Last week I had a conversation with my Editor no one wants to have. It went something like this:

 

Krumble: So … that post you put up, I think —

 

Me: It sucks! I’m sorry. It really sucks. It sucks, sucks, sucks.

 

Krumble: — it could use a little tightening. And more … I don’t know … funny?

 

Not being someone to back down from my principles, I immediately deleted the post and attempted to commit hari kiri. Thankfully, the lack of any sufficiently sharp objects prevented me from opening my stomach.

 

Wait, I thought you were some kind of author or something. At least, I heard you got paid to write once?

 

Oh, you mean in fourth grade, when I wrote Robert K — ’s book report on Bunnicula without reading it for $5? He got a C. (Impressive, for only knowing the title of the book, and well worth what he paid for it.)

 

To be honest, my brush with death wasn’t brought on solely by my failures as an author, and not by WordPress’s strange hate-hate relationship with strike-through text (which, God-willing, I will never be called upon to use again, so long as the Sun burns in the sky) — no — it was the sudden realization that a good number of my fellow Americans seemed to be buying the Sarah Palin horseshit that John McCain and his campaign were selling as Turkey dinner. Mmm … mmm … good! (more…)

I’m a fan of public transportation. I’m also a resident of Los Angeles. For those of you not in the know, mass transit and LA go together like bacon and skyscrapers. Riding the convoluted rail lines across most of LA this last week I spied a flyer for an LA Metro expansion meeting. I snagged one and found there were two upcoming meetings reasonably close to me.

 

The meeting itself was informative and interesting. They discussed many of the engineering challenges that go into adding a new subway or rail line. They also discussed the budget, which is currently the largest obstacle to increasing the subway system here. Specifically mentioned in this meeting was Measure R, a plan to increase the county’s sales tax half a cent in order to fund half of the expansion (the other half would likely be provided by the federal government). I support the measure, personally, as I think this city needs more rails before it chokes to death.

 

The thing is, the meeting well worth it without the information on the rail expansion. You see, if there’s one basic essence of public transportation that Los Angeles does have it’s Crazies. Boy do we have crazies. Train crazies, station crazies, and bus crazies. Bus crazies most of all. Let’s take a closer look at the Train Crazies at the meeting.

 

Kimberly. Citizens were given the floor of the meeting, called out in a queue by name ahead of time. Kimberly’s name was second. Kimberly was about six foot seven, maybe 250 pounds, and a man. A man with dyed purple and red hair, and a very normal man voice. Kimberly was also dressed in purples and pinks, in a slightly feminine style, which concealed either breast implants or man boobs. Kimberly’s point was well spoken, though, and he or she was a lover of the train.

 

The Professor. A shaggy haired man in a brown sport coat and a poorly kept shirt came next on the crazy train. The illusion of sanity was broken the instant his mic turned on. This man was here to yell. In his two minutes time, he told us how the “Subway to Hell” was crime infested and poorly planned. He told us how a gang of gay blacks from West Hollywood called The Rainbow Cryps routinely harassed the riders. He told us that they called him The Professor, which was fitting with his frazzled white hair, flailing arms, and disheveled clothes. And finally, he yelled that he gave weekly tours of the Subway to Hell in Hollywood, urging us to come see him if we wanted to see what we’d be bringing to our neighborhood.

 

Sign Guy. I regret that I don’t remember Sign Guy’s name, but he had a sign. A young tall black man in a very nice suit with an energetic manner and a friendly smile. I thought he was going to be an excellent speaker with his initial address to the audience. That’s when I realized he essentially had nothing to say. He’s brought a sign he made to show his plans for how the subway should expand. He explained his idea like so: “So, I’m a big fan of like the subway in New York. Like I love the subway. And like I love the subway in Paris. But like, I’ve never been there. So like, I want that here. I mean I love the subway man. I love it. And so, I got this drawing here. And like, we should do this. You know? I mean we should do this, because I think it’s a good idea. You know what I mean? It’s a good idea. So, like, let’s do it. You know? I mean, I think it’s really good and see, I’ve got this drawing here, so you can see what it would be like. And man, I love this idea, so we should do it guys. Let’s do this.” I won’t claim it’s verbatim, but it’s damn close.

 

Major characters aside, there were lots of attendees in various stages of descent into public transit insanity, or PTI as the doctors are calling it. A chief symptom is the need to yell despite being given a microphone and a quiet room with the attention of the audience. One man opened his comments saying he opposed Measure R, on the grounds that the trains in LA were underdeveloped, which he felt could not be solved by additional funding. Having said his piece with a minute and a half remaining, he chose to yell about the highway department and whatever else had bothered him that day.

 

Questions were answered at the end of the meeting, trying to fit in the answers before the meeting ended. Staff at the meeting were sent outside several times to quiet an argument between train crazies that had sparked up in the parking lot. Finally, as questions were wrapping up, PTI spread to the crowd and a few attendees began yelling objections without the microphone. Nick and I headed for the door before the infection spread.

     I hit the doorbell, then knocked once for insurance. Damn it was cold in New York. I’d returned home for the holidays and I was standing on Xeno’s porch waiting for someoen to answer the door. Soon I was greeted with a Xeno wearing a Serial Killer T-Shirt and Pajama pants.

