Praying Mantis waiting for a train in Stamford 1 AM. Just before this photo, he pissed himself, stomped out his cigarette, then awkwardly flew into the side of the local and bounced off. Drunk!
Scene: two 15 year old girls sitting down on the Stratford Station platform today. They had their legs dangling over the edge just as our train was pulling onto the platform. Luckily our engineer had quick reflexes and applied the brakes in time.
Me (agitated): Girls, What were you thinking? You could have gotten your legs chopped off...or worse!
Girls: We’re sorry!
Random guy across the aisle: Hey, At least you’d get great parking spots.
Me: Do you know how many people get killed out here doing stupid things like that?
Girls: We’re sorry!
Girl’s mother: Conductor, I have their tickets.
Me: And where were YOU when your daughters were dangling their legs off the platform?
Girl’s mother (defensive): Well...I TOLD them to stand up.
Random guy: ...and don’t forget, you’d get disabled rate on train tickets.
Ugh!
I still haven’t figured out if the random guy was being a jerk or was trying to make a point.
Yesterday, while crossing a footbridge at a beach here in Maine, we came upon a cute little 10 year old girl leaning over the wooden railing watching her father trolling for crabs in the water inlet below. The name “McDonough” was emblazoned across the back of the softball shirt she was wearing. I get ridiculously excited when I meet other people named McDonough, so I couldn’t wait to strike up a conversation. “What’s your name?”I asked, in the most non-pedophile voice I could muster. “Caitlin” she said. “Wow! My daughter’s name is Caitlin McDonough.” She smiled, but I could tell she wasn’t as taken by this fact as I was. “Where do you live?” I asked next, even though my wife was giving me that “you’re kind of being creepy” look. “Boston,” she said. “Wow! my ancestors first immigrated to Boston.” Caitlin smiled and turned back to look over the bridge as if to dismiss me. After putting our sand chairs away, I went back to the bridge and introduced myself to Patrick and Linda McDonough, Caitlin’s parents. They told me that the name McDonough is ubiquitous in Boston, “a dime a dozen” was the phrase I think Patrick used. They were very friendly, but I could tell they didn’t share my enthusiasm for finding distant relatives. I was a little disappointed, but before I left them to their crab pots, I told Caitlin that my daughter’s middle name was Aileen. Caitlin told me that her middle name was “Arlene”. I was now beside myself. I even think my Bean-town cousins were a little impressed by that.
There was a shampoo commercial back in the 80's in which a freshly
showered Heather Locklear holds a bottle of Faberge Organics Shampoo.
She says that it was so good that she told two friends about it...and
they told two friends, and they told two friends...and so on, and so
on...
I know the feeling. In December of 2015, I
posted a silly video of me while working as a railroad conductor, musically "conducting "
The Yale Glee Club aboard my train. This video went viral and at this
writing has over views on 3,348,126 Views on Facebook, and 52,321
people shared the video with their Facebook friends. These numbers
don't account for the thousands that watched/shared it on YouTube, or those who saw
it on their nightly news programs across the globe. Not bad for a silly video that
I just wanted to post to a few Facebook friends.
Here's how it happened:
On
December 4th, 2015, I was the conductor on the 2:45 PM Metro North
train from New Haven to Grand Central Terminal in New York City. A few
minutes before leaving time, a swarm of college kids headed toward the
back of the train. The rear two cars were closed, so I quickly opened
them to accommodate the extra crowd. We pulled out of New Haven
Station and I began collecting tickets. I soon learned that the 80
students were on a single group ticket. I was directed to a gentleman
who looked not unlike a professor.
"What group is this?" I asked.
"The Yale Glee Club." He responded.
Now
I've had the legendary Yale Whiffenpoofs on my train before, as well as
other assorted singing groups from Yale, but for some reason, it never
occurred to me to ask them to sing. But here it was, the holiday
season...and I really wanted to hear a Christmas Carol. I asked the
professor (who turned out to be Jeffrey Douma, Yale Choral Director), if
they would sing
me a Christmas Carol. He prompted them and they then sang the most beautiful version of
"The Wassail Song" that I'd ever heard. It sent shivers down my spine.
I thanked them for sharing their talents with me as they poured out of
the train and into Grand Central.
Later that night I
was boarding the 10:06 PM train from Grand Central to New Haven. I
heard singing in the terminal, and sure enough, The Yale Glee Club
rounded the corner, walked through the gates and down the ramp toward my train. I quickly
walked forward to the head of the train to open more cars. On the way I
chatted up some of the students. I told them I had an idea for a Facebook video in which I'd say,"I'm the conductor, let me conduct."
They all laughed, and Dan Rubin, one of the Glee Club Presidents said,
"Tell us that we're singing it all wrong and that you need to conduct
us." I loved that idea....but we still didn't know which song to do.
One of the students yelled "Carol of the Bells". I knew this song
pretty well from the dozens of Christmas CD's my wife continuously plays
from Thanksgiving to December the 25th, so I said "I love it!"
