Greyhound has scrapped an ad campaign that extolled the relaxing upside of bus travel after one of its passengers was accused of beheading and cannibalizing another traveler.
The ad’s tag line was “There’s a reason you’ve never heard of ‘bus rage.'”
Greyhound spokeswoman Abby Wambaugh said Wednesday a billboard and some tunnel posters near a bus terminal in Toronto are still up and would be removed later in the day.
Why waste the whole campaign? Just modify the tagline to “There’s a reason you’ve never heard of ‘bus rage’….ya know, except that one time..and what are the odds?”
Make that Ouroboros.. Pay no attention to the ‘Jake’ behind the curtain.. I am the great and powerful O! (uroboros)
I guess there’s a reason people say stuff like “Seriously, you can’t make this shit up.”
Or maybe a new campaign slogan all together:
“Greyhound: Dirty? Yes.. Smelly? Sure.. Filled with potential knife murderers? Uh-huh… But you know you can’t afford to fly, so what choice do you have?”
Bus driver looking up in big mirror:
“Hey! Cut that out. HEY! SIT DOWN! NO BEHEADING ON THE BUS!! DON’T MAKE ME COME BACK THERE! I’LL PULL THIS BUS OVER! GET BACK IN YOUR SEATS!”
I’m watching Mad Men… Can ya tell?
Overheard on a city bus..
(Couple or three teens getting a bit loud..)
Busdriver: Hey, you guys sit down and shut up! Don’t make me stop this bus and come back there.. You don’t want a piece of this.. I’m not just your average transit bus driver,
I’M NORMALLY A TOUR BUS DRIVER!
Hahahaha! I waited for him to elaborate but apparently he figured that that was enough to put the fear of God in the unruly boys..
I guess every profession has it’s hierarchies…
Maybe they can change it to “This busline has been beheading free since July 30, 2008.”
I’ll bet some of those posters show up on eBay.
A.L.: Hahahaha! Yeah.. with one of those little worksite meters that counts the days..
We haven’t had a beheading in XX days.
(with replaceable number tabs)
“The ad’s tag line was “There’s a reason you’ve never heard of ‘bus rage.’â€Â
– “….because you can rest easy that any witnesses will be immediately thrown under the bus.”
Testimonials from some of our satisfied customers –
– “Hey, full clean up and body disposal at no extra charge, while I was able to catch a full nights rest, trying to recover from that ‘special tired’ cutting off heads always leaves you with….I’ll never do a killing spree in any other public transportation…T. Bundy
– …Overhead storage for body parts and cleaver, plastic wrap to keep body fluids from spilling out in the aisles, lots of hot wet towels to sop up gore…Whats not to like….I go Greyhound every time.” – Freddie Krueger
– Remember – take the bus, leave the cleanup to us. Greyhound, for all your travel needs.
Ahh, c’mon.
Thelast Greyhound bus I took went from NYC to Oneanta. It took eight excruciatring hours (for a three hour trip in a car), and I sat next to this really hot girl who had apparently eaten about five black beauties. At first, I had a woody, and thought “just how lucky can a guy get?”
Ha! Within 30 miles, I would have rather been disemboweled and eaten.
Bummer, man. I really wondered what she would look like naked at first, but within thirty minutes, I started hoping that someone would shoot her.
Once, I took a Greyhound Bus from San Diego, CA to Norwalk, CA, and by the time it was over I wanted to kill everyone on the bus, including myself. Four and one-half hours of my life wishing the people across the aisle would shut up for just five minutes.
I’ve never taken Greyhound, but I took Amtrak from Detroit to Chicago then to Champaign once. When I realized the semis on the highway were passing us, I vowed never to ride a train again — what’s the point of having absolute right-of-way on an well-leveled, well-maintained track if you’re going to dawdle along like a granny with her blinkers on?
Rob,
I used to take AmTrak from CT to Delaware, and that mother smoked! Once we got across the Hudson River, it flew – anywhere from 115 to 125 mph.
I also used to live next to the AmtraK tracks, and my friend and I would have a few cocktaiks, and then go out and shoot roman candles at the AmTrak trains as they went by – only at night though.
You wouldn’t believe how fast the people on those trains could dive across the aisle!
It’s amazing what a person is capable of when they are young and full of cocktails.
Go Greyhound: Hey, at least there’ll be witnesses…
Could be, but 40mph across the Illinois plains? No thanks.
I rode Greyhound to Reno once.
By the time I got there the guy I was going there to shoot, just to watch him die, had caught a plane for St. Louis.
Fucking Greyhound.
You know, in the seventies Continental Trailways busses had stewardesses that served cokes and peanuts and sandwiches… Ahhh .. the poor man’s TWA.. Cost a little more but it was worth it..
Could be, but 40mph across the Illinois plains? No thanks.
