Another Talking Head

Barefoot Jesus

2006-03-13T11:02:00.000-05:00

I wrote an essay titled "Barefoot Jesus" for The Subway Chronicles -- an online journal that prints essays and photos inspired by the New York City subway system -- in August of last year.

Click on the title of this post to check out The Subway Chronicles' Web site.

I called him Barefoot Jesus.

He was a short, thin man with tanned, leathery skin. His hair was long, greasy and thinning. He had a crazy, furry beard that sprouted down past his stomach, and he usually wore an old gray sweatshirt and blue jeans rolled up to the middle of his calves. His naked feet stomped back and forth on top of an opened section of The New York Times as he strummed away on an old acoustic guitar.

Each night he sang the same, seemingly endless song to a handful of people waiting in the Times Square subway station for a train to take them home to Queens. The song had only one word that he repeated over and over:

"Thanks, thanks, thanks. Thanks, thanks, thanks. Thanks, thanks, thanks. Thanks, thanks, thanks…"

Barefoot Jesus would sing the word three times and then switch his chord and key for the next three. After he went through a series of four changes, the whole thing would start all over again.

He stood close to the platform edge with his back facing a support beam. His shoes and socks were set neatly next to a closed guitar case that had "Jesus Loves You" and "Trust in the Lord" stickers all over it. A large stack of hand-written flyers were piled on top.

I had watched Barefoot Jesus perform his routine hundreds of times, but I only saw someone give him money once. He had just arrived and was sitting on the floor taking off his shoes. A middle-aged man, who was walking by, tossed a dollar at his feet. Barefoot Jesus stood up with one shoe on and ran after the man to hand him a flyer.

Obviously, money wasn't his ultimate goal. There was no tip bucket set out. He didn't even leave his guitar case open. Barefoot Jesus had a message and a purpose. Something happened in this man's life that motivated him to sing out his thanks to Jesus all night long below the streets of New York City.

Often, people would laugh at Barefoot Jesus' efforts. When this happened, his singing would become quieter, his strumming slowed, and his stomping would be reduced to a tiny shuffle. His eyes would dart back and forth, nervously. Gradually, his confidence returned and things would go back to normal.

I liked knowing that Barefoot Jesus would always be there. My day felt incomplete on the few occasions that he wasn't. I'd watched him arrive on the platform around midnight a countless number of times and often wondered how long he continued to sing after I left. My question was answered early one morning while returning home from a night in Atlantic City. It was past 5 a.m. when I walked down into the subway and found Barefoot Jesus standing with his guitar hanging around his back. He was eating corn straight out of a can with a plastic spoon. He went back to performing as soon as he was finished.

One night, I was standing on the platform waiting for the 'W' and listening to Barefoot Jesus when a group of teenagers showed up. They snickered and laughed at him. A boy from the group stood directly in front of Barefoot Jesus, pointed into his face, and told him how much he sucked. He started to mock Barefoot Jesus by playing air guitar, stomping and moaning. The hysterical laughter of his friends echoed throughout the entire station. People from the other platforms looked our way to see what was going on. Barefoot Jesus' face grew bright red, but he didn't falter. He kept singing and stomping, trying his best to ignore the ridicule.

I decided at that moment that Barefoot Jesus deserved for something good to happen to him after tolerating such humiliation. I reached for my wallet and opened it. The light from an approaching train entered the station. The only cash I had with me was a twenty dollar bill. I looked up and saw the breeze from the arriving train blow his long beard into his face. I walked over, placed the twenty on top of his guitar case and hurried into the train.

I was surprised to see Barefoot Jesus run into the train right after me. He handed me one of his flyers and simply said, "Please read this." As soon as the paper was in my grasp, I heard a sound recognizable to subway riders all over the world:

BING BONG.

The doors closed, trapping Barefoot Jesus inside. He made a futile effort to spread them apart with his fingers -- his guitar banging against the doors as he did so -- but the train moved slowly out of the station. My mouth opened wide as I watched him stare out the window as his socks, shoes, guitar case and other belongings on the platform disappeared from sight.

When nothing but black was visible from the windows, he pivoted toward the middle of the car. His bare feet looked awkward against the trash-littered floor. I tried to express how sorry I was, but he didn't answer back. He just stood there with an embarrassed look on his red, leathery face.

I told him that he could get off at 49th Street and take the next train back to Times Square, but then I remembered that to do that he'd have to exit the station, walk up the stairs, cross the street and pay a two dollar fare.