When
we pulled out of the station, I quickly ran through and picked up all
the tickets. I then told my assistant conductor to take over the ship, I
had something to do in the head end. As I walked forward, I
collected the group ticket from Professor Douma. I asked for
permission to borrow his glee club for a Christmas carol I liked to "Conduct". He gladly gave
permission and even offered to stand behind me to do the real
conducting. "Okay," I said, even though I had no intention of using him.
This is what happened next:
I was floored by how amazing they sounded, and I was a little self-satisfied with my less than stellar choral directing. You can see that I messed up at the end of the song when I raised my arm in a flourish, thinking the song was over, then realizing we weren't done. I was a little embarrassed by this and briefly thought about yelling "Take two!" But any subsequent execution would have lost the videos spontaneous feel.
I walked back to the rear of the train after the performance, and by the choral director Douma. He asked me when he was needed to conduct the song. "We already did it." I told him.
The next day I got an email from Greg Suralik with the video attachment. I watched the video and was delighted...and a little abashed for being such a ham. I briefly thought about posting the video to my Facebook page, but I wasn't sure how well it would be received by my employer. I decided that I better not post it in fear of getting myself into trouble. I replied to Greg's email, saying it was great, but I was too chicken to post it.
That weekend, my family went up to visit my younger daughter at her college. I hadn't shown anyone the video, but decided to pass my iphone around as I drove through Willimantic, and let them have a gander at it. They all loved it.
"Dad, you HAVE to post this...you'll be on Ellen." said my daughter Caitlin.
I told my family of my trepidation about posting the video, and they all seemed to think I was being overly cautious. Two days later, I sat at my computer, watched the video again...and decided to post it. Almost immediately, people started "liking it" and sharing it. By the time I got to work that day, I had something in the neighborhood of 250K views. The next morning it was over 1 Million views then my phone started ringing.
I first got a call from a company in Los Angeles that wanted to buy the rights to the video from me. They told me they'd give me a percentage of the profits. I told them I didn't own the video, it that it belonged to a Yale undergrad named Greg. The phone continued ringing, we were asked to appear on Good Morning America (couldn't work out the logistics). The next morning I did a radio interview with Vinnie Penn on a local radio station. Two local news stations interviewed me, one whilst following me down the aisles of my train with a camera. The New York Stations set up a press conference in Grand Central, but my train broke down on my way in from New Haven, and it was cancelled.
I became quite famous that Christmas season. It seems the video went all over the globe. Passengers wanted to take selfies with me, I even got a few autograph requests. Suddenly, my regular pizza shop stopped charging me for my daily slice of pizza, and friends I hadn't seen in years began calling and leaving messages. I had hundreds of new Facebook friend requests.
Months later I discovered I had a spam filter on my Facebook page and that I'd missed tons of interview requests from media all over the globe. I also got love letters from Sweden and Hong Kong, but most were just thank you messages for brightening people's day. I even got a special thank you from Lynda Carter, aka Wonder Woman.
It really was a once in a lifetime chance meeting...or so I thought. Here we are again a year later in 2016. Again unplanned....it must be fate.
I was standing against the wall in Grand Central on Saturday when a woman approached me and asked, "Habla Espanol?" I told her "Muy Poquito" (very little). She then pointed to the grand staircase and said something about "La pelicula" which I knew meant "movie/film" and I guessed that she was asking me a trivia question...which I love...even in a foreign language.
"Los Intocables"? She asked hopefully. I took a couple of years of Spanish in high school and college but I don't remember learning "Intocables"...but not wanting to disappoint, I gave her a pen and a piece of paper and said "escribe" (write). She grabbed my pen and drew a staircase and next to it wrote "policia" which I knew meant "police." It was starting to feel like a game of Pictionary on Univision, so I became overly-animated, turned to my coworkers and yelled "hey guys...Can you think of a police movie filmed on the grand staircase?" They all shrugged as if to say "No" ( which means the same in both English and Spanish.) The woman was starting to look frustrated with me and wrote in big letters "LOS INTOCABLES." I have a lot of bilingual coworkers, but none were standing with me, so I had to throw my hands up and say "sorry" (but I couldn't think of the Spanish equivalent for the word).
As the woman walked away, I felt defeated, but then I remembered I had an iPhone in my pocket. I quickly Googled "Los Intocables" and the movie "The Untouchables" popped up. I then Googled "The Untouchables Staircase" and a shootout scene popped up on You Tube of Elliot Ness (Kevin Costner) shooting someone on Chicago's Union Station staircase. I chased after the woman, wanting to say "No esta Aqui, esta en la Ciudad de Chicago!" But she was gone...I was crestfallen, then angry. I thought; what kind of person asks movie trivia questions in a foreign language? Then I remembered...I AM EXACTLY THAT TYPE OF PERSON;
"Hey Pierre" I'd ask dismissively while pointing to the Eiffel Tower...'Rush Hour 3'?"
