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Diner? Let's do it.

I love diners. Love them. Just about every city, town, village, borough, municipality, alleyway has a diner. Even places so small that they only have two intersections. One of those intersections will have a diner. Probably a diner/gas station/ tire shop/ shower for truckers/ police station/ liquor store, but it will be there. Or it's four am and you're wandering in a city, you want some food, and over the hill, what do you see? A gorgeous, tiny, come as you are diner. Love these damn places for many reasons.

EVERYONE goes to diners. Every type of person. Hot people go to diners, ugly people, tall people, tiny baby people, amputees, full-utees, and everyone in between. You can see giant men in scooters whose flab is touching the floor crushing milk shakes. You can see a gorgeous woman with a huge ass in tight pants passing out drunk while eating a cheeseburger. People who look like they've strangled cats. People who look like they help people strangle cats. Cops. The complete opposite of cops. Diners are like grown up cafeterias in city high schools. Jocks, nerds, teachers, posers. They are all there.

Diners are usually opened twenty four hours. All damn day! How great is that? What other places are open twenty four hours? Some grocery stores, sure, which is great, but it's food that you then have to make. Not even all shady places are open all day. Strip clubs close. And where do those strippers end up? Diners. I guess drug houses are open twenty four hours a day, but you can't get a pulled pork sandwich in a building that also sells meth.
"Yo, man. I need an eight ball, and a Cuban."
"Cuban? Cigar? Cuban person, motherfucker?"
"Naw, the sandwich. Cuban sandwich."
"I cook meth here, not meat.... Wait. If I cooked meat, you'd buy, meat, AND meth? Let me think about it."

Diners also don't have any weird rules. ANY time of day, you go in to a diner you can get what you want. That doesn't happen anywhere else. McDonald's has strict breakfast times. Not diners. Want breakfast at 11pm? Done. You want to start your day with a turkey dinner and a bowl of raisin bran? No problem. Where else can your ridiculous craving for pancakes and whip cream with a side of gyro meat at four in the morning be filled? Not even at a place that only sells those things.
"Hey, can I get combo number one?"
"I'm sorry, sir, but we ar..."
"What do you mean? You are called 'Pancakes and whip cream gyro meat dreams'! Tag line, 'Are you a monster who wants these things together? Well come on in and we'll make you feel better'.
"Yes, I know. But we are closed. This is a very niche store. We gonna keep this open all day? You're the only person I've seen eat here and we go through this every night! See you tomorrow, Chris."
".... Alright. Goodnight, Steve."

Menus at diners are massive. You could beat somebody to death with a diner menu. Some of these things are about twenty pages. Twenty pages! Of food! In one place! How do they have space for this? Do they NEED twelve types of sandwiches? Nope. But they have them. Why? Because diners are magical. Five different muffins. Seven cakes. Eight burger options. Don't even try to count the number of ways you can get potatoes. Gyros, soups, kabobs, desserts. Diners are the Shang Tsung of restaurants. It's like they have sucked up everything off of everyone else's menu. About four hundred food options, and twelve seconds to decide what you want. Usually a waitress will hand you a menu, spin in a circle, and ask you if you're ready.
"Hey, here's an encyclopedia of every piece of food ever made. Also, don't forget, that you can also order whatever you want, even if it's not on the menu, and we'll figure it out for you... Do you know what you want?"
"I haven't opened the menu yet."
"Okay. I'll give you a minute.... (rock paper scissors with herself) .... You ready now?"

There are no topics of conversation off limit in these places. You can talk about ANYTHING in these places. Family, sex, breaking the law. People for sure plan bank jobs in diners. Criminals sitting in booths for hours talking about how they're going to get the key from the manager.
"Honestly, I say, just walk in, crack him in the fuc... Oh, yeah. I'll have a cherry coke and a burger. Hey, let me ask you a question. If you were gonna get the keys from your manager, you think cracking him in the head would get the job done?"
"Um. No. I'd just ask him."
"(GASP) Just ask him!"
People sit in diners and talk about work. People go into diners late and talk about banging people in club bathrooms. At any level, too. You can talk as loud as you want about the sex you're having.
"LAST NIGHT I BANGED THIS PERSON AND IT WAS A GREAT TIME!"
"Oh yeah? That sounds awesome."
"IT WAS! WE WERE MAKING AS MUCH NOISE AS I AM RIGHT NOW, IN THIS DINER! LAST NIGHT I YELLED 'DEAR GOD, I HAVE NEVER BEEN THIS HARD, I MIGHT BREAK SOMETHING', AND NOW,  I'M GOING TO YELL, 'HEY, PUT EXTRA CHEESE ON THAT BURGER. I HAVE NEVER BEEN THIS HARD!"

