Today’s soundtrack: worth a thousand with anybody
Today at 4:32pm: taking another blistering ride on the 3-train



I saw Ocean’s Twelve last night, and hopefully you won’t. The plot is that Andy Garcia’s character asks George Clooney’s character to give him his money back. I wish the real George Clooney would return my fucking ten dollars.

When people say they like surprises, they’re usually lying, or editing. What they mean is they like pleasant surprises. No one likes finding out that the condom broke, or that their favorite restaurant has closed, or that the election really is over and those are the results.

I firmly believe most things in life suck by default. I’m not dark or depressed about it, I just operate under that assumption and try to see what kind of wiggle room I’ve got. In my scheme of things pleasant surprises, no matter how small, hold extra resonance because they are anomalous.

Which is why I stopped reading movie reviews. I’m amazed at how inconsiderate critics are, giving away half the movie or describing scenes right down to the crux. When they take the surprises away, even little ones, they effectively ruin the movie for me. I dutifully avoided reading every review of Before Sunset.

In 1989 when I was seventeen I took myself out to see Cinema Paradiso. I remember walking out of the theater inspired and amazed. I felt like anything could happen. I think that was the first movie that really did that for me.

In early 1995 I took myself out to see Before Sunrise at the Loews on 3rd and 11th. I must’ve been what, 23, 24. The movie spoke to me, really hit me in some places and I walked out of the theater feeling well. I thought about it often.

I saw the movie again in 2002, I showed it to my girlfriend at the time on video. (I have a film curriculum I’ve inflicted on every girl I’ve dated that wasn’t well-versed in film, a rundown of must-see’s.) I was surprised at how different the movie seemed compared to what I’d remembered. I’d recently re-watched Cinema Paradiso and that was still a good movie, but Before Sunrise seemed dated, or like something you’d only find interesting if you were the same age as the protagonists, which I was when I’d first seen it.

Nevertheless I was excited to see Before Sunset, especially since by now the protagonists had aged along with me. It came on Netflix today and I watched it after work.

Ocean’s Twelve was a bombastic star-filled studio production full of celebrity winking and it stone sucked. In contrast, Before Sunset reminded me of what I love about independent movies, truly independent movies. In particular I found the ending fucking beautiful, though of course I won’t say what happens. It now ranks as one of my favorite movie endings ever, right up there with The Third Man.

You know how like, when you have a near-death experience your life flashes before your eyes? If I were to get in some kind of accident I think the last scene from either The Third Man or this movie would flash before my eyes. I don’t know what that says about me and I don’t care, I’ve done enough navel-gazing for the night. But basically I think it’s hard to end a movie well, or artfully, and I’m impressed when people pull it off. “Just In Time.”

I have no problems. Eighty thousand people literally wiped off the Earth in one cataclysmic event, that’s a fucking problem.

A couple days ago a friend forwarded me the link to donate. I remember scanning it and thinking I’d get around to it in a minute, then moving on to more “important” business. Later that day I saw the photos in The Daily News, froze up for a couple seconds and immediately went fishing for the link. Here’s another, in case you want to.

The horrific news is broadcast into televisions and computers, then thousands of people sitting in individual living rooms and apartments start mouse-clicking donations into the system, trying to do what they can to help out. That’s how it should go, no?

Today’s soundtrack: La
Today at 9:02am: mindlessly dull paperwork



Probably there is something wrong with me. Take this photo above: I’ve seen, shot and posted this flick or something like it dozens of times before, and yet when I saw this the other day I had to shoot it. Like when Mel Gibson buys Catcher in the Rye in Conspiracy Theory, I have to in order to feel okay. Even if I’m in a hurry or running late I stop and fish the camera out.

I think if someone was chasing me with a machete and a bucket of acid I would still have to stop to take the picture. Damn these water towers, damn these buildings.

What am I saying--who carries a machete and a bucket of acid. It’s one or the other, hack-and-slash or burning splash. I bet no serial killer in the history of serial killing went to that kinda trouble. Bucket of acid’s not the type of thing you can shove under your coat when the po-po rolls around.

