I'm going to get me a gold record baby/ 24 Karat hi-fi
Amherst, Mass., Friday night on a good night, stepping out in front of cars in this state just because you can. You never can underestimate the pedestrian, always with the right of way. I remember the last time I was in Massachusetts, with my sister, she would continually forget that you had to stop for people in the crosswalk, nearly running people over, were it not for my shrill reminders. In New York, motorists have the right to run you down and it’s just right and natural that as you’re proceeding forth in your oversized SUV you obey the right to crush jaywalkers like insignificant bugs. But not here, in Amherst, Ma., where you can dangle your toe out onto the pavement from the sidewalk and traffic comes to an abrupt halt. It’s kind of nice. And this town happens to be nice in all the ways that sleepy towns with liberal arts colleges at the outskirts are.

Everybody seems to be out tonight. We have made our collective way through the chasm, and have arrived here, to soak in the good weather of this night, wind blowing through your hair. And every girl is beautiful. The kind of girl who makes it proof positive that your there-is-no-god-and-it’s-pointless-and-grim stances crumble like some weak edifice. And the band’s not half bad, either. The singer keeps singing, “I’ve got my hands full,” which seems true of most people. Except me, of course, who is only holding a beer can. But that’s totally empty.

In my most private moments I stick my hands down my pants and get busted shoplifting by security guards
The days have become fast motion filmstrips that do not alter much. Sure, there are the subtle variations, someone at work I’ve never talked to before, a roadside cemetery I discover for the first time. But really, the days are just repetitious reels, self-destructively playing themselves out, Bill Murray Groundhog’s-style. I’ve suddenly begun to feel, sitting at the five minute red light outside the industrial park where I work, like the rest of my life has been deleted away, and the person doing the erasing has spared me this one moment to have the epiphany which I forget about as soon as I leave that window of time. What it features, essentially, is sitting at the red light and watching as the traffic proceeds by in its perpetual left hand turn, cascading by me as a steady stream of disgruntled faces. I follow each one long enough for the next one to be cued up, a continous stream of jabbering jaws, each one muttering things to themselves. Strangely, I notice every single person seems to be talking to themselves today, which is not very good PR for the early AM set, a demographic which I have found myself amongst.

I have cracked the shell of getting out of bed in the following way: by placing the alarm clock across the room as opposed to next to the bed. This way, when you’re in the midst of your early AM dream set, some exotic stranger cooing in your ear and feeding you tropical fruits, the insidious beeping of your alarm clock not only pulls you from paradise but also forces you to nearly break your neck as you run across the room to shut it down. There’s nothing quite like the jarring of context to pull you from your dreams. Which just may be something you learn early on. The next step, logically, is heading for the coffee pot (this is just plain and simple). A friend has recently brandished a coffee mug while on a visit to his house, and this is how he does it, in the following way of drinking a tankard of coffee, the mug a literal 3-cup affair. “I usually drink about two full ones of these,” he says holding up the cup, “and then I’m totally ready for the day.” Not only does this have the effect of totally clearing your synapses, it also features the added addendum of making the morning commute more comparable to an Indi500 race, swearing at motorists and passersby with the kind of vitriol that is just right and natural at 7:00 am. Arriving at the red light should probably contain the type of self-reflection which has me musing on how lucky I am to be alive. But instead, all I can do is curse the fact that the light is going to be red long enough to make me late. And then, as it turns to green, I find myself curing that too.

My coworkers are chiding me today with pretend-coughing after taking yesterday off. I don’t really make a good case for illness, telling them facetiously that I had an early tee-time. “Tomorrow is going to be even nicer,” they say to me laughingly. “Maybe you should have held out a few more days.” Actually, maybe I should have, I think, if only to make the movie more interesting. But it also occurs to me that Bill Murray only makes good by being good, and it seems like I have a long way to go. Which is, to be exact: 6 more days.

