The subway was a wild ride this morning. If you’ve ever been on the NYC subway you will understand that its better then any reality tv show ever!!! This morning on the daily ride it was kind of weird. A guy sat across from me with a big brown bag, he had a suit and tie on and big bulky half balled earphones black with red lines before the cushy part. Nothing out of the ordaniry till he changed his CD. Opened the bag, pulled out a case of CD mixes, blank CD’s with read writing on them – I could only see one of them that said Terrorism Mix.
The expression of the girl next to him was priceless as she contuied to listen to her iPod. I don’t know if it was the fact that he was flipping through that old technology called a CD case or the strange and awkward labels the man had on the CD’s. While this was going on another man handed that guy a piece of paper. The older man who handed him the paper was in my right-side blind spot since we were sitting on the same side of the train. He was an artist, with a clip board and a pencil. The paper was a sketch of the CD-Player guy. I peeped my head out and looked over at the artist and watched as he sketched a young girl who was rocking with the motion as her hand slide on the bar with every jump the train made. (more…)
Tags: iPod, New York City, Subway, Writing
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Posted by Terry |
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Today May 25th is Towel day. Well that is in salute of the funniest, most cleaver sci-fi/comedy writers, well maybe one of the funniest. So if you didn’t bring a towel, go to the bathroom and grab a paper towel. That might work, of course you shouldn’t drop it.
For all of those who don’t know. Douglas Adams … here is the wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Adams
And for this Towel Day I just have one piece of advice, “Don’t panic!”
Happy Towel day.
Tags: Humor, Writers, Writing
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My caffeine fix was no where in site. The bright orange subway seats had little effect on me as Foo Fighters DOA blasted from my iPod. Not your ordinary iPod, the five year old music player that can still give me a couple of hours of OBE(Out of Body Experience) a day. Across from me three girls with British, maybe Australian accents chatted as the vibrating bulbs flickered. I could hear them over “No ones getting out of here alive,” which engulfed me in my worse nightmare. Imagine being stuck on an eternal subway car with orange seats, three loud foreigners and that generic voice from above stating “We are being held momentarily…â€. Yes that would be hell, but I had my heaven blasting through the inner ear, working its way into my drum but I felt bad for the old Chinese lady sitting next to me who was iPod-less. Would it have been modern edict to offer an earphone to help the lady drown out the down-unders who were passing one cup of coffee back and forth, sipping it and discussing how bad it tasted? The train squeezed through, pulsating like the way a snake digests its food, managing somehow to increase the volume of the three down-unders. The song now changed over to JEM’s ‘They’ which made me wonder if there was more to this simple situation. It seems where ever I go the music from my iPod enhances my situations.
This was just another morning commute which I felt “DOA†while ‘They’ turned my surroundings into a complex paranoia complex. Maybe ‘They’ (the three loud Australian girls) where watching me, following me, distracting me. Maybe this was the beginning of something new, random bunch of foreign girls piling onto the 1 train at 8am sipping each others coffee and rambling on about life… hmmm. Would be an interesting sitcom – Subway Foreigners – Hmmm maybe it’s just enough to publish as a blog post!
Rushing out of the sliding doors I raced for the corner coffee stand. He is a god in the city that never sleeps, a little guy in a silver box who brews cheap good coffee. Sipping away the paranoia slipped by as the iPod shuffled onward towards Gwen Stefani ‘hollaback Girl’ and I spotted the three lost foreigners turning and twisting a map, happily no longer could hear there cries as Gwen cursed them away. Once again the morning caffeine fix calmed the remaining nerves as I made my way to sit in front of a computer and watch my life whiz by me in binary.
Tags: Humor, iPod, New York City, Subway, Writing
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The bus stop at Lincoln Center is always crowded. The construction from The Juilliard school makes things messy and it doesn’t help that a coffee shop is right in-front of the stop. Waiting makes you feel like buying a Cafe Latte and cheese croissant. Of course worst things can be done like yesterday’s Cellphone Borrower. A lady in her late thirties or early forties, who really knows these days, was moving her mouth as she stared at me. Of course I had no idea what she was saying and stupidly paused my iPod.
