This morning, I left home in Brooklyn at seven-thirty and started walking to work. My office is right by Madison Square Park, so the distance I needed to cover was about 5.7 miles. I slapped on the hat and gloves, screwed the mp3 player to my ears and started moving.

I hadn’t been to work since the transit strike started, spending two days as a shut-in with my eyeballs stapled to video games, mumbling to my cats. One can only have so much fun, so I decided that I’d best make some effort to get in to work.

I crossed over the Manhattan bridge, walking through Chinatown and Little Italy till I hit Union Square and finally Park Avenue. I’ve never done the walk in before and while it was interesting and fairly picturesque in an ugly, New York way, it sucked fucking donkey ass. It was really cold. I would have taken pictures, but my hands were freezing and I didn’t want to take them out of their gloves.

It took me two and a half hours to get to my office. I froze my ass off and really wanted to stop in Chinatown for Dim Sum, but was running late as it was. Faced with the probability that I will have to walk back the same way at the end of the day, it is completely not worth the trouble to come in.

I’m at a slow point the year for my production schedule, so technically, I’m fine to not come in till Tuesday, but I felt bad missing so much, so I figured I’d do the walk at least once. I sure as hell will not be doing it tomorrow. I’m done.

This transit strike seriously blows. I don’t care what happens or who gets fucked in the ass over it, but those trains need to start running again. It’s ridiculous.

This morning as I was coming down the stairs to the subway platform, a tad hungover from a wine smorgasborg that lasted pretty late, I noticed this really big guy holding the world’s cutest, smallest dog, standing around and waiting for the train to come.

I mean, this dog was small. The man was holding him under his arm on the side that wasn’t facing me, so all I could see of the little bugger was his head. Seriously, this beast was absolutely, jaw-droppingly adorable.

Now normally I really don’t talk to strangers. I’m not the type of person who pets other people’s animals or comments on them. Truth told, I actively avoid strange dogs in public because all they really want to do is sniff my crotch and bark at me. Who wants that (at least in public)? However, this little pocket-dog, this pint-sized package of Pokemon-like cuteness was just too much to pass up. I started walking over, a big dumbass grin on my face.

This big guy saw me coming, slipping and sliding in my own drool and practically falling down, tripping over my own tongue with semi-crazed eyes locked onto his pint-sized pet. He shot me a look of suspicion that I well knew is reserved for crackheads that look like they’re about to come up and talk to you. It’s a look that says, “I will go ghetto. I will hit you so hard, your kids will be born dizzy. Go drink some antifreeze, motherfucker. Leave me alone.” Anyone who lives in New York City knows of this glare that I speak of.

I wasn’t to be stopped. I had to see this dog. Once I was up close and he saw that I was reasonably well-dressed, clean and obviously not a homeless crazy person, the man would undoubtedly understand that I too, was a fellow miniature dog lover (well, I was one now that I’d spotted the little fucker) and he would relax and even let me pet his dog and everything would be fine if not slightly gay.

Finally, I reached the guy, stopping before him, grinning like a busload of Down Syndrome kids after a Teletubbies marathon. “I just cannot believe how utterly cute that dog is. What breed is he? Is he friendly?”, said I.

The man looked at me like I was naked, smeared head to toe in my own feces, offering to impregnate his mother. “Get the fuck outta here”, he grunted to me as he shifted his weight and turned away from me.

It was then that I noticed that the world’s most adorable doggie’s head was actually the handle of some stupid novelty umbrella that the guy had tucked under his arm. It was made out of plastic and I was officially the most retarded person in New York. I slunk away to the other end of the platform.

Always wear your glasses.

I was riding the 2/3 train into Manhattan yesterday morning and as I stood there, blasting that German death metal, as I am wont to do in the mornings, I noticed a middle-aged black woman, seated, knitting and bopping along to whatever was playing on her walkman. Her bag on the floor was overflowing with balls of thread and after a second’s scrutiny, I noticed that aside from her boots, the lady’s entire outfit was made of yarn. She wore a knitted hat, skirt, shirt, vest and socks. Lo and behold, I was in the presence of a yarn junkie at the end stage of the disease.

