My Effing Commute

The End

2011-08-01T14:58:00.002-04:00

This is how the blog ends.
Not with a bang, but with a quiet goodbye.
I start a new job this September, and I'll be driving a car to get there. Not riding a train. And as we all know, you can't type and drive, unless you're an asshole. So there you have it. No more train means no more blog.

It was never really a blog, if we're being honest here. A blog is something that gets updated regularly, which this most certainly was not. It was more like a collection of rants or essays or thoughts, written as much to practice writing as they were to entertain. Ultimately I discovered that I am a social creature, drawn more to people than isolation, so inevitably I found friends on the train. The 5:25 crew. The Mt. Kisco gang of four. The Holiday Ladies from Katonah. Tripp and Maria and Andrea and John and Andy and Mark and anyone else who would have me. And these friends filled my time when writing used to, and the blog suffered.

Every single entry (except this one) was written on the train, almost always in the one hour it took me to get to or from work. There we're many ideas that never saw the big screen of my mac. How you can use the reflection in the window when its dark outside to watch people without them knowing. How the train always slows down before it gets to White Plains because its ahead of schedule. The praying man, who prays as powerfully as any man I've seen for 10 minutes every morning before he exits the train. How I take the wide, elegant air conditioned JP Morgan escalator in the morning instead of the terminal escalator because its a civilized way to begin the day. Or the topless woman I passed standing on 6th avenue last week as I dashed to catch a 4:20 afternoon train. Yes. Topless.

So after 13 years I'm trading my monthly pass for my Lexus. I will play my radio, talk on my phone, roll down my windows, eat whatever I want, sing as loudly as I want and be the commuter I could never be on the Metro North. But I will also be alone, and as much as I will enjoy my new freedoms, I will also miss my old friends.

You can take comfort in the fact that I will still have an effing commute. I will surely suffer the indignities of road rage, texting drivers, headlight flashers, flat tires, traffic jams and the rest of it. but this time I'll keep it to myself.

I knew when I started this blog that it would be a fun way to kill time. I had no idea how many of you would come along for the ride. Thank you for that, and farewell.

Jesus drinks a 40 oz.

2011-06-28T10:44:00.000-04:00

I saw Jesus on the train the other night at 125th street.

He parted the closing doors, crossed the gap and sat down next to me. He looked tired.

We were in a communal 6 pack seat, three facing three, and Jesus quickly put his sandals up onto the empty seat across from him. They were the feet of a man who worked hard for a living, who wasn't afraid of getting a little dirty, but maybe was afraid of a regular shower. I didn't begrudge him this. Who am I to judge the king of kings. He threw his dusty hemp satchel on the seat between us, produced a cold 40 oz. and took a long deliberate pull from the bottle.

Long day Jesus? I asked.

With a glance my way his eyes said yes.

What's on your mind saviour?

The grind, I guess, he said. Every day, in and out of the city, preaching to the sinners, offering salvation, then back on the 5:25 to Chappaqua, up the next morning to do it all again. Somedays I don't know why I do it. Don't know if I made a single bit of difference in the world. Plus I have ideas. Big ideas. And nobody listens, you know?

Chappaqua? I asked

Seriously? Cuz you don't strike me as...

Another look from the son of god, this time different. Annoyed.

Another long hard pull on the suds.

Listen Jesus, I said. Your preaching to the choir. Somedays are just hard, you know. Somedays this train is just a dead end ride. You pull into the Grand Central and you don't even know how you got there. You haul your bag to your desk, you drag through meetings and emails, and you wind up back on this train thinking, what the hell did I even do today? Did I make a profit? A quota? A difference? Water flowing under ground man.

Thats it! said Jesus, obviously appreciating the Talking Heads reference.

Thats it exactly. I ride this train every day just to do right, man, to do the lords work. I strap on my sandwich board (how did i miss that in the overhead rack?), I stand at 44th and Broadway and I shout for anyone who will listen that the day is coming. The day when all of us will have to account for our actions and be judged. The end is near brother, and no matter how loudly I preach the truth outside of the Viacom building or the M&M store or the Lion King or that place that sells sketchy cameras and computers, nobody listens. Nobody understands. Nobody BELIEVES.

I understood.. Nobody likes to be ignored or marginalized, to feel insignificant or unheard, and as much as I sympathized with his situation, I quickly realized that this man wasn't Jesus. Just a dude with dirty dreadlocks and a slightly odd take on life. Maybe I wanted him to be Jesus, because honestly how cool would that be to ride the 5:25 with Jesus. Or maybe he liked being Jesus and we were each feeding off of each others needs at this particular time in this particular place. Either way, I knew it had to end. My stop was coming up and I felt the need to right the world and put it back on its normal axis.

Listen young man, if you want people to take you seriously in life, you should cut your hair, stop drinking in public and take your feet off the goddamn seat.

He took a last long pull on the bottle.

Fuck you, fake Jesus said

Amen brother.

Tie Die

2011-01-13T19:46:00.000-05:00

I’m not sure why this tie even exists. Help me out here. I just don’t understand, why would someone make it, and why would someone buy it. Its not even a good idea for a tie. Its medium beige and light beige ovals on a dark beige background. Who does that? Excuse me, sir, yes you, the one with the bad tie. Would you mind if I took a peak at the label on the back of that tie to see if it says “Compliments of your neighborhood Sizzler”. This is why life looks so dark to me sometimes, because I live in a world where shit ties are made and bought and I can’t figure it out. Made, I assume, in a third world factory that ordered way to much effing beige oval pattern fabric. I don’t blame them. Manufacturing. Jobs. Whatever. Its all good. But bought, I can only imagine, because someone was so taken by the overwhelming excellent beigeness of it all that they had to have it. Had to have it to match all the other beige shit in the beige closet of his beige master bedroom, in his beige colonial house on beige street, USA. Beige. You sir, I do blame. Or maybe his wife bought it. No that’s impossible, because there isn't a single woman on the planet with bad enough taste to buy this tie. Geez. You know how many ties there are in New York alone. Hundreds. Easily hundreds of decent ties for under $50. Do us all a favor. Take a fitty out of your beige wallet, go to a tie store or Macy’s or one of those pashmina street vendors and buy a solid navy tie. No patterns. Patterns are only for the advanced tie wearer. Solid colors. Then go to YouTube and watch a video about tying a knot, because the way you tied a knot in elementary school isn’t cutting it. Make it a windsor knot. Wow us. Please.

This is your friendly neighborhood blogger reporting from car two of the 6:52 to Southeast asking you to please stop the train sometime after White Plains and come on board to stick needles in my eyes, because that would be less painful than having to look at this tie for an hour. Thanks.

Lessons in Graphic Design #1

2010-11-19T11:27:00.000-05:00

Good morning class. Please finish your Monday New York Times crosswords that you saved to do on the train til Friday so you'd look smart, and lets put your starbucks mocha fucking whatevers away and get to work, shall we. As many of you may know, or maybe none of you actually, I am a classically trained graphic designer, highly skilled in the deadly art of typography. I once horribly shamed a young urban hipster by pointing out that his Vampire Weekend T-Shirt was actually a cheap derivative of the opening title sequence for the clasic 70's TV show BJ and the Bear. Indeed, he was immediately rendered speechless (or possibly annoyed). Take that culturaly derivative youth of America! Now listen up.

When it comes to advertising on the rails, there's really not a whole lot of innovation out there. It's mostly ads for John Grisham novels, Republicans and Democrats with smiling blond families or dogs (now I trust him!), the TV show Sons of Anarchy, stocks and mutual funds, ambulance chasing lawyers, Yonkers Racetrack and The Broadway production of the Addams Family. In other words, its a fairly uninspired visual stew of stock photography and poorly spaced sans serif type. So Im a big fan of the sharpie vandals who enhance the ads in an effort to provide humor and vulgarity into my Groundhogs Day existence. To be clear, I would never condone marking or scratching the trains themselves, but the ads, well, If FOX TV wants me to stare at a drawing of American Dad in a thong for an hour, I dont really see the harm of adding the always classic cock and ball unit. These alterations represent the full spectrum of human creativity, from clever to cloddish. Most are fairly expected, and yet, they still make me laugh, kind of like when my dad farts at the dinner table. You know its coming, but it's still funny. "Time for a Stock Alternative" becomes "Time for a Cock Alternative". It's like scrabble for degenerates! Fun for the whole family! Some of the less creative scribes simply take out their frustrations by writing words like fag, slut, asshole, bitch, whore, mostly across pictures of that guy from the Men's Wharehouse for some reason. You're gonna like the way you look. Slut. Whore. LOL.

So from time to time I'll be posting my favorites as I see them. Today's example is interesting. I might even go so far as to call it mildly retarded. Evidently, the artist, possibly while skipping class to take the train into the East Village to buy a new one hitter, was so inspired by the letter F that he couldn't restrain himself. "Hey, that word starts with an F. You know what other word starts with an F... tee hee. LOL. Slut." I will give high marks for typographic gymnastics in this case. I never would have thought you could fit the letter K into the letter M, but there it is right there. Ultimately I would have been happier if he had found the word Luck or Duck or better yet, Starbucks. Who can ignore a well executed Starfucks? And think of all the FOX news ads that could become FUX or COX. COX NEWS, Fair and Balanced. I'd buy that. Ultimately, I think we can do better people. The trains and platforms are full of opportunities for budding Banksy's, so grab a pen and put your boggle skills to the test. And please remember, it's always better to be clever than to simply write ASSHOLE. Unless its on a Carl Paladino poster. Class dismissed.

Happy Halloween!

2010-10-29T18:58:00.003-04:00

Today I made a change in my routine, a bold move for a commuter. I moved down the platform and got on to a different car than I usually do. I don't know why I did it! Stop interupting the story! I just did it. Something or someone whispered in my ear..."Not today John. Not this car. Not today". It might have been the woman whose shoes I keep trying to photograph cuz she keeps putting them on the seat, but I can't say for sure. Anyway, the point is I moved and I sat down and all effing hell broke loose. The guy across from me was putting batteries into a rubber rat, which he then hid under a scarf. At the next stop, two women got on, screamed at the rat (and I mean really effing loudly screamed), decorated the seats with Halloween decorations, and began passing out candy, cupcakes and bracelets. Naturally I struck up a conversation.

So, wait, you're dressed as your friend?
Yes.
Who is she dressed like?
Herself.
So you're both dressed as her?
Yes, although she doesn't really look like herself today. Twix?
No thanks. Why does your bag say happy birthday?
Well, it's also all three of our birthdays?
So its a Halloween and birthday party?
Well, it's mostly his birthday. Cupcake?
No, really, thank you, that's very kind, but...
Spider bracelet?
Yes, thank you, I think I will.

