessfully to get a cab, we’d just resolved to hoof it back to Penn Station when I spotted one as we were crossing the street. We made it just as the train started boarding, and were able to get seats together.

The train ride home was terrifically entertaining, as a cluster of drunks had gotten on the wrong train and were asking every conductor where they should get off, and what their next step should be. Then they’d forget about whatever their plan was, and ask again. I heard the leader of the bunch, a white guy with long greasy island-style braids, say to his friend, “If you weren’t so sober, you’d be fuckin’ bombed.” Words to live by. Anyhow, they planned to get off in Rahway, then passed that station. Then they planned to leave at Metropark, but didn’t get off when we did. I don’t doubt they saw the nightlife in Trenton by the time the night was over.

Yesterday was some much-needed yardwork, and some little-needed extra eating. I’m glad the tabloids don’t stalk me like they do Britney and Lindsay, or else I’d be in some sort of ankle bracelet for that bowl of ice cream and spoonsful of peanut butter I couldn’t resist. Stupid human! Stupid! Stupid!

And then, this morning—the guy I’m sitting next to on the train asks me about the comic I’m reading (the excellent Sandman Mystery Theatre) and suddenly we’re off and running on a nice conversation on comics and the direct market and commentary and all sorts of stuff. Turns out he’s the boyfriend of Cheryl Lynn of Digital Femme fame. Thanks for the conversation, Jay—hopefully I’ll see you on the train again sometime.

See what I mean about strangers?

Rob

Terror at Ten M.P.H.

I love roller coasters. The climb, the drop, the speed – the undercuts and the loops, even the oddball cartoon characters telling you how tall you have to be (the heightist bastards!) to enjoy this essential human right, first codified in the Magna Carta, I believe.

They’re exhilarating. They’re a rush. But they’ve lost the capacity to truly terrify me.

You see, I just took my first drive in a borrowed truck today. Through some accident of fate, a misalignment of the stars to a degree not seen since Lawrence Olivier did a guest-stint on Mama’s Family, Toyota has seen fit to loan me a Tundra, which I may alternately refer to as the Big Ass Truck.

Now, I drive a Chevy Cavalier. Kathy drives a Saturn. So we don’t even have much opportunity to ride in vehicles so tall, let alone drive them.

So for my first trip? I took it to the train station. I had to get to work, you see.

Now, my train station is a popular train station in New Jersey, drawing tons of commuters onto Amtrak and NJ Transit every day. There’s just not enough land available to park all those cars next to each other, so the station did what any station would do in those circumstances: They stack the cars on top of each other, via a parking garage.

Now, I knew height would be an issue. So for the past few days, I’ve looked for Tundras and similar pickups in the garage, and I’ve seen them. So I figured I’d be fine.

Still, when confronted with a sign telling me to the inch what the clearance is, I had to make a quick estimation in my head (I couldn’t find the clearance in the materials I was given). Coming up short (a good thing), I drove on in. But then, on the first turn, a second sign greeted me. Six-eleven, I think – more than a foot lower than my first estimate.

My knees were knocking, but experience had already showed me that the truck would fit, right? Right. Drive. Put your foot down on the pedal. Press the gas.

And slowly, I did. And the truck fit, probably with six inches to spare.* But even knowing it was fitting, and was very unlikely to stop fitting any time soon, I crept up the ramp, at 5 mph, then zooming up to 10 and maybe even 15. No one was behind me, although I was worried I’d miss the train I’d thought I’d left myself more than enough time to catch.

And every single support of the ceiling above me, spaced about five feet apart, looked like it would take my head off. Not the cab roof -- my head. So not only am I driving, I’m ducking as I go. I didn’t want to be found headless in a borrowed truck. The paperwork would be overwhelming.

Finally, upon finding no parking spaces down below, I emerged into the clear blue sky, and a nearly-empty roof deck. I parked the truck, looked at how far it was sticking out, parked it again, and then ran down to catch my train.

My neck and shoulders are cramped and knotted, but at least I’ll remember where I parked.

Rob

*Actually, about 5 and a half.

Maybe I should see a shrink

Because, man, I've got rage.

It's usually road rage, just shouting at some schmuck who can't hear me and doesn't care. Usually the only person who hears it is Kathy, and I'm going to try to avoid that in the future, because the last time really freaked me out. I just shouted something really suddenly, then just as suddenly realized how startling it must have been and spent the rest of the drive apologizing. She doesn't need to be put through that.

After all, what else are blogs for?

So I'm on the train from New York to New Jersey, and this guy--this bag of crap in a suit--keeps yammering on his cell phone right behind me. Like a lot of people on cell phones, he's got no indoor voice. And I'm trying to read, and I can't concentrate one bit. And it's not like I'm reading Paradise Lost or anything -- it's just the new issue of Robin. And if I can't YAP YAP YAP concentrate enough YAP YAP to make sense of even YAP YAP YAP YAP the latest adventure of YAP YAP YAP the Boy goddamn Wonder YAP YAP YAP it means you're talking right in my goddamn ear, you prick!

I swear, I'd kill a stranger a day if I could be bothered with the cleanup.

NOTE: My attorney advises me that I should assure readers that I am just kidding about the last sentence. He claims the phrase "I swear" is legally binding, depite the fact that I have not specified exactly what or who I am swearing to. I assured him that as I wrote the sentence, my non-typing fingers were crossed, rendering the final statement, including the swear, non-binding, in my understanding of the law. He agreed, although he pointed out that it would be a different matter entirely had I said "pinkie-swear." Which any idiot knows.

Rob

Overheard on NJTransit

Stealing a page from the Bastard, a snatch of dialogue from my commute:

"You know I'm a big computer geek, but for some reason I can't play Foosball."

Um... am I missing something?

Rob