I stood there thinking that she must be crazy or something. She looked clean enough to be a normal person, but then again, plenty of seriously crazy fucks dress better than I do. Case in point, I once watched a genial looking grandmother type, very tidily dressed, walk to the bottom of the steps to the Q train platform, smile, drop trousers and pee on the floor. Another time, on Wall Street, I witnessed a very dapper businessman get into a one-sided screaming match with a magazine rack that culminated in fisticuffs and a copy of GQ having to go to the emergency room. You just never know.

Anyway, as I stood there pondering the sanity of the yarn lady, we came to a stop and two girls got on, carrying coffee cups. Squeezing through the commuting crush, they ended up right in front of this lady, who upon seeing them, raised her needles threateningly and yelled “You motherfucking bitches better have those coffee lids on tight ’cause if you spill one goddamn drop on me, I’ll fuck your ass right up! I ain’t fucking around, you better watch yourself. Nobody spillin’ coffee on me! I’m from Brooklyn, bitch!”

The two girls, visibly taken aback, mumbled affirmatives in regards to the tight seal on their coffee lids and quickly moved farther down the car, taking care to clear this crazy knit-freak’s needle plunging range. The lady yelled after them, “You damn right you’re moving on! Ain’t nobody spillin’ their shit on me! Damn right you gonna get outta my way, motherfucking bitches!” and then went straight back to knitting and bopping along to her tunes.

Unfortunately, I make it a habit to never bring food or drink on the train. I was sorely wishing I had a cup of coffee so I could get the same attention. Oh well, next time.

This morning, I left my apartment to catch the 2/3 Eastern parkway train here in Brooklyn as I normally do every morning. Normally the station is really busy with people coming and going and there’s usually a kid that’s selling papers parked out in front of the steps but I was running late this morning and instead of the usual 8:30 mad dash, I was starting my commute at around 10 AM and there was no one really around.

As I started down the stairs into the station, five guys started coming up towards me, scoping behind them and ahead off them to see if the coast was clear. They were acting really sketchy and one of them looked at me me and said to the others, “Him! Get him! Do it! Fucking punk-ass, do it now!” I had no doubt that I was about to get jumped for my bag or my wallet.

They blocked off the stairs to try and box me in, so I turned around and high-tailed it out onto the street. One of them reached out to try and grab me, but I was too quick. All five of them ran out onto the street after me and for a few seconds I had the incredulous thought that I was about to get beat down and robbed on a busy street in broad daylight, but they took off running down the block, stopping at one point when the mouthy one slammed another guy up against a car, yelling at him and calling him a punk-ass, I assume because he let me get away.

I really don’t like the idea of being mugged again. I don’t know what it is about me or this fucked up neighborhood ghetto shithole, but being robbed twice and mugged once is really and quite truly fucking enough. Just that morning, I’d received the shipment of my brand new laptop and for some reason decided to leave it at home, against my natural inclination to dive headfirst into a new toy, which is a really good thing because if I had gotten robbed, I’d be shit out of luck.

Lately, as far as I’m concerned, everything’s been all about the mad subway masturbater. A man, dedicated to what I envision as a insane, frantic and unstoppable pud-thwacking frenzy that was caught on a cell phone camera, spanking his monkey like there was no tomorrow. Not a man to be upstaged, nor crossed. It’s all over the news. It’s the topic of conversation. It’s the image that’s burned into the back of my retinas when I awake, sweaty and screaming for mother in the wee hours of dawn.

Few of us, here on this earth can reach such levels of social inappropriateness as a guy who likes whipping his junk out in public. It’s raw, it’s primal, it’s really bizarre. Most of all, after consuming a lot of alcohol, it’s really fucking hilarious to me.

Now I know, this guy is a serious pervert. He’s victimized a lot of people and he’s really bad and should be castrated with extreme dull-bladed prejudice, but fuck, I have brain damage, I come from a broken home and at this current mental state, the whole thing is looking kind of humorous to me.

I mean seriously, a mad, demonic subway masturbater. Just when you think it’s safe to take that 6 train… THWACK, THWAPPA-THWAPPA-THWAPPA-the demon wanker of the underground has struck! You look up from your newspaper to a grinning fiesta of greasy, meat-spanking weirdness and you ask yourself, “Who am I, really?” As a passenger here on Spaceship Earth, do I really know where I’m going in this life?” Some deep moments can be had when facing the leering mask of the Monkey-Spank God.