Anyways I guess it’s like sex, taking these pictures. The end result might be predictable but that doesn’t mean it ain’t always different.

Today’s soundtrack:
some see the flesh before they see the bones
Some see the bones before
Before they see the flesh
Today at 9:32pm: jostling through crowds



Tonight I walked up to Rock’ Center with both cameras. I didn’t have much else to do and I figured those of you outside New York might want to see what the tree or the rink looks like. Decided not to take the stock shot ‘cause you can see that anywhere.

So I spend an hour hoofing it up there, and find the batteries are dead in both cameras. Aiyah.

Managed to squeeze two off with the Sony before it closed its eyes for good.

I’m looking for a line-by-line of the following, I figure it’d be easy for a fluent English/French speaker. If you can pull this off I’ll, well, I dunno, you tell me what I can do for you.

It’s my favorite song by Stereolab, “Spacemoth.” I just realized the other day that it actually has lyrics.


“Ce filme n'a pas été joué par des acteurs mais vécu par des femmes des hommes

On ne sait ce qu'il va bien pouvoir dévoiler, mais on espère la vérité

Morin et Rouch voudraient savoir comment vivent les personnes, sont-ils heureux

Malheureusement l'homme est réduit à son travail qui bien souvent brise l'idéal

Une partie de moi s'adapte mais je sauvegarde l'autre, c'est ma partie authentique

La possibilité de s'accomplir malgré tout et envers tout

Je vis dans la mesure où j'accepte des compromis terribles

Je voulais me heurter à la réalité,

Ne pas vivre par compensation

Me mettre en relation avec quelque chose qui me fasse sortir de moi

Je n'ai meme pas le droit de me tuer, ce serait faux, tout faux

La caméra

Etait bien là

Ils ont joué sincèrité

Ce filme nous

Réintroduit

A la vraie vie

Nous met en cause”

Today’s soundtrack: nous met en cause
Today at 6:32pm: some days you don’t feel like teaching, but you’re on the schedule so you have to go in



I’m walking down the sidewalk thinking about how things could be better for me and then I catch that whiff of piss that reminds me how okay I am.

Walk around the city and you smell urine, or worse, at least once a day. The smell doesn’t offend me, but I notice it every time. How could you not. I can block out background noise and visual noise pretty good, but the smell of anything that came out of the lower half of another human being always registers.

What I mean by how okay I am is, I’m sitting here bitching about my life and a block away is a guy who has to piss where he can.

The only benefit I can imagine to being homeless is that you don’t have to carry keys. Other than that it seems completely miserable and I am in awe of how they are capable of surviving. They must be some of the toughest bastards on the planet. If natural disaster did strike Manhattan like in The Day After Tomorrow I bet they’d still be walking around, humming and stuff.

Two of my friends now have a baby, which blows my mind. And of course it makes me think about my own prospects for fatherhood, which are currently remote. Finding the right girl and marriage and such. Anyways I decided when the time comes, I’m going to have my own kids the Chinese-Brazilian way: Kidnapping.

Hapkido was slow today, I knew it would be. Raining and all. I teach every Thursday and today I really didn’t feel like going in. It would be cool if I could call in a substitute, like the students show up and there’s some strange ninja standing at the head of the class.

I’m not really in the holiday spirit, so I think come Christmas I’m just going to stay in my apartment and break crayons or whatever. I got an invite or two from friends but I don’t feel like dealing with holiday parties where I may be required to put on my Proper Social Comportment face or have strangers turn to me and say “So, what do you do?”

“I smell urine and sometimes I write about it. What do you do?”

At this point in my life I’d rather be alone on days like that, which, I know, will get you funny looks if you confess this out loud. But it is what it is, and what it is ain’t terrible. For now I prefer it.

