I'm blaming this all on the full moon.

After a week of starting work at 5am, I was pleased that my Friday staff meeting was not until 10:30. Friday morning I woke up at my leisure, lollygagged around the apartment, and took off at 9:30 knowing that I would have a seat on the train. Once on a downtown 3, I sunk into the celebrity section of amNewYork without guilt, as I had already read five papers before walking out the door.

However, between the 110th and 96th Street stops, which is a fairly long ride as those between stations go, I was pulled from my pleasure reading by what I first thought must be an electrical fire. To my shock, when I looked up I saw it was not what I suspected, but rather the woman sitting next to me smoking crack.

Okay, I don't know what crack smells like, but process of elimination said the odor was not tobacco, nor was it weed. An office mate said he learned on COPS that people put metal in crack, as I suppose it is not bad enough for one's health solo, and that can give it an electrical fire-like smell. Anyway, the woman had two tightly rolled sheets of newspaper stacked on top of one another and was lighting something held in the middle.

The other people in the car had their eyes bulging out enough to make us look like a group of kids with thyroid problems.

I didn't know what to do. I got off at 96th, took some Treo pictures of the car, and called 911.

I though, "wow, what could be worse?" Coming home I found out.

At Times Square, a woman and two men boarded an uptown 2 carrying a small karaoke machine. That alone is worse than smoking crack, but then they turned it on. The woman began to butcher Donna Summer's On The Radio. Her signing on the packed car was so loud and bad that it prompted the first time I have ever heard someone tell a subway performer to turn it down.

At 72nd, the first stop after 42nd, having not received any tips, she said "It must be the car." I expected them to leave, as subway performers do, and go to the next car to set everyone's weekend there off on a sour note. Instead, she then kicks into Madonna's Holiday. And now, with a slightly less packed car, the two guys with her begin dancing like 8th grade nerds. One guy is way too old to be behaving like this, as he has gray hairs in his beard.

Then, from 96th to 110th it was the Pointer Sister's I'm So Excited. From 110th to 116th, and beyond I presume, it was Whitney Houston's It's Not Right, But It's Okay.

Wrong Whitney; it was not wright, but nor was it okay.