…another one rides the bus…
I take the red line from NoHo to my excellent job Downtown every day and Metro takes me to the dark place inside myself that prematurely turns me into a grumpy old man. Or… grumpier old man if you must.
I don’t care what idealized vision you have of mass transit, but it’s awful.
I began riding it to work when I was a code monkey at LegalZoom.com in Hollywood. It is mighty convenient and the places I’ve worked get some sort of tax break or something, so they reimburse me for my parking and my metro pass. That’s pretty great.
Plus, I’m an evil bastard who drives a child-killing SUV, so I’m saving hundreds of dollars a month by not driving to work while your president starts wars around the world. Parse that, hippie.
Driving in L.A., however, is worse than the subway, so since showbiz has put me out to pasture and I must work 5 days a week for the money my loop group friends make in a few hours, I’ve been fortunate enough to land jobs where I can ride the subway to work. (If you think I complain, you haven’t lived until you’ve heard a loop group person complain. “They made us do THREE TAKES of grunts!!!”)
The L.A. metro is awful. It is just awful. It’s noisy and uncomfortable. The passengers are inconsiderate and rude. Since we’re mass transit customers, we are basically sheep. An upside to that, I suppose, is that everyone obeys the rules; mainly the “no food or drink” rule. Which is nice as I’ve been on the train when there are people who don’t follow that rule and, well, if it’s not your own food, it smells like doo.
When I first began riding, it was filled with homeless people. They would just ride it all day… back and forth from Union Station to North Hollywood. A stop has been put to that. They clear the cars at the termination point, but it was soooo weird.
I get a cup of the finest coffee (7-Eleven… Seriously.. best coffee around, but those little creamers suck my nutz badly.) and hold it. It cools off nicely by the time I get to 7th/Metro. You would not believe the “discussion” I got into with a security guard. I have a hard enough time with authority figures, so the fact that I’m not in prison to this day for head-butting an idiot with a badge who couldn’t understand that “holding” is not “drinking”. The sign doesn’t say “No food or drinks” it says “No drinking or eating”, sir. Wildly different.
Besides the fact that it’s free for me and I don’t spend as much on gas as I would (two things I’m certainly not ignoring… I’m grateful for them), if I can get a seat (more on this later), I can manage to “sleep” for the 25 minutes of the trip.
It’s an odd sleep. I’ve only ever really fallen completely asleep once. Aks the bride: I often have um, “active” dreams and this one was no different. I was strangling someone in the dream. In the real world that becomes squeezing the cup and splling coffee everywhere.
Oops.
Maybe the security guard had a point. Whatever. Dick.
Back to the whining and complaining that I do so often and well:
At first, I was excited because I was actually riding the subway to work and saving money and could lord it over any hippie like a composte or hybrid car. But at a certain point, which takes about 4 years it seems, the excitement wore off and I realized “Wait a fucking minute. The L.A. Metro is just a very fast and expensive bus.”
I do what I can to block it all out. I listen to books. Angry Birds helped me through it all for about a month. I sleep. But… that’s once I’m on. That’s the least horrible part. Probably because I’m usually asleep or something.
This is what I see on the Los Angeles Metro EVERY DAY:
1) People running to STAND on the escalator.
This is a two part peeve – (great name for a band!!!)
First, there is a simple etiquette observed on escalators: Stand on the right – walk on the left. The rest of the world understands this… why can’t we in Los Angeles? B) If you’re in such a hurry, why stand on the escalator? Why not continue walking?
I know why, actually. Because people are standing on the left side of the escalator. Since this is Los Angeles and we are all narcissists and can do no wrong, suggesting to someone that they move to the side one step is met with “IF YOU WANT TO WALK, TAKE THE FUCKING STAIRS!!!” I hate confrontation. Why? Because the ones in my head end up with me throat punching someone.
2) A “Cool Kid” sitting on the steps at the NoHo Station as the rush hour train lets out. It’s already an unpleasant mom scene. We understand that you are a rebel and are mad at the world, dude, but really, how about sitting somewhere else? We notice you. You are tortured. We get it. And another thing. Pull up your fucking pants.
3) Men not offering their seats to women or the elderly. Today, March 31, on both trips I got up to offer my seat to a woman and it was promptly snaked by a man. A man younger than me, by the way.
It’s called chivalry. Look it up.
