There are few things more romantic than New York City on a Sunday in the pouring rain.
Although, the theme of the weekend turned out to be Old Dead Things, which in some context is Victorian and romantic in its own right.
My new favorite store is Maxilla and Mandible on Columbus and 81st, where they have a stellar arrangement of skeletons, skulls, general taxidermy, and pretty dried butterflies in glass cases.
In the same vein, soggy Saturday was spent in the Museum of Natural History. I discovered a few things while strolling the hallways of that enormous morgue. Almost everything we “know” about dinosaurs is pure speculation and paleontologists mask this fact by consulting their thesaurus and picking out the big words. That’s why it’s called a thesaurus. Also, my love of marine life and little furry things with opposable thumbs still runs deep. I didn’t have much of a social life as a child but I had National Geographic. It amazes me how much comes back to me when confronted with the twelve stages of horse evolution. Equus indeed.
A third realization was that Tom Hanks narrating the planetarium show was unsettling in a way I can’t put my finger on. With all the dramatic CGI and special effects on the domed ceiling, I wanted the guy who does the movie trailers – you know, Movie Trailer Man – “and NOW… ONE MAN’s JOURNEY...”
On Sunday I finally unearthed the secrets of the Chinatown Chickenbus. I’ve heard legend and lore of it for years, picturing the swinging open-air triple-decker vehicle surging through traffic, feathers billowing out, squalling children wrapped in swaddling clothes, women shouting in foreign languages. Anticlimactically, it was three-dozen college students and a renovated Greyhound bus. But it got me home in 4 ½ hours for $10. It gets my Bunny of Approval.
Speaking of bunny, I now understand how working parents raise fat, bratty children. Guilt. I’ve been neglectful of the Kobie rabbit since I’ve been away a lot of weekends, and in attempt to quell my own guilt, I hastily toss him a forbidden carrot whenever he gives me the imploring look. His orange bottom is verging on obese and he has taken to biting me in residual anger whenever I turn up the TV too loud.
I’m sad to say I did not get the job that I applied for at Harvard in the Zoological School Department of Evolutionary Biology. I was so excited to scan slides of amphibians and reptiles all day. I thought it would be my saving grace from the corporate world.
Have I mentioned I’ve been wearing a suit every day? Like, for real.
Happy Monday.
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