I’ve been studying my body language, Allan and Babs Pease style. Their book, The Definitive Book of Body Language, is fascinating. I’ve been applying their guide to my subway Tao.

They state that there are unwritten rules that most cultures follow rigidly when faced with a crowded situation–one in which your personal “intimate zone” is invaded by other people–such as a packed subway car. They are:

This one works for strangers but I find people on the subway will talk to each other if they know each other–unless they don’t want to. I know I would rather read so don’t stand next to me and expect conversation, unless you’re Karen, my wife. In which case we’re talking. Unless she’s also brought her paper. In which case we’re reading–both of us.

Now if it’s crowded and you’re six inches from someone or pressed up against their shoulder, hip, butt, or bag–even if they’re your intimate partner, the odds are you won’t talk. I think the Peases are right. Once you get within that 6-inch intimate zone it’s just not happening in public.

Avoid eye contact with others at all times.

That’s a go. My own study of eye contact on the F train over a year ago showed how uncomfortable this can be for all parties. You gotta be crazy, or a researcher for Trainjotting to do this on any kind of regular basis.

Maintain a “poker face” – no emotion is permitted to be shown.Again, true. But if you smile at someone, New Yorkers will smile back…right before they turn away from you. The smile response is a habit that the Peases talk about. We are hard-wired to return them. The unconscious mind exerts direct control over your facial muscles and you can try not to smile but most times the mirroring reaction wins out. So if you want to test this out try smiling at anyone you make eye contact with on your next subway ride. Only problem is you have to make eye contact first, which as we’ve seen is not easy to do.

If you have a book or newspaper, pretend to be deeply engrossed in it.

People on the subway are experts at this. Check out next time someone is reading a paper or book near you. Wait for them to turn the page. If the page isn’t being flipped after a reasonable amount of time they’re faking it. The subway is my opportunity to read so I don’t fake it. I wonder if women are more likely to fake it than men? The Peases don’t have an answer for that one.

In bigger crowds, no body movement is allowed.

I think this is true. I was on the F this morning, pressed up against four other people. I had to shift every few minutes, changing hands that gripped the overhead bar and moving my weight from one foot to the other. Whenever I shifted, people around me looked at me with frowns then went back to reading their books or listening to their i-Pods. “Sorry,” I said quietly, over and over each time, smiling, trying for eye contact.

  You must watch the floor numbers change at all times.

–Joe Lunievicz

The entry strategy went well overall–as my wife caught the 5:23 train east to Hoboken, and found her way to the PATH train, getting off at Christopher Street, and cabbing it to The Living Room on the lower east side. 

The neighborhood has really changed (gentrified) since we were last there 6 or 7 years ago–they even moved The Living Room!

We caught the short show, and wandered off for a bite to eat. Our friend Brian had to hit the road, to play again at an 11 pm set of Tom Waits covers back in his hometown of Philly.

At dinner nearby we geekily checked out our NJ Transit schedule, to land us in Penn Station in time for the train. Contrary to published reports, I must report that the 7th Avenue waiting area of Penn Station was mellow and felt quite safe as we waited for our track number to post.

Our train car was pretty sedate as well: no vomiting galpals, or loud cell phone conversations. Most folks reading or sprouting earbuds, fighting to stay awake through the many local stops.

Just before we disembarked, we overheard two conductors debating the seemingly very effective liquid sleeping agent of one necktied passenger: was it single malt scotch, or jagermeister? It was probably both.

Back home and babysitter released by 11:30, overall quite impressed with NJ Transit’s off-hours run on the rails.

–JerseyJim

If you’re the type that spends your entire 8:08 from Chappaqua ride talking about toy trains, here’s something for you. Lionel has issued a 25th-anniversary commemorative Metro-North toy train set. Selling for $280, the set includes one powered M-7 car with electronic horn, three non-powered M-7s with illuminated interiors and manual doors, 12 railroad trailblazing signs, various figurines, and a 40-inch by 60-inch track.

You can also separately purchase a Metro-North branded station and a canopied station platform.

The set will be on display at the Harmon Open House this Saturday. You can order the set through Lionel.com and pick it up at the Transit Museum.