Today’s soundtrack: despite the knives internal
Today at 1:02pm: feeling joy at the post office



In the mail I received The Book of Bunny Suicides from a complete stranger, and I feel pretty good about it.

It’s one thing to receive a gift from friends or family; while that is of course nice, there is often a rote quality to the ritual. Receiving something from a total stranger, on the other hand, is almost...moving. Because it means someone you’ve never met or spent any significant amount of time with actually went to the trouble to make your life a little brighter.

I don’t mean to detract from the significance of receiving gifts from people you know; I just found the arrival of the Bunny book, and a couple other items in my P.O. box rather remarkable.

The Sopranos isn’t even great, but I can’t stop watching it. (If you want to see a great show, watch Lost.) I love Carmella Soprano’s fake suburban housewife smile, it’s nothing short of exquisite. If I was the King of England I’d knight Edie Falco.

And I finally figured what I have in common with her character. It’s not just run-of-the-mill sorrow; it’s a sort of ruefulness that comes with slowly admitting you and your own faults are complicit in your unhappiness.

Only took me three seasons of DVDs to figure this out. Netflix is only $17.99 a month, which is cheap for a therapy bill.

I have to stop dragging my ass.

A pal of mine separated with his wife. Today he told me he is cursed with a complete lack of empathy. That’s pretty bad, though I suspect what I am afflicted with is worse. This guy can’t imagine what other people are thinking or feeling. I often can, but purposely avoid engaging them so I can avoid dealing with any emotional discomfort.

I’ve been around plenty of fighting couples, enough to know I want no part of that life. I can’t stand a man and a woman arguing. When I see spouses going at it I want to send them to Couples Therapy with David Blaine, where the three of them climb into a small box and remain underground with no food or water for many days.

Ed and Betty had the baby! A little girl. They even gave her a 1940s name, which I am totally into. My (hypothetical) daughters are totally gonna have names like Veronica or Jane, and longtime readers of this journal already know my son will be named Clyde. It’s hard to believe I will one day be having sex for procreative purposes.

Anyways the three of ‘em are all fine and healthy. On the day of the birth I ran out and bought a copy of the Times, figuring one day the kid will want to read that particular day’s issue.

Me, I wish I could see an NBC newscast from the day I was born. The anchors’ haircuts oughta be good for a laugh. Plus I’d be curious to see what was going on that week, and what kinds of problems were going on in the world I was born into.

Rabbits killing themselves in creative ways is fucking funny!

I hope I’m not too twisted.

Today’s soundtrack:
this is the only way that we should fly,
this is the only way to go
Today at 7:02pm: at the 24-hour post office on Eighth



I don’t know what it says about me that after watching nineteen hours of The Sopranos, the character who most stirs my empathy is...Carmella Soprano. Something about her eyes and how a lot of shit seems to go wrong for her. I guess it’s the Ralph Kramden/Gilligan/Homer Simpson syndrome where the protagonist can’t ever get what they really want.

Did Gilligan have a last name? And what’s with that first name. Cat didn’t look Irish to me.

My new sort-of job is Photo Studio Manager. During shoots I basically have to be on hand for four to eight hours, not really doing anything, but just there.

I figured I’d get to write during those hours...and I was wrong. With the din of a fashion shoot going on in the background, I spend a lot of time sitting at the keyboard making disappointed expressions. (Like Carmella Soprano, only more masculine.)

So rather than sitting there doing nothing I’ve been catching up on The Sopranos instead. Laptops and DVD drives go together like chocolate and peanut butter. The fastest way to kill a large block of time is to get on Netflix and queue up a miniseries. And it’s more fun watching people maim each other with bats than it is listening to a prissy hairstylist argue with the makeup person.

I’m only on Season Three; prior to Netflix I’d only ever seen Season One. Back during the dotcom boom there were these two companies, Kozmo and Urban Fetch, remember them? Basically these crazy bastards would deliver anything short of human body parts right to your doorstep. You’d log onto their sites and order DVDs or ice cream or mouthwash and an hour later they’d send some asshole over on a bicycle with your package.

