For those of you who have been following my epic saga entitled “Trapped in the Rotunda,” I thought you might be interested to hear this little tidbit from Flushing last Saturday.

So, I go to yet another Mets game with my friend Mike (Just think of him as the Twan in this story.  To make it interesting, we can say he just got out of jail — white collar jail — he works in finance.)  Anyway, we walk through the rotunda to get to our seats (obviously).  As we ride up the elevator I overhear some guy say, “Man, that rotunda is seriously amazing.”

Seriously.  What’s the deal with that place?  People are just walking around and talking about its virtues unprompted  now?  Just using the word rotunda like it’s a normal word?  I don’t get why the need for all this rotunda kool-aid, but clearly the people are drinking it.

You’re not gonna believe it, but things get even deeper as I continue my tale.  As we were leaving — through the rotunda — we got stopped by the escalator attendant.  For no good reason.  We were about to step on when he yelled, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait!”  We looked around, alarmed, figuring something must be wrong.  But after a pause of about thirty seconds, during which time we searched the guy’s face for some sort of explanation, he nodded us on saying, “All right.  Go on.”

I’m thinking we were about to get sucked into a portal into another universe, and the attendant was trying to help us.

However, Mike, who had reached his rotunda weirdness threshold, threatened to pop a cap in the guy’s ass, but I told him, “Mike, you just got out jail, and I’ll be damned if you’re going back.

Then he said, “Mel.”

I said, “What?”

He said, “Mel.”

I said, “What?”

He said, “Mel.”

I said, “Mike, what?”

He said, “My name’s not Mike.”