Above image courtesy 20th Century Fox.

People sometimes tell me the blog needs to focus more on me. That I write too much about everyone else, and what about the recurring bus driver in ever single one of the stories? What's he like? 

The thing is, I'm not all that interested in writing about myself. Maybe I'm just barely too old. I grew up before the internet. I don't take selfies. I don't take pictures of everything I eat. Living life is more interesting to me than documenting it– but that's another can of worms. Navel-gazing has reached new heights in the age of social media, and in the way "nerd" and "geek" have (thankfully) lost most of their traction as hurtful labels with the advent of widespread digital technology, so too has "narcissism" started to be, if not a positive, too pervasive to be much of a put-down. But it will (thankfully) never be a completely good thing.

While accusations of nerddom had more to do with unkindly accusing someone because of their interests, the label of narcissism is different. It's less about interests or even interest with oneself than a critique of lack of interest in others. The behavioral extension of that, selfishness, remains as uncelebrated in day-to-day interactions as it ever was.

For myself, I write about others because I'm more intrigued by them. It's their actions which move me, not my own. I'm grateful though, when readers take an interest in the posts which do focus more on me (such as the recent "Nathan Takes a Day Off" series), and I completely understand the need for character development. Who is this guy, after all, who shows up in every post, and what's he like? We don't care about characters in films or books unless we know something about them, and this desire makes sense to me. 

I learn about people most enjoyably when listening to them talk about things they love. Hopefully my thoughts on why these films resonate with me offers the same, and more importantly, functions as a list of recommendations for those nights when you're trolling Netflix, unsure of where to click next!

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This is supposed to be a list of overlooked 2016 films. I realize we're well into 2017, but I had to wait to see a few key films before I compile in good conscience. Also, there's a drawback to throwing together a top ten right at the end of Oscar season, as everyone does; you're too prone to overrate whatever films you most recently saw. There's a review of mine online somewhere (which we're definitely not going to link to!), where I gave way too many stars to a certain Ashton Kutcher-Kevin Costner water rescue flop… I think mostly because in those days I had to submit reviews within 24 hours, and my natural enjoyment of the act of film-watching just gets in the way.

So. This is a list where I've let things stew a while, and hopefully that makes it more useful as a resource for you. Personally, I think 2016 was a banner year. It wasn't quite up there with the cornucopias we got in 1999, 1969 or 1939 (why is it always the -9's?), but it was bountiful. I'm calling it an "overlooked" list because I want to focus on some of the stuff that might slip through the cracks, as well as the obviously great stuff. I'll start the actual list in the next post; for an appetizer, here are four films which I'll stop short of calling great, but which moved me for different reasons.

Image courtesy Lionsgate.

Deepwater Horizon

“Hope ain’t a tactic.”

Synopsis: A dramatization of the 2010 oil rig explosion. Theatrical trailer.

I know. You didn't think this was going to be here. I'll start talking about obscure Brazilian movies in a second, but first let's appreciate this entirely worthwhile Mark Wahlberg action vehicle.

I like films which explore the potential for truth-telling in realms about which I know little, and offshore drilling is a realm in which I have minimal (read: zilch) real-world experience. Peter Berg's film (he and Wahlberg have struck up a working relationship of sorts, and including this have made three pictures about real-life unsung working class heroes) spends an unreasonable time on the details of how oil rigs actually work. 

Berg focuses on things like how fuel injector hoses attach to a vessel, or step-by-step breakdowns of evaluating the integrity of cement work in a wellbore. Characters talk using jargon they don't explain, because every one of them would already know what the other is talking about, and we lean forward to piece it all together. The texture of life on a rig and how those enormous machines work, as well as a glimpse into the lives of the salt-of-the-earth folk who work them, hugely compels me. It's comparable to my fascination with the first act of United 93 (trailer), before anything goes wrong, where we're given unapologetically detailed views into the complexities of air-traffic control. I would have been fine with either of these films being about nothing more than that, rather than the disasters they eventually both end up focusing on. Isn't it all so interesting, what life looks like in all its many iterations?

Image courtesy IFC Films

Certain Women

"It'd be so lovely to think that if I were a man, I could explain the law and people would listen and say okay. That would be so restful."

