The other day I was made aware that I have no idea what's going on in local news. Having been a resident of Philadelphia for-like-ever, I was always accutely aware of the local and regional affairs for the lower-mid-Atlantic tri-state area. I've been in-step with the fluctuations and happenings (read: downward spirals) of city and state politics there. I had always considered myself to be fairly educated on current affairs. But I was outed when my roommates asked me if I was sick to death of hearing about the Elliot Spitzer debacle and I answered blankly, "Who?".
"Uh, the govener of New York."
Oh.
Shit, shit, shit- how do I not know this stuff?
The next morning the chick who sits behind me errupted with a laugh. Responding to our confused stares she explained that a caller on the news show she was listening to online had declared that if Spitzer had wanted kinky sex, it was his wife's duty to provide it for him. What shocked me was not the glaring and ridiculous sexist remark, or the surprise that I indeed have a juicy scandal to catch up on, but it was the re-realization that I, while at work, can be listening to the news. Duh! PODCASTS! Sometimes in the hustle & bustle of New York City circa 2008 I forget of simple technologies available, like say, internet radio and live, sexy-housewife webcam.
Fast forward 10 minutes and I had downloaded, I don't know, about bizzillion newscasts from BBC, NPR, French4Thought and mixes from IndieFeed, XLR8, and Noise Pop Radio. I've been blowing through them. I'm feeling back to my old in-tune self; up on politics, up on pre-signed indie rock, and the passé composé. I can now go to bars and parties, get comfortably wasted, and start rambling about $5K an hour hookers and Britain's national budget plan, all en mal français!
A new podcast fav is "Talk of the Nation" produced NPR. They conducted an interesting and fairly objective conversation Spitzer's follies and the American obsession with vice. It focused on the incident as a situation, as a structure, rather than in the sensational style of, say, Fox News. For a fun follow-up yesterday's discussion centered on hypothetical time-travel. The callers' quick and in depth responses to where/when/why they would travel through time astounded me. Obviously these poor saps: housewives and retirees, had plenty of spare time on their hands to come up with these sort of what-ifs... not like us busy working in important glass towers of Manhattan, keeping the economy-and world- on the level.
Ahem.
But the question stuck with me and like an eighth grader with a new riddle I have been asking everyone I know where and when they would travel to. Basically I can't come up with anything except for going back to the moments of death of punk and pop-rock icons and altering the endings for my own personal audio gains and am curious when my friends can come up with something more important or interesteing. This morning, on the L, I finally came up with my "final answer." Fuck time travel, I want to go to a hypothetical world where train travel is fully functioning and fuck-up free.
Seriously, this shit is constant and ridiculous. In other major cities in other countries trains run on a frighteningly tight schedule. In Japan, if a train is over 30 seconds late (uh, 30 seconds!) the conductor apologizes to the platform as if begging for the sparing of his children. Budapest and Vienna have nothing longer than 3 minute wait times, 24 hours a day. And trains never just stop in between stations.
A time machine I would come in handy on my morning commutes. I could technically just use it to get to work however I want, but where's the fun and vengence in that? I'm thinking: rewind to the point where some dumb a-hole blocks the doors or pulls the emergency stop on subway cars... and shake the shit out of them. And maybe steal their metro card.
Or maybe I would rewind a few years and start a life as a $5000/hour escort. Seriously for that kind of money, I'm your girl.
germany also has trains and buses and trollies (yeah, the above-ground "trains" - they're fun) that run on a schedule that is posted at each stop and can actually be depended on. really helps in your day-to-day... not like waiting for the V in the morning, only to watch 2 or 3 E's come by one after the other, or have you ever waited for a bus for 20 minutes and then 3 of them show up at once? those assholes... i don't know about other american metropoles, but come on new york...
ReplyDeletealso: In paris the trains have rubber wheels. they're silent. pretty sweet.
ReplyDeleteGOD STEFFEN. On and on about Germany again.
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