Went to Washington D.C. for a couple of days with my husband. We went for the the National Portrait Gallery, which was a pleasant surprise, as is the Freer Gallery. Visiting monuments was not a pleasant surprise. The reflecting pool is a smelly, mosquito-infested, algae-ridden mess, full of beer cans and other garbage. It was like a dirty kiddy pool in an abandoned trailer park. The Washington Monument looks like shit--the lower corners have sad cement patches that look like crappy spackle jobs people do on dinged interior wall corners. Cement has been splatted over walking paths near the Lincoln Memorial that originally were lovely fixed pebble walkways. What would Lincoln and George say? I've long thought that Jesus would be pissed if he could come back, assuming he really existed, but I think the "founding fathers" would be even more angry. What the fuck have we done? The District of Columbia was a swamp to begin with, literally, and it's a swamp figuratively too. Driving in D.C. is the biggest cluster fuck ever--who the hell planned the street grid there? Downtown DC in general, with the exception of monuments and historic buildings, feels like one big bland office park. People bitch about New York's architectural mess--NY has NOTHING on DC. And DC people all look like extras from the movie "Wall Street." Yuppie politician hell. Worst of all, the grass at all these monuments and institutions isn't even really grass at all--it's brown dirt ruts and dandelions--very sad. If you want to know whether we are functional as a country, as a federal government, as a people, go to DC. I guess the grass and maintenance is the first thing to go when we're snared in yet another bazillion-dollar pointless war.

Everyone in this town is crazy. I am not weird enough to be here. I am a scoop of vanilla, relatively, that somehow got dropped into a bowl of rainbow sherbet topped with chocolate sauce and a vast--and I mean VAST--assortment of mixed nuts. I had to go to the doctor on Sunday. I had a sinus infection that I let get worse and worse until I had sinusitis and couldn't stop coughing. I felt like my head was going to pop off my neck from the pressure of constant unproductive coughing, and I didn't want to wait another few days to get into a family practice. I found an internist in Manhattan with urgent care hours. I left him a message and he called me back personally within an hour--that in itself freaked me out--since when does a doctor of any kind call you personally regarding appointment scheduling, especially on a Sunday? He had a blog on his website that was miles long, covering a variety of topics--that should have been my first clue--but it was good stuff, at least to me, the kind of things I want to hear as a patient--HMOs are bad, taking plenty of time with each patient is good, don't do drugs, stuff like that.

So we go to Manhattan--my husband goes with me, because I don't want to go alone. This doctor's office is in Midtown, the business heart of Manhattan, so I feel reasonably safe. We enter the building, a non-descript, smallish, newer office building with a doorman who does nothing, not even greet you--he just sits on a chair behind a podium at the front door. We take the elevator to the correct floor, step off, and realize that this building is residential as well as commercial. We both get a little uncomfortable--if this doctor's office is in his personal apartment, I am not not sure I like that--if he can afford to be an internist in Manhattan, he can afford separation of home and work place. We ring the doorbell on his door. It is 9:25 a.m., and the appointment is at 9:30 a.m. We hear him rustling around for a minute or two, and then he opens the door. He is nice, polite, but he is ODD. His office is strictly his office, so that's good, but it is actually really dirty, which is bad. I have never been in a doctor's office that is actually really gross--even busy family practices with 200 kids in the lobby--they have a few dings on the walls and the bathrooms aren't perfect because they see about a million people a day, but they aren't filthy. This place has hardwood floors, and everywhere you look under furniture are dust balls that are the size of hairballs--like you would have if you had multiple pets and went on a vacuum strike for a week. When no pets are involved, it takes weeks, even months, for dustballs to accumulate and reach that size. There is a blanket of dust on the counter in his exam room, which is also his office. His desk is piled with piles--paperwork, books, etc. I don't like clutter, but I especially don't like clutter that is actually physically dirty because it has been in specific positions for so long that it has been able to accumulate dust.