Anyways one time I got really sick and was bedridden for a couple of days. It was miserable so I hopped onto Urban Fetch and ordered The Sopranos Season One. Watched the whole thing in two days, and I hadn’t seen an episode since, until maybe two weeks ago.

So yeah. A whole show about gangsters and I identify with the fucking wife. Maybe not her specific problems, but that look in her eye, yeah, I’ve seen it before.

Man, did you see that episode where Pussy kills the Elvis impersonator with a hammer? Holy shit.

Today’s soundtrack: for me the cloth once more to spin
Today at 4:42pm: driving unusually slow



I oughta be writing more, since lots has happened. It’ll take me a while to catch up.

For better or worse I operate completely independently of the holiday season, and thus have nothing Christmassy to say. Part of it is because I’m alone and part of it is because they’re too commercialized for me to enjoy them.

The holidays seemed more pure when I was a kid. Not sure if that’s because I was a kid, or if they were really less marketed back then. I always wonder if my childhood holidays in the ‘70s were disdained as too commercial by people who’d grown up in the ‘50s.

People ask me what I’m doing for Christmas and my unspoken answer is I don’t know, and I don’t care. I’m not cynical about them, just indifferent. To me Christmas will be nice primarily because the streets will be emptier than usual. Finding chow may be a hassle though.

I dropped Ed and an extremely pregnant Betty off at the hospital today. They looked simultaneously scared and happy. Betty was kind enough to lay a towel down on my seat so there wouldn’t be any amniotic fluid on the upholstery.

As they got out of the car in front of the hospital, I tried to take a destined-to-be-historic picture I could show the kid someday, but I ended up accidentally cutting my head completely out of the picture. Nice going. At least I got Ed, Betty and Betty’s sister in there.

Afterwards I went to visit my grandmother in Queens, who’s ailing and nearly 100. Between that and the maternity drive it was a real circle-of-life kind of day. I don’t want my grandmother to go anywhere and I’d trade years of my life if I could add it to hers, even at a two-to-one exchange rate. She’s basically a good person. I’m basically not.

We taped episode two of the cooking show last night, so right now the footage is in Francis’ capable hands. I have no idea where the hell we’re going with this or if it’s sustainable, but I don’t care as long as we have some laughs.

Logan’s original plan was to submit some test footage of just himself for that Food Network contest, but during the taping, which took place in my apartment, I hijacked his show and talked him into letting me post the results here. Plus I really would like to learn how to cook, since I can’t seem to find any of those 1950s housewives to move in with me.

I just remembered Sunrise Mart (Japanese convenience store with MRE’s) will be open on Christmas Day. It’s a lucky thing to live in a cosmopolitan city. When you’ve got enough cultures crammed onto one island, you can always hang with one to avoid the holidays of the other. That might not be what they’d intended, but that doesn’t mean I won’t take advantage.

Please download my new cooking show, Bachelor Cooking!

It’s totally experimental. I have no idea how to cook, but my friend does so I browbeat him into showing me how to make something anyone could make.

Today’s soundtrack: hi o tsukete, mori no naka
Today at 10:32pm: taking unfamiliar trains



Eighteen stops from where I got on, I get off.

The 1/9 (read that as “one/nine,” not “one-ninth”) is a strange train to me, every time I take it it’s like a little mini-adventure. I don’t take it often because it’s a west side train, and me and the west side of Manhattan ain’t exactly friends. The six, now there’s a train. Takes you anywhere you wanna go.

But tonight I told Grad-Student Writer Girl I’d attend her reading up at Columbia, so around 7pm, up I went. It’s eighteen stops from Canal to a hunnert and sixteenth.

I got out of the station and the entrance to the school is literally right there. I mean if you got shot through the stomach downstairs in the station you could crawl up the steps and drag yourself inside Columbia’s gates before you finished bleeding to death, in case you wanted to die on an Ivy League campus.

