Transfers at 51st Street

There I was, standing on the platform at 51st and Lex, waiting for the 6 Train, idly staring at a poster of Russell Crowe staring back at me from behind a drawn bow, playacting at brawny violence, supposedly cast as Robin Hood. What a boring image, what a lifeless poster. A five-year-old with a stick would've looked more convincing. I thought to myself, ugh, how did he get stuck down here? My eyes drifted across the other posters hanging on the opposite wall. An alledged romantic comedy starring the usual leggy blonde and some pouty boy in a tux holding a pistol instead of his cock. Killers. I pictured Grace Kelly and Cary Grant rolling over in their Hitchcockian grave. This guy looked like a poor man's Tom Cruise, making him exceedingly impoverished indeed. Ashton something-or-other, another bored stiff.

Next to it, some hairy dude in the steroidal Russell Crowe mode was grappling with what appeared to be a mutant piranha, its gaping maw full of photoshopped teeth, advertising a show called River Monsters. I think the fish was meant to be scary. It was just boring. Maybe Robin Hood could shoot a fake arrow into its rubbery head. I ast myself, who watches this shite? Glue-sniffing teens? Inmates?

My eye moved on to a poster for a personal injury law firm. "Have you been bitten on the job by an ugly fake fish? Call Farkus, Dorkus, Shitehead, and Dingleberry. We don't get paid unless you win." I took down the number. Some day I'll call 'em to find out whether or not they can get you compensated for being terminally bored by the products of pop culture.

I looked around at my fellow commuters. Not one of them stirred. Were they all bored too? One guy appeared hypnotized by an incredibly boring poster for the NY Mets, themselves an incredibly boring team playing in a monstrously boring new stadium. Even the open-air food court out there, so exciting for one summer, had become boring. The guy doffed his cap, let out one long sigh, then keeled over like a felled tree. Boredom had claimed another victim, right there on the subway platform, just before the 6 Train clattered into the station. People walked around him to board. That was that.

I ast myself, who are the bored and listless minds responsible for this boring crap? Hollywood cynics? Fat cats rolling in dough? Absentee owners? How could they allow Robin Hood to become a violent pummeler of childhood illusions about right and wrong? How did a swashbuckling hero with a sense of humor become a brutish Tea Party turd-head? The small army of "talent" that it takes to conceive and execute a movie marketing campaign -- they should be farming instead, or washing cars, or doing something else useful, instead of boring us all to death with their tiny ideas and hackneyed images. I shitcanned my Tee Wee a while back and haven't been to a Hollywood film in years. If I want to be bored I just check out the trailers on iTunes or wander around the NYC subway system looking at the posters. If when I'm down there some whistler in a Wolf Man suit offers me a ten-dollar hand-job, I feel like I've hit pay dirt.