The Abandoned Subway

About three weeks ago, I went with a couple of friends to see Rochester’s abandoned subway. This is a story I believe can be told almost entirely through disclaimers, so here is the first one:

Disclaimer: We were not trespassing. This was a tour given by the Canal Society of New York State, as part of Rochester’s River Romance festival. It’s still not clear to me how a dark, dusty underground cavern that smells strongly of urine in some places is romantic. Not surprisingly, at no point did any of my fellow tourists propose to any other tourists. For one thing, you do not want to get down on one knee in that dirt. You might as well roll in kitty litter. For another, they were probably waiting for the cemetary tour later in the weekend. Because you want to start a new life with the person you love in a place where corpses are decaying beneath your feet. That’s what we call romance in Rochester.

We started at the South Ave entrance, right next to Dinosaur Bar-B-Que. In the picture below, left to right: Minas Morgul (eye of Sauron out of order), the First Federal Building with the funny hat which apparently used to rotate, and the red brick Dinosaur building. And below that, a portal to what the River Romance guide calls “Rochester’s historic underbelly.” I have never heard of an “historic underbelly,” but I have heard of a “seedy underbelly” and I can only assume that’s what they meant.


Disclaimer: The abandoned subway is not safe and nobody should go down there even though I and two hundred other people did. The Canal Society of New York would like to turn the subway back into a canal, or something, it’s hard to picture exactly, and therefore opposes the city’s plan to fill it in. That’s why they hold these occasional tours. The city, however, makes the rather compelling argument that the tunnel is not structurally sound. So I repeat: people really should not go down there even though it is totally cool.

This was the last tour, and we just barely caught it. I didn’t actually see or hear the tour guide until the very end, because he was way ahead of us. Therefore, when I took this picture of hordes of people marching trustingly into pitch blackness, I could not be totally certain that the Pied Piper was not at the front of the line.


It’s tempting to make a lot of jokes about Moria. Like, if only I had Gandalf's magical 120-watt staff, I wouldn’t have had to use the flash on my camera and therefore catch all of the dust in the air.

Up these stairs, that’s where the orcs live.
Pretty sure they live here, too.
Oh, and definitely here.
I have no idea what this was for, but the fact that it has windows suggests how extremely different it must have once been down there. The way it is now, those windows would hardly let in any light at all, and even if they did, it isn’t as if there’s a view.

Little House in the Subway

Some parts of the subway were curiously pretty:




But those were the parts with sunlight. Once the tunnel goes underground, it becomes less pretty, and exponentially more menacing. We hadn’t realized they were going to let us roam free (I thought that would be asking for a lawsuit), and didn’t bring a flashlight. It started to look like this:


Here are the smart people with flashlights:



Here's one of the random pictures I took because I was using my flash to tell me what was in front of me:

I might die here, but at least Jesus loves me.

At a certain point, the absolute pitch blackness was too overwhelming, and we turned around. Moria jokes aside, it really was very much like being in a mine. Fascinating, and at the same time horrible and suffocating. In short, I’m glad we did it and gladder we came out alive.

The real value of the subway now, in my opinion, is the atmospheric combination of art and decay. It’s like a huge museum, but if the city of Rochester were to make it safe enough and palatable enough to be opened to the public, the effect would be completely ruined. For it to mean anything, it has to remain ungoverned, heading toward destruction. As Wallace Stevens says, Death is the mother of beauty.

Disclaimer: I have not scrutinized the graffiti in these photos. Even if I had, I would not have been able to figure out what most of it means. But I’m guessing much of it could be taken as offensive. Especially if you like grape Now and Laters. (Any opinions of grape Now and Laters expressed by graffiti artists are not necessarily those of the proprieters of this blog.)

In chronological order:

“Specialized To Vandalize”

Possibly Animatronic Thing In Blue

Possibly Organic Thing In Blue

Fishing

There’s something really ominous about that shovel.

Angry and Antennaed From Here To Oblivion

Few People are Familiar with Jackson Pollock's Brief "Badass" Period

See Above Disclaimer

I do not really know what this is...

...but I think it might be scary.

