Put Up a Parking Lot

Coming home from band practice on Monday night on the Southern State Parkway.   Eddie driving. Me looking at my iphone and tapping on it like an obsessive monkey.  The traffic comes to a halt.  And that is where it stayed.

Usually there is a halt, then inching, then more inching and then you see that someone in a really short skirt is standing by while her boyfriend is changing a tire and that was the whole mishegas.  But this night was different.  There was no movement, like a cadaver.   Finally some alpha car turns its engine off and eventually we all do.  People get out of their cars to "see what they can see" and it looks like the setting of a sci-fi film. 

I step out and look around. I see nothing but more and more cars all dark like we are in the Hollywood Bowl stacked parking.  I call Jeff.  We chat. He is in a comfy bed in a hotel in Chicago. I am standing indefintely on the Soithern State Parkway about to write a ballad about the whole thing.

Eddie is in the car talking to his girlfriend.  When he gets off the phone I decide we need a photo so I can immediately Facebook it as if sending out a Bat Signal to be rescued as this incident has been totally ignored on the traffic report on the radio and we are in something with the dimensions of true carnage. 

 Why we are smiling I do not know. 

Finally the police have everyone REVERSE on the parkway and drive down all the wrong ways and wrong entrances and we get back to dry land. 

But now my 7 train is closed. Eddie drives me around like we are in the film AFTER HOURS and nothing.  The poor guy who has to get up and teach early in the morning finally just drives me all the way home to Manhattan. 

I get to bed at 1:30am.

White Christmas. Swellegant!

Hello Folks.  INCHING back into blog writing.  I do miss it. And I miss YOU!

Tonight I had another "I Love this damn town where I live" moment.  Through my friend David in LA I was invited to Philippe Lamesch's art exhibit at the Luxembourg Consulate on Beekman Place.  Very, veddy posh address.  It is the former mansion of Irving Berlin.

It was absolutely bucketing rain when I left my temp job at the law firm. Since I do not seem to check, I had no idea to even bring an umbrella. And I certainly could not bring the one I bought just the other day for such an occasion as I left it in a friend's car. Where it would be safe and I dry I am guessing.  Nonetheless it settled down a bit and I made it across town to the swanky Beekman Place neighborhood.

Philippe is from Luxembourg but lives in Northern California.  We became Facebook friends before we actually met tonight.  So modern. What a lovely guy and talented.  It was a great event all around. He introduced me to two other of David's friends, Jim and Carlos.  We really hit it off and exchanged info. Carlos is even going to set me up with a work intro! How fantastic it is here!

The Best Night

OMG. I just had the best night. I go to my friend Ed's 40th birthday. And I say friend because he is, but we only met once a few months ago at an Anti-violence fundraiser.  (The pro-violence ones just gouge you at the bar, and the takeaway bags are shite.)  Anyway, he is the cousin of a good friend of mine and it turns out he is an animation writer (Emmy nominated) and we know a lot of people in common including his agent. Today he got off a cruise ship with his partner and his parents and then he has this party at a restaurant tonight which I missed but I came for the after party at their apartment (they are bi-coastal) and there is a huge grand piano in this place and loads of people and it is not huge, but it is just a blast. I knew only Jorge, his partne, and Jeff. Jorge is a terrific host and my seltzer water is never low in the glass.  We all get to talking and one of their friends has this condition where she can't forget anything. She remembers everything!  Like the weather on June 7, 1983.  She is going to be on 60 Minutes next month with 4 other people who have this "condition" (including Marylou Henner) and they are interviewed by Leslie Stahl.  Can't wait. She was so nice and patient and interesting.  Then a woman played this song that this guy sings about IKEA and her husband did voiceover work for Tippi Hedren and then we talked about speed dating and I explained how I met Jeff and about this small world story where his mother's best childhood friend was my mother's best high school friend.  There was this guy named Chance and I told him that my sister always wanted to name her son Chance, but when she grew up and had a son she named him Mitch.  He said Chance has been hard and he goes by his middle name David at restaurants because it is easier. And then I meet this woman who was in Alaska and Poland and is unemployed like me and we talk about spas in Arizona.  The two of us leave the party together and run into this poet Rives in the subway whom she knows and we talk about poetry and that he is big in the poetry world (who knew?! ) and  she was let go from TED and lives in Brooklyn and has no idea what she wants to do next, but she is funny as hell and pretty and I am convinced that she can do just about anything.  The we get to my stop and I leave.  Fin.