I had no idea how long it takes to get from Canal to 116th--I assumed it would take an hour, because I am bad at these things--so I ended up arriving a half-hour early.

With nothing else to do, I looked up and down Broadway for anything that looked like it served diner coffee, but all I saw was a bunch of frou-frou-lookin’ restaurants and a Starbucks. I hate Starbucks like it’s a person, so I turned around and went onto the campus.

Columbia is really collegiate-looking. If you’ve never seen it, it’s the school Peter Parker attended in Spider-Man. Lots of buildings that look like courthouses and the foot traffic is appreciable.

Amidst the stately neo-classical structures was a large, modern glass building that looked familiar; I’d done a reading there years ago. I remember it was some kind of student center, which would mean there had to be coffee. Students were going in and out of the place like bumblebees. I watched the students entering to see if they needed to produce ID for access, but a security apparatus seemed non-existent, so I strolled right in.

At the cafeteria on the first floor I ordered a coffee, and the guy just gave it to me. I knew it! These Ivy League schools just give you everything for free! I smiled into my free coffee until I saw the cashier charge the person after me; he’d simply forgotten to take my money. I cleared my throat and volunteered the cash, because...actually, I don’t know why I did that. But the bottom line is I paid.

Coffee in hand, I sat on a low wall outside the building and student-watched. Every time I’m on a student-filled campus, I miss something about college life. I dunno what it is, something about the laissez-faire hygiene and the unsophisticated haircuts. Fashion decisions that looked like they weren’t decisions at all. Brows unfurrowed by the stress that comes from not being able to make your health insurance payments and the like. None of these cats had ever come home and flipped the switch to find the lights weren’t coming on because Con Ed wasn’t bluffing this time. What I wouldn’t give to have the pressures of a college student laid upon my corporate whore shoulders.

Still, two things reminded me that the campus I was looking at was far from my own collegiate experience:

One, every third student was yapping on a cell phone. When I was in college they called them “cellular telephones,” they were shaped like bricks and the only people who carried them were doctors and crack dealers, both of whom were somewhat underrepresented in my freshman year class.

Two, this was an Ivy League school. I couldn’t get into this school if my father donated a library and gave a yacht to the Provost. Frankly speaking, I am not a smart man. I learn all my lessons the hard way or, where women are concerned, not at all.

At 8pm I found Dodge Hall, where the readings were to be held. I was somewhat surprised to see the “H” on the sign hadn’t been vandalized and changed into a “B,” probably because I am a child.

The reading gallery was filled with what looked like actual adults, so they must’ve been grad students. A grip of them looked like they were older than I was. Grad-Student Writer Girl arrived, nervous because it was her first reading. But she was the second person up and nothing short of stellar.

All three readers in the first half were of exceptionally high caliber, which surprised me. I’ve been to a lot of readings around the city and frankly, most of them suck. Then again this is Columbia and there’s a pretty high barrier to entry here, so it makes sense the talent level would be higher.

GSW Girl broke out during the intermission, something about having to attend a meeting, but I stayed on for the second half. The quality went downhill a little but the closer had the room in stitches. Three out of the six writers tonight were funny. If I’m going to try to write books that will make people laugh, the competition will be stiff.

After the reading I was hungry, so I called a friend who lived in the neighborhood. My friend is a slight Chinese girl but the woman who answered the phone was a heavy-sounding Latina woman, so I’m guessing said friend changed their cell phone number and I didn’t get the memo. Well, party of one it is.

I exited the campus and walked down Broadway. Looking at menus in windows but nothing struck my fancy. Then I passed a place called “Nussbaum & Wu” and I was sold by the Jewish-Chinese moniker alone. Walked in and turns out they’ve got one of my favorite foods in the world, panini!

I scarfed one and read a Columbia student newspaper that was sitting on the counter. Pretended I was a student. I’m an Econ major, or “Sohsh” or one of those words that gets truncated on campuses. What is it with college students and the abbreviations. You spend four years studying something, at least you can take the time to spit out all the syllables.