No comment.

Pretty colors.

Insert Final Insipid Caption Here.
I think uploading those pictures took more time than I spent in the tunnel. But there's one more. Upon emerging once again into sunlight and fresh air, this cement thing with weeds in it (garbage too, but I managed not to show it) struck me as beautifully natural. Happily, it is hiding the very bad words in the graffiti behind it.


Seriously kids, don't go down there.

when life gives you lemons...

I: ugh, the hairdresser gave me BANGS. I don't know what to do with myself.
C: well, you could be sexy Sarah Palin for Halloween...

time to buy some barrettes.

Internet

I have had the internet for about half an hour. Already I have:

1. Checked my e-mail eight times.
2. Discussed Latin, Chaucer, Heath Ledger, and brush fires with Ivan.
3. Read dooce.com.
4. Watched a useless YouTube video.
5. Gotten unreasonably annoyed by the comments on the useless YouTube video.
6. Written a pointless blog post.

It's so good to be back!

KILLER TREE

After meeting a live python in Marcella's living room, I didn't think I would be so sufficiently creeped out for quite awhile. Not much can rival a snake amidst your DVDs and comfy couches. And operating under this assumption I traveled to Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Park last weekend. A lovely place. Sequoia is full of non-threatening things like Very Large Trees and bears that mosey. I thought the most threatening thing about Sequoia was the campfire we started using some flame retardant cardboard that glowed green and smoked in a violent way... honestly, doesn't hold a candle to the python. But that was just day one...

Day two of the trip was spent in Kings Canyon-- an amazing place. Gorgeous views, scenic byways, killer trees, giant cave spiders, Sequoia cemeteries. Typical national park experience.

The day was beautiful and we decided to find a lunch spot... and for some reason picked a sad tree graveyard. I thought all the damage had been done by loggers, but then we passed this tree. Apparently the logging industry had NOTHING to do with the death of those giants-- it was all this guy. Asshole.

We left Killer Tree Grove before the Ents came to life and decided to see one of the lovely area caves. I read about the cave as we drove "wow, they've discovered new species of troglobites and pseudoscorpians in here!" To me this means nothing. The last movie I saw where someone explored a cave ended up in Fraggle Rock and I saw no reason this should end differently.

The cave tour was an hour long and looked boring, so the helpful cave ticket seller stuck out her tongue ring and suggested we take our headlamps across the street to the unofficial cavern. In retrospect, I see this as equal to the time the man running the ski lift told us if we didn't want to pay, we were welcome to walk up the mountain underneath the lift for free. Two hours later knee deep in loose shale, you start to realize you've been had. We shimmied into the cave and popped out into a shallow cavern. Cool! I'm spelunking! And then I swung my light around to look at my cave companion and realized we were not alone! Aside from the human, I was joined by a hoard of EXTREMELY large cave spiders. My Co-Spelunker will tell you they were not that intimidating, but honestly, HOLY FREAKING SHIT, CAVE SPIDERS. Yes. They looked like that. And I live in constant terror that not unlike the movie arachnophobia, I brought one home and it's currently nesting inside the cat. So I saw the giant cave spiders and I booked it out of that cave. In the interest of full disclosure I should mention that my co-spelunker had a broken leg and I left the poor man in there without even thinking. I am a horrible, horrible person that had absolutely no desire to die at the eight evil legs of one of those bastards. In defense of my co-spelunker: after dragging himself from the cave, he still gave me a ride home.

Thank goodness for the good souls.

Happy Blogiversary!

Not Taking This Seriously Anymore

Today's advice from my Worst-Case Scenario desk calendar: How to Foil a UFO Abduction

I find the assumptions they make about aliens to be interesting. First of all, why would an "extraterrestrial biological entity" necessarily want to abduct you? Why is abduction at the root of all human fear concerning aliens? It seems more likely to me that they'd come here to dump their garbage. And depending on how much they brought, we might WANT to go back with them.

