On board with ... oh wait while I finish what I'm doing, which is more important than anything you could possibly say to me

I am, indescribably, consistently surprised by the self-absorption of New Yorkers. Everyday someone will sneak through a closing door in front of me without pushing it open behind them, leaving me to walk into a closed door. Or someone will sit on the train beside me and proceed to call everyone in their address book and talk loudly about inane things that would make even the most Prozaked person on earth go on a three-state killing spree.

Today's example came on the subway ride after work. A gentleman was sitting in the middle of the bench, typing away on his iPhone (nothing wrong with that!), with a bag sitting on the seat next to him and his oversized, extendable-pull-handled briefcase resting on the ground next to him, sticking out further than his legs so as to block anyone from sitting near it. This man, in other words, was taking up more than half of the bench, as people filed into the car, walked by, and were forced to stand in front of him. The man sitting next to him (and I use the word "next" as I would in the sense that "Pluto is next to Neptune ... with millions of miles to spare") actually hugged himself into a tight ball so a woman could sit down, and all the while Mr. Oblivious looked down at his iPhone, probably writing a congratulatory note to himself for an excellent presentation at work today:

"You absolutely rocked that PowerPoint today, Greggors. I could hear that woman at the end of the table, her knees quaking under the weight of her desire to rip my clothes off and throw me on the floor of the boardroom. What a sight that would have been! I only hope she allowed me to shut down my computer first ... I was running on battery power and, more importantly, the porn I had been looking at earlier was still open (but minimized!) I would probably want to take my tie off, fold it up, and neatly place it on the table, as well. But after that, the passion would have been HOT. Also, my boss seemed to like it. You go, Greggory!"

This is probably the same guy you saw at the movie theater last weekend, the one who had his coat laying in the seat next to him, his feet on the seat in front of him, wearing the stovepipe hat and talking on his iPhone during the bloody climax. Luckily, I didn't see a wedding ring on his left hand, so we can only hope that the man has not spread his seed because the last thing this world needs are his spawn crawling around, doing the Dark Lord's bidding.

Four rules for choosing a seat on the train

I often wonder how people choose their seats on the train. I have a few rules which I live by:

1) Avoid fat people. I hate to rag on the obese again, but it makes perfect sense: large people take up more of the seat, leaving less for those who sit with them.

2) Avoid people with pens outs. I have a paralyzing fear of being written on by a neighbor who is waving a pen around next to me. This has happened to me before. At a school board meeting in Hillsborough, way back when I was with The News of Orange County, a reporter from a rival newspaper, writing furiously on the pad in her lap, wrote so long and hard she did not realize that her pen had reached the edge of the paper and moved onto my left leg. This was my favorite pair of pants, please remember, and I was distraught. The boring people in the meeting were talking about school lunches or how better to embezzle money (I have since forgotten, overcome with remorse) but all I could think about was what do to with my pants. I eventually decided to take them off, run to the bathroom, soak them in water in the sink, return to the meeting in my skives, and rock back and forth muttering, "I miss my pants. Definitely miss my pants." Long story ... um ended ... I fear that people writing on the train will repeat this dark episode of my life.

3) Do not sit near the door. For some reason, people - who have paid a fair amount of money for their seats - enjoy standing up well before they reach their station and standing in a line, rocking back and forth, as the train slowly brakes and then stops. Inevitably, these people will hit you in the head more than once. So sitting nearer the middle of the car lessens the chance that people will be standing near you.

4) Do not sit near teenagers or people traveling in groups. Everyday commuters are quiet throughout their rides. These people are severely beaten down by capitalism, and the harsh reality of working so long for so little leaves them depressed and silently rethinking their life choices. In other words, a commute is typically quiet. However, there are sometimes people - usually these are students - who talk very loudly. These people are annoying. These people make the rest of us even more depressed. I hate these people.

There are probably more rules, but I've managed to talk myself into a deep sadness and must lay down and rethink everything in my life.

On board with man-on-man bonding

Today on the subway I started worrying about this blog. How could I reasonably assume that something interesting would happen to me enough on my commute that I could write 3-4 entries a week? (This assumes, of course, that anything I have written here is interesting. Is it? Is it? Love me.) I wondered about this as I approached Penn Station. Just then, a man who had been sitting near me (as I stood holding the pole) stood up anticipating the train stopping. The train stopped, indeed. And the man, holding onto nothing but his briefcase, flew forward. Luckily, I was standing in front of him. He crashed into me.