Then, almost magically, the worry on his face vanished. He shuffled to the other end of the car and picked up a copy of the Daily News someone had left on a seat. He looked through it carefully as the train pulled in amongst the orange/red brick walls of the 49th Street station. I assumed he would get off to make his way back to his belongings, but he kept his focus on the newspaper. A satisfied expression came over his face. He placed the opened newspaper onto the floor, stepped onto it and strummed his familiar chords.

"Thanks, thanks, thanks. Thanks, thanks, thanks. Thanks, thanks, thanks. Thanks, thanks, thanks…"

He played and sang all the way into Queens without stopping. When we finally arrived at Ditmars Blvd. in Astoria -- my stop and the end of the line -- Barefoot Jesus stopped singing and sat down. The doors opened and everyone got out except for us and a couple of sleeping homeless men. I approached him one more time and attempted to express how sorry I was about what happened. He looked up at me and said that Jesus would have never allowed this to happen unless there was a reason. He was convinced that someone on that train needed to hear his message tonight. He also said that the Lord would protect his things until he got back.

I wished him a goodnight and he reminded me to read his flyer. I promised him that I would and left the train to walk home to my apartment near the East River.

After I got home, I sat in my room and read his flyer from start to finish. Some of the handwriting was difficult to make out, but I was able to decipher most of it. It explained how he had suffered for many years with a deadly skin disease because he wasn't a virgin before he got married. The disease was miraculously healed after he pledged his life to Christ. It explained how people who wish to rid their homes of evil must sprinkle their kitchen floors with flour (not self-rising) and keep it there until it turns dark. Afterwards, it must be swept up and buried in the yard of a Catholic (not Protestant) church.

But the most interesting thing about the flyer was the part where he explained why he stomps on a newspaper while he performs. He picks a particular story or article that deals with some type of evil happening in the world and stomps on it as a symbolic gesture to show his condemnation of the evil act.

Barefoot Jesus wasn't on the platform the next night. I worried that he had returned to the station to find all of his things missing and lost all faith in God. My fears were unfounded, though. He was back in action the night after that with all of his stuff in tow - nothing appeared to have been stolen. I noticed that the headline he was stomping on had something to do with the war in Iraq.

Barefoot Jesus is just one of dozens of subway musicians, panhandlers and other familiar people I ran into each day. I moved away from New York in late 2003 and I miss them all very much.

So, if you find yourself in the Times Square station after midnight, go down to the Queens bound N,R,W platform and listen to Mr. Barefoot play.

And be sure to take one of his flyers. It will make his day.

Bokov NYC

2006-03-07T14:07:00.000-05:00

A few years ago, I worked for the New York Restoration Project -- a nonprofit organization founded by actress/singer Bette Midler to cleanup and restore abandoned parks and gardens throughout New York City.

I started out taking care of an upper Manhattan park that most New Yorkers probably never even heard of. This post isn't about the park itself, though. It's about the treasures I discovered inside.

Every morning, our crew split up to remove garbage from various areas of the park. Part of my route was a paved walkway high up on a cliff overlooking the Harlem River. An old, stone wall bordered the path. Mounted on this wall was an old, rusty, metal box. I always noticed it, but never gave it much thought -- I assumed it was an old fuse or electrical box associated with the park's non-working lamposts.

One day, for some reason I can't explain, I opened the creaky cover of the box, expecting to find some old mangled wires or something of that sort. Instead, I got a complete surprise. The box was totally hollow, except for one thing: A drawing was attached to the inside with masking tape.

It was a drawing of man playing a guitar done in black marker on heavy, white paper signed BOKOV 1997 NYC. I thought it beautiful. I carefully removed it, rolled it up and took it home.

I checked the box every day after that hoping to find a new treasure there, and a couple of weeks later I got my wish -- this time it was some sort of a collage made from various peices of an old calendar. The artist had made it to look like a kangaroo. The words BOKOV 1993 NYC RECYCLE were written on the front.

Who was this artist who placed 10-year-old drawings in a park that hardly anyone visited?

Not long after that, I paid a visit to the office of one of NYRP's directors. I was shocked to find his walls covered in BOKOV drawings very similar to the ones I had found. He told me that he'd been finding drawings in that box for several years and collected them to form, what he called, The Gallery.