This went on for what seemed like 7 or 8 hours but was in reality only about 3 minutes. After they hung up the spongebob pumpkin, the candy filled pumpkin and the spooky garland, there wasn't much more to say. I wished them a Happy Halloween, and told them that if they had room for more guests at Christmas that I was probably going to be in town and I was happy to bring a side dish.

In conclusion, I will say this. Some people fight the commute. They tuck in deep, earbuds and sleepmasks firmly in place, and do their best to block it out, kind of like I do whenever I hear Michael Buble music. Then there are these folks. The Happy Idiots who know that life is short and if you have to sit on a train every day of your effing life, you might as well hang up some spongebob decorations now and then. I'm a little afraid of what might happen if I make my move to this car permanent. I might get sucked into this vortex of happines and mayhem never to be seen again. Commuters, unlike Democrats, don't like change. We like routine. Then again, we also like cupcakes...

The Package

2010-10-28T11:51:00.000-04:00

So I'm on my usual morning train, not really a peaker in the sense that it gets me into the city around 9:40am, but a peaker in the sense that Metro North charges me the peak fare as if this was a hard core rush hour train, which is an interesting point, because according to Metro North, the rush "hour" or peak travel time in the morning and evening are actually two 4 hour windows where they get to charge a premium fare.The opportunity for sticking it to the average Joe is obvious here. Metro North is a little short on cash and all of sudden my 10:15 am train becomes a peaker. Boom! The down economy at work!

Anyway, Im on my normal train and a regular guy, a guy I've seen many times before, gets on and sits across from me. This is a guy I'll call "The Package", like "The Situation", but in Westchester, not Jersey. I've never called him that before. I just made it up right here as I was typing, but he needs a name, and that name is The Package. And the reason for this is simple. The guy has a really nice package. No joke. I mean I'm not going to wax poetic about it, compare it to a summers day or tell my therapist, but in the straight up, no shit world of commuting, every once in a while stuff just jumps out at you as being exceptional, beyond the pale, better that average, and, well, that's what this is. When you look at the dregs of the commuting world day in and day out, the humps of society drooling on themselves as they catch up on their sleep, or trying to get one more misearable day out of that exhausted Van Heusen shirt, well, a guy in a nice suit and a handsome package stands out. Literally.

So, good for The Package. I mean, we all have a package, but if you'rs is testing the sewing on a fitted Brioni suit, well god bless you. My package barely gets to know my suits. For all I know, my suits think I'm a woman. Who cares if The Package tells his taylor with a wink, "just a little higher on the inseam, Boyo". All the better to see you with Grandma. If I had that package I'd do the same goddamn thing. So the next time I see The Package on the train, I'll take a quick look. Nothing to write home about or get the stink eye from, just a glance in his general direction, to remind myself that there are exceptions in life. People and places and "things" that proudly stick their neck out once in a while to the betterment of us all. And in case you're keeping score, The Package seems like the kind of guy who leans to the right, but The Package's package definately goes to the left.

Feet

2010-10-04T18:10:00.001-04:00

Well, it's been a long hot lazy summer, and between you and me and the sticky pleather train seats, I wasn't sure the blog was going to survive. Writing a blog, it turns out, is work, and work, it turns out, sucks. So I've really been enjoying NOT writing all summer. Some of the things I have enjoyed are sleeping, playing angry birds, deleting email, and not writing my blog. I've also been making friends on the train, which it turns out is kind of nice. These ARE NOT the kind of friends that you see on the platform and silently beg to sweet jesus that they don't sit with you so you won't have to "make conversation" for 65 grinding minutes. These are really decent, salt of the earth seasoned commuters who are smart and funny and real and they make me...what's the word I'm looking for...? Happy. And we all know the blog has no place in a happy commute. The blog is about misery and disappointment and futility and hopelessness and it is most certainly not about enjoying your friends. A happy blog is a boring blog.

So just when I think I might be done with the blog forever, just when I think I've been saved by my new friends and this new feeling I call happy, I'm jolted back into the harsh flourescent light of reality by two pairs of nasty ass feet up on a seat. Need I repeat? Two feet on a seat! One foot, two foot, three foot, four! Dump those shoes right on the floor! But wait, it's not just feet, it's feet and meat! Four feet and the meat that they bought on the street! How neat! (Actually, it's leftover tappas, but tappas doesn't rhyme with feet). Two prize Westchester hens, fresh off an afternoon of spending their allowances and guzzling chocolate martini's plop their pudgy, calloused, un ped-egged feet onto the precious real estate of a seat on my 6:29 peak train. Like they effing own the place. Like they're home on their sofa rubbing the lint and sweat out from between those toes and there's not a soul around. Except there are plenty of souls on my deadly serious, we-all-effing-work-for-a-living-and-now-it's-going-home-time peak hour train. And we souls shouldn't have to spend 65 minutes trying not to look at your naked effing feet.

And suddenly I'm awake. I'm enraged and alive and energized and bursting at the seams. Im sitting here, staring into a seatful of feet and meat and toes and woes, and I feel the familiar rumblings of a blog coming on, coming on strong like a freight train or a good bm. Because no matter how many friends I may make and no matter how much happiness tries like a strong worm to wriggle its way into my life, the enduring misery and indignities and smells and rudeness and absurdities of my commute will always beat it back down the hole it crawled out of. No happines in the world can win out over three and a half hours a day, five days a week, 52 weeks a year, year after year of riding this effing train. And if I have to watch my life slowly tick away into a big empty pit of blackness, minute by minute for the rest of eternity, well I'm damn well going to do my best to drag you down with me.

The blog is back. Long live the blog.

The Man Boy of Chappaqua

2010-08-05T09:40:00.001-04:00

First, I’m not really sure this guy is from Chappaqua, I just wanted to call the post that since the sign over his head says Chappaqua. Second, how cool is my mosaic filter identity disguiser, (used as always on the advice of my lawyer, Billz Just Fertalkin). I personally think its a big improvement over my previous legal safeguard, the eye covering black bar. Feel free to weigh in. So to the point, this guy caught my eye the other day, because, well, frankly because on a peak train full of guys in ill-fitted suits, untied ties, and hopeless gazes, a man dressed like a 3rd grader tends to stand out. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m a big supporter of riding the train on a weekday as a civilian. In fact, its one of the rare treats in a commuters life. I love taking a Wednesday off and heading in on my regular train undercover, pretending that I’m an aloof hipster or a trust fund a-hole, who only goes into the city when I feels like it, and who dresses more for urban survival than for corporate conformity. It’s like riding your bike through a traffic jam. You’re there, but your not suffering like everyone else. Or more to the point, you’re not suffering like you usually do. But if you’re going to grab a little bit of life on a weekday for yourself, I say go for it. Let your freak flag fly brother. Break out the temporary tats, pop the collar, toss the livestrong for a little hemp laniard, go for the black chucks, off color yankees lid, some sunglasses, an ipod, anything man. This is your moment. Look around you! Youre surrounded by guys wearing clothes they don’t want to wear, lugging 15 pound briefcases they don’t want to lug, guys who have to drink a cup of coffee at 5 in the evening just to have the energy to walk to the train, a train they have to ride every effing day of there lives. You are free man! In fact, you are not just free, you are a symbol of freedom in a wasteland of incarcerated commuters. You are motherfucking Easy Rider man, and if you’re going to ride this train and stand there in front of all of us, you need to be Easy Rider. And Easy Rider didn’t wear flat front khaki shorts, faux denim low tops and a Dennis the Menace shirt, now did he? No sir, he did not.

The Summer Sartorialist

2010-08-04T14:19:00.003-04:00

THIS ONE GOES OUT to all the ladies in the house. As we all know by now, it’s summertime, and the living is anything but easy. In fact, the living is ungodly effing hot. And as much as it pains me to say this, I’ve been noticing quite a few fashion don’ts on the rails lately, so I thought I would take a moment to offer some advice to my fellow female passengers on the proper way to beat the heat without sticking to your seat...

Rule Number One: Leggings are Not Pants.
Yes, I know they are super convenient and super comfy, but they also tend to ride up, if you know what I mean. So here’s a tip. If you can actually see your ass crack (or any other crack for that matter) when you wear something, that’s a hint that its meant to go UNDER something else, say a simple print dress or eyelet top that hangs below the waist. They’re called leggings for a reason girls. They show off your legs! They’re not called asslings, or cracklings, or buttlings. Lets keep it covered.

Rule Number Two: Toe The Line
I’m seeing lots of sandals out there, to which I say “absolutely!”. Everything from simple flats to gladiators (a little 2008, but they still work!). Go ahead and take advantage of a footloose summer fashion moment. But I’m also noticing a few open toe no-no’s, so here’s a few things to watch out for. First, flip flops are really more of a beach shoe and less of a commuting shoe. You see, when you ride the train, It’s possible that I may have to look at your feet for upwards of an hour, and I don’t really want to look at your 2-year-old, rotting, black-soled, fungus-riddled havaianas, so lets leave those for the weekend, shall we. Also, please pay a little more attention to those toenails! Along with the sandal comes a little grooming responsibility. I understand that a pedicure and a fresh coat of polish isnt always on the to-do list , but if you see lots of yellowish discoloration, thick scaley buildup, black dead areas or bruising, ingrown nails, bunions, corns, or if your toenails are simply falling off because you just ran a triathlon last week, well, these are all signs that you should seek medical attention. These are also all signs that nobody wants to see your effing toes.

Rule Number Three: Skin is Not Really In
When it’s as hot as it’s been lately, we’re all tempted to go with a little less on, am I right girls!? Holla! But just how much skin to show is always a delicate balance between appropriate and, well, truly effing disgusting, so here are a few simple tips to follow: If you’re carrying the absolute largest bag that Coach makes, and you’re still having trouble hiding most of your exposed stomach, it’s time to rethink your ensemble. I know its hot and all, and heaven knows your milkshake will bring all the boys to the yard, but some of us on the train may have eaten a meal in last 7 hours, so lets get that under control. And we all know that showing a hint of a bra is a sexy and acceptable fashion summer DO, but nobody wants to see the the whole thing. I mean, when what we’re seeing is less of a delicate lace moment and more of an amazing feat of structural engineering, then its time to scale back.

AND finally ladies, while we’re on the subject of undergarments, please let’s all remember what you learned the first time you sat on stage in a dress. Say it with me...legs together! Especially when you sit in the communal seats that face other passengers. Just like with the bra, a momentary glimpse of underwear isn’t the worse thing in the world to the average Joe Commuter, but lets not go all Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct. If the guy across the seat can tell that you’re still on your winter grooming schedule, or that you shop in the discount underwear department at Kohl’s, well then the magic’s pretty much over, isnt it?

