Today’s soundtrack: If a double-decker bus, crashes into us
Today at 8:02pm: Eating Japanese fried chicken.


I was supposed to be out in the woods camping yesterday, instead of sitting in a warm apartment in front of the technological marvel known as a laptop. Trip was canceled, done in by inclement weather and my own sneaking suspicions that freezing my ass off in the woods might be surprisingly un-fun. I hope we can go in the spring though.

Through the wall I can hear someone’s cell phone ringing, somewhere in the building. A truck slamming into the pothole outside. My coffeemaker ticking. And through the abject silence, I can distinctly hear the sound of Richard Gere’s career going nowhere.

At the restaurant the food is middling, but the atmosphere is exceedingly comfortable. I finish eating before the rest of the group and secede to the bar to have a smoke. It’s only six feet from the table, ridiculous I know, but laws are laws.

There’s a tall European woman behind the counter. It’s my second time in the restaurant and my second time seeing her. “Ah, so you’re a regular now,” she says.

“Guess so,” I say. Then I order an American coffee, hoping she’ll remember that’s my postprandial usual. Billy Joel used to sing this tragicomic song called “Big Man On Mulberry Street.” Now I’m in a restaurant on Elizabeth (two blocks from Mulberry) and the lyrics come to mind.

Lately I’ve been heedlessly maneuvering the car into social pothole after social pothole, and last week I lost my agent. October’s turning bad on me. Trying to squeeze out extra ounces of sweat in Hapkido to compensate.

By the by if you live in the New York area and have an interest in martial arts, my school is having an open house/class demo on October 30th at 7pm, open to the public. It’s on the corner of Broadway and Howard (one block above Canal) on the 2nd floor. If you’ve been thinking of joining a gym, consider this instead, you’ll never regret it. At the very least you can learn to count to ten in Korean.