Secondly, just because it's an alien doesn't mean it's psychic, so controlling your thoughts when faced with one may be a waste of energy. Anyway, I think it's a lot to ask of a person who has just been confronted with an alien simply to not freak out, much less control their thoughts. Similarly, I don't see why picturing yourself enveloped in a shield of white light is going to be remotely useful either, unless these aliens are as lame as you are and think white light equals safety.

As for the advice that you should "firmly tell the EBE to leave you alone"? You might as well scream STRANGER DANGER! at it. It's probably not going to speak English. Nor is there any reason to believe that body language is intergalactically universal.

As for their last resort -- "go for the EBE's eyes because you won't know what its other more sensitive areas are" -- I just want to point out that the alien pictured on this page looks exactly like a short, skinny human wearing a classic big-eyed alien mask. This leads me to believe that instead of going for its eyes, you should tackle it and threaten to tell Mom, because chances are good it's just your little brother.

(Incidentally, it turns out I owe myself ten dollars. See Previous Worst Case Scenario Post)

Pursuivant!

My new favorite word is "pursuivant". It is pronounced "per-sweeve-ant" by Rowan Atkinson in an episode of Black Adder entitled "The Witchsmeller Pursuivant"-- an episode that in no way clarifies what pursuivant means, but still makes me want to say "pursuivant!" all the time. Wikipedia seems to think it's some sort of an arms master, but I really don't care.

In light of this new! fabulous! multi-purpose! word (yes, I have decided it's multi-purpose -- "that's so pursuivant!" "he's so pursuivant!" "this is the most wretchedly pursuivant day I have ever experienced." --like hoopy-frood but with the versatility of a swear word) I present to you my latest craft project:

The Pursuivan-T

I couldn't take a decent picture while I was wearing it, but I promise you, it looks totally pursuivant.

Impertinence

Me: Couldn't you just remove both feet at the ankles?

Doctor: No.

To the Sullen Teenaged Boy in the Passenger's Seat of the Pink Mary Kay Cadillac Parked at the Post Office

I'm very sorry I pointed and laughed at your mom's car. I didn't realize you were in it at the time or I definitely would have spared you that moment of humiliation. I would advise that next time you are forced to ride in that mockery of an automobile, you duck down and keep your head below the dashboard. Even with your shaggy emo haircut covering half your face, people can still recognize you. Other alternatives include riding on the floor of the back seat, riding in the trunk, or just flat-out refusing to get into Barbie's Pink Cadillac in the first place. If you can graduate early and move out of town to start fresh, I would recommend that as well.

Anyway, please don't kill yourself or anyone else. There's always the hope that your mom's streak of sales successes will peter out and Mary Kay will take the car back. There's also sabotage, or if all else fails, sue. She may be your mother, but did you ask to be born? Moreover, did you ask to be born to someone obsessed with makeup? No you certainly did not. And I think a judge would agree with you. Maybe a normal family would adopt you. If not, you could at least use your settlement money to move to New York and start a band, which is what you were really meant to do. High school, smalls towns, Mary Kay cars, these things are not for you. Forget that stupid car; take your sullenness and your shaggy haircut and go conquer the world.

Regards,
Simon

Purple Way of Delight

This is one of my favorite times of year in Los Angeles. The Jacaranda's are blooming and entire city blocks are filled with periwinkle and sunlight. Sometimes, when I drive to work, I feel like Anne, seeing the Avenue for the first time.

When There Aren't Any Skittles to Sort

I meant to write about my trip to Germany, but my computer didn't make it out in one piece and I didn't think anyone would believe the post about grown men and women dressed as garden patches, wearing overalls made of astro turf and butterfly headbands, drinking on the rainy streets in 34 degree weather without some photographic evidence. Or that time they marched a stuffed doll through the city in the dead of night carrying torches and whispering "wooo, wooo" while wearing green wigs and furry elephant costumes and then set the doll on fire. I'm not sure I believe it.

And I meant to start writing regularly once my job slowed down and I officially had nothing better to do, but the job never slowed down and I am consistently having to remind myself "DON'T PANIC, this will all be over soon. Soon you will remember what a weekend is like". But that's still four weeks away, so in the meantime I have been distracting myself with semi-complicated art projects. Behold: The Chalkboard Wall.



