Brooklyn really is double- plus- good! The bottom pic is Grand Army Plaza. Pretty, right? You can't tell from the picture, but the light tree rotates colors. So I walked into the park just in time to see the first work of fire which a bystander clocked at 11:59. From where I stood, I could see the cannon explode on the ground, and the whole trajectory and airbursts. The last time I was that close to the source was Todd County (MN) Fairgrounds, July 4, 1983. The show was over at 12 after. Nothing like the show in NY Harbor last July 4, but the kids were ooooing and ahhhhing, you didn't have to go early and stand around, and because I was so close, it was just a very satisfying firework experience. I know I've said this annually since about 1971, but I really feel it this time--2008 is my year!

The landing approach to LaGuardia goes right over my house, that must have looked cool from a plane. Or terrifying.

The chicken pot pie was a learning experience. The crust was a pre-made frozen one and wasn't really amenable to being taken out of the tin and repurposed. For the sauce, I made a milky gravy thing, a bechamel using half milk and half chicken stock and some thyme and sage, salt and pepper, and that turned out good. As a matter of fact, it was like a thick chicken stew (I threw in two cups of mixed frozen vegetables) and it was fine right out of the bowl.

Also, this really was taken on Jan 1, 2008--blogspot is on West Coast/Google Time!

It's a Christmas miracle! Christmas night, I set my earrings on the edge of my sink and in the blink of an eye, so quickly it made me laugh, they were sucked into a vortex down the drain. They're not valuable, but I really liked them, so the next morning, I read about sink traps in Dare to Repair. I stumbled a bit when my pliers weren't big enough to loosen the nut. Buying a wrench would be way more expensive than the earrings, which came on a card with two other pair from Target. But on a crazy whim, I tried my bare hands and because the apartment was rehabbed not that long ago, I was able to remove the trap, retrieve the earrings and put it back together with no leaks. It wasn't even gross.

I'm thinking of making something along the lines of a chicken pot pie today, so I read up in Joy of Cooking and my Betty Crocker Cook Book my Aunt Joc gave me in 1984. (She was right when she said, "You might think you don't need this, but you do." And now I say unto you young people that most of the food you'll eat you'll prepare yourself, and it will be more fun and better tasting if you learn some basics.) Cook books are a great time capsule and it was enlightening to read about a world that was quite different even in the time I've been an adult. For example, Betty C has a page on microwaves, with a section called "Is it Safe?" You're supposed to examine the appliance carefully as you take it out of the box. For what? Radiation? The page on metric conversion reassures us that converting will be easy because everything is based on hundreds, and "it will probably take another decade" before America has fully converted. Suck my still-eight-inches, Restoftheworld. The section I found most bizarre was on making your own TV dinners. Betty shows you how to fashion and nest these little foil containers into a tray and tells you how to make sauces for the meat and crap deserts you never have like cranberry compote, which can all heat up in the same oven. I can't envision anything less appetizing and yet labor intensive! She warns not to substitute natural cheese when the recipe calls for processed, and the fats are usually "margarine or butter". Even in the salad dressings, it says "vegetable or olive oil". Oh, also, the vegetable section tells you what times of year each item is available. When I was a kid, it was a big deal to get an apple and an orange in our Christmas stockings, shipped from Florida. Boy, it took about five minutes to become spoiled by having all foods available all the time, huh? (Thanks, Central and South America, btw.)

Here's the coolest thing I saw on a walk down 5th Avenue, the big snowflake across about 59th Street. Going to look at lights is popular, it was crowded. I tried roasted chestnuts for the first time and I can see why they're good in stuffing. They grew on me, I'd add that to the holiday traditions. I got a little sick of being crowded (and having my crushed foot nudged by strollers) so I bought more street food, a gyro, to bring home.

I went to church at St Saviour this morning, kind of wanted to see that the RC is still kicking it old school. There was a mission statement posted in the antechamber and all of about seven items had to do with communication, we'll communicate with our community, we'll communicate with other Christians, with a goal toward oneness (this was a recurring theme--let's acknowledge that this oneness is to come about when the apostates understand they are in error.), we'll communicate within the church, etc. So they're kind of a religious Toastmasters. There was no talk of sin or helping people to not commit it. "Who are we to judge?" is that the new deal? There was also a calendar provided, as were the missals, by a nearby funeral home. Each month was a different apostle, and if you're interested, look it up--those guys did not die in bed!
What else? Oh, when the old ladies started straggling in, they went straight for the "candles". I say "candles" because it was really a bank of things that looked like candles but were really electric doohickies you pushed a button to set "alight". I didn't think it was very satisfying, but then I thought those huge candles probably cost a dollar. Also, the church has to move with the times in some matters. I probably reacted the same way some medieval worshipper did when he arrived at church all excited only to find candles in place of the heretics. Sadly, the church wasn't a quarter full. This isn't an Hispanic neighborhood, but there are Italians, and I would expect that the Russians would come because it's the most ikon-friendly (and according to the guide in the front of the missal, they're even allowed to take communion). But it was the usual suspects, mostly old ladies, but one babbling toddler and a screaming baby. That's the only advantage of the bland suburban Catholic church, the crying room. Okay, one more thing about church--do they think we won't notice the mysterious third verses in the hymns that don't scan right and seem too modern? Busted!

The theme of Christmas this year seems to be "overbuying". And like overeating, over drinking, and the over everything else we do, the fault surely doesn't lie in ourselves, but in our stars! There's a play going on now called Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir, whose theme is "The corporations want us to have experiences only through their products." Sometimes I feel like the obvious solutions, don't buy more than you plan, celebrate traditions other than gift exchange, etc. are so obvious that I must be missing something. But applying the lessons of some other long-standing crises I've seen in my life leads me to a couple of conclusions. We, and I mean Americans, now seem to need to undercut anything that seems to bring us too much joy, with constant reminders of negative consequences. When was the last time you enjoyed nice weather without hearing all day about how it presages the end of life as we know it? Secondly, like "negative campaigning", people worry a lot that other people are too influenced by advertising, but don't worry that they are. So we worry more that other people are overspending, that corporations are exerting some kind of unfair power over other, weaker-minded people, and that bottom line, we are all once again victims. (Do all of you who have temporary work at Christmas time agree that Americans overspend?) So let's just buy what we think appropriate, quit worrying about what everyone else is doing and enjoy our family and friends. Er, not that I'll be doing that, because all my friends are out of town and I decided not to go visiting family this year. But that's my advice to any of you who are worrying about the new epidemic of overbuying. And as you know, one of my many mottoes is I'll take the problems of wealth over the problems of poverty any day.

My career as a seat-filler is going great. I've seen three shows, only one of which I thought was praiseworthy, and have recouped my membership fee and am now $6 to the good, versus having paid even my usual discounted prices for these shows. Last night was Die, Mommie, Die, a satire of a kind of forties big-shoulder noir murder mystery. Starring a drag queen. The other, The Rise of Dorothy Hale, pretty much accuses Harry Hopkins, the New Deal guy, of murder. One of several reasons I disliked that play was that the doorman kept walking in every five minutes for no purpose other than to redirect dialog or contribute a tidbit of information. But it happened so often, I got distracted thinking what's this doorman hanging out in this apartment all day for? Who's minding the lobby? If he'd been up here this often, maybe Dorothy wouldn't have been able to jump out the window. Now, I might have felt differently if the doorman had been played by Matthew Cowles, instead of his understudy. YES, Matthew Cowles, better known to AMC viewers back in the day as Pine Valley's vilest pimp, Billy Clyde Tuggle.

I have a new favorite food--giardiniera. It's hot pickled cauliflower, celery, carrots, and red peppers, and it's on the pickle aisle. Chop it up in a salad with bleu cheese dressing and it's spicy and rich and quick and easy.

As I was giving platelets last week, Methodist Hospital's blood workers gathered around me for their Christmas party (though I'm sure they didn't call it that!). They were all people I've never met, but as Kellie, my primary phlebotomist, introduced me, it was clear they all knew my name. One guy even said, "This must be your thirteenth double, right?" When I got home, I added it up, and net of the single use pack of tubing and filters and stuff, but not counting labor or the capital investment in the platelet extraction machine, my donations since September have saved the hospital approximately $19,500. You have to be satisfied to toil in anonymity when you give this way, though, my name isn't going on any benches anywhere. You also have to get satisfaction from helping the people you never meet, the leukemia patients and drunk drivers. "And the botched suicides," Kellie added when I said this to her. I had a lovely dinner with my sister last Monday and she reminded me that not every place has the little Trima machine. But PSAing for a moment here, if your area has a Trima donation machine, it means you only have one arm immobilized (as Laurie said, it sucks to have to ask someone to scratch your nose when you have two arms hooked up), and I give two units in about an hour. I'm exceptional, of course, but I'm sure you'd do okay.

