NY Cab Conversation

Scene: I'm at the corner of 10th Ave. and 34th St. 7:30pm I'm waving my arm at traffic going North, wearing a hand-made dress from Zachary's Smile, Cheap Monday jeans and lipstick (shoes, a purse etc... just remember, I'm dressed modestly).
Cab pulls over, I get in.

Anne: Hi. Greenpoint, please. Take the midtown tunnel to the Pulaski Bridge and turn right on F____ Street.
Cabbie: OK. Greenpoint.
[Pause]
Cabbie: You're coming back here tonight, right?
Anne: (Text-messaging and anyway, oblivious) Yeah maybe... I might stay there.
Cabbie: Uh huh... OK...
[I look up at the rear-view mirror and he's staring at me. I am now wishing I didn't have that conversation with a complete stranger. No one needs to know where I live or spend nights. But. For the record: The only reason I'm not sure where I'm ending up this night is that I crash on said friend's couch after long nights in North Brooklyn all the time.]
Cabbie: Are you going home to Brooklyn or you live in Manhattan is what I'm asking.
Anne: What? I live here. (We're still in Manhattan)
Cabbie: Uh huh... OK...

Fifteen minutes later, approaching F____ St.
Anne: Right here's fine.
[Cab slows down.]
Cabbie: So...business is good?
Anne: ...ye...ah...

This cab driver thought for some God forsaken reason that I was a fucking hooker.

Can I Help You? Well... can I?

I know complaining about customer service in NYC is like taking candy from a child, which is like the most awful expression ever, but here is an astounding lapse in courtesy I felt like sharing anyway:

UHAUL. I arrive at the U-Haul counter at 4:30pm. No one's in line, and the clerk looks up from her computer screen, makes eye contact with me, smiles. I approach her and say, "I have a reservation for a cargo van." She says, "sure, no problem." She picks up a regulation office phone receiver, dials a number, waits a few seconds, then says...

Hi. It's (Jane) at U-Haul. (Pause) Yeah I'd like an order of Shrimp Lo Mein...(pause) yeah, exactly. With extra vegetables. (pause) Yep, exactly. (Laughter) I know (pause) Same thing every time. (Laughter) Alright see you in a few minutes.

She lets out an audible sigh. Types into the computer. Then says:

License and credit card, please.

I blink. I look behind me and ask my imaginary Yelp commentor, "did that just happen?" He answers, "yes Anne, that really happened." Of course I eventually get my cargo van. I just hope the gasoline I poured over Jane's shrimp lo mein tasted good.

Briggs Meyer... Shivers

This is what The Briggs Meyer Test has to say about me.

[And in parentheses, what I have to say about it.]

People naturally confide in the Champion (ENFP). [This statement implies that the confidence is misplaced.]

That's why they make such good mediators, counselors, teachers, consultants, and reporters. [I would suck at all of these positions. Especially the teaching bit. But I guess I can make an exception for one of these jobs--consulting--which I currently hold. Honestly, I'm just glad I have a job, even if it means having no clue what I do and some days I wake myself up screaming into a pillow. Damn. That describes 80% of the teachers I had growing up in the public K-12 system. I guess I would be cut out for teaching after all.]

Any position that outreaches to others can fit the Champion. [OK this is just a really PG way of saying I'd make a good hooker.]

They can be columnists, journalists, publicists, copy writers, advertising account executives. [I can't think of anything more diametrically opposed to an ad accounts shlub than a journalist. Whoever wrote this has clearly never worked in advertising. I doubt if Edward R. Murrow would ever take a dozen Japanese businessmen high on MDMH to a champagne room in the Bronx just to seal a Daihatsu Account.]

In the arts they can be character actors, cartoonists, art educators. [Correction, I'd make a poor hooker.]

If they choose jobs such as restaurateur, be sure that their business sites will be unique and designed for a particular type of customer. [What the fuck does this even mean? Who's making sure my business site is unique if not The Champion herself, hellooooooo.]

Don't be surprised to see them as an inventor. [Don't act surprised. Shhhh. She thinks we're not onto her! Tee hee...]

This type of personality wants to experience the whole of life and may change careers more often than many other types. [OK this might be true. Just replace the word "career" with "boyfriend" and "types" with "humans with a modicum of morality" and you got yourself Anne Ishii.]

Says Charles, "I've had a number of jobs and when there is nothing left to create, I move to something new. I want my life to be spiced with newness, love, and joy." [Absolute lie. Charles never said such a thing, now did you Charles. Charles, I'm not feeding you till you put the fucking hand towels in the right cabinet shelf...]

Famous ENFPs: Phil Donahue and Joan Baez.

[Awesome. I can aspire to looking like a lesbian and then pretending I'm not one.]

Famous Virgins. Boys-to-Men.

1. It's hard to believe but it's true. Carl Sagan (the Rocosi Freddy of Quantum Physics) said it himself in Cosmos (anagram of "Splooge"). Sir Isaac Newton died a virgin, but then again... he discovered gravity and intertia. Same difference as fucking.

2. The Jonas Brothers. As long as they know that incest counts as sex, they'll be fine.

3. American Pie, cast. All of that sex they pretend to have in the montage sequence was actually just rubbing "varsity patches."

4. Soichi Negishi, from DMC. My pointing out his virginity is a shameless plug (pun completely intended) for my work.

DMC 6 comes out (more intended, shameful punning) this week.

BUY IT, OR LORD JOHANNES KRAUSER II WILL BE A VIRGIN FOREVER.

I hate to be the pretentious pseudo-luddite, but...

Getting rid of my TV has been one of the greatest things I've done for myself.
Now, I should to say for the record that I didn't give up TV the way people give up drugs or porn addiction (e.g. in 12 steps). There was no purposed health benefit or some public message I wanted to make in the boycott of mass visual communication and commercial marketing. I work with an ad agency for crying out loud.

I just got rid of my piece of shit roundscreen TV when I moved last year, intending to get a nice new one, but never did. Besides, A.) Because I travel so much I get plenty of hotel and "mom's house" TV B.) The Internet, and C.) My friends with cable want nothing more than for me to come over and hijack their remotes so that I can flip back and forth between reruns of The Golden Girls and Cheaters.

Here are a few things that happen when you don't have a television:

1. When I do finally watch TV, I am agog. Everything is amazingly awful because I haven't had a chance to be pulled in by some flimsy yet narcotic narrative. Plus programming turns over like hot cakes these days, and each time, the reality TV fodder is that much worse. There is actually a fucking show called "Dating in the Dark."



What this show demonstrates to me is that ABC couldn't get clearance on blind soft-core porn because Disney is blind.

2. The commercials actually seem novel. Since I'm not subject to watching the same commercials over and over, a lot of them are still sort of entertaining, or at least easy to shit on. Like the Windows 7 commercial with the American in Germany doing tongue-ups on a wood floor. [I cannot WAIT till ten years from now when Tosh 5.0 cans some laughter making the obvious cunnilingus joke.]

3. Local news looks like nothing more than Youtube virals.
"Local man gets arm trapped in radiator. Cuts it off with the nearest sharp object: a toenail clipping."
"Irate Hanson fans throw chairs at the Southside Seaport when forced to wait ten minutes for them to appear on stage."
"President Obama's Labor Day Speech. What the half-literate man we cornered in front of the subway station has to say about it, next."

4. I've discovered incredible physical and mental health benefits in this absence of television and think everyone should re-consider their relationship to mass media and commercial marketing. It's evil.

5. Netflix/Hulu/DVD addiction.