The Adventures of A Lady in A City

I love this clip on so many levels!



Oh man. I miss the halcyon days of Sesame Street... These days it's just not the same.

Lawdy what a day. Work was heck, it just wouldn't quit being Monday. Between phone and coworkers, there was just nothing easy from start to finish. Then things got interesting, as onlystraw had a half hour layover which turned into five hours when his bus was too full. So we stashed his stuff in my office, he went off to play in FAO Shwartz and Central Park, and then we went for deeelicious steak with mephron. Ohhh love me some red meat. Tired and content, we saw each other off at about 10:15.

You'd think that'd be the end of the day, but then this is me, and this is New York City. Interesting was only starting.

I must have had my "talk to me" vibes on high, because I'd barely found a spot to wait for the train before a man standing next to me started a conversation. He was perhaps half a foot taller than I was, with coarse black skin, crooked teath and a ready smile. He'd left his wallet at home and was going back to get it, apparently, and had a duffel bag with him, and an odd coat of rough fabric dyed red in places and sewn with cowrie shells. We did not exchange names.

I will admit that big black men do make me nervous, slightly moreso than any other large strange man, and I was worried that at some point he was going to ask me for a date or my number, but apparently he just wanted to tell me about the fights he was in. He told me that he was in Last One Standing - a competition where men from America and England fight tribesmen and warriors from cultures all over the world. The one that survives the longest gets a large cash prize - which was the man's goal. He'd survived three fights so far, so he was guaranteed some prize money, but of course the big bucks are for the winner. I am a good, responsive listener, and he was certainly very animated and proud of his fights thus far, so it was extremely surreal but fairly pleasant. I heard about his fight with a Jamaican swordsman (Jamaican fighters can choose from a pile of a lot of different weapons - the man himself went for some hatchets), his fight with a very tall Indian (a wrestler who used a technique he described as being like a gorilla) and his greatest battle thus far: a Zulu warrior (who was surprisingly short but extremely fierce - he was certain that one was ready to kill him rather than lose).

I have no blessed clue if these stories are true or not - if he really is on Last One Standing, it's the coming season, as he's not on the site, but if it was a lie, it was a very involved and well-fabricated one. Regardless, I wish the man well.

Aaand now my computer is just up and shutting down out of nowhere. I've got a feeling it's a battery issue, as it doesn't seem to be charging properly. Nooot sure though.

TOMORROW I get to go see YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN THE MUSICAL with BLAIR who is AWESOME and gives AWESOME BIRTHDAY PRESENTS! But first, sleep. *thud*