I even took the time to bribe Gilbert P. Kitten into posing in front of The Chalkboard Wall. It only took six cans of unopened cat food to get him to sit on that table.



I use the chalkboard wall to keep track of my workouts. This is why it says "GO SWIM" in giant letters. I wake up in the morning and I think "seriously? I should get out of bed NOW? This seems like a bad idea" and I see the "GO SWIM" and I think, "well maybe". And then I go back to sleep, because the kind of person who thinks a chalkboard wall will motivate her to get in the pool, is not the kind of person who actually drags herself out of bed for laps. She is the kind of person who doodles in the columns later so they don't look so empty.

Hedgehog Politics

This is my desk at work. The post it note in the corner was balled up and thrown at me from an adjoining cubicle. It reads "The guy behind me just called Ryan Seacrest a genius. Where did my life go so wrong?"

Up Too Early

Driving to the airport. 4:30 am.

Me: Wow, the moon is even BIGGER now!
Dad: I keep telling you, it's because we're getting closer.
Mom: It's dented though.
Me: What a piece of junk.
Dad (sadly): Should have hung it up with a screw, not a nail.

And That's the Day He Started to Refer to Her as Iron Fist in His Head

In the library.

Father: Go tell your sister two minutes.
Little brother: Dad says two minutes.
Big sister: You may be quiet now, thank you.

Worst Case Scenario

Last Christmas we had Secret Santas at work, and my secret santa noticed that my 2007 desk calendar was going to run out soon. This 2007 calendar was the best desk calendar I have ever had, as it gave me 365 archaic words to use at the rate of one a day, which is really the limit in terms of how quickly a person can absorb new vocabulary. My favorite word arrived on January 17th and I never did find anything better.

snoodle v. To rub and scratch and attend assiduously to pigs

This year's calendar is not quite of the same persuasion, unless I happen to be in a scenario in which someone steals my pig, because thanks to W. H. Long's Dictionary of the Isle of Wight Dialect, I now know that having snoodled it is a reasonably good way to prove that it is in fact mine. But I do not have a pig. So let's move on.

The 2008 calendar is a Worse Case Scenario calendar.

So far, some have been quite helpful. HOW TO SPOT A RABID ANIMAL. Having had some experience with this, I learned nothing new, but I thought it was at least practical, as was HOW TO LOSE SOMEONE WHO IS FOLLOWING YOU ON FOOT. Occasionally one does find oneself on a dark street. You never know.

But then there was the one called HOW TO FALL DOWN A FLIGHT OF STAIRS and I thought, "Well that's just silly. Jump!" Naturally I am taking this too literally, but since their advice involves the sentence "concentrate on rolling on major muscle groups" I have to ask myself whether my response doesn't actually make more sense. Most people, when they're falling down the stairs, hardly know they're falling until they've stopped, but the calendar wants you to have the presence of mind to "reduce speed and maximize control." Well, of course. And that would be easy if, say, you were driving a car. But when you're falling down stairs, you're pretty busy . . . falling down stairs.

For a while this one was my favorite: On the weekend of January 19-20th I am informed of four steps to take in order to "outwit a pack of wolves." That's what it's entitled: HOW TO OUTWIT A PACK OF WOLVES. Not how to escape them or scare them or injure them or hide from them; how to outwit them. I was envisioning sitting down with them on a hillside and tricking them into drinking iocane powder, but what you are actually supposed to do is not get chased into a lake. That seems self-evident to me in any scenario, but I'm no expert.

And then they just got weird. HOW TO SURVIVE A HOSTAGE SITUATION. Where am I that I'm going to be taken hostage?

The very next day: HOW TO ESCAPE IF TRAPPED IN A LION CAGE. Why am I in a lion cage? How did I get there? Did I go into it voluntarily? Because in that case, considering how much effort it would probably take to put myself in such a dangerous situation, I deserve to be eaten. Or, did someone drug me and dump my body there? If so, it would be better to know HOW TO TELL WHETHER ANYONE HAS IT IN FOR YOU. Or at the very least HOW NOT TO END UP IN A LION CAGE.

