Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun

I’ve contributed another entry in my pal Reeves’s ongoing blog feature “On Board.” You can read it here. An excerpt:

If you’re a savvy urban mover and an earnest participant in the social contract, you have a Charlie Ticket or a Charlie Card, and you’re in the train in a jiff. If you’re a parent in town for a few days to accompany your kid while she goes through college orientation, you’ve only got two dollar bills, which you will fumble for, put into the machine backwards, and generally hold up the long line of people trying to get into the train behind you. Consequently, it’s imperative that you get in front of these folks and get on the train first.

Of course, longtime readers will recognize my antipathy toward those who pay for the T with money. Rooks can educate themselves by reading this Blogspot post from the proto-DD&U days. Money quote:

Who are these throwbacks, these anachronistic dinosaurs that cling so tenaciously to the old ways of exchanging bank notes for services? Paying with bills is bad enough, but at least once a week, I get stuck behind some brain donor that pays with dimes. For real. The nerve of these people.

For those interested in my first On Board submission, you can get to it through here. And, as always, if you aren’t already reading Meanderings, you’re cheating yourself.

More links!

# A defense of one of DD&U’s favorite shows, Real World/Road Rules Challenge. Not that I think it needs defending or anything.

# More on the absurd cost of higher education in America.

# More on the absurdity of the U.S. News college rankings.

# A tantalizingly brief piece on Boston’s defunct A Line.

# A nice remembrance of Satchel Paige, the most fascinating ballplayer in the history of the game. Did you know he once threw all three games of a triple-header, all complete game shutouts. With a broken leg.

Whenever I come across a video or an article or a photo that I think might be worth blogging about, I throw it into a draft e-mail and, ideally, click on it when I’m in a good blogging sitch and make the wordsmithery happen. As you can probably imagine, some of these links slip through the cracks. Not because they’re not good, but sometimes I just don’t get around to writing about them before something more timely comes up.

So this is me, clearing out my list of links, which I present to you for your weekend reading enjoyment.

# A not quite tongue-in-cheek documentary on Comic Sans, the most hated of typefaces. I’m not 100 percent sure, but it may have been produced by bu students. Still pretty ok, though.

# Here’s Walter Pincus on the troubles with journalism. Thesis:

My profession is in distress because for more than a decade it has been chasing the false idols of fame and fortune. While engaged in those pursuits, it forgot its readers and the need to produce a commercial product that appealed to its mass audience, which in turn drew advertisers and thus paid for it all. While most corporate owners were seeking increased earnings, higher stock prices, and bigger salaries, editors and reporters focused more on winning prizes or making television appearances.

I don’t necessarily agree with that statement, but far be it from to question a guy who’s logged as many miles as Pincus. Read the piece!

# Miles over at Now Is Not the Rhyme wrote a piece about the tricks that designers play with Photoshop, and the consequences that arise. I started writing a loooooong response titled “What is authenticity? An epistemological hermenutic of Photoshop,” which, mercifully, went off the rails before I could finish it. Read it, and then look at this, and just let things percolate.

# Neat drawings of different subway systems, done to scale.

My pal Reeves over at his Meanderings blog is doing a neat little exercise. I’ll quote the man himself at length:

People in major cities spend a lot of time on mass transit; by my rough estimate, most New Yorkers spend an hour per day, 7 hours per week, 30 or so per month, and a dozen or so full days per year on a transit vehicle of some kind. That’s a lot of livin’.

So, hopefully with your help, we’ll be chronicling those 12 days of life. This is not meant for “Weird Shit That Happened on the L Train.” This is meant for the everyday, the normal, the poignantly average.

He’s done a few so far, and they’ve lived up to the “poignantly average” directive. Reeves solicited guest contributions, and I was more than happy to oblige. You can read my entry here. Regular readers of Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun will recognize the running diary format from various Gossip Girl and Oscar posts; I’m nothing if not predictable.

I call it a neat exercise because riding the train is such a monotonous, soul-crushing, utilitarian activity. If you use mass transit regularly, you truly enter autopilot. Not to say that I did a terribly good job, but actually looking around and jotting down my thoughts, instead of just staring blankly across the aisle or listening to my iPod, was an interesting change of pace. I didn’t expect to find the inspiration for the Great American Novel in a crumpled up Metro, but it was nice to actually experience my ride. I recommend you read Reeves’s entries, because he’s better at this sort of thing than I am.

And while you’re there, you might as well throw Meanderings into your bookmarks or RSS reader or whatever it is you use to keep track of the vitally important things that you must read daily. It’s like a smarter and more disciplined Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun. His “This Week’s Best Profile” and “I didn’t know this yesterday” features are especially thoughtful and eminently stealable.

Quick, let me buy some time!

# This is an article by Official Friend of DD&U Kevin Armstrong, a writer at Sports Illustrated. (For real! I have actual like, writer friends.) It’s about the golden age of sportswriting in Boston, when greats like Ray Fitzgerald, Will Mcdonough, Leigh Montville, Peter Gammons, and Bob Ryan were all regulars on the Boston Globe sports pages. Even if you’re not at all familiar with late-70’s Boston sports journalism (which I’m definitely not), read the whole. There’s a sepia-toned, old-school quality to Kevin’s piece that’s really enjoyable. We came up together on The Heights (the Independent Student Newspaper of Boston College), he the sports editor and I the news editor, and it was always apparent that he was going to do what he was doing then for a pro outfit someday. He’s a student of sportswriting, and sports and writing to boot. This is all to say that you’re in good hands with him. Enjoy!

# Something this crazy has got to be true!

# I find this to be incredible. The MBTA is floating the idea of raising fares on the T 15 or 20 percent, and at the same time, some plutocrat is paying $300,000 for an outdoor, uncovered parking spot. Amazing! What a world we live in!