4) “Cool Kids” and others running from the train and pushing people so they can sit down on the bus.
The NoHo red line ends on Lankershim but it continues on as “the Orange Line”, which is just a space age looking bus. Bus drivers love to leave people behind, and every loser in L.A. who rides the bus knows this, so when the train arrives at the NoHo station it is a sprint from the train to the Orange Line. It’s so depressing. It’s like something out of “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?”. This crush of humanity… young kids, mothers with strollers, your cleaning lady, aformentioned “Cool Kids”, middle-aged proessional types, students. It makes me realize that if something bad were to ever happen in the subway, it would be, um, bad. I hope to be killed instantly so as not to a) be trampled to death or worse, b) watch people trample others to death.
5) That same “cool kid” blowing a “snot rocket” onto the platform from the train. Fortunately, I’ve only experienced this sort of joy a few times (today, being one. Lucky me!) But: Dis.Gus.Ting. It’s not cool. It’s really not. Dude, we know you don’t care what we think about you. We can tell because you’re dressed like all those other rebels who don’t care what anyone thinks about them. And dude, you’re not that cool. When I was your age, I had a job and a car. You’re riding the bus, loser. (yes, I know…)
6) The heartbreaking sight of a middle-aged to elderly woman, running to the elevator because no one is going to hold the door for her.
See previous comment about subway explosion.
7) Hey, “Cool Kid” again. That song that you’re singing along to *is* great. But… you’re riding the subway. You’re not on stage. I don’t think you ever will be, actually. Someone being “private” in public is so different from someone actually being private in public. Make sense? No. Didn’t think so. Oh yeah: Pull up your pants. Idiot.
The person who gets mad at me because there is permit parking and because I, personally, can’t sell them a parking pass.
You, the taxpayer, are actually paying for my parking space at the NoHo station. My work gets some sort of subsidy for reimbursing me for my train ticket and parking. I also claim it as an expense because I cheat on my taxes. Regardless, I have a parking pass. I had to make an effort to buy it. It’s not difficult, but I did make the effort. After about10am, there are NO spaces left at the NoHo station. If you don’t have a permit, you can park in the permit area at 11am. From about 11-1, it’s impossible to find a spot to park.
And… because everyone in the world is entitled to everything, that woman who overslept because she went to see Ke$ha at the Universal Ampitheater the night before can’t find a parking spot at 10:00am. So she drives around a few times and comes over to the permit side and wants to me to tell her everything there is to tell her about permit parking. Invariably, they get mad at me (REALLY!) because they can’t just buy a permit. Becasue I’m a dickhead and there are three other cars that look exactly like mine, I’ve begun telling people that “they never check that one section over there.” and “the fine is only $7.50 if they do catch you.”
I think it’s about $45. I hope so.
In addition to snot rocket man, today there were two young women with bibles. Again, they were being “private” in public. One was reading a passage (Acts, by the way) while the other one followed along. After they were finished, the first one said something like “I think it’s about blah blah blah…” and the other one disagreed; her interpretation was a little different. The first one replied, convinced she was right… she read the bit again. Her friend stopped her in the middle…. “Yeah, right there… they’re saying that…”
This is how wars begin.
On my subway. To hell.
Make no mistake, though: I’m happy to have a job and I’m thrilled I don’t have to drive.
I’d much rather be doing movies & t.v.
And I want a pony. A green one.
empathy, self-centeredness and other SAG member stuff
One of the best qualities of being human is empathy. We feel empathy for the people affected by the earthquake and tsunamis in Japan, but, other than write a check, we are unable to actually do anything to help out over there. Jamy Ian Swiss has a great presentation about empathy and its place in effective advertising and, of all things, good magic.
The “situation in Japan” is terrifying and confusing, especially because of the nutty bias against all things nuclear. Digression: I had an episode this past weekend listening to a reporter from CNN actually say “There’s nothing happening now, but some believe there could be a meltdown!” Last night, as I was torturing myself with Rachel Maddow, she was (condescendingly… go figure!) ‘splaining how nuclear reactors work – “…instead of an explosion, the rods create heat, which creates steam…” Because, as we all know, nukes are only capable of those two things.