“…I hear that train a-rollin”
I hang my head and cry…”
(There ya go, McGehee)
I probably woulda got there in time if I’d-a took the train.
One thing about that song always puzzled me, BTW: there have never been any rails near Folsom Prison that went anywhere but Folsom Prison. As of right now the nearest active railroad to the prison is a little fun ride in Folsom’s city park. Next nearest is, I believe, the metro Sacramento light rail system.
Back in the day when Johnny wrote the song, I think the only railroad through Folsom went up a little past Placerville to serve a lumber mill at Camino; I don’t think it ever had dining cars full of rich guys drinking coffee or smokin’ big cigars.
I have begun to suspect Johnny Cash may not ever have been to Folsom.
And why would a man be put in a California state prison for a murder committed in Reno?
</thinking too much about a great song>
As David Allan Coe sang, any good country song needs a train, among other things:
“WELL, I WAS DRUNK THE DAY MY MOM GOT OUT OF PRISON
AND I WENT TO PICK HER UP IN THE RAIN
BUT BEFORE I COULD GET TO THE STATION IN MY PICKUP TRUCK
SHE GOT RUNNED OVER BY A DAMNED OLD TRAIN”
The late great Harry Chapin, who in his ‘early days’ as a performer spent a lot of time on buses wrote a song called Greyhound
Here’s one stanza:
Take the Greyhound.
It’s a dog of a way to get around.
Take the Greyhound.
It’s a dog gone easy way to get you down.
Well, Harry, that Greyhound got you home safe, didn’t it?
My two cents? When I first saw this posted (Ace I think?) I thought it was ’cause of Obama’s throwing everybody and his grandmother UNDER the bus. Bus Rage, get it?
I think the ridership is so low in the midwest, Rob, that they’re running those trains on roughly Civil War-era tracks. Maybe turn-of-the-century(20th century, that is).
I rode the Newton,Ks-Chicago-Newton,Ks just a month ago. The tracks were just ok. Lots of swaying going on. Weird sitting back in my seat watching the car almost disappear as viewed through the door due to it swaying right and my car swaying left. Yet the people working the train showed no fear, so I figured that must be normal. Also no heads cut off and no cannibalism which is always nice.
I’m not sure about the mid-west, but my rides were on the Boston -Washington corridor, and I know they replaced all the track on that run. The new rails are about five or six times longer than the old ones, and it makes for a much quieter and more stable ride. If you’re outside the train, it’s so quiet, you can barely hear it pass by. It “whooshes” instead of “clanking”. It’s actually a pretty pleasant ride – unlike the nasty, nasty, nasty commuter trains to New York.
I think AmTrak actually might make some money on those Boston – DC runs. Once I came up from Delaware on the day before Thanksgiving, and the whole train was like a human sardine can. That’s why I paid the extra fifty dollars to ride in the “first class” car. No steenkin’ riff raff, and they deliver drinks and food to your seat, which is comparable to a first class airline seat.
Maybe those new rails are the difference, though. On the Metro-Liner run, the train is very stable, and once it gets out of NYC and past the model city of Newark, NJ,, it flies. If I hadn’t asked, I would have thought we were going about 60 – 65 mph.
Ahem. I will not sit here and let this revisionism go unchecked!
TLD: the lyrics are “When I hear that lonesome whistle, I hang my head and cry.”
McG: I believe the song was written by Carl Perkins, not The Man In Black.
Anyhoo, I took a train from Seattle to Vancouver, BC last July. Loved it. Four Bloody Mary(s) helped. A lot.
Oh. And McGehee?
Yup. It is a great song (I do it every time I play out), and I think that the reason he wrote it was for a concert he did at Fulsom Prison many, many years ago.
The inmates went crazy when he sang it. There’s a live recording of it somewhere in JC’s catalogue, and after hearing it, it surprises me that the inmates head’s didn’t explode when he sang it. They are going absolutely nuts!
I love Johnny Cash, but Merle Haggard is my hero. The Frank Sinatra of country music.
Merle actually spent time in prison.
Seems he was pretty drunk one night, and decided to rob the local bar. Unfortunately, it was ten o’clock at night and they were still open. They knew him, and if he hadn’t thrown down the wrecking bar that he had used to jimmy the door, and then run away, they probably would have thought it was a joke. Dummy!
Listen to “Sing Me Back Home” sometime. It’s about a guy who he was going to escape with, but chickened out at the last moment. The guy escaped and killed someone.
That’s where the song is coming from, and knowing the story makes the song even better.
Anyway…
“…just say your mine
I’ll pull the twine…” – or something like that.
Aren’t thinking of the concert he recorded live at San Quentin?
Hi, kelly,
Nope. I’m pretty sure you’re wrong.
That’s a different verse.