Synopsis: Four women– a teacher, lawyer, wife and ranch hand– strive to follow their own paths in the American northwest. Theatrical trailer.

In his 2003 book Mortals, Norman Rush writes about how most every society through history has subjugated about half its population. Men never have to wonder what it'd be like to follow a list of rules the other gender came up with; women have to do that all the time. To find peace being forever relegated to a supporting role– in society, in relevance, in perceived ability– has for too long been a sadly necessary feat of accomplishment, and one which goes unsung daily.

Kelly Reichardt's wonderful new 16mm picture is an exploration into three such unsung lives. What is the wife thinking, when her husband steps in during a land purchase, on the unspoken assumption she's incompetent at explaining herself? What's it like to be an underpaid teacher given a job in the middle of nowhere? The film isn't angry, but calm; not polemic, but observant. It's a window into the minds of what would normally be underdeveloped supporting characters, and a reminder of the complexity of lives outside the spotlight.

Worth noting are all the performances (especially Michelle Williams), but I have to single out Kristen Stewart. You may know she was the first American actor in history to win a César (the French equivalent of an Oscar) for her performance in Olivier Assayas' Clouds of Sils Maria, and I say she deserved it. Nick Davis in Film Comment writes: 

I see Stewart in the position Leo DiCaprio was in the years following Titanic; a talented actor struggling to improve his craft, be taken seriously, and climb out from under the shadow of a blockbuster which threatened to define him without requiring his skills. Her performance here is hugely exciting in its subtleties, and her collaborations with Assayas, in the aforementioned Clouds (trailer) and this year's Personal Shopper (trailer) are, without exaggeration, acting masterclasses. 
​

Image courtesy The Orchard

Demolition & Louder Than Bombs

"Repairing the human heart is like repairing an automobile. You have to take everything apart, examine everything, then you can put it all back together."

Synopses. Demolition (trailer): An investment banker (Jake Gyllenhaal), following the death of his wife, finds solace in demolishing his former life. Bombs (trailer): A family has differing perspectives on the death of their mother/wife (Isabelle Huppert).

Nobody liked these movies. Except me. Panned by critics and ignored by audiences worldwide, I nevertheless gobbled them up, and I imagine a few other solitary souls out there did too. I've been thinking a lot about grief, and grief is the subject of these two pictures. Demolition, by the Québécois Jean Marc Vallée (Wild, Dallas Buyers Club), follows Jake Gyllenhaal after his wife dies in a freak car accident; Joachim Trier's English-language debut, Louder Than Bombs, follows the family of a war photographer (Isabelle Huppert) after she dies in her own car accident. 

Demolition is about the problem of numbness in modern life, and how it relates to grief. How do you miss someone you never knew? How do you touch emotions, break through the fog of a society which disencourages truthful, raw, honest communication? 

Louder Than Bombs revolves around the impossibility of belonging in a family when you're away for long periods. When you miss years of the in-between moments, washing dishes and loading the car, you end up becoming a stranger. You find that those were the meat of it all. You try to learn what your children are interested in, what their concerns are, but the next time you're back that's ancient history, and you've got to relearn it all over. 

It doesn't often get mentioned in our culture that after a certain age, people you love will start dying. Their health will decline, and with enough time it won't get better, but gradually (or suddenly) worse until it's over. Nobody gets out of this game alive. What to do? You know the answer. You always knew. Live in the present. You can't be happy otherwise. It's what kids know how to do so well, a skill we don't have to forget.

I went to an Emily Wells concert in 2012. She told us then, "we're going to lose everything we love in this life." I've spent the last five years thinking about that line. I saw her again a few weeks ago. This time she said, "everything I've lost, I've learned to quit." A different mental hurdle, but equally important. The 2012 line was about preparing for something; the 2017 line is about dealing with the aftermath. The best and worst of us will all address these two issues, imperfectly, but that's okay.

We do what we can.

Above: Del Amo Station, South Central LA, facing north. 

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I'll confess to being annoyed with the man on first blush. I wasn't infatuated with the guy. Why?

He was the sort Walker Evans would've photographed were he alive today, the marginalized lot Manet would've included in his beggar-philosopher series, dressed in the tousled and bedraggled grunge which stands outside of the vagaries of fashion, a look that doesn't age.

You know I normally love these guys.