Diners also aren't picky about how long you're there. You can order a coffee, maybe a bagel, sit there for six hours, nobody will anything say to you. Chill the whole damn day. Any other place letting you do that? Don't think so. You can't go into Red Lobster, just get biscuits, and sit there for hours.
"What would I like....? Well, I'm going to maybe talk on my phone for awhile, maybe someone will come meet me. I'll probably have a bunch of cigarettes waiting for this bus I have to get on... That'll probably be six hours.... I'll just have a diet pepsi. And keep em coming."

Waiters and waitresses at diners don't care what you're doing. If you walked into a steakhouse with puke on your shirt, you might get some looks.
"Hello, I'll be serving you tonight. Can I start you with som... oh god."
"Wooooooo! Yeah. I'll start with.... (burp)... ah, god. I'll take a .... fuuuuuucckkkkk."
"Sir, there's a little bit of... you have some... on your shirt there."
"Oh, this? Yeah.... it's not mine. A girl fell into me an.... (burp)... I'll take a.... aaahhhhh, I can't stop spinning."
Waiters at diners? Won't even look twice. You could come in there with your head cut off, holding a dead hooker. They won't even blink an eye.
"Hey, sorry that I'm coming in this way, but before I head to the hospital I wanted to get some food."
"Sorry? Sorry for what? Wasting my time? Just order your food. Is that head eating? What does it want?"

And that's another thing that makes diners great. It's acceptable to be what you are. You're beyond trashed? You're a seven hundred pound cripple? You have half a head and six arms? Cool. How do you take your coffee? Diners won't kick you out for being drunk. Diners won't kick you out for being smacked out of your mind on smack. Diners won't even kick you out for beating a kid at your table for not eating his dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets (which diners have!). As long as diners are around, we will all have a place to go.

twitter @nathanmacintosh

On a derailed train.


Yesterday, I was on a train that derailed in Connecticut. I was on the train headed to a show. It derailed right before it reached the stop I was getting off at. Here is a short recount of it.

I didn't want to leave as it was. I had hurt my foot two days before, and had stayed off of it so that it could heal. It was still pretty bad, but I had a show for a bit of money and can't really turn down money at this point. It's not a huge amount, but still. I just couldn't. So I grabbed a cane and dragged myself to this train. I'm walking as if I have already been in an accident.
"Hey, were you involved in a train wreck?"
"Not yet. I think that's coming."
People can be very nice, though. When I got onto the subway, people offered me their seats since as they could see that I was having a hard time.

I was very happy to get on the train to Connecticut. I just wanted to sit down after all of the traveling to get there. It's probably only about a half hour to get to the MTA North station, but with a cane? There are a million stairs in the city when you have to deal with them. When everything's working, they're just stairs. When you're dragging something? Stairs seem to not end. So I get on the train. I picked the second car closest to me as the first was full, and the second one was the closest. With a busted foot, that was my choice. That car ended up being the second last of the train with the direction we were going.

So, train leaves, and I was on it for almost two hours. I had never been to this part of Connecticut before, so I was watching the stops to make sure I didn't miss mine. Mine was next, and with my busted foot, I thought that maybe I should get up and wait by the door to save time. I decided not to, and I am very happy and lucky that I didn't. Five seconds after I had that thought, the train jumped and made a loud bang. We were going very fast, so at first it just seemed as if we had maybe hit something. Then it was clear that we had gone off the rails. The train was bouncing around; sparks and wood were flying past the windows. It felt as if the car I was in was going to tip. It stopped on a steep lean, but didn't tip.