I assumed it couldn't get more unlikely than me being in a lion cage but I think they're working their way into absurdity as the year progresses because today it says HOW TO BAIL OUT OF A STREET LUGE.

1. What is a street luge?
2. No really, what is a street luge?
3. Who the hell has a street luge?
4. Is street-luging a recognized sport?
5. Is the picture, which shows a person basically flying out of a gutter (there's even a drainage grate), in any way accurate?
6. Why would you get into a hobby that involved literally being in the gutter?
7. Is not the very name of a street luge a sign of its being dangerous?
8. If your street luge goes out of control, is this not in fact an example of natural selection at work?

The best part is that tomorrow says HOW TO SURVIVE NUCLEAR FALLOUT, as if having to bail out of your street luge and being in the vicinity of a nuclear bomb explosion are in any way on the same level of worst cases. I guess maybe the detonation might blow you off your street luge, but if that happened, breaking your leg or getting run over by a car probably won't matter that much.

I will bet $10 that before the year is out there's going to be one about alien life forms landing on earth. Oh, I hope there is.

Easter Candy for the Unbeliever

This comes in second only to the Easter Cell Phone: Ostermix.

On Ivan's recent trip to Germany (concerning which she has so far failed to post HINT HINT) she picked up a bag of possibly the best Easter candy ever. I haven't actually eaten any of it yet, but I am prepared to say it's the best ever because it could not be more unabashedly pagan, and boy do I heart the pagans!

It's not the bunnies and the other bunnies and the strange cartoonish chicks that are so unreligious, although they definitely lean towards pre- rather than post-Christian traditions. It's the fried eggs.

Behold:


Whether fried eggs are more appropriate to Easter than, say, a chocolate Jesus, I'm not sure. Then again, I don't know that they are even particularly connected to pre-Christian fertility rituals. If you eat the egg, it is obviously not going to hatch. So it seems to me that this is basically a religiously neutral candy, like maybe something the Easter Beagle would deliver. Christianity has inspired a whole lot of incredible music and some excellent art and literature, and I'm sure Jesus, from his seat on the right hand of God the Father Almighty, is very pleased that it has now also inspired fried-egg-shaped gummies.

I leave you with close-ups. If anyone knows what the ones that look like luridly-colored caviar are, please tell me.

And it's All Thanks to Alexander Hamilton's Sister-in-Law

The Southern Tier is officially defined (by Wikipedia) as counties in New York State that border Pennsylvania, west of the Catskills. I have been there so infrequently that I have to admit it took some hard thinking before I could remember how to get on 390 going south. I already live half an hour south of the Thruway, which is essentially half an hour south of civilization; why would I want to go FARTHER that direction? I'll tell you why: pancakes.

Man, I love pancakes. So when I heard there was a family of maple producers in the Southern Tier who open a restaurant for three months in the spring in order to serve all-you-can-eat buckwheat pancakes to fellow maple syrup enthusiasts, I immediately enlisted the company of my trusty friend Sheilah, and away we went into the wilds of New York.

This family describes their restaurant as having a "somewhat out of the way" location. They are correct. They are a solid hour and a half away from just Rochester, and Rochester is about two and a half light years away from the rest of the world. So these are people for whom being nine hours from New York City wasn't good enough. They didn't even want to be near the Erie Canal. They don't even have a Finger Lake. They do have Keaney Swamp State Forest, but it is (a) a swamp, and (b) a swamp so unremarkable I can't even verify its name on the internet because, amazingly, there is no website detailing the state-protected swamps in Allegany County, so I can't imagine that it is any kind of natural wonder.

This isn't to say that the Southern Tier, in spite of obviously suffering from some longstanding economic woes, has no draws. It has a kind of lonely, dramatic landscape that is a cross between the mountains of Vermont and the hills of Prince Edward Island. If it hadn't been the epitome of a dull, colorless, depressing March day, I can see it being the subject of a National Geographic article, featuring pictures of neglected homes, abandoned homes, cat-eyed barns that are waiting for a good gust of wind or a lightning strike to finish them off, rusted schoolbuses that must date back to 1965 at least, and, naturally, peculiar local businesses. Such as maple farmers.

