Mooderfookers!

Last night I was feeling a little restless, so about 8PM I decided to head up to 86th Street to do a little shopping and see what was playing at the movies. Normally, I'd walk - it's less than 20 minutes to do so - but since the stores would be closing soon, I caught a cab on First Avenue. As the driver pulled away from my corner, he began ranting and pounding on his dashboard.

"Those dirty mooderfoockers! Asshools! Asshools! They do me an investigation and then don't know the...the...the....FOOKING scenario? You know what I mean? They asshools who....who...who...doon't know they is mooderfooking with the wrong guy. I drive New York cab for twenty fooking years! Twenty! You know they is mooderfookers!"

Um....what? The cabbie continued to rant. On one pound of his dash, one of the several Coptic crosses fell from its glued perch and he picked it up and smooshed it onto the base of a BVM statue dangling from the rear-view mirror. As he did that, he glared at me in the mirror, demanding agreement. I just sat there quietly and nodded. Oh, yes. They definitely some mooderfoookers. Please don't kill me. At the corner of 86th and First, he pulled over and meekly announced, "That will be $5.10, sir." I gave him his mooderfooking money and thanked him.

There was nothing I wanted to see at any of the theaters clustered around 86th Street, so after picking up a kitty scratch-pad at PetCo and a long-needed 500GB external hard-drive at Best Buy, I stopped at Burger King. Five minutes into my meal, a sort of race riot erupted between American-born black patrons and the all-immigrant (Dominicans, I think) black staff. Actually, I guess it wasn't a "race" riot. A culture war, perhaps?

From what I could gather, somebody accused somebody of deliberately putting pubic hair in somebody's sandwich. Both sides were hurling threats and the n-word was heard several million times. Then came the bravado-laden rap posturing. "Whachoo gonna do, bitch?" "Fuck you, mang." "You fat ass punk." "You's a fat ass, you damn spic."

At first, it was a bit amusing, especially since the "fat ass" bit came from 300+ lb guys on both sides, but when the female manager came hurtling from behind the counter wielding a mop and removing her earrings, trailed by all the male employees, I started to think about guns and decided to abandon my Whopper. I had to walk directly through the Sharks vs. Jets-ish standoff in front of the doors. Please don't kill me. Again.

Really, you don't have nights like that in Manhattan very often. I promise.