As soon as we stopped, a woman was freaking out. Rightly so. This experience was pretty scary. There was a man across from me who kept saying in a calming voice, "We're all okay. Everybody's okay. We're all okay." The woman calmed down with this and people started to look for a way out. One side of the car was open, but people decided not to jump that because we could see live wires. The other side was opened, and people in the car started helping people down. When I got to the door, a man said he'd take my cane and help me down. I said, "Yeah. I apologize. I hurt my foot the other day." I had to sit down on the side of the train to get out, and there were people helping people down. These guys basically carried me to the ground and made sure I could stand.

Since nobody in my car was really hurt, I thought that maybe it wasn't that bad. Walking along the train, there were people who were bloody, had broken limbs, had clearly injured their necks. People we're crying all around, and everyone was in shock. We were all told to move to one side unless we were injured. Conductors and EMT's were walking up to everyone asking them if they were okay and if they needed any assistance.

One reason I'm writing about this is to say that it is amazing to be involved in something like this and see how fast people who don't know each other come together to help each other. Five minutes before this happened, everyone on the train is a stranger, then this happens, and everyone works together to find a solution to what has happened. It's nice to see how instinctual it seems to be in people. People say all the time that they don't like people, that people are jerks. No. People are just involved in what they are doing as we all are. But when something happens that wakes people up from that, you see that most people are great and mean well.

Again, the only reason I was on this train was to go to a show. So this happens, and I really didn't feel like doing it anymore. Being beside people who are seriously inured doesn't really make you want to tell jokes. Not me, anyway. Plus, I was shook from the crash. It didn't really hit me until about twenty minutes later, but it was jarring. This was at about 7:00 by now, and the show was at 8:30. Had to do it. I was still shocked by the whole thing, so I joked with the crowd, "I was in that train accident that happened a few hours ago, so if this doesn't go well it'll be the second train wreck I've been involved in tonight" or something like that. People laughed, and it made me a bit more comfortable just in the sense that I now had told them where I was at mentally. It's all that I was thinking about. The show ended up being fun. Afterwards, though, I was still in a weird place because of this crash.

On my way home to feel better about the whole thing, I was making fun of myself for it. It made me laugh that I was involved in a train derailment, and I can't even say that that's how I hurt my foot.
"Wow. You were on that train? That's how you sprained your foot?"
"No. I hurt it two days before doing the Ali Shuffle in a boxing class."
"...Oh. I was about to give you some sympathy sex, but a boxing class? Step your coordination up."
May seem weird to try to find the funny in it, but as a comedian that's just what my mind does. In all honesty, I'm lucky that I wasn't injured, and am very happy for that.

I hope everyone that was injured wasn't too badly hurt and that everyone will be okay. Below are some pictures I took and a link to a story about it.



http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/18/18340811-absolutely-staggering-dozens-injured-in-connecticut-train-crash?lite











The world is overpopulated?

Over the last couple of years, I've been in conversations with people about the earth's overpopulation. Apparently, there are too many of us. Yep, that's right. Some of us just should not, or are not supposed to be here. Were YOU the one to tip the scale? The kid you had?
"And today's top story, the Hermans had a little baby boy today. Why is this a top story? Well, because newborn Chris Herman has pushed the earth's population into the unlivable. Oh, wait! This just in, an old woman was beaten to death for her change purse on a Wisconsin interstate. We are back to a livable number."
Why just people? There are a lot of dogs. Maybe there are too many dogs. Do you have a dog? Maybe it's time to throw that dog into the street and get the numbers down.
"You've always been good to me, Sparkles, but there's just too many of you. I'll try to make sure you land on a car when I throw you off the balcony."
"Arrrfffff!"
Are there really too many people on the planet? I think it's an excuse.

People use the overpopulation argument as an excuse to not have kids. I've heard people say they're not having kids because there are too many people on earth. Wow. You're taking that upon yourself, Captain Planet? Were you planning on having as many kids as there are residents of Cleveland? No? Then not having one kid probably isn't going to help very much.
"So that future generations don't have to stand on each other, I'm not going to have kids."
"That's great! We could use four hundred thousand less people on the planet."
"Four hundred thousand? What am I, a roach? I was talking about not having one."
"One? You think not having one kid is going to help anything? Listen, man, have the kid. Have three. Hey, Hal! You hear this guy? One kid. One! Hurt the earth more to throw a plastic six-pack holder on the ground. One! Oh, man. That's rich."