I decided to donate all the drawings I had found to The Gallery, but I did keep one to hang in my apartment -- a drawing of a man reading a book at an outdoor cafe. It reminded me of myself.

I became even more curious about BOKOV, but couldn't find anyone who knew anything about him. One Saturday I wandered into a tiny gallery at the South Street Seaport. Just as I was about to leave, something familiar caught my eye -- it was a BOKOV. Not a drawing this time. It was a full-fledged oil painting. The style was the same, though. I asked a gallery worker about Bokov, but all she knew was that he was Russian and wore strange clothes that he decorated with his own drawings.

Some information I found about Bokov since then:

In life and art Konstantin Bokov has found himself acting the mediator between cultures and art movements. A painter, junk artist and collagist, Bokov makes the recycling of cultural and industrial waste the central theme of his work.
Unlike two previous personal shows (in New York and San Francisco) that presented Bokov's "recycle" pieces as his most characteristic creations, the scheduled exhibition will also feature a number of large triptych-like canvases that put a grotesque and ironic spin on popular icons, smaller oil-sketches of New York City landscapes, still-lifes that often frame an imported artistic image, and drawings. These works employ the language of impressionism but disrupt the laws of classical depiction in unexpected ways and places that move the paintings into the realm of the absurd.

Almost 25 years ago the ideologically unreliable artist was expelled from the Soviet Union. Since then he has found solidarity with the marginalized waste of American culture, wandering the streets of New York City and reconstructing a new city from its discarded scraps. Along with countless recycle monsters he has left as gifts to the Soho streets, Bokov has erected impromptu gallery spaces under the Brooklyn Bridge, on the George Washington Bridge, and on the piers of Washington Heights, most of which have been destroyed. Indoors and legally zoned, the exhibition at the Philip Williams Gallery displayed a variety of Bokov's canvases and recycle pieces that offer through his skewed verbal and visual syntax, an image of New York City which is both a scathing critique and a profession of love.

Some works by Konstantin Bokov:

Could this be the stone wall with the box where Bokov left the drawings? Looks a lot like it...

Above: Bokov himself.

Royale with cheese, please

2006-02-27T14:23:00.000-05:00

I just watched a short clip from Morgan Spurlock’s 2004 documentary, "Super Size Me." I went to see the movie back when it first came out. I was living in NYC at the time and saw it at a huge movieplex in Times Square.

For those not familiar with the the film, it’s about a fairly young and healthy guy who takes part in a 30-day experiment where he eats nothing but Mcdonalds for every meal to see what the diet does to his health. In the end, he gained about 25 pounds. I think I read somewhere that it took him over a year to lose the weight.

Most of my friends who saw the movie before me said that it made them never want to eat Mcdonalds ever again. Most of the reviews I read said the same thing. Now, I’m not a big fan of Mcdonalds’ food. I rarely eat there, and when I do there’s only one thing on the menu that I like: Quarter Pounder w/cheese.

As I sat in that theatre on 42nd Street watching Morgan Spurlock bite into a countless number of Quarter Pounder’s, I started to get hungry for one myself. The largest Mcdonalds in the city was just a few doors down from the theatre. The exterior of that Mcdonalds was shown a few times in the film — it looks like an old theatre marquee, illuminated by hundreds of flashing light bulbs. The building probably was a theatre at some point. The New Amsterdam Theatre, home of "The Lion King," is right next door. This Mcdonalds has three stories of seating, and each seat on the bottom floor has a flatscreen TV monitor in front of it playing Mcdonalds trivia on a continuous loop. Do you know what year the Big Mac was introduced? Did you know that Willard Scott was the first Ronald Mcdonald? Do you even care? Neither do I.

So, Spurlock’s film had the exact opposite effect on me. I couldn’t get to that Mcdonalds fast enough when the movie ended. I ordered my burger and learned all about how people in Australia hate to have pickles on their hamburgers while I ate it.

I think fast food is perfectly fine as long as you don’t overindulge. Most things won't harm you if taken in moderation. What did Morgan Spurlock think would happen to him from eating Mcdonalds every day for an entire month? Of course he was going to gain weight. He had to have known that. No fruits or vegetables? His health would deteriorate, most definitely.

Is it Mcdonalds' fault that people are getting fat from the food? Or is it the customer's fault for eating there too often?

Click on the title of this post to view streaming video of a really kitschy, old Mcdonalds training video from the early '70s.

