Don't Smoke and Run

During a walk on this beautiful sun-drenched day in Prospect Park, my beau and I came across a few Super Bowl inspired neighborhood football games.

None were organized in the sense of markers, jerseys or in some cases sneakers, but all had that "It's the last down, hail-Mary pass, ten seconds left" spirit to them.

We were drawn to one group that appeared to have quite a following and a lot of screaming and my-driveway-is-bigger-than-yours (a phrase a high school friend came up with to make fun of the kids who spent their time trying to figure out the newest way to out do the next kid) contests.

I'm not really sure who was winning because pass after pass was dropped or just not even close to being caught, but what I really liked about them was their ability to trash talk despite their inability to play. It was beautiful.

One of my favorite interactions between the better (? better is really up for discussion) was between a Joe Pesci look alike with cut off sweatpants with high red socks (think The Super), a puffy coat and a hoodie pulled over his head and one of his teammates.

Before I describe this, I have to explain that Pesci had just failed to complete a big pass and before this last bad pass he had fallen and before that he let a touchdown go by failing to touch the guy who was maybe four feet away from him and not doing any fancy foot work, nor was he that fast.

"Tower?" Pesci's roommate would scream (right next to him).

"Yea!" Pesci replied.

"Tower, you in the building?"

"Yeah!" Pesci yelled.

"Tower, you in the building?!"

"I AM the Building," Pesci screamed.

It was great. As this was conversation was going on the teams were lining up and one tall skinny kid on the opposing team turned his head to the sidelines very quickly and screamed,

"Hey, you smoking? I know you've got a cigarette, come on, Papa, give me a puff."

So, he runs out of the line up and takes a drag of some fan's cigarette before running back to the line up.

While that was bad, I've seen worse, which brings me to the title of the post.

During the NYC marathon I was just about to walk (definitely walking at this point and didn't start running again until Mile 16 over the 59th street bridge) over the Polanski bridge, which connects Greenpoint with Queens, when I saw her.

A woman walking about fifteen feet ahead and to the right of me.

She was SMOKING. Let me say that again, she was in the NYC marathon and SMOKING.

It was ridiculous, offensive and wonderfully funny all at the same time.