Stories – john paganetti

That time we almost saw the Daily Show

Nishi and I went into NYC yesterday to attend a taping of the Daily Show. Jon Stewart is leaving later this year, and I thought it would be fun to see a taping. The trip down was part of my birthday present from my parents this year.

We dropped Charlie off with my parents, and got on the train in New Haven to head into the city. We had a roughly half hour walk from Grand Central to the studio, and would arrive at Grand Central about an hour before we needed to be there. The Daily Show overbooks tapings, so you need to be there a little early. We thought we’d get there by 2, but were about a half hour late, putting us right at the time they start handing out tickets. The line stretched around the block. We were about six people away from the front when they announced they were out of tickets for the day’s show.

We were at a loss. Being near the theatre district, we though it would be nice to catch a play, but everything there was out of our price range, and everything in our price range was far away. Maybe some live music? No, it’s a Wednesday night, most of the bars have a dude who couldn’t hold a candle to the people we like to listen to, nevermind a full band.

Food was in order – lots of it. We had a grand meal, and it brightened both our spirits. We made our way back to Grand Central and then New Haven. Though we didn’t succeed in our reason for going out there, it was a fine day anyhow.

Rough Start

2015 is off to a rough start. Our January is complete with vehicle malfunctions, scarce employment, and escalating health issues. Of course, all of these things will be remedied, but it’s still rough when they all pile on at once.

Nishi had been having more and more back issues lately, and hasn’t been able to lie on her side for a week or more. It reached a point late Friday night (it’s always on weekend nights) where we had to do something about it. Down to Middlesex ER we go, to see what they can make of it.

Nishi had been laying in bed prior to our trip, and hadn’t changed out of her pajamas. Since the air outside was under 20°F, she wore her fuzzy winter hat with the little ears on top. This apparently alarmed the ER receptionist, who talked to Nishi while I parked the truck. Moments after I get inside, we’re whisked back to a room where Nishi is receiving more attention than she has ever gotten in the ER. I’m asked to stay outside, and they proceed to get her changed into a hospital gown. This is all new to us, previous visits had been very straightforward, but we go along with it. The nurses changing her quickly discover there’s been a bit of an error. They were getting her ready for a psych evaluation.

Our running theory is the hat was to blame.

We did get to see the ER doc, and Nishi is feeling better. Mark came over today and pointed me in the right direction so I can get another car running. It all comes back together eventually.

Can’t Complain

I was walking around downtown Middletown a little while back, and passed a homeless guy with his foot in a brace. He said, “How’s it going?” I responded with my usual “Doin’ alright, how about yourself?” He said,

Can’t complain, it doesn’t do any good anyway. Woke up on the right side of the dirt. There’s no bars on the doors and windows. The hospital is a nice place to visit but you don’t want to live there.

Dust Devil

When I was younger, I played little league baseball. On one particularly windy game, a dust devil formed on the first base line. Play paused while the kids gawked at the tiny tornado that joined our game. I kept moving towards first base, and enveloped the first-baseman who was unsure what to do. It kept moving towards second base, avoiding the grassy outfield. Now it was clear that play wouldn’t continue until the distraction was gone, and players stepped back to let it pass. It rounded second, and made its way towards third. We started to cheer the dust devil, on the verge of stealing third. Sadly, it dissipated before reaching third, tagged out by some strong breeze. Whenever I see a dust devil I remember that day, and that story.

Pirates

There is a former employee of my company who goes to restaurants pretending to represent us, promises outrageous prices for oil, and takes waste oil without paying. He’s a sophisticated veggie pirate, and he’s causing all sorts of problems for Connecticut rendering companies. It is incredibly awkward trying to speak with restauranteurs who have dealt with him, since I am claiming to represent the same company he claimed to represent. It’s not fun telling them that they won’t get paid, and one interaction stands out.

From the get go, dealing with Chinese restaurants is a challenge. There is a language barrier, which breeds trust issues. Many Chinese restaurants seem extremely worried that I’m trying to somehow rip them off. Our company takes every step to try and extend a bridge to these small business owners, and employs a Mandarin speaker, as well as printing “We speak Chinese” in Chinese on our brochures and business cards. It helps a little.

I visited a Chinese restaurant that was hit by said veggie pirate, tasked with explaining the situation. After briefly explaining that he didn’t work for us, I showed them the number to call and confirm what I had told them, which was printed on the business card he left them. Okay, maybe he’s not that sophisticated. He just crossed out the 1-800 number and circled his cell number several times. Still, he easily causes problems, and the owner repeated what I had said several times, not wanting to believe it. “I don’t understand,” she eventually said. “Everyone has been so nice to us since we came here.”

American Studies

I recently remembered why I got into the American Studies program in the first place. It wasn’t a random decision, or my attempt to coast through college, but it was due to the influence of Siva Vaidhyanathan. When I realized a Computer Science degree wasn’t for me, I tumbled, undeclared, into the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. My interest at the time was centered around Intellectual Property law, and the waves it was creating in society. This interest was a direct result of being accused of breaking copyright law in high school, and later realizing I was protected under Fair Use. Being the agent of spite that I am, I learned everything I could about it.

Around the same time I settled in to being undeclared, Siva wrote a paper about a field of study called Critical Information Studies. Being a field that he had just invented, it wasn’t actually offered anywhere, but there were fields that were similar. American Studies was one of these, and was what Siva taught at the University of Texas. I read his manifesto, got fired up and declared my major, promptly forgetting why a semester later.

