Do you see America's Next Top Model in this group? They had a casting call yesterday at the Park Central Hotel, so I went to check out the talent. Perhaps the herd had already been culled.

I took this at about 1:20 and there didn't seem to be anything more to see, so I thought I might be able to make a matinee and started walking southwest. When I got to the Ed Sullivan Theater, they were taking aps for a lottery for David Letterman tickets this week, so I spent about six minutes doing that. Then I had to stop for cash, and got to the TKTS booth at quarter of two. When I went earlier and the play I wanted wasn't there, an Englishman abroad recommended Talk Radio, so I bought a ticket and still had time for a whiz before it started. As everyone says, Liev Schreiber is pretty awesome, but so is Sebastian Stan as Kent the superfan.

After the show and a visit to the Drowsy Chaperone box office to buy tickets for my mom's visit next month, I went where I thought I'd never have need to go again--shopping in Soho. I wanted to check out a backpack at Vitorinox which I didn't buy. The most interesting item was for sale on a street corner, stolen Marc Jacobs shopping bags. Apart from the stolen part, I decided it's better for people to whom this image matters to buy the faux bag than to spend money they don't have to buy the real thing. Yes, judging everyone all day every day drains a certain amount of my energy, but who else will do it?

Finally, a trend seems to be emerging: New Yorkers hate chemicals. At the theater, a couple moved to seats a couple of rows behind the ones they'd bought and I leaned forward to ask if, perhaps, they were dodging perfume. "Yes, that woman who just sat down," the man said, "smells to high heaven and my wife is allergic to chemicals." Then at Java Indonesian restaurant where I supped, the other patron was ranting about hating doctors and not taking any medication. Later, she mentioned she takes clopazine for her emphysema (? it's a psychoactive drug, but maybe that's just what they told her it's for) and has a weekly appointment with a hyperbaric chamber. (This is what passes for "I don't take any medication" these days.) But back to the chemicals, she said people trying to emigrate here from Brazil always face a big hassle, because "they have their own pharmaceutical companies down there and they use everything natural, not chemicals, so they don't like to buy from us". If that's the case, then I say yes, dammit, keep the bastards out!