This comes from the New York Dolls. If you’re not familiar with them, the New York Dolls hit the downtown/CBGB scenein the bleak mid-’70s. They wore a lot of makeup and teased their hair to frightening heights. Perhaps paradoxically, they cranked out cool, ballsy, lo-fi garage rock.

As their Too Much Too Soon album title presaged, the Dolls burnt out pretty quickly, thanks in large part to excessive booze and heroin. Band members either died of overdoses, moved to L.A. and took up with the Mormons, or relaunched their careers as sleazy lounge singers called Buster Poindexter.

Ladies and genlemen, the Dolls doing “Subway Train.”

 I can’t ever
Understand
Why my lifes, been
Cursed poison,
Condemned
When I been tryin every night
To hold ya near me
But I’m tellin you
It aint easy

Ever since I been
Ridin, right on the
Subway Train
You can hear the whistle blowin
Ya might think I’m goin insane

And now your friends
They’re fillin up my car
But your so busy readin Suzy says
Ya can’t look now
You didn’t see your lovers
They’re all just in rags
Ya know ya hid as pushin up posies
Tryin get ya fed

We was all
Ridin, right on the
Subway Train
And you can hear the captain shoutin
He thinks I’ve gone insane

Cus I keep
Ridin, keep on
Ridin, cus I keep on
Ridin ridin ridin, keep on
Ridin, yeah

You stop and you stare,
As I’m leavin my favorite place
We have no regards
Ya can’t find a trace
Ya gotta get on back to daddy
That’s all its gonna be
He got the poison black arts of the pimps
But don’t ya st- st-

I seen em travelin
Right on the
Subway Train
Ya can hear th captain shou-ow-tin
He thinks weve all gone insane

Cus we keep on
Ridin ridin ridin
Ridin, cus we keep
Ridin ridin ridin
Keep on ridin

I think I see the train
I see ya got open track
I’m hopin
One of those gonna bring my baby back

(Cus I guess I said)
Dinah wontcha blow
Dinah wontcha blow your horn
Dinah wontcha blow
Dinah wontcha blow your horn
Someones in the kitchen with Dinah
I know whoa whoa whoa
I said someones in th kitchen with Dinah
I know

I keep on
Ridin ridin ridin

Apparently someone has told Mr. Google Algorithm that there’s a serious crisis going on in the American economy, and countless commuters on Metro-North are feeling levels of despair not seen since Metro-North made a special stop at Hooverville in the late ’20s.

Check out the ads I’ve seen up there the last few days:

Boy, I’m feeling tremors just reading those ads.

I tend to read, or at least skim, the NY Times’ obits because they always seem to find these fascinating people who did fascinating things during their time on earth. Coupled with the fact that I remembered a few Kingston Trio albums in my dad’s old collection (geez, those guys were well-scrubbed!), I decided to peruse the obit for Kingston “harmonizer” Nick Reynolds late last week.

The Times mentioned a “humorous ballad” called “M.T.A.”, so I decided to dig up the lyrics. It’s about a guy who gets stuck in the labyrinthian subway system, but it’s actually about Boston’s subway system–that city to the north where Cheers was set and guys named Sully boozily celebrate the city’s nonstop litany of pro sports titles.

“Charlie” had paid a dime to get to Jamaica Plain, but when he was unable to cough up another nickel, he was doomed to remain underground with the Mole People and LilSubwayCrybaby.

Here are the lyrics.

Well, let me tell you of the story of a man named Charley 
on a tragic and fateful day.
He put ten cents in his pocket, kissed his wife and family, 
went to ride on the M.T.A.

Chorus:
     Well, did he ever return? No, he never returned and 
     his fate is still unknown. 
     (What a pity! Poor ole Charlie. Shame and scandal. 
     He may ride forever. Just like Paul Revere.)
     He may ride forever ‘neath the streets of Boston. 
     He’s the man who never returned.

