I started reading her blog for the stuff about letterpress, but stay for stuff like this.

I don’t usually whine about my commute, and there are many many MBTA riders, indeed, entire blogs, devoted to this pursuit. But today’s was amusing enough to whine about.

Preamble: apparently a Red Line train caught on fire and the MBTA bussed people between Broadway and Harvard (basically, the entire stretch of the Red Line that most riders use).

When I found this out at South Station, rather than fight the hordes, I decided to walk to Park St, take the green line to Hynes, and get a #1 bus to Harvard. But when I got to Park St, there was one of the shuttles right there, and when I heard the driver lean out the door, and — I think — say that they were going express to Harvard, I decided to jump on. It was full, but not as crowded as it could have been, presumably because it was going express.

Except, when the closed the doors closed, the driver turns around and says, “OK, does anybody know how to get from here to Harvard Square?”

Now the chances of someone knowing the way are pretty good (but not 100% because a lot of Red Line riders are suburbanites who just take it to Porter Square to catch the commuter rail). But the chances of a Red Line rider knowing the best way to go, especially the best way at 6:30pm during rush hour, are low. People generally take the Red Line specifically so they don’t have to know. The chances that someone who knew the best way would be in earshot of the driver on a full bus are just about zero. And indeed, we ended up not going express to Harvard, because we got lost in Beacon Hill and ended up at Charles MGH, and just took the normal Red Line route and made all the stops from there (which meant that it quickly went from full to overcrowded).

But honest to goodness, where did the MBTA dig this driver up? It wasn’t just like he had no idea of how to get out of Boston, he seemed to have no idea of where the Red Line actually goes and where it stops. After a while, it gets easy: you just follow Mass Ave and stop at every big “T” sign you see; and because there is no subway, there will be huge crowds of people standing outside and waving to you. But this proved too difficult for this guy. People actually had to tell him to stop at Central.

I sound indignant, but mostly I felt bad for him. He was clearly asked to do something he had no idea how to do, and everybody’s been there at one point or another. Luckily most of us don’t have to do it when we’re driving a huge piece of machinery, crammed to the gills with sweaty, tired people.

That said, my fellow commuters were taking it in stride: there was the same kind of jovial whatcha-gonna-do solidarity that is usually reserved for the first big snowstorm of the season.

I made it home by 8:15, which made the trip about double my usual commute time.

You’ll only encourage him.

The Somerville News is reporting that a brawl of ~100 people broke out in the children’s birthday party area on Easter Sunday.

Casablanca is on TCM tonight, and it just got to the scene in Rick’s Café where the German soldiers sing “Deutschland Über Alles”, and everybody else sings “La Marseillaise”, drowning out the Germans.

That reminded me about one more thing about the Berlin Filmmuseum, which I mentioned last week. That scene was playing on a loop in one of the rooms in the permanent exhibition near the Marlene Dietrich section that showed all the German actors who went into exile in Hollywood in the 30’s and 40’s. How weird must it be to see a fairly propagandistic film from a former enemy country playing on a loop in one of your museums.

So, we’re now back safely in Boston.

We did not keep a trip blog this time, but I plan to post little snippets as I remember them as a way of prolonging the fun.

Editrix pointed out an excellent Achewood plot thread about currywurst which mentions Bono, which reminded me that Berlin really has a thing for U2, which I guess is reciprocal since I dimly recall them having had some kind of Berlin thing in the 90’s. There’s some kind of diagram that probably should be drawn linking U2, Berlin, Wim Wenders, Zoo Station, and the year 1992.

Anyway, on our first evening in Berlin, when we went to the Christmas market near the Zoo Bahnhof itself, we heard probably no less than 3 U2 songs. The Christmas markets are sort of like the Topsfield Fair here in Massachusetts, with rides, carney games, food stalls, and such, but also with booths with more artsy craftsy Christmas gift kind of stuff, different cookies and foods, and alcoholic drinks, like Glühwein, which is a hot and somewhat stanky mulled wine. Many cheap meals involving sausage (or various vegetarian options) were had. This is the currywurst I had at a fast food type joint in the Zoo Bahnhof on our last day in Berlin:

RealFake readers are encouraged to visit me and Terri at the Boston Bazaar Bizarre, where we will once again appear as the Rainy Planet Press. We’ll be making customized Moleskine debossed notebooks on the spot, and hocking our brand new cards, bookplates, recipe cards, as well as some unsold favorites from prior crafty fairs.

Check out all the details on the Rainy Planet Press Blog.

Friday as I was headed to the T station after work, I saw this banner, a two-story blowup of a sympathy letter from FDR.

After I got off the T in Davis, I decided I was tired enough that I could take the bus. Terri thinks taking the bus is cheating yourself out of a 15 minute walk. I think not taking the bus is cheating yourself out of a potential source of good stories.

Friday’s trip on the 87 bus was a case in point.

While we were waiting for the light to change to pull out of the Davis Square bus area, a rather inebriated guy with a grey crew cut and a fairly packed physique, kept putting his fist in the air and yelling “we’re the Marines!!!”. A couple of bratty kids outside the bus (let’s assume they were waiting for the 96 to Medford) started saluting him. He yells to the driver “hang on, I’m getting off!”. He proceeds to dangle out the front door and point threateningly and yell incoherently at the kids, who laugh and run into the station.