Here are some pics from Sunday. The one with banners is of Tubas on Ice. It was nice, tuba music is very soothing, don't you think? But I had unrealistic expectations that it was going to be a Busby Berkeley type thing, like Ice Capades with tubas. How could that possibly be? Half the tubists were little kids, how could they skate and play at the same time? You can barely make out some tuba horns at the bottom of the picture between the flag poles. Anyway, it was a mild day and it was very pretty, bringing me to picture #2, Christmas lights as seen in a Volvo hood.

I have now submitted two scripts to this cold reading group. Next week is "Twistmas" and I wrote a little scene for Miss Liz to star in called Brutally Honest Secret Santa. It starts with someone giving the receptionist an alarm clock and ends, of course, in mass murder.

I joined a seat filler club. You pay a hundred bucks to join, then you can get tickets for $4 a pop. I'll see stuff I wouldn't have chosen otherwise, sure, but I'm always seeing off- and off-off-Broadway stuff I'm not sure if I'll like or not, so why not do it for $4 versus $30? Tomorrow night is my first show. I have to wear business casual (no jeans) and can't talk about being a seat filler while at the venue. This isn't like being a theater critic when they slobbered all over me. I miss those days.

Meanwhile, back at City Paper, they laid off five people from editorial, in addition to at least Aaron Leitko who took severance a month ago. I miss everyone and wish I could help them, but I don't regret leaving to follow my passion/dreams/bliss/lazy-ass sitting on the couch lifestyle. I'm a housespinster.

Grace, the blood bank manager, has matched my record platelet count, but I am still "by far" the biggest donor of blood and blood components at Methodist Hospital, Park Slope, Brooklyn.

Snow! Love the snow. It helps that I haven't seen much of it since I left Maine, that I don't drive, and that I don' t ever have to shovel it.

It's been a big week for entertainment. Sunday Andy took me to two SAG screenings, "Atonement", which we both wanted to walk out on (the stars were there for a Q&A after, but between this and "Pride and Prejudice", I have nothing to say to Kiera Knightly) and "Great Debaters" which surprisingly, had no debate in it, just speeches. Monday, I went to a staged reading, Tuesday, Liz came with me to that cold reading group I went to a couple of weeks ago, and this time I gave the producer a scene from the Grandpa play. I have to wait patiently to hear if I can have it read there. On the 18th, they're having Twistmas, and I did have an idea for a short--Brutally Honest Secret Santa. I've been working on that this week. Wednesday, Liz got me a freebie to "The Gate", a pretty amazing spectacle comprising dance, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, and multimedia theatricals, written by the guy who wrote the score to "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon". It starred the skinniest soprano I've ever seen. The music was about fifty percent violins, which were stationed all around the theater (Sensaround, like the movie "Earthquake"!), and fifty percent non-conventional percussion, including hands dripping or slapping water, and my favorite, a teletype keyboard. Thursday I saw a short play called The Receptionist, and last night, Harold Pinter's The Homecoming, starring the scrumptious Raul Esparza (from last winter's Company) as a brutish cockney pimp. And some other people.

When it's as cold as it's been lately, Hobo Joe (that's a job description, not an individual) can often be found sleeping on the subway steps at my exit. Thursday night, there was a guy passed out with his pants half off, and let me just say, Joe needed some Desenex.

I went into town yesterday to help rechristen the Broadway season after the strike. I went to Mark Twain's Is He Dead?, and it was really cute. It was a farce, which isn't always my cup of tea, but Norbert Leo Butz Tim Gunn'd it and it was charming and funny in the exact way I'd hoped Curtains would be and wasn't at all.

I may have written before about my quest for the Cuban sandwich. I learned about it at the paper from a woman who was born in Cuba and it didn't sound very good to me--roast pork, ham, swiss cheese, pickles, mustard & mayo, toasted on a press--but one day when John Miras and I went to a Cuban/Chinese restaurant, I decided I wanted to try it. Yeah, I know, in retrospect, it's clear there can't be a good Cuban/Chinese restaurant (possible exception--if it's in either Cuba or China). It's not like the very common Mexican/Salvadoran places in Washington which are good. Let's say you can't conjoin cuisines that are separated by more than 3 other countries, let alone a continent and ocean, unless there has been an historical colonial relationship.

Where was I? Oh, yes, I asked for a Cuban sandwich and the not-Cuban waiter barked, "A Cuban sandwich!" like I' d asked for, I don't know, caviar poached in whale oil. Well, yesterday, I read about a Spanish restaurant a few blocks from me that Internet people raved about and that served Cubanos. I went there, and was offered a drink. I said, "I have to look at the menu, but I'm going to have a Cubano." "I'm sorry," said the waiter, "we're not making roast pork any more. The only sandwich we have is steak. The next time we print the menus, we're taking it off." I was pleasant on the outside, but now I was angry. This sandwich will not beat me.

So that evening I went to the play and on a whim, checked out the restaurants in Playbill. There was a Cuban restaurant a block away, which sounds good, but in general, restaurants around Times Square are disappointing and expensive. Nevertheless, I went there. Their Cubano was served with sweet potato fries, another rare treat, for $9. And when I got it? People, there was a hazy figure up near the ceiling, and I didn't get a good look at it, but it might well have been Jesus. The Cuban sandwich is well worth devoting the rest of your life to. There was a guy at the next table chatting me up. Well, in his way, because his Spanish accent was very thick, he was drunk, and kept saying "Being in Minnesota now, I feel like I am better man, you understand?" The music was very loud and the guy just kept repeating himself, but really, I just wanted to be alone with the sandwich, you know?

Mmmmm, soul food! I found a good storefront place a couple of blocks from the library and got a fix--fried catfish with salt and hot sauce, perfectly cooked collard greens, grainy corn bread and mac and cheese that was, ultimately, a little too sweet for me. I haven't had that food since DC, though, and it was goooood. And as in DC, the place was a zero atmosphere storefront with no drink selection. The cook was a six foot tall, gorgeous black woman, and there was a guy sitting at the counter named Moses, who after he yelled "customer" when I came in, I couldn't understand a word he was saying.

I picked up some books I had on reserve on the way and started reading one, Discover Your Inner Economist : Use Incentives to Fall in Love, Survive Your Next Meeting, and Motivate Your Dentist. There's a section on the need for self-deception and that got me thinking about the qualities I wish I had, like perseverance, versus qualities I actually have. I think I have a pretty huge ego, if only because I think it's going to be possible for me to change these things through force of will. But anyway, when I analyze my success in school and in jobs, I think it comes down to my being a very obedient person. Isn't that glamorous? Avant-garde? How did I become a Libertarian? (Not that Libertarians are a very rule busting bunch. Mostly it's computer nerds and ex-hippies, and the only people who smoke marijuana are cancer patients.) Another strong characteristic I have is affiliation. From the time I was selling wigs at Zayre through City Paper, I was always proud of where I worked. Combine those two, though, obedience + affiliation, and it can equal chump. Patrick saw that propensity many years ago.

Here I am, Thanksgiving 2007, on my patio, reading the Barely Portable Margaret Thatcher. It's 62 degrees.

Soon, I'll start on Thanksgiving dinner: Roast chicken, Cauliflower Trio Fromaggi (parmesan, goat cheese, and cheddar), cornbread stuffing, and dessert. For dessert, I made a fat-free, low cal version of my Pumpkin Dream pie. It's just the filling part, and has 240 calories. (I'm pretty sure the next time I can get it to 205 with no degradation of taste.) Enjoy treadmilling off the traditional 640 calories (for two 1/8th slices) y'all.

As for things I'm thankful for this year--being here in Brooklyn, enjoying my pre-retirement is the main one. (Thank you, Washington real estate bubble.) I'm thankful I still have my mom after her surgery last summer, and my dad, who had his first surgery since before I was born a month ago, and is now taller than me again. (He had a back thing that made him hunch over.) I'm thankful for my family and friends, but also because I think this year I had the chance to be a friend, and I miss feeling needed. I'm thankful that the future still seems interesting and fun to me.

