Oh, to know the story behind the box on the sidewalk labeled FREE, filled with NutriSystem food!

Bucket List alert: I rented a bike and rode around Central Park today. (Why not my beloved hometown Prospect Park? Because the bike rental industry is not as well developed here. You have to rent for the whole day, for example, rather than by the hour.) It was a gorgeous day and these modern bikes are so easy to ride, it was really fun.

For those of you who pray, I've applied for a job I really, really want to interview for. For those of you who bribe, email me for further information.

My high school friend Jo Lynn Terry would have been 54 today. She was older than I was so I always think of her as being older than me, but she was killed when she was 23, just a baby.

And I just noticed the irony--she was killed riding her bike.

Uncle Sam wants you...to eat Nathan's hot dogs! Yep, I went to the hot dog eating contest, where last year's winners triumphed again, Sonya "The Black Widow" Thomas and Joey "Jaws" Chestnut, but no records were broken. In the ladies' round, one contestant had a tragic attack of hiccups, and one of the male contenders, I think it was Notorious B.O.B., "got disqualified in the most unwatchable way possible". The men had great personas. My fave: Eater X, who woke one morning on a beach in Tangiers with no memory, but obvious training in speed-eating. Now he travels the world, eating, and hoping to solve the mystery of who he is. (For those of you who follow the sport, for the second year in a row, Takeru Kobayashi did not compete because of a contract dispute with the--yep--governing body, Major League Eating.)

But the highlight for me was the emcee, Barney. He had the Old Testament quality I used to like about wrestling, everything was of epic proportion. "God spoke directly to Isaiah," was one, "but he's speaking to Joey Chestnut through hot dogs!" "Her stomach is a cauldron, her jaw is a vice and her teeth are daggers!" "She's attacking those dogs like a starving hyena on the Serengheti!"

I was also testing Equate brand SPF 30 spray-on sunscreen which seems to do the job--I have no Birkenstock lines.

To top it all off, I can see the Macy's fireworks from my window. Happy 4th everybody!