"I don't want to have kids because the earth doesn't need anymore." 
Get over yourself. Are you serious? You're doing that for the earth? Just say you don't want kids! You're allowed to think that! Overpopulation seems to be the new 'not ready' for kids.
"Honey, I want to have a baby. We've been together for awhile and I think we're old and mature enough."
"I thought this would come up. Aggghhhh, look. I was in the mall today and there were people everywhere! I'm talking wall-to-wall, 'I-wasn't-alone-in-any-store' people! I just don't think this world needs another face eating at Baskin Robbins."
"So you're saying you can't have a kid because there is no space in the mall?"
"I couldn't even get to the khakis! You know how much I like khakis. I had to just stare at them through people's arms. I just think until it cools down a little bit out there, we should chill."

People say that they don't want to have kids because there's not enough space on the planet. Is it just people taking up all this space? Why not stop Starbucks? There are a lot of those around. They're taking up a lot of space, and you can't even have conversations with them.
"I don't know what's wrong with me. I have a good job, my girl's cool. I just can't get happy. Do you know what I mean, 'building on the corner of Main and Church'?"
"..........."
"Yeah. I don't have any answers either. Hey, have you seen Breaking Bad?"
"..........."
"You are a tough nut to crack, building."
People really don't think there's enough space on the planet?
"Where is everyone gonna go? There are people everywhere. Everywhere! I can't walk down aisle two when I want! I can't even open my car doors. I have to live in my car!"
Where's everyone gonna go? I don't know. Most of Canada? Middle America? There's open space everywhere! I'm sure there is some space in Iceland we could move some people to. Greenland. Newfoundland. Any of the places that end in 'land'. Any place where hunting is a recreational activity, there is space.
"You know, I just went hunting and I didn't see one person. Just a bunch of trees. Offer a tree a beer, see what happens. Rude ass tree just looks at you."

You can actually say there's no space? Have you gone everywhere? You've been all over the world and done censuses? Or did you just go to a crowded area, someone bumped into you and you decided that some people deserve to die?
"Man, I can't believe it. That guy bumped into me and spilled my Jamba Juice all over my shirt. There are too many people on this planet. That guy should be set on fire!"
Just because you saw a lot of people in a McDonalds doesn't mean there isn't space on the planet for everyone. You live in a place where there are tons of people. That doesn't mean there's no space at all.

Overpopulation has apparently also given rise to adoption. People say that they don't want to have kids because there are kids who need to be adopted.
"There are tons of kids out there. Do I REALLY need to have my own? Some mother had one, tossed it in a dumpster. One mother's trash is another mother's high school graduate. I'll just dust this one off and raise it."
"Really? It has a beef jerky wrapper stuck to it."
"I said I'll dust it off."
Sure, there are kids out there who need to be raised. That's good of you to do it. But if you're gonna do it, just do it! There's no need for the reason, definitely if the reason is overpopulation.

If overpopulation is even a legitimate argument, then we should find a way to make kids that isn't so fun. Right now? The activity is amazing. Sex is great. Maybe just change the name from sex. That might get people to calm down on wanting to do it.
"Yo, you see that girl over there, man?"
"Yeah. She's hot."
"I wanna 'maybe make a baby' with her tonight'."
"...Are you sure?"
"...Yeah, you're right. Let's just go get some sex."
"Waffles?"
"Waffles."

The overpopulation argument suggests that we should start thinning people out. That we have to control this. Really? We're just gonna decide who stays and who goes? Who's able to have kids and who isn't? Where do we start, bud? What's the application like to be on of the 'people who are not blown away just for being born' list?
"Here is your application."
"Hmmm. Question one. Have you ever liked a tweet, but didn't retweet it just because you were angry about how good it was? Well, sure. Once or twice."
"You have failed. We do not want your kind here. Please throw yourself off of that cliff."

Here's a quick way to see if you would be on the list if we started thinning people out. If you've talked about overpopulation at a bar, you are NOT on the list. You are not on the ship. Neither am I. If thinning people out is because of overpopulation is an actual conversation being had, it's taking place between billionaires behind move away bookshelves. Not over Pabst Blue Ribbon on patio furniture.


Twitter @nathanmacintosh
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