While I was standing on the subway platform, I caught some movement near my feet to my right. I jumped back. The man to my left saw it, and jumped forward to stomp his foot on what turned out to be a napkin. "It's not a rat," I said. "It's not money," he said. We've led totally different kinds of lives, this gentleman and me.

How's the stage hands' strike going, you wonder. One beneficiary is the straight play Mauritius, which I saw Saturday. (There are about eight productions that have separate agreements with the stage hands and so are still up. Unfortunately, they don't include The Little Mermaid, which my friend Lorna brought her family down last week from Maine to see.) This play, which I cannot recommend, is closing in a week and has been playing to half-empty houses, but because there's little else to see, it's been selling out.

Who's losing, besides the producers, the workers, the restaurant owners, the cabbies, and on and on? The AIDS people, since this week is Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, where show folk gather with buckets as you leave the theater. So few show folk, so many red ribbons left over.

Also, red ribbons? Still?

It really works! I learned this trick from Ted "Queer Eye" Allen--when you open a bottle of sparkling wine, you can stick a spoon in the neck, handle first, and it keeps it from going flat. Ted doesn't know why it works and neither do I, but I had a bottle of champagne open in the fridge over night and it was still fizzy.

I wanted to go to a meeting on Staten Island Wednesday and when I totaled it up, I spent five hours getting to and from there. I saw the new Tom Stoppard play (and old Tom Stoppard himself in the alley, later) at the matinee, then took the subway to the financial district and caught an express bus. I thought the bus went on the ferry, and had wondered if we'd stay in our seats or get off, and if we were in our seats and the ferry capsized, would I have a chance to swim for it. Ha--the bus goes through the Brooklyn Battery tunnel, then over the Verrazano Narrows bridge. (In my defense, though, I took the ferry home, and it seems like it is designed to take vehicles.) I normally enter and exit my borough underground, so I didn't know the welcome to Brooklyn sign says, "You name it, we got it" and the leaving Brooklyn sign says "Fuggedaboudit". So what is "it"?

Once you get there, Staten Island is like a small Ohio town in the 1940s.

Kellie, my herb-growing phlebotomist, was complaining to her husband one night last week that she doesn't have any friends in New York and because she hates people, she's never going to make any. Her husband, Michael, must be very perceptive, because although I've only met him once, he identified me as an ideal friend for someone who hates people. When I happened to stop by the blood bank to kill some time, she announced her intention to force her friendship on me. What could I do? I invited her out for rijstaffel.

My most stylish friend, Lorna, is visiting from Maine, with Matt and their five year-old daughter, Olivia, who's from Hong Kong. I thought I'd misheard when Olivia asked Matt to open a package for her because "I don't want to break a nail." "No, you heard right," Matt said, "Ask her what she's doing for her birthday." "I'm getting an up-do," she told me, at some kid's salon in Portland. I think we can finally put this controversy to rest: it's nurture!

Finally, Tuesday night I went to a theater where underemployed actors do readings of unproduced works. I might be able to get in on this (I thought it could be fun for Andy and me to hear a scene from our movie acted out) but I'm going to go a couple more times to get the skinny. It seemed like writers are in demand, because the organizers suggested that during the pre-reading cocktail hour, the actors buy us drinks to try to get parts. And you know actors never spend a dime unless they absolutely have to. Mmmm, free drinks.

Brooklyn is beddah. Like buddah. Fans of Hopfblog might remember that last year, Liz Maestri, Sarah Godfrey, and I went to the Greenwich Village parade, which while pretty cool, was crowded and long. This is the Park Slope parade, which starts off with EMTs giving out candy from the backs of ambulances. The big tradition is that the parade is led by a headless horseman, and he was so headless, and so on horseback, but I couldn't get good pictures tonight for some reason. Anyway, the parade started on 12th Street (I live on 15th) at 6:30. I got there at about 6:15 and stood on the street, with no one in front of me, until the parade started precisely on time. Then I realized that there weren't that many people crowding the sidewalks because everyone walks in the parade. I stood there for nine minutes, which is how long it took the whole thing to pass, and then came home. That's my kind of parade, especially because I realized that people in costumes kind of scare me.

I gave platelets today and my phlebotomist, Kellie, said she was thinking of dressing up as me for Halloween, by pulling her bangs back, wearing jeans, tennis shoes, glasses, and a hoodie, but she wasn't sure I'd get it. I said I wouldn't have, unless she'd shoved a bunch of padding in her clothes, which would have been kind of mean. She's not at all mean, though, she had presents for me: a CD of teasers for The Really Big Pirate Show (see thereallybigpirateshow.com), the musical she and her husband wrote and are trying to get on Broadway, and the last of her herb garden, a bag each of basil and thyme. I froze five packs of basil, and with the other one, I made a salad for dinner that's the ingredients of that sandwich I liked: cucumbers, tomatoes, basil and a thinned-out mayo dressing, and it was yummy. If you don't know what I'm going to do with the thyme tomorrow, you haven't been paying attention.

This has happened a couple of times in this, the city of immigrants--I tell someone my name and they kind of consider me German. It's been at least a hundred years since anyone I'm descended from thought of themselves as German. My Grandma Thora was born in Sweden, but she was adamant that she not be called Swedish, she was an American, dammit, and even Swedish-American an insult.

Anyway, the gentleman who asked me who my German relatives were today lived there as a child, when his father was stationed there with the Red Army. (I didn't ask if dad was rewarded for his service with a stint in the gulag as so many soldiers were.) He liked Germany, but it was complicated, and he was happy to get back to "simple Russia". Flash forward and somehow he has come to live in very un-simple Brooklyn. That's a heck of a life.

Miss Liz had a meat jonz last night, so we went to Schnack, a hipster burger joint, in Red Hook (or was it Carroll Gardens?). I had some good onion rings and a lame salad, and she had their specialty, tiny oblong hamburgers, and fries. While deciding what to order, I asked the waiter if the "double" was two patties or twice the size of the mini 1.5 oz patty. "I'm not sure, I don't eat meat," he said. "You're saying you've never looked directly at the food you sell here?" I said. Peeps, I'd like to hear the string of expletives that would explode from every one of Chef Ramsay's orifici if an employee of his said that! (A helpful diner a couple of tables away waved her burger at us and told Liz that was the double.)

Then we got serious and went up to Union Smith for libations.

On the bus yesterday, I saw a woman holding a brochure that said, "Don't Let BV Slow You Down". What's BV? Bronchial Virus? Bovine Vigilantes? No, the subtitle was "What you need to know about bacterial vaginosis". I'm not going to google that or anything, but I am going to say ma'am, you probably should slow down.

Here are two of my ex-receptionists from City Paper, celebrating the 30th birthday of a third, last Saturday in Brooklyn. (It really is the center of the universe, people, get on up here.) And, apparently, Batman.

I haven't been to a Broadway show in a while, but I wanted to see Kevin Kline in something, so I went to Cyrano de Bergerac yesterday, and it was better than I expected. He is really good, and Jennifer Garner earned her laughs. The play's kind of a downer, compared to "Roxanne", which being such a lowbrow, was my background. Oh, but one pet peeve, though, according to the text, Roxanne and Cyrano were children together, but Kline is 25 years older than Garner. In this case, he is too old for the role, rather than her being too young, but since it takes you out of the play, they should have dealt with it. It's like the opening narration of the movie "The Assassination of Jesse James . . . " There's a voice over giving fun facts about James, including that he had granu-something of the eyelid which caused him to blink a lot. You know producer Brad Pitt is not paying actor Brad Pitt to blink like a psycho, and he doesn't, so why not drop that line?

If I'm a little quiet on the blog, it's because I bought seasons 2 and 5 of "Upstairs Downstairs" on ebay, and I can't quit watching, oh, Mr. 'Udson!

I don't even want a Nobel Prize now. Regardless of how you feel about Al Gore, how has the cause of peace been advanced?

