So, reasontv.com had a reception yesterday for supporters to see the new Drew Carey piece and meet the reason folks, Matt Welch, Nick Gillespie, etc., at the home of a hedge fund guru and his jewelry-designing wife. (Okay, I've been calling her his "Asian trophy wife who designs jewelry" but she was so gracious to me and offered to fetch me stuff that I feel bad now.) All I knew was where the apartment is and that we'd be taking our shoes off before entering. I'm down with that, I think it's a Midwestern thing to want to kick your shoes off indoors, like we're programmed by our sodbusting DNA to think there's always manure on them. Furthermore, since my friend Liz told me my "dress" shoes look like the kind people have to wear when one leg is shorter than the other, I wasn't worried about them getting stolen. (She's really right, too. I'd been thinking they look like the old flying toasters screen saver . . . which Liz has never seen.) It was about two in the afternoon when I remembered that when you're invited to someone's home, you have to bring something. On the one hand, it was likely that this would be kind of a big, impersonal gathering, which it was, on the other hand, I'd rather be the boob who brings something than the boob who wasn't raised properly. I decided on flowers, because if you don't like them, they die and you throw them away, but at that point, I was stumped, so I called my stepmother, Pam. Good call, because she has a lot of experience being pleased and annoyed by gifts. Here are the rules: you have to bring display-ready flowers, either in a pot or a vase. (The hostess can't stop what she's doing to arrange your supermarket bundle into something presentable.) Secondly, she prefers a small vase, even a bud vase. Finally, at the end of the night, it's hard to remember who handed you what, so there has to be some kind of note with it. The picture is what I came up with after visiting my local dollar store, Hallmark shop, and bodega--cute, right?

Well, the apartment was the kind of fabulousness you only see on TV, on the 38th floor of a building half a block from Madison Square, where we watched the sunset over the Hudson. The buffet table was the prettiest I've ever seen, and not only because it was sprinkled with reasontv luggage tag souvenirs. There were people there I knew from their pictures on their columns in reason, Mark Skousen, who organizes Freedomfest in Vegas, which I'm going to again this year, and, what now, is that John Stossel curled up on the couch? Yes, it is! Perhaps we were on TV after all. (He looks shrunken and sickly, but I think he's just a runner.) I'm sad to report that my cocktail party skills are as horrible as ever. Not only did I keep getting boxed into corners, but the only ice breaker that occurred to me was when I saw a woman about my age with an abdominal bump and I thought, "You look too old to be pregnant, do you have ovarian cancer?" I restrained myself from expressing my concern to her. Fortunately, there were lots of reason staffers who were paid to mingle with me, and a couple of them think I will have no trouble selling my screenplay.

Anyway, I'm sure you're dying to know--I guess I made the other 65 or so guests look like boobs who weren't raised right, because I didn't see any other hostess gifts. Someone put my bud vase on the buffet table, though, and I wasn't embarrassed. I was even gratified to see the real florist had the same idea for the giant drum full of calla lilies that I did--we wrapped leaves around the inside of the glasses to hide the stems. I'm pretty confident in saying that is now the only item in the home of Bob Gelfond and Sandy Leung that came from the dollar store.

Scholars of this blog will notice this is a new category of post--religious observance.

First, I decided to visit the Prospect Park Zoo on my constitutional this afternoon. This tiny place makes the Como Park of my youth look like a big game preserve. But it was cute, I fed a goat in the petting zoo (none of these sissy handwash/sanitization stations when I was little, but I guess these days whole classes of elementary kids don't get wiped out by goat measles like we did), I learned that peacocks lose their plumes every year, and saw the sea lions do tricks. I'd read on the park's website that there were vending machines and with nothing in mind, I went to the refreshment building. I bought a 100-calorie pack of fruit cocktail out of the "fresh food" machine (the only other item was Nestle's chocolate milk) and ate it with the lid fashioned into a kind of jagged edged scoop because I couldn't see any cutlery. Man the tool user! But the interesting thing was a big kosher vending machine, "Hot Nosh", motto, "Open 24/6". Only it wasn't serving, or it was unclear. There was a sign on it saying that because of Jewish dietary laws and Passover, the machine wouldn't be serviced until some time between April 28 and 29. The machine was lit, so I don't know if the sign meant you could get the kreplach, but the machine wouldn't be restocked for a while, or if you couldn't get any food or what. I love coming up on something like this, though, like the Sabbath elevator at the hospital. I found the company's website and part of the deal is that only certain Jews can service the machines, so not only does it shed light on the sign, but also tells me my time reading the "Franchising Opportunities" page was wasted.

