My friend Forrest, a local Miami comic, agreed to give me a ride to The Amtrak station. He insisted I get directions printed up. I went to the rip off of a "business center" in the hotel I was staying at, and paid 10 dollars for directions and a map. The ridiculous prices bothered me. But it was still way cheaper than taking a cab.

Forrest came to get me around 9am. He's the boss at some kind of maritime operation. He and his employees try to save the.........what are they called? They look like whales, but they also look like seals. I can't think of what they're called. Well anyway, the fact that I can't remember is evidence they're fighting a losing battle.

It doesn't surprise me. Forrest isn't the least bit interested in helping this already forgotten creature. He left the office that morning without so much as clocking out, just to give me a ride to Amtrak.

I couldn't be any less beneficial to his government funded mission if I was out in The Atlantic killing the creatures with a spear. He was getting paid by Dade County to take me to the train station. Forrest just walks all over weak ass Dade County. He doesn't care how it makes Dade County feel. Poor Dade County. Forrest is a bully. Not to fret though. I hear Dade County just signed up for Karate classes. And Forrest agreed not to fight Dade County until the "All Valley" tournament.

I gave Forrest the directions. He looked them over briefly and told me they were no good. An hour later he got me there: 13 miles down the road. Good thing he asked me to give him the directions. How else would he be able to ignore them enough to take the longest way possible and get lost 3 times?

I got to the Amtrak station. There were no cars in the parking lot. It was in an industrial section of Miami.

I went inside. The first person I interacted with was an older dude coming out of the bathroom. "Excuse me," I said.

He looked at me like he wanted to kill me. He had every right to hate me. The way I was all showin' off with my manners and shit.

I went and got my ticket. I was an hour early. I sat down in a seat to wait for the train. I was already annoyed. The lobby had The Family Feud on the TV and it was unbearably loud.

"SURVEY SAYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

When did the survey start shouting?

A Mexican dude in front of me had an AM radio playing Mariachi tunes. A little girl was having a "conversation" with her father behind me.

"We goin' to Grandma's house!"

"You goin' ta' Gramma's house?"

"We goin' to Grandma's house!"

"You goin' ta' Gramma's house."

"We goin' to Grandma's house?"

"You goin' to Grandma's house!"

And so on, and so on, infinity. Conversations need direction. Ideas have to evolve. Sentences need to inspire new sentences, until the conversation can reach a point of mutual understanding, and then end. If the conversation is just a repetition of the same sentence, no progress will be made, and therefore the exchange will be infinite, and my patience will become extinct. It was too early in the trip for this. I was going to need my composure for the train ride.

Manatees! That's what they're called.

On the Wall were cardboard cutouts of superlatives. The signs were hand drawn, like something you would see on the wall when you were in kindergarten. The signs said things like, "Super!!!" "Hurray!!!" "Outstanding!!!" "Good work!!!!" "Wonderful!!!!" They should have been signs that said, "You fucked up! You're a loser! You travel in the worst way imaginable! Get a better credit card! You might as well be a citizen of a third world country!!!!!!!! Amtrak is for LOSERS!!!!!!"

Excuse me, wall!

The train came. We all got in a line. A lady asked me in some kind of Spanish accent if this was the train to New York. I told her it was. She was excited.

I got on the train. Picked out my seat. Our train attendant was a big black woman. She talked to us like she was a sergeant in the military.

"Now, Family! I call you that because for the next 30 hours, we are going to live together like we are a family."

I looked around the car. I didn't recognize anybody from Thanksgiving dinner, definitely not the guy with The Giants jersey and 16 pounds of bling around his neck.

Our guide walked up and down the aisle yelling at us about the bathroom she knew we were inevitably going to destroy.

"When you use the bathroom! Do not throw paper towels in the toilet! Do not leave the water running! If you run the water too much, we will not have enough to get us up to New York! I have never seen this many people get on the train this early in the Miami to New York trip!"

Fine. I knew to turn the water off when I was finished washing my hands. I knew to throw trash in the trash. That was perfectly acceptable to me. I've been through similar scenarios every single day of my life, for you see, I've always lived in CIVILIZATION. I've always been a member of SOCIETY.

I went to bed. I went to chair.

"Ticket!"