By whipping his johnson out and painting the ceiling, he has single-handedly (literally) shown the world that as civilized as it may look, underneath the surface, lurking around the corner is a crazy dude that likes beating it in public. You probably work with him and don’t delude yourself by pretending he washes his hands on a regular basis.

There’s something almost primal about a dude who sees something he likes and just starts punching that clown till there’s no tomorrow with total disregard for social norm and restraint. It’s totally fucking caveman and in that sense, is awesome. Unfortunately, there’s victims. But let’s pretend for a minute that there aren’t. Remove the victim and in my mind, the Mad Subway Masturbator is a hero of the times. A man that refuses to bow to society’s rules, who indulges in his animal roots and yanks it left and right, preferrably on public transportation. His rigid, grinning visage of onastic pumping joy serves as a beacon to shock us and remind us that we are human and not that far away from the caveman, whipping one off by the campfire.

If he hadn’t terrorized those girls, I would’ve felt a lot more support for him. I envision him pulling an OJ Simpson, riding the train into the sunset, cops on his tail, whacking that shit till it bleeds because he’s not jerking it for himself, he’s jerking it for the world. He’s whacking it for God, man. I’d be right there on the platform as the train would whip by at breakneck speed, with my cardboard sign that said, “Go Mad Subway Masturbater, Go!”

But reality is something I’m far removed from. This guy’s an asshole. He’s a pervert that needs to be someone’s ass-toy at Riker’s for a few months.

Yesterday, I was doing the morning rush-hour commute to the city, hungover, late and addled with lack of sleep. A typical morning for me. I sat there in the subway car, shifting from position to position, trying to find the one magical contortion that would prevent me from blowing massive chunks all over my fellow passengers like a poor man’s metro rendition of “The Exorcist”. A warning to the wise: if you are riding the 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 trains in the morning on a weekday and you see a skinny, pale and sketchy looking white dude with glasses that keeps leaning back and forth, shifting from side to side, make sure to stay out of range. Possibly, you might want to switch subway cars because it very likely could be me, very close to painting you with the contents of my twisted and unhappy stomach. You have been warned.

That morning, my voyage on the good ship nausea was not off to a particularly good start as I sat down in the one free seat in the car to a smell that made me think of the taste one might come up with after licking a few used ashtrays. Whoever had been sitting or had died there prior to my arrival was one hell of a fucking champion cigarette smoker. Perhaps it was the ghost of the Marlboro Man, come to haunt my morning hangovers, who knows, it stank like a motherfucker though.

So, up to my waist in stale cigarette stank, I held it down. Green in the face with a sweat beaded brow, I braved the bumping, the jostling, the screeching and the squealing, holding the lid down on my stomach with an iron will.

Finally, I made it to my last transfer. After switching trains, I only have a few more stops till I can hide behind my desk until death, or lunchtime releases me. I leaned against one of the platform pillars, proud that I’d made it so far without decorating some senior citizen or homeboy with hangover barf. The train arrived. The doors opened and I entered into the welcome air conditioning. Almost there.

Upon entering the car, I see this huge, black young man. He looks at me, smiles and says, “I’m on American Idol!” and proceeds to screech, not quite coherently, Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You”, only just the chorus part, over and over, hanging from the bars in the train. As quick as I could, I made to back out the door, but I was too late. The doors shut and I found myself taking a seat, front and center for a one-man diva-thon without the medication.

This guy was clearly having a psychotic episode. Screaming, laughing, squealing his way through those four words much like the guinea pig at a “proctology as chainsaw art” seminar might do.

“Ladies and Gentlemen…I’m on American Idol! AND IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII WIIILLLLLLLLL ALWAAAAAAAAAAYS LOOOOOOOOVE YOOOOOOUUU!!!! AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!”

Over and over, this crazy fucking nutcase assaulted my eardrums. He screeched so high, it was actually painful and I swear to god, something inside my head ruptured. Fifteen years from now, as I sit on the edge of the exam table and the doctor delivers the bad news of an inoperable brain something or other and asks, “Were you ever exposed to any high-frequency sound?”, I’ll look back and it will all make sense. That nutty squealing bastard will be the death of me.