Happy Fifth of July!

Happy Fifth of July everybody. If there’s one day out of the whole year that gets absolutely no respect, it’s today, July 5^th. The day after Christmas is awesome because you’re still playing with all of your new stuff. The day after Easter is equally cool because Easter sucks and it’s a relief to not have to pretend to be celebrating a bullshit holiday anymore. But July 5^th, man, nobody likes July 5^th.

And that’s too bad. Everybody looks forward to the Fourth, there’s usually some sort of a three-day weekend involved, except for this year, the Fourth is on a Thursday, and so all of the bosses are like, what are you high? A four-day weekend? Nice try. We’re actually giving you a two-day weekend this year. So don’t get too comfortable on Thursday. Seriously, stop laughing. I’m not joking around at all. I expect you in the office at nine tomorrow.

And so chances are you’re probably reading this from work. Maybe your boss sent out a mass text to everyone at like seven am, “Rise and shine team! Just a friendly reminder that we are OPEN FOR BUSINESS and that I expect you all AT YOUR DESKS in two hours!!!” And it gets to the heart of why everybody hates this day. On July 5^th, it’s just this annual reminder that summer’s never going to be as fun or as cool as it was when we were all little kids.

I mean, yes, next year the Fourth is going to be on a Friday, and so the fifth will get a little bit of a break, but not much. That’s just Saturday. The default awesomeness of Saturday comes at a price, namely that, while it’s consistently the best day out of the week every single week, it’s kind of stuck there at its weekly level of greatness. What I’m saying is, you try taking a really great day and throwing it on a Saturday and it kind of evens out to just another Saturday.

Like when Christmas is on a Saturday. Nothing’s worse, because your boss is like, this is great, we don’t have to give any days off for the holidays this year. And there’s always one employee who fancies himself a leader, he starts going around from employee to employee, “This isn’t fair! We should all just make our case, that we want off for Christmas Eve!”

And some people coworkers might be like, “Yeah!” but even his more vocal supporters aren’t going to actually stick their necks out. Most people are just going to be like, “You know what’s worse than having to come in this Friday? Having to sit here and listen to you plot out a Christmas Eve revolution. Get out.”

When he finally goes to the boss, the boss is like, “No, we feel that the two-day weekend is more than fair, and we expect everybody to work the whole day on Friday,” and, realizing that things aren’t really going as he envisioned in his head, the employee might reach for a feeble, “Come on, maybe a half day?” but the boss just shakes his head from side to side.

July 5^th should be more appreciated. If I were in charge, first of all, I wouldn’t make anybody come in today at all. I’d say, “Enjoy the four-day weekend everybody,” adding, “and you know what? Take Monday off also. Enjoy the five-day weekend.” I’d be a hero. And I’d be doing my staff a service. Everybody wants a vacation during the summer, but why are you supposed to use your vacation time? And you take a week off sometime in July, then you’ve got to get out there and vacation with every other person in America also trying to take a summer break, and the airlines jack the prices and everything’s more expensive.

Fuck that. There should be a built-in, government mandated weeklong summer holiday, starting on July 5^th. Obviously we’d still have the Fourth off, but this would be separate, a July 5^th week off.

But if I were the boss, and I still had a boss, and even though I wanted to give everybody off, maybe my boss would be like, “Absolutely not!” and he’d be shaking this printed out spreadsheet at me, like, look at these numbers, just look! “And you want to give the whole team a day off?” In this situation, I’d at least get everybody a catered breakfast. People would come in, all pissed off that they really have to work on Friday after having had off on Thursday and they’d see trays of eggs benedict and French toast. It would make the day. And of course there’d be a catered lunch as well.

Man, don’t Google employees get that every day? I’ve applied for a Google job like twelve times and they never even respond, they’re just like, “Thanks! Someone has received your application!” Goddamn, I want what they have. I bet you nobody at Google is working today. I bet you they have free Fifth of July t-shirts on the way into the office, but nobody’s wearing them because everybody has the day off. Meanwhile, the rest of the working world is lucky they have the Friday off after Thanksgiving. Hey Google, come on, give me a job, please, I’ll do anything. Just let me have that free lunch. If your Internet robots are out there crawling the web, have them send this blog post to somebody at HR.

