Assorted bus tales #1

About a month and a half ago I hopped on the old BBB#1 to go to UCLA. BBB is the Big Blue Bus, or as I call it the Santa Monica Limo Service or SMLS - "smiles!" It's always an interesting ride. This particular afternoon I decided I wanted to go to a lecture by Amartya Sen. He is easily one of the most important minds of the last 50 years. Nobel Prize? Got it. Books? yes, sold tens of thousands (which is pretty good for an economist). Honorary doctorates from all over the world? Check, 87 of 'em. Married to Rothschild banking family? mm hmm. Hot actress daughter? that too. Guy is pretty slick. A rockstar. I'm pretty excited.

So the bus rolls up and this old homeless fellow slowly saunters on board the bus. He is stooped so far over it looks like standing is difficult. He is wearing 2 shirts and 1 and a half jackets. The bus driver was hassling him for something, probably because he didnt seem to notice that he had to pay a fee to ride. I couldnt tell, I had my ipod blasting Propagandhi. So as he shuffles down, I notice people immediately get up and scurry toward the back of the bus. Others squint and make disgusted faces. Then the smell hits me. It literally smells like old shit. Everywhere. All over the bus. For some reason the guy walks past all of the seats that have now opened up and sits next to this guy who is right out of the mid-west. I can tell this by his t-shirt advertising a bar in milwaukee. He looks like norm from Cheers. Norm can hardly believe this. After about 10 seconds he gets up, squeezes past the homeless man, who is now hunched over to one side and threatening to collapse into the aisle. This commotion seems to awaken him and he soon stands up in the aisle, purposefully leaning against the support rail.

It then becomes clear to me that he is also wearing pants. Or rather trying to wear pants. They have fallen down to mid-thigh. He is not wearing underwear. In a few minutes, people begin to yell from the back of the bus that he sit back down. After a while he does - with stern encouragement from the bus driver. Meanwhile the smell is overwhelming. He is 3 rows in front of me. I turn up my Propagandi as if it will cover up the smell. In my day I've smelled some bad things. Open sewers. Burning garbage. A fridge shared by 10 people. Bathrooms during and after Cinco de Mayo. This was really testing me though.

As we approached Wilshire the homeless fellow became restless. "Imgettingoffhereletmeoff!!" he yelled toward the person across from him. He slowly stood up and stood in the aisle again. He stood next to a clean cut middle aged man wearing a brown fleece jacket and bright green Crocs shoes. This guy was also listening to his ipod. Slowly the homeless guy shifted his weight and in a moment his bare ass was less than a foot from this guy's face. It was probably there for about 2 minutes. I wonder what was going through that man's head during that time, which must have seemed like years. Once we got to the Wilshire stop, the homeless man slowly sauntered to the back exit adjacent to where I was sitting. The smell sharpened. I turned up my ipod. I think it was Flogging Molly on there then. He continued and made his way out of the bus very slowly.

About 20 minutes later I'm in the Humanities building lecture hall. Time to see Sen. I'm there with some of my grad student colleagues. We're pretty pumped. This guy is huge. The lecture hall quickly fills up. There are about 200 of us there to see him. He is old. He stoops slightly and was wearing a tweed coat that was too large for him, making it resemble a cape. Sen walks up to the podium. We lean forward as he prepares to speak.

"Do you have a microphone? I need a microphone to speak here" he says thoughtfully in his Oxbridge tinged British accent.

Of course! That would help. He is 80 years old and is going to speak to a huge room of people. He may need a microphone. 10 PhDs who did not anticipate this suddenly spring to action. From a small cabinet they retrieve a microphone that looks like a dog collar. A classics professor places it around Sen's neck. Others adjust the PA system.

Sen speaks. He sounds like Stephen Hawking speaking on a telephone in a snowstorm. Sen doesnt know this and begins his lecture. He talks about Social Choice Theory, walks around a bit, mentions John Rawls a few times and writes on the chalkboard. After 20 minutes I realize I have no idea what the hell he is talking about, simply because it is totally indecipherable through the buzzing robotic gibberish that his swingining microphone is occasionally relaying to the PA system. The audience seems anxious. Some one adjusts the PA cabinet. A while later someone moves the microphone and clips it closer to Sen's head. His new dance partners come and go intermittently for the next 30 minutes. Each intervention is an interruption. Once, while walking to the board, the dog collar microphone tenses and jerks the nobel laureate toward the PA cabinet. He nearly loses his footing. PhDs jump forth. I look around me and shake my head. "Amartya Sen, no microphone. Are you serious?" I say. Sen recovers and coolly tells the audience, "when I was growing up in my village in India, I had a goat that would do the same thing when I pulled its collar." Everyone laughs.

This mess continues for the next 15 minutes until Sen has finished his talk. At one point he calmly says something to the effect of "I've never seen so much effort expended in order to NOT shut me up." More laughter. What a let down. He probably made thousands of dollars to come to UCLA and basically speak to himself.

Interesting afternoon though. The homeless man and Amartya Sen. Such different people, couldnt be much further apart in many senses. Juxtaposed. Sen probably wont be back anytime soon after his hosts did such a good job of making him look like a total fool. If so, maybe they'll forget to pick him up from the airport. Then perhaps i'll see him on the bus.