Instead of being able to DO something – Instead of being in a position to help, we scare ourselves with stories that big bad radiation is coming and that we need to stock up on iodine or iodide or kelp or kelp iodine or… SOMETHING… ANYTHING… from Whole Foods. It can only be from Whole Foods because, well, it’s Whole Foods. After discovering that, OH, SLUG ME IN THE CUNT! WHOLE FOODS HAS BEEN SOLD OUT OF KELP IODINE SINCE SATURDAY AFTERNOON!!!!, we too, can now be (big sigh of relief) victims of the earthquake and tsunami. We can take part. We can suffer, too. “Hey, Japanese people! Lookie here… I’m in peril, too! See, I can’t get kelp iodine!!!” It’s also a way to inject some order into a weird, random event. Instead of not knowing what is going to happen. Instead of uncomfortably drifting in the wind of wait and see, we now have a task: GET ME SOME FUCKING IODINE!! STAT!!!!
It happened after 9/11 – An actress on a t.v. show hired private security guards because “they hate our media”. For weeks after the attacks, a Jewish community center down the street from where we were living at the time, used pylons to block off a lane of traffic in front of their building because they felt they were a possible target. People wouldn’t go to work in tall buildings across the country because, not only did they work in the tallest building in their city, there was a reason for terrorists to fly planes into their business, too. The movie studios “got tough” about identity and made actors miss auditions. Everyone began playing “If I were a terrorist…” You can tell when there’s a game of “If I Were A Terrorist” being played: Someone says “A terrorist could just…”
My most excellent acting teacher, Howard Fine (not the stooge, no) used to harangue us with “comfort is a false god: don’t pray to it!” (I suggest adding “don’t pray to anything” for good measure, but…) It’s a great thing to remember when we are made aware of random events. I say “made aware” because random events are happening so often that referring to them as random may be a mistake. We have literally awesome technology that allows us to be aware of things that are happening anywhere and everywhere in the world. There are always nutty, horrible, unexplainable and scary events going down. It’s a great tool, but we often forget that there was 24 hour news before 24 hour news channels. Plus, because we are now used to receiving immediate and accurate information, as Tom Petty once told me: The waiting is the hardest part. If there is no resolution within my attention span, I’m going to create some resolution, by gum!
Me and my SAG member buddies are especially self-centered. Not necessarily a bad thing. Along with chiseled abs for guys and, um, chiseled abs for the ladies, being aware of feelings is one of the main job requirements. We have to self-examine and figure out where we are emotionally, not only because it’s good for the “art” but because everyone around us lies. (Great job… Fat? You? No… That was your best work… We are behind you 100%… The guys at network are talking another season… etc.) Also, since we’re never working, we create these little tiger blood dramas for ourselves to star in. Convincing yourself that you can only eat a type of chicken sold at one store keeps oneself distracted from the fact that you haven’t been on a set in 10 months. This is all yet another episode to convince me that things were easier when religion and the religious were clearly defined. The downside to fewer people believing in that stuff is figuring out who is doing something because of “faith”.
Unfortunately for the cynics, people are basically good. Even without a man in the sky. Thanks to humans, life is better now than it’s ever been.
The sky will fall when it falls. Every generation believes they’re the last generation of humans to walk the earth. It’s sexy. “Hey, my generation destroyed humanity! How rad is that?!”
(rad, get it?)
Chimp Day – 2011
My bride is a superhero.
While busting her butt until late nights as sole editor for the provenz’ extravaganza, she also rises when duncan feels like getting up… usually 6am… and deals with him until either grandma or help shows up to hang with him. Unlike me, she is able to juggle work & family with a semblance of a social life and extra-curricular activities with friends.
Mainly, she is an amazing mother to our son. So concerned with his well-being and happiness that she takes responsibility for things that she probably shouldn’t be taking responsibility for. Patient and loving to him at times that anyone else would launch the boy into the ocean and be done with him.
She’s able to cut the The Green Room at home, so she can do important things with Duncan like spend actual “quality time” with him at the end of the day, feed him, give him his bath and put him to bed… and then go back to work. She takes care of me… listens to me whine about my stupid job and wasted life and has been dealing with ALL of the bullshit paperwork on our house.
Plus, she is funny and smart and is a Hottie McHottenberger, rockin’ the hotness each and every day. Even when she doesn’t think she is rockin’ the hotness.
We’ve been together just about 11 years and each and every day has been a delight. Except for that one. But that was my fault. Pretty much.
Happy Birthday, Jessie the chimp Marion. You rule. You are a superhero.
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