It was his attitude of entitlement which I let rub me wrongly. When I first met him, I hadn't heard a line a colleague would later tell me, a throwaway sentence which would stick in ways he likely never intended and would prove so useful in so many instances for me.

"They act entitled because they're not."

Many mantras of self-talk I repeat to myself have similarly inauspicious beginnings. Of course. Marcus walked in and demanded the heater be turned on in a way I found frustrating. Some folks never learn the variations of power they can exert by how they phrase things, and go through life demanding, with no idea that politely asking usually gets you more. Intellectually, I could see that pleasantries are probably not high on your mind if you're stuck outside sleeping on buses that are uncomfortable and cold. You're likely also working on a whole host of other issues. I appreciated that intellectually, but not emotionally. I had to bite the urge to be passive-aggressive about it.

I reminded myself I had nothing against turning the heat on, and did so. He was the same the next few times I saw him– demanding in a way that hid his reasonableness, with a particular interest in heat. I wouldn't know his name until more than two years later, when out of the blue Marcus showed up again, dressed in similar garb and limping, one leg in a cast. I couldn't remember if he'd always had glasses.

By this time my colleague friend had unwittingly contextualized entitlement among the homeless for me in a way I found helpful in its understanding perspective, and I'd grown to realize that people have different intentions when they say the same lines. A person who's never learned delicate phrasing ("if isn't too terribly imposing, I was wondering if I could inquire about the status of the heater?") may not be trying to be rude when they express their needs ("HEAT!") in the clearest way they know how. It may also be that they have more pressing concerns.

It was easier to take Marcus' tone in stride. Should we really expect people to be at their best when they're trying- and usually failing- to get good sleep by riding buses around all night? Over time, my kindness wore him down. He asked one night if I had anything sweet. "I got diabetes," he explained. "You got an orange or something? I know you got an orange."
"How'd you know I had an orange? Yeah, this one's got your name on it."

After that I'd periodically check up on him. Did he need a granola bar? Did he want these Skittles I definitely wasn't going to eat? We'd talk about the wavering status of his leg. Never long conversations, but companionable. Or he'd listen silently as I chatted it up with someone else. 

One day, upon reaching the end of the line, as I walked back there to where he and a few other sleeping forms reposed, he called out to me.
"Yo, Nathan."
"Mister Marcus, hey."
"I got something for you."
"For me, no way!"
"Yeah, man." He fiddled with his overstuffed backpack. "You like salads?"
"I love salads!"
"Yeah, I got these salads for you." He'd been carrying them around in anticipation of seeing me. I was struck by the absurdity of someone in his position giving someone in my position food, and said so.
"Now hang on, Marcus, you sure you don't need these yourself? Stuff is good for ya, man, spinach makes you big and strong...."
"Dude. I don't eat that stuff, man,"
"Ha!"
"It's for you!"
"You sure, bro? Thank you! Thank you so much! Man, Marcus!"

When you learn a lot in the space of a few seconds, the effect is profoundly humbling. He has every reason to keep the food he comes upon for himself. Every reason. But here he is, feeling it was important enough as a gesture to give me, the reasonably well-heeled bus driver artist, two spinach and feta salads? What? He did not need to do that. It was not necessary for his survival, benefited him nothing, and cost him valuable space in his pack lugging it around looking for me. But it wasn't about any of that. This was his way of expressing gratitude. Not flowering Victorian requests for the heater, but the gift of food.

Which, let's be honest, is what I would prefer anyway!

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Only recently did I learn, from an offhand mumble, that Marcus has a job. He works janitorial duty during the day… and does this at night? Roll around catnapping while continuously getting interrupted? Wow. How does he do it? "You're friggin' Superman," I decreed. No wonder he's abrupt sometimes, my goodness. I certainly wouldn't be at my best in such circumstances. Talk about being one of the enterprising ones.

You may have seen the video above, about a fight on my bus. The video is new, but the event happened a few years ago. It's something I've been carrying around for a while, and right after it happened, I had no idea how to talk about or even write about it. 

The energy of the two men, especially Mr. Navy Seal, and beyond that the unforgivable actions of the Sheriff who started it all… I still have the notes for everything the principals said, and the buildup and conclusion of the event was larger than I indicate in my speech. So too was the fallout of subsequent interactions in the months after. But it was too much to write about (though I'd briefly mention the incident at the bottom of this post, over a year later). Maybe one day when this blog is a book, I'll go into all the details. It was a long time before I could see it all clearly enough to laugh about it.  

