"Extra Extra! Read All About It SUCKER!!!!"

If you know me you know of my obsession with "The Onion", a brilliant satirical newspaper that is often the only news source I can genuinely trust. I have often found myself obsessed with their horoscopes, but not as of late. Just in case you haven't seen this brilliant periodical, you should do yourself a favor and visit their website and enjoy their news videos. The physical newspaper itself is not only awesome, it is FREE!

Well, a few years ago after a particularly long day out on the mean streets of NYC, I had been looking for the new issue of The Onion to pick up for my subway ride home and every spot I'd come across was out of them. I am pretty sure I even went out of my way to seek it out in a few choice spots, but to no avail. I was dragging my weary bones down 8th Avenue looking for a place to rest my soul when a sort of crazy-eyed homeless guy approached me with a stack of newspapers. I figured he was selling the "Homeless Times" paper that some of these folk are peddling. Just as my auto-response "oh, no...sorry" was about to begin, my eye caught sight of the old familiar font and Today's Weather looming off to the right. This man was trying to SELL me "The Onion"! I couldn't help but laugh. This man thought I was dumb enough to pay $2.99 for "The Onion"? He even pointed out the joke price that used to be printed on it that looked legitimate but was just part of it's brilliant satire. I could NOT stop laughing! I figured this was worth the $3 for the amusement I was getting, and besides, I needed the new issue anyway. So I told him I WOULD buy one off of him, just because I thought it was hysterical of him to sell it. I walked away grinning from ear to ear only to realize, as I glanced down in jest, that I already had this issue, and it was WEEKS old. This swindler not only sold me a FREE newspaper, but he sold me an issue 3-4 weeks old! That bastard still GOT ME! At least it was actually one of my favorite issues. I know that sounds strange but I told you I was obsessed. Every single inch of that issue had cracked my shit up and mostly out loud....so at least he sold me a good one!!

This has long-since been one of my favorite NYC stories, much like the time I saw a "blind" panhandler with a walking stick walk off the subway reading his newspaper.

Well....I was hangin' out in Times Square this past week....acting like a hippie with flyers for "Hair" when this man wanders through.....




Now this is NOT the man who swindled me, but I have never seen anyone else trying this since then and that was at least 4 years ago. So I had another good laugh. I told him all about it...and he kept saying it was probably him. I knew it wasn't but I still needed some documentation. This man was very good humored about it all even though it hadn't been him originally. He mentioned that they stopped putting the fake price on the paper and he assumed it was so that people like him couldn't sell them on the streets. He also mentioned that he recently returned from being "away" for the past 4 years. By "away", he definitely meant "in jail"...which he was also, oddly, good humored about.

Only in New York...I hope.

So I was heading home last night after seeing a show and grabbing some food with friends, and the subway car that I got on had a homeless guy stretched out and sleeping on the bench. The first thing I do when I notice I am on a car like this is take a small sniff. I have endured more than my share of subway rides with homeless people who smell like poop, or worse....death. I once stayed on a subway car all the way into the city with a man who smelled dead because it was rush hour and I needed to sit down and eat my breakfast on the way to a job I would be standing all day for. Yes, I even ate an egg sandwich whilst smelling death. I don't recommend it, but not just for the fact that it is gross, mainly because I smelled that smelly homeless dead guy all day long. There are still days when I think I can smell him near me. Anyway, I noticed upon sniffing that there was no discernible scent, so I decided to stay. I noticed some crumbs lying on the floor next to his cart. I felt bad for the man, knowing this may have been his only meal that day and it looked like a tiny bag of chips. I wondered if he would be interested in finishing the half of chicken quesadilla I was carrying home. It wouldn't be the first time I had offered someone my leftovers, and generally they have been well-received, but sometimes it can be offensive. I thought about how I wish I could leave him a $50 bill to wake up to instead of a quesadilla. My thoughts drifted to this man and his plight for a few stops until I noticed that he had his hand down his pants. Up to that point, the angle I was sitting at saved me from that discovery. Certainly he isn't doing anything in there....maybe his hand was just...cold? It wasn't long before I noticed that his hand was moving, and there was no denying what it was doing in there. Well fuck that! That foul man is NOT getting my chicken quesadilla! Ah....NYC. Good times. Well...shortly before my stop, I noticed his motions getting more...purposeful when....I heard the sound of water...falling. Still laying across the subway car seat, he had pulled out his penis and proceeded to unload his bladder. From where I was seated, his cart blocked full exposure, but the arch of urine from his crotch and splashing onto the floor was clear. It was then that those at the other end of the car....down-stream of this man's relief show...noticed what was happening. Some were amused, some were appauled. I found myself more amused than anything. I have to say that, while NYC is a much cleaner/safer city than years ago, nothing like this really surprises me exactly. It was a first for me though. I never saw a man whip it out and piss on the subway while laying down, but I did see a man take a dump on the sidewalk in broad sunny daylight near Madison Square Garden though. It was a hot summer day and there were people everywhere. The man made no attempt to conceal his actions, and I saw his bare ass gleaning in the sunlight and the poop coming out of it. But the best part of it all was that he was reading what looked like a paperback romance novel at the time.

Oh...the crazies!