Somebody was shaking me. You have got to be joking. The conductor shook me to wake me up. Did he ask to see my ticket? No. Did he tap me on the shoulder and say, "excuse me?" No. He just shouts, "Ticket!" and then shakes me.

Like I'm not a paying customer. Like I didn't spend legitimate US currency to get on board. This is the conductor. This is how the conductor acts. He needed to conduct his motherfucking hands off of me. Is that even legal?

"I've made a huge mistake," I said to myself like I was a character in the TV show, 'Arrested Development.'"

I slept for an hour or so. Then I got up to go to the bathroom. I'm standing there pissing and the stream is going back and forth all over the toilet bowl. I'm like, "This bitch is going to kill me if she sees her bathroom is messed up." So I picked up a paper towel and wiped off the seat.

I went back and sat down.

You had to make reservations if you wanted to eat in the dining car. I did so.

At 6:00pm, I walked in and sat down. They brought me a menu. There were 8 booths and about 6 of them were empty.

I was sitting there thinking about how relaxing it was to see the country this way and enjoy a nice meal, when the waiter sat an old lady across the table from me. They didn't sit her in any of the many empty booths. They sat her across from me. Not next to me. 4 feet away from me, face to face, so we had nothing to do but stare at each other.

Inhale. Sigh.

I think she must have asked to sit with me or something. Like she didn't want to be alone. I'd have to be a real asshole to say I didn't want to sit with her, right? I would have to go out of my way to get out of the situation. I would have to call someone over and say, "I don't want to sit with this woman." I'd have to point right at her. It would be 6 different kinds of rude.

Even if I did it behind her back, she would still know I made the huge effort to have her removed from my booth. She would also know I did it just because I could not bear the simple act of sitting across from her. Keep in mind, I could sit next to her all day, but face to face? 1 minute was an eternity.

I didn't want to sit with her. I didn't want to talk to anybody. And this woman? This woman was somebody.

We talked a little bit about how nice it was to take a train. She was going to South Carolina. We were pleasant enough to each other. But there were long periods of silence. I kept looking around the car. Most of the booths were still empty. It didn't make any sense. Anyway, I know I'm a baby. I know I'm a brat, but it ruined my dinner. I couldn't enjoy it. Felt like a first date with an old lady. You know the tension. You can never figure out when to make your move.

On the way back to my seat, the cool kids tried to get me to join their cool crew. This girl told me she liked my hat. I guess I was supposed to stop and talk about it. I just told her it was from Target and kept moving. She said something about that being "alright." I wasn't apologizing for it. I just didn't know what else to say about it.

I went back to my seat, but this woman had her ass in it. Not only that, she had all of her stuff spread out next to her on the other seat. Great. I tried to sit next to her. She made the most mild attempt in the history of common courtesy to move everything, but she wasn't even putting a dent in the pile of suitcases and bags she had stacked up past the top of her head. I let her off the hook and just sat next to another older lady across the aisle.

This woman I sat next to was in her forties or fifties. It was the same woman that asked me hours ago if the train was going to New York.

She told me she was from Ecuador and currently enrolled in an English class. She asked me to check her homework for any grammatical errors. There were plenty. But how could I correct it without changing what she wanted to say? It was all kinds of gibberish. There were "sentences" like:

"The squirrel run over by where I won't not how."

So then I'd correct it with, "The squirrel ran over next to where I was. I'm not sure why."

Is that what she was trying to say? No. Probably not. But what she wrote wasn't correct or resembling any kind of reality. I had to get that squirrel doing something comprehendible. I didn't know what to do. I just kept trying to change her words into something that made sense. She kept writing more pages and then handing them to me.

She had begun writing about an angel. I "corrected" it and handed it back to her.

At this point it was dark out and the lights in the train went out. She panicked. I reached up and turned on her overhead light. She was grateful.

Then she handed me her notebook again to proofread, aka rewrite completely. I started to wonder how long this was going to go on for. Then in her notebook she had written about how the lights went out and her "angel" had turned it back on. I felt like such a dick. I was the angel. Did she want me to respond or make a comment about this? I never acknowledged the fact that she was writing about me.

Then she told me it was a poem. Damn it! She should have told me that before. I was correcting it and making it into coherent sentences when it could just as easily be random statements and phrases. Whoops. Hope I didn't screw up the poem.