Another near-perfect night in the Ap Friday. I don't think I've been to the symphony since I was a teenager, but I really enjoyed this multi media thing at Lincoln Center. Well, first I enjoyed a glass of champagne by the fountain (where Nicholas Cage met Cher in "Moonstruck" and where several gentlemen were obviously awaiting their Chers the other day) on a perfect New York evening as I appreciated for the millionth time how lucky I am to be here. The first half of the show was a clip from the movie "The Music Lovers" and some actors talking about Tchaikovsky's life and reading excerpts from his letters, and then some analysis of the themes in the 6th Symphony, which was finished nine days before Tchaikovsky died.

Then after the intermission, they played the whole symphony, better known as Pathetique. I had a record of it back in the day and it's emotional and overwrought, just like I was, so it was easy for me to enjoy. The man next to me said, "I always buy a seat toward the stage because I like to follow along with the score," and sure enough, he had a pocket sized copy. Cough*nerd!*cough. But I wasn't tricked into applauding the two seeming climaxes like the rubes down below, because I just waited for him to close the book.

After the show, I walked down to Times Square just to see the colorful blur like the gawky tourist I am at heart. Then I bought a bag of cheddar/chipotle popcorn for the subway ride home.

I'd say that evening was in the top 2% of my life. (Think about it--there should be 7 days per year that make it into the top 2%, but there are some years that have a lot and some that have none, so I'm sticking by my math.)

I saw the National Theater of Greece's Elektra last night at City Center, from the exact same seat I saw Gypsy. It is a fine, yet reasonable, seat. The show was terrific (in Greek, with surtitles), but Maestri is right--as we have childrens' theaters, we need elders' theaters. They can't sit still for two hours, nor can they quit their choking. So each seat is outfitted with a phlegm bucket, a catheter, and lozenges. Also, people in the row behind my seat, shut up. Seriously, all the coming and going and coughing did distract me from what was a very interesting show--mostly the hysterical Elektra surrounded by her chorus, via J. Crew. There was a great prosthetic on Clytemnestra at the end, too, that the cast dipped blood out of. The Greeks: Exorcising your pity and fear for three millennia.

Elevator G at Methodist Hospital where I drop off my platelets is a Sabbath elevator. From 4pm Friday through 9pm Saturday, it stops at every floor, going up and down continuously. Like in the Torah.

Liz had tickets to the Cloud Gate Dance Theater of Taiwan last week, so we went to dinner and then the show. It's hard to believe dancers have the same muscles and tendons I do. There wasn't much music per se in this performance, it was a lot of very slow controlled movement to a faint rhythm or wind blowing sounds, for example. I feel like I'm lurching around like Frankenstein.

At dinner, Liz was admiring the excellent hair color job I got in Minnesota. "It's kind of reddish gold," she said, "and with your blue blouse and glasses, your eyes really pop, and, well, all in all, you really look like a member of the master race." See? Now that's all I was going for, I never liked the fakey bleachy look.

John Miras and I had a lovely afternoon together Sunday, starting with brunch at a little Mediterranean place around the corner with garden seating. He seems to be digging his assistant district attorney job, and it's everything he ever dreamed of: the juvies, the hookers (one woman was picked up turning a trick on the way to the courthouse), the kids who shove sausages down their pants and make a run for it. He says that almost invariably when defendants are offered a choice between two days of community service or ten days in jail, they choose jail. It was unseasonably warm, so we walked down to the library, then sat on a bench in Prospect Park for a while just visiting. Such a nice boy.

I did not, however, care for the movie portion of our afternoon, "Eastern Promises". The "Russians" sounded like a bunch of Count Choculas.

And here's the one thing I got a laugh out of--you can apparently shoot paint pellets at people running around in freak costumes. From this we can now pinpoint the outer extremity of political correctness at King's Highway.

Going to the beach shouldn't make you sad. This is the sad Cyclone at misty cool Coney Island. Here's some sad food. I took the bus out because I wanted to see parts of Brooklyn I haven't seen before, and Brooklyn's really huge. There's one block on Coney Island Blvd. where everything changes from being Kosher and in Hebrew to restaurants like the Rasputin. And that long-ago planned trip to Russia? I feel like I've been to a retirement community on the Caspian Sea now. The less sad sights are at the top: the hot dog record board, and Nathan's. (Only 272 more days until the next hot dog eating contest.)

Headline of the NY Post story about the Federline boys having to go live with their dad: Un-Fitney. Awesome!

Some observations from my travels yesterday:

Check out the new Brawny paper towel man. His teeth are whitened and he's got product in his hair. What kind of metrosexual lumberjack camp is he in?

And I was accidentally exposed to the show I thoroughly hate, "The View" (versus shows I love to hate, like "Seventh Heaven" and "Sex and the City"). Whoopi "Girl, Please" Goldberg was arguing with Elisabeth "Republican Whipping Girl" Hasselbeck about, well, who knows, but here's Whoopi: "I don't like your war, but I am forced to pay for it. So fine, I'll pay for your war that I don't like, but you have to pay for abortions that you don't like, and we can all get along." It was like they were reading the constitution aloud. And then, a chat with America Ferrera! This show is like if you were at a new job and the whole department was going out to lunch so you had to go because you're new, and you got stuck at the end of a table with the dumbest bunch of women who think they're hilarious and sophisticated, but they're really just the gals who do payroll that they can't figure out how to fire.

I've just written a fan letter to Kate Fodor, who wrote the play I almost died trying to see.

It was a year ago today that I loaded up the mini-van and drove up here from Virginia. Man, I was a mess, after the trauma of leaving the City Paper, but I'm sure glad I came.

Here's a thoughtful critique of Reba McIntyre's new "Duets" album from an amazon reader:

It's lame brained hillbillies like Reba that supported Bush and subsequently created the mess we are in. Let them know there are consequences and DO NOT BUY THIS CD.

But does it have a good beat? Is it easy to dance to? What? No one alive today remembers "American Bandstand"? I don't believe it.

I discovered the thing that's better than the farmer's market today--the farmer's market when they're packing it up and all the food's discounted. I went to the library today and on the way in, I almost got a bunch of green onions for $2 (for my Creamy & Delicious eggs, if you must know), but then thought it wouldn't be too cool to sit in the library with a bunch of onions. When I was headed home at 5:30, they were dumping food into bags, I'm guessing, for food banks, and I got a bunch of onions and a broccoli crown for $1. While some might call it garbage, I prefer "fully ripened".

I attended the inaugural lecture at a new auditorium at the library, given by David Wallace, who co-wrote Gotham. He talked about Brooklyn and its history in relation to Manhattan and immigration. Some things I didn't know: 37% of the pop of Brooklyn is foreign-born, 2/3rds are first or second gen immigrants, our unemployment rate was 10% during the "miracle economy" of the 80's (it's 6.7% now), and the majority of people who have jobs work in Manhattan, not here. This was kind of funny. Wallace was talking about the Manhattan bridge being called the "Jewish Highway" because it was built when the big retailers moved north on Fifth Ave, "but while they still needed clothes from the garment workers, they really didn't want to see them at lunch." So the Jews went to Williamsburg. Then, until the major black influx during the 30s, "The Germans, the Jews, the Irish had really been at each others' throats the whole time, but when the migration from the south started, they all kind of looked at each other and said, 'Well, we're all basically white.'"

He told us about a town in Mexico where about half the population lives either permanently or part-time in Brooklyn now, and rather than assimilate, the Brooklyn population plays an active role in managing the town's affairs because they provide money for the capital projects. So it's really one community, half of which happens to be here. Talk about the other side of the tracks...

There was a guy at the lecture who kept blowing his nose and waving his handkerchief out between blows to the point where I was averting my eyes. He asked the first question, "A two-part question, if you please . . ." afterwards. Later, I was in the ladies' room where some women (and let me interject to say that the average height of white women attending this talk was no greater than 5 feet, even including me) were talking about him, and how he's a fixture on the lecture audience circuit. But, "there's something genuinely wrong with him," said one of the ladies, "he's to be pitied."

The Janet Hopf Reconciliation Tour '07 is concluded, and frankly, I'm ready to live in the now, now.

The reunion was not what I expected, but nobody but me is surprised that it was so, how shall we say, down market. The women looked as much as possible like they once did, but I didn't recognize a single man. They just let it happen, don't they? The plurality of men, by the way, were rocking this look: Hawaiian shirt and gray mustache. Oh, and something happened right of the bat that was so bizarre that even as it was happening, I was thinking "what seems to be happening can't be really happening!" Some guy I don't remember named Mike Andreen hugged me, and I inhaled his hair. I had to back up to get it out of my trachea, and I don't think he knew what happened, but I'm looking forward to Alzheimer's to claim the memory of that.

