Sp-eed

The movie Speed always reminds me of Thailand. Partly because I was living in Thailand when I saw it in the theater. (Said with a Thai accent it's Sp-eed, BTW.) That and the fact that I was once chased down an alley by a riderless motorcycle after the rider had been knocked off by a taxi shortly after seeing the film. (The traffic is pretty intense over there.)

Anyway, I recently watched the movie when I was feeling a little under the weather and needed some couch time. The thing that I find most unrealistic about Speed is not a city bus jumping a 50 foot gap in a highway. It's how everyone in LA seems to know everyone and are on a first name basis. Judging by the film, LosAngeles must be the friendliest city in America. I mean, even if you see the same driver every day, how many of you know the name of your bus driver and he knows your name as well?

There was a bus driver that I frequently saw when I had to commute to Marin County for a hideous marketing job that I suspected was the Zodiac Killer. Whenever I got on the bus, he would have found an excuse to strike up a conversation with a young woman at the front of the bus and then worked the topic around to the San Francisco serial killer, always mentioning that the killer was never found. Finally, after hearing his spiel three or four times, I googled the Zodiac Killer. The bus driver only looked in his mid-thirties so I figured that would put him at too young of an age to be the killer. Still, even though I try to be friendly and polite to everyone, that's the most I've ever known about a bus driver.