Charlie handed in his dime at the Kendall Square Station 
and he changed for Jamaica Plain.
When he got there the conductor told him, “One more nickel.” 
Charlie couldn’t get off of that train.
     (Chorus)
Now, all night long Charlie rides through the station, 
crying, “What will become of me?!!
How can I afford to see my sister in Chelsea 
or my cousin in Roxbury?”
     (Chorus)
Charlie’s wife goes down to the Sculley Square Station 
every day at quarter past two,
And through the open window she hands Charlie a sandwich 
as the train comes rumblin’ through.
     (Chorus)
Now, you citizens of Boston, don’t you think it’s a scandal 
how the people have to pay and pay?
Fight the fare increase! Vote for George O’Brien! 
Get poor Charlie off the M. T. A.
     (Chorus)
He’s the man who never returned. 
He’s the man who never returned. 
Ain’t you Charlie?

Surely I’m not the only one wondering about the timing of Italian automaker Maserati rolling a pair of tricked out, ultra high end sports cars into the concourse of Grand Central, hoping to entice people to shell out six figures for a car?

And surely I’m not the only one wondering if the two Maseratis were, in fact, repossessed from disgraced bankers?

Just wondering.

[image askacopywriter.blogspot.com]

On Mondays, I take the later train to steal a little extra time with the kids. I stole a little too much extra time, and left myself just six minutes to catch the 8:43.

Mind you, it’s doable–five minute bike ride, another minute to lock up the graphite horse and bolt up and down the stairs to the platform. But it’s a little too close for comfort, especially if the train is actually on time.

I made it through the intersections I had it make it through, and turned onto Elwood, the final leg of the journey.

It’s a straight shot from here, maybe five blocks. Sometimes I close my eyes and pretend I’m Lance gliding through the Champs Elysee, then open them just before I slam into incoming traffic.

But as soon as I hit Elwood, I saw the city-bound train pulling into the platform.

Not possible, was my initial reaction. It was 8:41, so there was no way the 8:43 was pulling in now.

Still, I went as fast as the ancient Trek bike would go, locked ‘er up, and hit the stairs, not even stopping to lock up my helmet.

The train pulled away before I even hit the platform. I looked at my watch, a (seemingly) hardy Timex Iron Man: It had just turned 8:42.

I cursed Metro-North a million ways for being early, asked the scruffy cab manager how long until the next train, and set out looking to kill 33 minutes in Hummerville.

There’s not much to do in Hummerville. I got a cup of coffee at the Station Deli and grabbed a bench in the tiny garden that fronts the train station. It is entirely possible I was the first non-mentally impaired person to sit on the bench in a year’s time.

I planned out today’s blog post, excoriating Metro-North for its earliness. It was bad enough that I’d missed the later train; it was badder still that the boss was in from L.A. today.

I looked at my Timex Iron Man, then took out my cellphone. Then it hit me: It wasn’t Metro-North’s fault at all.

A little back story. When you leave it to the last possible second to catch your train twice a day, you need a trusty timepiece. When I walked to the train during my first six months in the ‘burbs, I relied on my cellphone–a handsome, sleek Samsung thing I bought on eBay from a guy named Osama (totally serious). It was synched perfectly with Greenwich Mean Time when I bought it, and still is today, a few years later.

But when I started biking, I wanted a watch that would be easier to acces when I was flying down Champs Elys…er, Elwood Avenue. So I bought the Iron Man from Super Runners Shop in Grand Central for about $45.

Well, over the weekend, I was putting Little G to bed, and was periodically hitting the light on my watch to see how long we’d been at it, and help make sure his various efforts to delay did not push us past our 30 minutes of stories. While feeling about for the watch’s light (it’s called “Indiglo!”), I’d mistakenly reset the Iron Man’s second hand to zero, meaning, say, an 8:13:42 time had been reset to 8:13:00–thus knocking me back 42 seconds, or just enough to miss the train when you cut it close.

As is my full-blown right as an American, I will avoid any personal culpability for missing the train and will instead assign all blame to the Iron Man. The damn thing is called Iron Man–one should be able to wield a machete through a field of bamboo, pythons nipping at your ankles and rabid ocelots at your wrists, without the Iron Man resetting on you.

