Famous among dozens
This little boy is about three, just learning to talk and to count. He’s naming everything we pass and counting objects as the bus drives along.
A truck!
A sidewalk!
A flag! Two flag! One, two, three, four flags!
(We pass the San Francisco City Hall where couples are just leaving their same-sex wedding ceremonies.)
A boy and a girl. … No, a boy and two boy. Two boys.
A tree!
B: We get to vote tomorrow!
Me: (monotone) I can’t wait.
B: Hey! I don’t make fun of things you’re excited about.
Me: I’m sorry. I get to exercise my voting rights! Tomorrow I will use the power of my ballot to increase the common good!
B: I don’t know.
Me: I lost you at common good.
B: Yeah.
A group of us are at a bar celebrating. A stranger approaches with a drink in each hand and says, “Are you the soup and mayo pigs?” The best part is how we look at each other questioningly. Are we the soup and mayo pigs?
On the bathroom wall of this SOMA coffee shop, someone has scrawled, “I have a boner that could hit a homer.” I find this intriguing because the gentleman in question most likely wasn’t drunk, and yet he felt compelled to share. I myself have never put pen to plaster, because I can never think of anything worthwhile to say. Perhaps if I had a penis.
A heartening note from Rosecrans:
Going to the butcher, I buy a paper and read it in the park on Saturday
morning because it’s so nice out. Little girl and her mother sit down
next to me with a plastic bag from a bagel store. Mom answers her cell
phone. Little girl picks up the bagel bag, says fondly, “Bag…I love
you.”
As we’re leaving a restaurant, a well-dressed gentleman and his wife block the door. He’s helping his wife with her coat, but when he finishes, he just stands there with his hand on the door.
R: Excuse me.
(Gentleman turns and blinks at her slowly.)
R: Excuse me?
(Gentleman may have had one too many mojiotos over dinner. R moves his hand from the door and opens it so we can leave.)
M: He was looped.
R: Yeah, that was weird. He obviously heard me.
M: He just wasn’t sure what to do about it.
R: Brain to arm. Come in arm.
B: This is arm, over.
M: I need you to move the door.
B: (drunken slur) Don’t you tell meee what to do.
Why are you alwaysh telling me what to do?
R: Exactly. “I’m not gonna move the door. In fact, I’m gonna give this woman the finger!”
M: So that’s how that works.
For the past few years, I’ve read almost no books because I subscribe to so many magazines. Right now, I’m getting:
Real Simple
O, the Oprah Magazine
Martha Stewart Living
Esquire
Vogue
Lucky
Dwell
The New Yorker
The Smithsonian
Time
Jason Kottke recently embarked on a campaign to read more magazines, and he got a surprisingly long list of
suggestions from his readers. Look it over and see what appeals to you. Scanning it, I realized it’s been way too long since I’ve picked up copies of Giant Robot, Readymade, or The Believer. Then again, I’ve been meaning to finish Cry, the Beloved Country, The Lost Contient, and Midnight’s Children for quite a while too. I could use a few weeks on the beach.
Scenario: A pushy man gets on the bus with a cart too big for the aisle. He stands just next to the bus driver. The driver tells him to move, so he shuffles back about a foot and stands with his cart in front of an older woman. She expresses concern; he ignores her; she reiterates. All the dialogue below is hers:
You can’t stand here.
(Pause)
You’re in people’s way.
(Pause)
I said you’re in people’s way!
(The bus driver tells the man to find a place to sit down. The man shuffles back a bit more.)
(Victorious now.) You hear him? That’s it.
Keep movin’.
You’re doin’ fine.
Keeeeep movin’.
A: When I was a kid and we played imaginary games, I was always the boss. If we played house, I was the mom. Or if we played work, I was the boss. I was such a brat. I used to always fight with this one neighborhood kid over who got to be mom. Mark Smith, remember him?
M: Oh, yeah!
A: He came out of the closet a few years ago. His mom was crushed. The rest of us were like, “Surprise.”
M: Ha!
A: Really no one wanted to play Dad, except my little brother. Dad was so boring. We’d just give him a briefcase and say, “Go to work now.” And he’d have to march off into some back room and play by himself for awhile.
M: Oh! That’s sad.
A: Yeah, he’d leave for a minute and then come back and be like, “OK. Work’s over!” So he’d pretend to read the newspaper.
Great insight into comedy by Billy Connolly from an article in the New Yorker:
“It’s not because you’ve said something terribly funny; it’s because you’ve reminded them of something very bright in their lives, because you’re so passionate about telling them this tiny thing. It’s a girl you love, it’s fly-tying, it’s a banjo–all the things that make you want to dance.”
Mighty Girl 