Tony

2006-02-27T14:06:00.000-05:00

This is Tony — one of Columbia, South Carolina’s most interesting homeless people. I hadn’t seen him around for the past several months and was wondering what had happened to him. But, the other day, I saw him quietly sitting on a bench with his long, tangled hair sticking out in every direction.

I first noticed Tony not long after moving here in August 2004. I was stopped at a traffic light on Devine Street on my way to the store when I noticed a tiny man standing on the sidewalk staring at his feet with a blank look on his face. It was close to 100 degrees, but this guy was bundled up like he was in the middle of a blizzard in Nova Scotia. He must have been wearing 50 shirts, giving him an almost cartoon-like appearance. He had on one of those enormous knit hats that rastafarians usually wear. On my way back home — over an hour later — I found him in the exact same spot, still staring at the ground with the exact same expression on his face.

After that, I saw Tony just about every day. Sometimes I’d find him walking in a strange way down Devine Street — hands on his hips, wobbling from side-to-side. Other times he would be sitting on a public bench, staring at the sky, or standing on a corner pointing at the ground. I started wondering about him. Where did he come from? Why is he homeless? Why does he walk around or sit on a public bench all day?

I thought about giving him money or offering him food, but then I read a short article about him in Free Times, Columbia’s alternative weekly newspaper. Apparently, a lot of people offer money and food to Tony and he always declines. I was happy to see that I wasn’t the only person who wondered about this unique guy — and I was happy to find out his name from the article. Here’s an excerpt:

Free Times found him walking down Devine Street on a Friday afternoon in January. He was apprehensive at first, but eventually agreed to answer a few questions. First of course was his name: "Tony," he said, rocking on his heels. Pressed for his last name, Tony just shrugged.

Shrugs outnumbered answers in two encounters with Tony. Most of his responses were single words. Asked where he came from, he said, "Vietnam," and declined to elaborate. Asked what brought him to Columbia, he smiled and said, "Airplane."

Tony speaks English and possesses a sharp sense of humor. But he’s a very private person, and even after much scrutiny, something of a mystery — at least as far as his past is concerned. Tony would not say why or when he came to America, and just shrugged when asked how he came to live on the streets.

But as vague as he was about his past, Tony was perfectly clear about his present. He is unemployed. He owns nothing but the clothes on his back. And he has been a guest of numerous shelters over the years. He currently spends nights at the Beth and Lou Holtz Winter Shelter at 1929 Hampton St. The Cooperative Ministry, a community group that serves the homeless, operates the shelter.

"[He] comes in every night," shelter director Mike Lee says of Tony. "All he’s looking for is a place to sleep."

The shelter has only 150 beds and a limited amount of floor space for sleeping mats. Aside from the lucky few who have assigned beds, the dwelling fills up on a first-come, first-serve basis. Tony is one of the lucky few, as he’s been a regular at the shelter long enough to have his own bed. Tony comes in soon after the shelter opens every evening in time to eat dinner, which the shelter, volunteers or a charity provides. Yet while he shows up early enough to eat, Lee says Tony skips a lot of meals at the shelter.

The following week, Free Times printed a letter about Tony from a woman named Evelyn Morales who congratulated the paper for scoring an interview with him. Evelyn said she had tried to talk with him in the past, but didn’t have much success:

I also wanted to write something about Tony once upon a time. It was about five years ago when I spotted him on Park Street. I chased him down. I knew his name because I had asked him in an encounter earlier that year. Anyway, out of breath, I smiled and extended my hand toward him. He simply looked at me. "Excuse me, Tony," I said, "I’d like to ask you some questions if that’s alright. I’d like to write a story about you." He turned his back to me slowly and continued walking. His reply: "I don’t have time right now."

To anyone else, his reply might have seemed preposterous. But it made me consider that he is more than the oddity many consider him to be — he is more than our curiosity waiting to be satiated. His journey in life is his choice. The fact that he is homeless and prefers to walk all over the place insulated to the gills is his choice, and I respect that about Tony. I’ve offered him food and money -- he has never accepted. On the other hand, I have accepted that he is a person with wants and needs beyond food and shelter.

Well said, Evelyn.

Fantastically fat feline

2006-02-27T13:42:00.000-05:00

A news story about an extremely obese cat in China has been circulating recently.

