The honorable money mongrel presiding

Two days ago I went to downtown Brooklyn to defend a ticket I got for riding my bike on the subway platform.

I awoke Molly at 7:30 am and she told me she'd dreamed that our apartment was filled with cockroaches and our fly-annhialating cat was carefully and daintily prancing around them, so as not to kill them. Mexico then jumped on Molly's bed. I had dreamed that I was in Britney Spears' bedroom, which was carpeted and decorated with cheap Sears furniture.

We got dressed up, walked to the deli and got coffees and corn bread cookies, then walked to the bus stop, where we waited in a small patch of sunlight, courtesy of a sole gap between two buildings, illuminating the sidewalk.

We got on the bus and bounced ourselves toward downtown. Molly, Alex and I were sitting on three connecting seats, facing the side of the bus. A man who was sitting directly behind Molly, in a seat facing her, got up and stood in front of me. I noticed that he kept quickly shifting his eyes to look at Molly and then he paused, bent down a little closer to her and said, "You would look better without those glasses." (Molly has wonderful, plastic black framed glasses.) Molly snidely replied, "I wouldn't be able to see without my glasses."

Beat.

Man bends back over, trying to catch Molly's eyes with his, but doesn't and then results to snapping his fingers right in front of her face. Molly looks at him. He says "I hope you weren't offended by that." Molly: "Oh no. But I really don't think you should snap in people's faces to get their attention."

Man didn't say another word, but stood in front of me, baggy crotch at eye-level, for twenty more minutes, all while pseudo-slyly glancing at Molly.

We got to the courthouse and were all told that to empty our pockets and set our bags on the table, a request which immediately grips me with the same anxiety I get everytime my bags go through the secuirity machine at the airport, and I think please god, let there be no traces of drugs from months ago in the bottom of my purse/coat pocket. It takes each of us about three minutes to empty the contents of our coat pockets, mine full of change, probably around three dollars worth. I go through the metal detector and the lady with the badge that says MTA on it asks why I am here. I tell her it's for a hearing and "I want to defend it because I didn't do..." She puts a hand up to hush me and says, "Middle window", pointing ahead, past rows of plastic chairs, to a plexi-glass window, with a line of five people behind it.

Alex and Molly beep when they go through the detector, Molly must spread her arms and legs. Alex didn't have to.

After I fill out some paperwork, I join Molly and Alex and wait. We watch the judges come out and call the defendants back. An older man with white hair who is wearing red suspenders comes out. I really hope that he would be my judge. He wasn't. I got a woman in a lavender, micro-fiber, breezy blouse with brown hair that was curled out, but in a feathered way, not a bobbed way.

We went back to a small room. There was a tape recorder. She sat behind a desk and I sat in another plastic chair, facing her. I naturally sat straight up, instead of my trademark slouch, as I was being put under scrutiny. The room reminded me of my high school probation officer's office in Iowa and the time I was handed an empty cup and told to go pee in it. I went into the bathroom and stared at myself in the mirror and whispered, Karen, you can't do this. You are stoned right now. I went back into the p.o.'s room, my mother was also in there, with a still empty cup and told him that I had a bladder infection and couldn't pee. Then I got in the elevator with my mother to leave and when the doors closed she turned to me and said, "Karen, I'm not stupid."

But now, I was older and wiser and not stoned. The women pushed record with a sense of urgency and made me raise my hand. "Do you swear to tell the whole truth?" "I do." She asked me to tell her what happened on the evening of February 8th, 2008. Before I answered my mind wandered back in time to what I was feeling that night. Who I was thinking about, what my overall mood was during that time and I felt depressed for a moment, but I shook those thoughts away and I told her the whole story, *see post below*, but lied a little, saying I wasn't actually pedaling, but my feet were touching the ground, and I using them to sort of "paddle" myself down the platform. She seemed very sympathetic towards me and was nodding understandably in a motherly way. I wanted to hug her. She then said she had no further questions, turned the tape recorder off and told me to wait outside.

I was so smiley when I rejoined Alex and Molly in the waiting room. Twenty minutes later the woman behind the plexi-glass called my name again and I went up there.
"You are still required to pay in full, a fine of $100 to the transit authority of New York."

My heart dropped.

I hated that she had said 'transit authority of New York', why couldn't she have just said MTA?