That’s it! Not so hard, right! If you can follow these simple tips for dressing for success on the trains, I think we can all enjoy a happy and healthy summer. And for the fella’s out there, flys up, shirts buttoned, and no scratching inside the pants until you get home please. Thanks everyone!

Chinese Fire Drill

2010-07-15T12:09:00.000-04:00

I see this every now and then in the parking lot just before I go up the stairs to the train platform. A car pulls into the drop-off area, which is actually not a drop-off area, it’s a crosswalk, which is kind of the opposite of a drop off area, but whatever, and the passenger and driver each get out. The driver leaves to catch the train and the passenger gets behind the wheel and drives off. I give you, The Chinese Fire Drill (I apologize if this phrase has crossed over into political incorrectness, like Oriental Rugs or Hillbilly Weddings). The Chinese Fire Drill exists, I assume, because there are certain men in the world who do certain manly things better than their wives. They hold the remote better, they grill meat better, they play golf better, they snore better, they bury there emotions better, they make onion dip and pancakes better, they hail cabs better, they put Ikea furniture together better, they add extra holes to their belt loops better. If its manly, they do it better. And driving a car is surely one of the manly arts, and therefore these men, these masters of the manly arts, do it better.

So even though these men are the men that will be getting dropped off at the train every morning to begin their manly day, they are also the men that must, by the laws of all things manly, also drive that same car that will be dropping them off. And you can’t drop yourself off, now can you. Obviously, you need a wingman, a partner. Someone who you trust enough to drive the car after you’ve finished driving it, but not enough to drive it while you’re in it. Honey, can you come here a minute....

So the wife rides along, admiring your driving skills I assume, while no doubt listening to the AM sports talk radio station of your choice (Yet another of the manly arts. Choosing things). You arrive at the drop off area, which is actually a crosswalk, you exit the vehicle, meet your wife somewhere near the back bumper, kiss her goodbye, and then she gets back into the drivers seat and assumes control of the vehicle. This ballet of transference adds another 30 seconds (35 seconds if the kiss is PG-13) to the amount of time the car is blocking the drop off area, which (have I said this?) is actually the crosswalk. And it is this minor intrusion into the rest of humanity’s commute that piques my interest, because now, your manly man bullshit is blocking my crosswalk for 30 seconds. Now you are no longer a manly man. You are a D-bag.

And now that you have my attention, Mr. D-bag, I have to ask the question, just how bad a driver is this woman? More to the point, just how good are you? I mean, is all this really necessary?

Evidence would suggest that its ok for your wife to drive alone, and I assume she possesses sufficient skills to drive the children all day, every day. She’s probably able to balance the checkbook, cook dinner, buy the kids clothes, play tennis, get the dishwasher fixed, frontline the dog, run a small business, send gifts, make travel plans, bare children, know who the teachers are, replace screen windows, operate a table saw, vote, drink, fight in a war (if called upon). But lets be honest. Who are we kidding. When you are a manly man, why leave the driving to anyone but the best? I mean really. If she can’t be trusted with the remote, can you really trust her to drive the most important person on the face of the effing planet to the train station? Not likely.

But here’s the thing. Have you ever heard of the butterfly effect? A butterfly flaps its wings in Kansas and Bill O’Reilly is never born, or something like that? Deviate from the path for just an instant and it can change the future? Tomorrow, when you’re about to get into the car to go the train, stop for a second. Deviate from the path and let the missus drive. Just try it. See how it goes. Let her pick the route, make the light, or not make the light, choose a radio station, lead the conversation. Give up control for a minute. Or 10 minutes. See what happens. At the very least, you’ll only be in my crosswalk for 5 seconds, which I can live with. And you never know, your wife just might surprise you. She might even amaze you.

Or she might be the worst effing driver in history.

Casual Friday

2010-06-04T09:03:00.001-04:00

I wear a suit almost every day. I don’t mind. It’s just part of the deal. I actually have a bunch of suits because I worked at a men's fashion magazine for 6 years and I used to get a deal on suits, so I figure, what the hell, I got em, why not wear em. Second, a suit is a good weight control monitor. If your jeans start to get tight because you spend your nights eating pretzels and ice cream and Samoas and watching baseball, well, no big deal, you go buy another pair of jeans. I have about 50 pairs of jeans in a variety of waste sizes, from “damn, you look fine today sir” all the way up to “maybe we could use your fat ass to plug up that oil leak in the gulf”. But when your suits start to get tight, that’s serious. I can’t just run out and buy a new suit every time I gain 10 pounds, so I don’t mind the suits because they keep me from going off the deep end. So I wear a suit every day. Every day except Friday, because as old fashioned and lame as it sounds, I believe in casual Fridays. It’s more of a personal rule, because I work in publishing and the publishing world could give a shit about suits and Fridays. In publishing, you show up at 10, work until they turn off the AC in the building, and shaving and socks are optional. I could wear spongebob pajama bottoms (yes, I own those) and wife beaters to work and most people wouldn’t notice. I choose to wear a suit. But not on Fridays.

And as you can see in this picture, I am wearing a suit, and as you can also see from the time stamp of this post, it is Friday. You may also have noticed that I'm sporting my eff-you beard today, which is my silent yet powerful protest against the man. And the reason Im wearing a suit on a Friday, and sporting my eff-you beard is that some upper management yahoo whose pay grade is way above mine decided to schedule a get-to-know-you dinner tonight, on a Friday. A summer Friday. So on a Friday when 99 percent of the people in the office are going to leave around 2:30 in the afternoon, I will be sitting at my desk with my thumb up my ass in a suit waiting to have dinner. It also means that on a day that I usually enjoy riding to work with my feet up ( an admitted dick move) in my khaki pants, black converse chucks and an untucked dress shirt that I’ve already worn 3 times in the past 2 weeks, I instead have to sit up straight in my effing suit and be respectable. But that’s not the best part. You want to know the best part? The best part is we’re having dinner at the train station. So while I’m sitting there in my suit on a steamy effing New York Summer Friday night eating a dinner I really don’t give a shit about, I get to watch everyone else go home for the weekend. Somewhere, someone is laughing about this. Maybe it’s you. Have a good weekend everyone...

Mr. Tiny TV Man

2010-05-05T16:53:00.000-04:00

Hello Mr. Tiny TV man! I wonder to myself, what do you watch on your tiny TV? What is it that you see on that tiny little screen? Do you watch SNL shorts? Tiny Tots cartoons? Little House on the Prairie? Wee-man? Bugs Life? Gulliver's Travels? Honey I Shrunk the Kids? Could you really enjoy anything so tiny? Can you appreciate the nuance of an expression? The subtle eyebrow lift of a flirtatious leading lady? Nope. You can't see that on that tiny TV. Do you watch hockey? No way dude, do you watch hockey. Tiny puck is way too tiny. I can barely see that puck on my big boy TV. Do you watch a tiny little Yankees games? Do they play small ball? Again I say now way dude. Was it fair or foul? Can't tell. Too tiny. Can you read the scroll at the bottom of the news. I doubt it. I would imagine that the type would be, how shall I say, too tiny. John and Kate plus 8? Nope. Too many tiny kids. Tiny YouTube? Way too tiny. Can you hit the tiny share button on the tiny YouTube video? No you can not sir. Tooooooo tiny. Tiny porn? I doubt it. Too teeny peenie. Way to teeny a peenie to be seenie. Tiny video game? Teeny Wii? Little teeny Wii golf? No no no. Too small a golf ball says I. Too small a ball. Tiny spongebob? Tiny Homer? Tiny Greta Van Susteren? Tiny Simon Cowell? Teeny Charlie Sheeny? I have no idea. Whatever it is that you watch on your teeny tiny TV though, I do know that it must be good, because you've been watching that effing teeny TV for 30 minutes. Time for an iPad dude. Time for an iPad.

April Showers

2010-04-26T18:09:00.002-04:00

About 40 feet above the underground train platform, somewhere on Park Avenue I imagine, the lightly falling spring rain is collecting in pools on the street. It mixes there with all the other things that share the streets of Gotham. Things like tubercular loogies and motor oil and dog feces and mop water and cigarette butts and spilled breakfast burritos and the collective lost hopes and dreams of 8 million souls. It cozies up with all the other infectious diseases and bodily fluids until it becomes one with the repulsive gumbo of Manhattan street water, at which point it continues on its journey. It follows the natural flow of the street until it finds a gutter to fall into, where I imagine it spills into a whole new level of decomposing detritus. Dead rats and old tampons and illegally tossed batteries and medical waste and chewed tobacco, and it is here, on this level, that it begins to take on the low light glow of radioactive material. And now, with its new lethal powers, it eats its way through the cracks of the 150 year old infrastructure of the city, past the electrical tunnels and the sewage pipes and the long buried teamster, until it finally squeezes through a microscopic pore in the ceiling of the north end of Grand Central station and lands on my head just before I reach the safety of the platform exit. It hits my head, crawls through my scalp and slowly trickles down the side of my face, just missing my eye and nearly reaching the corner of my mouth before I wipe it off with the defeated look of a guy who gave up caring about this kind of thing many years ago, and I think to myself...shit, I forgot my umbrella.

Fly Guy

2010-04-26T09:40:00.000-04:00

Friday had all the makings of a great commute. Beautiful sunny day, left work early so I could ride home and actually look out the window of the train, got the window seat facing an empty seat so I could really spread out and relax, which is exactly what I did. I slouched way down in the seat, spread my legs wide and settled in. This is the kind of ride you actually look forward to. Comfortable, civilized, a gift really. A gift from the train gods. In fact I got so comfortable that I fell asleep for about a half hour, and when I woke up there were two women sitting around me, one in the seat across the aisle and one in the seat on a diagonal across from me. I also noticed that, because I was wearing a nice suit with a delicate italian zipper, evidently when I sat down and spread my legs apart, my zipper unzipped itself, exposing my lovely baby blue Hanes underwear ( I buy them in colorful discount sets from Kohl's. Yeah, I really do) to my new guests , who no doubt thought I was drunk or just really bad at flirting. Turns out the commuting gods were not smiling on me that day. Turns out they were just setting me up, which is par for the course. So today's lesson is an obvious one, and yet it's one I never seem to learn. When things seem like they are going really good for once, that for one brief beautiful shining moment life is actually working out in your favor, don't trust it. Chances are, your barn door's open, the neighbors are peeking in and the gods are laughing their effing asses off.