It goes:
“…But I hear that whistle blowin’,
That’s what tortures me…” (third verse)
I could have it wrong, but I don’t think so. I learned it so long ago that I could be transposing some words. It’s like Pure Prairie League’s “Amy” (or Aimee?)
I’ve been doing that song for so long that sometimes my mind just goes blank in the middle of it. That’s when I get to be most creative, and make up sounds that appear to rhyme. Sorta like Pigeon English.
And BTW, singing “Johnny B. Goode” is like kicking a dead dog over and over and over again. Just so you know….
Hi again, Kelly.
I don’t know about San Quentin, but it’s quite possible. I haven’t seen the album in years, and am rapidly approaching dementia.
And I also don’t know about Carl Perkins writing it. That could also easily be true. I have always just assumed that JC wrote it. I’ve never heard Carl Perkins do the song, though.
But if Carl Perkins wrote it, that’s way cool. He’s another one of my early heroes. He did some way cool stuff. I think I was about twelve when Blue Suede Shoes came out, and was just beginning to play guitar. I used to sit for hours listening to him and picking up the needle from the 45 and dropping it back so I could learn what he was doing.
What a dork I was.
Gotta run, but kelly.
Is it possible that there are two different versions out there? I learned the words straight off of the recording, so I’m pretty sure that I have them right.
I wonder. Because you seem to have it pretty much together where JC is concerned…
Gotta disagree, TLD. It goes:
“Well, I hear that train a-rollin’,
it’s comin’ round the bend,
and I ain’t seen the sunshine since I don’t know when…”
I’m 95% sure Perkins wrote Folsom Prison but I’d be happy to be wrong. Also, I have that live San Quentin CD. Carl is on guitar.
But if you think what you were doing listening to 45’s over and over made you a dork, then I was probably a bigger dork.
Johnny Cash wrote Folsom Prison Blues, according to wikipedia.
From memory:
I can’t believe I only blanked out on that one part. I’m probably wrong on a lot of it anyway, though.
In fact, the second-to-last line in the second-to-last verse might be “But those people keep a-movin’.”
I stand corrected on the authorship of the song, but I had the lyrics right. So, hey, good for me.
(???) = fancy
</still haven’t Googled the lyrics>
Hi, Kelly.
I listened to my download again, and the second verse is:
“…when I hear that train a-rollin’,
I hang my head and cry”.
and the third verse is:
“…(But) I hear that whistle blowing,
(and) that’s what tortures me.
So there must be two different recordings of it. It’s the only thing I can think of.
Unless you went to a “lyrics” site. They notoriously get words wrong, because most are sent in by other people.
Whatever. It’s still a great song, and I am pleased to find someone here who is into Johnny Cash. A country musician is a lonely place to be where I live. When I was a kid, I had to hide my country records when my friends came over.
Very traumatic…
McGehee
(???) = fancy
Yes.
And I know the word in that verse is “coffee”, but I often just sing “whiskey”. Seems to fit better at the dives. My favorite kind of bar, BTW.
There was a place in Hailey, ID called the Mint that was the last local bar in Sun Valley. It was just a really neat place, and filled with locals. A really fun place to hang.
And then Bruce Willis bought it, turned it into a blues bar, and it just kinda died. Another great local dive bites the dust!
But I have to admit, it must be way cool to be able to buy your own bar so you can have a place that will hire your band.
There was another place down the road in Bellevue (or Belle Vue) that was called Sam’s club. I went in one afternoon at about 1:00 to check it out. It bwas full of boisterous lumberjack types and bikers, and it kinda scared me.
I had already ordered a beer, so I decided to drink it and get the F out of there. Well, I wound up staying ’til closing time. What a blast!
But that’s another place that has been plasticized in the last ten years or so. Too bad.
I live for dives.
That coffee line sticks with me because when I picture the people in that verse with their rich surroundings and big cigars, I see them holding brandy snifters, not coffee cups.
I live for dives.
I heard that. All of my favorite ones from my touring days are so friggin far away.
The Filling Station in Bozeman, Sluggo’s in Pensacola, The Yacht Club in Iowa City, Tilt Daddies in Charleston WV, Westward Ho in Grand Forks, The Zoo in Lincoln NE, Antones in Austin, Ace of Clubs in Nashville, Rajis in LA, so many more I can’t recall the names of right now.
And of course the sleaziest of them all, CBGBs (RIP)
B. Moe,
Yup. It’s sad for me to think about how many of these great places that have been overtaken by the brave new world.
When I was in Nashville, I played at an incredible dive beer bar that we called “Momma’s Country Dumpster”. (Momma’s Gountry Junction).
But the best thing was that I was playing with some great musicians, and whenever any of the “A Team” guys were in town, they would stop by and sit in with us. I made twenty bucks a night, but the experience was incredible. I think I even felt important for a few minutes now and then.
Hope your gig is still going good, my friend.
TLD