Urban Verbs – "Subways" (1980)

On this train, I'm never ever lonely

People smile from pictures on the wall

The Travel + Leisure magazine website currently features a slideshow titled "World's Most Beautiful Subway Stations."

I can't argue with the stations from Paris, St. Petersburg, Stockholm, Moscow, and Tashkent that are on the magazine's list.

The T-Centralen Station in Stockholm

(Who knew that Tashkent – the capital of Uzbekistan – even had a subway?  And who knew that Uzbekistan was a doubly-landlocked country?  A doubly-landlocked country is one that is surrounded by landlocked countries.  The only other doubly-landlocked country in the world is Liechtenstein, which has fewer residents than Joplin, Missouri, and doesn't really deserve to be classified as a country.)

But Travel + Leisure also put a Washington (DC) Metro station on its "most beautiful" list, which makes me wonder if anyone from the magazine has even ridden the Washington Metro.  

"The Washington Metro is a rarity among America's largely utilitarian subways," says the magazine.  The Metro's underground stations feature "vaulted cathedral ceilings with coffered blocks," and the "elegant up-lighting and hushed mood give [the stations] an ecclesiastical air."

Gallery Place Station (Washington, DC)

If you ask me, Metro stations are depressing spaces that remind me more of a set for a dystopian science-fiction movie more than a cathedral.

You never forget you are underground when you're in a Metro station.  The stations are poorly-lit and devoid of ornament and color.  I would describe the brutalist Metro architecture as Soviet-style, but the subway stations in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kiev, and other former USSR cities are much more attractive than the Washington Metro's stations.

Avtovo Station in St. Petersburg, Russia

The most eye-pleasing aspect of a Metro stations is usually its advertising signage.  On occasion, a Metro station will only have advertising from a single advertiser.  Gallery Place, the busy station closest to my office building, has been taken over by a diverse collection of advertisers in recent years, including Microsoft (when it introduced its "Surface" tablet computers a few years ago) and the Virginia Tourist Authority.  

Recently, I debarked from my train at Gallery Place to discover that every available square inch of the station was covered with advertising for something called Go90, which I later learned is Verizon's new mobile video/social network app:

According to the ads, the Go90 app allows you to "watch, cut & share all the awesome."  In other words, Go90 allows you to "share the stupid" and "confuzzle" (confuse + puzzle?) your friends:

It sounds to me like Go90 will result in millennials wasting even more time on their smart phones – which seems to be exactly Verizon's idea:

Here's the basic Go90 logo, which looks like "go" and also looks like "90":

Go90 posters are all over the walls of the Gallery Place station:

There's a big Go90 advertisement right in the middle of the floor.  (I never know if it's OK to walk on the ads on the floor.  Maybe I should walk around them?) 

The station's ventilation shafts have been turned into billboards:

Even the entrance/exit gates have little pictures of happy Go90 users:

A number of hip young Go90 users are featured in the posters.  Each one is labeled with an adjective or short phrase, which could double as Seven Dwarfs-type names for the hipsters.

There's "Excited":

And "Rainy Day":

And "Wide Awake":

And my personal favorite, "Dazed":

The ads are colorful and bright and a little psychedelic – just what the ginormous expanse of grayness that is the Gallery Place Metro station needs.   

Here's what The Verge had to say about Go90:

Verizon today officially rebranded the act of turning your smartphone sideways — and it's called Go90, as in degrees.  The new mobile video app is an effort to snatch eyes away from popular mobile services chipping away at TV, and its absurd name is a way to ensure people view Verizon partner videos horizontally.  Because vertical video is not chill.

The Go90 app description contains some cringe-worthy feature highlights straight out of 2010, like "Cut and share those OMGGG moments with friends, like that catfight that just broke out on that MTV show you can’t get enough of."  You can also start an online "crew" of content-hungry like minds to chat about your obsessions and, as Verizon says, "forget the haters."  In non-marketing-speak, that means the app has a group chat function.

I don't think I'll be adding Go90 to my Blackberry.  For one thing, a Blackberry screen is pretty square, so rotating it 90 degrees doesn't really do much.  For another thing, I don't think Go90 is available for the Blackberry operating system.

The Urban Verbs formed in Washington, DC, in 1977.  I bought their eponymous debut album when it was released in 1980 – I thought they ranked right up there with Elvis Costello, the Talking Heads, and my other favorites from that era.  But neither of their major-label albums sold very well, and the group broke up in 1981. 

Here's "Subways":

Click below to buy "Subways" from Amazon:

Pussycat Dolls -- "Elevator" (2008)

Like an elevator, we go up and we go down . . .

You're stuck on one while I'm pressing three 

Then we end up on the fourth floor

And then we disagree

Goodreads is a very popular "social cataloguing" website that is focused on books.  

If you search for quotations relating to "intelligent" on Goodreads, you get 32 hits.  If you search for quotations relating to "stupid," you get 125.  

In my experience, that's about right.

