The floor show at Downtown Crossing's food court

I’ve been spending a lot of lunchtimes at the food court — sorry, “Food Experience” — in the Corner Mall at Boston’s Downtown Crossing (not much of a mall and not much of a downtown at this point). There are other eateries near my office, but I stopped going to one deli after I found shrapnel in my chicken salad. I crossed off another deli when, on my third visit in as many days, the mustached, rubber-gloved guy behind the counter leered at me and said, “You like the way I make sandwiches, dontcha?” And a Mexican place was ruled out when a young woman tossed a handful of shredded cheese into my burrito, turned to a colleague, and griped, “I would never eat this cheese! It’s so dry!” (And I realized she was right.) That pretty much leaves the food court as the only place with enough seating for the lunchtime rush. It has about a dozen vendors, and several of them try to get your attention by offering samples. The signs may promise Japanese, Jamaican, or Cajun food, but the samples are pretty much all the same: pieces of flash-cooked chicken, with slight variations in the levels of salt and grease. Yet there are always people (mostly women, and mostly under 20 or over 50) who ask for free pieces of chicken with ostentatiously curious facial expressions. (“Well, what’s this? I’ve never seen such a thing!”) They chew on the morsels very slowly and thoughtfully, hesitate for a moment, then regretfully shake their heads before moving on to the next seller of flavorless poultry. They’re not fooling anyone, but their thespian antics are worthy of compensation, and they add a bit of diversion to (or from) my meal. I certainly prefer them to the pornographic sandwich maker.

Rome: The Missing Episode

Courtesy of American Fez.

Things to never do (or do again) before I die

First in a series: 1. Run to catch a train, bus, plane, or any moving vehicle unless my tie is caught in a door. 2. Use the cheapest possible method to get from Boston to New York City. (Ta-Ta, Fung Wah!) 3. Eat Ramen Noodles. (But I can’t promise not to use those addictive Ramen spice packets on fresh pasta.) 4. Order something at a restaurant solely to gross out everyone else at the table. 5. Be in any room where kids and pets outnumber adults. 6. Learn to love a dog that bites or can’t be housetrained, regardless of whether I intend to write a book about said dog. 7. Invent an acronym to use in instant messaging. I’d rather P my G out. 8. Spend my last night of vacation in a café emailing people I could just talk to when I get back to Boston. 9. Jingle coins back and forth between my hands while walking through the Mohegan Sun Casino instead of keeping my winnings in a plastic cup like a normal person. 10. Pick up anything round and shiny off the floor in a room full of slot machines, even if it’s my own goddamned money. 11. Say in a sarcastic voice, “Of course she does!” to someone who claims to be a Connecticut state trooper after he tells me that one old-lady slot-machine player is backing up another old-lady slot-machine player’s story that I ran over and snatched her jackpot money off the floor. 12. Expect to have a good time in Connecticut.

McTruthiness

McDonald's is crying over the Oxford English Dictionary's inclusion of the word "McJob." From the Financial Times:

The UK arm of the fast food chain is starting a campaign to get British dictionary publishers to revise their definitions of the word “McJob”, a term the Oxford English Dictionary describes as “an unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects, esp. one created by the expansion of the service sector”...

“We believe that it is out of date, out of touch with reality and most importantly it is insulting to those talented, committed, hard-working people who serve the public every day,” wrote David Fairhurst, chief people officer in northern Europe for McDonald’s, in a letter seen by the Financial Times seeking support for the petition. “It’s time the dictionary definition of “McJob” changed to reflect a job that is stimulating, rewarding and offers genuine opportunities for career progression and skills that last a lifetime.”

Carol Burnett crosses over to the dark side

I love The Carol Burnett Show and I hate Family Guy, but it's pretty hypocritical for a woman who became a huge TV star by spoofing classic movies to sue over this. Come back to your senses, Eunice!