Post-panini I took the 1/9 back downtown, then pulled the jalopy out of the garage. I’m on standby tonight. Ed and Betty are having a baby, due any day now, and I’m the hospital-driver. Betty's sister thinks tonight's the night! Exciting, no?

I’m doing it partially out of the goodness of my heart and partially because I can hold it over the kid’s head for the rest of her life. Yeah man, when I’m old and infirm, Ed and Betty’s kid will be driving me everywhere. Suh-weet!

I love people who wax their cars fastidiously.

Today’s soundtrack: if I thought I was qualified
Today at 12:02am: filling a notebook



In the movies they never show you life’s interstitial moments. In the original Star Wars movies, for example, you never see anybody eat anything. Not a single snack. Han Solo’s driving on all those long-ass trips and he doesn’t eat so much as a candybar. I don’t even think the Millenium Falcon had cupholders. I think there’s one scene where you see Obi-Wan quaff some shit that looks like Windex but that’s about it.

Anyways if I was George Lucas, I’d come out with a DVD called Star Wars: The Unseen Moments that featured the characters conducting activities previously deemed unworthy of showing on the big screen. These moments would include:


- Chewbacca down at the pharmacy, picking up 35 bottles of conditioner.

- Darth Vader and his first cup of coffee in the mornings. “Ahhhh.”

- Han Solo complaining to Chewbacca about the shower drain being clogged with hair again. “And get your own goddamn bar soap, I’m sick of picking your hair off of mine.” -“Rawwwwwwr.”

- Princess Leia on the phone with her Ob-Gyn, dealing with paperwork hassles. “Well I’m not paying for this...no...my insurance is supposed to cover everything...well, then you call them. Look, I don’t have time for this.”

- Han Solo and Lando cruising skanks at a cantina. -“How ‘bout her?” -“What, the blue one with the tentacles? Pass.”

- Luke on the toilet 1: With a severely upset stomach before the rebel assault on the first Death Star.

- Luke on the toilet 2: Taking a relaxed, leisurely shit and flipping through Jedi Home magazine before the rebel assault on the second Death Star.

- Jabba the Hutt in the kitchen at two in the morning, sadly eating a salad in an effort to stick to his diet.

- Obi-Wan Kenobi spilling tea all over his lightsaber handle. (“Mother%*@&%#!”)

- Boba Fett having dinner with his family and spewing anti-Jedi rhetoric to his impressionable young son.

- Obi-Wan discovering he now has to hold his lightsaber at a certain angle, or it turns off. (He can still fight people as long as they don’t approach him from the left.)

- Stormtrooper locker-room scene where one of the troopers reveals to the others that he keeps his boots from stinking by using tough-actin’ Tinactin.

- Obi-Wan on the phone with Lightsaber Inc., trying to figure out if his model is still under warranty.

- In The Empire Strikes Back Han Solo tells Luke “You look strong enough to pull the ears off a gundark.” One night Luke gets drunk and tries...then spends the rest of the night in Space Jail.

- Princess Leia fending off intergalactic paparazzi. “You people are animals!”

- A drunken Yoda “borrows” someone’s X-Wing Fighter and wraps it around an asteroid.

- Obi-Wan discovering he now has to shake his lightsaber vigorously or it won’t turn on at all.

Today’s soundtrack:
my doctor put me on
milk, cream and alcohol
Today at 12:02pm: dodging puddle-splashing motorists



Catching a taxi in Manhattan when it’s raining is like trying to catch STD’s in a nunnery. Fucking impossible. Wendy and I must’ve spent ten minutes standing on Broadway while an endless procession of taxis with the lamp off drove past.

You know ‘bout the lamps, right? (Here comes the Public Service Announcement portion of this blog.) I write this because I’ve see so many tourists who clearly have no idea how the system works. Each taxi’s got a lamp on the top with a number on it. If the number’s lit up, the taxi is available. If it ain’t you’re shit outta luck.