Anyway, try to keep your chin up. This fifth of July will be over in no time and, it’s really not that bad, tomorrow’s Saturday. Everybody loves Saturday. Just make sure you stay the full day today, like all the way until five, or six, or ten if you’re a lawyer of something like that. Happy fifth everybody!

Happy Fourth of July!

Happy Fourth of July everybody. And by everybody, I’m talking about Americans, of course. Real Americans. What’s a real American? Well, I’m not going to get into a political diatribe. Anybody who knows me understands that I never insert myself into political controversies. No, I like to stay above the fray, out of the spotlight. OK, yeah, I’m known to make the occasional passive-aggressive comment on my relatives’ Facebook posts. Whatever, maybe sometimes it’s something bordering more on aggressive-aggressive, I’m only human.

But I’m a human American. And as an American, I can say that the Fourth of July is the one day out of the year when Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs can lay aside their differences and focus on what makes us different from everybody else. Call it American exceptionalism, you know, that feeling you get when a big group of people start chanting “USA! USA!” and then you start chanting it too, and you’re all really pumped up, almost daring a different group of people to start chanting something else.

Can you imagine what it would be like if an equal sized group started chanting something ridiculous? Like, “Germany! Germany!” or, they’d be saying it in German, I’m not going to bother writing out the German word for Germany, seeing as how it’s the Fourth of July and everything, but in that scenario, things would get ugly pretty fast.

Luckily, all we have to do is look back at history to imagine how that one would play out. We’d probably lose a bunch of really great chanters, but they’d be the greatest chanting generation ever, and it would be worth it, because this is the greatest country in the world. Sorry Canada. Sorry every other country in the world.

Sorry Puerto Rico, and look, I get it, it’s kind of nice to be wanted, but you think we’re going to keep up this courtship forever? One of these days it’s going to be like, all right, are you with us or against us? And you might be like, “Well, it’s complicated, we have to have a series of referendums. Ask us again in another twenty years,” and that’s when we’re going to pull the rug right out from underneath your feet. And maybe we’ll give statehood to some other country, people who really want it. Denmark? Chad? I could just keep listing random countries all day.

But why would I want to talk about any other country besides America? Especially on the Fourth of July. Forget all about that Canada and Denmark and Chad stuff I was talking about earlier. Let’s focus only on America, for real. I went to the arts and crafts store the other day with the idea of making my own custom globe, one with only America, like it would be the earth’s only giant country. That’s a globe I figure that all Americans might be able to rally behind. Obviously there’d have to be water, but that’s OK, it would just be one giant ocean, and I’d call it the American Ocean, and it wouldn’t really be as big as giant America anyway.

But walking into an arts and crafts store with an idea for a project is a lot different than actually figuring out what you’d have to do to make that project a reality. I started talking to some sales clerk about my idea, and she just kept giving me the craziest faces. Again, I don’t want to get political, but she was clearly one of those unreal Americans I was talking about earlier. Maybe she wasn’t even American at all. Jesus, I can’t believe I almost bought something from a potential non-American, and this close to the Fourth of July.

But it’s OK, because I didn’t buy anything. It would have been a lot of work, involving stuff like paper mache and mod-podge and … well, it doesn’t matter, I’m not really a crafts guy I guess, and so, who knows, maybe when I strike it big some day I’ll be able to hire a real globe maker to make my dream globe a reality. But for right now I’ll have to settle with this regular globe that I bought and covered up with blue paint. You know, all of the non-American parts. But it’s not the same, it’s like, regular America, just by itself, it’s too small surrounded by such a large ocean.

Anyway, I don’t want to keep anybody too far away from their barbeques and celebrations today. Go out there and eat a bunch of hot dogs, and make sure your flag lapel pin isn’t on crooked, and if you see anybody chanting anything else, just pretend like you’re one of them, like you’re chanting whatever it is that they’re chanting, but slowly start to alter the trajectory of the chant in a way that, after a few minutes, nobody will realize that they’re all actually chanting “USA! USA!” I’ve seen if happen before. It’s difficult, but it’s totally doable. Happy Fourth everybody.