David Sedaris, big fat liar

In the first issue of the new, improved New Republic (not available online unless you have a subscription), Alex Heard gently takes David Sedaris to task for inventing dialogue, fabricating characters, and putting himself in situations that weren't as dramatic as he makes them out to be. "His work is marketed as nonfiction," Heard writes, "and there's a simple rule associated with that: Don't make things up." For example, Sedaris really did take guitar lessons from a little person (he uses the insensitive term "midget") when he was 12, but in his book Me Talk Pretty One Day, Sedaris gives the teacher a different name and apparently makes up a story about the teacher freaking out because he thinks that young David is making a pass at him. Heard figured out the real teacher's name and tracked down another former student to poke holes in Sedaris's account. He did the same with Sedaris's story about staying at a nudist camp, figuring out the real person behind a fake name and asking eyewitnesses whether the real person would have actually said the stuff that Sedaris's made-up person said. The answer was no -- but how many fans believed that anyone actually confronted Sedaris, then a Manhattanite, with "You're all just so sophisticated sitting in your little cafes and looking up at the Empire State Building while the rest of us lie around in haystacks smoking our corncob pipes?" Heard does get at something that makes me sad when he notes that "nonfiction is bankable in ways that fiction is not." I would add that Sedaris is lucky to be in bookstores at all when the humor genre is practically extinct. Most bookstores do have humor sections, usually next to "puzzles and games," but they're full of comic strips and cartoons, books of lists and short jokes, and the occasional title by James Thurber or by Sedaris. There are about 10 sudoku books for every book of comic essays. (I didn't actually count them, Alex Heard.) I have seen Sedaris's "memoirs" in the fiction section, and I wonder whether bookstore clerks are doing it out of kindness, so he doesn't have to sit next to the transcribed stand-up acts of Tim Allen and Dane Cook. But a lot of his books simply disappear after they leave the "newly released" table. My favorite humorist is Calvin Trillin, but his ouevre is usually dismembered and scattered all over the bookstore. His hilarious books about food are in Cooking, and his one novel -- the wry Tepper Isn't Going Out -- is in Fiction, as if it's the most important thing he ever wrote. A few months ago, I was looking for About Alice, a tribute to his wife, who died in 2001. The book is sweet but very funny, and typically Trillin. Failing to find it at Borders, I did something that I do about once a year: ask for assistance. The clerk finally located the book in the Self-Help section, Death & Dying subsection. Just the place for a humor book! If About Alice is a Death & Dying book just because it's partly about how its subject died, shouldn't half the store's novels and most of its biographies be in that section? Disclosure: I interviewed Sedaris once and was totally charmed. We talked a little bit about my writing, and the overnight success advised, with complete sincerity, "You should get something published in The New Yorker. They pay very well." And I didn't have to make that up.

Conquering zenophobia

After an especially tense week (mostly spent worrying about how tense this week will be), it seemed a good time to visit the Boston Shambhala Meditation Center for its monthly Queer Buddhist Fellowship meeting. So after a quick lunch at Sushi Time in Downtown Crossing, enlivened by my violent cursing at a packet of soy sauce I couldn’t open, I headed to Brookline Village. Bill, the group leader, begins the meeting by recognizing the newcomers in the group of 15 or so, and then giving us tips on how to meditate. When I attended Catholic Mass as a child, my mother would have to tell me to stop fidgeting during the boring parts – that is, when the church organ wasn’t blasting and the altar boys weren’t “on stage.” (I wanted to be paying attention in case they made a mistake. Kids live to see other kids screw up.) Buddhist meditation is even more difficult for a fidgeter. One must find a proper kneeling or sitting position that includes a straight back but loose shoulders, and one must try to maintain it for a half-hour or so. Bill tells us that if we start to feel uncomfortable, we should not change positions but instead make “micro adjustments” – wiggle a toe if a foot has fallen asleep, rotate the head slightly if the neck feels sore – and the discomfort should subside. I don’t believe him at first. After 10 minutes of kneeling on a mat, my back feels so stiff and my stocking feet are splayed at such an odd angle that I’m certain there will be a lot of pain when I finally get up. I cheat – once – by getting up, and I discover that the mounting anticipation of pain was much worse than the microsecond it takes to move my bones back into their accustomed angles. After that, I can take my mind of my posture and concentrate on deep breathing. I can almost ignore the sound of someone scraping ice of the sidewalk just outside the window, a sound that makes me anxious about my long-overdue appointment with the dentist. (I have tartar issues.) After meditation, we discuss how to manage impulses toward aggression in our daily lives. (That wasn’t the official topic, but aggressive members of the group are the first to speak up, so that’s where the conversation went.) Then it was time for tea and hummus. All in all, better than my first attempt at Buddhist meditation. That time, I spotted someone who looked familiar on the other side of the prayer room, but he avoided eye contact with me. After meditation, we split up into three discussion groups. When he realized that he was in my group, but he loudly offered to switch places with someone in another group. I began to get peeved. Was he snubbing me? When I left the prayer room, I saw that him sitting on a bench right next to where I had left my shoes, but he jumped up and left as I approached him. South End attitude at a Buddhist temple! Who the hell did he think he was? It wasn’t until I left that I remembered how I knew him. He was a therapist who I had seen years before. So it would have been unethical for him to acknowledge me first in public. I had seen him, of course, to work on self-esteem issues.

