My back hurts

And I'm so tired. I had my Daily Show class yesterday and thought I'd give the Fung Wah ("Fiery Bus of Doom") a try because 1) it's a little cheaper than Greyhound; and 2) it leaves New York at 10:00 PM as opposed to having to wait for 12:30 AM for Greyhound, which gets in at 4:45, which makes it not worth it to drive home and then just have to get up in an hour, so last week, for instance, I just went to my office and went to sleep on the floor. Thankfully nobody noticed I was there when I woke up at 8:20 AM the next morning. Just had to go fix my face and pretend I was wearing a fresh outfit and had just arrived at work! Nobody was the wiser.

Anyway, the nice thing about the Fung Wah bus is that they have your name on a list and they actually watch out for you to make sure you show up. When you arrive, they let some other unseen person know that you are there. Which is fucking awesome, because I had to RUN from the Canal Street subway all the way up to the bus, which is near the Manhattan Bridge. It's a long fucking way when you're wearing loafers, carrying a 10 lb. bag of camera equipment and notebooks and your crappy feedback "Hey, nice job on your piece, except maybe for [list everything in the entire segment], and sliding all over the road because there is six inches newly fallen snow over a mischievous little layer of ice. That ice was calling to me, "Fall here, fall here!" And I did a few times. I thought I seriously was going to have a heart attack by the time I got to the bus with 1 minute to spare. I was a block away waving at it like an idiot, just in case they happened to think, "Oh, we're missing a person and there's some crazy quasi-bag-lady chick waving at us, maybe she's the ticketholder??" Yah right.

May I also mention: I got out of the subway (the wrong exit of course, meaning the one that was farther away than I needed to be) and didn't know which way to go. So I asked two different people, one of whom was wearing a uniform of some kind--transit cop, bus driver, something--"Can you tell me which way is the Manhattan Bridge?" And NEITHER of them had any idea whasoever of what the "Manhattan Bridge" was. "You mean the Brooklyn Bridge, right?" NO Mr. Arm Badge, I do not mean the Brooklyn Bridge. The MB is on a map, there's an entire area of New York named after it ("DUMBO" - Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass), it's a giant fucking bridge--and these two guys had no clue what I was looking for. Is it called something else to New Yorkers? If it is, then why did DUMBO come to be called DUMBO instead of DUTBABTWDKTNO (Down Under That Big-Ass Bridge That We Don't Know The Name Of)? You would have thought I asked them how to find that big department store, Gimbal's.

Anyway, so I huffed and puffed my way onto the Fung Wah bus. After making sure I wasn't going to pop my aorta, I was pleased to see that very few people were on the bus so I got the whole last row--where there are three seats together instead of two--to myself. I then snuggled in, watched a couple episodes of The Tudors on my iPod, and eventually fell asleep. Point being, the Fung Wah bus is not worth it: it's a little cheaper, but then you have to pay for the subway both ways ($4.00), plus you have to walk a fairly long way, fast, and worry the whole time that if you don't make it you're gonna be spending the night inside the Port Authority, which is where you'll have to go after missing the Fung Wah because the Fung Wah doesn't have a bus terminal, at least not that I could see. Just a lonely little row of chairs outside a Chinese convenience store. Which was closed.

Next stop, Boston, arriving at 3:00 AM, which is 1 hour longer than they said the trip would take. Then I had to take a taxi to my car, pay for 2 days parking (yes a "day" in Boston parking parlance is actually only 8-12 hours. Over that, you get charged for another "day." I had also lost the ticket and wondered what they'd do about that but they only charged me for 2 "days" (11:30 AM to 3:15 AM the actual next day). Oh, and they hadn't plowed the lot at all so I was pretty amazed I even got out of it. It's a lot easier to drive in the snow when you know that even if you skid, you're not going to hit anyone. Maybe I should try some wheelies sometime!

Then had to drive home, a 35-minute ride that took 1-1/4 hours. And I especially want to thank the goddamn fucking tailgater who just HAD to stay one car length behind me for about 8 miles when he had the whole fucking highway to pass me on. But NOOOOOOOOOO, he had to just stay on my ass. I was half wishing for a need to slam on the brakes just so I could make him crash into me. In Insurance Land, rear-end accidents are 100% the second driver's fault. It would have been sweet, for a minute anyway.