Gum Bomb

2010-04-12T19:29:00.002-04:00

Warning: This post contains language that may not be suitable for younger readers, but that hopefully adds just the right amount of emphasis at the appropriate moment.

When my train pulls into Grand Central in the morning, we’re almost always on the same track, track 24, and when I get off the train, I go out the north exit, which is to say the ass end of Grand Central. Most people go out the front end, the wide open end, where you stroll through the main station room with the majestic vaulted ceiling like effing Fred Astair, and you just know you’re going to have a good day. That’s not the way I go. I go out the ass. The part that most people don’t see. The part with leaky ceilings, poor lighting and perennially empty Metro North schedule bins. And when you go out the ass on track 24, you have to stand in a long line with the other ass enders and wait your turn to squeeze through the small little single door exit that faces backwards (a sadistic touch of engineering) at the end of the track platform. Just another one among hundreds of commuting indignities that I’m forced to suffer. I start my day by being shat out the ass of Grand Central.

So every day I stand in the line, waiting to pop out the other side, and almost every day, somebody cuts the line. It’s usually a guy (surprise), and he’s definitely the kind of guy who doesn’t do lines. A non linear guy. A maverick. A renegade. Actually, a douchebag. He slithers along the yellow studded warning strip that lines the edge of the platform until he reaches the front of the line, and just when he gets to the door, he looks at his Blackberry as if he just got the worlds most effing important email, and he pounds through.

Now this is the world I live in and I expect no apologies. It’s the commuter world, warts and all, and I know just as well as the next guy, that it can bring out the worst in people. So I don’t hold it against the cutter. He’s just taking his place in the never-ending circle of hell that is my daily commute. He’s like the guy who goes into prison a garden variety tax cheat and comes out a white supremacist. Ride this train long enough and eventually one day you’ll be a dick. It just wears you down.

Plus he probably has a reason. We all have reasons, right? Im sure his older brother laughed at his penis or his wife holds the remote or his mom didn’t breast feed him or his kids de-friended him or he’s gone as high as he’s going to go among the lemmings of middle managers at his company, and so this is his moment. This all he’s got, man. Which is kind of sad when you think about it. Eff the line! Eff waiting my turn! Today, right now, for just this one glorious moment, I am going to stand up and be a douchebag! I am going to cut to the head of the ass-enders line and get shat out into the world 1 minute and 25 seconds sooner than the rest of you losers!

And that’s cool. I get it. Law of the jungle and all that. You live by the rule of the commute. But you also die by it. And so this morning, when a guy cut in front of me in line, I simply took my gum out of my mouth and dropped it into his open briefcase, right on top of his Wall Street effing Journal. Point set and match motherfucker. See you tomorrow.

Get Up, Stand Up

2010-03-15T09:03:00.000-04:00

First, on the advice of my attorneys, I will be employing the black bar method of disguising the identity of some of the people in my pictures, not really because Im afraid of getting sued, because a train is a public space, and as such, there is no expectation of privacy (i just made that up), but mainly because in this particular case, I showed this picture to a friend of mine and they delightfuly squealed, "Hey, I know that woman". And if my friend knows them, then chances are they live near me and chances are they can hunt me down, so in the interest of safety, mainly my own, I'm bringing out the black bar.

On to it, then.

There are a lot of people who ride the train who simply refuse to sit bitch, that is, refuse to sit in the middle of a three seater between two other riders. I suspect its a whole too touchy too close personal space kind of thing, especially first thing in the morning. Before your day even starts, you just dont want someone all up in your bidness eating breakfast or cranking their music or bumping elbows while they turn the page of their Wall Street Journal (hurry up iPad). Those folks tend to get on the train kind of late, so they dont have as far to ride, and they usually chose to stand, or sit on the floor in the doorway. It's not really that bad. You just lean there and look out the window for a half hour and your there.

So standing or sitting on the floor are the two most common approaches to avoiding the uncomfortable feeling of touching another person. Turns out there is a third one which I didnt know about. Seems you can stand up at your seat, turn backwards facing the other riders, and scowl for 30 minutes, which is what this woman did. I kept wondering if she as looking for a friend, or an enemy, or a conductor, or happiness, or fulfillment, or a reason to keep going on. But she was standing for too long, so it didnt make sense. Maybe she had that shaky leg thing that you get when you cant sleep, or bad circulation like on planes when if you dont walk around every hour you can get a blood clot and die. But she wasn't stretching or moving around at all. Just standing like a statue. A really pissed off statue. So what else could it be? It had to be that she just didnt want to touch the person in the seat next to her. Now in all fairnes, I couldnt see the person in the seat next to her, so its possible that this person was so repugnant that even the idea of sitting next to them was too horrible to imagine, but then why not go stand next to some other person, or even sit next to them? I still don't know why this happened, and I havent seen her since, so I dont know if this was a one time occurrence or whether this was just how she enjoys riding the train. Either way, she's just one more person on one more train ride of a lifetime of train rides that doesn't make any effing sense. It's unnerving spending hours and hours of your life in a place that more often than not doesn't make sense. Where people just do weird random things that can't be explained. Like when people bark like dogs for no reason, or root for the Mets year after year, or go to New Jersey on vacation.

Next time I see her, I'll offer her my seat and see what happens. My guess is she'll accept it gratefully, move over to where I was sitting, and stand there staring into the train car. And I'll have to switch to her seat...and sit bitch.

An Apology

2010-03-05T20:25:00.003-05:00

I'd like to apologize to a woman who was riding the Harlem Line 5:59 peaker last night. Here's why...

Chapter 1: Sockit Tumi

I bought a new briefcase yesterday, a sleek black Tumi briefcase, probably made out of recycled six packs and old goodyear radials, which makes it indestructable, which is cool because i dont want to have to drop another $250 on a briefcase for at least 5 more years, or until the effing recession ends, whichever comes first. And this new briefcase is much smaller and narrower than my old briefcase, because I'm such an obsessive compulsive a-hole that I firmly believe every extra ounce of weight and wind resistance I lug around makes me a less efficient commuter. I like to travel light. No coat in winter, no umbrella for rain, no books, no food, no newspapers, no effing extra weight. If i thought it would help to go with a full on Michael Phelps body shave "smoothie", I'd do that, if it meant knocking 20 seconds off my crosstown walk (plus I bet the missus wouldn't mind either. holla!). So now I have a bag with a really nice "profile", as the affected bag people would say, but i still have the same amount of crap to carry as I used to, so its packed tighter than a rush hour F train...

Chapter 2: The Rotten Apple

Last week my 14 year old daughter's Macbook laptop up and died. It didnt even have the ram to muster up a good old fashion screen freeze or spinning effing rainbow wheel. It just wouldn't turn on. I can't really blame it. After three years of sharpie marker tags, nail polished keys, glitter stickers, drops, spills, kicks,and sleepovers, I suspect it just said eff it and shut down for good. Which left it up to me to figure out how to get the three years worth of music, photos, journal entries and video chat screen grabs off of our dearly departed Mac in order to preserve the precious digital memories of my daughters transition from innocent child to hormonal effing devil. So I did what any smart dad would do, I took it into my IT department and asked them to work their magic, which they did...

Chapter 3: Ooooh. That's Gonna Leave a Mark

Time to bring home the laptop, but because I am now a streamlined commuting airfoil, there's no room in my fancy new bag to store it, so I have to carry it, and when I get on the 5:59 peaker heading home, I decide that the best place to store the laptop is on the overhead rack. Are you starting to figure it out now? Thaaats right, as I was getting ready to get off at my stop, I reached up to get the laptop, and that fat little 13" white plastic brick slipped right through the 3" spaced bars of the overhead rack and landed on the head of the sleeping woman in front of me. Suddenly awake and very surprised, she let out an audible gasp, something like "aahhhh! What the..." and she doubled over in pain in her seat. I picked up the laptop, which had slid down behind her, which meant i had to reach down in the vicinity of her ass and grab the thing, which no doubt added a whole new level of humiliation and confusion to an already awkward situation, and then I tried my best to apologize. Round about my 5th or 6th "holy shit, are you OK?" she finally sat upright, and in her lap, much to my horror was an open copy of the book "What to Expect When Your Expecting". That's right, I just dropped a 5 pound plastic cinder block onto the head of a pregnant woman. One express ticket to hell please. Whats that? No, I don't believe I'll need a return ticket. Pretty sure I'll be staying.

So with really nothing else to do but say I was sorry over and over and over, I braced for the inevitable. I mean, I've seen people get into fist fights on trains over phone calls and spilled coffee. What would a pregnant woman with a concussion and an angry mob on her side do? She stopped for a second and took a breath. "It's OK." she said. "Really. I'll be fine. I know it was an accident and I'm sure you didn't mean to do that." and then she touched my hand which was resting on the back of her seat and in a voice that could only belong to an angel she said "Really. Dont worry about it".

So lady, if you're out there somewhere reading this, I just want you to know two things. One is that I am truly truly sorry for what I did and if I ever see you again on the train, I will gladly let you drop the heavy object of your choice on my head as payback. At the very least, leave your email on the blog and I'll send you some flowers or a bottle or something. Oh, and the other thing I wanted to say was you will almost certainly be the world's most awesome mom.

Shout Outs and Blogrolls

2010-02-07T15:46:00.000-05:00

Remarkably, or I guess not so remarkably, it turns out I'm not the only person who likes to kill time while he commutes by writing a blog...about commuting. I recently got emails from two like minded souls who found my blog and reached out. One of them is Mike, who writes Trainjotting. If you want to know what a real blog looks like, with ads and updates and all sorts of impressive looking stuff, well, take a look at Mike's site. It's what my blog wants to be when it grows up. Plus, I enjoy Mike's slightly dark and Cheever-esque take on life on the rails. It appeals to my glass is half empty sensibility. Finally, Mike told me what a blogroll is (look to your right...) so in my book, he's a standup guy.

The other person is Emily, who has an even more professional looking site called I Ride The Harlem Line. This is what my blog wants to be when it grows up and hires a designer, which it turns out is what Emily is. She's got all sorts of cool things like tags and ads and an illustration of herself. It's a fun upbeat site with a healthy and sometimes sarcastic sense of humor, which also appeals to my sensibilities.

In fact, the other day i was sitting on an early train that i never actually catch, like a 7:15am peaker i think, and a woman got up to get off at the White Plains stop, and she looked at me and said, "aren't you that guy with the blog"? and I said "depends, are you carrying anything that might be used as a weapon?" and she said, "I'm Emily. I write the I ride the harlem line blog". and we shook hands. Fellow commuters. Fellow bloggers. It's nice to be part of a group. A group of slightly unbalanced commuting misfits, but a group none the less. Please show my fellow bloggers some love. Thanks

Gooooooooood Mooooooorning Metro North!

