Swapping Your Blood with Formaldehyde

One step forward, two steps back.

It occurred to me this weekend that, in the name of productivity, it was time to become a Media-less Monk.  Blow up the TV, eat a lot of peaches, all that.

Enough, with the Internet, for one.  Mile after mile of superhighway eye candy’s got my sweet tooth rotting out.  Keep blogging away, world, someone else’ll read it.  Everyone else can stay wired, pouring over the ultimately unnecessary news, both real and fake; go on, folks, Gawk and Defame and Drudge on.  I’m stayin’ back here. 

Enough with this blogging, to be sure.  Because sometimes this big, purposeless warm-up circle has spun off and become the field of play.  Silly thing, this little corner of the ‘net. 

Enough with music, enough with all these “hip” new ‘80s bands, enough playing genre-of-the-week, enough alt-reunions.  Enough CDs, and mp3s, and shows that go on all hours of the night.  Stick a pitchfork in it, I’m done.  I’m only listening to musicians who’ve died and bands that’ve broken up. 

Enough with movies.  Dump the Netflix queue – all three hundred and two bits of it – because it’s really just a pile of steaming whim.  It’s all blending into one huge forgettable flick, anyway.  That goes for theater-going, too:  $10.50 should get me more than two hours of material to bitch about.

Enough with books, because I can’t even be bothered to pay attention anymore.  It’s good to have something in your hand when you’re on the train, but by the return trip I’ve forgotten everything that got me there.  My attention span’s been corrupted beyond repair, and if you can’t get your point across in one short and shiny pop-up ad, I’m not interested.  Sorry, literature.  It’s me, not you.

That was Saturday.  I realized I hadn’t made any headway whatsoever on any of the stuff I’m supposed to be writing, and this seemed like a good solution.  My senses are overloaded.  Shut Down.  Bite the Bullet.  Nose, grindstone; grindstone, nose.

Then, Sunday:  Decided that, having once again lost touch with my main character, the best way to recreate her was to have her blog.  So, we set up another blog, and will hammer the goddamn story out there.  Good luck to her.  It’s scary, always finding something to say.  Sometimes, it feels like a waste of time.

Want to waste some time?  Turn Yourself into a South Park character!  I did and, despite some quibbles with hairstyle and the limited eyeglass frame options, it looks a little more like me than I do, at the moment.  (Thanks to http://www.ieatrice.com/ for the link.)

Oh, you’ve got more time, do you?  Why not indulge in some secondhand geekitude and call the people who are already lining up for Star Wars Episode III: Another Lousy Subtitle tix outside Grauman’s Chinese Theater in L.A.  Or you can indulge in thirdhand geekitude, and re-link to this. (Thanks to http://www.allthingschristie.com/ for the link.)

If you have any time you need to piss away on a weekend, might I suggest the NYC Subway system?  I’m not one to bitch about the MTA – of course, I also haven’t been caught in any of the recent downtime disasters.  To me, it’s amazing that this duct taped-together, hundred-year old system still works at all.  That it’s not one five-borough trackfire wick is some sort of accomplishment.

But this weekend I got stuck in a pre-planned bit of ineptitude.  I should have checked the MTA Advisory Page, where it no doubt said something like, “April 2:  Shoot Selves in Foot.”  Or, “Fuck You, Brooklyn!”  Or maybe, like its trains, April Fools’ came late.

I was going to a screening of Carnal Knowledge at BAM.  BAM is actually within walking distance of me; it’s about an hour’s walk, very doable on a nice day.  Saturday, of course, was anything but nice, stuff coming down from the sky with such ferocity that folks from PETA are probably plotting action against tri-state meteorologists.  There’s no walking in that.

My train route to BAM takes roughly a half-hour.  It goes thusly:

1)  Manhattan-bound F train two stops from Prospect Park to 4th Ave/9th St

2)  Manhattan-bound R train two stops from 4th Ave/9th St to Pacific St/Atlantic Ave

Weekend trackwork, however, makes the F skip Prospect Park; THIS weekend, it also skipped 4th Ave.  In addition – and this I found out when I got to 4th Ave – the Manhattan-bound R was ALSO skipping 4th Ave.  Two train lines skipping a connecting station?  Insane.  So, this is what I found myself facing:

1) Coney Island-bound F train two stops from Prospect Park to Church Ave

2) Manhattan-bound F train two express stops from Church Ave to Smith & 9th St

3) Coney Island-bound F train one stop from Smith & 9th St to 4th Ave/9th St

4) Bay Ridge-bound R train one stop from 4th Ave/9th St to Prospect Ave

5) Manhattan-bound R train two express stops from Prospect Ave to Pacific/Atlantic

At 4th Ave I just ran upstairs and caught a cab.  It had taken me a full 65 minutes to get, oh, not so far from where I started. 

The movie was good, a little too dated to be great; it’s really your father’s humping-in-the-back-of-an-Oldsmobile picture.  Ann-Margaret was very good (and quite nekked).  Art Garfunkel was in it, so there’s that.  I also got to take it out of my Netflix queue, so that’s only three hundred and ONE little red envelopes.

Ah, progress.

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