I don’t know if I would ever go back to enjoying use a car to commute. I love riding in the subway. There are, of course, things I don’t like about it but for the most part it’s great. I use the F train in Brooklyn and can get to most the places I need to go rather efficiently with it. I understand the G will come out past my stop so going up to Williamsburg or Queens will be a lot easier.
Lately things have been getting a little weird on the trains. I guess you never know what will happen when those doors open. Since the beginning of the year I’ve noticed a lot more people smoking down on the subway platforms or in the cars themselves. Once, a train came up and I notices this one car was rather empty. I stepped in to find a man surrounded by newspapers and plastic bags laughing this gothic bluesman chortle and speaking incoherently as he smoked in the train! A few days later, I saw an older woman who was quite old. Like she was from another era. She had a scarf on here head like Betsy Ross and 4 big plastic bags. She obviously had been taking care of whatever was inside of them. There were a couple of younger women chatting away in sorority delight about trivialities much to the old woman’s chagrin. I noticed her ankles were swollen and blue and her feet through the holes had something gangrenous happening. When the girls left, she spit on the ground and cursed about them. She got out at her stop 2 stops later.
My day started a couple weeks ago with a large man wearing a sweat suit under a blanket with a hole cut out for his head barking in gibberish. He had a nice voice but didn’t make any articulated consonant sounds. No one gave him any money. My gut said he was a Julliard actor doing research for a role. That, I think, happens sometimes. I saw a guy claiming to have cerebral palsy from some accident and he gave this big story about how his electricity was going to be shut off if he didn’t turn in funds by 7pm that night. My BS detector was screaming at me but I gave him a buck anyway. I saw him a couple weeks later in a train station way out in Brooklyn near Coney Island talking nicely to a boy. He had no disability.
Last night, I was heading up to see my friend Robin’s play debut at the Emerging Artist Festival. The train was held by police in the East Broadway station. An undercover cop in a flannel shirt ran past my car with his badge out. “Close ALL the doors!!” Uniformed police trolled up and down for several minutes. I don’t know what it was but it was scary. What if the person was in my car? I never worried about that before. I wondered if the person was in hiding in my car passing off as a regular citizen.
Today a 20-something man kicked his soccer ball off the side doors in my car as I came back from my callback. I switched at Jay St. where weekends are going to be a mess for the foreseeable future. A man and a woman got into a shouting match. He was angry but not crazy. I don’t know if I could ever have that much public privacy. I get quiet in cab rides home. I’ve seen the hidden camera shows.
Oh, on my way home the day the gibberish guy hit me up on my ride in, he plunked down in the seat near me. He obviously put in a full day. He had the smell of several sweat cycles. I hope he gets the part.

So no more Fringe. I’m a little numb from the whole experience. This year’s festival was much better than the first year I was here. I didn’t do it very well then. I should have gone out and met more people because I had a good show back in ’03. This year was a success for me. I did not sell out, get an agent, or a review in Times (although they did get tix for the show but did not come out). But I did have very good shows with nice houses and 4 great reviews, including the Village Voice. My second show was a little shakey but still ok. I did the shows without passing out or freaking out so I guess my endurance is getting better for this work. I did learn more about where to take my postcards. Boy, aren’t they a funny thing. No one wants them but you have to have them. Next time, I’ll go with posters to off set the number of postcards. I got 10,000 and really only used 8,000.
There were a lot of great shows at the Fringe this year. I enjoyed Tuesdays and Sundays, Lulu, Never Swim Alone, In Transit, A Show of Force, Minimum Wage, Billy the Mime, Park ‘N’ Ride, and I’ll Sell the House in Which I Can No Longer Live. And I had a great time at the Fringe Club podcasts. My girlfriend, Carolyn, introduced me to lots of people that work with Fringe. I met cool peeps from LA and Canada. Overall, the people in the festival were affable and kind.
Now I am going to do 2 weeks at the Gene Frankel Theatre. It should be a good time. I’d like to start teaching people about doing solo performances soon. I think I could help a lot of people make their shows into something. After all the excitement, stimulation, and entertainment, I need to regroup and figure out where to go next with things.