# Holiday Office Karoke Party.

Killed "push it" by Salt n Pepa. Stayed true to the barley, no liquor and no ass making out of myself. Fun was had had by all, and in true office party tradition everyone got wacky. But not over the top.

The gargely chortles of my Tom Waits-esque back up singing was in full effect.

# 6:30 @ 7:30, Push it, push it real good.

Just hopped aboard the 6:30am chariot at 7:32am. A giant accident happened on route 80 west bound at exit 12, the exit right before mine. We shall see when I get into work.

Any other day if the bus is more than 15 minutes late I'm in my car and driving in, but tonight I have our company holiday party and it'll be a late night and driving home is not an option. Karaoke is the official theme of this year's form of workplace humiliation.I have my song all picked out, dance routine choreographed and the costume is bedazzled, took a sick day off work to get all those sequins attached. It will be stunning, a sight and performance not to be forgotten. Salt N' Pepa's Push It is the anthem of choice. It will be epic, the things workplace legends are made of.

Can you feel that tingly electricity in the air? I do.

# Free Snow

1st real snow commute of the year. Snow is free. And when you are a kid you sometimes get a free day off school. I wouldn't know about such luxuries, having grown up in Southern California.

When I get to the city I'm going to listen to Chris Anderson speak about his next new business hype. The subject of his new book that he's pre-promoting is the idea and tactic of "free". The longest tail has lead him to free. I'll go listen to what he has to say and eat his "free" donuts.

I'll report back afterward how free will free us all.

I get free food, not a free day, snow does not stop the mighty wheels of commerce, only elementary school learning.

# Soylent Green PA.

Monday morning, climb aboard the trusty steed, and it's empty, only 4 people on the bus. My stop is the last stop, and only stop in NJ before rolling straight into the NYC, their are 5 other stops before mine all in PA starting in Scranton.

I think all the old PA steel mills have been converted into food processing plants, that crank out soylent green, or maybe the PA variety is more a rust color. It's the only logical explanation for my empty Monday morning bus.

# Simpler.

Cold, dark, wet.

Get ass out of bed go to work on a bus.

# Simple.

Get on the bus go home.

Suck it.

That's all I got.

# Back of the Bus

ah, stretch out, relax, make yourself comfortable. Not the normal whining of my bus ride to work, but today is different. I have the entire 3 back seats to myself, it's almost like staying in bed an extra hour and ten minutes. I fell asleep, snoozed and woke up inside the warm comfort of the womb-like Lincoln Tunnel and popped out the Manhattan side like a new born baby. No slap on the butt, only the sweet diesel fumes of Port Authority.

# Only 17

One of the lamest guilty pleasure, big hair band songs " Seventeen" and the lamest early morning temperature so far this year, 17.

Damn is 17 cold, even for the 11 minutes I stood waiting for my Monday morning Chariot. 17 degrees hurts almost as much as the song. At least it's possible to get warm and forget the cold of 17, but the Winger tune of 17 can stick in your brain and torture you, for who knows how long.

# Worst ACF Ride to Date.

It all happened last night, started out innocent enough.

Met my Buddy Mike after work down in Tribeca near his new job. Hung out at Tribeca Tavern for awhile then my fatal decision occurred. Let's stay out a little later and catch the 11pm bus home instead of the 9pm. At the time it seemed like no big deal, get home a little late but nothing drastic.

We go up to Port 41 for a few drinks. A quiet night, very tame except for the working girl who wanted to sit in the booth with us, gave her the cold shoulder and she moved on. Then some old timer junkie overhears us mention California, and he proceeds to give us a firsthand description on how amazing Mexican Black Tar is compared to the crap he gets here in NYC. After the critical analysis of east coast vs. west coast illicit pharmacology. We walk across the street and go to the bus gate.

"Sorry, bus is full" the driver tells us. We convince the driver to let us stand, we're the 1st stop. He says ok and we stand up riding home not optimal, but not bad. We get to our exit on Route 80 and it's closed for construction. We pass it go an extra 15 miles and back to our exit from the eastbound side of 80 get off the bus. Finally.

Now I realize I need to drive Mike back east on 80 back to Dover train station where his car is. An extra 40 miles. Then I'm back on 80 with the closed exit again, another 15 or so more miles.

To complete a usual 59 mile trip I spent 115 miles and an extra 2 hours.

Head hit pillow at 2am, alarm rang at the usual 5:40am and rode the ACF again back to NYC.

Next time we plan on investing a little more time in logistics. Seat of the pants planning did not play out so well.

# German Grafitti by Blu

An amazing creation in patience in Berlin. Blu.

# Morning French Confusion

Each morning when I exit the ACF in the lower intestine of the Port Authority Bus Terminal, my ears are filled with French. Not the French of highfalutin cinema, or sophisticated snobbery.

Nope. The other French.

The lower basement is empty except for one long line of verbal confusion. The bus leaving to go to Montreal, our back bacon eating, Molson drinking, hockey obsessed brethren to the north. Why is it so much fun to make fun of Canadiens? They just feel like the little brother you could pick on and tease. The line to board the polar express is always chattering with that goofy sound of France's ugly step child.

The PABT really is the UN of low culture.

* Empty Bus.

The day before Thanksgiving and the Wednesday morning ride on the ACF to the city. The bus is empty maybe 10 fellow passengers on the 55 seat land yacht, and the roads are as much a ghost town as the inside of the bus.

