Thursday, January 28, 2010

Subway Musings - Shake, Rattle, and Roll


I was on the subway today coming home from work and a woman came aboard at City Hall. She was wearing a long blue corduroy button down and had very long strawberry blonde hair, probably late 40s. She struck me as a little odd because she was holding a paper plate with a slice of pizza on it, but on top of that was another paper plate with an empty soda can rolling around on top of that. She was looking around for a second until she decided to look down on the ground, actively searching for something to catch her eye. She kept nudging the pizza slice this way and that, as if it was a restless sleeper trying to find the most comfortable position.

Upon getting between Rector and Whitehall, she took the Diet Coke can and started shaking it vigorously. This would have been fine except she had broken off the tab on the top of the tasty beverage (I'm a Diet Pepsi man myself, even Diet RC, Pepsi One if available, Diet Sunkist) and had lost it in the can. She kept shaking it and shaking it, the little fucker rattling away inside. People started to take notice. And just when you thought you couldn't handle it any more, the tab showed itself on the paper plate. The woman didn't even look elated, which led me to believe that this was something of a routine. She then inspected the tab for a split second before putting it in her pants' pocket. That also led me to believe that this was a habit.

What got me was the length of time she was giving the can the business. I would say I'm a pretty patient person in most cases, and it felt interesting to me as the sharp cackling grew louder that I wanted to see how long it took for it to bother me. Just as you're about to give up internally, she got what she wanted. It's like a weird build up of something you don't want to hold onto just to test yourself, I dunno, putting your finger next to a burning candle to see how long you can hold out. What a tease.

Kind of like most old Juliana Theory songs from Understand This Is A Dream (which I owned for several years), you think they are going somewhere climactic and big, and then you're just left frustrated. And that's before I started to dislike them..."the TAI-eeme is 2:22 andIhooope your wish, comes, truuuueee...." what's with those numbers on the album cover?

Speaking of Juliana Theory, they are coming around after 4 years of not being a band (what's with all these bands, some I like, coming back after 4 years, which is totally not enough time to be broken up, come on Piebald) to Highline Ballroom way out there in Chelsea, way out there on August 20th this year. They are pre-selling tickets to all 46 of their current fans (oooo low blow, sorry guys).

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