2010-02-02T09:00:00.003-05:00

Rise and shine people! It's another glorious day on the rails! I see you've REALLY got your game face on today. Ready to take on the world baby! Ready to GET SUM!

Lets do a quick pre-battle check, shall we? Eyeshades stolen from your last business class flight? Check! Neck roll pillow your wife bought you from the Sharper Image catalog? Check! (watch out for that drool soldier!). Pony tail that tells the world deep down inside you are a free spirited youth ready to fight global warming wherever it rears its ugly ozone depleting head? Check! John Fogerty sideburns. Check!

This is the dawn of a new day soldier, a day when men like us, men like YOU, who have the will and the determination to change the course of history can make their mark. Life is what you make of it, and today you and I are going to grab some effing life and shake it by the neck until that bitch does what WE tell it to do.
You are an army of one.
Now MOVE OUT!

(and dont forget to switch out your slippers for big boy shoes when you get to the office).

My Guiding Light

2010-01-31T08:19:00.003-05:00

He's Baaaaaaaaaaaaak.

I know, it's been over a month since I've posted anything. Call it my winter break. Took a horrible vacation, been busy at work, got the winter blues. Whatev. Needed some me time to recharge the battery. So this week, as a way to get back in the swing, I have a story to tell that really isnt about a commute, but it ends in a commute, so hang in there.

The first time it happened I was in a bar. We were celebrating somebody's last day at work and we took about 10 people to a some place in NoHo. Now if you know anything about magazine people (which is what I am) and graphic designers in general (which is what I do) you know that they'll travel considerable distances for free food and drinks, and word gets out fast, so in a very short time the original 10 turned into about 50, all industry types, not all of whom I knew. So when it happened that I was standing at the bar and two women came up to me and said "We just wanted say that we love you and that we think you're really talented", I assumed they were a couple of fellow magazine folk come to pay me a compliment. The "we love you" part seemed a little strong, but not that unusual I guess, and the "youre really talented" thing made perfect sense to my misguided overinflated sense of self importance. Of course women approach me in bars, I thought. I choose typefaces and assign cartoons for a midsized weekly entertainment magazine. In fact, im surprised its taken this long...

"Could we get your autograph?" they asked.
Well hells yes ladies. In fact let me buy you two a drink and tell you all about the time I changed the display sans serif from Bureau Grotesque to a Geometric that really got the design world talking...

"We've been watching your show since high school and you're our favorite"
I'm sorry, what was that last part. What show is that?

"Guiding Light"

Yes. Guiding Light. Turns out, I look a lot like Josh from the daytime drama Guiding Light. More specifically, 13 years ago, when I cut my hair short, had a stubbly goatee and weighed about 25 pounds less than I do right now, I looked like Josh. Today I look like Josh after a 13 year carb bender.

Sorry ladies, Im not your man, but I can tell you some funny stories about how reducing the weight of your paper stock from 32 to 30 pounds can save almost a million dollars a year in shipping costs. Nope. I lost them.

So thats how it started. From this moment on, I would live my life as we all do but with one small difference. I would go to work, raise a family, pay my bills, battle through lifes daily trials, enjoy lifes occaisional victories, and then, about every 6 months, I would get confused for Josh from Guiding Light.

The sightings came less frequently when i changed my hair style, shaved or gained a little (or a lot of) weight, but whenever the stars (and our stubbly goatees) aligned, it would happen.

Aren't you that guy...?
Nope.
But you look just like...
Really. Not me.
Too bad.
Tell me about it.

So after about 10 years of this, I had an idea. It was time to "monetize" my good fortune, as they say in the online advertising world. I set up a meeting with the casting directors of Guiding Light and made my pitch.

As you can plainly see, I said, I look a lot like the character Josh from your show.
Well, if you lost a few pounds maybe...
So here's what Im thinking fellas. I'd like to come on the show for a week as Josh's long lost evil twin and then write about my week as a soap actor for Esquire magazine (which is where I worked at the time). My character (I was thinking Rex or Stone maybe) could show up on Josh's door, either recently escaped from prison, or a mental institution, or from being on the lam in mexico, and then I'd ask for money, or the car, or prescription drugs, and then I'd threaten the whole family, maybe take a hostage, burn down the hospital (I'd never actually watched the show, but I assumed there was a hospital), if the writers insisted I could have a brief affair, and then, bam, at the end of the week, they shoot me and dump my body into the river, not quite dead though, in case my week went so well that they insisted I come back later for a longer stay. Ratings would soar. My career as a TV actor would be launched and I could quit my day job and live happily ever after.

Can you guarantee us that the story will run? they asked
Well, sir, I can guarantee you this. I can guarantee you that I will show it to the editors at Esquire and that if they really like it and have some extra space that month that they will almost certainly consider running it.

We'll be in touch.
But...
Thanks.
but the ratings...
Security...

And that was it. 10 years of being mistaken for a Josh wasted. Nothing to show for it. No cameo. No effing awsome death scene where I hold the fake blood on my shirt and stare at my twin brother in disbelief as i drop into the murky water of the soap opera river. My one shot at stardom gone for good. So I gave up on the dream. I grew my hair long, shaved my goatee for good and moved on with my life.

And then, about 5 years later, I had left work early and was on the 2:48 afternoon off-peaker home (you see, here comes the commuter part), and there he was, literally sitting at the end of the car reading a paper. Josh. Or more accurately, the man who plays Josh, the actor Robert Newman. Turns out he's a commuter, just like me. Here was a man who in a small but not insignificant way had been a part of my life for 15 years and he didn't even know it. Needless to say (but I'll say it anyway) it's not often that life hands you an opportunity like this and so I decided that I would accept this gift from the daytime TV gods and I sat down in the seat facing him. Surely he would be fascinated by my numerous tales of mistaken identity, my brazen attempts to ride his coat tales onto fame and fortune, and the ultimate acceptance of my simple and lowly station in life.

I leaned, in close and introduced my self.
I explained who I was, how I had spent the last 15 years of my life being confused for him, thinking about him, plotting to infiltrate his show, the whole sordid tale, and even as the words were leaving my mouth I could tell this was a mistake. There was just no way to explain this story to the man who was its focus without sounding like an unstable stalker who had finally, after years of searching, cornered his pray on a northbound metro north train. When I was done talking, he stared at me with those steely blue moneymaker soap opera eyes of his for what felt like a good 10 minutes while he no doubt considered his options, and finally with a look that ultimately had more pity in it than fear, he said, "Nice to meet you", and he went back to reading his paper.

Fiber Man

2009-12-09T18:47:00.003-05:00

I'm on the 6:42 peaker, front car, which means i got here at the last minute and grabbed whatever seat was available. Then, right before the doors close and we head out on our merry way, in walks Fiber Man and sits right across from me. I've seen Fiber Man before, and I know his deal. He's got an eating ritual, which is to say that he catches the same train home every night, sits in the same effing seat and eats the same very healthy ass meal which goes a little something like this...

Small tupperware container of black prunes (or maybe dates, its hard to tell)
Small tupperware container of what appears to be wheat germ or bulgar or one of those finely ground fiber based things that heart doctors are always telling you to eat but you cant stand the effing taste so you never eat it.
Small tupperware container of granola.
Large thermos of green tea.

Now I don't know about you, but if I just pounded all that fiber and then followed it up with a green tea caffeine chaser, well then yes, I'd be on my way to the head to drop a deuce. But not Fiber Man. Fiber man has super powers beyond those of mere mortals. Fiber Man and his effing wood stove of a stomach just pound all that fiber into a little rock hard ball that burns slowly and efficiently in his gut like a chunk of West Virginia coal while he relaxes with the book he recently borrowed from the Greenburgh Public Library.

And also, who eats like that? Like how plane crash survivors ration food until they have to start nibbling each others toes for protein. "Dammit, Bob, you've had your tupperware bulgar for the day! Move on to the granola man!"

I decided a long time ago that I didn't like Fiber Man. I don't like people who live life like its an effing spread sheet, where everything fits neatly into its predetermined slot. Never late, 20 minutes of excerise a day, rolls his change, tips exactly 15%. The kind of guy who is never surprised by life, takes no chances and draws inside the lines. Fair or not, without ever even speaking to the guy, I just don't like him.

And then I see it.
Peeking out from a slightly open outside pocket of his hyper-organized computer bag...
The Tucks Takealong. Thats right, the very asswipe that I myself carry and have written about in these very pages. The worlds greatest asswipe.

Fiber Man isnt a super hero. He's not a robot. He's human just like you and me (well at least me). And I know where Fiber Man is going. I know he doesn't pack that wipe just for show. He means to use it. And I also know that on some level, Fiber Man and I aren't so different really. Sure, he eats like a lab rat from premeasured plastic containers, but he also knows how to take care of business and he takes his hygene seriously. Amen brother

He is Fiber Man, and in some small a way, I am Fiber Man too.

Climate Talks

2009-12-09T09:04:00.000-05:00

Welcome to day one of the Metro North climate talks. In honor of the climate conference going on in Copenhagen, i thought it was high time to address some of the climate issues we have right here at home, specifically on the Harlem Line of the Metro North train station. First on the list is the overpowering stench of urine that has become the hallmark of many a commute. I know we brought this up at last years conference which took place at the Golden's Bridge train station and was attended by myself and my friend Tripp who regularly sits next to me, but the problem persists, especially on the older cars. I believe this year we've come up with a solution. It seems that there is a room on some train cars where people pee. Metro north officials have confirmed that this room is known within the transit department as "the bathroom". Now that we know where the problem is centered, we have also come up with a two phase plan. Phase one, flush the goddamn toilet. Phase two, close the goddamn door.

I want to thank everyone for making time in their busy schedules to attend this years conference. This concludes today's agenda. Please check your mimeographed handouts for a list of tomorrow's discussion topics. I believe we are scheduled to begin at 9:00 am sharp with a discussion of a-holes who think its funny to fart in sealed environment.

Good day.

Stix to go

2009-12-08T08:28:00.003-05:00

DEPARTMENT OF SHAMELESS PRODUCT ENDORSEMENTS:

A few months or three ago I popped into the coffee shop at the station, poured myself a small hazelnut, stuck on a travel lid and took it to the counter to pay. As I placed the cup on the counter, the lovely and talented Roseanne stuck a little green plastic doohickie into the sipping slot of the lid. "Why are you touching my coffee, Roseanne?" I asked. "Its a coffee stopper so you don't spill on your ride" she said. How thoughtful, I thought. I was intrigued...

