Today I was told my personality would make me a good bartender and that, if I shaved, I could easily be Will Friedle’s character (Duncan) in My Date with the President’s Daughter for Halloween.

Remember this?

Best worst day ever.

It was a painfully familiar feeling, but not as painful as it used to be.

I’m long past hangover headaches and I pretend it’s because I’ve begun to take better care of myself, hydrating properly, eating well and taking vitamins to ensure I can bounce back each morning. That’s definitely not it, though.

More likely it’s because my brain cells have grown used to the morning exercise when all they want to do is rest from the debauchery of the night before, but I digress.

In this particular instance, the extent of my hangover was a tinge just behind my left temple, but it was further aggravated by the fact that I had slept on the ground the night before and had been stirred awake at 7 a.m. by older men who, somehow and for some reason, always manage to wake up way too early.

I put my uniform on and walked, barefoot again, to where breakfast was being provided. I badly needed a soda, but was still resisting them as part of a personal challenge developed a few weeks before, so I had tea.

Breakfast was free and much more than a muffin and coffee. Sausage, a biscuit and gravy were welcome sights during this blurry trip to the dock, but there was a weird aroma and flavor to the sausage. The texture reminded me of the new ADA-approved playground surfaces.

In the middle of chewing I learned it was deer sausage.

It’s not that I’m against eating deer. Actually I’ve developed quite a hatred for deer recently, but the texture and taste didn’t ease the tension in my head, it just added a bit of nausea to the experience.

I returned to our Civil War-era campsite and laid on one of my fellow campers’ cots.

I dipped my tricorn hat over my eyes and tried to sleep it off as the sprinkling rain pitter-patted on the roof of the tent. Ordinarily it would help me sleep, but this time it just pricked at that sensitive cavity behind my temple.

I was roused eventually for the battle reenactment and a couple other skits, but when I returned to the campsite, I was tired.

I told those I was camping with that I was heading home. The constant throbbing behind my temple, lack of substantial food and Monday’s advance had me convinced I wanted to sleep in a bed that night.

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I won’t pretend that I’m the first person to write about New York’City Subway. I won’t even pretend that what I have to say is particularly enlightening, but I’m weirdly turned on by efficient public transportation systems. It makes me want to write like this:

There’s a roaring monster below New York City. It pitches and careens through caverns.

It wears its innards like a badge of honor. Exposed hoses, wires, pipes, nuts and bolts hang out for all to see.

In a world where every word out of our mouths is expected to be politically correct and each public utility must meet Americans with Disabilities Act specifications, the NYC Subway system thrusts its unmentionables in your face like a drunken exhibitionist.

The paint is chipped. The signs are outdated. The seats carry the same color scheme as they did when the cast of Seinfeld sat on them more than 20 years ago (when he sat across from an exhibitionist on his way to Coney Island).

It’s like an organism that evolved to its peak physical condition in the mid-1990s and decided it would just maintain at that level forever. Like older men who wear the clothes that were en vogue during their glory days for the rest of their lives.

“Yeah,” the Subway says, “I’ve seen the elevators and guardrails and waiver agreements of your generation, but I don’t care. I’m the NYC fucking Subway and I’m the greatest public transportation project that was ever conceived.”

Sure, there have been advances. There are mobile applications that help you time your trains and displays that count down the stops, but these amount, essentially, to handing a cell phone to Big Jake and asking him to call you from time to time to check in.

It’s easy to argue that the raw, antiquated innovation of the NYC Subway is what’s lacking from the world today, so I will. The closest that government comes to most citizens across the country today is when their house is broken into or burned, but in a handful of cities across the United States, the government allows us to descend into earth’s depths and subsidize each other’s travel.

Actually, maybe I just like the NYC subway system because the Ninja Turtles live beneath Manhattan… Continue reading →