Wading in the Velvet Sea

1) Google Maps lists the distance between our respective abodes at 217 miles. What Google does not tell you is that some of those miles pass by as if you’re in warp speed, and others as if you’re doing the breaststroke through a tar pit. Half the time you’re humming “Born to Be Wild”, the other half you’re singing the Slow-Poke Rodriguez version of “La Cucaracha”.

2) For some reason, Slow-Poke always killed me as a kid. Speedy would be all, “Seriously, Slowpoke, anytime this century would be great, the cat’s almost here” and Slowpoke would be all, “If you wanna talk about seriously, let’s talk how seriously bad I have the munchies right now”. Couldn’t get enough. The “Best of SlowPoke” needs to come out on DVD, pronto.

3) In a related story, apparently as child, I would be hypnotized by those Halls commercials that animated the “vapor action”. I could be doing anything: playing, crying, hurling feces against my crib, and then would be rapt for the 28 seconds of this commercial. If my parents had the technology available, they would have created an eight-hour loop of this commercial to keep me quiet.

4) Driving anywhere is a weird experience for me. It’s been two and a half years since I bought my car, and three and a half since I’ve had one in general, and each time I get in, I have this “Oh yea, I have one of these…cool!” feelings come over me. I’m lucky if I put 50 miles on the thing a month aside from visiting The Girl or my folks. Just sits there, all pouty. Not that a Camry could pout. That would weird. I’d unlock the door, and it would sigh and passive-aggressively question how much I really need it, and how it bets I’ve been eyeing other modes of transportation, and yea, I’m OK with my boring car.

5) What I’m not OK with, however, is the fact that my car (and anyone’s car) can go, “Oh my, that’s weird” which leads you to handing over a few hundred dollars to a mechanic before you can say “gas/electric hybrid”. Impossible to plan for. Case in point: a few weeks back, when shoveling my car off for the 416th time this winter, I managed to knock off one of the nozzles that sprays windshield whiper fluid. Oops. Figured it might cost me $60, including labor. $510 later, I had a nozzle, oil change, and new brakes. Stab me in the groin with a flaming sword.

6) Brakes just aren’t one of those things I feel like messin’ with. I mean, it’s not like the batteries on my old Discman. I could walk by a CVS, think about getting new ones, and then out of laziness say, “Eh, I’ll get new ones when these run out.” I’d heard the squeaking, I had just gotten use to it, and wasn’t about to find out on I84 that I needed new ones. I’m crazy that way.

7) Speaking of crazy, I’m fairly convinced that everyone wants to steal my car. For the first few months after buying it, I’d leave the house in my pajamas to make sure I’d locked it. Locking my car is one of those things I do subconsciously, so I can never really remember if I’ve done it or not, and I’d envision a warehouse of people not so much pimping my ride so much as raping my ride, and then I’d bolt out of the house and lo, there it was, locked. And there I was, in footie pajamas on the streets of Cambridge.

8) I have a similar problem now with the door to my apartment. For four years, I lived on the 3rd story of a building that featured doors that were permanently locked---a problem if you forgot your keys, but great otherwise since all I had to do was shut the doors tightly. It got so bad during the first few months in my new place that I forced myself to say, out loud, to nobody but myself, “I am locking the door now.” I could still not remember locking the door, but I could remember talking to myself like a crazy person. Mnemonic devices are amusing, what can I say?

9) Sorry, I’m still thinking about the SlowPoke thing---am I the only one who thinks he shoulda been paired with Hugo the Abominable Snowman from those Bugs Bunny cartoons for one of those cop movies where the pairing leads to hijinx and amusement for all? Remember Hugo? Freakin’ lonely snowman, he was. He was fairly indiscriminate in terms of his affection. Kinda gave it away freely. If anyone came within a few miles of him, he’d kidnap them, and profess the desire to love them, squeeze them, and call them George. Just put him near a crime scene, let him hug the criminals until they were so skeezed out that they would confess their crimes, and let SlowPoke consume all the drugs found on site. Can’t miss, I tell you.

10) In retrospect, using the Abominable Snowman’s techniques as the basis of my system for picking up women? Not that smartest move I ever made.

11) I wonder if someday I’ll be in the ‘burbs, driving everywhere, and wondering how I ever lived a life that’s 95% car-free. I mean, my everyday travel has barely changed since owning a car. I mean, who wants to willingly drive in Boston if they have to? We spent $14 billion on the Big Dig and it’s still a mess. On the plus side, at least it’s leaking to the point of compromising its structural integrity, so it’s got that going for it.

12) My lack of car time, coupled with my iPod, means I haven’t heard more than an hour of radio in the last two months. And when I do here the radio, it’s a 50 Cent song bleeped out so much that they should have just used the instrumental track and let people in the car make up the words. My brother’s already working on one: “You can buy a turkey club/Or maybe just a sub…” Then again, 50 Cent at this point could simply rap out the side effects to Cialis and have a Top 10 hit if the beat was good enough. Ahh, lyrical content, where have you gone? A nation turns its once-literate eyes to you…

13) Bad enough when I have to get my Camry around town, but even worse when I’m surrounded by SUVs and Hummers working their way down the one-ways of Beantown. Couple the inefficiency of these vehicles and the gas-churning experience that is city driving, and people wonder why we’re in a gas crisis. Unreal. It’s not like I can even take out my rage when once of these people takes up the “compact car only” parking spaces either. I mean, it’s not like my car would get the better end of the deal by ramming one of these monstrosities. I’m afraid to hit a pigeon lest my Camry explode into flames, to be honest.

14) Speaking of “flames”, seriously, don’t let “Pimp My Ride” anywhere near my car. Not only will that paint it with ridiculous flames that would make a car from “2 Fast 2 Furious” look tame, but they’d find out I use to do theatre and do something ridiculously stupid like put a proscenium arch in my trunk. I mean, it’d be great if I wanted to direct a mobile one-man show starring Verne Troyer and all, but still, all in all fairly useless, cumbersome, and would result in me trying to sell it on eBay like half the people from that show already have.

15) I could of course simply take the bus to Jersey each time I go, but that’s just plain annoying on so many levels, not the least of which is that if the person in front of my leans back, I end up with my knees in my ears. Being 6’5’’ is great for reaching the top shelf, and awful for all forms of mass transportation. As annoyed as I can get with the last 15 miles of the drive to Jersey (3 hours for the first 200 miles, 2 hours for the last 15, I swear), it’s nothing compared to the annoyance of Sir Snores A Lot next to me for 300 minutes, trust me.

16) CDs packed away for the commute: “American Idiot”, Ani Difranco’s “Living in Clip”, R.E.M.’s “Monster”, U2’s “Pop”, and a slew of Phish CDs. I have an adapter for my iPod that wirelessly sends the signal into an FM station, but, um, the batteries ran out. See above about the “brakes”. I’m nothing if not predictable.

17) Did I mention that I’m happy these commutes are ending for us both shortly? I mean, anything that drives me to pitch “48 Hours” starring SlowPoke Rodriguez and Hugo the Abominable Snowman as leads simply can’t be good for my long term mental health.

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Have a good weekend, everyone…