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Film and Television Rights: Bizarre Things I've Shouted at People



For Stu.

You, sir, are no gentleman!
To an old guy on the sidewalk in Williamsburg who'd just told me to go fuck myself. We screamed at each other for like five minutes. I swear to god I said this. He choked on his own tongue and died on the spot.

This is my town!
This was the last thing I said after stomping back and shouting at a group of kids in Union Square, who'd called me a name when I ignored their pleas for a cigarette. It was an incredibly silly shouting match. Half-way through I realized they were actually small children-as they insisted they didn't actually insult me personally, but were disparaging the general act of not freely giving away cigarettes. (At no point did anyone discuss the British slang usage for smokes.) The smallest child, who could have been perhaps ten years old, or an undernourished teenager, kept wanting to use that time-tested phrase, "Keep walking!" as I turned to walk away, but I kept turning around and stomping back to shout some more, about the global economy, my favorite films, etc. I finally had to leave and go home to my waiting family, and again, a half block away, the youngest, wanting to get the timing just right, for maybe the fourth time, shouted, "Keep walking!" My impassioned retort was the above immortal sentence, which is now a hit off-Broadway musical.

There's a trash receptacle on every corner.
I've said this like ten times. I don't actually shout this, so note the lack of an exclamation mark, but I point when I say it. I really point hard.



Postscript: I hate tough guys. They are riddled with fear, every last one of them.






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