Times Square Street Artist Destroys Own Caricatures, Placed Under Arrest

NEW YORK, NY—Street artist Brian Fong was placed under arrest Wednesday evening after acting erratically and confronting a police officer in Times Square, authorities said. The struggling caricaturist was seen flipping over his own folding table, shouting obscenities in multiple languages, and destroying his own works of art after what some are calling, "a slower than usual afternoon rush."

Sources say the strange behavior began after a routine encounter with a tourist.

"I saw him run down the street after a couple, gesturing with his hands that he'd draw their picture," said a man at the scene who requested his name be withheld. "He gave up on them when he saw a little girl with a balloon animal, but her father wasn't having it and told him to 'scram.'"

Witnesses say Mr. Fong then dropped to his knees, put his head between his hands, and began sobbing uncontrollably for "what seemed like a fucking hour."

"After that he just went nuts," said local businessman Dennis Haverford. "He was screaming in some language I didn't understand, Chinese I think, and stomping up and down the sidewalk smacking himself in the face. He finally quit it after about 5 minutes, and we thought it was over. But then his eyes got all wide and he threw his table to the ground. The weird thing was he was sort of half crying the whole time. I don't know how to describe it."

It was at this point that witnesses say Mr. Fong began destroying his own artwork.

"YOUR LAST GOOD MOVIE HEAT!" he shouted through tears at his whimsical take on Al Pacino with the ludicrously large bags under his eyes. "THAT 14 YEARS AGO! HOW YOU HELP ME SELL PICTURE?!"

"你做的是欢呼声! 这是不!!!!!" he continued.

A man who walked by in the middle of the tirade, unaware that Mr. Fong was responsible for the commotion, tried to help him pick up his belongings. Witnesses say Mr. Fong then berated the man.

"You want picture, Mister? HUH? YOU WANT PICTURE? I make you look funny like Jimmy Durante. You don't know Jimmy Durante? Make sense. WHO THE FUCK JIMMY DURANTE? HE HAVE BIG NOSE - SO WHAT? WHAT THE FUCK AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE?"

"我应该听一听妈妈,留在腌业务!!!!!" he added.

Fellow vendors said they noticed a change in Mr. Fong's demeanor the last week or so.

"He seemed pretty happy right around the time Michael Jackson died. He must've been selling a lot of MJs - I mean, we we all were," said Seymour "Meaty" Meterson. "But then about a week ago, when the MJ stuff started dying down, he had this icy stare all the time," continued Mr. Meterson. "Well, when he wasn't running after tourists with that giant shit-eating grin of his."

Mr. Fong was eventually placed under arrest after a mounted police officer asked him to calm down and pick up his things. Rather than comply, the enraged artist threw a balled up rendering of Mick Jagger with hilariously oversized lips into the officer's face.

"I didn't want to arrest the guy, " said arresting officer Ramiro Reynoso, "but we can't have a man running  around Times Square screaming and crying and carrying on."

"I've been told he was upset about slow business," Reynoso continued, "but frankly, I find that hard to believe. I mean, did you see that Valerie Bertinelli with the huge, adorable cheeks? The man's an artistic genius."