I looked at him, waiting to say, "Don't worry about it" after he apologized to me. He did not. He turned to face the door. We stopped, I turned to the door (which I was standing in front of), and he barreled into me again as he tried to speed out. Was he embarrassed and eager to get away? Was he in a rush? Was he mentally imbalanced? He wore a suit and carried a briefcase, so he must have been gainfully employed ... that or he was on his way to an audition for "The Nutty Professor: On Broadway!"

At anyway rate, God bless you crazy falling briefcase man. You have given my blog another day.

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And now it's time for everyone's favorite feature: "Did Phillip get touched unnecessarily by a stranger on the subway today'?"

Seriously? Did you read this post?

On board with THE DAILY SHOW

When I told people in North Carolina that I was moving to New Jersey, I got a wide range of responses, from "Why on earth would you do that?" to "What's wrong with you?" to "You may the dumbest idiot I know." At first I wondered if they were right, but in the last three weeks I finally found the answer. (Yes, it took me two years.) On Thursday, I sat in the studio during a taping of The Daily Show, just three weeks after doing the same for the Colbert Report.

For those of you who remember my Colbert exploits, you know that it marked the pinnacle of my life, a point from which I was only bound to fall mercilessly back to earth. While the Daily Show helped to ease that fall, it definitely did not live up to the Colbert high. At first i wondered if this was because I had essentially entered the Colbert Report as a TV audience novice, and The Daily Show was merely Take Two, but I don't think this is true. I entered Thursday strongly a Colbert man, and I went to sleep that night the same. For me, Jon Stewart - while excellent - does not live up to Stephen Colbert, and the experiences were very different.

There were many similarities, including the long lines to get in, the heavy security, and more. But the atmosphere at The Daily Show was much different. Being older and more established, there was almost a sterile air in the studio. Whereas the people at the Report emphasized so strongly that the show depended on our laughter - indeed, it seemed as though Stephen would go home and cry if we were not loud enough - we were told just once to laugh at the Daily Show, and even then it didn't seem that important. Jon came out and spoke to us, and he was certainly funny (even more so than he is during the show, oddly). The show began, and it was almost as if we were an afterthought. We couldn't hear him too well, especially if there was any laughing, and Jon played more for the cameras than for us. The studio was much larger, and Stewart was further away from us, almost kept at a distance. Colbert was exactly the opposite. During the show he looked at us and not always the cameras, playing to us, as if to ask us to laugh.

Perhaps most emblematically were the way the hosts entered and exited the studio. Stewart emerged from the back of the stage, spoke to us from in front of our desk, did the show, and then exited the way he came, never coming too close, letting the large studio act as a natural buffer between audience and host. Colbert, however, ran from behind the audience, jogging down the center aisle while slapping people's hands. He paced the studio while answering our questions before the show. After the show, he walked along the front row, shaking hands with many of us, and then - as you recall - walked up the aisle by me and graciously touched my ever-graced hand.

So perhaps this is my long-winded way of explaining why I prefer the Colbert Report to The Daily Show. Stephen Colbert is everything Jon Stewart was 10 years ago: the upstart, eviscerating mainstream ideas while remaining deeply in touch with his audience. Jon Stewart has reached a level of popularity which has made that impossible. In a way that is sad, because I have watched TDS since Craig Kilborn first debuted his "Five Questions." But, at least we have Stephen Colbert.

And did I mention: Stephen Colbert lives down the street from my school. New Jersey isn't all bad.

In board with grammar

What is with you people up here? "We had to stand on line for 10 minutes at Starbucks!" That is not American. You can stand IN line for 10 minutes; you can be visiting starbucks.com ONLINE for 10 minutes. But you are not physically on a line ... unless you've managed to convince your linemates to pass you above their heads, forming a sort of impromptu Starbucks crowd surfing phenomenon.

Also, stop saying "supposably."

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This is going to be a new feature of the blog: "Did Phillip get touched unnecessarily by a stranger on the subway today'?"

