Brad Walsh

Three Things I Saw This Morning on My Way to Work That Made Me Question the Legitimacy of Human Intelligence

1. On the sixth or seventh story of an unfinished building, with only ropes tied from beam to beam to serve as exterior walls, two men on steel stilts caulking the ten foot ceiling and fighting. One of the men pushed the other, who nearly fell over the rope to his messy, noisy, tangled with metal, terrible death.

2. A woman walking on Spring Street in front of me had what appeared to be an unsightly scar or birthmark covering her left shoulder. She was also walking, as so many irritating people do in that area, incredibly slowly with several friends who were all side by side. As I muttered obscenities and passed her, I noticed that the scar was in the shape of a sort of feather or a fan, something obviously designed. The “scar” was pale while the rest of her shoulder was bronze… it was a sun tan tattoo, and looked sort of like reverse henna. Tan tattoos are ridiculous to begin with, but what made this one particularly stupid was that the tan got lighter and faded away by the time her shoulder became her arm and her arm became her hand. I think she stuck the design to her skin and then rubbed fake tanner on her shoulder to get the effect she wanted, and then didn’t bother doing the rest of her body. Just the trashy part.

3. Remember that homeless Lifetime movie-in-progress that Kathy reported on a while back? I passed her this morning (as I do every morning, afternoon, and evening) not long after the shoulder tantard, and things have gotten completely out of hand. I’ve always said she that resembles the Olsen twins, that perhaps she was the poor unfortunate outcast Olsen triplet who was too uncooperative to play Michelle, and normally she’s dressed the part: big sorta trendy black dresses and/or pants under skirts – not the sort of thing you’d expect a homeless girl to be wearing – heavy eyeliner and a wealth of odd and artsy possessions spread across the sidewalk. What’s sold her, for me, as truly homeless has always been the talking to herself and the occasional waft of that smell. But today she was wearing a fitted button-down shirt with the back of the collar popped, and brown flowy short suit pants. Barefoot. With her eyeliner and windblown dark brown hair, sitting against a black SoHo storefront under scaffolding, this Olsen triplet is a fucking full-page Vivienne Westwood ad. This is not candid. I am certain now that we are being had. Just you wait, this girl is going to stand up one day, pull a microphone out of her hair, and begin interviewing passersby about their “preconceptions of the residence-challenged population of New York,” and it will air at 4pm on a Thursday to mixed ratings.