“People Keep Sneaking Into New York City Sewers. No One Knows Why.”
That’s the New York Times headline on the story. It’s caused me at least a couple of minutes of thought, during which I came up with an answer:
Because this is New York City, and because they are there.
Did they think I wouldn’t notice? Over the past week, Channel 1942 (Spectrum) has played the same classical music pieces in the exact same order.
What the fuck is going on over there — wherever “there” is — with Music Choice? Someone has created what the film business calls (or used to call) an air loop, generally of some background sound like city traffic or a screaming mob infuriated because their music station is screwing around with them.
Is Music Choice’s massive collection of work from famous and utterly obscure composers being run by a musically ignorant AI? Or maybe a disgruntled MAGAt has created that loop and no one can figure out how to dismantle it. Or or or…
In any case, I’m pissed. And I wrote to Music Choice so informing them.
On a day when I was out walking for the purpose of shopping, I was stopped at a street by a red light.
This is a town with staggered lighting for cars, as well as walkers. If you keep up a certain pace, you’re sure to hit nothing but green lights at each crossing.
Not that day. And because a truck was parked to my left, blocking my view of the street and oncoming cars, I couldn’t risk crossing on that red. Even though the cross streets in my neighborhood are not heavily trafficked and are fairly safe to cross even at a red light.
But, as I mentioned, I couldn’t see the street. I had choices: remain safely on the sidewalk until the light turned green, or creep out v-e-r-y slowly in front of that truck and v-e-r-y carefully bend my head forward until…some speeding Uber came along and took my head off. You know what I mean, right?
I made my choice: waited for the light to change. Until I spotted a man across the street who had no impediment to his view of potential oncoming cars.
He was pretty fat and smoking a cig – bad combination, but I made a decision to overlook his health problems; he could see down the street and I could not. I decided if he crossed, so could I. Safely. And if he crossed slowly, I didn’t have to scamper like a crazy little fool. Strolling would be in my cards.
So I watched the guy and then suddenly thought, “Wait, what if he’s decided to commit suicide by walking in front of a speeding truck?”
You might consider my thought a reason to be concerned about my mental health. But to me this fancy was only a sign I’ve been watching way too many mysteries on MhZ, et al. A lot of the mysteries start with, yes, a dead body, who seems to be a suicide victim until the detectives figure out, no, this is a murder.
I try to watch TV while reading The New Yorker, so I can pretend I’m not entirely wasting my time,* but combining articles with TV mysteries presents problems, because, hey, I read a short humor article about, say, the Pied Piper of Hamelin, and by the time I finish and look at the TV, the cops have some suspect in an interrogation room, and I’m thinking, “Who the hell is that?”
Sure, I can rewind but watching characters go backward at top speed does some damage to the verisimilitude. And I’m a fan of verisimilitude. Which is how I found myself in a new career, as an advisor to mystery series on TV. (More to follow.)
*Did I ever tell you about the time during dinner when we three kids were popping up from the table to poke our heads at the nearby TV screen, and then popping quickly back to the table — because something crucial was on TV and we didn’t want to miss it?
My mom kicked our TV set in.
