If A Tree Falls In The Forest, Who Pays The Bill?

(Farewell, Iron Lady.)

This morning, I had an everything bagel with scallion cream cheese and lox for breakfast.

"And?"

"And" nothing.  That's the whole story.  The point of it is that life is good.  The weather is spring-ish.  The sound of landscaping equipment is wafting in through the open windows.  (Ever hear a feral cat scream as it gets caught in a lawnmower?  The sound is blood-curdling.)  My seasonal excuses are flaring up.  (Thanks to my hay fever I'm getting a therapeutic use exemption for EPO.)  I also rode my bike yesterday, steering it intentionally onto the bumpier parts of the road in honor of Paris-Roubaix, the race won by Fabian "Spocktopus" Cancellara:

("I won a Classic and all I got was this stupid rock."--Spoctopus)

Unfortunately, I forgot to set my DVR, but I did record the rebroadcast that came on late last night, which means I'll never, ever watch it because I already know everything that happens and now it will just sit there unwatched until I delete it to make more space for kiddie movies.  

And that's how I follow bike racing.

Anyway, making pictograms is more fun than watching bike racing:

(minus)

(plus)

Equals "Perry Ruby" which sounds kind of like Paris-Roubaix.

You may applaud now:

Speaking of spring, here is a scenario familiar to all New Yorkers:

You're walking or riding on a lovely spring day, buzzed on pheromones and choking on post-nasal drip due to your seasonal allergies.  Suddenly you notice cables duct-taped to the pavement, and then some weasely little NYU graduate with a Leatherman on his belt stops you and says, "Uh, could you wait, we're shooting here."  That's right, it's yet another film shoot.  Maybe they're making a crappy Hollywood blockbuster.  Maybe they're shooting another episode of an insipid TV drama.  Or maybe it's just a commercial for some piece of shit car.  Whatever the case, a bunch of overpaid schmucks are making you late for your job while they do theirs, which is pumping the popular culture's bloated lips full of more collagen "entertainment"--unless you're like me, in which case you reply "Oh, shut up," and keep going, despite the fact you don't even have a job to which to be late.

It's highly irritating, but I suppose it's the price of living in the only real city in America.

What's even more irritating though is being interrupted by a film shoot when you're not even in the city.   As I mentioned Friday, I do like riding all-terrain bicycles, but I don't like interrupting people while they're humping.  Therefore, that very afternoon, I headed north to a humping-free zone that offers much better riding:

(See?  No garbage, and nobody humping.)

What I did encounter though was an overturned car, because they were filming some kind of movie in the park:

Presumably the scene involved a car plummeting off a highway into a ravine, because they had installed a guardrail in the parking area:

They also bulldozed a path right through the trail, presumably for all their equipment:

It's hard to tell, but the trail is supposed to go like this:

It's a fun little section too--or at least it was before they fucked it up.  I mean, it's circa 2013 for chrissake!  Can't they do all this shit with computers?  They're like bicycles for the mind!

(Oh shut up.)

I guess what I'm saying is that absolutely nothing is more important than my leisure activities, and that it's only acceptable to inconvenience people when I'm the subject of the film.

I wonder if the film production company will send the woods a bill for scratching their crane, sort of like how the NYPD runs down cyclists and then sends them bills for scratching their cars:

The city added a thousand-dollar insult to an already painful injury when it demanded that a Brooklyn cyclist pay for damage to the police car that struck and sent him flying.

“I think it’s preposterous,” said Justin Johnsen, 31, who received the $1,263.01 bill from the city last month for the Nov. 5 accident on Flushing Avenue that left him with deep cuts that required stitches.

“I was upset. I was in kind of disbelief that they were going to send this letter after four months or so and ask me to pay damages for their vehicle, when they hit me when I was on a bicycle,” added Johnsen, who was not ticketed for the crash.

The only thing even remotely surprising about any of this is that the police did not also ticket the cyclist for the crash.

Meanwhile, the first bike share stations are beginning to appear:

I give it three months before the first station is destroyed by an out-of-control motorist who "mistakenly" steps on the accelerator instead of the brake.