The one person I'm really glad I saw there and had a chance to talk to was Lisa Terry, sister to Jo Lynn, my best friend who was killed by a drunk driver the year I graduated college. One of the first things she asked me was "Do you visit her grave? We've had the impression over the years that someone other than the family was there." I put flowers on her grave every time I go to Minneapolis, and it just goes to show, you never know when something you do affects someone else.

Also, I discovered, again, to no one's surprise but mine, that Park Center might not have been that great a school. Here is a list of the teachers who attended, compiled by a member of the reunion committee, himself an inductee in the PC English Hall of Fame:

Dave Brom- Engleish Dept. Paul Wardell- Englaish Dept.
George Lausch- Enjlish Dept. Suzanne Armstrong Larson- Ennglish Dept.
Jack Hohag- Engglish Dept.

Happy Roddy McDowall's birthday!

Traveling on the subway outside normal business hours, there's about a fifty percent chance you're going to have somebody screaming about something. Tonight's offering was an older black man who first caught my attention when he [correctly] pointed out that "I'm riding the underground railroad." Next stop, Delancy Street/Harriet Tubman's cabin. "You all can clean your own toilets." Checkeroo. Then he got interested in a couple who judging by their niceness were probably tourists. He had a big black beard. "You look like a goombah," he said. The man got the translation "Italian" from his wife, and smiled and nodded. That bought him some punch handshakes and cries of "Paisan!" When I got off, he was offering the honkies Little Debbie Star Crunches "I didn't open 'em yet." The nice blond lady lied that they'd just eaten big pieces of pizza!

I hate it when I tell people that I was run over by a bus and the first thing they say is, "are you going to sue?" Because I think the sentiment behind that question is "lucky you, success will be yours at last!"

I finally finished my aborted theater mission from the night of my accident and saw 100 Saints You Should Know, and boy, was it good! I feel like my palate is now cleansed from Idol: The Musical. Saints is well-written, funny and poignant (how often do I compliment the writing?), it's about interesting ideas, and was beautifully acted. The reason I went was Jeremy Shamos, the firstest and bestest Doug in Gutenberg: The Musical, and he was, okay, I'll call him what actors always call each other, amazing. We both almost cried.

As for the intersection (yes, right in front of Papaya Dog on 9th Ave) where I was hit, as I approached it this evening, there were two ambulances at the very spot on the curb where I plopped down to direct the recovery efforts. And on my way home, a guy crossed toward me, making the exact same mistake I made, not seeing the protected turn. A bus cut an arc out in front of him, but a semi was aimed right at him and tooted its horn. The guy had headphones on and didn't look up, but fortunately, the truck was able to stop. I suspect that intersection is a meat grinder is what I'm saying.

Okay, I cracked wise earlier, but I admit, I choked up when I went down to Brooklyn Heights and saw this. (And yay Nikon Coolpix and gorilla-pod.) So yes, we'll always commemorate 9/11, but not by turning into a nation of victims, okay?

What a gyp! I went to Methodist this morning for an 11 o'clock apheresis, and who was scheduled for 11:30, but my neighbor, John Turturro. But then I failed the hemocrit and was out of there at 11:15.

This is the worst thing that's ever happened on 9/11.

Isn't this gorgeous? I never think about the farmer's market at Grand Army Plaza, but Saturday I coincidentally went to the library, and got hit by a big waft of basil going in. That put the idea of caprese salad in my head, which I made with a fresh mozzarella from the butcher shop. I ate it in the context of a "plate of plants", I cut up the peppers and cauliflower and ate them with a low fat dill dip I had the foresight to make the night before. I'm looking forward to that cute parti colored eggplant!

When did it become okay to scream? I hate that sound, and now it seems like everywhere you go, people are screaming or whoo-oooing. Also, when did I turn in to Andy Rooney?

Score!

The Royal Shakespeare Company is in town, and I had a sweet obstructed view ticket to The Seagull tonight. I generally like Chekov because he always has some loser like me who was ambitious and always meant to do something with his life but never quite got around to it. Seagull's playing in repertory with King Lear, starring Ian McKellan. Seeing him in Richard III at the Kennedy Center in 1992 was one of my transcendent nights in the theater, but I missed out on tickets to Lear.

Anyhoo, as I was on my way to the gorgeous Harvey Theater in the Brooklyn Academy of Music complex--it looks all bombed out, like some Bavarian Statsoper, circa April 1945--I had the idea that McKellen would be subbing in Seagull tonight, and lo, he did! The part, Sorin, isn't very big, but he was adorable with the bulbous alkie nose, Lear-beard, and Harpo Marx fright wig.

As if that weren't enough luck enough for one night, I whipped into Pathmark to reload on fat-free yogurt and romaine lettuce (I'm on a Caesar salad kick) and the bus came 2 minutes after I got to the stop, putting me at my door in 18 minutes. If you own tires, I don't expect you to understand.

Jeezum, every time I leave the house . . .

I was walking home tonight along Prospect Park when I heard a scuffle in a doorway of one of the apartments to my right. Ahead of me to the left was a young guy, smoking, apparently waiting for a bus. As I got closer, I saw a couple in the alcove. Sometimes you think people are fighting when they're really playing or laughing, but it became clear the man had the woman pinned against the doorway and was yelling in her face and that she was crying. I stopped at the bottom of their steps and when they saw me, I asked if they needed some help. (As soon as I said it, I remembered that I'd left my phone at home, so I don't know what help I could be, but once you're in one of these situations, you have to maintain your calm.) The man stepped back and said he had no problem if she'd go away. She, sobbing, said she didn't want to leave because he was her husband and he wanted to divorce her but she didn't want him to. Then I became aware that the guy from the bus stop had come up behind me, wing man style. I asked the woman if she had someplace to go. "She's got her own place," the husband said. "I don't want a divorce," she told me again. "You have to get the hell away from me," the guy said to her. By then I realized that the guy wanted to go inside and be done with it, so I asked the wife if she wanted me to help her get home. She said again she didn't want to go home, and what could I say? Dude doesn't want you. I asked the guy if I could help him and he said again he'd be fine if she'd leave. It really seemed like the whole thing had blown over, so I said something lame about maybe she could try him again another day and went on my way. I'd only gotten a few steps when my wing man was beside me again, thanking me for stopping. "He's not hurting her," I said. "I'm a guy, and I just didn't know whether I should go over there or what." I thanked him for coming over because that was potentially very helpful if the situation had gone another way. "Well, you were the bigger person for going up to them first."

You know what it is? 9/11. I've had sub rosa conversations with two fellow New Yorkers about how we're over 9/11, but we can't forget the lesson of that day--we can't stand by and watch bad things happen. We are the first responders.

No new horror pics today, it's kind of all over but the shouting. Or numbness and swelling, in this case. I'm moving on.

Inspired by a friend to read some classic lit-ra-chure, I read Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, this week. Despite Mr. Anderson's world view being 180 degrees from mine, I have to say I like his unemotional writing style. The biggest laugh I got out of the book was A's rant about the corruption of all this here materialism we got now since the post-Civil War technology boom. (The book was published in 1919.) Now, he's talking about Ohio, so he's not advocating a return to slavery, but one of the bad guys in the book is a young man who inherits his uncles' farm. He gets obsessed by it, builds an addition to his house so he can look out on the farm hands and animals, and repeatedly, "he thought about nothing but the farm". He walks along the valley and dreams that one day he'll own all the farms, which he eventually does. Remember, he's the bad guy. The good old days were when his four uncles worked the farm and it took up all their time and energy to clear rocks and tree roots by hand. They weren't a bunch of pansies sitting in a room thinking all day! More advice from Mr. Anderson--sex never leads to anything good. Not ever. Go exhaust yourself moving rocks in the fields instead.

You can kind of see the other major injury area in this picture. (It doesn't come out with a flash because of the white fluorescence of my skin.) I also discovered two things when I took a shower--I can feel where my head bumped the side of the bus, and I have a big bruise on my tailbone. It's apparently where I fell, but not where I sit, so I didn't notice it until I saw it. Shake your heads again with me, how can I be walking around? I put an ace bandage on my foot, and I'm not even in pain.