I met my guardian angel while waiting for the subway

I was running late for work the other day, so late that I must have forgotten to check my pockets as I flew out the door, I didn’t have my MetroCard, it’s usually in my left back pocket, not in my wallet, easy access, you need the easiest access for a MetroCard. It’s like, any sort of moisture on your hands, whatever the plastic material that the card is made out of, it becomes impossible to get a grip on if it’s stuck in a wallet, you’ll be standing there at the turnstile, why isn’t this thing coming out, it’s barely raining, or I’m barely sweating at all, and people behind you are like, “Come on buddy, let’s move it pal, I don’t have all day here man, let’s go …” and you want to be like, “Shut up! All right! Just shut up!” but the best you can muster is a feeble, “I’m sorry, it’s just that, I can’t, my grip, it’s right here, I … it’s … I’m,” and they’re like, “Hurry! Up! Move!” and then the MTA employee gets on the mic behind the box, you think she might defuse the situation, but she’s not on your side, “Sir! Please step aside and let the people through!” and it’s only been what, ten, fifteen seconds so far, you’re not allowed ten or fifteen seconds to try and grab the card that’s right there?

Right, so back pocket it is, which, until now was the most effective strategy, walk through, loose MetroCard in the pocket, swipe, if only that guy ahead of me would just hurry up already, what is he, a tourist, come on pal. But this time it’s my undoing, I’m going to swipe but there’s no card, there’s nothing, I look behind me, there’s a line, I start to panic, I can feel the group conscious start to come down on me, it’s going to be negative, maybe it’s going to be violent, who’s going to turn on me first.

“Hey friend,” who the hell said that? “Need a swipe?” It’s this guy next to me, I don’t know what to say, what’s his angle? What does he want? “No, it’s just that … well, I can’t seem to … I just,” and then he just swiped it. The turnstile screen said go, so I went. “Hey man, that was really … you didn’t have to, I … thanks, just … just, thanks a lot, all right?”

“Yeah, no problem.” And then I turned, I went up the stairs to wait for the train, I always walk to the end of the platform, nobody ever walks all the way down, and so even if it’s a full train, even if it’s rush hour, there’s always a little more room if you head toward the first or the last car. But I couldn’t help but thinking about that guy, was I just his good deed for the day? Does he do stuff like that pretty regularly? Man, I’ve got to buy a new MetroCard, which sucks, because I don’t want to have to get attached to a new one, I used the old one for so long that all of the lettering faded away, it was just a white card with a magnetic strip, which I thought was cool, it was like I owned it, like it was …

“Hey man, you dropped your magazine.” It was that same guy. He was holding a magazine. I instinctively reached back to touch my other back pocket, yep, it was gone, no magazine, and that’s weird too because I’m never losing things out of my back pockets, and now today, twice, first the MetroCard, now, well, maybe I lost the magazine while looking for my MetroCard, that moment of panic, I could feel everybody’s eyes on me, just waiting for me to trip up, sometimes even if you have your card, you swipe it that first time and it doesn’t read, it’s just like, “Swipe again, at this turnstile,” and so you’re stuck, come on …

“Thanks man, I owe you again,” I told him and grabbed my magazine. “Yeah, don’t mention it.” Wow, I’ve got to be more careful I guess, just a little more aware of my possessions, my sense of what’s in what pocket, right? When I got on the train there weren’t any seats, so much for my strategy, well, whatever, maybe it’s just unusually crowded today, or maybe there was a delay right before I got on, so everybody had a chance to walk to the end of the platform, but it doesn’t matter, I guess I really don’t mind standing for …

“Hey man, you want to sit down?” I couldn’t believe it, it was the same guy, what is he, my guardian angel? How did he get on the train before me? I didn’t even see any open seats, there are like twenty people standing in the car, and this guy was definitely behind me when I took the magazine out of his hands. I wanted to ask him all of this, I wanted to freak out, head to the next car and try and give this guy the slip, but the car doors closed right behind me and, yeah, I actually did want to sit down, I’d been rushing this whole morning, everything off on the wrong foot, no coffee, I was exhausted, “Yeah, man, thanks.” And he got up and I sat down and read my magazine. That was really nice, that guy, what a nice thing to do, three nice gestures in a row, this total stranger, what a guy.

Hillside Support Facility

EDIT: 09/01/2014 – I see that this story is getting a lot of traffic from some train forum called SubChat. This story is fiction. I am a fiction writer and I make myself write a fictitious story every day. No, I didn’t really sneak into the Hillside Support Facility.

I grew up on Long Island, but now I live in Queens, so every time I want to go home and visit my parents, I have to take the Long Island Rail Road. It’s expensive, yeah, but I don’t have to take it every day, and so I don’t really have any reason to complain about the price, seeing as how it’s fast, it runs very regularly, and I don’t have to deal with rush hour or anything.

