E. Michael Harrington

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I JUST GOT OFF AN N TRAIN with the coolest new electronic map/graphic display. It tells what number stop you are from the beginning and end of the line, the name of every stop and what trains can also be caught at each stop. And it is placed on the side near the front door, not directly above and in the center of the train. Really really nice. I sat next to a tourist and told her just how lucky she was to be able to more easily know where she is going. (I love being the charming hepful native New Yorker - dressed in one of my green and blue Red Sox shirts - assisting a lovely and confused tourst!) I ride N, R, W and Q trains almost everyday and this was my first encounter with the new sign.

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DRIVING AN AMBULANCE IN NEW YORK has a few things in common with driving an ice cream truck. With each, you hear the same damn song all day everyday. My ice cream truck played a terrible little metal record from Switzerland with punched holes - sort of a horizontal piano roll - that played "Jack And Jill" over and over and over. I dreamed Jack and Jill. I sang it/hummed it/thought it more often that I had the urge for women or food. Jack and Jill is a terrible thing that buries itself down inside you (worse than a worm, I'm sure). It gets hard to shake but you need to play the damn song loudly in order to get people to become Pavlovian and want to buy your ice cream. The people need a-programming and a-programming I did.

But after the frst week, I had reached a breaking point. That damn little record was going to start to play different music. So I took it into my father's workship, put it in the vice, took out one of his drills and started DRILLING AND POKING AWAY! I was quite excited with each new piercing and loved it more with each metal molecule flying away from the evil SWISS concoction. (Damn that country - they can do watches and chocolate and large St. Bernard dogs carrying medium-sized whiskey flasks but not much else right. I shouldn't leave out another quality feature of life in Switzerland - they are the best at providing a haven for illegal money laundering. Someday I want to have a secret, hidden Swiss bank account of $100 just to be annoying to someone who would spy on me.)

Back to the SHAVED DOWN metal Swiss record that powered my ice cream selling days..... After I VIOLATED and poked the holes, the music turned into a wildly atonal, disturbing cacophony that made many little kids hold their ears and made my stoned hippie friends exclaim, "you're crazy man - what the hell are you playing?" YEA. Good times were had by me and I had exacted revenge on Jack and Jill and the Matterhorn at once.

But the other thing is is that ambulance drivers and ice cream people need to go fast. Getting there quickly makes all the difference. For the ice crean man, it is fellow ice cream men heading to the same neighborhood to cut into your business. (I had one nasty competitor who would rip off kids - giving them incorrect change) - and sell pot and other illegal stuff to customers (rarely were they my customers.) For the ambulance driver, it is something far more significat than money as a life (lives) are at stake. There's the big difference.

I'm sitting 8 floors above 7th Avenue listening to too many ambulances and my mind went to repeated music heard by the drivers. What a strange diversion.

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Midtown is a mad place to be right now with the Christmas Tree-and-Gift season charging in and worst of all - that foolish lighting of the BA Evergreen Tree at Rockefeller Center last night. If you were anywhere near Midtown, or passing through or under Midtown, you were madly inconvenieced as streets were closed and slow-moving tourists were even slower.

The worst things tourists do? The second worst - moving slowy as if stuck, and not in a straight line. The VERY WORST - holding up cameras to take a picture of each other posing in front of some damn overpriced Fifth Avenue store (Saks, Henri Bendel - I'm ashamed I know that there is a place named, "Henri Bendel" - I don't know what it is or does but it must be overpriced and for people who cheris shopping - knowing that there is a Henri Bendel is like knowing that Brittney Spears first marriage lasted 55 hours). and expecting hundreds of fast moving New Yorkers to come to a stop and not get in the way of this wretched soon-to-be PIECE of INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, i.e., a bad and uncreative photograph that will receive copyright protection until dinosaurs come back. (Yes, I've got the Christmas Tree-and-Gift Season spirit, don't I? LOL)

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I'VE TRAVELED A LOT LATELY and in a nonstop manner but to good places and to do goo things. I spoke at Berklee during Thanksgiving Week and will speak at NYU this afternoon at 5:30. Yea yea yea fun fun. I always learn a lot from peoples' reactions, questions, suggestions and comments.

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CENTRAL PARK is always perfect and is the perfect escape from Midtown Madness. Yesterday, as I was headed from my usual stop at Columbus Circle to see The 12 STARS, to the Boathouse, I decided to go in as straight a line as I could, which meant scaling the BA Rocks in the Park, and moving around lovers on the BA Rocks (too bad one of them is not me in the late afternoon). Once I got past the BA Rocks, the next obstacles were fences (there is a large repair project in the southwestern corner of Central Park) and a great playground. I made my way through that - down a cold metal slide while wearing shorts (it's in the 50's here - tropical by my tastes) - and to some embankments made of stone bricks. Once you get to the bottom, you land on what looks like shingles. But the great surprise is that this shingle like texture is really spongy and bouncy as hell. REALLY FANTASTIC - quite a great surprise! I spent more time than I shoudl have just jumping up and down on this surface. I will go back here many more times, and highly recommend it to anyone. (So what if some little kids look at you like you're nuts and a few Moms and nannies fear why a bigger kid is in their midst jumping up and down on the cushy stuff.)

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