A glimpse of the underside

In my daily activities, as I go shopping, putter around town, I do encounter the poor and the homeless. But I'm not in many environments where most of the people around me are poor.

I had that experience today after I dropped my truck off for servicing. I decided to go downtown to see a movie, and went to a bus stop for the number 9. The number 9 goes from a working class neighborhood in the far south of the city to downtown, via neighborhoods that are almost all working class; the highlight of the trip is when it swings right by San Francisco General Hospital, the place of last resort for health care for poor people.

So the bus was packed with the lumpenproletariat for its whole route. And lumpen they were. Predictably, an argument broke out between two macho dickheads, but I was surprised by the way the other people on the bus reacted. Instead of sitting in silent acquiescence of yet another shot of minor violence, several people began yelling for the guys to stop it. "Don't do that here!" shouted one person. "There's women and children on this bus," said someone else. "Take it outside!" someone else called. "You can't do that here!" said a fourth person. Flummoxed by this popular uprising, the two hoodlums cut it out. I don't even think they got off the bus; they just chilled out. I was impressed by the way everyone on the bus reacted together to stop the fight.

 
 

Scot or not?

Downtown, I finally saw the second Lord of the Rings movie. I enjoyed it and I think it's very much worth seeing. But one thing I couldn't get over is that the actors playing two different characters, Sam and Merry, had voices that sounded exactly like that of Colm Meany, who played Chief Miles O'Brien in "Star Trek Next Generation" and "Deep Space Nine." In fact, "Sam" actually looks like Meaney; but Sam is played by Sean Astin, who is actually the son of John Astin (who played Gomez on The Addams Family) and Patty Duke. So he's not even from Ireland or wherever. So much for that theory.