There’s nothing particularly happy about the Anaheim train station. It’s a tiny little depot in the parking lot of Angels’ stadium with a couple of tired vending machines, concrete benches and one small ticket window. There’s also a sign on the door that reads “Station may be closed at points throughout the day for 30 minutes or more to accommodate meal breaks.” This is a significant improvement over their previous sign: “Closed whenever I’m hungry, bitch.” Of course, this is a tiny underutilized train station in Southern California, so they could probably close down long enough to roast and consume an entire pig and no one would notice or care. After all, commuting by train is only slightly more popular around here than commuting by yak – which is actually surprising, since you can take the yak in the carpool lane on the 405 – but only if the yak has a sticker. Man, I’d kill for a 2006 yak. Anyhow, after spending eight hours in the bowels of the Happiest Place on Earth, it was pretty jarring to be suddenly spat out by taxi into the joyless Amtrak ennui of the Anaheim station. I sat on the platform in a daze like a wadded up towel on the Penn State locker room floor after a Second Mile event – sopping wet and rumpled and wondering if I really just saw what I thought I saw and how the hell I’m going to tell anyone about it. I’d never been to Disneyland before, because I always just sort of took for granted that I’m the sort of person who would fucking hate Disneyland a lot. I’m not really sure why that is. I guess if I really think about it, it’s because Disneyland represents...

New York – millions of people and millions of stories. Having lived here for many years now, I’ve seen some crazy things. Every once in a while when I’m out and about, I snap a picture to share along with my friends. Now, I’ve sharing them with you! It was a random Wednesday morning and I was walking to work. While stopped at a crosswalk, waiting for the light to change, I looked down and found this…! I’m sure these Chicken McNuggets didn’t really fall from the sky like rain, but it looks like someone lost more than half of their 20 piece order. I don’t know about you, but I usually don’t see the sidewalk littered with deep fried chicken parts often. Last month, I spotted this sign posted in a Jersey City bar, just across the river from Manhattan.  Read the last line very carefully… Doesn’t consuming beverages at a bar make you hydrated — or less thirsty? Apparently not here! So, come in thirsty – because you’re going home even more dehydrated!   We’ve all heard about the chicken that crossed the road… well, here’s the pretzel that crossed the subway tracks.  Somehow, I don’t think this story would be good for children, especially when the 3 train comes barreling on in!   Yes, this giant cockroach was recently caught in a Manhattan high rise! Feel secure that a few hours earlier, it was crawling across somebody’s desk. You should have seen my co-workers freak out when I carried this thing around!   How would you like to drive this van with a giant hot dog on top? This thing blew past me at about 80 MPH on the Garden State Parkway, heading south of the city.   No, this is not a prop from Saturday Night Live… this...

“My sole inspiration is a telephone call from a producer.”–Cole Porter Deadlines and I are frenemies. Without a deadline, even if it’s just a scrawl on my to-do list, I would never get a thing done. Having a deadline is a light at the end of my creative tunnel. Sometimes that light is the finished project coming out into the sun. Most of the time, a deadline seems like a train, carrying a cargo of procrastination that is about to run me over. Even when I’m super excited about something, say things like writing a bi-weekly column for this online publication, I put off the inevitable. Usually I start a bit of writing a few weeks before the item is due, committing myself to bits of research, looking at other points of view, digging up thoughts and memories. Then suddenly, somehow, it’s an hour before deadline and all I have are a few scratchy notes that that seemed much, much more comprehensive in my head than they do on that sheet of paper. Here comes that train, barreling towards me with little regard for my excuses, no matter how valid they sound. Time and tide wait for no man, or writer. This is not a new phenomenon. I sucked at homework. I can admit now that I was a fairly good student, but I would have accomplished a lot more if I had focused on history or geometry problems at the kitchen table instead of my chosen way of spending an evening; either reading a book or dancing around in my room play acting out little skits about how Gopher and Isaac the Bartender were both in love with me. Most mornings you would find me in the school hallway, about 10 minutes before...

It’s Memorial Day weekend and not only does this mark the unofficial start of summer, it also marks my third SEASON PREMIERE! This blogumn officially kicks off my third year on F & N. Since we’re 93 blogumns in (plus 5 filling in for Ryan Dixon’s Fierce Anticipation), it’s time to update some of the great things we’ve talked about over the past two years. MOUNTAIN DEWMOCRACY May 7, 2010 [FIERCE ANTICIPATION: THE JERSEY JOE EDITION III] In my third blogumn filling in for Ryan, PepsiCo, the bottlers of Mountain Dew released three test flavors for the summer of 2010, allowing fans to vote on which they liked best to join the line permanently. They had tried this experiment in 2008 and it was a huge success. Mountain Dew White Out was the winner and went on sale on October 4th and is still on sale now.  For a brief time, Wal-Mart Supercenters also sold 2 liter bottles of Mountain Dew: Typhoon, one of the losing flavors.  In addition Mountain Dew: Game Fuel Cherry Citrus and Mountain Dew: Game Fuel Tropical were also on sale last summer to tie into the video game release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.  They were discontinued in December. PepsiCo has hinted that it has no plans to test more flavors, but a few new releases have gone on sale.  Mountain Dew Xtreme (grape flavored) in available in Saudi Arabia and Mountain Dew Grape is currently on sale in Japan. For summer 2012, a new flavor will appear in stores: Mountain Dew: Dark Berry as a promotion for the movie The Dark Night Rises.  It will have a mixed berry flavor and the cans will change color when chilled.  It goes on sale June 18th. THE SMURFS MOVIE May...

It’s school vacation time in France, probably in a lot of places, and I’m on the top level of a high speed train careening south at 280 km per hour. That’s 173 miles per hour, by the way. At first it totally blew my mind that you could do an eight hour drive in four on the TGV (Train à Grande Vitesse). And even though the TGV, as of mid-2011, was the fastest conventional train operating in the world, I’ve become almost as jaded as the French people around me while riding. Though I admit that I am still impressed by the sucking whoomp sound that occurs when another high-speed train whizzes by in the opposite direction. When I lived in New York, I took the Amtrak to Boston from time to time, but before South Station was rebuilt, it was a lot easier to take the bus all the way to Maine. First you took the Peter Pan Boston Express, where they’d sometimes play a Kung Fu movie with the sound piped over the PA system, and then onto Concord Trailways, a small bus line with service in northern New England, where the bus drivers have magnificent accents that make you feel like you’re home, even if nobody in your family actually speaks that way. The only time I tried the Acela, a supposedly high speed train run by Amtrak, through the north east corridor, it was a total disaster. We were delayed six hours on the tracks, tracks that were shared by the low-speed trains. By the time we got to South Station, it was 1:00 am, and closed, and my parents had to drive 2 hours to come pick me up. In my opinion, that would never happen in Europe. But...