Dr. X chats up my husband while I fill out a form, talking about everything under the sun but what I am there for. In less than 15 minutes, this is what we learn about Dr. X: he has a house on Long Island, but his girlfriend prefers Manhattan, and it will take him awhile to sell his house because he has a ton of tools because he inherited equipment from his mother's construction companies, and he has boats, cars, motorcycles, and four Jeeps--are we interested in buying a Jeep? He's a Jeep expert, he tells us--he likes to fix them up and resell them. He also buys damaged model planes on e-bay, which he thinks is the coolest thing ever invented--he talks quite a bit about e-bay--then gets back to the planes, which he restores and resells on e-bay. He takes a phone call--he has one of those earpieces attached to his cell phone, which is clipped onto a pocket of his very clean and new black jeans. He makes an appointment to see another patient after me. I am finished filling out the form. He tells me to have a seat on his exam table, which is next to his dirty desk. He gets a mouth thermometer out from one of the dusty cabinets and puts one of those paper sanitary guards on it, but not all the way, and when he puts it into my mouth and tells me to bite down on it like a bone, the teeth on the left side of my mouth bite down on plastic instead of paper--icky.

Dr. X reads my form while my temperature is being gauged. He tells me he has a lot of patients who are hairstylists to celebrities, and who are celebrities themselves. I throw out some names after he takes the thermometer out of my mouth, but none seem to register with him. He sets the thermometer down on the dusty counter, and does not remove the paper guard or sanitize the machine, at least in front of me. He then launches into a story about how his dad died when he was a kid and his mother supported him and put him through medical school by running several construction companies--they were so poor when he was young that they were on welfare. I tell him he's come a long way, being polite and congratulatory because that's the way I am because I am a Midwesterner and we are a nice people, even when we are sitting there wondering if Doc Quack is ever going to ask us about stuff like our symptoms, etc. Then he listens to my chest and my back while I breath. I am looking down at the floor while he does this, and I can't help myself, it just comes out: " Dude, you need a maid." He finishes counting my heartbeats and smiles and says that not only does he need a maid, but also a secretary. His girlfriend was his secretary for awhile, but he also mentioned that she was a psychologist, so that probably got in the way of her practice. There is a nice watercolor on the wall next to the exam table, and he points to it and tells us that his girlfriend bought it for him. He says it is especially meaningful for him not only because it is a good water color, but because it reminds him of their first date together in Central Park, the details of which he goes so far into that I get scared I'm going to hear something I don't want to hear--they were in the park, and it started to rain "cats and dogs," and by the time they got back to her place they were "two little wet noodles, and ..." I thought for a second he was going to tell us they ripped their wet clothes off each other and had sex on her floor or something, because he seemed to be really building up to something, and had a big smile on his face, but mercifully, he didn't go any further.

He then asks Patrick what he does, and a whole diatribe springs from that--turns out this guy likes Thomas Kincade's work, of all people, which floors Patrick and I--we're the Midwesterners, the hillbillies in the room, and here is this Manhattan internist telling us how much he likes what Kincade paints and how he paints it. Patrick explains to him that Kincade's "paintings" are produced factory style on an assembly line, and often aren't real oil paintings at all--we are both outsnobbing a Manhattanite at this moment, and to be brutally honest, really enjoying it, because this guy is really on both our nerves by this time. I tell the doctor his girlfriend has good taste in art, meaning, indirectly, that he doesn't, just to be a passive aggressive little bitch, because by this point I am really tired of hearing all about Dr. Weirdo and nothing about what is wrong with me. We are about to get to the bill part, and I am wondering if this guy is going to charge me up the wazoo for the privilege of hearing his life story.

Doctor tells me I have sinusitis and a throat infection and writes a prescription for common antibiotics. He asks me if I take any medication or vitamins. I tell him I take vitamins, and then he tells me how he is writing a book on nutrition. He tells me this in a "you should buy my book" sort of way. I find this funny because, to look at him, he is hardly the picture of health--he is skinny rather than healthy, and has the face of a heavy drinker--think a young W.C. Fields--that reddish-purple, mass of broken capillaries skin. Maybe I should give the guy the benefit of the doubt and chalk it up to a serious cause of rosacea, but they have lasers for that now. So I'm guessing he likes his liquor. I like wine myself. Thing is, you have to drink it by the caseload every day to get a face that looks like Doctor Strangelove's.

