Strangest Thing Seen Recently

It's going to have to be a tie:
1) Friday night, I'm in a bar in Williamsburg, a place I wandered into. On one wall, a Japanese anime movie is being projected without sound, while a band plays in the corner, this sort of chill, noodly art-rock sounding stuff. Two young hassidem in black and whites walk into the bar, which is otherwise full of standard Williamsburg hipsters (and me). They're there to play pool, and so they do. Sitting to my right is a mixed-race couple of very beefy and very flamboyant gay men around my age, who appear to be having a recreational argument. Then up to the bar comes a trio of girls who have Long Island written all over them. Nothing wrong with that, but boy, are they out of place. They're all dressed up to look pretty and meet some boys I presume, and here they've come into this mostly empty little Williamsburg bar with its art rock and anime and billiard-playing hassidem and quarrelling queens. I don't think they're going to have a good night. And then... they DO! Two guys who must be barely old enough to drink, look like skaters, come up and start talking to them and buy them drinks (Coronas with lime, of course!). This is when I think, Is it possible that I am sitting in the very strangest place in all of New York right now? Probably not.

2) Last night on the subway, I get on and notice that some teenagers are staring at a man standing near me and giggling. I can't figure out what they're on about at first, and then I notice his ears. Now, it's not such an uncommon thing for old men to have hairy ears. The Sharper Image catalog must be selling those battery-powered ear & nose hair clippers to somebody, right? And in a rare moment of disclosure, I will share with you, my dear readers, that I have this one, translucent hair that grows from the outside edge of my ear; that is, until it gets long enough for me to yank it out. But this man on the subway, his ear hair was something different altogether. All along the outside edge, rather than from the hole (that's pinna and meatus, respectively, if you like the clinical terminology) of each ear grew a dense thicket of long, flowing black hair, flipped back a la Farrah Fawcet. It was a sight to behold. Dear lord, when I become an old man, please see that there is someone to look after me before I go out in public.

Related to both of these stories... the variety of humanity here is one of the very best things about New York, maybe the key to everything good here. But recently I overheard a conversation as I walked by a restaurant. The conversation was in French, although for a moment I couldn't tell if it was in another language or if I just wasn't close enough to hear what was being said. And when I recognized that it was in French, I suddenly felt tired. Because that's the way it always is here - a thousand conversations going on around you, and who knows what language they're in. A thousand strangers around you, and who knows what planet they're from. The variety that is often so pleasantly stimulating is sometimes just overstimulating.