There are many times in life that reality is just so kooky that no writer could possibly invent the characters that I encounter on my various jobs here in NYC. Working at the Compusa on 5th Avenue (promoting AOL) has always been what I will refer to as an adventure, so as to cleverly conceal some of my bitter sweet feelings for it. Located in the heart of midtown, entirely too close to the Empire State building, you encounter one of 2 types of people here...the foreign folk, and the crazies. There are a lot of both in midtown, where they walk in all directions at once, none aware that there are hundreds of other human beings anywhere near them..changing their already indirect directions instantly running into you, stepping on you, keeping you contstantly on guard to dodge them, or stand your ground and run into them. Just the foreign folks, the crazies, and me. Perhaps it is best that these folks just bump into you and keep moving, for when they stop, and talk to you...you enter a world that not just anyone can handle. I talk to these people. I listen to them. Not generally on the street, but while working my various jobs. It took me a while to realize that while there shouldn't be any harm in this, they can often drain the life out of you at the same time as they tickle your brain when you realize that this is a real person standing in front of you, talking nonsense. When you stand in one place in a retail store every day or every weekend, these crazies always know where to find you again. I have met so many but right now all I can recall is yesterday. I met a filthy looking lady yesterday here at the store. She was very sweet. She was missing her two front teeth which were framed by the bright red lipstick smeared around her mouth. She had a tragically uneven skin tone, made moreso by the streaks of concealer or foundation strewn about her face. Her eyeliner appeared to have been applied heavily before her head had, perhaps, been held under water for a spell. Her hair seemed plastered to her head, with a slight frizz, and coated in some sort of glycerine-like liquid that was at some point dripping down her temples, but whose thickness had stopped it on it's way . Too thick to be sweat I wondered if she had applied glue? The topping on the cake is a toss up between the swirls of red lipstick that had somehow been spread faintly around her entire face and the numerous whiskers on her chin. She was a sight to behold. I approached her in my section without realizing all of her uniqueness, but once we began, I was involved...and had little way out. So we chatted. I learned she was an actress and she showed me her headshot and resume, a postcard sized copy of a picture she said had been taken on a cellphone, of her standing on a NY city street in front of a subway station, looking like a homeless person with bright red lipstick on. On the back was her resume, which boasted film/tv/commercial credits that my resume can't hold a candle to. Some credits were scribbled in and all was on the back of this postcard/cellphone picture. I offered to take her picture here (one of the parts of the area I am to get people to interact with). She seemed as though I caught her off-guard and she wasn't necessarily at her best, but we gave it a go. She saw the first shot and whipped out her makeup bag saying she needed to touch up her face. The first thing she grabbed was her tube of whore-red lipstick, which she not-so-expertly applied without a mirror. Instantly it began to bleed out into the lines and sweat on her face, on a path towards joining the rest of the "lipstick party" already in full swing on her forehead, cheeks and chin. Then she grabbed her foundation and swiped her finger in it and proceeded to draw lines around her face, poorly attempting at blending it while asking "do I look alright?". I can't answer that! Lying is physically painful to me. I couldn't even begin to point out all of the things that would have required fixing. The most helpful thing I could have offered would be a sponge and a bucket, but this was not an option. She was now looking in a mirror, and if she couldn't tell that she didn't look okay by seeing what I was seeing, what was the point in trying to fix it? Lastly she took out the eyeliner observing in the mirror as she rubbed the dull pencil around both eyes. "do I look alright?" she asked again, smoothing back her glue-y hair and smiling her no-front-teeth smile. "yes, yes you do." I said, pinching back my amusement and wincing at the pain for the untruth. She wasn't ever pleased with her photo, yet she had plans to go to kinkos to copy it and use it for her acting work. A few minutes later when she sat down at the public free internet computers we have here, I cringed as I watched her dirty hands smearing the left over brown foundation all over the keys and mouse. I couldn't wait until she left to wipe it down, but these computers are very popular and I never had a chance...several people cleaned it off with their own hands. Ew. Ew.

Gratuitously Rotten Smelly Homeless Man

This morning I hopped into the brisk air on the subway platform and was met with a train pretty quick, only to rip open my fresh hot egg sandwich and enter a car on the train that just happened to be filled with the stench of Gratuitously Rotten Smelly Homeless Man. There was no one in this car. The looks on my face as well as the few others who had filtered on with me told me I wasn't the only one to smell it. At the far end of the car lay the rotten thing...with all his belongings. Was he dead? How long had his carcass been allowed to ride on this train? Why hadn't anyone cleaned him out of there at the last stop (being that it is the end of the line, where they clean the cars!)? I saw him stir, so the smell couldn't be explained by death. We all looked at eachother in horror, our noses scrunched up as we tried to inhale as little as possible. A few people passed through to the next car. I looked in, but realized that-at this hour of the morning, were I to move, I would lose my seat...which is a coveted position during the morning rush hour...even moreso when you are about to stand outside for the next 10 hours working a promotion. So I stayed there...still eating my egg sandwich...because, well...I had to eat. As others filtered in, no one sat from half way through the car towards him. Many switched cars the first chance they got. I remained. Every once in while, as my nose started to get used to the smell...I feared the idea that I could ever get used to something so awful...would I smell like that all day? Just as I would worry about getting used to it, another wiff would waft all the way down to my end. What the hell could cause that? Was he covered in open sores and lying in his own soiled pants? How long would he be permitted to stay there? I have no doubt his smell would linger LONG after he had been shood out...and some innocent new rider would sit right where his poopy/bloody/corpse-like body had layed all day. I don't know if I was being insensitive to the plight of this unfortunate soul...whose aroma stayed with me and taunted me throughout the day. Was it really nearby, or was it just that strong that my mind couldn't help but have flashbacks? I don't know...there are a lot of homeless people here that sleep on subways...and they don't all smell like that.