- SUBWAY:

Friday night I was coming back from a friends place on the upper east side. I was waiting at the 86th st stop for my train when i decided to do some de-facing of public property. Something I always wanted to do but never have. I was a little drunk granted, but not enough that I couldn't have stopped myself. There were maybe 2-3 other people who were waiting for the train and I knew they weren't paying attention so I took out a red marker I happened to have.

The three things I wrote were on those big advertisement posters on the wall which are replaced quite frequently, so I knew it wouldn't be a big deal. On a movie poster for a new Jennifer Garner film entitled "13 going on 30" I wrote with the marker, "Another brilliant Hollywood offering to stimulate the intellect." The second was on the new Iron Chef poster with Mario Batali, Wolfgang Puck, and Bobby Flay. On the breast of Flay's chefs jacket I wrote, "Pretty boy who can't cook" and on Mario's I just wrote "over-rated" I left Wolfgang alone..I got no beef with him. I amused myself simply because who the hell would write something like that except some lunatic who obviously watches the food network religiously like I do.. I just thought it was better than making a mustache or drawing a penis in one of theirs mouths..which is the usual artwork people leave on those posters.

The third was an ad for a school or something..and I didn't write anything relevant to the actual ad, its just there was a nice big empty white space to write in, so I put, "Jesus loves you.....but everyone else thinks you're an asshole."

Now the funny part of this came a few minutes later. When the subway came I got into the car and sat down and put my headphones on but could still hear some guy ranting in spanish about whatever. He was talking to 4-5 people who didn't seem to know him.

Like I said I wasn't paying much attention until he turned towards the person who was sitting next to me and said in English, "You know that Jesus loves you don't you? Jesus does love you." and the guy was just like uh yeah ok. I almost lost it considering what I just wrote. If I was with someone I would have said the line I had just written 5 minutes earlier, but I had to keep it to myself.

Another funny thing happened when the guy got off at 125th st station. The doors were still open in our train and we could see as the guy walked onto the platform and began talking to another random person just saying more shit about Jesus. The people he was talking to in the car just looked at each other and started laughing or rolling their eyes. But the fact is that some of them were probably somewhat religious and do believe in God and go to church.

The thing I thought about was this. I realize that this man really does love Jesus and God and feels he wants to share his love with everyone, but because of people like him I think most people that encounter a situation like that are left with a bad impression of religion as opposed to being inspired by it. If I wanted to join a club for example, I wouldn't want other members of that club standing on the side of the road yelling with wild eyes, "COME JOIN OUR PHOTOGRAPHY CLUB!!! IT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE" It would seriously turn me off and make me rethink about pursuing my interest in it.