The guy swings back into the bus and lurches down the aisle to his seat as the bus starts moving. He’s talking to himself or yelling things at people on the bus, like “hey, cupcake, how do you know if you don’t give me a try?” or pointing sort of threateningly at this kid and saying “you, young man, need to show some respect”. The kid’s mom is sort of protectively standing over the kid with her hands on his shoulders. This went on for a minute or so and the guy didn’t seem about to give up, so I decided that I needed to take some kind of action. I didn’t want to do anything pick a fight with a drunk ex-Marine, especially since he looked like he could be a mad drunk, but I just kind of decided that I’d walk up into the aisle between him and the kid to distract the guy.

The guy looks at me. He starts studying my face. “You look very familar. Where do I know you from?” He keeps staring. “I KNOW! You’re the guy who got me out of jail today!” He holds out his hand. We shake. “Thank you, my friend. You got me out of jail today!” He calmed down a little and went back to just yelling “We’re the marines!”

And then it was my stop.

I have written long half-deranged screeds against the electric guitar here before, so I won’t bore you with a mere recap of my irrational and fairly hyporcritical invective once more. All I will recap is that I think electronic music is not a way out of the guitar-based pop morass; I write software for my day job, so outside of work I need something that is not programming, something that captures a performance, a more primal give and take between two or more human beings making some kind of organized noise (I’ve certainly heard electronic music that captures this spirit, but it’s a rare thing). And while I definitely get some energy from listening to classics of previous eras, like jazz and classical (I’m sorry, jazz people, give me a counterexample that jazz is not on life support, and I will gladly eat my words), I generally crave things that are more of the zeitgeist.

Anyway, part of what appeals to me about removing the electric guitar from modern pop is really almost just the exercise of doing something unfamiliar, like writing your name with your left hand (or right hand if you’re left-handed). So that is at least in part what attracts me to Tilly and the Wall. Rather than take out the guitar, they took out another central pillar of the heterodox rock platform: the drums. And replaced it with a miked tapdancer. Yes, the only percussion is tapdancing. It actually seems obvious in retrospect, like why did nobody think of this before, which is often the hallmark of total genius.

Terri bought their most recent album, Bottoms of Barrels, last year, and I liked a song or two, but lately, they’re all I can listen to.

Also, I forgive them for being part of the same Omaha milieu that spawned the loathsome Bright Eyes.

Also, they are staffed entirely by supermodels and dorky-looking guys, a formidable combination.

Also, I would include a youtube video of them on Letterman, but I can’t seem to get YouTube to come up right now, which is odd.

One of the perks of the new job is that for multiple reasons, I’m much freer to talk about about work here (though I have little inclination to at this juncture). But, I can use all the help I can get with this, so I thought I’d throw it out there. If you have any interest in working for me, I have a position open. If this sounds like you, kindly apply. If this doesn’t sound like you, but you know someone who this does sound like, kindly forward this to them.

Unfortunately, for other reasons (which I am happy to explain in person, but not here), I can’t hire you if you work for my former employer, as much as I would totally love to just pilfer my whole former team.

I extended my work trip to NYC last week a couple of days and we spent our 6th anniversary in New York City.

Friday night I worked late-ish and went out with some work people, since Terri had swung guest list tickets to see Interpol at Madison Square Garden (which were nosebleedy and she swears it was not as cool as it might sound; actually, any MSG show sounds sort of inherently uncool, but the guest list part sounds cool). It was actually good, since I haven’t done much socializing with the new work peeps, but once that wrapped up, I was a bit lonesome without the honey, especially on anniversary eve. That morning, I had switched us from the kind-of-great-for-a-very-business-oriented-hotel-but-not-so-romantic Club Quarters to the quirky and not-in-an-interesting-neighborhood-but-kind-of-fabulous Hotel Metro. With the huge pictures of Greta Garbo in the lobby and the Man Ray photos and iconic pictures of Harold Lloyd hanging from a clock in our room, could it have been a better T&E Show hotel? Anyway, without Terri, I spent some time pining in the rooftop bar and trying to take pictures of the Empire State building. When I got hungry, I went down the street and got the 2 hot dog special at a Papaya Dog. By the time Terri was out of the show, I was actually kind of beat and pretty much just went straight to sleep.

Saturday, we walked around town. In earnest. A lot. All day. We started out at the Galaxy Global Café for brunch; it was kind of this space age diner with an almost exclusively vegetarian menu heavy on the hemp-flavored items (yeah, yeah, I know). And if to underscore the hemp-y nature of the place, who should walk in halfway through breakfast but Woody Harrelson and his posse. He was wearing some sort of earthy-orange hemp jumpsuit, sort of a hippie/Guantanamo kind of thing. Terri and I had been sort of taking each other’s pictures in our booth, because That Is What We Do, but on Woody’s entrance, it became awkward to continue this since it would have looked like we were celebrity stalking. Alas.

