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.