I sat down at another seat in the row behind the lady working on her homework and started reading Factotum by Charles Bukowski. It was fantastic. I was truly enjoying it. The woman would still hand me the notebook. And I'd still correct it for her. But mostly I just read my book and it was nice and relaxing. It was nighttime and things were winding down and growing quiet.

Across the aisle was the middle aged woman sitting in my seat. She had the whole thing reclined with the legs section elevated, and she was scrawled out across both the chairs. I didn't care. I had a row to myself at the moment.

Then the con-dick-tor came by and told me to get back in my seat. I pointed to the lady who was sitting in it. She was now lying down, occupying both seats.

He starts tapping her with an open hand, practically hitting her, then shaking her going, "Excuse me! Excuse me! Scoot over please."

Please? The word "please" does not belong anywhere near the rest of that scenario.

The woman never took the blanket off of her face. She just sat up, now only occupying one seat. She immediately fell back asleep.

Meanwhile there were tons of places to sit on the car. The conductor was just being a pain in the ass. I got in the seat, which really wasn't even my original seat. She was still in it. I turned on the light. I didn't want to ruin this lady's sleep, but I wasn't tired and wanted to read my book. At least I wasn't punching her in the face like the guy in charge. Eventually I fell asleep around 4 in the morning. I woke up around 2 in the afternoon.

As soon as I came to, the lady next to me apologized for being in my seat. I told her I didn't care. She never looked up to see who was beating the Hell out of her the night before, and thought that the conductor shaking her was me. That I was harassing her like that. Ha ha! I can't even imagine doing that.

I don't remember too much about the rest of the day. I do know I went to the snack bar when the train was stopped and the guy behind the counter was bitching out anyone who asked for something.

Somebody would ask for a beer. He'd get it for them, and then when they handed him a bill, he'd shout, "I don't have any change!" Then he'd point to the cash register and be like, "The electricity's out!"

This would confuse anyone. You gotta' say something before you serve the food.

So there were a million people standing around waiting to order, or worse yet, pay for what they already had in their hands.

As soon as the electricity came back on he'd get so pissed, shouting, "Next!" But nobody knew who was next because there was no room for a line. It was just people crowded around his counter.

"Next! NEXT!!! COMEON!!!!!!!!"

This guy was a sweetheart. A true prince. A man with people skills. It's weird that he ended up being a snack bar clerk on an Amtrak train, and not the CEO of Microsoft. It's all politics, man. Red tape.

I also remember this lady sitting behind me, coughing on me the whole way there. 30 hours of coughing. Nonstop. The back of my head was soaking wet.

As we passed through Trenton, it was time to talk politics. Our train attendant out of nowhere just starts blabbing about how it doesn't matter who is elected president. I knew exactly where it was going too.

"It don't matta' who get elected president. Only one person matters................"

Can you guess who it is, readers? I'll give you a hint. He's been dead for almost 2000 years and he lives in your heart.

".........Jesus."

No shit. I thought she was going to say Tom Wopat.

She's like, "You ever wonder how you gonna eat? You look in the refrigerator and you like, 'how my gonna eat?' Then you wake up in the morning and there's food in the fridge?"

3 people were like, "Yes!"

Yes? If I were to respond, my answer would sound more like, "no." That has absolutely never happened to me. Never once. It definitely explained why this woman was so far from petite. Jesus grew food in her refrigerator whenever she was low on funds. I would love free magic food. I can't stand the hustle and bustle of the grocery store.

If only those starving kids in Africa would just say a prayer to Jesus Christ. Then they would have food in their refrigerators every morning when they woke up. But those stubborn little jerks only worship their false, made up Gods, like Zebras and Coca Cola bottles. They should just wise up and send praise to the God with the correct name. Then they'd be fat little piggies like us.

We pulled into Grand Central Station 2 hours behind schedule.

I climbed up the stairs to the regular part of the subway. I bought a subway card on debit. This lady who didn't speak English was handing me cash. She wanted me to buy her one too. I didn't want to get involved.

I got on a train headed towards Brooklyn. I think it was an A or a C. I didn't really know what I was doing, I just knew I had to get to an F to get to Park Slope to where I was going to stay. My plan was to get off at every stop and see if I could find a transfer to the F.

It only took 2 stops.

I got on the F, and sat down. It was no accident that I got to be the caretaker of Colonel Walter E. Kurtz's memory, anymore than being back in New York City was an accident. There is no way to tell his story without telling my own. And if his story is a confession, then so is mine..

