Monday, August 11, 2008

Live! From the Bolt Bus to Boston!



Due to the wonders of technology, I am blogging LIVE on the Bolt Bus from NYC to Boston. I can give you all the exciting news and play-by-play action. Things are pretty quiet right now; most folks are sleeping. We're somewhere in Connecticut. It's raining.

Something that's nice though is that I am not sitting next to anyone, despite the fact that the bus is almost full. How did I pull that off? Not quite sure, though I did try to look hostile when people were shuffling on and selecting seats. I have come up with some other sure-fire ways to ensure a comfortable two-seat allocation. You too can take up more space than you need! Anything on the below list should do the trick, if your timing is on (i.e. during boarding).


1. Speak loudly on your cell phone in a phony foreign language.


2. Flip through a hardcore porn mag, preferably one with something extra-kinky on the cover, like Milk Nymphos.


3. Stop bathing three days prior to bus trip.


4. Clip toenails/tweeze chin hairs.


5. Wear any of the following:

a. fake moustache (even better, draw one on with a Sharpie, badly)
b. plastic Dracula fangs

c. eyepatch
d. huge fake clock around your neck like Flavor Flav


6. Bring your pet goldfish on board.


7. Eat a raw onion like it's an apple.


8. Suck thumb.

9. Make this face:



10. Open your laptop so everyone can see your desktop picture of the Twin Towers burning.

11. Sing along with iPod to Bette Midler's "The Rose" and cry uncontrollably.


12. Take pictures of yourself in the bathroom with your new iPhone:


Man, I wish that guy was on my bus. He has mastered the come-hither look, in the bathroom of a moving bus. Impressive.

That's all for now...though tonight I have my first class at the New England Bartending School so that should be exciting to write about in the days to come!

4 comments:

Jonathan Lehman said...

I think Yvonne "Boosh" Zusel did #7 with startling regularity in high school.

The Mouse said...

I found that picture HIGHLY disturbing, thankyouverymuch. I was in a sketch comedy group in college and at one point we bantered about the idea of a piece about ways to keep soemone from sitting next to you on the bus. i think it escalated to taking ipecac and vomiting on the seat next to you. of course then vomit would be your seat partner.

sygl said...

I just read this and couldn't believe that I didn't get referenced in the article-- I'm pretty sure that I told you about the holy grail of bus riding that was passed on to me one college morning at 5am in the Port Authority Bus Terminal, but I’m going to use this opportunity to do so again:

As I'm sure you're aware, the Port Authority is probably one of the creepiest and un-navigable places in NYC, and at 5am after being out all night, it's no better. So, after politely refusing the second homeless man's offer to carry my bags for me, I took him up on his offer to direct me to my gate. Once there, I still had no assurance that it was my bus, because there were absolutely no signs, and since I was an hour and a half early and didn’t want to pass out in the wrong line, I very timidly I engaged the only other person in line:

Excuse me, is this the right line for the 6:30am to Boston?

Sure is. We’re a little early.

Ok cool, thanks. [hurriedly search for headphones to disengage conversation]

Course, I always get here this early. That’s the trick to getting your own seat.

Yeah, hopefully.

Nothing hopeful about it-- get here two hours early and carry a big see-through bag of trash. Ain’t no one going to ask to share a seat with you.

[Pause. Notice big bag of garbage for the first time.] But… then you have to sit next to a big bag of garbage for the whole ride…

It’s MY garbage! I know where it’s been!



Anyway, I think that the advice has been making the rounds, because I routinely see this method being used on the NJ Transit also. And really, it appears to be fool proof. I have yet to see someone sitting with a bag of garbage on their lap who appears to have moved it to let someone sit next to them. But on the trains it’s usually smaller grocery bag type bags--- and for the record, at the bus terminal, it was a full sized kitchen garbage bag; and it didn’t seem like it was just newspaper filler to give the appearance of garbage. Oh, and she definitely had taken tip #3 to heart as well.

Imogen said...

This is great!