Turns out it has a name, this little green thingy, and its name is "Stix to go". Obviously, some guy or gal who had spilled his or her coffee for the umpteenth time, and who also had access to an injection molding plastics facility, decided enough was enough. It was time to plug up the hole and save commuting coffee drinkers the world over. Besides, there really isnt enough excess plastic in the world's landfills, so, why not!

I've come to really enjoy the Stix to go stopper on many levels, but I'd be remiss if I didn't explain one reason in particular. Now, what I'm about to say may not come out right, and you may very well think less of me for saying it, but here goes. It's a very satisfying tactile experience for me, and I suspect for other men in general, to stick something into a hole and have it click into place. There. I said it and I'm not taking it back. In fact, its so satisfying, that I tend to do it over and over again as I ride the rhythms of the rails. So is that so bad? Really? I mean, I have to ride the effing train every day for two hours, if a little piece of plastic can bring some joy into my otherwise soul sucking commute, dont I deserve it? Yes, I do. Plus, it makes a little clicky sound every time you do it. I like things that make clicky sounds. I bet you do too.

Oddly enough, in my 12 years of commuting, I've never spilled a beverage of any kind, so I cant honestly say it works because I'm not a big enough idiot that I put my coffee on the seat, where it just might ruin someones ride. I keep it on the ground where it belongs, but it is nice to know that, if an unexpected leakage does occur, I have protection.

Have a nice day.

December 7th, 1993

2009-12-07T09:33:00.003-05:00

There are a two days every year that I take some time on my train ride and think about the big picture. I think about how fragile life is and how in an instant it can all change. One of those days is September 11th. I first became aware of the events taking place while I was on the train and people's cell phones began ringing. It was strange, like a scene from a movie. First one, then another, then 5, then 10, all ringing with news that something was happening at the World Trade center. I remember sitting on the train and overhearing that a small plane had hit the tower. I guess I'd learn more once I got into the office, I thought. Almost always, on September 11th, I'm on a train at the two times that the planes hit, 8:46 am and 9:03 am, and I always stop and close my eyes and pause to remember.

Today is the other day that I stop and remember. On December 7th, 1993, a man who had no business being on a rush hour train home to Long Island, and a man who certainly had no business possessing a gun, waited about a half hour after the train had departed Penn Station and then, in a ruthless, emotionless and calculated manner, got up and started firing into the seats. Six New Yorkers were killed and 19 were injured on a train ride home. Commuters who were probably doing the same things that I see commuters do every day. Reading newspapers, books, magazines, sleeping, answering email, deleting email, listening to music, making to-do lists, talking on the phone, texting, browsing, meditating, snoring. Commuting. And then, in the short time it takes a train to travel from one station to the next, it all stopped, and the lives of those men and women and their families we're never the same. It made no effing sense whatsoever, and yet, it happened.

So on this day every year, I look around the train at the same people that usually make me so miserable on a daily basis, the loud cell phone users and the shopping trophy wives with their seat hogging Bloomie's bags and the self righteous teens with their feet up and the people eating smelly food and spilling drinks, and I say whatever. Today is not the day. Today is the day that we are all one family in this rumbling tin can we call home for two hours every day. Because no matter how mind numbing and boring a daily commute is, no matter how much you may hate that person sitting across from you, every now and then the normalcy of life, and the routine of arriving home safely at the end of another day, is a gift.

Field Guide to Commuters

2009-11-25T17:23:00.007-05:00

The blog is catching on my friends. I recently got asked to write a "fun" column about commuting for Westchester magazine, which is good news for me and my ambitions to retire on the profits of my commuting demise. Unfortunately, its bad news for you, my loyal readers, because it means I spent this week writing for them instead of you. So in lieu of my regular bitch-fest, I'm simply going to post the article here. It's not as bitingly sarcastic and profanity laced as my usual column, and I left out any juicy personal details about hygene and scatological habits, but it has its moments. What can I say. When you whore yourself out to the mainstream media establishment, you just can't talk about poop. That said, I promise to be back to my abnormal self next week. Oh, and why am I wearing a UPS baseball hat? Because it was on the effing free table at work, OK. Happy Thanksgiving!

John's Field Guide to Metro North Commuters

by John Korpics

I ride the train a lot. Two hours a day, 5 days a week for the last 12 years (and counting). So in the interest of science, and as a way to pass all that time, I have compiled this handy guide to a wide variety of commuter species. The next time you ride the train, take this along and see how many you can spot...

Schoolcutticus juvenalius
A high school student who cuts school to go into the city with their buddies, usually for a Yankees day game, a Yankees parade, a Yankees pep rally, or St. Patrick's Day, all of which involve underage drinking. These riders are not hard to spot. They wear authentic team jerseys and Uggs, nervously pool their spare change in order to pay the extra peak rate tickets that they didn't buy, and then spend the entire trip talking about which direction is best to walk when they leave Grand Central station.
Distinguishing Characteristics: Pimples

Americangirlicus parentus
A parent with a daughter who is carrying a doll dressed just like her, both of whom have hair appointments, followed by a reservation for high tea and a musical variety show, all at the American Girl store. There are so many things wrong with that sentence that I can't begin to list them. Seen mostly on elementary school staff development days.
Distinguishing Characteristics: A profound look of disbelief that says "is this really what my life has become"?

Cellphonica obnoxious
A person who's need to make small talk on the phone super-cedes your need for sanity. I was looking through some old drawings of medieval torture techniques the other day (like you've never done that) and I came across one that was particularly disturbing. It showed a man whose arms and legs had been pulled off by horses, his eyes had been gouged out, and someone was laughing while pouring hot liquid into his disemboweled stomach. Now imagine the guy laughing and pouring the liquid is me, and that one of the severed arms is holding a cell phone...
Distinguishing Characteristics: Look carefully for the numbers 666 somewhere just beneath the hairline.
Warning: This rider can be dangerous if antagonized with a sarcastic comment (trust me).
Overheard phrases can include: "Nothing, what are you doing?" and "I am so bored".

Fosters twofisticus
A commuter who boards the evening train with two (yes two) 22 ounce, motor oil sized cans of Foster's beer. 44 ounces of beer of beer for a 45 minute train ride. If he drinks an ounce a minute, he still has an extra minute to pee! Subject has also been observed spilling various snack foods on his lap and not caring. Have you ever seen that scene in North by Northwest where Cary Grant orders a Gibson in the dining car of the train and then charms the pants off of Eva Marie Saint? This is the complete opposite of that.
Distinguishing Characteristics: Untied tie, un-tucked shirt, sits near the bathroom.

Newspaperus scavengerus
The person who climbs into the metal trash bins on the Grand Central terminal platforms to get a free discarded newspaper. That's right, he's sticking it to all the fat cats at the New York Times who are drunk on newspaper profits! The M.T.A. trash police have mounted an 18 inch high metal barrier atop the bins to deter this behavior, kind of like how campsites try to keep bears from getting into dumpsters, but he is tenacious and can usually mount the bin and reach in for his prize. Bravo sir. If someone is willing to go to this much trouble to save $1.50, I'm afraid the newspaper industry really is doomed.
Distinguishing Characteristics: Long arms, no sense of shame.

Twoseated booby
A person who spreads their stuff out over two seats, and then pretends to be asleep when new riders get on.

Snoring droolapotomus
He sleeps. He snores. He drools. Hat trick!

Checkered flagosaurus
A person so terrified of having to wait in line, that he is always the first person out the train door, into his car and out of the parking lot, thereby shaving precious seconds off the end of his commute while also (bonus points!) risking countless lives as he speeds through the parking lot.

Marthastewart wannabeetles
A person who knits, crochets, sews or does some other generally crafty thing on the train. Look for the tell tale L.L.Bean canvas bag full of crap.

Please feel free to respond to the blog with your own additions. When we get to a hundred I'll make up an official list and post it. Thanks!

Welcome back!

2009-11-19T08:12:00.003-05:00

Judging from the many angry and threatening emails and facebook postings I've received over the last two weeks, I've come to realize some things. The first is that some of you just need to effing relax. Im not a blogging robot. A blogbot. I do it when I can, and when I cant, well, I just can't. The second thing I realized is that, like it or not, I seem to have become a small part of many people's daily routines, like a cup of coffee or blowing your nose in the shower. Just a little something you rely on to make your dark day just a little bit brighter. So when I stopped writing for a few weeks, I guess it was kind of a dick move and for that, I apologize. And because I love you all so damn much, my apology takes the form of a cute dog picture (see above). This is something you see now and then on the train and no matter how effed up life is, you just have to smile. And, as a bonus, I give you the passed out commuter in the seat behind pulling a dick move and taking up two seats. Your welcome. I promise that whenever I see a cute dog tucked into a purse or a jacket or a little dog carrier, I will take a picture and pass it on to you, my loyal readers. So there you go. Have a cute dog.
Also... NEW POLICY. If I plan to take a little time away from the blog, you will be duly notified by some sort of official announcement. Something like, "I'm taking next week off. Read a book. Love, John".

Moving on...
So if you're interested, I was away in cold and dreary Scandanavia last week talking to lots of black turtleneck wearing Danes and Norwegian's about graphic design and other such things. I did notice some commuting oddities while I was away, which I will share with you here. First, In Copenhagen, everyone rides a bike to work, which I found inspiring at first, especially when I imagined that, with a little gumption, imagination and some municipal cash, this could be New York. Why not? We could build bike lanes, follow the rules of the road, accept the bicycle culture in general , get the cars off the road and live happily ever after with unicorns and rainbows and windmills and danish chocolate, just like they do here. New York could become the Schwinndy City! And then I actually rented one of those bikes and drove around Copenhagen for a while, and I realized that, first, I could never do this in a suit, which is something I wear more often than not, second, I live about 55 miles from my office, so, well, eff that, and finally, the part I enjoyed the most actually, the bikers over there behave just as badly as drivers over here. They cut eachother off, they ding their cute little danish bells when they're angry, they tailgate, run red lights, and once in a while they smash into eachother and curse in Danish which is effing awesome. So for whatever its worth, a pissed off commuter is a global certainty, whether he's blocking the box with his Denali or running up someones ass with his Trek. And frankly, I like my bike, but I love my Lexus.

The other thing I noticed is that nobody wears ties. I was there for a week, in Oslo and Copenhagen and I don't think I ever saw a tie. I guess we have our business uniform and they have theirs, and I'm not judging or anything, but I'm also not sure how I'd feel living in a land where everyone dressed like Steve Jobs.