I got off the train in Park Slope. I walked to my friend Jay Larson's apartment, fully aware of the contrast between an Amtrak car I had just spent 30 hours in and the infinite architecture and energy of New York City.

I got to Jay's. I pushed on the buzzer. Kate, Jay's girlfriend buzzed me up, but I didn't realize I had to make it passed 2 buzzing doors to get in. So I buzzed again and got up.

I walked upstairs. Jay was at work. Kate was making dinner and gave me a warm welcome. She made me some fish that she had just baked and opened me a beer. Perfect. We watched a basketball game. Celtics versus Detroit. I'm not into sports at all, so when I watch it I have to find a team to root for if I want to find any kind of interest in it. I decided to root against Boston.

I just went to Boston and everyone there seemed like a dickhead. At one point me and my friend Daniel were walking down the street in February in Boston. This dude in shorts, pretty normal looking (besides the shorts), walks up to the both of us, looks right at me, and shouts, "Fuck you!"

Without missing a beat, me and Daniel both go, "Fuck you," and start to walk again. I have to say the timing was perfectly executed by both parties. You could almost hear the director yelling, "cut."

Anyway, I'm sitting in Kate's apartment in Park Slope and I'm rooting for Detroit. Secretly. In my head. She's Jay's girlfriend. She's gotta root for Boston. Jay's all about Boston. Even though later during my stay, Jay would confess to me that he's not actually from Boston. He's from a small town in Massachusetts.

People do that all the time. They'll tell you they're from the city just so they don't sound like a hick. I should do that. I always say I'm from Southern Maryland. People always go, "Baltimore?"

No. If it was Baltimore, I would have said Baltimore. People always wanna know where you're from. I've never asked anyone where they're from. Who gives a fuck? Most people are predictable as all Hell. Most people think it's good to ask run of the mill questions just to get a conversation going. Conversations are ALWAYS unnecessary. Opening my mouth to answer things I don't care about is a chore equivalent to digging a hole to the center of the universe with a popsicle stick. But that's just me. I'm a brat.

One time on an airplane, a couple sitting next to me brought their baby with them. The man (with a ponytail) (Yes, that's correct. A ponytail) was in the middle seat, the woman had the aisle with the baby on her lap, I had the window. Did I mention it was 2006 and this dude had a ponytail? It would have been so funny if the baby had a ponytail too. But this was not a scene from Airplane 3. It was real life: Painful, miserable, real life.

Pony Tail told me he had just asked the flight attendant if I could move to another seat so his baby could have mine. Great. I'm paying for your little mistake to have his own seat? I have to get up from where I'm sitting because you forgot to stop at the drug store?"

I don't even know this kid. I wouldn't even want to. He looks as dull as a pencil eraser. He probably doesn't even have any cool stories. He looks like he doesn't even have one thought in his entire undeveloped and soft little head.

The flight attendant came back looking at me and said, "If you want to sit in the back, you can go ask the lady sitting in the last row."

I told everyone (who were all now looking down the aisle towards me) (again, it would be funny if the baby had a ponytail and was looking at me as well) that I wasn't asking the lady in the last row anything. It wasn't my idea to switch seats, and I didn't necessarily want to sit there. The flight attendant told me she would go ask. At this point, it was for the best. I didn't want to sit with the baby and the yuppie couple anyways, especially since I was now officially unwanted. The tension would surely be there for the rest of the trip. I told myself if it was an aisle or a window, I'd take it.

Pony Tail could tell I hated his living follicles, and for some reason thought he should comb things over.

"Where are you from?"

What? What? What?

Why do you care where I'm from, Pony Tail? This is the end of our relationship. Hopefully we'll never see each other again.

I'm from the window seat. I'm from Nobabyland. I'm from Idon'tunderstandyourproblemsbecauseIhaventmanagedtoruinmylifewithoffsprington. Have you been there lately? The responsibilities are very slim this time of year.

This was how he chose to defuse the situation, by the way. This is my reward: A conversation with HIM. Wow! I'm so lucky.

He thought he'd treat me to my least favorite thing in the world. Small talk. Pointless banter from someone I couldn't even stand to look at.

"Maryland," I told him, staring hard at him through evil eyes, unable to hide my sheer hatred for him.

