I loathe the bus...

I miss the days when bus drivers were actually allowed to talk. Most of the time they were boring, just announcing the stops in monotonous voices that sounded not unlike the grown-ups in Peanuts, had they lost the will to live. But sometimes, magic happened.

Like this one time, during rush hour, when my bus driver growled, "Next stop... hell!" (At least he was being honest.)

And I'll never forget the time my female driver said, sighing, "To the two men giving each other a hand jobs, we can see you. We can ALL SEE YOU."
Now we just have automated, voices with flat, regionless accents that jabber incessantly between stops. One recording warns passengers to "protect yourself," and every single time I finish the sentence in my head "... before you wreck yo self." (Those automated voices should totally rap.)

There's also the transit tunnel buzzkill robot who basically tells us that the crumpled Subway wrapper on the floor beneath the sleeping homeless man, next to the cup of either pee or Mountain Dew, is probably rigged to explode.

And then there's this one: “If you see an elderly, pregnant, or handicapped person near you, offer your seat. You’ll be standing up for what’s right (pun intended). Courtesy is contagious, and it starts with you.”

Look, I have nothing against the elderly, pregnant, or handicapped. I'll stand up for what's old, or fat, or blind. But courtesy is not contagious, no matter how much you pun. What's contagious is the hacking cough of the man leaning against the pole (DUDE. THAT IS NOT. YOUR. POLE.) ...or the glances of relief when the very vocal insane person decides to stop arguing with the Metro Driver of the Year poster and exits the bus... or, surely, the bench being used by the two men giving each other hand jobs at the back of the bus….

Lost

I love Lost.

Last week, I actually wept watching it--and I don't even cry at funerals. (I know; I'm a terrible person.)

Anyway, as anyone who’s been following Lost knows, the final season has been set up as a kind of good versus evil spiritual showdown between two characters I could not care much less about: Jacob (the goody-goody, who looks perpetually stoned, like a middle-aged Jeff Spicoli) and The Man in Black, who is NOT, cruelly, played by Tommy Lee Jones and who is apparently going to destroy the world as we know it. When not in human form, he basically looks like that Icelandic cloud of volcanic ash that’s been fucking up air travel for the past few weeks. When the show ends I guess he’ll go back to following Pig Pen around.

While I know that the ultimate battle between good and evil forms the basis for many pop-culture pairings (I’m speaking, of course, of duos like Garfield and Nermyl, Amanda Woodward and Allison Parker, and Alexis Carrington Colby Dexter Rowan and Krystle Carrington), I’m left kind of cold by this story arc. Don’t get me wrong—I’m still totally obsessed. It’s just that if the entire basis of Lost turns out to be Radio Raheem’s monologue from Do The Right Thing, I am going to be pissed.



“Lost,” though, I will grant, is a much better title than “The Story of Right Hand, Left Hand.” (Ahhhh! Which brings us to Mr. Hand, Jeff Spicoli's history teacher nemesis! I love it when my blogs come full circle. Also, judging from yesterday's and today's posts, I think I need to Netflix Fast Times at Ridgemont High.)