Finally, I just thought everyone would like to know that I'm gaining weight. I'm not an idiot. I'm sure you tolerate my blog entries when I try and wax poetic or make some social commentary, but you mostly enjoy it when life is kicking my ass, so this is for you folks who love it when I suffer. Some combination of less sunlight, a love of pretzels, and my large purchase of Toblerone and Gummi products at the Copenhagen Airport Duty Free, has added about 15 pounds to my delicate frame over the past 3 or 4 weeks. So if you see me on the train and I'm wearing the truly lame jean/suit jacket combo, its not because I think It looks young and hip, it's because the suit pants that go with that jacket don't fit right now, so there. Yet another gift for you my readers. A cute puppy and my fat ass. I guess Christmas came early this year.

Jean Genie

2009-10-29T08:29:00.005-04:00

I wear a suit most days, and a tie some. Its not really a preference, more of a tool. In the course of a normal day I may have 5 or 6 meetings, sometimes with my boss, sometimes with my boss's boss, sometimes with vendors or ad execs, and sometimes with my staff. All of the big shots tend to wear suits, so I play that game. All of the little shots wear whatever they effing want, but when I have to be a boss (which sometimes means being a dick), I respect them enough to dress like one (a boss, not a dick).

Also, when you boil it all down, I am a commodity, like a racehorse or a car or a watch. I'm a commodity that somebody spent a decent amount of money on, and when somebody spends a decent amount of money on something, and they have to look at it every day, they usually want to feel good about their investment. Sure, my car runs well, and the blinkers work, but I also want it to look good when I toss the keys to the valet. So for all of these reasons, I wear a suit.

Now on an average commute, I'd say about a quarter of the people on the train are wearing suits. If you're on an early peaker, the ratio goes up to maybe half. So I see alot of effing suits. Old, new, cheap, expensive, too tight, too long, ill-fitted, bad-ass, pin-striped, peak lapeled, glen plaid, three button, two button, unbuttoned, missing buttons, out of style, overstyled, had it since college, should only be worn to a funeral, brown, blue, black, searsucker, cotton, wool, chino, Prada (for the younguns), Polo (for the grownups), Brooks Brothers (for the lemmings). You name it, I've seen it. But there is one suit that I rarely see. A suit so unique that I sometimes go months or even years without a sighting, and then, when I've almost completely forgotten about its existence, I catch a flash of blue out of the corner of my eye as I ascend up the stairs and out of the station. There it is, in all it's denim magnificence. The Jean Suit.

A dude in a Jean Suit is a dude who is saying eff you to the suits of the world. I will not be a slave to your fashion laws, your shackles of style. I will go my own way. The way of the Levi. The way of the Wrangler. A dude in a Jean Suit lives life as a free man. He wakes up and says "today, I will wear my jeans, because they are comfortable and I enjoy them", and then, without even the slightest hesitation, he says "and I will also wear my denim jacket, because, it too, is comfortable". And then finally, just because he knows he can, he throws a metrosexual leather satchel over his shoulder and strides confidently out the door. Point, set and match.

Walk on Jean Suit man. Walk on

The Things I Carry

2009-10-28T09:49:00.002-04:00

An homage to Tim O'Brien (the writer, not the illustrator, although I am a fan of both).
Sidebar: I once met Tim O'Brien (the writer) at a book party and he was quite drunk and hit on my wife. I like to call that a twofer, two great things happening at once, meeting a well known person who happens to be falling down drunk, and, having him flirt with your wife. Anyway, that's a story for a later time...

All hard core commuters carry some sort of bag that doubles as a briefcase / first aid kit / bookbag / life support system. Mine happens to be a 10 year old black Tumi computer bag with a non matching gym bag strap that I added a few months ago when the original strap couldn't take it anymore. It's a nondescript, shabby yet functional bag. If a thousand commuters all went to lunch together, and we all checked our bags before we sat down, I would have a very hard time telling the coat check person which one was mine, and then I'd have to tip more because of how long he would look. What a man or woman carries every day in their bag is the product of a well worked equation, balancing necessity and comfort, need and speed. And of course weight. It almost always comes down to weight. How much of a burden are you willing to bear everyday as you stare into the abyss? Here's mine...

• 15" MacBook Pro Laptop. By far the heaviest thing in the bag, but also the most essential, for without this, there would be no blog. Your welcome.
• ATT Wireless USB card. Costs me about $60 a month. I am presently trying to pressure my employer to give me a company laptop card, so that I may negate my contract on this device. I'll keep you posted.
•Keys. Pared down to the bare minimum to help keep weight and clutter down. The ring has a house key, a car key, and an office key. It also has a pink plastic laniard ribbon made by my daughter in camp two years ago. Worth the extra weight. The keys are hooked onto a plastic key clamp sewn into the Tumi. Whenever I look in the bag and the keys aren't on the hook, I panic. Lost keys means having to call the wife from the station and get her to bring me the spare set at 7:45pm on a weeknight. Never lose the keys my friend.
• Iphone USB power chord with detachable wall plug.
• Mophie battery skin for the iPhone. Because my iPhone battery lasts about two hours if I don't play the skeeball app (which I do enjoy). I also need the extra battery power so I can listen to a whole baseball game on my MLB app, which sucks up iPhone juice faster than a toddler on a teat.
• V-Moda Earbuds (with extra pads). You get about 6 sets of extra silicone ear bud pads with the V-Moda's, and for some reason I carry them all. They come in different sizes, so you can match your particular earhole with a particular bud size. Whatever, they dont weigh much, so I bring em.
SHAMELESS PROMOTIONAL MOMENT: I had an old pair of V-Moda's that broke. Out of warranty, no receipt. I sent them to V-Moda and they fixed them and mailed them back at no cost. I am a customer for life.
•Glasses. I wear a pair of glasses every day, and I bring a spare pair in case something happens to my first pair, and then I have my fancy new Maui Jim prescription sunglasses, so yes, I carry three pairs of glasses. This might be an area where I could trim down. Maybe contacts...
• Maps and Schedules. I carry those plastic laminated streetwise manhattan and transitwise manhattan maps, as well as a train schedule. All of these things have been replaced by apps on my phone, but I carry them anyway, I guess in case there's some sort of of nuclear attack and all the technology goes down and I really need to catch a subway.
•Phones. Yep, plural. I have an iPhone 3G and a new company blackberry. I think this is mostly psychological, but I try not to mix any business technology with personal tech. Trust no one. In a month or so, I will also have a company laptop, which means I have to carry two laptops or chose one to leave at home. Or hire a sherpa.
• Pens. 3 pilot G-2 o5's and a sharpie, always black, cuz im a newyahker.
•Medical Supplies. I have a Provental inhaler for asthma, and 3 Zyrtec's for allergies. I carried bandaids for about 10 years, but everytime I cut myself, I was always in a place where they already had bandaids, so...
• Yellow AMPAD Gold Fiber Quadrille letter sized pad. The best note pad ever. I think they use them on the space shuttle.
•Business Cards. A set for my new job and a set for my personal business (just in case).
•Personal Hygene. A small box of toothpicks, cuz I have some annoying gaps in my teeth that I need to clean out now and then, a packet of those listerine breath strips, a pack of trident bubblegum flavored gum, and seven individual Tucks Take-Along "Medicated Wipes". I highly recommend that last item for anyone who lives an "on-the-go" lifestyle and also happens to hold personal cleanliness in high regard. Without going into too much detail, it wouldn't be overstating it to say that the Tucks Take-Along has saved my ass more than once, literally and figuratively (badump bump).

Thats it. There are many things I've stopped carrying over the years. Books, newspapers, umbrellas, aspirin, food, drinks. All mostly because I don't like the extra weight. I like to think of myself as a lean mean commuting machine. Ready to sprint across town without being weighed down by thoughtful or inspiring reading material. The whole shooting match weighs about 8 pounds, which is why my right shoulder is so much stronger than my left. As far as I can tell, the contents of my bag suggest that I worry about being late, having fresh breath, being disconnected, and having a super clean caboose. All good qualities in any soldier. I offer my apologies to Tim O'Brien for stealing his concept, but since he once tried to bugger my wife, I guess we're even.

An Inconvenient Deuce

2009-10-22T08:13:00.004-04:00

The life of a long distance commuter is all about timing. Here's an example of how my morning usually goes...
Alarm goes off at 6am. I hit the snooze a couple of times. Out of bed by 6:20. Wake the kids, make coffee, wake the kids again, shower, floss, brush, dress for work, match tie to shirt, match socks to pants (usually in the dark), take the kids to the bus stop to catch the effing ungodly 7:05 am bus, back home to grab all my stuff, answer an email, kiss my wife, pet the dog (important to do it in that order), drive to the train station, grab an egginabag and another coffee, catch the 8:05 peaker, arrive at Grand Central by 9:10-ish, walk across town and finally plunk my ass down in my trendy ergonomically correct Aeron chair by 9:30am. This leaves me a half hour to unpack my shit, plug in my laptop, print out my schedule, go through the 50 emails that I didnt answer yesterday and get to my daily 10am meeting. It's a tightly planned morning that doesnt have a whole lot of wiggle room in it, and so here's the problem. Somewhere in this frantic 4 hour window, I have to find a little ME time to do my bidness.

You see, this blog is about life, not some Disney channel laugh track retouched version of life, but the real deal, and having set those parameters, and out of respect for the intelligence of my readers, I really have no choice but to discuss the true indignities that come along with this lifestyle. The simple fact is, that at some point during those non stop, hectic 4 hours between 6am and 10am, I have to drop a deuce.

Now usually, if life is drudging along and the days are falling endlessly into eachother like a row of dominoes layed out in, say, a death spiral pattern, I'm in a pretty good rhythm. I wake up, get the coffee, wake the kids, maybe grab a bowl of shredded wheat or grape nuts, and boom. There you have it. Done and done. Time to move on. But every once in a while, like when it's time to set the clocks back, or if I skip dinner, or if I changed the order I put my socks on, or if earth's rotation around the sun alters its course by more than a thousandth of a degree, I can get knocked off that rhythym, and that's not good.

When that happens, my morning can go something like this:
Alarm goes off at 6am. Out of bed by 6:20. Wake the kids, make coffee. Huh, nothing yet.
Shower, floss, brush, dress for work. Hmmm. Still nada.
Take the kids to the bus, back home to grab all my stuff, answer an email, kiss my wife, pet the dog, and then...uh, oh.

