Have You Heard of Peter Pan?

My brother pointed out this adorable blog post from Christoph Niemann in the Times. Aww.

Missing the Train

The Subway Crush site might be new, but the experience -- and documentation -- of sudden strong feelings among underground commuters isn't.  This passage from Subwayland by Randy Kennedy describes the work of a man named Neil Goldberg, who would wait on subway platforms with a Sony handheld video camera for the sole purpose of filming the facial expressions of MTA passengers who missed their train:

Most interesting and striking in some of the 17 hours of footage Mr. Goldberg has taken so far is the way that commuters briefly let down their subway masks, allow their faces to register real emotion and then, realizing where they are, quickly bring the masks back up again.

"It makes it almost hard for me to watch sometimes," Mr. Goldberg said in his studio, where he will eventually distill the hours of recorded faces into probably five minutes of pure disappointment.  "Somehow, it's almost sad."

Eat, Sleep, Blog. Make Pasta?

I generally don't read on the subway to and from work for several reasons: My commute is relatively short, my hands are generally full (coffee, heels, lunch), and I have been known to miss my stop while reading. But I very much enjoy seeing what other people are reading (a girl can only study MTA posters so long). Today, for example, I was adjacent to not one, but two Atonement-readers. Also in close vicinity was the most ubiquitous subway-book of them all -- #1 on Goodreads' most read list for 2007 -- Eat, Pray, Love. As much as I like the title's pithy imperative, Lizzie Skurnick's splendidly useful review of this book forever cured me of all curiosity about its contents ages ago:

A sad truth for those of you out there seeking greater ones: Nothing is more boring than your epiphanies. (Even worse, sojourners–the more particular they are to you, the more they sound exactly like everyone else’s.) Such is the problem with Elizabeth Gilbert’s journey through the particulars of her digestive, spiritual and moral humors–located, for your corporeal information, in the regions of Italy, India and Indonesia, respectively. It’s a bit of a punt to say the book is self-aggrandizing–how could a book focused on one’s spiritual well-being not be?–but it’s the grand Richard Bachian strokes that provoke the reader beyond speech: “Simply put, I got pulled through the wormhole of the Absolute, and in that rush I suddenly understood the workings of the universe completely.” (Simply put.) However, we’re a girl! Fish-in-barrel elements aside, of course we loved that someone would eat pasta, meditate and tool around Indonesia for a year to get over a broken heart. There’s a lot to be said for pasta in general.

Look Mom, No Pants

This weekend is the 7th Annual No Pants! Subway Ride.  If you're not familiar with the occasion, it's a breezy prank (brought to you by the folks who orchestrated the ingenious Strand cellphone symphony) in which the willing board a train, wait for the doors to close ... and drop trou. Usually a few arrests are made and a few articles are written.  Harmless pantsless fun. Potential pantsdroppers (anyone can do it! so long as they're capable of riding sans pants and sans smirks) can check out the details here.  But take note, the undignified or un-self-possessed need not apply:

You are responsible for your own pants and they should be with you at all times.  If anyone asks why you've removed your pants, tell them that they were "getting uncomfortable" (or something along those lines) ... You can wear fun underwear if you like, but nothing that screams out "I wore this because I'm doing a silly stunt."

Seeing Something

The tagline of this article ("What, exactly, did 1,944 New Yorkers see, and what did they say?") is a question I've wondered myself when seated across from one of those If You See Something ads. The answer, I learned, is that reports of people counting (while praying) and flat-out phony tips topped the list. I'm not sure whether to be reassured by this. Granted, with over 8 million riders trafficking the city's subway's each day, some 2,000 calls for the whole year isn't much at all, which is itself good news -- if people aren't saying something, then they aren't seeing something, and if they're not seeing something, either there's nothing to see (no terror!) or they're not worried enough to look (no paranoia!). So hooray! I guess. And now (speaking of somethings I've seen on the MTA), here's my favorite inscrutably circular MTA Poetry in Motion poem (by Vera Pavlova):

If there is something to desire, there will be something to regret.

If there is something to regret, there will be something to recall.

If there is something to recall, there was nothing to regret.

If there was nothing to regret, there was nothing to desire.