Congratulations to my friends who are moving up in the world starting next Tuesday. Liz Maestri will be working in development for the Brooklyn Philharmonic, and John Miras will be an assistant D.A. in training in the Bronx. Hmmm, jobs, what would that be like?

Every day and in every way, I'm getting better and better. Like you all, I guess I half expected some major damage to manifest within 24 hours of my accident, but I'm feeling ever better. I realize now that keys to my survival were that the bus was starting around a corner from a stand-still, and that it probably only moved four feet from the first impact to the last. No, no, don't get me wrong--still considering myself very very lucky!

As for the chicken, it wasn't perfect, but it was pretty good, and I'd never cooked with fresh thyme before--that stuff is gorgeous!

For the rest of my life, if I ever complain about bad luck, you all have permission to punch me in the mouth and say, "Remember when you got run over by the bus?" A Washington Trails bus, ironically enough. I was on my way to the theater at an intersection, and when the light changed, I entered the crosswalk, not seeing there was a protected turn. The first sensation I had was that I was watching a movie where a pedestrian gets mowed down by a giant white tour bus. Yes, as the ER doc said later, "Like 'Final Destination'!" Then my foot hurt, then my leg was hit, then I thought, "What's happening? Stop it, how do I make it stop?" then I got conked on the head and finally thrown back on to the pavement. Several people ran up to help me, and I said, "I didn't have the light, did I?" "No, but he should have seen you!" Well, it would have been nice if he'd seen me, but I was where I shouldn't have been. A perplexed Andy Rogers said later, "but you're the one always telling me I'm walking where cars can't see me." Ah know, right? So I stood up, saw my glasses, intact, on the street and put them on, picked up my soda and some people helped me sit on the curb. The driver stopped and showed me his license and gave me his company's number, and I could tell I was miraculously unhurt, except for my foot. Well, enough of that, it was time to get to the theater, so I thanked everybody and went along my way. (To very reasonable questions that were asked later, such as "Didn't anybody call the police?" and "Why aren't you arriving in an ambulance?" I just say I dunno. I guess I was confused. I remind you that my mother sat through the end of a movie after her heart attack.) So I got my ticket at will call and thought I should look at my foot. There was a big blue lump, so I thought there may be a variance in outcome possible if I got some intervention. I went back to will call to return my ticket (they said I could come another day) and they googled emergency rooms for me.

When I got to Roosevelt hospital, I decided to call someone, to keep me from making dumb decisions, and especially, to help me figure out how to get home. Poor Andy was the first to answer his phone...fifteen minutes into a first date. "I swear I'm not one of those people who arranges for a friend to call and say they've been hit by a bus when I'm on a first date!" he said fakily before leaving. I'm really glad he came, because you kind of get forgotten in the hubbub, but Andy doesn't let himself get forgotten, and he'll keep you company till the cows come home, or the ER remembers you're there. Later, we called John Miras, who'd been in a movie (and thinking I was calling him because I was in the same theater, goofing on him) earlier, but who came right over and drove me home. In his father's town car, no less.

So, can you believe my foot's not even broken? That I was run over by a bus, and I got off that lightly? That I literally walked away, and the sorest part of my body this morning is my shoulder from reaching back to break my fall? Oh, and the little bungee cord on the front of my fanny pack broke. I have an ace bandage on my foot, some ointment on a 7" abrasion on my thigh (I didn't even have any knee or ankle impact) and crutches. I am one of the luckier people alive today.

You know what? I'm so lucky, I don't even need anything. I made a major grocery haul to Fairway yesterday morning, and today I will endeavor to make a perfect roast chicken, with lemons shoved under the skin and fresh thyme I got from my phlebotomist.

There was a heat advisory today, so after getting off the subway a stop early--a new exercise discipline--I bought a drink and sat in Bryant Park to cool down before going to the library. Right away, this guy came up to my table and threw a bag of Skittles down. "Oh, no thank you," I said. "Why? Are you watching your weight?" Hmmm. "Yes." He picked up the candy and said, "And how you doing that, by drinking," he bent over, "diet peach Snapple? You know what? All you need to do to lose weight is eat seven times a day. diet Snapple, that has even more calories in it than regular Snapple, they don't tell you that." "Thanks for your help," I said, because by then he was yelling at me from the next table down. "This is what you need to drink to lose weight," he shouted, pointing to some random woman's vitamin water. "Okay!" So I just got back to my daydreaming when he came by again and waved the Skittles at me. "You really need to buy you some of these!" A few minutes later as I was walking to the library, I suddenly wished I'd asked him why he was all up in my grill! What was I doing but sitting in the shade on a hot day drinking iced tea?

Mission accomplished at the lion library--outline and draft for a "My Turn" column for Newsweek to reject.

I assume because of my rare review of a show in this blog, the horrible Idol: The Musical closed a few days after I saw it. I vow to use this power sparingly, but in this case, it had to be done.

You know, I read descriptions of about a hundred plays in the NY Fringe Festival, and there are only a few subjects playwrights seem interested in exploring: unearthing a deep family secret, after which, of course, nothing will ever be the same, gender-bending, bad love affairs, and talking about the war in Iraq while seeming to talk about something else.

One month on South Beach, and I've lost 16 pounds. And as Dr. Agatston foretold, it was noticeably in the gut area, so I no longer feel like the monster from "Alien" is going to bust out of my stomach when I bend over to tie my shoes. More importantly, I haven't knowingly gone off of it at all, I find it very easy to stick to. Now I have to start reintroducing starches and fruit and I'm nervous! For lunch I had a piece of whole-grain bread (the kind with extra oats glued on top) with peanut butter and a salad--still have to get in two cups of vegetables per meal. I no longer have to eat snacks, but I still have to eat breakfast. Well, here's my delicious diet breakfast for anyone who's interested: Half a cup of V8, a pot of tea, and Creamy & Delicious Scrambled eggs. Non-fat cream cheese (good stuff) supplies the creamy, and a scallion provides the delicious.

And anyone out there who's ever struggled with dieting, buy The Beck Diet Solution. It's not a diet, it's about why people go off diets and how you can change your thinking and stay motivated. And although you know I know everything, I learned a lot from it.

I got to wondering what, exactly, my perfect purple penumbra portends. Remember, what I was thinking about when I was "read" was what to ask my colorist to do to my hair.

Purple: This color can indicate that an individual has a tendency of being intuitive. The deeper the purple hue, the more passionate and strong willed the person is. Purple also can reflect intense erotic imagination, and a tendency of being overbearing.
Purple: indicates spiritual thoughts. Purple is never a strong point in the Aura. It appears only as temporary "clouds" and "flames", indicating truly spiritual thoughts.
The purple shades often reflect an ability to handle affairs with practicality and worldliness.
purple and yellow cool, impartial person who heals but is unaware of it
Essentially having a great deal of purple in your Aura shows that you are a highly spiritual individual, or are concentrating upon matters sprititual.
Purple is associated with power, both earthly and spiritual. In healing, purple is used for mental disorders and also for becoming one with Spirit. In the aura purple signifies higher spiritual development.
Gold represents understanding and luck. Remember though that nothing comes from nothing, It is the most powerful healing color, but so powerful that many are not able to stand it initially and must be conditioned to it via other colors. In the aura it represents service to others.
GOLD AURA COLOR: The color of enlightenment and divine protection. When seen within the aura, it says that the person is being guided by their highest good. It is divine guidance. Protection, wisdom, inner knowledge, spiritual mind, intuitive thinker.

This should be the best dye job ever!!!!!

I was standing in front of the library drinking an iced coffee on my dinner break when a guy came up and talked to me. My thoughts are in italic.