Stupid T-shirt

One of my favorite authors, Richard Ford, penned this line in his novel, The Sportswriter:

"People surprise you, Frank, with just how f*ckin' stupid they are."

But surely we shouldn't be surprised by how f*ckin' stupid people are.  After all, as the late George Carlin once said: 

Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize that half of them are stupider than that.

"Stupid?  Me?   Yeah, I'm stupid.
Stupid like a FOX!"

That quote shows that George Carlin had considerable insight into stupidity (as well as a good understanding of statistics).  

Carlin also understood men and women:

Here's all you have to know about men and women: women are crazy, men are stupid.  And the main reason women are crazy is that men are stupid.

I'm probably beating a dead horse here.  If I say that people are generally stupid, and that many (perhaps most) of the things people do are stupid, the only people who are going to argue with me are STUPID people -- right?

I could list many, many examples of the stupidity I encounter every day, but I will limit myself to just one.

I get to work by parking at the Glenmont Metro station and riding a Red Line train to downtown DC.  Metro recently opened a second parking garage at Glenmont, and there are always parking spaces available in that garage at the civilized hour when I arrive to begin my daily commute.

When the new Glenmont parking garage opened, there were so many politicians present at the opening-day ceremony that you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting one.

The day the new parking garage opened

The county executive was there, the neighborhood member of the County Council was there, the local state senator was there -- even our esteemed congressman was there.  (Actually, that guy's not my congressman any more.  I live in the most gerrymandered state in the country, and I've been in three different congressional districts since we moved into our current house.)

The new six-level, 1200-space garage didn't come cheap.  (Nothing that our county government does comes cheap.)  But it's state-of-the-art in every way:

The $24.7 million price tag was assembled from Montgomery County revenue and liquor bonds backed by Metro, a surcharge at all county Metro stations, and a $1.6 million state grant, according to a county press release. . . . The garage was built to LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards, with energy efficient lighting and recycled building materials.

Believe it or not, spending $24.7 million doesn't necessarily protect you from stupid stuff.  To wit . . .

Here's a photo of the control panel for the parking garage elevator:

If you want to get to the Metro station, which floor do you want?

(Take your time.)

The obvious answer is the first floor, of course -- because there's a big shiny star right next to the number "1."

You're not stupid, so you probably suspect this is a trick question.  And you would be right.

If you ride all the way down to the first floor, you'll find yourself underground when you exit the elevator, with no easy way to get to the Metro station.

Metro has attempted to remedy the confusing elevator control panel with signs like these on each floor of the garage:

Wouldn't it have been simpler just to say something like "You are on level 4.  To get to station, exit on level 2"?  

Why this sign could be improved, let's not be too critical.  After all, assuming you can do simple math, you'll probably figure out which floor to exit on to get to a train.  

That leaves the real question: Why the hell didn't they just put the star on the control panel next to the "2"? -- and maybe add a little plate next to it that said "Station" or "Metro access" or something similar to make it clear that the second floor was where you had to exit if you wanted to get on a Metro train.  (There is absolutely no other reason to park at the garage other than to get on a train.)

Speaking of stupidity, I give you the Pussycat Dolls, and their song "Elevator."

The Pussycat Dolls

The Pussycat Dolls got their start as a modern-day burlesque troupe -- the Dolls performed live with Christina Applegate, Carmen Electra, and Christina Aguilera, and were featured in Maxim and Playboy and the 2003 movie, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle.  

In 2003, the Dolls signed a recording contract.  (I would have never thought to turn a bunch of glorified strippers into pop stars.  I might have thought about crossing them over into porno movies, but not pop music.)  Their first album had six hit singles and sold 10 million copies.

The group fell apart after releasing their second album, Doll Domination, in 2008.  While all the Pussycat Dolls were equal at first, it seems that Nicole Scherzinger eventually became significantly more equal than anyone else, and the resulting envy and resentment over her lead-singer status resulted several defections from the group.

Nicole Scherzinger

In 2011, the Pussycat Dolls reformed with six new members.  It was widely reported that Kim Kardashian was going to be the executive producer of a new reality show featuring the new Dolls, but nothing has come of that idea as of this writing.  (Dum spiro, spero.)

I don't normally think of the Boston Globe as stupid.  (The Boston Red Sox, yes -- I mostly think of them hairy and ugly, but they are definitely stupid as well.)  But I was wrong, as this excerpt from that newspaper's review of Doll Domination proves:

[Doll Domination is] often filled with giddy, brilliantly produced goofy pleasures with nothing on its mind beyond love and pleasure.  Oh, sure, there are a couple of ballads about heartache and regret, but lead singer Nicole Scherzinger sounds more like she's pining for a good facial than a guy.  Especially as the disc wanders to its fatiguing 21st track. We know the Dolls want staying power, but c'mon . . .

Methinks the Globe should have stopped a couple of double entendres ago.

Here's a video of a live performance of "Elevator."  (It's a hot mess.)

Click below if you'd like to order the song from Amazon.  (In other words, click below if you're stupid.)