Sacre Bleu Line!

Note: I am now blogging at Robert David Sullivan. Please visit! The MBTA's new Web site is in 15 different languages, but the translations, at least in French, are a bit too literal. (Go to Charlie on the MBTA for good gripes about all things T-related.) I don't get why the station names are translated at all, since a French speaker who reads that "Coin de champs" is the closest station to where he wants to go would be better off knowing that all the signs at that station say "Fields Corner." And he would be better off asking a Bostonian "Does thees train go to Feeelds Cornair?" than saying the name of the station in French. Here are some of my favorite stops: BLUE LINE Le Suffolk avale la station (Suffolk Downs, or The Suffolk Swallows the Station). Run for your lives! Vénérez la station de plage (Revere Beach, or Venerate the Beach's Station!). The MBTA, naturally, prefers the imperative tense. Station non-conformiste (Maverick). It spits on your bourgeois Charlie Cards. GREEN LINE Station de prudence (Prudential Center, or Caution Station). En arrière de la station de colline (Back of the Hill, or The Back of the Station Called "Hill"). RED LINE Station carrée de bagagiste (Porter Square, or Person Who Carries Bags Square). Station de maître d'hôtel (Butler Street, or Butler Whose Name Is Probably Not Butler Station)* *Marilyn Monroe warned about this possible confusion in "All About Eve":

[a butler passes by] Miss Claudia Caswell: Oh, waiter! Addison DeWitt: That is not a waiter, my dear, that is a butler. Miss Claudia Caswell: Well, I can't yell "Oh butler!" can I? Maybe somebody's name is Butler. Addison DeWitt: You have a point. An idiotic one, but a point.

A tragic tale of enabling and co-dependency

A reader from Providence passes on this sad story:

A 98-year-old Mother Superior from Ireland was dying. The nuns gathered around her bed trying to make her last journey comfortable. They gave her some warm milk to drink, but she refused it. Then one of the nuns took the glass back to the kitchen. Remembering a bottle of Irish whiskey received as a gift the previous Christmas, she opened it and poured a generous amount into the warm milk. Back at Mother Superior's bed, she held the glass to her lips. Mother drank a little, then a little more, and before they knew it, she had drunk the whole glass.

"Mother," the nuns asked with humility, "please give us some wisdom before you die."She raised herself up in bed and with a pious look on her face said, "Don't sell that cow."

Of course the Mother Superior did not die, but it was too late to turn back. Next it was Ecstasy in the omelets and "Don't sell that hen," then cocaine sprinkled over the bacon and "Don't sell that sow," followed by a wool sweater dipped in huffable furniture varnish and "Don't sell that sheep." It's all so troubling.

Damn day job

It's keeping me from posting much this week. Much more to come soon, especially in April. For now, please enjoy a couple more photos from my exciting hometown of Malden, Massachusetts! If you had to spend an afternoon in one of these two places, which would you choose?

