Well, when I heard the rain wasn’t gonna let up until NEXT Thursday, I finally broke down and got myself some proper raingear and have been cycling to Back Bay and back every day. Monday I got up and thought, I’m gonna get just as wet walking to the T station from home, and from the T station to “work” and back again, as I am just riding my bike to “work,” so why not just ride? You know, get it over with quicker.

Plus, in the first scenario I’d have to stand, packed into a humid, mobile bird-flu incubator for forty minutes, with scenes of near-Dickensian misery all around me, the train lurching and rocking to the collective gnashing of teeth. You know the drill. No thanks.

And it’s been drizzle for the most part, albeit a steady drizzle. Still, as for rain, it’s no biggie.

On my way home in the afternoon, I even dilly-dallied a bit in the South End. Stop-and-smell-the-roses type stuff. Where on the T can you do that? I don’t dare to take my noseplugs out the whole time I’m underground.

Yesterday I took a different route so that I could stop and admire my hands-down favorite piece of public sculpture in this, or any city, really:

Clearly alluding to the underbelly of the Fontana di Trevi in Rome, this postmodern anti-fountain on the corner of Pembroke and Warren was an early attempt, before extensive gentrification, to increase property values in the then-blighted area, by adding top-notch public sculpture that reflects pride of place. It now stands as an heroic monument to asphalt and scrap granite in the heart–or, actually closer to the liver–of our fair city.

After admiring that for a spell–really recharging my aesthetic batteries–I proceeded along the intestinal tract of Mass Ave. on my way home. I saw this poster advertising the ubiquitous Da Vinci Code on a T lean-to outside of the NStar facility across from South Bay Shopping Center:

I haven’t read the book, and have no intention of doing so, and if I see the movie it will be out of the same dull desperation on a rainy day that drove me to Mission: Masturbation III. But I liked this poster. It’s a little different from some others I have seen. I particularly like the looks on the actors’ faces. Like they’re being confronted by something both awesome and distasteful at once. Like a full-scale Lucien Freud nude. In fact, I imagine the photographer probably flashed a couple Freuds at them to get that shot. There’s more than a hint of “ee-yooo” there, don’t you think?

Tom Hanks, who has finally turned to marshmallow, looks concerned for humankind on the verge of a revelation that obviously horrifies the scrumptious, fiery-eyed, nostril-flaring Audrey Tautou, who nestles in his marshmallowy breast for comfort.

Hmm. Honestly, I don’t understand what’s the big deal about The Da Vinci Code. Many other deities have married mortals, after all, and no one batted an eye. If gods become flesh and then don’t mingle with the fleshly, how can they really be said to have understood what having flesh is all about in the first place? Why not just stick with being a burning bush? I mean, to go to all the trouble to get fitted with a body, and all tricked out with the tackle, and then…? It’s like taking a Carnival Cruise and never leaving your cabin. It’s like going to Vegas and staying holed up in your hotel room. Can you really say you’ve been to Vegas? Sure. But have you really been to Vegas? If you haven’t done anything that needs to stay in Vegas, as the ad says, then you might just as well have stayed home, really, and watched the series on TV.

But having said all that, it should also be said that whatever a god does when he manifests in fleshly form should really be his own business, don’t you think? QOTD.