train in vain

Yesterday, Allie and I caught the train from Chicago to Kansas City. It was delayed for four hours because of a derailment. We had to wait in the train at the station for a long time without moving. So we went to the lounge car to play Boggle.

While there, we observed several failed attempts at the human mating ritual.

In the booth next to us sat two young women working on word search puzzles. After a while, a man with long hair and a beard sat down with them. He was a liberal know it all. He lectured the young women in a friendly but patronizing way about what makes good theater and why the bourgeois ruin it. He said this word, bourgeois, several times, drawing out the syllables.

I thought that perhaps the women were high school students, and this guy was a teacher escorting them and several other students on a theater trip to the big city. They looked very young to me. But then, after the guy left, they pulled out a great big bottle of whiskey and started drinking. That threw my theory off.

Not long after the guy left another guy started in on them. He asked them questions. Invariably, he would turn the conversation back to the weather. I wrote a note to Allie in which I deemed him the weather man.

We learned through his inquiry that they were college students from New Mexico who had been in Chicago visiting relatives. The man offered that he is a movie extra who lives in LA. To pay the rent he drives a limo. They told him they thought he looks like Ricky Gervais, star of the British version of The Office. They seemed to not even know that Gervais's latest project is called Extras.

Oh. I have to go eat. More later...