Only 116 days until Christmas!

Many thanks to recording artist William Hung for being a good sport on "Blute and Scotto" this morning. It made my hellish commute a little brighter. I had actually never heard William Hung sing until Scotto started playing samples of some of his songs during the interview.

Never has an individual been rewarded so well for doing something so badly

For more unconscious irony in packaging, click here.

Only 116 days until Christmas!

Potty talk

Please go check this blog out. It is the answer to all my prayers...
That is, if phrases like "Jesus Christ! Who designed this?" count as prayers. Ever since I worked for my dad's architecture company in 2000, I have been silently observing just how rotten a lot of commercial interior design is in this country. One my top five list is definitely poorly designed public bathrooms.

Think about it, you go into a place to take care of simple bodily functions and it's a steady environmental assault of broken stall closures, automatic sinks either don't work at all or too much, automatic hand dryers that blow out cool air that does nothing to dry your hands, or those toilet paper dispensers that grudgingly give up one square at a time. And even though I am five feet, two and a half inches tall, I don't know how many times I've had to practically hop onto the toilet to close the stall door behind me. Given the sheer numbers of really big women that I see every day, I wonder how they deal with that.

So if you can get the stall door to actually stay closed behind you, find a decent amount of TP in the stall AND are able to flush afterwards (extra points) then for a bonus round, see if you can figure out how to operate the "hand cleansing system" that was installed.

Here's a few other winners in the Bad Interior Commercial Design Hall of Fame.

The Bank North Boston Garden (AKA North Station)
I am actually old enough to remember when it was set up with several rows of long wooden benches and the restrooms were right where you wait for the trains. Now, there are a few benches lining the walls at the end of the terminal, the bathrooms are a few hundred feet around the corner beyond the "Pro Shop" and people going to events are forced through the same entrance as people trying to catch trains. Should you actually be so lucky as to make it to the station doors in time to have hope of catching your train, you still have to fight your way through throngs of screaming toddlers and stressed out soccer moms and dads trying to find out if they are in the right line for "Barney on Ice".

Shaw's Super Market, North Beverly
Recently re-opened and not especially for the better.
Luckily I grew up in this country and I'm familiar with the concept of putting essentials deep into the store in the hopes that you will happily spend a few hours "impulse shopping" on the way to buy milk and eggs. I can live with that. But what the hell is up with creating the stupid little "boutiques" of "specialty foods" all over the freaking store? It "pisses me off". I want to buy a bag of rice. I want to get the best deal. I now have to go to the "ethnic foods" aisle to find the basmati, and then truck the cart over to the "regular white people food" aisle to compare the price with Uncle Ben's. Oh wait, I forgot the "Spanish Foods" aisle! It's a small world after all... And to top that off, and probably in the hopes that in my frantic search for something like applesauce, I will feel the uncontrollable urge to grab imported olives and nacho cheese dip, the signs telling you what each aisle has are INSIDE the aisle, not on the OUTSIDE where you could actually read them as you scan the store. On the positive side, there are public bathrooms that are clean and everything actually works.

On another note, how come food eaten by asian and hispanic people is referred to as "ethnic" and food eaten by caucasians and african americans is considered "food". Isn't white trash ethnic too?

Au Bon Pain Cafe (anywhere)

Just a general note, when people are entering a space to fufill a basic need (eating, getting rid of what they ate, sleeping, buying shoes for no good reason, DO NOT attempt to make them either think, appreciate new concepts, nor marvel at the triumph of style over substance. ABP, this means you. I go in to a cafe to grab food. I have stopped going because I got tired of trying to figure out where to find all 50 items I needed to get a cup of coffee and the last time I tried to get something at the after 4pm bake sale, I was almost trampled by two large ladies who kept hovering around the "baked goods kiosk" trying to make a decision. Go back to the old way. Make everyone stand in line and then when they get to the front, make them articulate what they want so somebody with gloves on can bag it for them and then collect the money. Simple, done. Wham bam thank you Au Bon Pain.

