Tried to Grip Myself, but Myself Keeps Slipping

And yet again I am remiss in getting anything written down about the day's events and am too tired to go into much detail. So here's a quick step-by-step.

1. Got up early, was tired and moved slow. Got started late.

2. Once downtown, but unlimited use public transit day passes for the next three days. The only time I used one today (thereby making it useless now) I would have been better served just walking. Unless one needs to quickly get all the way across town, it's easier and cheaper just to walk Philadelphia.

3. For that reason I walked to the Philadelphia Art Museum. There was a big marathon underway, and one of the major traffic arteries was closed, thereby making the next best lane so crowded it was demonstrably quicker to walk than take the bus.

4. In front of the museum, as part of the marathon, there was a stage set up with live music. "Hearing Shot Through the Heart" and "Living on a Prayer" back to back, I concluded it had to be Bon Jovi, because no one else in their right mind would play two back-to-back Bon Jovi songs. Turns out it was Slippery When Wet, a Bon Jovi tribute group.

5. I ascended the Philadelphia Art Museum's steps, but unlike many others I did not turn and raise my fists to the sky in celebration when I got to the top, like Sylvester Stallone. I am different.

6. I spent some three hours in the museum, looking at European and some American art from 1850 to the present day. I never knew Marcel Duchamp was a proper artist before he started signing urinals.

7. With time left over once I was done, I stopped at the Rodin museum. I think Rodin is my favorite sculptor, because of the dynamism in his figures, and the museum--second only to Paris in its Rodinian completeness--is a treasure.

8. I wandered around a bit after that, and ended up going to one of Philadelphia's gay bars, Woody's. While I was there a guy across the table dropped his pants to show us his new ring. Another man pulled out his sticker in front of me at Nelly's in DC. I'm told this doesn't normally happen. Maybe I bring it out in people.

9. My bartender was an overbearing, walking erection who--because I am, in his words, "reserved," and because I mentioned something about Utah--kept calling me his Mormon.

10. I made a friend, who had to leave but I may see tomorrow evening, and then made a couple more, who showed me around the Gayborhood. One of them offered to stay at his place. In retrospect this might have been a good idea.

11. I started making my way home shortly after 10:30, got a little turned around, and got to the train station at 16th St. at 11:00 and found that the train line I needed to get home that I thought would be in service until midnight, had in fact stopped and would not resume until the next morning.

12. I had to call a cab to take me home. I didn't know the address, and he couldn't find the train station that was too blocks away from it, and so we wasted about $10 I'm sure, just wandering around the nearby neighborhoods until my gracious host met me at a nearby street and took me back.

No quotes today. Only the observation that none of my trips would be complete without some kind of insane traveling SNAFU, and that I'll probably fare better when I actually live in one of these places.