"Excuse me, may I for a moment interrupt your peaceful beauty?"
Okay. I was just scanning passersby looking for a model for the hair coloring job I hope to get for my class reunion, but you seem more amusing.
"I say beautiful because you have a beautiful purple and gold aura."
Go, Vikings!
"Really, you have the most perfect purple aura I've ever seen, no cracks. I'm a psychology student at Columbia University . . . "
I thought socialism was the dumbest thing they taught up there, but auras?
"And I volunteer at this fine institution."
You have no idea where we are, do you?
"As you may know, our horrible federal government in order to send ever more money over to the war, has recently cut all funding to feeding the homeless."
That seems improbable. I wonder if he'd enjoy my lecture on the enumeration of powers of the federal government as outlined in the constitution and tenth amendment. Liz didn't seem too interested when I laid it on her recently, so I'll hold off.
"I mean, our wonderful federal government!"
I guess he was expecting some kind of reaction I didn't give. Poor fella, if you only knew with whom you're dealing!
"Fortunately, the Gay Men's Health Crisis has generously offered to help us by matching every $2, $5, $10, or $20 donation we can collect."
Beware of mission creep . . . But I pulled out my reticule.
"Oh, thank you. Where are you from, sweetheart?"
Damn this backpack! I don't want to look like a tourist, I want to look too badass to risk messing with! "Brooklyn," I said, handing over two bills. Single bills.
"Really? Oh, wonderful, wonderful, one of us, helping our own."
It does not appear I'll be getting a receipt for tax purposes.
"Seriously, if I'd met someone as beautiful as you years ago, I wouldn't be gay today."
Hmmm, I wonder who I could be saving from that fate right now? Or is he saying I look mannish? Because one reason I grew out my hair was because I got called "sir" twice. And finally, as he walked away, By the way, "Mr. Charity", your meth mouth gives you away!

You know, I could shave my head right now if I wanted to. I'm that free.

I walked over to the library yesterday and finally caught the farmer's market at Grand Army Plaza. I didn't see any celery, which I needed, but bought shallots, a zucchini, an eggplant, and two green peppers. On the way back through the park, I saw a woman carrying a big iguana on her hip like a toddler, yelling, "It's my baby," to anyone who made eye contact with her. She switched to raising and lowering it over her head like a barbell, then tried to put it on the branch of a tree, but it was too heavy. Let's not worry about what she gets out of showering her love on a lizard. What I wonder is what in the iguana's DNA enables it to make any kind of sense out of being carried around by a . . . primate. Yet I also laugh, because I'm reminded of Bert Parks singing, "There She is, Miss Komodo Dragon" in the movie "The Freshman".

This morning, I went up to Seinfeld country to see "Moliere" (the script's a mess, but Romain Duris is bitchin') and sought Ollie's Noodle Shop for lunch afterward. There's a cute provenance to how I came to eat there at the first time, with my cousin Patty. We'd gone to see the new wing of MOMA and such good travel companions are we that neither of us actually wanted to go inside, we just wanted to see what you can see for free. We did each buy a print from a sidewalk display, and surprisingly, Patty knew a lot about printmaking and was able to talk to the artist about his process. (And I say surprising not because it's uncharacteristic of Patty to know things, but because I presume that if I don't know something, it must be unknowable.) I think I was the one who wanted to see Lincoln Center and by then, we were really hungry. I had the name of a restaurant on Amsterdam, but Patty--again with the knowing of things!--had a New York address decoder that told her we were 30 blocks south of it, not the three I thought we were. So we were trudging up Broadway, seeing nothing but variations on Starbucks and McD's when we found ourselves behind three teenage girls. One of them was carrying a big artists' portfolio, and they were all talking about how starving and broke they were and they should go to Ollie's. We cleverly engaged our mad tailing skilz and followed them to Ollie's, which turns out to feature the kind of Japanese noodle soup they ate in that terrific movie, "Tampopo" which I'd wanted to try ever since seeing it. It was good and cheap, although the girls, after many consultations on their cell phones, decided to eat someplace less good but more cheap. Anyhoo . . . my basil shrimp wasn't cheap, but it was okay, and I really had a hankering for seaweed salad. You gotta get your two cups of veg at lunch on the Beach, you know.

No, it's not a shiny fresh-scrubbed floor. My apartment flooded again yesterday and I'm kind of expecting it to again tonight, though I learned of another drain I can shove my hand in to to pull out any obstructing gunk. The bright side, and granted, it's not exactly blinding, is that the plumber has quit blaming me and supposedly they're installing a sump pump and a pipe out to the sewer.

How can you mess up a premise like Idol: The Musical? Apart from the opening scene which was a nod to the bomb worshipers in "Beneath the Planet of the Apes", there were no laughs, and very little Clay Aiken! Before I went, I read that the entire cast was replaced a week ago, which can never auger anything good. I was somewhat interested in how much one character looked like Carla Carpio, one of my receptionists, but when she took off her wig and goth garb, even that little flicker of interest was extinguished. Really, really, shockingly bad for off-Broadway. Go see "The Bourne Ultimatum" instead--it's spine-tingling!

I bought a big ol' cheesy keepsake of my first year in New York--a poster of Playbill covers from all the shows that played on Broadway in the '06-07 season. There were 67 and I've seen 23 of them, three more than once. Man, I got whacked but good by the lucky stick this year!

Hey, "Top Chef" fans... I haven't been to Craft yet (I told Andy that's where I want to go when we sell our screenplay, but now I'm thinking I should pick another milestone, like one that just rolls around on the calendar without my having to accomplish anything), but I've tasted Colicchio. Ew, that didn't come out right.

After working for a few hours in the library Saturday, I needed to eat before seeing "Rescue Dawn", so I went to one of the 'wichcraft kiosks in Bryant Park and bought his anchovy salad. I liked it a lot and will have it again. Here's the flavor line-up for you profilers: bitter frisee, caramelized onions, a soft-cooked egg, fresh, meaty anchovies (not the super salty leaches you put in caesar salad), croutons, and a parsley vinagarette. I rejected the proferred crostini and, because they were about to close, free cookies. Damn you, South Beach! Yes, I really liked that salad, and it was not what you expect to be eating in a park, it was so not all pre-made and mushy-tasting.

There's only one part of New York I've found so far that I really don't care for--SoHo. My movie was at the Angelika (where Ross and Rachael saw "How Stella Got Her Groove Back", for you potential World Series of Pop Culture wannabes). So SoHo has expensive and/or trendy stores (Prada, Pottery Barn), Balthazar, Rachael Ray's favorite restaurant, which I admit was pretty good, and a lot of twenty-somethings with money. Nothing interesting to look at.

I was almost to the subway entrance when a guy cleaning up a flower display at a bodega shoved one too many pails onto his side of the cart, which meant one rolled over and one fell out--onto me. I laughed when I pieced out what had happened then thought the guy would be scared that I'd yell at him, so I smiled and gave him an "I'm not a dick" wave. "Hey lady!" some guy walking behind me yelled as I hit the stairs down to the subway, "count your blessings, that could have been piss. Welcome to New York!" I bristled at being mistaken for a tourist, but I was carrying a back pack. And the water--actually, because it was so hot, it was pretty refreshing.

Greetings from the 5th avenue "lion" library. I finally bit the bullet and reloaded the operating system onto my desktop, so now it has gigantic fonts and a recycle bin and that's it. It can't even get to the 'net through Explorer. Constant thwarting, this has been! I'm just thankful I'm not a one-computer household and now that I have an ethernet cable, I can hobble along with the Toshiba.

This thing with my apartment is the weirdest, I haven't heard from my landlord whether they're going to fix my flooding or not. Meanwhile, yesterday, I noticed mildew creeping up the wall from behind a base board. Kind of bolsters my opinion (in opposition to the plumber's) that the flooding was seeping in under the base boards, doesn't it?

Yes, I'm at the library, which means I'm doing work. Yesterday I was working on the musical, so when I got home, I checked out the WWE for inspiration. There are two guys who are like 50s greasers, combing their greasy pompodores, accompanied by a girl sidekick on roller skates. Another guy has, as part of his costume, a Breathe-Rite brand nasal strip. I'm also reading Amity Shlaes' new book about the Depression, and I think the question is the same for both--where is the bottom!?

Those of you who have been wise enough to visit me here will recognize my favorite thing about my block--the crazy animal control old tyme ambulance. After nine months, I've still never seen who drives it or its companion pick-up. You can't see the warnings about live animals inside, or bumperstickers such as "Kids who hunt don't mug old ladies", but you can see what a magnificent spectacle it is.

And sadly, I'm accepting the possibility that I'll have to move soon. My lease renewal is up and I wrote a letter saying I want to renew, but only if they're going to work on solving the flooding problem, which they haven't done since November. You know what, though? Even if I have to move, it feels better to accept that fact and start looking forward again, rather than feeling helpless paralysis, which I seem prone to. I know now that money can be thrown at most of the work.

I said I'd go back to the Food Bank tomorrow. Get me out of the rat race!

