Saturday, November 08, 2008

What’s the Meaning of These Incessant Phone Calls?

The person who most often does the morning traffic reports on KQED, a person with a very nice radio voice and manner, sometimes says, with a frisson of contempt, that traffic is slow due to “rubberneckers.”

I always want to say to him, “Excuse me, what do you do think you’re doing, albeit electronically and maybe thirdhand? Just because you’re in front of a computer looking at something sent from the helicopter THAT WOKE ME OUT OF A SOUND SLEEP at 6 a.m., that doesn’t make you better than anyone else.”

In fact, if I’m not mistaken, this person is on the air because he gets paid for it (though I should hasten to insert that I personally would be happy to be on the air for free), not for the beautiful, natural and very human love of knowing what the aitch eeeh double toothpicks is going on, like the in-person rubberneckers.

I’m fully on the side of those who do their rubbernecking firsthand, on an amateur basis. For one thing, I can't tell from my bed that they're doing it.

And what is the reason for this dreadful early morning cacophony? It’s to prevent some yuppie (or so I picture this person) from trying to make it to work without advance knowledge that traffic is slow on a given stretch of road. I say, let it be a surprise. Why does everyone have to know everything in advance?

I’ve been on bike rides with people who insist on announcing topographical features before you get to them. I even once dated someone who periodically confirmed that we had reached such-or-such a romantic milestone on schedule. (After six weeks, we broke up, on schedule.)

If you have to know what’s happening when it comes to something as routine and ever-present as traffic, go look at it with your own eyeballs.

Now, as to before the election, in fact, just last weekend, I flew to Seattle on Saturday to see the beloved faces of the King and El Capitan, Lisa being the King, of course, and had a very excellent time, slightly delayed by happening to arrive at the Sea-Tac airport during a security breach. I had to wait more than an hour (and Lisa and David therefore had to wait outside in their Zipcar) for the train that normally runs every two minutes, taking people from the two satellite terminals, which are islands in the sea of concrete, to the main terminal.

Could one just walk there? Could one even step outside at all, or was one basically trapped inside this building, resulting in a faint claustrophobia? No, no and yes.

As to the nature of the breach, someone, in this day and age, thought it would be a fine plan to try to run through the security checkpoint without being screened. This caused everything at the airport to grind to a halt, including the once-a-day flight to Tokyo, which couldn’t take off, domino effect, thousands of dollars per minute down the drain, people standing around having to listen to a woman regale a friend with her lines for a community theatrical production by bellowing them into her cell phone.

Finally I was outside in the rather dim afternoon light and there were David and Lisa! Just as I remembered them! Here’s everything we did: drove by Boeing, which takes a while, and saw actual strikers, had lunch at a Chinese vegetarian place, walked around the sculpture garden that is part of the Seattle Art Museum (there are witty things and there’s a huge Calder), saw various calm waters (there’s a lot of that in those parts), drove through downtown, saw where Lisa reports to work and where David reports to work (at my request, so I can picture them reporting to work), had dinner at their place—Lisa made us a yummy tomato-and-bean stew, served with bread and green salad; cupcakes for dessert—and watched Irina Palm, about a 50-year-old woman who goes to work in a sex emporium to get money for an operation her grandson needs.

I spent the night in a hotel not far away and on Sunday morning we had huevos rancheros, which were really, really good, at the 14 Carrot Café. Lisa happens to be an expert on credit card processing, at least relative to myself, and explained to us exactly how it works. I took notes. It was riveting, and I mean that very sincerely. Did you, for instance, know that it is not legal for a merchant to establish a limit beneath which he or she won’t accept a credit card for a transaction? I didn’t know that. I can see why they’d prefer to have that limit, but it’s actually disallowed.

After breakfast, we went to the Center for Wooden Boats, and strolled along the docks looking at the watercraft, and we went up to the top of the Space Needle—because the weather was more autumnal, we didn’t have to wait in line at all, and it wasn’t crowded at the top, though also not lonely.

Toward the end of our visit to the Space Needle, we discussed whether to take the Zipcar downtown or the monorail. Lisa stepped away briefly, and when she returned, she asked, “So, are we taking the monorail or driving downtown?”

David answered, after a shocked pause, “We’re going to the gift shop. Keep your priorities straight.”

In the gift shop, I invested in a diminutive blue Space Needle, and then we rode the monorail downtown and went to the Pike Place Market, where we visited Piroshky Piroshky and purchased fresh-baked items of impressive quality. Back near the Space Needle, we stopped by the International Fountain, half a metal globe which sends arcs of water through the air, and then I took the bus back to the airport, which takes 30 minutes and costs just $1.50.

At some point toward the end of this whirlwind trip, we were calculating how much time we had left to do things and realized that, what with one thing and another, it was just 15 minutes.

I said, “Next time I’ll stay longer.”

David replied, “Duh!”

“Did you just say ‘Duh’?”

“No! I said ‘Great!’”

The topic of Metallica came up, as it will, and David asked if I could hum a Metallica song that he would recognize. In fact, I think that might be a little bit difficult. I considered trying to hum “Enter Sandman” or “For Whom the Bell Tolls” or “Ain’t My Bitch,” and quickly decided not to risk such dignity as I still might have.

But I offered to make a CD containing some of my favorite Metallica tracks, and throw on some Megadeth and some Drowning Pool and what have you, and I think I will also put some of Todd Rundgren’s heartbreakingly beautiful ballads on there—why ever not?

I said it would be the most annoying CD they owned. “We won’t own it long,” Lisa reassured me.

(The title of this entry is what David and I vie to be the first to say when speaking to each other on the phone.)

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