Talent...unmistakable talent

My dear friend, Joe Mande, like many of us comedians, has a day job. He works for a designer optical shop in SoHo and has just brightened my day with his latest window display entitled, "Why I Hate Myself."

I think it's beautiful.

It appeals to all sorts of vision impaired people: club-going night owls looking to turn a quick trick before dancing the night away in an abandoned tunnel as well as agoraphobic housewives who would just rather keep the city at a nice distance staying safely within the walls of their picket fence gardens.

I think he really knows his market. There's nothing that a snotty SoHo shopper wants more than a really obscure window display. The weirder the better. Take a walk down West Broadway. If the French Connection puts a display up where two mannequins are bottomless and being engulfed in flames made from orange panties, sales go up. It seems artsier and, thusly, more expensive and better. French Connection you better pay me royalties if you use that idea.