I am German, some more. I was at Lutheran Hospital yesterday, talking to a p.a. about the bad cold I have this week. "Now that I've been up and out for a couple of hours," I said, "I'm actually feeling quite a bit better. I guess it was time to leave the house." "That's because you're German," he said. "I have a friend whose mother is German and she sleeps with the window open when she has a cold." "I sleep with the window open most nights," I said, "my head likes to feel cold." This racial science business reminds me of my motto "if you believe in angels, you see them everywhere".

This cold, while not the worst I've ever had (that would be the Walking Pneumonia of Winter '92) cost me $80 in theater tickets I couldn't use. Tuesday night, I was to see Happy Days at BAM, which just got "Time Out New York's first six out of six stars". Let's leave out the illogic of the six-star system. Wednesday, I knew there was no way I could withstand the three and a half hour, two intermission, incest and violence fest that is August: Osage County. Maybe not even on my best day, but certainly not with the near-continuous cough I had by then. I probably won't have another chance to see Days, but I'll get to lovely-sounding Osage County some time.

A bunch of grade school kids were riding my bus later and had this info to share with each other: "If you like how blood tastes, it's twice as likely you'll be gay."

Finally, I was on the subway one night when a lesbian panhandler started talking to a cute woman near me. "Hey, sis," she started, and she learned that the woman works in an advertising agency, so she asked her for career advice. "I don't have any experience or anything, but if I have the model look and model skill, can I be advertised? I live in a shelter. I got in a fight with my woman last night. What stop is this?" And then she was gone. Farewell, Lesbian Panhandler with the Model Skill!

Finally, an exciting show for four bucks! Dai (Enough) has played in a couple of venues since I've been here, but the premise, the author does monologues as several patrons of a Tel Aviv cafe right before it's bombed, ultimately put it in the "broccoli" category. But in fact, it's funny and thought provoking as well as tragic. Iris Bahr is the author and star.

Last night I was in sweltering lobby of the Public Theater waiting for Church to start. Next to me, a guy was telling his girlfriend a story about when he had to get a copy of his birth certificate when he was 15 and it had the wrong birth date on it, so he showed it to his mother. "Oh, yeah," she said, "I forgot about that." She'd wanted to pack the kid off to kindergarten but he was a month too young, so she doctored up a phony birth certificate for him. As his brother joined in the laughter, she told him he also was younger than he thought. From the moment he said his birthday was different than he thought, I knew where the conversation would go, and I wasn't wrong. "So all your life," the girlfriend said, "you thought you were a Capricorn when you were really an Aquarius!" Most importantly, as Miss Liz (she's in the choir of Church and we rode home together after an unsuccessful search for clearance priced Christmas lights in the weirdly smelly Astor Place K-Mart) said, "How would you know who to get wit?"

I loved "I Am Legend". The opening sequence of Will Smith hunting in a people-free New York City was as exciting as the beginning of any movie I can think of. And don't think this movie was an easy sell for me--I was a big fan of "Omega Man" growing up. Oh, but my single favorite scene was where Will's evacuating his family before the island of Manhattan is quarantined. It's like the evacuation of Saigon down at the seaport (Andy's in there somewhere but I didn't see him) but Will's so important that even his dog gets a place on the helicopter.

Tonight it's Kathleen Turner-directed Crimes of the Heart, which I've never seen before. I hope it's more crimes than heart.

It finally happened to me, I was coming home from the theater Friday night and a woman sitting next to me on the subway fell asleep on me. She dropped her puzzle book and I picked it up for her and she conked right out again. Then when a few people got off, she moved to the other side of the car and I thought she was unwrapping something in cellophane. No, that was the sound of vomit splashing on the floor. I was lucky I didn't get an armload when I handed her her book!

The show was a revival of Come Back, Little Sheba which starred S. Epatha Merkerson from "Law and Order". (I don't watch it but I understand it's very popular.) And it was also the Broadway debut of my favorite ingenue, Zoe Kazan. This is the third play I've seen her in since I was run over on the way to see her for the first time in August. She was good, and although she was still the hotsie totsie teenage girl, it was different from the other two performances because she was a 1950s girl, not contemporary. I still think she's TaLeNtEd. The play doesn't hold up that well, however. It gets unintentional laughs with lines like "the doctors at City Hospital told me to eat candy bars because alcohol washes all the sugar out of your system".

The pic is my apartment, winter wonderland-style.

Last night, Miss Liz and I went to dinner at Craft, owned by Tom Colicchio, for fans of "Top Chef". (I planned to go there to celebrate the sale of "The Menage" if that tells you how long I've been thinking about it.) I loved going with her, because she'll eat anything, and we both wanted to try stuff we've never had. Here's what we ate (asterisks indicate first-time items for me):

Fried codfish with pequillo pepper sauce (amuse bouche, one of the best tastes of the night)
The best bread I can remember tasting (kind of burnt on the outside, lots of crunchy junk on
the inside)
* Mache salad with pears and pecans in a truffle vinagarette (also one of the best things)
* Scottish partridge with black truffle sauce and brussels sprouts leaves
Pan roasted quail
* Jerusalem artichokes
Roasted baby onions
Sweatbreads with quince sauce (this is the second time I've had sweetbreads, so I feel like I can now say I don't care for it)
Monkfish with bacon and *crosnes
Peanut butter chocolate mousse pie (an amuse bouche sucre)

And then they give you a moist, gingery, carrotty type muffin wrapped to go with your (okay, exorbitant) bill. And the whole restaurant is really cool, the tables are thick wood with place mats rather than tablecloths (which I always seem to yank at, spilling the drinks) , and a hidden drawer that slides out to hold your bottles of wine. It was a very satisfying high end NYC dining experience.

On our way to the subway, I told her the movie of "Sweeney Todd" is awesome. A creepy duffer next to her said, "If you want to see a guuuuud movie, see 'Lars and the Real Girl'." When we were away from him, I asked her if that reminded her of anything. "Oh, I just got creeped out because it reminded me of that documentary we watched about guys in love with their sex dolls." "Dude," I said, "That's what 'Lars and the Real Girl' is about too! I'm telling you, we have to compete with sex dolls now, on top of everything else." What's an organic woman (as one of the sex doll lovers calls us) to do? "I just hate people," Liz said.

I misjudged the chicken pot pie. It set up in the fridge and when reheated, was a derned good meal. Look at me with the fancy leftovers, huh?

Here are some things I've overheard lately that I recorded in my sudoku book:

"I wish I had a daughter. My daughter hair woulda looked nice."

"She captured this restlessness, the struggle of being young in an urban environment." Theater box office guy on the historic significance of Alanis Morrissette.

Old biddy at "Sweeney Todd" screening: "My editor, he's a great editor. I just found out he's gay, but you'd never know it. Such a shame."

"Persepolis" is an awesome movie if you're looking for something to do. You know the saying "The enemy of my enemy is my friend"? I think the recent history of Iran this movie deals with disproves that. Just because the ayatollah also hates the shah doesn't mean he's your buddy, and just because Saddam Hussein also hates the ayatollah doesn't mean he's your friend either. It's always amusing to me when I see something historical like this movie that bumps into my own memory of the same time. For unknown reasons, there were a fair number of Iranian college students in Minnesota in the 70s. When I was at North Hennepin, they were demonstrating and collecting signatures at the U against the shah. By the time I was in grad school, the petitions were against the ayatollah, and I wondered just how much influence they thought University of Minnesota students have.