By that time I had managed to become bogged down and overwhelmed by the college process. Doing college became the focus of my time, instead of the knowledge I had hoped to receive. This was largely my own fault, starting myself off with a horrible first semester. I rarely attended some classes, and didn’t study much for others. This left me on academic probation, meaning I had to start doing well if I wanted to stay, whether or not I learned anything. This was extremely upsetting, and by the end of my sophomore year, I was fed up. I realized that I didn’t actually want to stay. I felt there was nothing being taught there that I couldn’t learn on my own, and my time could be better spent earning money. My parents convinced me to stay. After that, I was in it for the diploma, and anything interesting I could glean along the way. I didn’t think about Siva’s essay again until a few days ago.

The classes I took in my second two years were certainly more interesting than the first two, and I don’t think I could have gotten those same experiences outside a college environment, but I’m not convinced they were worth the time. My degree resembles nothing of what I had set out for it to be, and is probably closer to a Sociology or Philosophy degree. Critical Information Studies was a very academic discipline, and I was fed up with academia. But this whole story is moot, because even if I had crafted the degree that I had wanted to, I still couldn’t get a job.

Pulled Over

Anne Marie, Nishi and I were pulled over for the first time yesterday. There have been plenty of police/bus encounters, but up until yesterday no one had felt the need to pull us over. We were driving through the hills of western Connecticut, when a state trooper pulled along behind us. He followed me for nearly ten minutes before deciding to throw on his lights as I was crawling up a hill. There is probably something wrong with going 25 mph on a road that allows for much faster, and I was imagining a bizarre “Do you know how fast your were going?” exchange.

He walks up to the door looking kind of confused, and asked if I had any papers for this thing. I get up to get the registration, and the e-brake starts to slip. The e-brake in that bus has never been very good at keeping the bus from rolling on hills, though Joe once drove it all the way to Cheney using only the e-brake. When the e-brake slips, it makes an almost ratcheting movement, rolling a few inches backward at a time. I stepped on the brake quick enough to keep from buying him a new cruiser, and we threw chock blocks under the wheels. Playing it safe, he decided it would be best to move his cruiser out from behind thirteen tons of spray painted madness, and parked uphill.

When he came back I produced the registration, which he looked over briefly before asking for insurance as well. Handing him the insurance he explained that he pulled us over because he couldn’t read the license plate (reference picture), and everything seemed to be a-ok. He was nice enough to escort us as we crawled out way up the rest of the hill.

Did I ever tell you about the time I sold Heroin?

Jack and Mike called me one night, and asked if I was interested in coming to the diner with them. I don’t remember what I had been doing that day, but I was tired and planning on heading to bed early. Maybe I had just eaten and was full. Whatever the excuse, I begged off and went to bed. Some time later, before I had fallen asleep, I got a call from Jack, who was in the diner’s bathroom. He explained that the people at the booth next to them had begun to suspect that Jack was a heroin addict, and he’d started going along with it and playing it up. He said he was going to return from the bathroom with his sleeve unbuttoned and wrinkled, having just been rolled up. He wanted me to be the finishing touch to the act, by coming down and posing as his dealer.

This was enough to get me out of bed, and forgo any sleep that I might have needed. I made sure to park in sight of their table, and went inside. I went to their table, and after the type of brief and awkward conversation that is unique to drug deals, we went out to my truck, leaving Mike in the booth. In the truck we talked normally, but continued to pantomime doing something behind the dashboard. Jack made sure to flash a little cash. After a minute or so, Jack left to go back to his food, and I drove back home to go to bed.

I really love that we made someone’s night a little surreal.

Loan Shark

Stephen King wrote a book called The Stand, which was eventually put on film as a TV mini series. Four episodes, each an hour and a half long, faithfully recreating the story. Jack and I watched it on a whim one night, when we couldn’t decide what else to rent and the store was closing. We must have started it after eleven o’clock that night, and didn’t finish until five or six in the morning. It was quite good, and only more epic considering the struggle we went through to watch it all.

He shot me a text the other day saying that it was on TV in its entirety. I didn’t have cable, but it was streaming on Netflix and Nishi was game to watch it. There is a character in The Stand named Larry who is an aspiring pop musician who gets into trouble with loan sharks on the west coast. He borrowed a bunch of money in the anticipation of his record sales, but they didn’t cover what he owed. The thing is, shortly after he defaults on his debt, the plague hits and kills very nearly everyone. Including (I assume) the loan shark. This fantastic luck is never really mentioned in the story, on account of his mother and everyone he knows also dying. But he managed to be perfectly timed to profit on the apocalypse. He took out a big loan, spent it all, and never had to pay it back. This amuses me to no end.

I got to thinking about loan sharks in general, the break-your-legs kind, not the exorbitant rates kind. Wikipedia says they’re mostly gone now, and even when they were around they were just an appendage of the mafia. Despite that, I thought it could make for a good story where a man goes to a loan shark for some large amount of money, which he then uses to hire a hitman to kill that very loan shark. Yeah, I think there’s a fun story there.

What Year Is It?

In June of 2010 we dressed up like time travelers and invaded the Middletown car show. This venue lent itself to many jokes. I walked up to a man proudly displaying his car, and asked “What year is it?” He replied, “It’s a 1969 Rolling Widget.” “No, no, what year is it now?” and other such jokes (I think Peter came up with that one). I dressed as a inhabitant of a THX1138 type future in all white with a barcode on my neck and wrist, while both Peter and Joe went with Terminator themes. Omar decided to be a time traveler from the past, which seemed to really confuse people more than anything else, but to be fair, he was the only one who was asked to pose for pictures.