Bad thoughts on the Red Line

Here's another way to start your workday badly. Wear, for the first time, that $70 shirt you bought on Newbury Street -- the striped blue-and-white one that looked so daring, yet so right, that you knew you'd wear it enough to get your money's worth. Imagine the reaction of co-workers, impressed that by your combination of pinache and professionalism. Now, just as you've sat down and the subway doors have closed, bow your head and admire the shirt for the first time without preening in a mirrow. And realize why it caught your fancy: It looks exactly like the top half of the pajamas from Sears you wore through junior high.

Rich, naked, and wild

The only really disappointing part of the new TV series The Riches is that Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver’s characters impersonate a wealthy couple whose last name is Rich. The Riches premiered one week after ABC introduced The Wedding Bells, about three sisters who work as wedding planners and whose last name is… Bell. At least one TV critic wrongly described the show’s title as a pun. No. It is not a pun, and certainly not clever, to give a protagonist a last name that comes straight from the title you’ve already decided on. The title Sex and the City would not be a pun if Kim Cattrall were the star and her character were renamed Samantha Sex. (The show might have been better, but the title wouldn’t have been). Crossing Jordan, about a medical examiner named Jordan Cavanaugh, is not a pun. Grey’s Anatomy, about a medical intern named Meredith Grey, is not a pun. If you know that Grey’s Anatomy is a medical reference book, you can guess that the show is about a doctor even if no one is named Grey, and if you never heard of the book, the title makes no sense. Grey’s Naked Anatomy would be a cheap bit of wordplay, if not an actual pun, but it would probably make people think of an orgy with the casts of Matlock and Murder, She Wrote. I would watch O’Malley’s Naked Anatomy, if T.R. Knight became the star of the show. The Wild Wild West was not a pun just because its lead character was named James West. But I give Aaron Sorkin for not giving us a President Jed West in The West Wing. Misspelling a word does not make for a pun either. The Munsters qualifies as a witty name only if it’s about grotesque cheesemakers. House is a pun, but a lame one. Hugh Laurie’s brilliantly deducing doctor is named as a homage to Sherlock Holmes, but the name Gregory House always makes me think of Egbert Souse (with an accent on the "e"), a screenwriting pseudonym used by W.C. Fields. The worst name in television history is Robert Ironside, the wheelchair-bound detective played by Raymond Burr in Ironside. I hated that show because it came on after The Flip Wilson Show when I was a kid. After watching Wilson’s variety hour, with its inoffensive humor and transvestism, I’d have to run over and turn the channel before I was traumatized by Ironside’s opening credits, with its air-raid siren score and a cartoon of the title character being gunned down into paralysis. Anyway, not only is Ironside a tasteless pun for someone in a wheelchair, the character had the name before he became handicapped. I had nightmares of baby Raymond Burr coming out of the womb in a tiny wheelchair – just like his father, his grandfather, and several generations of Ironsides. Television has given us some clever names. The Sopranos works because it has a triple meaning: It tells us that the characters are of Italian descent, that there will be melodramatic moments reminiscent of opera, and that emasculation is a major theme of the series (think of Tony’s mother). The Guidos or The Castratas wouldn’t have worked quite as well. All in the Family’s Archie Bunker had a good name, hinting at “arch conservative” and “bunker mentality.” Columbo was clever, as the title character was constantly discovering things – clues, not continents. The Rockford Files also hit the right note: Jim Rockford sounded tough, but he wasn’t named after a gun, like Baretta. Echoing the Midwestern city of Rockford, Illinois, also gave the character an everyman quality. But the best TV character name of all time? That would be Arrested Development attorney Bob Loblaw, author of Bob Loblaw’s Law Blog.

