Wednesday, June 23, 2010

It Sounded Like A Great Idea When I Heard It In My Head.

This would be an absolutely hilarious and ironic post...if only I'd gotten a little cooperation!

Yesterday was a 24-hour crackdown on people using cell phones while driving. I'll admit that I'm never sure why they announce these things. It makes sense to announce DUI checkpoints for things like New Years Eve; it tends to make people think twice on a night known for its amateur drinkers.  But is June 22nd some traditionally known day for high cell phone use?  I don't know.

Any way, since I'm constantly seeing cops driving around while happily gabbing away on the phone, I thought I'd get a bunch of pictures of that!  Hilarious and ironic...get it?

Pheh!  First, I took my camera over to a stretch of Myrtle Avenue that should get a disproportionate share of police traffic.  Twenty minutes.  One cop car drove by.  Not only was the driver not talking on his phone...he was staring straight at me with a malevolent glare as I experimented with keeping focus on a moving target.  That actually would have made an amusing picture if I had only clicked the shutter.  I didn't.  The only thing I got out of that was a reminder that cops get a little pissy when you get in their faces with cameras -- even when it's only by means of a 105mm lens.

I moved on to Dekalb Avenue.  Dekalb had three advantages I could think of.
1. It's a one way street so I could position myself to get clean shots of drivers instead of viewing them across a lane of traffic.
2. It's a direct route from the Precinct house, so it should get a lot of police traffic.
3. (And this might be the most important advantage) -- There's a cute little place to get an iced coffee and sit outside while I was waiting for my photographic coups to come to me.
The iced coffee was delicious.  Otherwise, the outdoor seat was in the sun - bad.  Two cops drove by while flagrantly not talking on their phones!

I decided to move on to a third vantage point -- a vantage point guaranteed to supply me with fodder for this most amusing of posts.  I decided to walk up Willoughby as a route to my next hunting ground.  Willoughby has the advantage of being a one-way street leading toward the Precinct.  Surely, as I walked, I'd catch a couple of uniformed scofflaws.  Zero. Zilch. Nada.

Finally, I staked out Myrtle Avenue across the street from Kum KaoKum Kao is the best, or, at least, the busiest Chinese restaurant in the neighborhood.  It's a friggin' cop Mecca! So many cops stop there for take-out that the street usually looks like a Used Police Car Sales Lot.  Surely, I'd see a huge number of cops arriving and parking their cars at those weird angles in the crosswalk they favor.  Surely, one of them would be on the phone conducting Vital Official Police Business like, "Hey Sarge.  Did you want pork fried rice or Happy Family with your Sesame Chicken"? Surely, I'd hit paydirt here!

Bah!  One cop circled  the block a couple of times and then parked in a legal space before going in to pick up her eggrolls.  Another car went back and forth on the cross street three times, but those cops seemed to be looking for something or somebody -- stupid cops being vigilant when I'm trying to catch them with their pants down!

A third cop drove by in one of those dorky Cushmans.  He made a U-turn and drove by a second time, and then he pulled over at the corner so he could use the payphone!  A payphone?  What's up with that? Who uses payphones anymore?

So, this idea which sounded great when I heard it in my head turned out to be a total bust.  You don't get a single hilarious and ironic picture to marvel over...just the sad story of my complete and utter failure.  But I'm not discouraged.  I'm just bubbling over with brilliant ideas! I've got one I'm working on about how frustrating it is trying to change typewriter ribbons. 

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