     ”C’mon, We’re going to the dirtmall” I said.
     ”I can’t.. who’s going?” was the reply.
     ”I’m kidnapping you, you have no choice, get dressed and we’re going. Ben and Becca are with me.”
     ”I can’t I got plans” Xeno tried.
     ”You’re being kidnapped, plans have no relevance here. Besides, I’m only home for a week, after that I’ll be gone for like 6 months” I said.

     ”I was supposed to pick Burgess up from school.” he said.
     ”Hope she has another ride then.” I told him.
     ”I feel bad!” he said. By this time he was already in his room changing into suitable attire. I waited for him to come out and told him again that he was being kidnapped. Then I told him we were taking his car.

     Ben and Becca returned from the bank and we all piled into the Xeno Wagon. We started up and took off for the Dirt Mall, a mere 20 minutes away. Twenty minutes is normally a preposterous amount of time spent driving to a Dirt Mall, but in Central New York, that’s about as close as major attractions like Wal Mart and the Dirt Mall get. Thank goodness the Xeno Wagon had heat though.

     Some people have asked me what the Dirt Mall is when I’ve brought it up in conversation, including Becca, who was with us that frigid day. It’s hard to explain the Dirt Mall effectively, and it almost always requires that you’ve seen the movie MallRats to know the roots of the word. My Dirt Mall, has about 20 customers within the entire mall. You can walk the length of the mall within 10 minutes and all of the stores are worthless. You’ll have your standard mall stores like K Mart, Kay Bee Toys and a Waldenbooks, but all they have are leftovers from just before they became a Dirt Mall. The Kay Bee still sells Ninja Turtles as it’s hot item.

     As we entered the place, we were greeted by the silence from the Dirt Arcade, and the smells from Michael’s Dirt Court, the kiosk that sold pretzels. Stale pretzels. The Dirt people mulled around buying dirt jewelry and getting their hair cut. The first order of business on our list, however, was to take in a movie. So, with that goal set in our heads, we headed for the Dirt Theatre.

     When we reached the theatre we had to decide what to see. I’m not sure what else was playing at the time but when we stepped into the theatre to see ‘Enemy of the State’, I realized that there were only two other people in the place. It became our goal to force these people out of the theatre.

     We started with the fist pump, a long held tradition where I come from. Since they weren’t sitting behind us, they weren’t annoyed in the least by the waving of arms, we quickly moved on to loud commentary. I remember cheering every time Jon Voight showed his face on the screen, but the people never left the theater and I was soon too far into the action to care about making them leave.

     After the movie, we headed for Gino and Joe’s, the greasiest place I’ve ever been in my life. Gino and Joe’s is an Old School pizzeria that sits in a mall and changes lots every year or so. They have the square plastic drums of kool aid that perpetually bubbles around and they have green red and white tables. I guess it’s to symbolize that they’re Italian. If you’re not stern of stomach I don’t suggest the pizza, it’s kinda hard on the internals. Ben usually is the one to suffer and suffer he did, starting by burning his tongue. Xeno poured about an ounce of the pepper onto all of his pieces, he said he used it to sop up the grease. As for Becca, I don’t remember actually seeing her eat any of the pizza at all, probably the wise choice.

     Now that we had eaten it was time to walk off the food, so we strolled to the pet store. Now normally you can be entertained in the pet store for at least 15 minutes, looking at all the animals living with their 3 cubic feet of space. In the Dirt Mall, it’s a little different. they don’t really have any pets, and they don’t really have any supply. All they really have is a lot of sawdust in cages and a permeating bird shit odor. Realizing this, we abandoned that end of the Dirt Mall for K Mart.

     Inside the boundaries of K mart we walked around wondering if there was anything worth buying. The only things we could find were Cow pot holders and some rifles, which were locked. We considered playing hockey using a bottle of mouthwash but figured that may get us into a little bit of trouble and resorted to throwing the pot holders at each other like ninja stars. After we had a K Mart employee following us around we decided to stop and head for the Dirt Arcade.

     A normal arcade is full of kids and loud and you hate to be in there because it somehow loots you for everything you’re worth in change. The Dirt Arcade is very different. There are no children playing games, just militant men in their 30’s who have been playing Mortal Kombat since it came out. There’s also nothing to play at all. The only thing in the place that is even close to appealing is the Xmen game. Not the fighting game, the side scroller that came out when I was 10 years old. The only thing the four of us could find to do was play Air Hockey.

     Xeno had been practicing. I believe the end score on the game was 10 to 2, and it lasted about 5 minutes. The only reason that I got the second point was that a shot of Xeno’s bounced off my goal and back into his own. So, in my defeat I handed the … thing… whatever the hell you call those things that look like scrubbing bubbles to Ben. Ben played valiantly but in the end, lost as well. The change machine wasn’t working and there was no one at the counter, so we left, having spent a grand total of One Dollar.

     Having covered every store in the Dirt Mall, including Radio Shack, where I managed to Blue Screen the display computer, we exited the Dirt Mall. As we walked to the car, the final episode of the day was upon us where some hapless Dirt people tried to back over me with their Dirt-mobile. In defense I jumped back and screamed out: “DON’T FUCKING HIT ME”. They drove off, dumbfounded at what had happened.

     So, after much boredom, grease and witness to Dirt, we piled into the Xeno wagon and drove back home. I couldn’t help but wonder as we got home, what ever happened to the girl that Xeno was supposed to pick up at school. It was really cold that day too..