My "American Beauty" day

[trinityvixen]

Waiting for Carrie to show up at Midtown, I emerged out on the 8th Ave side of the block Midtown Comics is on utterly confused. Not directionally, for once, but just overwhelmed and not at the same time. Midtown, so easily recognizable, the corner with McDonald's and Burger King, the Citibank a block away in one direction, and the Red Lobster a block in another. It seemed like a place from my childhood, yet I used to visit every week in college, which I'm only less than a year out of. I talked to Pucik, and Michelle is coming by after Wicked. It's another year, a long time ago or sometime in the future, I'm not sure which.

To kill time, I went to Office Depot, and partook in one of my favorite pasttimes: browsing at school supplies. It's amazing how pristine they all seem. A hundred pens of promise, blank sheets that will be filled with scrawl, copied on or over, thrown in the waste bin or recycling box, straight edges, organizers in disarray, even household cleaning products! New inventions on old standbys, retractable sharpies! In still more colors than I have, and I bought the super-duper set less than a year ago! A ruler that folds up into sections perfectly one inch long--it seemed to defeat the purpose of a ruler, having one that didn't have a straight edge twelve inches long, but I'll be damned if, when I took it down and played with it a while, it didn't present tight corners that wouldn't send any pencil astray! Slinky-brand 3M post-it pads! It's a post-it, it's a slinky! Crazy! Then, when I went down the last aisle, about ten feet from me or anyone, and I was closest so I would know, a piece of paper, probably a price tag, fluttered off the foam board display and onto the floor, just as plain as you please. I bought 'thank you' note cards, debating on the design that really just grabbed my attention, and the one in the same line of cards that actually said 'thank you' on it. I bought the ones I liked, but it took a while to leave the puffy 'thank you' stickers behind. I paid with a twenty for something that cost $4.77, one penny short, exactly, on the seven cents.

I bought comics, too, for the first time since coming back from Australia, I think. X4 is a manga-ized X-Men/Fantastic Four crossover, and I picked up the second issue and just clicked with it. It wasn't the first one I'd looked at either, I'd gotten over the giddy "Yes, I'm in Midtown again" feeling by then. And the Phoenix book looks stupid...no, I take it back, it looks fantastic, but it will probably be stupid. Who cares? The art is semi-photorealistic, and Jean Grey as Dark Phoenix is my hero, who I most wanted to be of any literary character, or so I told CUSFS as a freshling. All I have to do is get really evil and all-powerful; Carrie said I was halfway there, and I agreed. I just need to get really evil, now.

We went to BK for a quick dinner; I ate all of my fries before Eugene's food arrived. I got on the subway by myself, and the brainwashers were waiting near the S stop at Times Square, in that place where usually the break dancers, guys beating drums, or that guy who tango/salsas with the dummy usually are. I hate Scientologists, luring people in with their signs reading FREE STRESS TEST. They smile funny, as if they're possessed, and I think this is probably true. I walked really fast away from them and caught a shuttle that I debated not taking for some reason. I shouldn't have made it because it had been there a minute or two before I ran away from the alien lovers, and then I hesitated, but I walked into a car and still waited for it to move. I caught the 6 the same way--I shouldn't have caught it, but it waited for me.

At 96th, I came up and got to Park when the light turned against me going west, so I went north to 97th. We're getting a new grocery store, it looks like, a fancy one, right where one left just before we moved in to our apartment. I haven't ever noticed it, probably because I just don't notice things like I was tonight. It was funny to come to the apartment from the wrong side, from 97th not 96th and down, seeing the laundromat from the east, and a puppy tripping itself in its leash while its owner tried not to laugh. There was a cop van parked next to the cars on Madison, with one guy in the passenger's seat. I thought of the Bangles' "Walk Like an Egyptian," and looked for his partner in the Dunkin Donuts. There were two cops there. Do they send them out in threes these days?

Yeah. That's a weird day. I don't know why I had to write this. I couldn't get it down in my notebook fast enough, I suppose. I feel curiously detached still. I wonder if it was something in the fries, or maybe Midtown playing "Vertigo" just as I left. Or a girl reading a book in another language right-to-left with roman characters. Or two people, a guy and a girl, squatting in the middle of the subway car, chatting in a language I didn't recognize. The number of earbuds people wear--one in three is listening to their mp3 player, and of that number, more than one in two on average has an iPod. I feel very observant. I had an argument about colors with Eugene over the toppings on our otherwise identical sandwiches--he wanted no onions, I wanted no tomatoes, and somehow, I got on the subject of Legends of the Hidden Temple. I really do hate those asshole Green Monkeys. Blue Barricudas are the best. Lisa called me so I wouldn't be said that she would be out with Sarah tonight. That's nice.

Comments

[cbreakr.livejournal.com]

Those scientologists do have 50-something alien spirits in their heads.

[arcane-the-sage.livejournal.com]

I find the scientologists kind of funny sometimes. They really are only geared toward handling the Big Three monotheistic practices and agnostics. Anyone outside that realm and they don't know what to say half the time. I had lots of fun once working one over in a TGI Fridays who came over to "talk" to me and a friend. He just didn't know what to say to my arguments 1/2 the time so he tried to ignore me. Big mistake ^_^

Now what I'd really pay to see if a scientologist trying to work a Bob-ite. That would be really funny ^_^