Today’s soundtrack: the things that I used to do
Today at 12:02pm: at the diner, having my “usual”



Hey, how was your Thanksgiving?

Good, good. I watched Harry Potter and picked up a chicken roll at the deli for dinner. The woman working the counter looked miserable but apparently found my holiday meal choice pathetic, as she gave me a look of pity. I, in turn, counter-pitied her by scoffing inwardly. These social dynamics are all so terribly complicated.

Last night I defied my logic board and had dinner outside the house with actual human beings. Or one human being, anyway. Kirk and I met up at Menkuite, this Japanese joint on the Bowery. The chow is okay but those motherfuckers have no class; they asked us to leave shortly after the meal because “There are people waiting.” We left but there was no one waiting for a table at all, though I know at least one waitress who’s waiting for an ass-whipping.

I worked part-time in restaurants for about eight years and I’m real touchy about bad service. So middle-aged Japanese woman who waited on us, you can go to hell. (Save me a seat.)

Kirk’s got this thing we call the Kirkabase; it’s basically his own Zagat’s guide, compiled by him and the people he’s come into contact with. Everybody in New York has their favorite spots, “the best bagel,” “the best thin-crust pizza,” etc., so Kirk’s idea was to compile them all into a small database that he carries everywhere with him, like mace.

The problem with that is the more people whose opinion you get, the more mainstream the tastes tend to become, so it wouldn’t work for me. But this ain’t about me, it’s about Kirk. He picked a Louisianian (<--that looks like an Armenian last name) café out of the Kirkabase and we went there for coffee.

The Louisianian place smelled like mildew but their beignets were made from scratch. Beignets are to desserts what the Shining Path is to Marxists: the most extreme version of the ideology. Beignets are purely bad for you with no redeeming qualities whatsoever, I mean it’s fried dough smothered in piles of sugar for fuck’s sake, and every time I see one I can’t stop myself from grabbing it and shoving it in my mouth, even if it’s in someone else’s hands. Luckily no one in the restaurant had ordered them before I had.

Anyways Kirk and I guzzle joe, discuss broads and go over details of bank heists we’d like to pull off, then as we’re getting up to leave I see this guy at the next table getting up. “Rain,” he says. He’s a guy so I don’t flinch; but a woman standing up in a restaurant and calling your name is bad news because chances are high it’s an ex-girlfriend.

“Oh shit, [Filmmaker Activist Guy],” I say. It’s a guy I met when I was helping my friend Wendy out with her little film shorts. “How’s it going?”

“Good, man, good,” he says, and we shoot the shit for a little.

Why am I bringing this up? Because later that night I get home and I’m in bed reading Wired. (A few paragraphs ago I said this wasn’t about me, that it was about Kirk, and I totally lied.) In this one article I come across a vaguely familiar name, then I realize they’re writing about the guy I just ran into at the café. Small world, right?

Then I turn the page and see the next blurb was written by this girl I used to know who lived on Union Square, and I do a double-take. It’s surreal to see people whose names you know in print. I wonder what it’s like to have really famous friends, I bet it’s weird.

Next I had to put the magazine down because I felt suddenly unwell.

Life Lesson #472: Three beignets is one beignet too many.

If I was a Marxist Guerilla I'd be sick like a motherfucker.