Wendy and I are shit outta luck, and I’m getting wetter by the minute. The city is grey, shiny and damp. “Maybe I should just take the train,” she says.

“Good idea,” I say. And that’s, of course, when a taxi finally becomes available. Across the street a hack sees us and stops. We wait for three trucks and a bus to whine past us before we dash over to the other side of the street, defecting from west to east.

“Thanks for doing it, Rain,” she says, and I put her in the taxi and she’s off. I don’t take taxis much; I don’t like to and I ain’t got the scratch. Plus walking is better, you see more.

The thing she thanked me for doing is narrating her latest short in front of an audience of her professors. This morning I showed up at NYU’s Tisch building at 9:30am, where I was greeted by Wendy and three cute Chinese kids, anywhere between eight and eleven years old. Wendy looked harried. In the cafeteria, the five of us sat down at a table.

“I need you to read not only the narration, but also the part of the father,” she said.

“A’right, whatever.”

“Is that your boyyyyfriend?” chirped the little girl, indicating me. She bounced up and down as she spoke.

“I bet he’s her boyfriend,” said one of the boys, sizing me up.

“I’ll be reading the part of the mother,” said Wendy, ignoring them and handing me a copy of the script.

“And he’s reading the part of the father?” said the second boy. “Yeah, that’s her boyfriend.” (Kids today, I tell ya.)

“I’m not her boyfriend,” I explained. I felt like telling him the last time I’d gone out with Wendy and her boyfriend, she and I had shared a piece of pie or something, and I think it made the guy uncomfortable. But I guessed these kids didn’t know the meaning of the word “interloper.”

During the dry run I see the kids all call her “Miss Wendy.” It’s the cutest goddamn thing you ever did see. Apparently Wendy poached these kids from a tutoring gig she pulls on the side, down in Chinatown.

After we’ve run through the script, it’s time to put it on. We take the elevator upstairs to a screening room filled with professors. From what I understand, they’re all Somebodies in the film industry. Directors, producers, writers and so forth, all with impressive credentials. The atmosphere is chummy but elevated, as everyone in here is members of the same exclusive club.

At the front of the room, the three kids sit at a table with Wendy, so she can cue them with their lines. I’m the narrator--the guy who has to say shit like “Exterior, Farmhouse, Day. A boy scans the sky for signs of rain” in a projective voice--so I have to stand.

The reading goes fine. It’s just a short, fifteen pages, hard for me to fuck up. Afterwards Wendy herds the kids outside, where a middle-aged Chinese couple, presumably parents, takes them back to school. Then the professors give Wendy ten minutes of criticism, most of it minor and benign.

Then everyone stands and gives me a round of applause for what was, in their words, the most brilliant performance they’ve ever seen. Several of them want to sign me immediately. A producer approaches me with a vehicle that’s “perfect” for me. A female director asks if I’m available Friday. Okay, okay, so I made this paragraph up, get off my back.

Afterwards Wendy and I have coffee up the block at the Cozy Soup ‘N Burger. You know it used to be half the size it is now? It was half as wide and there was a store next door. I think they subsumed it sometime in the early ‘90s. Anyways yeah, walking into that place used to be like walking into a bus.

First time I sat down in that place was with a high school girlfriend and a buddy, it was cramped as hell and I remember Wham! was on the radio. Second time I went back was with a college girlfriend, I think we split a burger. Since then I’ve been back maybe once or twice. Type of place you pass all the time but you never bother going into.

I just realized something: I ramble on like an old man, don’t I? Yeah...ah, I don’t care.

I just got back to the house, damp but energized.

By now Wendy’s at home, with her boyyyyyfriend.

I'm at Vassar College sitting in their library, which is fucking beautiful. I've got a gig here tonight. At the school, not the library. Anyways I'm updating for no reason other than that they have wireless here and I just found out.

I have nothing to report.

I'm starving though. Our "handler" is supposed to come meet us soon and take us to the cafeteria.

Ah, colleges.

Upstate New York is freezing.