Potty talk

A Bad Case of Schaudenfreude

Follow this link to the rant line

I didn't think it was worth an entry, but apparently a lot of people are feeling ticked off at the T lately. As one of the greater Boston area's long running "chicken or the egg" disputes, the conflict between low commuter morale and the gritty realities of mass transit is coming to a head for the fiftieth time this year. To follow the link above to the bulletin board where people have posted their complaints about MBTA service is to travel deep into Boston's psyche, a place where the collective unconscious acknowledges that this is a very old city, with a very old mass transit system, but if it's been around so many years why can't they get it to run on time, dammit?

Just go to any subway station to observe the following scenario, an underground cavern, filled with grit, old damp copies of the Metro and pigeons, and watch as the wary faithful gather on the platform. Depending on which side of the platform you are on, there will be at least 3 trains on the opposite side before one comes in your direction. After about 5 minutes with no train, people start to twitch and begin sticking their necks out over the tracks, trying to get a glimpse of the next oncoming train. If there is an event or if it's rush hour, there is also an inverse ratio of trains to commuters, but still people pile into the cars like it's the last helicopter off the roof of the embassy.

I took the T to a night class for almost a year and it almost cost me my sanity every time. Waiting for an outbound D train at 5:30 on game night could make anyone insane. But I knew what what to expect and most of the time I managed to get to class only about 5 minutes late. After 17 years of living in Boston, I know the exact distance in which I am better off walking than waiting for a train. It's a skill one developes over time like an animal learns to smell snow on the wind.

Despite all this, I was dumbfounded a couple of weeks ago when I tried to get the 8pm train to Salem at North Station. Apparently, the train bridge had gotten stuck in the up position at Beverly and there had been an inbound train at Beverly sitting in the station since 7. No one knew what had happened yet, but there were a lot more people than usual waiting around the station. I waited for about 17 minutes and then someone made the announcement that a bridge was stuck and they were trying to fix it. I tried going to the ticket window to ask for a refund slip (something the T doesn't advertise, but if the train is more than 30 minutes late, you can fill out the card to get a refund), of course I was sent to a different window and even more predictably, that person refused at first to get me one, insisting that since it was a train bridge, i.e. not the actual train, then the T was absolved of any obligation to give out refunds. I insisted that he give me one just as a souvenir and he saw the logic in that and shoved it at me through the slot in the bulletproof glass.

I found a seat on the floor and waited with a book. People asked in wonderment where I had gotten the refund card. Apparently I had succeeded where so many before me had failed. I pointed to the window and said good luck. The man behind the glass was in the process of telling an elderly lady that it was up to her to find out how to get a connecting bus to Lynn. Apparently he had mistakenly sat down behind the INFORMATION window instead of the LEAVE ME ALONE I AM JUST HERE TO COLLECT A PENSION window.

I was content to let it slide. So the train was delayed, 98% of the time you can set your watch by it. But it seemed strange that there seemed to be no effort to try an alternative way to get people home. I had been on the commuter rail before when it had broken down and there were busses in 15 minutes ready to take people where they needed to go. All I saw was a group of conductors drinking coffee by their office. Then I saw a man go up to one of them and ask the question that was on everyone's mind. "Are there going to be shuttle busses coming soon?"
The conductor's reply was the straw that broke the collective camel's back. He jabbed a thumb towards the entrance and said "There's cabs outside buddy"

That's when several people lost it. Years of indifferent service, broken down, MIA trains, intermittent AC and overcrowded cars exploded as several people began to gang up on the conductor. A professor-looking man demanded to speak to someone in charge. I asked them why they couldn't have run a shuttle bus by now, when it had been done in the past, other people said they lacked sufficient funds for a 35 mile taxi ride. The conductor spluttered something about just doing his job for whoever signs his paycheck (I am not kidding) and retreated to the conductor's room.

After about 20 more minutes, a train managed to limp it's way into the station, but the T employees seemed to know that the damage had been done. No one had the gall to collect fares. They seemed to know that a line had been crossed and that one of their own had done it. It's one thing to be delayed. You can tell me there's an hour's wait and I'll hang it there as long as it takes as long as people are being treated decently. It's when people who have been waiting patiently are yelled at and ordered around with all the grace of a cattle drive that ridership goes down. People would actually prefer to sit in traffic on their own time rather than squished in a tin can with a bunch other people being screamed at over a loudspeaker system.

A Bad Case of Schaudenfreude