But it always drives me crazy, there are like four or five stops in between where I live and where my parents live, and one of them is this place called the Hillside Support Facility. Every time they announce Hillside Support Facility, the conductor makes it a point to tell us that it’s for Long Island Railroad employees only. And sure enough, we pull into this mystery train station, it’s like all industrial looking, like we’ve arrived at the second level from Sonic the Hedgehog, and all of the sudden all of these guys in orange vests and hardhats and work boots are standing up and getting off or coming on.

Every time it just drives me crazy, I want to go to the Hillside Support Facility. Why should employees get their own private train station? I’m sure they’ve got like cool soda machines and maybe an air-conditioned waiting room. Why won’t they let me get off? Why can’t I just walk along the tracks and see what’s going on? I’m not going to walk into any offices or anything, like, if I find some closed doors, I’m not just going to start opening them up and peeking inside. And worse case, I do open up a door and snoop around a little, I’m not going to just leave the door open after I’m done, I’ll shut it behind me, I promise.

It’ll be like I was never there. And these thoughts, they flash through my mind and I’m like, I’m going to do it, I’m going to get off at the Hillside Support Facility, but then the doors close and I’m stuck in my head, just daydreaming about the Hillside Support Facility, I’ve blown my chance, the conductor gets on the loudspeaker, “Next stop, New Hyde Park.”

And I mentioned before how rarely I take the LIRR, so it’s not like I can really build up some momentum with these daydreams. I figured, all right, I’ve just got to do this. I’ve got to go home, I’ve got to make a plan, and I have to make this happen. So I went back to Queens and I found this store by my place that sells all of those worker looking clothes, all of that stuff I was talking about earlier, the orange vests, the safety goggles, I was ready.

I got on the train and sat down, and the conductor started working his way through the car right away. “Tickets, all tickets please.” I figured, OK, I’ve got to make this look convincing, so I’m not going to give him a ticket. I’ll just act the part, like I’m working at the Support Facility, like I’m not going to pay a ticket to get to work. Right? Those guys have to be able to at least use the train for free. Right?

“Tickets?”

“I’m uh, I’m working at the Support Facility.”

“OK, I need to see your tag then.”

“I … I …”

“Your ID? What subsection are working at? What are you electrical? Maintenance?”

“It’s just that, I just … the Support Facility …”

“Wait here a minute.”

Shit. I really didn’t plan this out too well. I should have made it seem like I had an interview or something, like I was going there for a meeting. And I should have been way more casual. But then what about all of this working gear? I could have said yes to whatever he said, electrical. The conductor came back with another guy wearing an orange vest and a hard hat.

“Hey, where’d you say you work at?”

“At the Support Facility,” I tried to act even more casual, like I was talking about before, “I’m maintenance. Electrical maintenance. Support.”

“All right, well, I’m shift leader today. Stay close. What are you a transfer? Let me see your tag.”

I froze. Just then the doors opened up. We were here, Hillside Support Facility. I made a break for it.

“Hey! Wait!”

It was just like any other stop, there were stairs leading up from the platform. I raced up, down some hallway. There was a soda machine, but nothing special, just Coke, Diet Coke, Dasani. I checked real quick to see if the sodas were complimentary for employees. Nope, a dollar fifty, just like in the civilian world.

After the hallway there was a door, outside an employee parking lot. I ran past all the cars, there was a security guy at a gate letting vehicles in. I sprinted past him too, “Hey! You!” and then I was outside. I had no idea where I was, Hillside, I guess, and I had no idea like how to get home, how to get to a civilian train station, which direction I might start walking to get to my parents’ house. What a bust.

Happy Canada Day!

Happy Canada Day everybody! I’m an American – well, technically so are Canadians, we all live in North America – so I always wind up just not giving July 1^st any serious thought. And then July 4^th comes around three days later, it’s this whole huge USA bonanza, and sometime a few days after that, something pops in my head, hey Rob, way to go, idiot, you forgot about Canada Day again.

Not this year. This year I’m giving all of my Canadian readers a reason to keep reading this blog. And maybe I’ll even gain some new Canadian readers in the process. I’m just picturing my neighbors to the North, they’ll be settling in for a nice night of patriotic celebration, maybe they’ll get bored with the same-old, same-old, and they’ll turn to the Internet, they’ll type “Canada Day” into Google for ideas on some fun Canada related activities, and maybe this blog post will show up.