I say peculiar because this is not a maple farm from Tasha Tudor's New England. This isn't to impugn their maple syrup, which was marvelous. And perhaps I have become too focused on marketing. But I must say, there is great potential for a place like that to be really, really cool, and they missed almost every opportunity to educate people on how maple syrup is made, as well as to commercialize on their own cuteness, because there was not much cuteness.

In the basement of the building there is a display, I guess, of old equipment, I think, and a kind of reproduction, as far as I could tell, of the maple-sugaring life about a hundred years ago. I am unsure because normally in such a situation there would be some kind of placard telling you what you are looking at. Not so here:


Sheilah: What does it do?
Me: I have no idea.
Sheilah: It looks like you could cremate a body in it.
Me: Sheilah!
Sheilah: Is it not the perfect size and shape? IS IT NOT?
Me: I have to admit . . . it IS.

A nice placard could have spared us that exchange.

Also, I have something to say about this:


Someone saw me taking a picture of this and asked why I was taking a picture. What I said was, "Why not?" but what I thought was, "Are you kidding? This is the funniest thing I've seen in three months except for the RON PAUL RLOVEUTION sign that we passed as we drove down here, and that was mostly scary."

And in the back, where by all rights there ought to have been a nice path through the maple trees down which you could take a guided tour and learn the history of sapping, there was only this:


I won't hold the mud and snow against them because they can't control the horribleness of March, but the rotting logs, the rusted frame, and whatever that yellow thing is that looks like it might have contained as explosive gas of some kind? That could be somewhere else. When I go to a place like this, I want to be fooled into thinking these people lead wholesome, rustic lives, grow all their own food, take good care of their grandmothers, and play the fiddle for entertainment. And a horse or two in a nearby pasture wouldn't go amiss. Even just a horse statue! I can be flexible.

While we were adventuring in the area, Sheilah and I thought we might as well stop by Angelica, which Sheilah's mom said was cute and had some shops. Sheilah's mom was right. It was cute, and it did have some shops. And we were possibly the only people there. We were actually recognized by the owner of one shop because she had just spent half an hour talking to the owner of the shop we'd just been to. However, here's an interesting fact: the village I live in has a population of about 2,500, while Angelica has a population of 903 (that's 95 people fewer than in 1830), and yet Angelica can support a number of antiques stores, a sweet shop, a hotel AND an inn, and three restaurants, whereas my village can barely keep a single coffee shop in business.

Something is wrong with the place I live.

Side note on Angelica: The village of Angelica is named after Angelica Schuyler Church, daughter of General Philip John Schuyler and Catherine van Rensselaer (from Albany. Surprise!). The General was a member of the Continental Congress. Angelica corresponded with not only the Marquis de Lafayette and the Marquis de Talleyrand, but also Thomas Jefferson. She was painted by John Trumbull, and eloped in 1777 with an Englishman who fled to American after a duel. He may possibly have been using an assumed name at the time, and appears to have been something of a gambler. THe Englishman, Church, duelled with Aaron Burr (both survived) and when Aaron Burr later duelled with Alexander Hamilton, who was married to Angelica's sister, they used Church's pistols. Who named the village Angelica and why is a mystery to me, but I would just like to say on an unrelated note that it is a strange period in history when the thing to do is to settle arguments according to who has better aim. That is barely one step up from drowning suspected witches. Come on. Lame.

Whether or not Angelica Church married a gambling addict or Thomas Jefferson wanted to have an affair with her or she wanted to have an affair with Alexander Hamilton, the place that was named after her sure is darn cute. It might be kind of hard to tell from this picture, because unfortunately it was still March by the time we got there, but Main Street is a wide, tree-lined avenue with some lovely architecture, nicely-restored houses, and colorful shops.


More importantly than this, they knew just how to fool me into thinking they lead wholesome and rustic lives. It's not a horse. It's even better. It's a cow statue!


Neat.

At the end of Main Street, there is a nice traffic circle with a pretty big park in the center of it. There are no less than four churches around this circle, one of which is pictured here:


And this is the extremely charming town hall. I am a sucker for red-white-and-blue hangings on official buildings in small northeastern towns.


