the rix mix

Tata reminds me she's a poet:

In the street, I see many things and take pleasure in seeing them. A pair of shoes with the price tag still attached resting on a parking space divider. A long-abandoned house with its own garage and thicket. Police tape wound around a sagging phone pole. Manicured lawns and lots gone to seed. Broken sidewalk, fresh concrete. Fat gray squirrels accustomed to human company scamper up trees for the sheer excitement of leaping. This morning, I came to a corner where an elderly woman and her young nurse stared across the street at two bunnies chasing one another in circles.

I might have taken the train to the shore today if I didn't have to take the train home. Jersey Coastline trains are miserable places to be at the end of weekends. Crowded cars, families of squawling babies & hyper children, loaded down with all the baggage & strollers needed for a day at the beach & boardwalk. Teenagers shouting into cell phones when they aren't playing games with the sound turned up. Foul smelling restrooms; stand in the vestibule of another car rather than take a seat near the train toilet. If Amtrak is having problems (it usually does), Jersey Transit rail service is delayed, since Amtrak has priority. The only amusement comes from seeing how affluent New Yorkers deal with their journeys home from Bay Head & Spring Lake, burying themselves in the New York Times, heads pulling into torsos like turtles attacked by ravenous raccoons. The entire circus gets out at the bleak Long Branch station & moves across the platform to another train that may or may not be waiting.

Filling in for Glen Jones at WFMU on Sunday brought out my hidden Bachman-Turner Overdrive. Last time, I played Allman Brothers. Before that it was Fleetwood Mac & "Let's Pretend" by the Raspberries. I freely admit to what I like. Sometimes you have to ask, but I never deny. & the BTO wasn't unprecedented. "Roll On Down the Highway" was the penultimate song on my final show in East Orange before the station moved to Jersey City.