The answer today is yes. The woman sitting on the bench by me stood up as the train approached her stop and grabbed onto the pole I was holding on to. When I say "grabbed onto the pole I was holding on to" I mean she grabbed my hand. And held it until I moved it lower ... and then her hand fell down to mine.

Can someone seriously explain this to me? Why all the touching? I thought New York was supposed to be cold and isolating. So far it's been uncomfortably warm and rife with inappropriate togetherness.

On board with drool

There is an unwritten rule in New York that you do not look at anyone on the subway. Looking at someone for 1 second results in an ugly look back. 2 seconds: a profanity-laden tirade. 3 seconds: a hard slap across the face. 4 seconds: a swift kick in the fanny. 5 seconds: death by drowning in rat urine.

But today, I had to stare. The guy sitting across from me had fallen into a deep sleep. So deep, in fact, that he had started to drool on himself by the time I saw him. I am not talking about a bit of saliva falling gently from the corner of his mouth; there were lines of dark drool streaming down his chin, leaving numerous water stains on his polo shirt. After two stops, he woke up and, noticing the liquid flowing from his mouth, sat up and wiped his face. And then he looked down and noticed the three pools of drool festering on his shirt. This was a image I could not have looked away from if you had paid me. Here sat an adult with drool covering his chest, wondering what he was going to do to hide his shame.

So, after noticing that I was staring at him, he opened his shoulder bag and wiped his shirt with the underside of the outer flap. Of course, this did nothing, and the drool remained. And I continued staring. I would have sat there staring for another hour if I hadn't reached my stop. Risking my life to see this, I'd do it all over again.

On board, almost

There are two types of people in this world: Those who stand on the edge of the platform, longingly looking down the line for the subway to arrive and those who stand aloof, almost apathetic against the wall, indifferent to when the subway meanders down the line. I am most definitely the former.

And we can infer a lot about people from where they stand waiting for the subway. Those who pace along the edge, turning around obsessively to see if the train is coming - those people are anxious to get where they are going. They don't want to be late. They are punctual, they are Type A. Or they're high on crank.

Those who stand back, patiently waiting for the subway - they are laid back. They take things as they come and take them in stride. They are Type B, they are calm. Or they're high on grass.

On board with a ballerina

Living in the New York area, I've grown accustomed to seeing all sorts of people I never bumped into in North Carolina. Needless to say, very little surprises me anymore. I've seen the Barry White/Johnny Cash karaoke singer, dudes in shirts not big enough for Olive Oil, and so much more. But Tuesday I saw something truly shocking. Waiting in Penn Station for a train stood a six-foot tall, wrong-side-of-50, gender-neutral* ballerina wearing a bright pink tu-tu and showing a fair amount of leg.

* I say gender-neutral, but I assume the person had a gender. I just don't want to guess what it was.

What was truly remarkable was not that this person was there wearing a giant tu-tu but that this man/woman was standing there as if nothing crazy was going on. S/he stood straight upright, at one point pulling out a brush and calmly styling his/her shoulder-length graying hair. And through it all, I my lasting impression of this was thinking: Hum, that tu-tu bottom is quite large. It was probably 6-feet in diameter and looked like a gown from Gone with the Wind. In fact, I have an artist's* rendition of what this person looked like:
* This was drawn by no artist.

On board with obesity

Train travel, like real estate, is about three things: location, location, location. Every morning the train stops at exactly the same spot at the station, so I stand right where a set of the doors opens so I can get inside and find a seat to my liking. (By the time I get on, it's a choice of middle seats in a three-seat row, but there are still degrees of middle seat badness.)

Unfortunately, this morning the train pulled a fast one on me, and by the time I got inside, my options were limited.

Unfortunately, I ended up sitting next to a fat man.

It was unfortunate, not because I dislike fat people, but because he was taking up half of the clearly defined area that was supposed to be for my rump. And for 40 minutes, we were cuddling. (And as I think I've mentioned before, I don't care for bodily contact in my strangers.) I don't mean to offend anyone*, but I think fat people should have their own trains.

* In case you are unfamiliar with these types of qualifiers, by opening a statement with "not to offend our alien overlords but ..." or "I have nothing against poor people but ..." one can say absolutely anything and not get in trouble. It's infallible. I dare you to fall it.

Okay, I don't honestly believe that fat people should have their own trains ... just their own cars.