So anyway, he prints a bill for $150.00--not too terrible for Manhattan, or for urgent care in Manhattan, so we are relieved. Somehow music comes up and doctor starts talking about all the famous musicians he sees--how they are really messed up and live very unhealthy lifestyles. "Courtney Love--she's in the practice," he says. Oh wow, we both say, because we have no idea what to say. I'm not sure exactly what in the practice means--does that mean Doctor Weirdo, who also makes house calls for an extra fee, saw her once during an overdose, or is he pulling our chains? I don't know, and I don't care--I just want to get the hell out of Doctor Dirty's office. We pay the bill, and thankfully, he gets a call on his cell, so we can scoot. The last thing he says to us: "Welcome to my practice ... anything you want to know about the city, you just call me--this is a really strange and complicated place, and it can be hard to adjust ... I'm happy to help in any way I can ..." then he starts talking to his caller while walking us to the door and waving us out. We leave the building, passing the apparently deaf/mute doorman, and it is all we can do to keep quiet--we are both looking at each other in the elevator like "Holy shit--what was that?" We don't speak until we hit the street, because for some reason we both feel like we shouldn't say anything out loud until we are out of the building--hidden cameras and all, you know. We laugh about it all the way home. Even the freakin' doctors here are weird.

As mental as I've always considered myself to be, I am just not mental enough for Manhattan. I need to develop a much more ridiculous personna if I'm going to fit in here. Even the aerobics instructors at my health club are characters. The last weight training class I took was from a tiny girl with Elvis black long hair that was hunter green in the front, and she had a huge nose ring with green beads on it that matched her highlights. She was almost completely tattooed, and I found it hard not to stare at the designs peaking out from all parts of her workout clothes. She was very nice and funny, and a bit wild that day, in her own words--"I'm on a roll today--I've had three Chais already!"

I don't run down the street talking to myself or screaming anything and everything at the top of my lungs, my hair has no food coloring in it, I have no tattoos, which might mean I will never be granted permanent residency in Brooklyn, my dogs and cats are not pure breeds of anything, I actually own regular plain old sweat pants, and I don't litter.

What am I going to do?

New York is great and New York is awful--it's a love/hate relationship. I am amazed and horrified, charmed and then repulsed. I open my blinds one morning and see the Empire State Building surrounded by low clouds, the rising sun making its metal windows shine, and it is stunning, and I think " Ooh, I love NY," and then I go outside, take the subway, and step in some homeless guy's hurl and I'm like, "Ooh, I HATE NY," so it pretty much goes like that.

I just spent the day in the 5th Avenue and Park Avenue area, where all the ritzy stores are--you would not believe the window displays here--the Bergdorf Goodman ones I looked at today are just pure art--I will take pictures so you can see--sounds silly, but I'm serious--they're unbelieveable. The whole area is decorated for the holidays, and is very beautiful and very expensive. I was in the area checking out various salons, but was more distracted by the plastic surgery--you gotta see these Park Avenue socialites--their faces are pulled back so hard, their eyes are lifted so high, and their lips are so fakely plumped, they look like HIDEOUS--it's really hard not to stare--I took my camera to take pictures of the x-mas decorations, but what I really wish I could get away with photographing is the face lifts--Michael Jackson got nothin' on these women, and there are HUNDREDS of them--it's like being on safari and observing a strange looking pack of animals running around in their native habitat--weird.

No diary about being new to New York would be complete without talking about smells.

The smells of Manhattan--ah, the smells. Every day, there is a whole alphabet of smell waiting for you when you step outside. It doesn't matter what time of day it is, or even the time of year--the season and weather only determine an odor's intensity. Smells here are a constant you can count on, something about this city that will never let you down. This is my daily smell catalogue so far:

1) On the way to the dog run every day, several times a day; urine (maybe human, maybe canine, you never know--Patrick claims he can smell the difference--I can't), vomit (there are about a half-dozen homeless men living in doorways along my walk who drink a variety of things, from Hennessey to Mad Dog), dog shit, marijuana (I'm in Chelsea), car exhaust, a great fallafel cart on 24th and 6th, so it goes about like this, it almost has the rhythm of a pop song; urine, urine, exhaust, pot, pot again, vomit, dog poo, urine, pot, pot again, fallafel fallafel fallafel, BO BO BO, and now we are at the dog park so it's urine urine urine, especially if it's raining--the dog run becomes dog urine soup.