These men live in our heads, but they go on existing in real life too, and not always how we expect. Last night Mr. Navy Seal got on at the first stop in Rainier Beach. He slowly put his cigarette out, took his time loading his bike. Don't get angry. If he's trying to irritate me by being slow… don't fall for it, Nathan. I grabbed a sheaf of papers from the dash, reading over notes for an upcoming interview.* I took a deep breath when he stepped in. I said hello. I went for it, enthusiastically greeting him by name. Let's start things off on the right foot here. 

And wouldn't you know it, he responded in kind. We bumped fists. Something different in his air now: I'm noticing how clean shaven he is, the better repair of his clothing. Smooth dark skin, crisp and fresh in casual dress, as though he'd aged in reverse over the last five years. Taking care of yourself can do that. He chats up one of the ladies seated nearby; they grew up together. He asks after her children. The man's always been boisterous, but now, tonight, he's friendly. 

After she leaves he turns to me. 
"How you been?" I asked.
"Ah been good, man, it's a good time now. Way better than before." And then he tells me. I remember the explanatory kindness latent in his raspy, masculine brawl of a voice. We all have our low years; his was 2012. He used to work on the Light Rail. 

"Thanks for puttin' that train in place, dude," I quipped. "Much appreciated!"
"Well, I had an accident, man." An industrial work accident involving a dump truck and steel poles, and a truck that wasn't inspection-certified, instead cleared under the table. This oversight led to a severe on-the-job injury I won't describe, followed by intense back pain and the call of booze. "2012, man, that year was a motherfucker. My back tore up, drinkin' like crazy, caught up in stupid shit, my momma sick, then mah dog died…."
"Oh my goodness, the dog too! Everything all at once,"
"All at once exactly."
"But look at you now! I'm so glad you… pushed through all a that. I admire that, I respect that. 'Cause it isn't easy."

Don't you wish you could know the story behind every angry soul, every dangerous drunk? To understand the shape of things, the beating and wounded hearts, their voices strangled by loss and vice. 

Look at his smile. Those eyes, which have suffered and seen so much, crinkling into crow's feet. Nothing malevolent there anymore. A working man getting off at a decent hour, headed home to a roof he can call his own. I tend to believe that people don't change. 

I love being proven wrong.

​---

*I was studying up for a treat I think you'll enjoy– the podcast, Bare Naked Bravery, wherein I was interviewed by the great Emily Ann Peterson! It won't air for a while, but when it does you'll be the first to know!

"Real life is so hard to find."
-Knight of Cups

Directed by Terrence Malick. Starring Rooney Mara, Michael Fassbender, Ryan Gosling, Natalie Portman, et. al.
Theatrical Trailer.
Synopsis: A woman explores love, identity, and selfhood against the backdrop of the tumultuous Austin music scene. 129 mins.

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In 2009, as I was finishing my tour of duty at UW, I got excited. I was restless, and I wanted to birth out something of value, really push myself. I wrote a 457-page thesis about Pure Cinema, a form of filmmaking I consider the ultimate possibility of what movies can do. My professor wasn't exactly thrilled, but was still kind enough to nominate it for the Library Research Award. 

Briefly (in an effort to keep this post under 457 pages!), Pure CInema can be described as films, or sections of films, that communicate to the audience in a manner possible only in the film medium, bypassing the derivations of literature and the stage, relying instead on a potent mix of moving images and sounds.

Have you ever noticed how your favorite scenes in movies are never the ones about story mechanics, but rather those immersed in the present moment, the parts which plunge you into the pulsing immediacy of life? Movies can be used to tell stories, and being a linear time-based art form they're great at that. But they can also do so much more. Most pictures don't take advantage of that possibility, and settle for something closer to filmed theatre.

In my thesis I wrote about the director Terrence Malick, noting that with each successive film of his, he was getting closer to abandoning narrative entirely in favor of something more direct, more immediate, closer to our pure and fragmented experience of life and memory.