But, it didn't get me down. No sir. The three of us went to the rustic WaMu bank on Fulton, that is beautifully architectured with amazing chandeliers and marble cylinders and such, then to JoJo's for a late breakfast.

Never again will you see me riding a bike on the subway, but I just may hock a huge luge when no one is looking, just for good measure.

Who says women aren't funny?

Vanity Fair certainly doesn't say it and damn it, neither do I. Tiny Fey is a babe, and I don't say this just because she is extremely attractive, but she is also equally hilarious; it is both of these things together that make her fly off the charts on my babe-o-licious meter, along with Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Amy Sedaris, Amy Poehler, etc, not to mention all the beautifully funny women I am lucky enough to actually know/have met.

A few months ago a boy I knew told me that he thought I was funny while we were waiting for the subway. I didn't say anything back to him, maybe an insincere thanks (I don't do well with compliments). He then added something along the lines of, "...and most girls aren't funny." (Trying to build up the compliment by putting the rest of my gender down.)

Anyone who thinks girls aren't funny must conglomerate around women who don't know left from right (I can imagine them making those little L's with their thumbs and index fingers) because anyone who has got a fraction of intelligence is capable of pulling something funny out of their ass. Granted, it may not be on par with the sheer genius of a Tina joke or a Jerri Blank witticism, but it should at least spawn a smile.

In my experience, most people I know are funny, boy or girl. I simply spend time with people who make me laugh, which I assume isn't a criteria for friends that is unique to me.

So for any guys out there who have the unfortunate opinion that most women are not funny, it's really simple to fix - all you need do is raise your standards.

Crab me a piece of that

Oh - Rockaway Park was a hop skip and a jump to delicious puns and delightful euphemisms.

Alex, Molly and Eric prove to be heartfelt walkers and steadfast thinkers.

If her eyes are that vicious than her lips must be delicious!

Kate Bush!


- I wrote the lyrics of this song with a green Sharpie on the wall of a bathroom at a Brooklyn bar (it's a unisex bathroom), try to find it!

Warum nicht riefen Sie mich an? Ich wollte mit Ihnen sprechen!

Days have passed and now they are sanctifying my existence as the makings of a true Americanan.
Mexico is curled up next to me, eyes half-open, in a blissful state of melancholy.

Last week a gay man (I mean, straight man) that looked like Brian Botano - the figure skater, hit on me at work.

I agree with Snig Wigs - ABBA girl fashion is an inspiration.



Bookshelf love:
Two too many at wit's end. Death on the installment plan of grammatology. To have and to have not middlesex on leaves of grass. A child's garden of verse is fathers and sons on the red pony. Call me brick, washington square. How it is the sweetest dream. The golden notebook is like death in the afternoon for whom the bell tolls. Anna Kerenina is the paradiso dante. The little prince is writing about art for the wonderful story of henry sugar. A lover's discourse on language becomes gender diversity underneath gravity's rainbow. Virgin suicides play the piano drunk like a percussion instrument until the fingers begin to bleed a bit with Guignol's band. Tender buttons' love poems with an introduction by Anna Quindlen. Intimacy out of sheer rage begets the history of sexuality. Moments of being the odd women of Richard III's survival in Auschwitz.

What about all those stupid kids rolling around on their sneaker/rollerskate shoe things?

The TV just said, "...And we'll meet the kid whose Playstation blew up in his pants. Next on Fox News 5."

Keeping up with the tides of my labors...

Oh I wish I had better self control!

M and I put our minds together last night while listening to Tomahawk's "Ghost Dance" and decided that we are going to kidnap B and take him with us to a remote park somewhere near the ocean and do our own "project" involving tribal dances, a drum, a gong, peyote, lindsay lohan, feathers in our hairs, and ponchos of various Aztec-y designs. We are going soon. No one else may come. It will however be well documented for all you curious readers of this wonderful blog (which by the way, I wanted its url to be doppelbanger.blogspot.com but someone already took it and it is super lame and he doesn't even use it anymore. What a waste of a brilliant name that infuses both of my passions - doppelgangers and banging.)

I am influenced by Phoebe Cates' character in Fast Times for the feather in the hair thing. I am going to ride my bike to Queens very soon to Michael's to get the supplies necessary.



This weekend I played my flute at a show! I don't have any pictures to prove it, but I do have an after-image that proves I had my flute with me while I was out - drunk fluting on the F train underneath the East River.

Thanks Tom's iphone.