“Can I borrow your cellphone.” she asked.
“What?” I replied a little confused since moments ago “Garbage” was blasting “Paranoid” in my head.
“I need to make an urgent phone call, Its local.” She insisted and was only a foot from me. A true New Yorker who seemed to go over her caffeine intact for the day. The confusion out weighed my paranoia and my cellphone was in the hands of a complete stranger. The bus pulled up, unusually quick and the droves of patient people hogged the entryway.
I made sure she walked in front of me, since my head was thinking of a story about Kevin Spacey who lent a kid in London his cellphone and after the kid started dialing numbers he ran off with it. She entered and sat down in the handicap/elderly area as I slide my metro card in the slot and stood above her. She yapped along for a good five minutes, as I heard her converse with someone about their day. As we got to the next stop, she finally handed me my phone back since I was hanging over her like a trained monkey. By time I got a seat she had already borrowed the cellphone from a young guy sitting across from her.
Her white, rather large, hat and loud voice as she yelled on the phone to the poor soul at the other end made her the center of bus-attention. The old blind man sitting next to her laughed at loud as the Cellphone Borrower snipped at another lady who told the young guy he should get his phone back before she runs off with it.
On the other side of the park she returned the guys phone and raced off the bus. As we passed her barely moving cross town I watched as she stopped yet another man random man on the street. He took out his phone and she started dialing again. I call her the Cellphone Borrower but it was more like Tarzan swinging from branch to another. The bus turned up Madison and I sat back in my seat smiling. The city that never sleeps, never stops surprising me neither.
Tags: Humor, Just Me, New York City
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I am happy where ever I go. That is a fact, and why shouldn’t I be. Recently a friend commented on my adaptability as being harmful to my life. While my lack of fight, or keeping on one side of an argument can be an issue since I can see there is at least two sides of everything, unless of course your looking at a pyramid. However in the end I’m proud that I am not single minded.
But how can someone be or become adaptable? Well I blame most of my adaptability on my surroundings. I spent a year abroad as a Rotary Youth Exchange student in Quito Ecuador and before we were alowed to leave the country the Rotarians prepared us for our journey. They advised that we should look at our situations with open eyes and not compare things to what we are use to in the States. This of course makes perfect sense since I was about to embark to the Middle of The World and find myself surronded by a foreign culture.
One Rotarian stood up after a formal dinner and explained to us that we are now in a foreign country and after dinner the custom is to eat the center piece. In this case a potted plant that was in the middle of every table. The Rotarian picked up a serving spoon, dipped it into the dirt and pulled out leaping mound with jiggling worms plopping it on my plate. I was not adaptable at that moment as I heard moans, gulps and some vulgar whispers. Yes, the mound of dirt on my plate didn’t please me and I wished for canolie, but the Rotarian insisted that we try new things and put away what we think we know. With my spoon I gathered up enough courage to take a taste, the worms were no longer moving and the dirt seemed to smell more like chocolate. After a tiny dime sized bit i realized that the center piece was chocolate moose and the worms were Jelly worms. This of course was more of a test, then a formal desert but taught me well.
During my senior year of high school in Quito Ecuador I experienced many different things. My first bull fight, first hang over, first time dreaming in a foreign language and in all it was my first time on my own. Each time an event came up that I did not know I wouldn’t try to compare it to anything that I’ve experienced before. To be truly adaptable is to take in your surroundings and do as the natives do. If I did think and compare things before I tried them, then I would of missed out of bull fighting with a baby bull or spending a week in the Amazon Basin. When we are faced with uncertainty our instinct is to run, however, if you stick in and realize that someone else has accomplished this task you will see how adaptable you really are.
Tags: Ecuador, Humor, Just Me, Rotary Exchange Student
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It is the middle of Tree Pollen Season in the North East of the United States. Yes. All you red puffy eyed, nasil dripping, wheezing and majority medicated comrades, I feel for you. It was 85 degrees today and the sun felt great warming up my face and skin from a zerod out winter. While I sneaked out for a minute (coffee addict) walking down the street the little yellow guys were waiting, floating all so cute through the air. As they gently fell from the trees guided by the constant east river wind, I panicked. Ducking, twisting my body as I walked down the block. With my iPod blasting and being in New York, I do blend in.
