Outside the Trains Don’t Run on Time
Comedian train conductors. Do I love them? Totally. Do I sit on the edge of my seat because I’m waiting for him/her to make funny comments over the PA? Yeah. Well, actually, I do that because subway seats are so nasty sometimes.
Late tonight on the A train:
Conductor: [Over PA] This is an A train riding on F tracks tonight, folks. Yes sir. A train on F tracks. I know some of you are confused. It’s not too bad, though. You heard me: It’s an A, first letter of the alphabet, train riding on F, fifth, no, sorry, sixth, letter of the alphabet, tracks. You can switch at West Fourth. If you want, that is. [Pause] Look, I just don’t want to hear any more complaints or see any more confused faces. It’s not that hard, people. Seriously. It’s an A train riding on F train tracks. Every day is a new adventure, folks. To ease your commute, you should buy a subway map, study it, and know where you’re going. Even better, you should log on to the MTA website and pick the train you’d like to take. It’s a nice website they got there. Like I said, every day is a new adventure. I’m just doing my job, people. Next stop: 14th Street.
It’s usually difficult for me to wipe the sneer off my face while riding the subway, but I couldn’t resist closing my book for a moment and gazing up at the PA speakers, smiling as I listened to the conductor’s labyrinthine, quasi-helpful announcements. Better yet — and I hate being sentimental, hell, I hate being friendly to strangers — the dozen or so passengers on the train car, including myself, exchanged smiles and laughs as the conductor carried on. New York City’s pretty cool. For a girl.
Speaking of cool, the truly laugh-out-loud book I was finishing up on the train tonight was Woody Allen’s Without Feathers, a meditation on God, love, and philosophy in the form of a play and several short stories. I purchased the book in a thrift store this summer, but didn’t get around to reading it until this week. Did I enjoy every page of it? You bet. Would I read it again? I don’t see why not.
I am also finishing another Allen project this week, a project that commenced three years ago: My one and only New Year’s 2003 resolution was to watch every Woody Allen-directed film. It was not an overwhelming task; at the time, I had already seen about twenty of his forty films. But, for whatever reason, it took me three years to get down to the final three films, which are: Alice (Netflix DVD at home now, waiting to be watched), Shadows and Fog (ditto), and — sigh — Men of Crisis: The Harvey Wallinger Story (unavailable on DVD; apparently possible, but not likely, to find a VHS copy on eBay). The latter will be a challenge, but at least I’ll have a sense of accomplishment. If you’re looking for a wonderful Allen short, check out Sounds from a Town I Love. Highlights: Griffin Dunne, Bebe Neuwirth, Tony Roberts, and Michael Emerson (from “Lost”).
In other news, I checked out David Lynch’s new film, Inland Empire, this weekend at IFC. In such films as Mulholland Drive and Blue Velvet, Lynch’s oft-employed dream-like narrative functioned incredibly well in exploiting and satirizing, respectively, Hollywood and suburban utopia. Regretfully, not only is Empire unnecessarily lengthy (three hours), the absence of a linear storyline, in this case, renders the film truly absurd, even painfully unwatchable, at moments. ‘Tis a pity.