Nine o'clock guy

Every morning I buy a newspaper from an older guy (who looks disconcertingly like my father) near the turnstiles at my subway stop. A few weeks ago, he started to call me "nine o'clock guy" -- as in, "Hey, there's my nine o'clock guy!" and "Well, it must be nine o'clock!" I'm genuinely puzzled by this. Don't most commuters go to work at about the same time every morning? Why am I singled out? I know the guy is just trying to be nice, and by the time he sees me, he's sick of commenting on the weather, or he's been underground so long he forgets what it's like outside. But I feel pressured to come up with some response to him (other than my weak "Oh, that's right, ha ha"), so that some day I'll look back fondly on our ritual. Yes, I remember when people read things called newspapers. I bought mine from good old Ernie [or whatever the hell his name is]. Every morning, without fail, he'd say, "Hey, here's my nine o'clock guy!" And I would always respond, "Nine o'clock is still too early for me, Ernie! I'm jumping in front of the next train!" But I never did. I'll always regret that. Last week I had to go into the office an hour earlier than usual, and when Ernie saw me, he feigned shock and kept pointing to his watch. I had to smile and give an appreciative nod for this silent-movie performance before I could get my newspaper. Hopefully, the Boston Globe will go out of business and I'll be rid of this awkward moment every morning.

What's worse than a Mainiac?

I beg to differ with this story on New Jerseyites, Michiganders, and the like from Governing magazine's Web site:

Massachusetts residents, so far as I can tell, are the only Americans without a dictionary-recognized name that's a variant of their state's name (I even tried a dead-tree dictionary). "Bay Stater" is all they've got, which is lame (I'm from Virginia and we also have a bay). Some people have tried Massachusettsan, but it seems too clunky to catch fire. I prefer something sleeker like "Achu" or "Chewy."

I think we've come up with something a little more concise -- and scatological -- than Bay Stater. And I'd hate to associate it with "chewies." But I do like "Achus." It makes me think of Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz's pun-filled song "Rhode Island Is Famous For You", which features such gems as "Pencils come from Pennsylvania/Vests from Vest Virginia/And tents from Tents-a-see." Now we can add the line "Sneezes come from Mass-achu-setts."

TV shows you can stop watching: The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Comedy Central's Daily Show with Jon Stewart is smart television in stingy portions. Despite the name, the show is on only four times a week, and it's in reruns for several weeks a year, when Stewart makes money on live concerts and the like. The fact that there's no guest host during these periods shows that this is really a vanity project -- or that Comedy Central is too cheap to pay for a true "newscast." The Daily Show's strength is showing the hypocrisy and inconsistency of political leaders and journalists, mainly by juxtaposing the right video clips and following them with a few seconds of sarcasm from Stewart. It's a badly needed public service, but bloggers are now doing the same with YouTube clips -- and without commercials or the whooping studio audience that eats up valuable time on The Daily Show. You have to give Stewart credit for interviewing serious authors who, a long time ago, would have been welcome on The Tonight Show. (Recent examples include Fareed Zakaria, author of The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad, and Jeffrey Rosen, author of The Supreme Court: The Personalities and Rivalries That Defined America.) But because the interviews last only about eight minutes, there's barely enough time for the guest to get out the requisite well-rehearsed anecdote before Stewart says, "We've only got a minute left, but I just wanted to ask you..." I know the economic reasons why an hour-long Daily Show, with interviews long enough to exercise Stewart's obvious intellect, is impossible in 2007. But that doesn't mean I have to pretend this is an adequate substitute. Previously: Lost. Next: Rescue Me.

A new look for spring

I have decided to suspend my account on the Internet dating site Manhunt until I get some better photos to go with my profile. Please send some to escargot555 at yahoo dot com.

Malden puts the down in downtown

I tried out my new digital camera on this very cloudy afternoon in my hometown of Malden, Mass. (birthplace of Jack Albertson, but not Karl Malden). This photo pretty much sums up the state of affairs downtown. The sign on the left notifies fashionable Maldonians that the city's leading lingerie store will be relocating... seven months ago. The new site in Woburn offers "Easy access from Rt. 93... plenty of free parking!" The trash bag in the window must be filled with slips and panties that weren't good enough for Woburn. My best guess is that the graffiti means "Burger King Consignment Shop upstairs."

You can still see the ghost of the Lady Grace sign to the left of All Seasons Table, a promising Asian restaurant that claims an April opening date. To the right of All Seasons is an example of the economic engine of downtown Malden: dollar stores and thrift shops. Note the interesting second-story architecture on this block. In a lot of neighborhoods the Lady Grace building would be perfect for a faux diner serving $24.95 plates of macaroni and cheese.