In his 1990 novel Immortality, Milan Kundera wrote that memories, as they exist in our heads, are closer to photographs than films; they rarely involve a complete beginning, middle, and end. They're more like fragments. Malick aims for this, and the result is hypnotic. We don't get scenes; we get glimpses, glances that catch in our eye or in our heart, the things we notice but which are too subtle to talk about. These are films about the thoughts we all have but don't have the norms to express. His next picture after my thesis, 2011's Tree of Life (trailer), would delve deeper into this realm than ever before, and his next three movies would form an informal trilogy of sorts which communicated to the audience as no director has ever even attempted.

The subjects of the three films aren't new ("a fall from grace, a journey through despair and finally a restoration of innocence and hope," respectively, as Justin Chang notes in his review below), but the execution is. Malick really is developing a new visual grammar here, no less seismic than Antonioni's initially derided L'Avventura, 47 years ago. That film was so radical in its photographic, structural and editing decisions that a volatile Cannes audience booed it at its first screening, threw things, and physically threatened its director and star to the point they had to flee the theatre! And wouldn't you know, it's a classic now. Growing pains….

That's why I'm writing to you about these weird abstract new large-scale art films that a lot of people are deriding. I have to do it. Change happens slowly in the mainstream, and when it doesn't it's hard for people. The attitude toward these films is going to change dramatically over the next decade, and if you'll forgive my saying so, you heard it here first. 

We might ask what all these movies actually look like. Try this trailer for Knight of Cups, the second film of the trilogy. It's condensed, of course, but the approach is pretty truthful to the experience of watching the film: you get an impression of a successful screenwriter in Hollywood feeling adrift despite his material successes and access to pleasure. By way of a very active and probing camera that focuses on details, along with narration giving voice to the characters' private, interior musings, we get a palpable sense of the protagonist's yearning for substance, for a spiritual awakening of sorts, but not knowing quite how to get there. It's fresher and more involving than ordinarily blocked and scripted scenes of the same. You don't think the movie; you feel it.

Almost all criticism of late-period Malick has to do with complaining about the fact that his movies aren't like normal movies. I say walk in with an open mind, and dare yourself to watch it without judging it by the standards of something it isn't trying to be. Others may cry pretentiousness or portentousness, but should we really take an artist to task for actually trying to do something, for taking his craft seriously and attempting to reach beyond his grasp? Here's what I wrote in 2013 about watching To the Wonder (trailer), the first of the trilogy: 

I'd go on about how much I love the director's lack of irony and why that makes him ahead of his time, or the natural light cinematography and the beauty it sees in the most unlikely of realms, Malick's process of searching for extemporaneous moments with the actors instead of using a script, his tendency toward articulating a pre-considered outline by improvising the details... but I don't want to bore you (links to all that below). 

Just go watch the thing. 

It's a trilogy in theme only; there's no need to have seen the previous pictures. All three films involve searching for solace in the cacophony outside oneself, and eventually finding it within. You may be fascinated by that and love it, as I did, or you may leave it (I've never seen more walkouts than during a 2012 Tree of Life screening in Bellevue), but you'll never have seen anything like it.

When your friends start complaining about how American movies aren't original, or modern movies aren't daring anymore, you'll know what to say. 

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Song to Song is currently playing in NY and LA. It opens in limited release in Seattle on Friday.

Further reading:

The thoughtful take: Song to Song: Terrence Malick's Romantic Idealism: Richard Brody (The New Yorker). Brody boldly championed Knight of Cups a year ago, and continues here.

The lively take: Terrence Malick's Song to Song film review: A masterpiece, life-changing and other superlatives I stand by (Chris Hooton, The Independent): "It is suffused with that feeling of when you want to cry but can't."

Legendary: Terrence Malick Makes a Rare Appearance at SXSW 2017 and Digs Deep On His Process (Indiewire). This is seriously the stuff of legend: Malick, a notorious recluse who once took twenty years off between films and was photographed less than five times before the invention of the internet, does his first interview here since 1979!

Song to Song (review). Carson Lund (Slant). 

Cosmic Questions (ASC): Creating emotionally resonant imagery on Tree of Life. Details the rules Malick and Lubezki established together for how to shoot the films.

Terrence Malick's 'Song to Song' finds beauty, frustration and hope in the Austin music scene (review). Justin Chang (Los Angeles Times). 