After that, we walked around the Union Square area and then walked around Central Park starting up on the northern side and working our way down until we ended up around the mid 80’s and needed a drink, so naturally, we went to Café Sabarsky, which along with the Neue Gallery which it is connected to, feeds into our shared love of all things turn-of-the-last-century-Vienna. We didn’t go into the Neue Gallery, but we did stop in the book shop. I picked up a copy of the Wiener Werkstätte book that I have been eyeing since our actual trip to Vienna for our 3rd anniversary. There was another really great book that feeds into my own love for all things Weimar Republic, which I totally can’t link to, but which Terri will know what I mean, and which would make a good Christmas present, hint hint.

We went back to the hotel. My folks called to wish us a happy anniversary. By the time we were done talking to them, it was 8 and we were pretty beat, so we just went to the best Italian place we could find in reasonable proximity to our hotel. After dinner, we had intended to have a nightcap on the rooftop bar, but when we got up there, it was totally abandoned. We went back down to the lobby to ask what the deal was, and apparently someone had decided it was too cold to keep the bar open. So we went up to our room (did I mention that we lucked out and were upgraded to a king room? We had good travel karma on this trip), took what we wanted from the minibar (a luxorious first for both of us), and went back to the rooftop patio with our own drinks. Terri played bartender.

• woke up at 6am to see our labor day weekend house guests off. I miss ‘em!
• after they left, I went back up to bed and read another chunk of Amnesia Moon, which I’m re-reading. Given the vast number of things on my to-read list, and my seemingly dramatically decreasing time to read them, re-reading anything is an increasingly rare honor.
• I fell back to sleep and woke up at 11. 11!!!!! How crazy is that? I was sleeping 5 hours a night on a good night during August, which was one of the most insanely busy and stressful months of my life. This means I slept like 10 or so hours last night (albeit non-consecutive hours)? Crazy!
• After I woke up, I finished Amnesia Moon. It was as fantastic as I remembered.
• I made a sandwich with some of the bagels I brought back from NYC and also with the fantastic grilled chicken I made last night for me and the Flemings.
• Terri and I went for a walk at about 3pm and ended up at the Diesel Café in Davis Square. I was barely awake and it felt like about 8am to me. I had a large mocha. We worked on editing a friend’s thesis proposal which we promised to have finished a couple of weeks ago. And then I had a double espresso (a very chincy one, if you ask me: I’m still not a Diesel fan). And then I almost felt awake and human.
• We stopped by Johnny D’s and were the only people there besides the bartender. We watched the Blake match at the U.S. Open. I sort of hate tennis (Terri loves watching it), but that was a pretty exciting match.
• We came home and had some leftovers. I went to Johnnie’s Foodmaster to get a 9v battery to stop the smoke alarm from squeaking every minute.
• I have decided that I hate the Treo 750 I got my first day at the new gig. I’m going to take it back and just try to transfer my existing wireless account and phone to my company’s account. The Treo 750’s Microsoft SmartPhone UI sucks, and the phone does far less than my good ol’ RAZR does (main need: if my RAZR were on an unlimited data plan, I could use its data connection over bluetooth to have an internet connection for my laptop while on the train; the Treo 750 talks bluetooth but only can be used as a dialup modem, for reasons that make no sense to me; otherwise, my RAZR has everything that the Treo has (email, a browser, IM) except a keyboard).
• we are watching the Sox slaughter the Blue Jays
• Weezie and I have been all love-birdy-y today
• I am totally excited about getting back to work tomorrow. Which is a weird but great feeling

Due to a misreading of one small letter (”E” vs “W”), I ended up having to walk down 46th street, across half of Manhattan (so, width-wise, but still) this evening. I saw the sign for the Gotham Book Mart, and thought “oh, yay, I’m going to be able to go to Gotham Book Mart on my way home from my first day on the new job tomorrow”. And then I saw the bars across the windows and the “building for sale” sign in the window. No matter, I thought, I know they moved a couple of years ago, so this must be the old site.

Alas, no. It looks like the Gotham Book Mart is done for.

After I got to my hotel, I checked around, and realized the sad truth. So I walked back over and snapped this shot. The guy pictured seemed to be camped out there. He was writing furiously in a notebook both times I walked by, within about 90 minutes of each other. I’d like to pretend that he is just sitting there, waiting for them to re-open.

I feel a little like the chronicler of Lost Institutions on this blog sometimes, and, really, I’ve only been to Gotham Book Mart 4 or 5 times in my life, but, geez, this was like one of the most well-beloved bookstores in the epicenter of literary America. Who the hell else has a chance?!?

Speaking of i-cafe in Teele Square, I just saw this little tidbit on Chowhound:

got to talking to the owner, ali, who, it turns out to be the original owner of soundbites. he sold out to the breakfast nazi 9 or 10 years ago. made me a banana crepe on the house — nice touch.

I haven’t been to Soundbites since the time the breakfast nazi threw our check at us and told us to leave, the very second that our friend John picked up his last forkful of omelette. And yet, John keeps going back every time he’s in town. It must be the crack in the hash browns.

Terri’s the stuff.