I was excited to find a business with the word cafe in it. Unfortunately, this one seems to cater to people forced to learn computer skills because no one will answer their phone calls (thanks to caller ID). Never mind; it's not open on weekends anyway. Who'd want to sit in a cafe then?

I did end my visit with a tasty lunch (pho with fish) at this Vietnamese restaurant. Sai-Gon, take me away!

Fashion and film

Because my last post was on rant-and-rave side, I bring you practical news from reader Snide One, who lives in the New York area and is ahead of me on so many fronts. First, the male fashion news:

Here's the latest on man bags (a.k.a man purses). Fanny packs now look most fem. Gym bags are still OK, but are bulky and being replaced by drawstring back packs for "street cred." Cargo shorts, flip-flops, and wife-beaters are out. In are plaid shorts, hiking boots, with visible white crew socks, and opaque but clingy T-shirts where one's nipples are clearly defined by shape, but the color of the nipple is obscured. Nothing shiny, ever.

When I'm with Snide One, he gets all the looks, so I trust him completely. He also goes to the movies so I don't have to:

"Zodiac" is two hours and 40 minutes of excruciating '70s realism. It will get a nomination for set design. Jake Gyllenhaal has a dull presence. Chloe Sevigny does a dead-on impression of the post-pubescent Jan Brady. Robert Downey Jr. continues to embarrass himself.

OK. Instead of going to the movies this weekend, I'll bring all my wife-beaters to the Goodwill.

Boston Globe flunks Poli Sci 101

A particularly inane story today in the Boston Globe about as many as half of all states moving up their presidential primaries in 2008 so that they come only a week or two after the New Hampshire vote -- or, more accurately, the New Hampshire veto, since all that state does is eliminate candidates from consideration. The main headline: "States may force megaprimary, winnow the 2008 field early." Well, since 1968, no one who has finished lower than second in New Hampshire has ever been nominated for president. I would say that the New Hampshire, as the first primary, has always "winnowed" the field. John Kerry nailed down the Democratic nomination after winning New Hampshire in 2004; how can the process be over any quicker than that? The subhead in the Globe story: "Once, they could come out of nowhere." This refers to New Hampshire's supposed ability to give a boost to candidates without a lot of money or national name recognition. That happened exactly once, with Jimmy Carter in 1976, and Carter won the nomination only because he was the only candidate smart enough to run in every single primary that year. All the other plausible nominees -- Henry Jackson, Jerry Brown, and Ted Kennedy among them -- concentrated on only a few primaries or thought they could win at the national convention. No one will ever catch a break like Carter did. The story is illustrated with photos of Gary Hart (who won New Hampshire but lost the nomination because he didn't have the money or organization to prevail in later primaries) and Bill Clinton (who actually finished second in New Hampshire to Paul Tsongas). New Hampshire likes to take credit for discovering Clinton, but he was easily the most plausible Democratic nominee that year long before New Hampshire voted. He may not have been as well-known as Jerry Brown, but do New Hampshire voters really believe that they were responsible for preventing Brown's nomination? OK, this is a rare post about politics. I'm supposed to avoid the subject because of my nonpartisan day job. But going after New Hampshire's ridiculous claim on choosing presidents is something Democrats and Republicans in 49 states can agree on.

Television shows you can stop watching: "Lost"