I am fully medicated which means that the pollen doesn’t bother me as much, but this still doesn’t make me happy that mother nature has released cyanide into the air to kill off some of us. She is trying to exterminate the lucky few of us who’s bodies over-react to harmless seeds. Really? What is the worst that could happen to us if we inhaled a lot of pollen – would roots start sprouting out of us? We would become trees, as they grow inside of us like a really bad b-movie. I do wish I could talk to my bodies chemist and yell at him for performing his job too well! Then I stop and think about it and reward the poor workaholic with a shot of Tequila.
Without the cure of modern medicine I would be a Bubble Boy and maybe then I could rant and rave about how Mother Nature is trying to kill me. I still think she is and has been for thirty plus years which means her cyanide does weaken me like kryptonite but hasn’t sent me pushing up the daisy’s yet.
Tags: Humor, iPod, Smell, Writing
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Men are dogs she says. Yes. That is the typical stereotype, four legged, tale between our rear legs, crouch licking, instinct driven animals. For some this maybe a severe contradiction on a quick self analytical survey. But are men like dogs? Well, I am a man (last time I checked) and I do not drool at the mouth, lick my own crouch, shed, run after cars, trucks, sticks, balls, Frisbees or the local USPS mailman. Yet, something about the statement makes me smile. Their is a bond between a man and a dog, an unspoken trust. When that connection is there, it is something quiet unexplainable, well, almost unexplainable — since dog is ‘man’s best friend.’ We could deeply analyse the psychology of what is called man’s best friend, but I prefer to stay clear of that. The real question, is it a true statement that men are like dogs?
Yes. Of course we are.
The answer is simpler then the above statements, its men think quickly about instinctive things. We do what makes ourselves happy in a perverse way, like looking back when a beautiful girl passes, leaving clothes around the floor of the bathroom instead of using urine to signify dominance of a territory, and of course trying to out-perform any other guy around because WE are the MAN. So next time she taps her Prada shoe and states that ‘Men are dogs’, think about one question only: If men are dogs then why is the slang for an annoyed women a Bitch, the same definition as a female dog? When your done smiling you might consider men are dogs since we both want to get the bitch.
Tags: Dogs, Humor, Just Me
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After a long day at the office all one wants to do on a Monday night is go home, grab a beer and watch lasts nights tivo’d desperate House wives. That would of been a nice Monday night in the city, instead, I opened the apartment door and noticed something on the rug. Turning on the light, yellow dust filmed the green carpet in my hallway and didn’t stop there. The dust was everywhere, the floor, desk, inside the kitchen over the counters, inside the cabinets pasted to the pots, forks knifes and spoons. Walking through it, my shoes left little treads around the apartment.
It seems your never safe from your neighbors renovation. The nice young lady next door had torn her kitchen completely out that day, well not her but the construction people she hired. I of course would rather picture the blond with a sledge hammer pounding away the wall as her Maltese barks after every loud crash. Everyone in the building waiting for the dogs Last Bark! Instead three Spanish speaking guys with ripped jeans, thick accent and plastered smiles broke down the wall and the next morning vacuumed and wiped up the mess. The microfibers of the concrete they were smashing made its way through tiny little holes inside my kitchen wall that is opposing her kitchen wall but never touches, touching kitchen walls would be in violation as would be some sort of insulate.
Since the place was already a mess and I was in no mood to see which Desperate house wife was getting, slapped, dumped or shot at this week I decided to exit the situation in New York fashion. Calling around I ended up getting an early dinner (8pm) with a friend at Jekyll and Hyde Club since she had out of towner’s who needed a place to snap some pictures and ask “why on earth would someone actually eat here?” After an evening of live entertainment, theater students acting as crazy scientists and talking shark heads, I did return home, opened a beer and watched the show. After a hard day and unexpected events its good to watch a show that people actually suffer more then you. Long live Desperate House Wives.
Tags: Humor, Just Me, New York City, TV, Writing
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