Riding the Skytrain

There's a Kenny Rogers looking guy standing next to me wearing a cowboy hat. He looks like he might be one of those Texan oil millionaires, except he's wearing a plaid flannel shirt and his briefcase is made of cheap plastic. He smells like farts and shampoo.

There's a teenage girl with a birthday cake in her lap (Happy Birthday Ellen, whoever you are!), lip-synching along with her iPod. She looks like Joan Cusack would look if she was 16 and pretty and whatever is wrong with her mouth wasn't.

There are three black men sitting quietly. Occasionally, one of them coughs politely. I wonder to myself if it's racist to note that his cough was polite, like when my grandma talks about how the negro she saw on TV was quite eloquent.

I notice a giant guy sitting near the back of the train with a big, red, bushy beard. I can't decide if he'd look more at home decked out entirely in furs and wielding a battle axe or decked out entirely in leather and chains wielding an electric guitar. Either one would be far more suitable than the track jacket and slacks he's wearing now.

At the next stop, an elderly asian man gets on and stands in front of my seat, uncomfortably close to me. His crotch is the Allied troops and my personal space is a beach in Normandy.

There's a guy sitting with his bag in his lap, trying not to look at the old asian man's crotch directly in front of him as he attempts to properly describe the situation to himself. The best he can come up with is a crappy D-Day metaphor that barely makes sense. He thinks he'll probably think of something more clever before he gets home and writes about it in his blog. He doesn't.