This is the start of a new feature on Escargo-go: Television series that I’ve given up on. The first is not a big surprise, but it’s a special disappointment because I resisted it for months, then discovered to my surprise that it lived up to the hype. For a while, anyway. Lost. The obvious comparison to this tale of plane-crash survivors stranded on an apparently uncharted isle is to Gilligan’s Island, but this show is closer to M*A*S*H in its vulgar refusal to accept the passage of time. M*A*S*H took 11 seasons to tell the story of a war that lasted three years, and Lost is progressing at the rate of a few weeks per season. In its swings between cheap sentimentality and ponderous philosophical debate, and its seeming obliviousness to the possibility of the audience moving on, it’s starting to resemble a collaboration between Norma Desmond and Fidel Castro. Inevitably, Lost will also take after M*A*S*H in a disappointing and anti-climactic finale. (ABC’s threats to keep the show on the air even after its creators leave ensures that it will continue past the point of anyone caring about it. And watch for the theme of inevitably disappointing finales to come up again in future installments of “Television Shows You Can Stop Watching.”) And I’m certain that Lost will end with at least one of the characters who bitches the most about being stuck on the island voluntarily choosing to stay there – just as Klinger “ironically” decided to stay in Korea at the end of M*A*S*H. It took me a long time to start watching Lost, but when I finally downloaded the pilot on iTunes, I was hooked. I liked the semi-sci-fi premise, I was intrigued by the characters (especially Locke and Sayid), and I thought the flashback-heavy format was refreshing. Despite the Gilligan-like development of the castaways finding that hatch in the ground, Locke’s obsession with The Button was good for a second season of arresting weirdness. But now we’ve got the Others, the island inhabitants who prolong this series by abducting, imprisoning, and playing pointless games with the original cast. They’re like the Borg from Star Trek: The Next Generation, but without the character depth. And now I don’t give a damn how anybody got on, or gets off, this island. Next: The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Read about my failures

A few weeks ago The New York Times reported on bloggers who chronicle their attempts to get out of debt. The theory is that, in being so open with their finances, they'll be too embarrassed to backslide into wasteful spending. They write how much they save eating lunch at Subway and, if they're in a masochistic mood, what extravagent purchases have gotten them into trouble. (See http://bloggingawaydebt.com/ and http://kgazette.blogspot.com/ for examples.) Clearly, a narrative involving personal failings is what is needed at Escar-go-go. Unfortunately, I erased my credit-card debt long before starting this blog, and I'm not in any group whose name ends with Anonymous (not that you know of, anyway). But I do have goals, and I will write about the steps taken to achieve them. One is to find a new apartment, which will be fun because of my unreasonable expectations. Another is to start a regular exercise regimen, which I guarantee will take a long time because it's so boring to write about. (Having a drink in every Boston establishment with a cocktail menu will probably take precedence.) And there is the goal of having a complete wardrobe that I look and feel comfortable in. Right now I'm all set with T-shirts (thanks to Christmas gifts) and pajamas (I don't want any, so I don't have any). One goal that seems attainable (probably deceptively so) is fluency in French. I have the benefit of a French-speaking mother whose parents were from Quebec, several years of classes in high school, and frequent trips to Montreal. But there is a problem in the difference between French French and Quebecois French. For example, I told my mother I was reading a novel about Paris called A Year in the Merde. I pronounced “merde” in the proper French way (the first syllable being similar to what Rhoda called Mary on The Mary Tyler Moore Show), and she didn’t know what I was talking about, so I started yelling “Merde! Merde!”, which is something I never expected to do to my mother. Finally, she said, “Oh, you mean mAHrde!” The lesson was that the French and the Quebecois don’t even shit the same way. So this might take longer than I hope.

Better living through public transit

The MBTA's computerized Charlie Card is another way that America's favorite transit authority is helping to rid Bostonians of bad habits. As I was reminded today, an unlimited-ride Charlie Card will not work at a subway stop if it has been used at the same stop less than 20 minutes earlier. So if you're standing on a subway platform and you suddenly remember that you just left your cell phone in a restaurant -- or an embarrassing document in a printer at work, or your footprints in the yard of a house you've just burgled -- it's going to cost you $2 to fix matters and get back into the subway without falling behind on your schedule. That will teach you to go through life without carefully patting your pockets and racking your brain every time you walk outside. Other T tools for life include strategically stopped escalators that force you to get a bit more exercise; erroneous station announcements to teach you the value of being more aware of your surroundings; and T personnel who no longer sit in token-vending booths but instead mingle throughout the rush-hour crowds, which sharpens your skills at playing "Where's Waldo?" Today I also rode on one of the rehabbed Red Line trains, in which hard vinyl seats have been replaced by seat with about an eighth of an inch of upholstery. This fabric could be more comfortable than the old material only if you are riding the subway bare-assed. Anything to attack Boston's prudishness is laudable, but I would prefer cage dancers in the now-abandoned token booths.