"Shh! This guitar fill is amazing. Hold on—it's coming up. Just a second. Wait..."
When I worked in the East Village, there was a homeless man on Avenue A who would recite the full text of “The Raven” for a dollar. The cornerstones of his operation were that A) it also cost a dollar to make him stop, and B) he was crazy. In addition to being about six foot six, he wore a feather sticking straight up out of his hair and was constantly trying to hug people. I once saw him kick a teenage boy in the testicles so hard that both his feet lifted off the ground. The Raven Guy was a real fixture, and like all crazy people he considered me his friend. One evening, as I was engaged in a delicate negotiation with a young woman re: the future of our relationship, he came charging across the street at us. “You listen to Dan,” he said, looming. “Dan knows what he’s doing.” She broke up with me immediately. I thought nothing like that would ever happen to me again, but this morning I learned that Pat Robertson supports the legalization of marijuana.