Song to Song review – Terrence Malick returns to form with lyrical love triangle (The Guardian). Thoughts from across the pond.

Images courtesy Broad Green Pictures.

Note: I'll be gone for a week, but I'm leaving you with a nice, big, fact, juicy one here! Hope you enjoy it!

They're a fine bunch, the operators. Bus Driver Appreciation Day was originally designated in Seattle, and I'm not surprised. We've got good people here. Like all bunches, there's a portion of sour grapes. I recall a passenger blurting out one evening, after some apparent thought: "ninety percent. That's about what it is." 

Before I could ask him to elaborate, he did. "Take any group of people, any race or workforce or whatever, and ninety percent of them will be pretty cool. They'll be basically all right. Most folks in any group are all right. Homeless people, bus drivers, rich guys. You always get a few assholes, but hey, whatever. Yeah, I'd say about ninety percent."

There are some great folks out behind those big wheels. It's a test, requiring a commitment to patience and self-generated positivity, a commitment that has to be re-upped daily, sometimes hourly. City bus driving takes a special breed. Few jobs require such an extreme level of technical driving prowess simultaneous with such a prodigious understanding of human psychology, and no other job requires a dexterity in these unrelated realms to the degree where the lives, jobs, and the safety of many are at stake. I'm honored to work alongside my colleagues, whether old, young, beautiful, fat, trim, crabby, or happy. They are the lives unsung, expended with great effort, largely and forever unknown. But they– we– did happen.

The best way I can appreciate my fellow cohorts is by sharing a few of the valuable nuggets I've gleaned. As with art and film, much of what I've learned about bus driving I've "observed" (stolen outright) from others. Some are technical, others personal; some will only make sense to operators, but it's interesting how many others are universal. 

I hope reviewing them reminds us that we can search around the edges of any activity, any profession, and carve it into something ever more capable, more meaningful, with greater relevance and a kind of beauty. In another life I might have scoffed that bus driving has no business being among the transcendent, all-encompassing human endeavors. I would have been wrong. Bus driving is nothing less than the full human organism, up close, and it is, intriguingly, an experience that ends up being largely what you put into it. I suppose that's how the world turns.

To me, this list is so short. There are so many more operators than the ones mentioned here whom I adore and respect beyond all reason. But a short list is better than no list!

Regarding customer service:

• "It doesn't matter if they return your good energy." That's not why you're nice to them. You've done your part. Ernie.
• Announce the zones yourself. This was required when I started. Jack, Walter, Tony, Anthony, Greg, others.
• Announce the zones colloquially, using complete sentences. The human touch makes a surprising difference. Brian.
• If there's something about the job you don't like that's out of your control, rewire your brain so you like it. Paul.
• The power of smiling at people in a low-income neighborhood. "They're not expecting to be treated nicely by authority figures. When you do, it'll blow 'em away." Mark.
• Love everyone. Jessie, Joni.
• Respect people. Especially the people who seem like they deserve it the least. Bob.
• Actually turn your shoulders to greet the passengers. Catherine.
• Wheelchair-bound people know they're inconveniences. They're reminded of that constantly. "You need to be the first person who doesn't treat them as an inconvenience." Mark.
• One person with a bad attitude shouldn't affect how you treat everyone else for the next month! Dan.
• It's okay to yell pleasantries to the back door people. Brian.
• You know you're doing something right when people come up to the front door to thank you as they exit! Ken.

• It's possible to chat amiably with most anyone… even LSBW! Walter. It's amazing to watch him work.
• The world won't end if people know your first name. Harold, who would announce his name on overloaded trips, pilot-style.
• Kindness goes a long, long way. The passengers.

Regarding downtown & night operations:

• "They will push your patience to the absolute limit." The trick is being in control of yourself even then. Terry.

• It would cost King County more money to enforce the fare than the revenue generated by that enforcement. There's a percentage that's expected to fall through the cracks. Don't sweat it. David.

• Carry Febreze! Carry Vick's Vapor Rub! Liz, David. We Night Operators need these things….