I'm listening to my '80s music cable channel. Milli Vanilli rules!

I put in [almost] a full day's work. I answered the call from the Food Bank and worked in their office on Pearl Street in the financial district from 9:30-4:30 today. First I audited a bunch of files, then I made 60 phone calls to children's programs on Staten Island. I hate to admit I saw why the Islanders are looked down on by we of the major boroughs, people there seemed ill-mannered and kinda dumb. I'm going back next Monday and we'll see if the receptionists of Jamaica Plain know what their agencies do.

Yesterday, I finally went to the Brooklyn Museum of Art. (That would be the second largest museum in the U.S. Comment if you know the first--it's a heartbreaker.) It's pretty cool. Lowbrow that I am, I tend to like gigantic stuff that wasn't really meant to be art best (see Pergamonmuseum in Berlin), and BMA has totem poles and two houses. Yes, a colonial and an 1830's era house, both once belonging to the Schenck family of Brooklyn. I'm telling you, it's the second largest museum in the country.

But what I went to see was Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party, a tribute to 29 women who did stuff and then, often, faded away in the fashion appropriate to women. (My grandpa used to say "whistling girls and crowing hens always come to some bad ends".) There are those who think this exhibit is just a bunch of va-jay-jays on plates. You judge, Emily Dickenson's is pictured above.

So reading an adjacent wall o' women, I got to wishing I would do something that would make someone want to commemorate my junk in ceramic. I think I'm a "freethinker".

So you all will never guess what I did today. I've been in a pretty foul mood, first from the weeks of computer virus battle, well, probably first from Mom's heart attack and recovery, then I got my lease renewal letter last week and they're raising my rent, and then yesterday, I had another significant flood. So I was considering whether to move and that was putting me back toward my catatonic state from last fall.

This morning I decided I had to do something different. Something other than fretting about the apartment/flood situation, and after buying seven doses of entertainment (five plays and two movies) last week, something other than just buying distraction.

So I went to the "lion" library on Fifth Ave and actually wrote! It's a pretty cool place to be, cool and quiet and interesting-looking. I outlined the first act of the musical, read over my notes for my stand-up routine (don't know if I told you about that) but didn't write anything, and read over the Grandpa play. I still love it for the girls' relationship, but I see now it doesn't have a plot. This renews my hope that I can make it better and maybe the world is still a rational place where it was rejected, not because nothing good is ever going to happen to me, but because it needed work.

Then I went to a little cafe deal I'd scoped out on the net first and had a salad and a hunk of salmon (South Beach is going well). This is kind of what I pictured my days would be like before I moved here, and I'm pleased to report that I'm feeling strong like bull again!

Oh, and here's something I overheard Saturday, from a woman who was leaving her dog with some elderly bench-dwellers, "Galvin, you have to quit barking. You have to be quiet, I have to go buy blueberries." Then the bench-dwellers were so old, they started talking about Rin Tin Tin!

Finally, it was announced today that the City Paper was sold to Atlanta chain Creative Loafing. Now the question I was asked about our history of EEOC complaints (none on my watch, baby!) makes all kinds of sense. Did I dodge a bullet or the gravy train? Have to call Amy tomorrow to find out!

Another near-perfect day in The Ap! First up was a matinee of Xanadu, which was hilarious. You may recognize this as a play I ridiculed as reflecting the dearth of originality on Broadway, but which I decided to see because I saw book writer Douglas Carter Beane talk about it and he sounded funny. So the show is campy, energetic, and funny, as one line goes, "children's theater for forty year-old gay people". And in the ladies' room afterward, I saw my first Toni Pony hair piece. (Go to hsn.com if you don't know what it is.) Seriously, this do was a brunette Sharon Tate.
Then I had a couple of hours to kill, so I walked over to the 25 screen multi at Times Square and saw "Talk to Me". I liked it a lot, but please, someone explain to me why thy used 215 as the area code for the DC radio station! That's Philly, y'all. I know, cause I still be representin' the 202. In the bathroom, they were test marketing the new Dyson 12-second "hand squeegee" blow dryer, which worked great. I think my Dad needs one in his garage.
Anyway, I'd considered going to the library before I went into the movie, and I'm glad I didn't because when I came out, there was smoke down the street, which turned out to be from a steam pipe explosion a block from the library. What the hell are steam pipes for? The calliopes?
I'm starting the South Beach diet tomorrow and decided on Thai for my last supper. There are Thai restaurants slightly below ground level on every block of Times Square between Broadway and 8th Ave, and I keep trying to go back to one I've been to before, but always get a different one. Well, Blue Chili on 51st was the best Thai meal I've ever had, and reasonably priced. I had a delicious meal of steamed chicken and peanut dumplings, garden salad, tom kha gai, and iced Thai coffee. Really fantastic.
Then it was up to Studio 54 for 110 in the Shade. I wanted to see Audra McDonald, and she was terrific. Can't say I thought much of the book, though. Which is surprising, because the theme of the show is how you might as well be dead as a spinster. Audra's dad basically pays a grifter $100 to boink her so that her life will have meaning for at least a couple of hours. Anyway, as I said, Audra was worth it, especially since I hit a new record low price for a Broadway show--$28.
Yes, a perfect day, but did I do anything other than allow myself to be entertained and eat good food? No. I've been avoiding this computer business, but it's top of the agenda, starting with making sure my laptop's ready to step in as a backup in case I can't get Whiskers III (the desktop) running. I looked into new computers, and once you look at paying someone $150 to come to the house, you might as well just buy a new box. They'll be like toasters soon--cheaper to replace than repair.

I bought the most gorgeous bunch of basil yesterday and made this sandwich, which was amazing: on a Portuguese roll, lightly butter one side and cover with seeded tomatoes. Salt and pepper, add mayo, and coat with chopped basil. Then add a layer of cucumbers, and smash the whole thing down a little so the stuff doesn't pour out. The flavor profile, as we say in TV cookery, was spot-on!

How could I have forgotten to mention I finished Tristram Shandy?! I'm going to read it again in another couple of years, because I want to read it in one stretch, instead of over the about two months it took me this time. It really is an amazing book. My favorite bits were Mr. Shandy's "beds of justice" where he conducts scheduled fights with his wife, and the three main groin injury plot twists. It's the 18th Century's answer to "America's Funniest Home Videos".
On to Erasmus!
I booked about five nights of theater today--there are at least two festivals going on at the moment, and you know nothing cheers me up like bad theater!

Doesn't this look like the shop where Michael Jackson went berzerk in the Martin Bashir documentary? I think that was at Caesar's Palace, is there one of these overstuffed rich grandma's attics in each casino? There was another shop at Bally's that seemed to only sell stone globes. Is that a traditional Vegas keepsake?
The virus continues to breed. I think we're looking at a total reformat, folks. I called Brian at the CP who confirmed that reformatting is actually the only way to make sure you kill everything. The last time I did this was about twenty years ago with a DOS 5.25 inch floppy. On one hand, I think I have CDs that came with the computer which hopefully will do everything. On the other, that was a simpler time when I really knew what I was doing. And you know what else? Everything cost a nickel.
Tonight's hot date: "Confessions of a Matchmaker"!

My French is a little rusty, can anyone make out what this area might be?
I have a confession to make. I blamed the wrestling boys for my computer virus (which I continue to battle) when it really happened a day or two before, when I foolishly, and even as I clicked, I thought 'I shouldn't have done that', downloaded "free" sudoku puzzles. What an idjit.
Last night I saw Gypsy with Patti LuPone. It was directed by the author, Arthur Laurents, who declined to bring anything new to it or reimagine the show in any way. It might have been a play based on the movie. (Have I mentioned that I have a ticket to Xanadu next week?) However, Lupone was adorable and formidable and if we didn't have Rosalind Russell on film doing it, it could have been her signature role. I don't regret seeing it, but the evening was, please don't get upset, or do, and tell me about it, like the best dinner theater production imaginable, without the food. What I mean by that is you get a well-known workhorse of a show, full of songs you know, with the impossible good luck of seeing La LuPone in it. But if you're getting your theater and food in separate buildings, that's not enough. Maybe this is an unfair comparison, but last year's Sweeney Todd was the ultimate example of what a revival should be--even if you've seen the show before (and I had, and furthermore, hated it) you are seeing something brand new and challenging.