Coming home from work it'll be the exact opposite situation. Today being the most traveled day of the year. Everyone needs to get "home" for the all-american gluttony fest. No ACF ride home for me today, will be rolling home in my wife's car battling the traffic to get to a pre-thanksgiving family dinner, just to repeat the gastrointestinal workout the next day, kind of a dress rehearsal of gluttony. Maybe the goal should be to get fat enough to attain the status of getting my own seat each day, to repulse others to not have to sit next to the fat guy.

I can hang on to my dreams, no matter how hard anyone tries to take them away, I'll always have my dreams.

* The .01%

I have missed a few days of entries to the ACF blog of retarded observations.

Why?

Because every entry I have written about has been about the thing, event or person that is out of the ordinary. The past few days have been painfully numb with blandness, to the point that I have no idea what has happened in the past 5 or 6 trips on the Chariot. Maybe this is good, maybe this is the pinnacle of commuter enlightenment, the closest thing to being transported from one location to another unaware of the trip.

I write about that one nail head in the floor that sticks up, that you tear your sock on, not the hundreds of other nails doing their job holding down the floorboards as they should.

That one nail that is waiting for the hammer to smack it back down into conformity. I write about that one freak nail, the tiny percentage that is slightly oblique, that just doesn't fit in. Is this a mirror of my own struggle to not fit in, just like everyone else? Probably.

Maybe it's good to celebrate the bland, to go for the bronze, to strive for mediocrity. It's what 99.9% of life is for most of us. Movies, TV, magazines and newspapers are for that .01% of people we trick ourselves into thinking is normal.

Just another day on the bus, nothing more nothing less, and that's ok.

* 5 Minute Dialog With Ralph Kramden.

Just witnessed a man have a very heated and animated conversation with Ralph Kramden. The man was telling how he was going to be right back and that he would not leave Ralph out in this bitter cold. He went on to inform him that soon he'd be ready, real ready, for what I had no idea but it sounded as if it had been in the works for quite some time.

Ralph Kramden is the life sized statue of Jackie Gleason's famous bus driver character from The Honeymooners. He stands proud and tall at the south entrance of Port Authority on 8th Ave and 40th street, directly across from the New York Times building. I like to think of him as the patron saint of bus drivers.

He'll listen if you have something on your mind.

* Pussycat Dolls, Iron Workers & Port 41

Get to the PABT a little early and decide to go to Port 41 for a soothing barley beverage, it's a freezin 38 degrees. I toss open the door of the skankiest watering hole in all of Manhattan and what do I behold?

Ten or more burly as all hell Union Iron Workers dancing their asses off to the Pussycat Dolls blasting on the juke box. What a sight. And they know all the words, the Dominican Barmaid is shaking her money maker in full effect, this only whips the union dudes into a frenzy. They will not stop dancing, they are madmen possessed by the hypnotic pussycat dolls infectious beats.
I down 2 Bud drafts in record time and climb aboard the ACF homeward bound with that "when I grow up!" Song bouncing back and forth inside my noggin.

* Blocking the Box

Almost in the bus terminal and a foot Cop bangs on the the bus door as we are waiting to pull inside the entrance, the driver opens the door and the cop yells at him that he'll be getting a summons by mail. She asks for the Driver's name he says "Brian and then some last name that has a s-k-y on the end. Brian the Driver is pissed yells back at the cop "how can I not stop part way in the intersection with all the construction happening"?

Now I know the Driver's name he doesn't have one of those fancy name plates above his seat the way E. Camara did, I don't think he has the same level of pride and commitment to his job as E. did.

* Overheard Quotes.

Walking from the subway to Port Authority the guy walking in front of me says to his buddy "There's all the people that do stupid things that get fired anyways" speaking of the 20,000 CitiGroup employees getting axed today.

* High Stakes Driver.

Eavesdropping on the guy's conversation in the seat in front of me. I think he drives probably the largest payloads in the city. He works for Sotheby's and drives a box truck that hauls all the items to be auctioned from the warehouse to the showroom. I can only imagine the art work this guy has taxied around Manhattan.

* Ocular Hygiene in Port Authority

Waiting in line at Port Authority and a guy behind me bends down, places his contact lenses on the floor, squirts some eye juice in his eyes, picks up the lenses from the basement Port Authority floor and jams them in his eyes and let's out a relieving "ahhhh that's better".

Effing freak.

* Eat The Miles Away.

Just hopped on the 9pm Chariot headed out west to Jersey.

Sometimes a fellow ACF riding compadre gets a powerful hankerin' for some vittles. My Chariot riding pardners now how to chow down in a most serious way. Two rows in front of me the infectious aroma of Popeye's Fried chicken is wafting back, this woman is no stranger to its crispy golden goodness. Damn she even has the mashed potatoes with the little bits of pork floating in the gravy, she's killin me. That is one righteous meal I'm coveting.

Meanwhile across the aisle the woman is on her 3rd Aunt Amie's Pretzel dipping each and every bite meticulously in cream cheese. Pizza, Chinese food, and unidentified things in stained tupperware containers are being devoured. Tonight it's like a bouncing rolling mall food court on wheels.

I'm just as guilty of my fave of the seven deadly sins; gluttony. Yesterday I bought a whole package of four fat-assed brownies from Mrs. Race's food stand in Union Square and did not share one bite with my co-workers. Yup I'm keeping up with all my fellow Piggy McPig-Pigs on the ACF.