• Hand out transfers like candy. The gesture, more than anything, solves most issues. John, Maurice.
• Never give them an opportunity where they can say no. Figure out a way of saying it that isn't a demand. Brian.
• Don't sweat the small stuff. What's the small stuff? Everything's the small stuff! Dan.
• Tell yourself this: "every passenger is telling the truth." This prevents a lot of internal headaches. Michael.
• It's okay to like the 7 because of its clientele. Eileen. I'll never forget her saying she liked the route because of its people, without irony, as if utterly unaware how absurd the comment would sound to most.
• "Even if they do have money, if they're bumming rides on buses, they're probably not doing too well." Michael.
• Recognize the compliment implied in flirtatious comments or advances, and then move the conversation out from under that, in stride. Joni.
• Near-death or near-accident? Step outside for a moment and walk it off. "Guys, we're gonna take two minutes." Brian, Michael.
• Sometimes it's okay to let sleepers sleep through terminals. Brian.
• If it's not as important as not hitting jaywalkers, question the degree to which it should even be on your radar. Paul.
• When two people are arguing, say something like: "okay, I'm gonna step out and smoke a cigarette. Y'all just come on up let me know when you're done…!" James.
• Passengers will sometimes resolve problems for you– especially if you say something like, "okay, we're gonna have to sit here until this guy leaves…" watch the other guys come into action. Dan.
• Literature and bus driving go hand in hand. Paul, who read the unabridged, 1,500-page Les Miserables in between driving Night Owls. Could there be anything more romantic? His tattered copy lost the final chapters, which he ended up reading on the floor of a bookstore.

Regarding driving:

• Try to make imperceptible stops. Bob.
• "You have to go bang out into the lane. Don't stop. Be careful, go slow, but don't stop." Dean, on the impossible magic trick of causing a bus to reenter traffic.
• When you become late, slow down (Why? Because it's then that you'll get in accidents!). Tracy.
• Stretch. "My doctor told me, you did almost all of it. For thirty years of bus driving, you ate right, you were healthy, you exercised, you did everything right. But you didn't stretch. And that's why you have to have back surgery now." David.
• Jackknifing on ice or slush? Put the transmission in neutral. The weight of the front half of the coach will pull the articulation back into a straight position. Some Guy at East Maintenance (that saved me multiple times, whoever you are!)
• Lean forward during turns to avoid over-stretching your shoulders, keeping your back straight by pivoting at your tailbone. Never touch the top half of the steering wheel. Richard. I can't even explain how much this advice has helped my upper back.
• Never sit except when operating. Stand (or lie down) during all of your breaks. (I forget your name, but you always did this at the Bear Creek layover! Thanks for leading by example!)
• If you're late, change the DDU screen so you can't see how late you are. It focuses you in the present and helps eliminate the incentive to speed up. Paul, Soheil, many others. 
• Set up the seat and wheel slightly differently all the time, to minimize the repetitive nature of the movements. David.
• "If you don't know which bus goes to West Seattle, or the U District, you need to go get a job working somewhere else. Have some respect. Make the effort." Dave.
• If you're overwhelmed, just take a breath, and pause. It's okay to pause, and figure it out. Bill.
• You can say "good evening" in your answer the coordinator! Paul. I was surprised by his comfortableness with them. I had always been trepidatious prior.
• Recognize The Fall as it's happening, not afterwards. Address it. Aaron.
• Go slow, so you don't "see red" in everything happening. Giving up the desire to get there fast changes the nature of every interaction, every moment. Everything that happens is no longer an impediment. We talk about living life in the present, because you might not make it to old age; likewise, relax and enjoy your time on the route now, because you might not get a break at the terminal! (Me!).

You can go above and beyond. You don't have to go as beyond as some of these giants, but the ceiling is high, and there is room to play:

• Chuck, walking a sight-impaired person across the street.
• Po, cooking breakfast chili with his children and bringing it to the folks at Third and James. 
• Greg, driving the last 49 of New Year's night, in the days before it ran 24 hours, overloaded and leaving seventy or so people behind, demanding the coordinator send out another 49 after him, even though it didn't exist on the schedule. He told the people left behind to wait for that hypothetical bus, trusting the coordinator and an operator would come through. They did. 
• Paul, exiting the bus, following for a block, and calling the appropriate numbers to make sure an intoxicated girl didn't get raped by her companion. Sure, he probably broke half the rules in the playbook, but you better believe that girl was thankful afterwards.

All of which is to wit: say thank you to your bus driver!