And let me tell you, I was single-handedly representing white Christendom over there!

As a run-up to Passover, we had the Pope in town this week. My first reminder was Sunday morning on the sidewalk, a woman screamed into her cell phone, "The f___ing Pope is in town!" I turned on the TV at home to see if I was likely to get rained on, my main fear in life. Every channel was broadcasting mass from St. Patrick's Cathedral. I flipped through some stations, then turned to do something and accidentally heard a man and a woman commenting on the mass. Now . . . I read once that the Druze religion is very mysterious, that only adult men are even told the full details of their beliefs. Catholicism ain't Druze. We have a number of Catholics right here in the NYC. My second preliminary is that if you're on the news and you really can't contribute any information to what you're covering, you can just describe what you see, that's okay. So, the first shot I saw was some nuns at St. Pat's, and the newsgal was saying something like, "with a shortage of men entering the priesthood, doesn't it make sense to let women who want to do more"? Now, she doesn't have to agree with Catholic doctrine, but there is a doctrine, and the church can't just call up the temp agency and ordain whoever's sitting there. The newsman (he gets slightly more respect from me, you'll see why) said it isn't that straightforward, but before he could continue, she busts out with this gem, "Doesn't it all go back to medieval times when the church was afraid that if women became priests, they'd get their hands on its treasures?" Because we gals love the bling! Newsman tried a different tack and said, "The role of women in the church is complicated, on one hand, no, they can't become priests, but on the other hand, the Catholic church alone among all religions holds a woman as the highest honored human being." "That's not true," newsgal said, "because when I was growing up, we were taught that Mary Magdalene was not a good person." Exasperated newsman, "I was talking about a different Mary." And I couldn't listen to any more, and risked getting rained on in my rush out the door without an umbrella. It was almost worse than "The View" where the gals agreed Monday that the most important quality a presidential candidate can have is to look like you could walk up and talk to him/her. (Does everyone know that show's been on eleven years? Joy Behar said it came along at a dark time in her life where she was so desperate that she was looking for a sitcom to be on. The gals were in consensus that had she gotten a show, it could never have lasted as long as this pergatorial gig.)

But you know, that's kind of how the news always sounds to me, dumb-looking people babbling about either quotidian stories about house fires and traffic delays, or making inane comments on subjects they don't understand. But I feel like if I went up to them, they'd talk to me!

Finally, I can't sign off on the first issue of Religious Observance without passing along this story from my friend Sue. She was in Target and overheard two blonde twenty-somethingish women. "What should we have for Easter?" one said. "Ham?" "We can't have ham," the first one said, "Easter's a Jewish holiday." I assume they were newsanchors.

Yesterday I was back in production as a platelet donor after a long hiatus, and it was kind of a Keystone Kops day in the blood room. Around the same time I got there for my appointment, a novice blood donor named LaToya arrived. Well, LaToya was a pistol, and kind of a 'tard. (Sweetie, I'm sorry if you're reading this, but I know you're not.) She couldn't understand the questions on the donor survey, so Kellie had to read them to her, "Have you ever had a positive HIV test?" "Yes?" "You have?" Kellie said, patting down her lab coat pockets for the permanent deferral forms, "You tested positive for HIV?" "No, I was negative," she said. A fine distinction, but an important one. As I was getting my hemoglobin tested, LaToya bellowed, "I've been bleeding from my vagina for five weeks!" I thought I'd swallow my little vinyl thermometer. (Later from the donor room, I heard her saying something about her virginity, unfortunately, I didn't catch the details.) But it was when she laid down on the donor bed that she got her biggest, most genuine laugh. By then, there were two more donors backed up, and LaToya was introducing herself to everyone and asking what our names were. When I said Janet, she said, "So we're both named after Michael Jackson's sisters." I truly wish I could report that the other woman waiting to donate was named Rebe.