2) When riding the subway, it's: BO BO BO, fart smell fart smell fart smell, and then you get on a subway car, and it's BO BO BO, urine urine urine (be careful--don't sit in the seat with the pee puddle), weird food smell, almost like a burp, then BO BO BO (be careful, don't step in the drool puddle of the homeless guy sleeping on the floor of the car), pollution, pollution pollution when you get out of the subway car, and then BO BO BO, fart fart fart as you run for the exit to get up to the sidewalk for some "fresh" air. You reach into your purse for your little bottle of hand sanitizer, because half the time when you have to stand on the subway and you grab a metal hand rail, it's slimy, like somebody greased it with Vaseline--not an exaggeration--I HATE that feeling.

Even in the nicer areas of Manhattan the sidewalks are covered with black dots--it's gum I think, mashed down into smooth round spots that suck up grime and pollution and end up a very dark black. If I had a dollar for every one of them I see and walk on every day, it would be like winning the lottery.

And last, but not least, one of my biggest ickies--spit. Public spitting is RAMPANT here. People treat subway tracks like they are a spatoon. It just doesn't make any sense--the way people live here, they should take public health as seriously as religion. I feel a little like a character in a Charles Dickens novel in Victorian London, when they just threw their urine and feces into the streets. It isn't that bad here, but it's not so far from it either. This city is just ripe for an epidemic--I watch someone spit, then watch a mother pushing a baby stroller wheel right through it--ewwwwww--I might turn into one of those freaky people who run around wearing surgical masks and latex gloves all the time. If a terrorist released something in the subway system here, it would spread so long and so far in a matter of minutes, just because there are so many people. Scary.

If I was in charge of this town for a day, I would organize a cleaning day--I would hand out a surgical mask and gloves to everyone in Manhattan, and a scrub brush and a bucket of anti-bacterial cleanser, and then make each of them scrub a five-foot by five-foot square area outdoors. If everyone in Manhattan did that, say once a quarter, or was willing to pay a crew to do that, say once a quarter, and hose down the subways while they're at it, this island would be such a different place.

Here I am in New York, and my biggest fantasy so far is cleaning. Marth Stewart tapes her show a few blocks from my hotel--maybe I should pitch my cleaning idea to her show--ha. We will be moving to Brooklyn soon, where the air is cleaner, the horizon is more open, and it is far less dirty, so I will calm down some then, but still, wow is this place dirty. And smelly. One of many great things about the Midwest; when you are outdoors there, the wind and spaciousness usually protect you from the BO of others, and if not, it's not usually that hard to get upwind of someone gassy. But here, we are packed onto this island like sardines in a can--there is no escape. There should be BO police in Manhattan--if they can charge you $1,000.00 for not picking up your dog's poop, there should be a fee for being too stinky. A stank meter. I thought this being NY everybody would be so chic and amazing--there are lots of chic and amazing people, but there are also way more people who seem to think that a shower once a week or so is more than enough.

Obsessive compulsives and germ phobics should be sent to NY for treatment--if you live here, you just have to let go of any hope of being clean and just hold your nose and go.

This place is just so different from anywhere I have ever been that I find it really interesting ... I am e-mailing too many people way too much information, but oh well.

I've been to most of the major U.S. cities, but NY is different--I'm still working on exactly how. So far all I have is that it's not really an American city--it is, but it isn't--it's more of an international city--it doesn't feel American to me--it feels like its own little country, like it is its own little District of Columbia or something.

I think a lot of the people who live in Manhattan would like it if you had to get a passport to get on the island--we are offending a lot of people in Chelsea with our presence. It has been very clear from day one that Patrick and I are not anywhere near cool enough, in this life or any other future life, to live in Chelsea--we have a temporary visa, but we will never be granted permanent residence.

We can actually afford to live on the island, but this island hates animals, and children--they actually had to pass rental housing laws against discriminating against children here because so many property managers were doing it. I can understand the fashion students being that way--they are young and acting their age--but when the middle-aged and senior citizen types stick up their noses at my dogs and look at babies in carriages like they are monsters--it's just strange to me.