And, just in case you were in doubt, this is Angelica, New York:


A Town Where History Lives Except In March When History Moves To Her Condo In Florida And Takes The Entire Population With Her.

As a day-trip destination, I give the Southern Tier three out of five stars, but if you are thinking of visiting, please bear in mind that I awarded one of those stars solely because Angelica Schuyler Church seems like she was pretty awesome. And I awarded the second one on the strength of the orange truffle I got from Angelica's sweet shop. And the third one was for the doll peeking out of the basket in the basement of the maple place. My definitions of "interesting" and "a good time" might not match up with everyone else's; in fact, at this very moment I'm considering bumping it up to four stars because I just remembered that the directions MapQuest gave us for the route home included a dirt road -- a dirt road that in any other place on earth probably would have been closed at this time of year, considering that it was not so much dirt as mud. I guess the MapQuest people thought, "If they're in the Southern Tier, 99 to 1 they're in a truck, so go ahead and put that dirt road in there as a valid route."

Yes. Definitely four stars.

Winter Garden

Greens

Having not posted in more than two months, I feel I need to ease my way back into the routine. With vegetables.

Deck the Fire Truck with Boughs of Holly

In Sweden they dress up as martyrs at Christmas and wear flaming crowns, in the Netherlands they eat candy out of unfashionable shoes, and in small town America, they decorate fire engines. I have two comments:

1. Small town America is no weirder than anywhere else.
2. Small town America WINS. Fire trucks are AWESOME and they are even more AWESOME when they are decorated with Christmas lights and electronic moving reindeer and REAL LIVESTOCK!

Having never lived in the center of town before, and my parents having apparently kept this a secret because it is too good to share, I had no idea that every year, a couple of weeks before Christmas, the fire departments from various surrounding towns compete to see who can decorate their fire truck the AWESOMEST and then they drive them through town so that we village folk can be mightily impressed by their decorative skills and/or total lack of subtlety. Which we were. Fa la la la la la la la la!

But I am not here to make fun of them. Because I honestly thought this was the best parade I have seen in a long time. Look! Fire trucks! With lights!


And! There's more! Firemen dressed up in lights! You might ask yourself, isn't that a fire hazard? But no! It isn't! Because there are fifteen firetrucks within a half-mile!


And here's one of them! And it's so pretty! Just imagine if your house was burning down and this showed up! You'd be so happy, you'd forget that all your worldly possession were in ashes!


However. There is a line. And if I were having a heart attack and my rescuers arrived in this, I think, if I could manage it, I would say, "I will not allow you to take me to the hospital unless you take those ridiculous animals off the roof of your vehicle. This is not a Wagnerian opera!"


When the parade was over, there were a vast number of fire trucks lining Monroe Street, and a vast number of people who were annoyed because they wanted to use Monroe Street, and there was a very immobile fire truck parked across the end of it blocking it off. It was like having royalty in town. Royalty that could plug themselves in and light up like toys!

Happily, a nice fireman let me out of the street because I needed to go grocery shopping because this:


was due to arrive imminently, and in fact snow began to fall at almost the exact moment that the parade ended. It was not the deadly horror that newscasters gleefully predicted, but it was cold enough and windy enough and snowy enough that I only took two pictures before going back inside to have another can of soup. Here is the other picture:


Isn't that lovely? And just twelve hours earlier, there were firetrucks rolling through town like vehicular Christmas trees. This is a great place to live.

Pastry Warfare

Z: I have about 500 mini muffins, do you want one for breakfast?
N: nah, Fred's got a rival faction of scones in his room, I'm going with them.
Z: Pastry warfare... I don't know how to handle this.
L: Just wait until the crumpets show up.

editorial decisions

A: We need to replace this shot of downtown LA with a shot of Vegas.
I: ok
::scans through Vegas tape::
A: We should probably go with that aerial of the city...
I: Really? I was going to use the shot of the tiger combined with the fountain of fire...
A: You really want to be an editor?

I just shook George Carlin's hand.

how cool is that?