"Baltimore?"

"No," I told him, staring at his idiot face, mine tight enough to make diamonds between my lips. If I was from Baltimore, I would have said Baltimore.

I took the seat. It was an aisle. Looking back I should have stuck around. But fuck 'em. I didn't need to prove a point. I just wanted to get away from the 2 morons who proved the dumbest point of all: They showed to the world she was fertile and he was potent. Congratulations. You just achieved what I've avoided my entire life. I'm very impressed. You have accomplished what billions of people do every day on accident. Front page news.

So, back in New York, I finished my dinner and headed out into town.

I hit the road. I took the F train to Gotham, just to check out the commute so I wouldn't be stressed about it the next day during rush hour. Found it. I had about 4 or 5 hours to kill before Jay got home. I called my girlfriend. I walked around. I rode the train back to Brooklyn.

Actually before I even went to Manhattan, I stopped in at Harry Boland's, an Irish Pub I used to drink at, back when I lived in Park Slope for a month.

This was back in 2004. I had quit my job at a video duplication place. I was worn out after years and years of working during the day and doing stand up at night. I had income here and there, but not much.

I got 2 gigs on the East Coast. One in New Jersey and one in Pennsylvania. Scranton, PA, I think. I can't remember. They didn't pay much, but I figured I'd go. And while I was figuring that, I figured I'd move to New York and stay with my friend Carolyn until I got the ball rolling.

Not much happened. I did open mics. Did The Cellar at like 5:30 in the afternoon in front of 6 other comics. A year and a half later, when I was on Last Comic Standing, one of the other comics that was there emailed me to say "what's up?"

I did The Village Lantern. I hung out with my friend Tom McCaffrey and watched him kill it at shows. Mostly The Village Lantern.

I couldn't find a job. Looking for a job always depresses me so much that I lose all confidence in looking for a job. Me and Carolyn went to Harry Boland's quite a bit. We also went to Uncle Lao's, Daisy's Diner, and Ray's Pizza all the time. Before I left California, I was swimming laps everyday in the sunshine. One month in New York and the most unhealthy meals on the planet were doing the backstroke in my gut.

I ended up going back to LA and taking my old job back. I didn't even do the gigs that I had lined up for January. I just ended up in the same place I was when I quit a year prior. I could have saved myself a gang of trouble and just stayed at my old/new job. But when I'm treading water at a day job, I never understand how great it is just to be able to pay my bills on time. It feels like a luxury to pay rent whenever I first go back to work after being unemployed. Then I break even for a couple of months and start to realize that I'm wasting every second of my life just so I can afford to be alive. I love being an adult. It's a lot different than being an indentured servant.

I made the right choice though. As soon as I came back to California, I became a regular at The Comedy Store, started working The local Improv's again, and by the end of the year performed at The HBO Festival in Las Vegas, and did my first TV spot on The Craig Ferguson show, eventually leading to other TV shows, and so much road work that the duplication company had to let me go for never being able to make it to work.

Anyway, anytime I'm ever in New York is a good feeling because my reference point for New York is failure, misery, and the cold of December. I came back once to tape Live at Gotham, less than a year and a half after my failed attempt at living there. Every other time I come back it's so I can work a club or a college. So by association, I feel like I should be poor and miserable, but then I'm not, which makes it great on a couple of different levels. It just feels like, "Hey, remember when life absolutely fucking sucked? Well now it's only blows every other week!"

Anyway, I went to Harry Boland's and had a 6 dollar beer. Way to keep to the budget. When I got back to Brooklyn from Manhattan, I went to another bar me and Tom McCaffrey used to go to. It was just me, the lesbian bartender, and 2 other guys. One guy was trying to drink himself to death, while one guy was talking band talk to the bartender.

It was nice to sit there quietly and let them hash it out. Whenever I'm around comics (every single night) I have to talk shop ("How'd you get that?" "Who books that?"). It was nice to hear the alternate universe gab about bookings, business, and politics, mostly because I didn't have to say anything.

At one point the drunkest guy stood up. It took him 3 or 4 seconds to get his balance together. He looked around the room. He spotted the exit. He walked towards it. But it was kind of a herky jerky Herman Munster walk. The entire transaction looked like it was being performed by a toddler.

Me and Bright Eyes watched him walk out. He made it all by himself.