Religious Dialogue

The following interaction took place this morning, April 29, 2008, around 9:30 am in a center car on the Coney Island-bound F train. The participants were a middle-aged woman with a Caribbean accent in a full length, camel-colored coat and silk scarf and a tall, heavy man with dark hair in light blue jeans and a navy anorak. All iterations were spoken very loudly, the intended audience being the other passengers on the train:

Woman: JEE-ZUS! YES. JESUS IS THE LORD. BOW before the Lord Jesus. JESUS is the Son Of GOD. You have got to know the love of JESUS!

Man: For the love of Jesus SHUT THE HELL UP.

Woman: JESUS IS KING! YOU must accept JEE-ZUS...

Man: You must accept that YOU SUCK.

Woman: Get back, Satan!

Man: YOU SUCK!

Woman: JESUS!

Man: YOU SUCK!

Woman: JESUS!

Man: YOU SUCK!

Woman: JESUS!

Man: YOU SUCK!

Woman: I reject you, Satan! Accept Jesus into your HEARTS. Jee-zus is your Lord and your Saviour!

Man: Everybody worship the devil! BOW BEFORE THE DARK LORD!

The train then stopped at 34th Street/Herald Square, where both evangelists exited quietly.

The Daily Grind To A Screeching Halt

Today I saw a Buddhist monk in an orange robe and new white Nikes getting on the Manhattan-bound F. It made me happy to live in New York, and also diffused a little of the residual anxiety I had from sitting across the car from a meth/speed/crack addict mom who spent the train ride rubbing her daughter's hair and listing her favorite things to drink (orange soda, Yoohoo, Dr. Pepper, milkshakes, Sunny Delight.) I'm realizing that if I didn't ride the subway I'd have a lot less to write about. It's not the "great equalizer" that irritating, delusional people say it is, though. New Yorkers just know how to ignore each other better than most people. It's not like I feel some kind of spiritual kinship with the meth addict mom or the fake homeless guy or the girl singing Akon because we happened to ride the subway together. I'm not going to go grab a Yoohoo with them later and talk about how we're all one beautiful family under God and the MTA. Living in New York just means I have to look at them when I pretend they don't exist.

People We Don't Like

Celebrities are so weird. They're always so much shorter than you think they're going to be. My mom's arch-enemy is Bernadette Peters (5'3''). She really hates her. They were in summer stock together and my mom won the Best Actress Ever Award, but Bernadette went on to win Tonys and a moderate amount of fame. Unending bad blood. My mom's in town for the weekend, so my advice to Bernadette would be to just lay low.

The Death of Dreams

When I was like 12 I used to go into Virgin Megastore and put on the headphones that let you listen to hot new albums and I'd sing along really loudly. I acted like I couldn't hear how loud/awesome my singing was, but really I was hoping that there would be a music exec in the store somewhere who would hear me belting out Hootie and give me a record deal. There was a girl on the train today who was doing the same thing while listening to her iPod. I could tell because she was adding all of these yearning, Mariah Carey-ish inflections to the words and closing her eyes like she was so enraptured by the intense emotions stirred up by the song that she couldn't even tell that she was totally rocking. I felt really embarrassed for her and for my preteen self. The only other people in the car were me and a Korean lady who was eating a peach. I wanted to shake that singing girl and tell her to wake up and recognize that neither me nor the Korean lady wanted to hear her sing Akon or give her a record deal. I didn't though.

Godless Wastelands

Here's a place that I hate: THE POST OFFICE. I always feel like I'm in Communist Russia in there, with all of the forms and waiting in line and resentful workers and armed revolts. Let's never be Communist, ok? I can't stand waiting in line. Really nothing aggravates me more. Even if I have nothing to do when I get back to the office but read catsthatlooklikehitler.com, I always just feel like I HAVE TO GET OUT OF THE LINE RIGHT NOW. While waiting I try to look as surly and volatile as possible so no one even thinks about touching me or being loud. This is generally ineffective.

You're Just Weeyerd

Accents are hilarious; everyone knows this. I spent the past weekend palling around with my old pal Thor*, who comes from Wisconsin. Although we were actually in New York City, we pretended like we were in Green Bay and added extra syllables and kindness to all of our words. We ordered butterburgers and cheese curds at every restaurant. It sounded a lot like this:





For more accent-related hilarity, check out the Maria Bamford show. We did! I first saw this on the blog for Magazine and I'm hooked.




*not even close to his real name

Friends and Neighbors

Once when I was working in the bookstore Liza Minelli came in. She was surrounded by what appeared to be a squad of protective lesbians. I thought to myself, "Sally Bowles? Lucille 2?" I couldn't be sure if it was really her. She asked me what I thought about The Secret. I told her, then she said that she had "enough positive thinking in [her] life." What a woman! She bought about $60.00 worth of books. I looked at the signature on the receipt and confirmed my suspicions/wildest dreams. I gave the receipt to my friend Dan for his birthday. Just the week before we'd been flouncing around the front desk singing "Life is a Cabaret" at some leering, decrepit customers. Coincidentally, it is Dan's birthday again. Happy birthday Dan! Other celebrity sightings at Bookstore included Woody Allen accompanied by a 12 year old girl (seriously), Christine Baranski and Princess Lee Radziwill.

Cultural Exchange

Sometimes life is hard. When this happens I watch the following video, brought to you fittingly by dorks.com. It's pretty much the best thing I've ever seen. (Personal note! My brother often travels to India for work. He claims he's working in "healthcare," but the guy in this video has hair that is suspiciously like his. Also my brother dances just like this all the time.)

Ways to Make Money

Here's a picture of me doing a great job promoting Mom & Me watches from Barbie and Fruity Pebbles. If you would like me to promote your watch or cereal here on my blog, contact me here at my blog. I am also available for birthdays and corporate events.

Life Cycles

An unsettling aspect of life in New York is that you live stacked on top of other people. People are always clawing for more space and therefore waiting for their elderly neighbors to permanently vacate. This is ghoulish and pretty despicable but everyone does it. Supers whisper about how unwell Mr. Johnson in 3D's been looking lately and that 3D was last renovated in 1994 and outfitted with marble countertops and crown molding. Today in the hall I saw a neighbor of mine who I thought was dead. Turns out he'd just been too frail to leave his apartment for the winter. People in the lobby were visibly disappointed.

Getting Real

People who make me feel more awkward than I normally do are actors. This is because they'll come up to you and, rather than making stumbling attempts at conversation like everyone else, begin to sing some obscure melody from H.M.S. Pinafore or something and beg you with their eyes to take the harmony. Or, in the middle of a conversation, they'll do an impression of Howard Cosell. This is intended for humor but is quite startling. Or they'll start juggling. The thing that bothers me the most is that I'm not above doing any of these things myself, and I think that if I'd continued in a theatrical vein I might do them, rather than hunching behind my computer and looking for things to mock. Actors are the outward projection of everything that I sort of leer at sideways about myself. So, that was LiveJournal-y. For next time, more snarky observations about wackos.

Tips!

A fun thing to do when you are more at home than you'd like to be on a Wednesday night is look up your coworkers on myspace. That way when you see them the next day you'll know things about them that make you feel a little uncomfortable and voyeuristic, like the names of their pets or whether they're an atheist. Another thing to do is drink 64-87 ounces of water. Hydration is key. If you are feeling creative/industrious, you should build a model society out of Q-Tips and Flintstones vitamins. Make sure to have plenty of civic centers. Other ways to be productive and have a great time are: deleting your ex-boyfriends' numbers from your cellphone, thinking about everyone you know who is probably gay, flossing, giving yourself bangs.