I dusted off the ol’ Bose headphones (and by “ol’” I mean very new), plugged in all the bells and whistles, and gave them a trial run on the 8:16 this morning. It was as if everyone on board knew I was testing them out–when we hit White Plains, a yapping cellphone lady (”I’m on the train…I’m on the train…I’m on the train!”) got on board, followed by a woman pushing a baby in a stroller.

The train was surprisingly full (has Slippery Rail started yet? No way!), and people seemed pretty content to let the lady with the stroller stand. Having been there recently with Little G, I slid over to the window and let her sit.

I quickly steered my iPod over to the Recently Purchased; owing to the ubiquity of Springsteen on TV these days, I’ve been in the inexcusable mood for his two albums with the least street cred in the Boss oeuvre–the one with the ass on the cover, and the one where Springsteen lived in L.A. and was falling out of love with his actress wife.

The Bose phones did indeed drown out just about everything but the sound of “No Surrender” and “Brilliant Disguise.” The sound quality is good, though not quite spectacular, but the phones seemed to do what that ad promised–block out the extra noise and bring out some aspects of your music that you may have missed before (that cheesy drum machine at the start of Springsteen’s “Tunnel of Love”–I had no idea!).

I still don’t know if I’ve even activated the noise-cancelling feature yet; as the name indicates, it’s sort of hard to tell when you’ve successfull cancelled noise, because there’s nothing there to put your finger on. Guess I’ll have to read the f***in’ manual.