I did get a mention in class of my OTS being good, which surprised me because we had to do two and I thought my other one was better. An "OTS" is one of those graphics on The Daily Show that they use to illustrate the piece that's coming up--some kind of play on words or double-entendre that makes the whole piece funnier. He mentioned one of mine as being "good." Before you think I'm all talented and shit, be aware that we all threw out a bunch during the class and most of the ones he dinged as either not funny or not appropriate were the ones I thought were some of the best, and I could have seen them all on TDS. But he said they'd never have made it. **puzzled**

So that's why I'm tired. I cannot wait to get home and snuggle up under the comforter.

I just want my paper that I paid for

I went downstairs to get my paper today and it wasn't there. Hmmm, that's unusual; it's usually delivered about 6:00 AM or so. So I went back inside and found another copy and called the circulation department at The Boston Globe and this is what the recording said:

"In an effort to provide you the most complete New England Patriots playoff coverage, delivery of today's paper will be delayed."

I don't give a rat's ass about the New England Patriots or the playoffs or getting complete coverage of some stupid game. And more importantly, there's a tiny thing I don't understand: either that game was last night, which means the paper has had an eternity in the Newspaper Space-Time Continuum to write about it; or it's today, which means we're not going to get our papers until, what, midnight?

This is just baffling to me. I don't recall the Globe ever delaying delivery so they could provide the most complete Iraq War coverage. Or the most complete anything coverage. Why don't they just deliver the paper and let people who simply must get "complete coverage" turn on the TV? Or the radio, or the computer? I can't replace the information I want to read in the paper by doing any of those things, but everyone else can get "complete coverage" about some dumb entirely-too-important-in-our-warped-society game by turning on their monster-truck-sized TV sets.

Weather Writing Romney Religion

It was 60 degrees today in Boston and close to that or the same yesterday. And I LOVE IT. I am really hating cold weather more and more. In Charleston over Christmas it was somewhere between 55 and 75 the whole time and it was glorious. I had to go do errands outside the office and was wearing my winter coat and I was roasting. If it could be like this in New England from November through late April, I’d be so very happy.

I think this nice weather here is supposed to last a few more days at least. I do feel sorry for the bulbs though, because their little pea brains (heh heh) are going to be all confused by this and starting making their journeys to the air beyond the dirt. And then it will get cold again and they’ll turn downward again. This messes things up for the real blooming time.

* * *

So now let’s talk about me. I was accepted into a class I really wanted to get in to, “Writing for The Daily Show,” which will start in a few weeks in New York. It’s pretty hard to get in–the teacher, J.R. Havlan (who is one of the show’s writers), only gives it once or twice a year and he requires a writing sample, which consists of a “headlines” section based on some current event in the news (that’s the first third of the show: what Jon does when he’s sitting by himself at the desk at the beginning), in the style of the show and, most importantly, which sounds like Jon. And then he decides among all the samples who he’s going to accept into the class. And I got in! I was fairly surprised because I’m sure they get many great applications, and the waiting list was over a year long. I requested yesterday with my boss and other relevant people the time off and it’s all set so I’m starting it on Feb. 5. Plus, a good friend of mine also got in and I’m looking forward to being in there with her: it’s really helpful to have someone to bounce ideas off of when doing this kind of writing. She gave me some good suggestions on ways to make my sample pop; things that were obvious after she pointed them out but which I hadn’t thought of beforehand. So you see how it’s good to have someone else’s eye to review things.I wrote my piece on Mike Huckabee’s recent ads, one of which rather prominently displayed a cross in the background (they were actually the edges of bookshelves) and the other a large “Jesus fish” (it was the logo for the group to which he was speaking). People sort of accused him of trying to send “subliminal messages” that he’s the best Christian or the most Christian or the most religious. I’m still not sure what the controversy was: everyone knows he’s a minister. Seemed kind of weird to accuse him of being subliminal about the subject. And it’s on his Web site plain as day. Anyway I tried to come up with something funny and “Jon-like” and it must have at least not been the worst one they got.

Point of interest: the first and possibly still only woman writer on The Daily Show was hired directly as a result of taking this class. Of course many more people than her have taken it before and since she did, so it’s not like you’re gonna get a job out of it. But it’s fun and interesting and there’s bound to be lots of talented people in there.

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