When I lived in Boston I lived on comm ave, home of the B branch of the green line (pity me). Every day I would get on a train that said ‘Government Center’ on it and would invariably start singing the Jonathan Richman song of the same name all the way to work. This is a holdout brain pattern from when I had decided to limit my speech only to lines from songs and quotes from movies. I got pretty good at it: “that chet, he’s an asshole,” or “you can dance, for inspiration.” It’s surprising how flexible language is, even the most random sentences can can be stretched into relevance depending on the context. Blah, blah, blah. Anyway, this morning, I started singing “I’m a little dinosaur,” also by Jonathan Richman, and it seems oddly appropriate for the new york subway.

Dressed in a rich, almost burgundy suit, the first black santa I have ever seen sat motionless with his eyes closed on the 4 train on sunday. Wether he was sleeping or faking it, it was definitely a defensive move on his part. People were really eager to talk to him and one guy looked ready at any moment to give santa a little shake and start up a conversation.

I have that espn.com applet running in a window that refreshes continually with the world series stats as they happen. I will forget to check it for a while and I will hear the neighbors shout “oh no!” Or “yay!” And I will know that something important just happened, and I check the game. I am enchanted by the little baserunner graphic that they use. It is the only dynamic image in the whole program. Everything else is text and numbers.

At a certain point on my way to the train in the morning, I can look up to see how many people are waiting on the manhattan bound platform. From this I can guage how much time until the next train arrives. If there are only two or three people up there, I know a train has just been through and I that I have time to get an apple turnover from the bakery on the corner. After months of going in there, today was the first day that the counter guy said, ‘apple turnover’ before I even said good morning. Kinda dopey like the theme from cheers, but it made me feel a little special.

Worked late with ben and nick. At 11:30 we all went out for beer and fried foods at the least shitty of the nearby midtown bars. At the next table over a group of people from the philip morris company were all chatting and I noticed a bunch of them looking over at us on and off for a while.

After a bit, a wobbly woman named Sheila came over and pulled up a chair and started schmoozing with us in a kind of patronizing, flirtatious manner. It didn’t take long for me to start asking her questions like had she ever been to antarctica, and if keeping a two legged dog in the city was less cruel than keeping a 4 legged one. She implied by her assertions that if the humankind would only see things her way, the world would be a much better place. I have to agree, a world full of drunken republicans does have a blissful ring to it.

In the subway station, a man was walking slowly up the platform singing his own version of country roads, take me home. He had all the words down and had intvented a new melody. It was almost like a harmony part to the original. I couldn’t help but smile. He was stamping his feet lightly as he went and when we made eye contact I just smiled more. I thought I would give him some change or a dollar, but he didn’t have a cup out and seemed perfectly happy to share his muse for free. His voice was thin and gravelly and it kicked my ass. As he got down by the next set of benches a downtown train pulled up and a skinny glassy eyed thug jumped up and told him that he better get on it or there was going to be trouble. His song stopped immediately as turned to go seek out a MTA worker to call a cop for him. He seemed genuinely scared and stood very close by the officials until a cop arrived.

Last night I got on the same train that I stole the mr t ad from two nights ago. I had slid the protecting plastic sheet about halfway out its track before going to work on the poster. Once I had the picture, I tucked a corner of the sheet into the track of the adjacent ad so it wasn’t flapping in peoples faces. It was kind of wierd to stand on the train under the evidence of my misdemeanor. The wobbling, bowed out piece of plastic was making a faint bweep, bweep noise like the blade of a handsaw flexing back and forth. It started to sound more and more like thief, thief and I was starting to feel hot and claustophobic. The thief, thief, thief noise was getting louder and more insistent and was drowning out the rumble of the train. Everyone’s eyes settled on me. thief, thief, thief, thief, thief.two more stops to go. Hold on. thief, thief, thief, thief, thief. I got home and saw a raven outside my chamber door.