Life Imitates Art

Arrived back in New York last night after a lengthy absence due to pesky ole' college, and I'll be around until Monday morning at which point there will be only two weeks left to the semester. Scary. And also awesome. Plans include heavy amounts of much needed R & R, along with some sweet hangout time, visits to the UCBT, and duh, TURKEY. I'm actually not a big fan of turkey. I eat the yams, stuffing, and cranberry sauce, then sit back and watch as everybody else loads up on the tryptophan. Yeah, they're enjoying themselves now, but I'll be the one laughing when I'm the only one still AWAKE. Take that, family!

Hey, did y'all know I love trains? Yeah, I really love trains. A lot. So much so that I was really pumped when I found this book two summers ago called Derailed. A whole book about trains? FREAKIN' AMAZING. Turns out I wasn't able to put down this novel, a thriller about a man who meets a woman on the Long Island Railroad, a NYC commuter train system, has an affair with her, and his life gets DERAILED. Not the type of book I normally get into, but this was about trains, so all bets were off! They end up making a movie out of this thing, and I saw it when it came out last weekend. As to be expected, not quite as good as the book. The movie just seemed way too predictable. Or maybe that's because I knew what was going to happen already. Hmph. Anyway, for the film they switched the setting to Chicago and its Metra commuter rail. So based on the title of the book/film, I laughed out loud when I saw this when I got home tonight:

CHICAGO COMMUTER TRAIN, VEHICLES COLLIDE

ELMWOOD PARK, Ill. - A commuter train slammed into several vehicles caught in a traffic jam on a busy road Wednesday evening, starting a chain reaction that damaged more than a dozen cars and injured at least 16 people, authorities said.

Three people were in critical condition, according to Judy Pardonnet, a spokeswoman for the Metra train service.

DERAILED.