The 9-year-old couch potato weighs 33 pounds and has a waist measurement of 31.5 inches. Amazing. The cat’s owner says his feline friend eats six pounds of chicken every day — six pounds! Who could eat six pounds of chicken? How much does an average whole chicken weigh, anyway? Three pounds?

I'm a cat owner, myself, and I just can't imagine my cat ever getting to be that big. He put on a few extra pounds last year, so we put him on a diet. I just wonder why the Chinese cat's owner didn't think to do the same.

Apparently, this fat cat is in perfectly good health, though. It just needs help jumping up onto the bed.

Click the title of this post to view streaming video of this story from Sky News.

Mitch Hedberg

2006-02-27T10:32:00.000-05:00

First, Bill Hicks. Now, Mitch Hedberg. Why do I always discover great comedians after they’re dead?

I got turned on to Mitch a few months ago while watching some clips of his standup on the Bravo channel. I downloaded both of his comedy albums and can’t stop listening to them.

Sadly, Mitch passed away last year. It would have been awesome to see him live.

Click the title of this post to view streaming video of an animated version of Mitch doing his comedy bits on the now-defunct "Dr. Katz" show from Comedy Central.

The simple genius of Mitch Hedberg:

"At a stoplight, green means go, yellow means slow down and red means stop. But for a banana it’s the complete opposite. Green means hold on, yellow means go right ahead and red means, dude, where the fuck did you get that banana at?"

"My apartment is infested with koala bears. It’s the cutest infestation ever — way better than cockroaches. When I turn on the light, a bunch of koala bears scatter. And I don’t want them to, you know? I’m like, ‘Hey, wait, come back. Let me hold one of you … and feed you a leaf."

"If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be fucked up."

"I want to hang a map of the world in my house. Then I want to put pins in all the places I’ve traveled to. But first I’m gonna have to travel to the top two corners of the map so it won’t fall down."

"You know when they have a fishing show on TV? They catch the fish and then let it go. They don’t want to eat the fish; they just want to make it late for something. ‘Why were you late?’ ‘I got caught.’ ‘Bullshit, let me see the inside of your lip.’"

"I went to a restaurant and ordered a chicken sandwich, but I don’t think the waitress understood me because she asked me how I would like my eggs. So I tried answering her anyway: "Incubated! Then hatched, then raised, then beheaded, then plucked, then cut up, then grilled, then put on a bun … it’s gonna take a while. I don’t have the time. Scrambled!"

"I have a cheese shredder, which is its positive name. They don’t call it by its negative name, because no one would buy it: sponge ruiner. Because I tried to clean it, and now I have tiny bits of sponge that would melt easily over tortilla chips."

RIP, Mitch.

Bushisms

2006-02-27T10:23:00.000-05:00

I’m a big fan of "Bushisms." For those not in the know, a Bushism, according to Wikipedia, is a word, phrase, or other grammatical configuration unique to the public speaking style of President George W. Bush. Click the title above to view a short streaming video of some of Bush's greatest hits.

Here are some of my favorites:

"Wow! Brazil is big!" — George W. Bush after being shown a map of Brazil by President Lula da Silva, Nov. 7, 2005.

"We look forward to hearing your vision, so we can more better do our job." — Bush in Gulfport, Miss., Sept. 20, 2005.

"I want to thank my friend, Sen. Bill Frist for joining us today. He married a Texas girl, I want you to know. Karyn is with us. A west Texas girl, just like me." — Bush in Nashville, Tenn., May 27, 2004.

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." — Bush in Washington, D.C., Aug. 5, 2004.

"I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully." — Bush in Saginaw, Mich., Sept. 29, 2000.

"It’s clearly a budget. It’s got a lot of numbers in it." — Bush quote from Reuters, May 5, 2000.

"They misunderestimated me." — Bush in Bentonville, Ark., Nov. 6, 2000.

It’s not fair to only pick on the Republicans, so here are a few gems spoken by President Clinton during his administration:

"Politics give guys so much power that they tend to behave badly around women. And I hope I never get into that." — majorly ironic Clinton quote from his days as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford University.

"I tried to walk a fine line between acting lawfully and testifying falsely, but I now recognize that I did not fully accomplish that goal." — Clinton commenting about his testimony concerning the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

"It was a real sort of southern deal. It had AstroTurf in the back. You don’t want to know why, but it did." — Clinton reminiscing about a pickup truck he owned when he was a teenager.

"I may not have been the greatest president, but I had the most fun eight years." — Bill Clinton