I cursed my Iron Man–I think it was the ‘F’ word–as I killed 33 minutes in Hummerville. I read the paper. I watched cars go by. I checked out the fake thermometer on a big sign in front of the station, the fake mercury showing how much money the town has raised toward a new clock for the train station.

Hopefully the new clock won’t be an Iron Man.

They can’t do it. They won’t even be able to do it.

And yet, there they are: two Latino men outside a (surely illegal) construction site on Spring Street between Mulberry and Lafayette. They wave their arms to help a bulldozer operator lift an unwieldy bundle of wood into the site.

The site is an open lot flanked by two brick buildings and blocked by a makeshift wall of thin boards, orange mesh plastic and scrawny-looking posts. Above and behind the wall floats the bulldozer’s bear claw. Winched to a bundle of 50 strips of wood, each maybe 30 feet long, the claw struggles to hoist the bundle over the wall.

It isn’t working.

See, the strips of wood are the same size as the width of the lot. So the bundle can’t clear the sides of the adjacent buildings.

I’m standing across the street. The ex-newspaper reporter in me makes me shake my head. The site is rife with violations of the OSHA laws (OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH ADMINISTRATION); for starters, clueless pedestrians are wandering unprotected below the bundle of wood—a brown, wet-looking monstrosity—and only one of the workers is wearing a helmet.

But instead of asking where the foreman is or putting in a call to my old editor Gene, I just stand there in bewildered awe.

Suddenly, the bundle sways dangerously close to the face of Debra Messing. Well, not the Debra Messing, but her smiling likeness on a poster for her new series The Starter Wife that is stapled to the makeshift wall.

The bundle swings the other way like a giant pendulum over Spring Street, and a passing dumptruck comes to a wheezing stop. The white, goateed driver slaps the steering wheel and slumps his shoulders. His rig idles with the sound of coins in a coffee can. The driver looks set to shift into reverse should the bundle swing back his way.

Then the two workers get an idea. They find a long stick lying on the sidewalk. Using the stick, the men try to prod the bundle up and over the wall. The unseen bulldozer revs and squeals and farts and hisses, waving its bear claw. The ’dozer itself seems to be doing K turn after K turn.

At last, with much skidding on the sidewalk, the workers manage to turn the bundle perpendicular to the lot and guide it over the wall. One of the men lets go of the long stick and uses his bare hand to ensure the job gets done.

The bulldozer growls and backs up. The wood gradually disappears, and the workers file through a gap in the wall after it. The dumptrunk hums and proceeds down Spring. Scores of early-morning pedestrians march by the entire time. Some slow down to glance at the commotion, but none of them stops.

Debra Messing keeps smiling.

—Tim Coleman covers the pedestrian beat in “Foot It!”

Once in GCT, I bolted for the track, and encountered a morass of humanity shuffling down the ramp, heading for the train across the platform. Things were getting dicey as I looked for a gap in the fleshy wall.

Just as I hit the platform, the doors of the [TIME REDACTED, SO I DON’T GET ANYONE FIRED] train shut.

*&$#*, I thought to myself. It had been a late eve at work to begin with, and The Missus would not be happy to hear I’d be 25 minutes later. Such a delay might even be the difference between seeing Little G and Little Miss C, and not seeing them at all.

The train ambled out of the station as I stood there contemplating my next move. It had left right on time, not the usual 30-40 seconds late that most trains do.

The caboose drew level to where I was standing, and stopped.

And stayed stopped for a moment.

On a whim, I knocked on the door. The conductor, a man whose description I will withhold so I don’t get him fired (let’s just say he was wearing powder-blue), looked at me, shrugged, and went back to punching tickets.

The train remained on the platform.

I knocked again. The conductor shrugged again, as if to say, you were late, it’s not my fault, get a Bud tall boy and wait for the next train, champ.

Then the clouds broke and sun poked through the gap.

The conductor pulled his Schneider-esque key ring from his pocket, slid the key into the door, and let me on.

“I…uh…I owe you BIG TIME!” was the best I could muster. He nodded blankly and I took a seat.

Thank you, [REDACTED] conductor on the [REDACTED] train out of Grand Central. You know who you are.