And it's at this point that I have two very unenviable options. I can drop my bag, heed the call and miss my train, therefore probably missing that meeting that a bunch of people in nice work clothes will be expecting me in. Or, I can use the facilities on the train, and here's why that second option is just never ever going to happen. You see, about a year ago, I actually did decide to use the train bathroom, not for a full on sit down, but for a number one moment. And as I was standing in the bathroom, doing my thing, the train came to a stop, and when the train came to a stop, the sliding door of the bathroom that I was positive I had locked, rolled open. And so there I was, in full view of a very appreciative audience who, even though they hadn't put a dollar into a slot, nonetheless had the door slide open for a little Times Square style show.

And so given those two options, whenever I'm faced with the inconvenient deuce and I have to make that choice...well, those people in that meeting can just wait.

Egginabag

2009-10-19T07:43:00.003-04:00

For the commuter on the go!
I was standing on the platform one morning waiting for the 7:35 when I ran into my buddy Tripp (Tripp, by the way, is the perfect name for a buddy. Who doesn't like a guy named Tripp?). I noticed that Tripp was eating a hardboiled egg while he waited for the train. I was puzzled by this. Did Tripp actually boil an egg this morning, and then rather than eat it at home, he'd carefully packed it in a ziplock and carried it to the train, only to eat it on the platform? Did he prefer dining al fresco? So I asked him. "Did you bring enough of those for the whole class?".

Turns out he just had the one, and it also turns out that he did not make it himself, but rather he bought it at the train station coffee shop. The woman who runs the shop sells them for 50 cents a piece. Genius.

So the next day, along with my french roast, I got myself an egginabag. The woman who runs the shop told me that there were a steady and slowly growing group of commuters who were buying the eggs. She keeps a set of squeeze handle salt and pepper shakers next to the basket of eggs so that we may season to taste. De-lish.

She also informed me that she keeps the low fat milk under the counter in the mini fridge rather than on display with the regular milk and the half and half. Just not enough room for all three milk products on the counter so the low fat got the short shrift. Whaddyaknow. So now I love walking in to the shop like a pro, pouring my regular cup and reaching for the mini fridge milk, like I just woke up and came down for breakfast. And every once in a while (not everyday cuz of the cholesterol my doctor tells me), I loves grabbing me an egginabag.

Dick Move

2009-10-16T08:40:00.004-04:00

I'd like to apologize to all the folks who got on the train at White Plains this morning. I pulled a classic dick move. I was sitting in a two-seater and I was sort of half asleep and leaning over into the other seat, eyes closed, when the doors at White Plains opened. Instead of sitting up straight and making the seat readily available, I just kept my eyes closed and stayed in position. Truly a dick move. It pains me to admit that my commute does sometimes bring out the worst in me, but there it is. I'll never pretend I'm something I'm not. Now, if someone taps me on the shoulder and asks me to make a little room, I absolutely do it, no hesitation, but every once in a while (and it's really not very often) I just sit there and make you ask. I know it's hard, and I know the average person will take a look at me and decide it's not worth it and move on to the next seat, but if they screw up some courage and take what is rightfully theirs, well then they earned the seat and my respect at the same time. If you're ever on the train and you see some a-hole with his eyes closed enjoying more than his share of a two seater, do the right thing. Take what is yours, on the train, and in life. Have a good weekend everyone.

The Talker

2009-10-15T19:12:00.001-04:00

"Did you ask your father?"
"What did he say?"
"So I guess the economy's getting better."
Why do you need to do that?'
"Did you finish your homework?"
"What should we do for dinner?"
"Again?"
Blah blah blah blah.

As I'm riding home on the 6:52 peaker, selfishly enjoying the first quiet and peaceful minutes of my endless day, these are the truncated conversations that I hear coming from the woman in the seat across from me. I wait. Patiently. I'm sure she'll make this a quick call and hang up because this a peak train full of hard core commuters, no rookies, and we know the rules and they are as follows: Have your ticket ready when the conductor comes around, keep your station bought bevy on the floor, not the seat in case it spills, and, unless you need to convey immediate information that will save American lives, stay off the effing phone. You most certainly do not ramble on with your daughter about dinner, homework and sleep plans. That's why nerd geniuses like Bill Gates inventing texting lady. WTF.

In cases like this, I have a few options. I can ask her politely to keep her voice down and try to keep the conversation short, which is exactly what Mr. Rodgers would do because he was very calm and patient man and he truly loved humanity. But you see, I got about 5 hours of sleep last night, and I've been at a stressful job all day, and I'm sitting under these interrogation strength fluorescent lights, so the Mr. Rodgers in me is not going to show up.

The second option is to stare. Fix a concrete hard gaze on her that lets her know exactly what I think about the fact that she's sucking up all of my relax time with her inane conversation. So I try the stare. And, well, she just stares back. Go ahead lady.

Another option, which I can only use if I get lucky, is that I wait until she gives the person on the other end of the conversation her cell number. "I might lose you. Just in case I do, my number is blah blah blah - blah blah blah blah" and you write that precious number down r-e-a-l-l-y carefully so you make sure you have it correct, and when you get home you her up for automatic phone messages from the home shopping network. "Please alert me by phone when you have a sale of any Wizard of Oz figurines. God bless".

Unfortunately, I have no such luck tonight. The digits are not forthcoming, and so finally I resort to my last option (and my new favorite). I pull out my iphone, take her picture, and blog about her.
Served.
Remember people, the train is a community, and if you aren't a good neighbor, well, chances are someone's going to leave a flaming bag of dog shit on your step.

Oh wait, she's getting off. Chappaqua. Figures.

The Sunny Side

2009-10-14T08:32:00.001-04:00

The 8:05 peaker heading into the city. Sitting on the Sunny Side. At certain times of the morning one side of the train gets blasted with sunlight. Usually, only a rookie sits on the sunny side because it's very hard to read or see a laptop screen or sleep with the sun blasting in the window, especially when it's intermittently blocked by trees and buidlings creating a strobe effect, which I've heard can cause a stroke or a siezure in some cases. That would be a bad way to start the day. But today I'm rolling in my new Maui Jim prescription sunglasses, and life is good.

I designed a business card for my Optometrist friend, Dr. George Amatuzzi. I did it for free, because I've been going in to see him for about 12 years now and I just couldn't stand looking at his effing ugly business cards anymore. They were printed on a thin gray stock (really, who chooses gray stock?) and designed from some sort of standard template that a printer gives you to chose from. So I took one of his cards, went home and designed him a new one, took it back in and asked him to please accept this gift on behalf of all the people in the world with 20/20 vision who couldn't stand looking at his effing ugly business cards anymore. He said thanks and told me to pick out some sunglasses, which I did.

And here I am, sitting on the sunny side in my Maui Jim prescription sunglasses, which I thought were cool when I picked them out, but now I'm not so sure. Im starting to think they look a little doofy. As you can see, I'm also wearing a summer weight suit jacket even though it was 40 degrees this morning, and a button down collar with no tie, which is actually a fashion mistake, but do I look like I give a damn? Nope. Not today. Life is good.

The 7:25

2009-10-13T18:49:00.001-04:00

First, I would like to welcome my 5 new followers. You represent the best that mankind has to offer and I thank you.

Today I wanted to talk about the 7:25am Peaker, that is the morning express peak train into the city. This is the train of choice or people who need to be at work by 9am and want as few stops as possible. Type A people. Type A-holes. I tend to take the next train, the 7:35, which is a local train and a little less intense, but today...the 7:25.

Look long and hard at this photo, and then imagine starting every day of your life just like this. Packed to the rivets, industrial strength flourescent lights, and hundreds of people who dream in the form of a powerpoint presentation. This is why they always have those ads for Aruba on the walls at the end of the train car. "Honey, I'm not sure why, but i think we should take a trip to the Islands".

This is a silent train, which is to say that nobody talks, either on a phone or to another passenger. If someone tries to talk to you, which actually happened to me this morning, you know right away that they're a rookie, a new commuter, and you briefly think to yourself, "Isn't that odd. he's talking to me. huh". And then your coffee starts to wake you up a little more and the look on your face shifts to a look that now says, "Sorry. I don't mean to cut you off in the middle of that story about your recent relocation, but It's 7:25 am, and I'm just not the person you wish I was. Goodnight." I'm not proud of that. It just is. You're either tired or hung over or reading or sleeping, but the one thing you are not doing is making conversation.

The other drag about the 7:25 is that its full, which means there are no empty seats, which means that someone has to sit bitch. Someone has to sit in the middle seat in a three seat row. In order to do this, you have to gently nudge the person in the outside seat awake, ask to step over them, and then sit down in the middle, which then wakes up the person in the window seat. If you successfully navigate that obstacle course, then consider this. Of the three average Americans now sitting in these three seats, what do you think the odds are that one of them is morbidly obese. Turns out they're pretty good actually. And finally, if the gods are truly against you today, one of the three people that you're now rubbing arms and thighs with will decide to eat his egg and cheese breakfast out of a Tupperware container. Jackpot. Picture complete. Which makes sitting bitch one of the worst experiences you can have on a commute, because the only thing worse than talking to someone at 7:25 in the morning, is touching them and smelling their eggs.

That's it for today. Look at the picture. Look hard. Tomorrow I'm catching the 7:35.

Monday, October 12, 2009. HOME

2009-10-12T20:04:00.000-04:00

Welcome to the first post on my effing commute. Every weekday of my life I spend three and a half hours of my day (mostly on a train) going between my job in Manhattan and my house in Westchester County, NY. The life of a long distance commuter (which is an actual term that has a specific definition that I believe I meet) is a soul sucking, Kafkaesque existence that I would wish on no man or woman, but it is my life, and I've learned to accept it. I've also decided to use my time to share my living hell with as many people as are interested. Your Welcome.

So tonight it's 8:15pm and I'm on an Off Peaker, which is a train that doesn't run within the designated peak rush hour times, which is to say I'm on a late train going home, which usually means its full of drunks and shopping trophy wives yacking on their cell phones. Today though, is Columbus Day, which is kind of a holiday (no mail, no school), but not really (Wall Street and my job...open), which means it's a light volume day on the rails. So besides having to pee but not wanting to use the train bathrooms (there's like ten blogs worth of writing to be done later on the train bathrooms), I'm enjoying the ride with my feet up and plenty of "spread out room". It's a good ride.

As you can see, I'm wearing a tie today, which means at some point this morning when I was getting dressed, I thought I might need to look like I was in charge today, which I am usually (in charge) but I don't always want to dress the part. If this blog was called "My Effing Living Room", there would never be a picture of me in a tie. There would more likely be a picture of me in some sort of Hanes underwear product and a T-Shirt that I got for free and then cut the sleeves off of. That's just how I roll. Thanks for reading. See you next time.