I've really held myself back from going on libertarian rants in this space, and I know you all appreciate it, but six and a half years after 9/11, all my federal government has succeeded in protecting me from are analog TV broadcasts and incandescent bulbs. Here in NYC, I can eat all the trans fat I want, unless I'm in a restaurant. Kay, that's all I'm saying.

As I was taking my morning constitutional through Prospect Park, I got my first migraine in a long time. For those not familiar with my intracranial vascular history, I get acephalgic migraines, that is, I see an aura, which might block between 5 and 30% of my field of vision (and looks like a fluttering ribbon of foil that's been folded in triangles like a flag, then unfolded) but I haven't ever had pain with it, and it's over within about half an hour. Then I feel a little weird, like I fell asleep in the sun or something. All in all, if you have to have migraines, these are the kind to have. (My Aunt Lois gets the same kind.) Anyway, the only complication this morning came when I was crossing the street with several little Jewish women, the ones to my left were completely invisible!

Finally, here's what they don't tell you on the tax prep software commercials. Every year I break down at the last minute and buy software because the prospect of writing in pencil is just too daunting. This year, the Block brothers, H&R, found a $240 penalty for me that I almost certainly wouldn't have found on my own!

August: Osage County won the Pulitzer Prize, yayyyy!

Good grief, where have I been? Was I in a coma? What day is this?

I can tell you that last night, I went to a piano concert at the Metropolitan Museum. I thought it would be a nice evening to go there, see an exhibit, then listen to a concert while I catch up on some diary-writing. I'm not the type who enjoys hour after hour of museum mummy-walking. I'm a member, so I can go in for half an hour, as I did yesterday, to see Jasper Johns's Gray exhibit. I loved it, and I got it, I think for once, in the way the artist intended me to get it. He takes away color, with all the emotional associations it brings, and creates from an intellectual place of texture, exploring the nature of the materials, and building on a familiar patterns, like numbers, alphabets, and of course, flags. "The flag already makes sense to the viewer," as he says. PBS's Sister Wendy explained what we're supposed to get out of abstract art in a way I could understand, that it should create the same effect in us as the ocean: we can stare at the ocean for a long time and it's always changing a little bit and it's not boring. I could have done that (from a comfy chair) with my favorites, the alphabets.

Then the concert, featuring lovable Lithuanian mop-top Andrius Zlabys. I wouldn't be able to distinguish top level pianoing from merely competent, but it seemed pretty complicated. And it has to be quite the gig for a young man from the Baltic to play the Met. Anyway, the program started with Brahms, snore, then Beethoven's "Tempest" sonata. That was more dramatic and more to my liking. After the intermission, we had Bach's Die Kunst der Fuge. Bach's okay in church, and when I hear him for some reason, I always think 'this is what I'd have heard at a party at Mount Vernon'. The last piece was Prokofieff's Sonata #8, one of the "war sonatas" written during the Big One. Prokofieff starts out like he's going to be nice and orderly, Brahms-like, then he totally slaps you around--I loved it.

According to Wikipedia, Prokofieff was kind of plagued with bad luck and bad timing his whole life. First, I love this line, "His first piano composition to be written down (by his mother), an 'Indian Gallop', was in the key of F Lydian (F major with a B natural instead of B flat) as the young Prokofiev did not like to touch the black keys." And I kind of love Mrs. Prokofieff for still thinking her son could make it big with the piano. His first opera, "The Gambler" was set to premiere in St. Petersburg, but had to be canceled because the February Revolution broke out. The next year, he came to the US and soloed and composed another opera, "The Love for Three Oranges", whose New York premiere was canceled when the director died. So, off he went to Paris. He did okay in Europe, but moved back to Russia permanently in 1935. The communist government had begun censoring artists, but Prokofieff was one they approved of. Perhaps it was an oratorio he composed called, "Hail to Stalin". And although he was in favor, performance of his opera, "Semyon Kotko" was delayed by the arrest and execution of its director. And alas, after the war, the soviet decided Prokofieff's music was dangerous to the people, and that was kind of it. Oh, except for the unfortunate fact that he died on the same day as Stalin. For three days, the crowds of people thronging Red Square made it impossible to get Prokofieff's corpse out of his house for a funeral (an estimated 500 people were crushed or trampled to death trying to view his body), and when it did happen, they had to use an audio tape for music and paper flowers because all the real flowers and musicians were over at the Stalin's house.