If you’re a Canadian, and this is your first time here, I’d like to say, welcome. This is an American web site, so you’re kind of, almost visiting the States. Every time I’ve been to Canada, I’ve noticed how Canadians always refer to the US as just the States. And I always think, huh, that’s a funny way to refer to it. But then I also think about my time abroad. While I was living in Ecuador, everybody called America the States, myself included. I don’t know why. I guess maybe when you’re living in America, when you’re in a state, it doesn’t make any sense, but once you leave, maybe you forget where it is, or how to describe it, so you’re like, you point to them, you know, the States, those ones, somewhere over there.

Look at me, I’m trying to write a whole blog post dedicated to Canada, to Canada Day, and here I am spending the majority of my words talking about America. Sorry, I can’t help it though, that’s just us Americans by nature. Even though, let’s be real for a minute, even though I’m being a little America-centric, and despite the fact that I’m being the bigger person here, admitting that I can’t stop talking about the US, what the hell Canada? Why did you guys make your independence day so close to ours? It’s like, OK, we have the Fourth of July, that’s great, and I hate to say it, but we were here first. And then you guys are like, oh yeah? Well we’re going to have an independence day too, and we’re going to preempt yours by three days. Three days! It’s your own fault that I keep forgetting about Canada Day every year. Maybe if you did it like in October, or September. April would have been a good independence month. Just something that we could have looked at, apart from our own independence and been like, huh, Canada Day, let’s drive up north and check that out.

But with our own celebration a mere three days away? It’s unlikely that any Americans will be caught dead north of the border on July 1^st. We have too much planning to do over here, what with the procuring of fireworks, asking our parents to borrow their giant cooler for the weekend, and they’re like, “Again? Every year with you. Why don’t you just buy your own cooler? Why don’t you start acting like an adult? And another thing, when are you going to start paying for your own cell phone?” and you’re like, OK mom, OK, and then you just sneak into their backyard when they’re out walking the dogs and you just borrow it without asking, and maybe if you don’t return it, after a while they’ll get a new cooler, an even bigger one, and then when you finally decide to return the original, maybe you’ll borrow the new one, take it out for a spin, a cooler upgrade.

Wait a second. What if that’s your true intention? Canada, I hate to even lob such a dirty accusation your way, but are you having your Fourth of July on July 1^st in an effort to keep us away? Because yeah, we’re loud at parties, and sure, if you look at us funny, we’ll probably get into some sort of a fight, but we’re still bros. You can’t just have a huge national celebration and decide that we’re not cool enough.

Because we’re not that different, you and me. You being all Canadians. Me being, well, just me, I guess I can only speak for just me. And I’m actually in the unique position of being both American and Canadian. What I mean is, my grandmother is from Quebec. That’s enough, right? How come you guys haven’t offered me dual-citizenship yet? It hardly seems fair. Israel would have given me dual-citizenship if my grandmother were born in Jerusalem. Just think about it. I make great dip for parties. Ahem. You know, like national holidays. Ahem. Like Canada Day. Come on just invite me to Canada Day! Please! Not one Canadian is going to invite me to Canada Day? That’s such bullshit! I’ll invite you here for the Fourth. All of you, you can come stay in my two-bedroom here in New York. Let’s keep relations good, Canada. I promise I won’t break anything. I promise I won’t blast my Toby Keith or forget to separate the recyclables from the rest of the trash or honk my car horn in suburban traffic. It’s just that, you guys drive so slow! What the hell! What are you looking at? Huh? You want to fight? Huh?

Sorry Canada. I got a little carried away. Most of that fight just there was in my imagination. We Americans have such colorful and vivid daydreams. Anyway, look at the positives. I didn’t make one “eh” joke, I didn’t take a cheap shot at how polite you guys are. I just want you to love me, Canada. I just want the President of Canada, or the Prime Minister, or whatever, Stephen Harper, or Steven Harper, I have no idea, he’s been in charge forever, like way before George W. Bush, I just want Mr. Harper to send me a glossy eight by ten photo, have him sign it, something like, “Hey Rob! Canada loves you! Love, Canada!” Because I love you Canada. Happy First. Does anybody say that? Happy First? I’m saying it.