What Sticks Out Most In My Memory Is the Bizarre

So in trying to construct the past gap of a few weeks, that's what's coming up to the top, like the cream afloat mere milk.

About two weeks ago, me and Carol went to an taped interview for Inside Edition, a weirdo tabloid TV show. A production manager had read about No Train Like Home and requested an 'exclusive'. We were picked up in a Lincoln Town Car in Brooklyn and ferried to the mothership on 57th Street, where we were sat down in a room (set, complete with prop books placed carefully on glass-topped tables) and asked a bunch of questions by a producer, a very nice woman who reminded me of the older, bitchy girls who played lacrosse in my high school. She asked us things like:
"I mean, what...WHY, would you DO this? Decorating a subway?!"
in a very extravagant, hammy way. I guess it's to get the other person, the interviewee, to really react, but it completely unnerved me, and as I later found out, Carol.
The producer would also nod and beam in an extremely exaggerated way as we were answering questions, I suppose to encourage us. It reminded me of how a mother would act as a baby was taking its first steps.
She also mentioned how glad she was that me and Carol were not ugly. More than once. Oh, TV. Yeah.

Too bad I don't have the footage yet, because the aired piece, in its entirety, was so strange. I don't even have a working TV, so I went over to Kemba's to watch it. A three-to-five minute long jumble of shots, disconcerting jumps, and soundbites. The editors there really don't get paid enough. Really, it's half the show. I say three to five minutes because I honestly don't know how long it was. My only reaction after seeing it was that it was weird.
However, I do have one photo from the occasion: I saw this sign on the floor of the Inside Edition newsroom, and thought it was, you know, such a zeitgeistal thing and all. No. It's just silly.


Then, last weekend, I was on the phone with a FedEx lady. I had been waiting for a package for days, and since my doorbell is broken, I had affixed a note with my telephone number downstairs. FedEx ignored it, and I was told by the operator that they "don't make phone calls if there's no phone handy. Is there a phone handy?" Lady, are you kidding? Of course there's no phone in the lobby! My doorbell doesn't even work! This conversation was interrupted by the presence of two cops who climbed up my fire escape and scared the hell out of me:
Cop #1 (really just a strange man, since I couldn't tell he was a cop yet) appears
Me: What the hell?!
FedEx Lady: What?
Cop #1: Did you see anyone come up here?
Me (to Cop #1): No. What the hell?
Cop #2 appears
Me (to FedEx Lady): Sorry, not you. Two cops just showed up on my fire escape.
FedEx Lady: Oh!
Cop #1: You know your neighbors?
Me: Not really. Just to say 'hi' to.
Cop #2: You see anyone else come up here?
Me: No.

Apparently a neighbor had witnessed three men scaling the building in a similar manner, but I hadn't seen anything. The cops had to climb through my bedroom window and traipse through the apartment to get out. One of them remarked "Nice place" somewhere around the living room. The woman from FedEx probably never wishes to visit Brooklyn.

Which lead to me journeying through the edges of Queens last Friday to finally retrieve the package at FedEx. Which took forever. Highlights included walking along a expressway underpass for what seemed like years and screaming 'fuck off' a lot at truck drivers. This was about 10 minutes of a two-hour journey on foot, round trip:

However, all was not lost. Look at these hastily-sprayed words of wisdom I spied along the expressway:

Plus I got my package.

Last but not least, I accompanied Sean to his neighborhood grocery store last Thursday, which was nice in and of itself, because he is finally out of that circus of a hospital:


However, this would prove to be no ordinary grocery expedition. Intrigued by all manner of cactus and weird little apples, I was frozen-in-my-tracks, deer-in-headlights-style alarmed to see this presence in the freezer section:

Holy shit! I had stared at the packaging for echoing, endless seconds, my mind finally rejecting the last resort that it might be Guinea Pig brand broccoli florets or something. No, man. And $13.99! Well, I guess I am glad that guinea pig lives are not taken so lightly. I will note, though, that it is displayed in the most horrible manner. It would be one thing if it were beheaded and chopped up, and another if it still had the fur on, but a skinned, whole guinea pig is not something I can forget about very easily. Consequently, I have been obsessed with it for days, and yapped about it to anyone who will listen. Jesus. I used to be fun.