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.

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.