Any way you cut it I’m not afraid/ I know I’m gonna get it
It is nice out today, the first in what the weatherman on TV promises will be a succession of good days. Whether the accompanying day off from work I took today was the result of the weather or the more ostensible reasoning of the college transcripts I have to obtain will likely remain a mystery. But am I ever glad for this good day, if only because the parking lot of the particular college I went to happens to reside way out on the perimeter of the school, like they were building the campus with the solitary purpose of exercise in mind. I imagine the planners hanging around and thinking up this new concept: ah, yes: if you come to college here, not only do you get an education, you also get marathon training in the grueling form of trekking 3 miles to and from your car each day. But all that is quickly forgotten on a nice day. I double check, making sure I have the requisite ID in hand, and then begin setting out in the direction of the Registrar’s Office, raising my head to the heavens and giving thanks for this nice weather. It’s been a little while since I’ve been to college and so I waste no time in pretending that I am a student again. This lasts for about two and a half seconds before I am quickly grounded by the bizarre-looking masses of sweat-suited people walking around campus. I don’t remember people looking 100 percent like this when I went to college here, but it’s been a while. When did humanity bang the right hand turn that has them looking like they are headed for an early AM workout, I wonder? I’ve lived in Albany long enough to be desensitized to bad fashion, but this seems like something else entirely. Few students seem to favor anything but the peculiar breed of sweatpants that make the audibly swishy sound as they walk by. Also, despite it being 50 degrees, a lot of people have shorts on. What the hell is this, I think, before remembering that a lot of people commute, and the parking lot does happen to be a 2 mile walk from the main campus. And so maybe they had functionality in mind all the while.

I arrive at the Registrar’s Office to find a small line waiting. Handing over the appropriate paperwork at the counter, I am looking at my college transcript momentarily, which is stamped with an official-looking seal. I peel back the cover and look inside. Good god, I think, getting a look at some of my grades. I totally suck. A class called Computer Fundamentals and Application, I scored an obtuse D in. I only vaguely remember taking this class, I think, sitting next to a girl who would occasionally help me with my Excel formulations. She seemed to know what she was doing, I thought. Another class involving computers I scored a similarly low score point in. And then, there’s just no avoiding the fact that I withdrew from Desktop Publishing. Nope, that didn’t seem like a good one to me. I couldn’t make a heads or tail of what was going on in there. The classes I whipped ass in are things like Abnormal Psychology and totally esoteric Literature classes, where we read things like Huysmans’ Against Nature, which may have just been that same knowledge overlapping. I had a professor who was hearing impaired and carried a microphone-type box which you would have to speak into for him to hear you. He would stride around the classroom as he delivered his lecture, occasionally springing that device in your face. It was pretty awesome.

I am standing out on the platform, as the noon time bell starts going off. It makes this glorious sound which resonates in every direction. Well, this does not look good, I think, checking things over. Clearly I didn’t manage to learn anything in college, which may or may not contribute to my current situation. I do kind of want to go back to school, though. If only to vindicate the past. Like Saturday Night Live says, though, you have to hustle. And the whole thing is, I don’t even own a jogging suit.

Let's not wrestle Mt. Heart Attack
Saturday Night Live is chatting us up in Records Management today. She is sitting behind us at the fiche machine, while we proceed to make copies and copies, as she spontaneously bursts into song. She does the Chicken Dance Song, complete with the handclap part, and I am moved enough to ask about her workday enthusiasm. She is unequivicalably the most enthusiastic person here, and so I ask. “You’ve got to stay upbeat,” she tells me. “It’s the only way to be.” I goad her on by accident and as a result she ends up telling me her entire life story, as people often tend to do while in my presence for two minutes. That’s kind of the thing that I wonder about myself, in moments of deep self-reflection: one second you’re on the verge of tears because the lithium-addled woman on the fiche machine is doing the chicken dance song, and the next thing you know, she’s telling you about where it all went wrong. And that’s kind of the weird thing you tend to notice about comedians, is the fine line being walked between crying and laughing out loud. Look at Dave Chapelle if you do not believe: one moment he’s getting paid the prevailing wage, and the next thing you know he’s nervously chortling about his trip to Africa on Oprah. Things get blurred as Saturday Night Live gets into the details of her life, the musical theatre aspirations, the dropping out of school. The long road which has lead to this moment, talking to the guy making copies, who is me. I regale her a little by giving advice which I’m not exactly qualified to give but which still seems absolutely necessary. She is turning 40 next week, but it’s not too late for her, maybe. Beneath the piles of bills and lifestyle accoutrement payments there is a way, maybe. I don’t know. I’m just trying to make copies over here, really. In two seconds, though, it’s pretty much a moot point, as she’s right back at it again. People are walking by Records Management and wondering what the hell is going on in there, which if I could explain, carries a certain amount of complexity. She wants me to join in the clap, but I don’t really like the Chicken Dance Song. But, because Saturday Night Live is a friend, I do it anyway, which confounds me, as well as just about everyone in the office.