These people that think Manhattan is so great and they never want to leave the island--I can understand that to a certain extent, but at the same time I wonder if they understand how compromised their quality of life can be. Without a car, you are at the mercy of your surroundings--it's like being poor and living in a bad neighborhood in North Omaha or Kansas City--you are stranded in a sense--you have access only to what you can walk, or, if you can afford it, take a bus to, so that means you shop at overpriced drug and convenience stores because it may be hard, if not impossible, to get to a real grocery store, which by the way, doesn't really exist in Manhattan. There is one large Whole Foods grocery chain just across the street from my hotel that is only a year old, and was lauded in the local press as the second coming. Only one--on the entire island. Everything else is drug stores or tiny grocery chains that have limited selections and charge way too much. And I don't count Whole Foods as a real grocery store--it is a gourmet, high end food store for wealthier people.

Cultural life is definitely at its height here--it is fantastic to have so many choices every day of the week--but the mechanics of daily life can be a real grind.

I am getting my first taste of becoming jaded as a New Yorker--today marks the 5th time since we have been here that there is a film being shot near our hotel--they block off all the parking, make the sidewalks nearly impassable with equipment, etc., and then act like they own said sidewalks and could chase you off if they felt like it, which is all fine, not the end of the world, but sometimes they run generators when they shoot at night--I don't know if they are for the lights, or to run the actors' trailers, or what, but the thing is, generators are LOUD, and multiple generators are REALLY LOUD. And the noise is amplified by the accoustics created by all the tall buildings. And they run the generators until about 4 a.m.--it's like living next to a commercial construction site where they only work at night. It's just crazy loud, and it's the kind of noise that if you do fall asleep in spite of it, you have dreams like you've died and gone to hell and were given a job in one of Satan's furnace factories--all hot and loud--just nuts. The kind of dreams where you wake up and are really relieved you were only dreaming.

There has been one exciting part--Patrick saw Colin Firth this morning when he was walking the dogs to the dog run--they are shooting this movie called The Accidental Husband. Colin Firth, Uma Thurman, and Isabella Rossellini are all sitting in trailers a block from me as I write this--so weird. The dogs are terrified of the generator noise at night, but they don't seem to mind all the equipment and stuff, because they get to pass the craft services table a couple times a day on the way to the dog run to poop, and they seem hopeful that one of these times someone is going to give them some food. The dogs are good cover too--you can pretend that you doing something legitimate--dog walking--when you are actually kind of star stalking.

Some other things I forgot to mention about SNL--we watched the show that night after we got home from the rehearsal, and it is surprising how different the two shows can be--details big and small, which skits make it into the show and which don't--it's interesting. I found that the first show, the rehearsal, was funnier--for whatever reasons, with this particular show and cast, the second time around the lines weren't delivered as freshly--they were more rehearsed, more pat, if that's the word for it, and things that got a laugh the first time around fell flat during round two because they just weren't delivered the same way--it's really fascinating. I admired Annette and the entire cast--they would do their best and just move on--it takes a thick skin to do that. The show wasn't terribly funny--I think the cast is very talented--from what I saw, I'd guess that there is more of a writing drought going on right now than a lack of comedic ability on the part of the cast. I think Bening is amazing, and I have been impressed with every role I have seen her in, but if you watched her SNL show, she didn't seem to connect with the cast--she was acting to the camera, rather than them, and it seems that on that show, you have to do both. But what the hell do I know.

I also learned that the adage about TV adding pounds is visciously true--it's really startling when you are able to see this phenomenon for yourself--when you are able to watch people perform live, and then again on tape, this very shocking difference really comes home to you.

The way the SNL stage and studio looks so much bigger on TV than in real life, well, unfortunately, that applies to people as well. Gwen Stefanie looked fabulous in person, especially for just having had a baby--she was ever so slightly larger than usual, simply because of her pregnancy, but there are few women in North America who wouldn't be thrilled to look as good as she does post-baby at any time in their lives. When I saw the show later that night on TV, Gwen didn't look fat, but she did look larger than she really is--I guess a little puffy would be the best way to describe it. That is so unfair--it wasn't what she looked like at all in person--no wonder women in show business get complexes about their weight and go to extremes--having seen it for myself, it really is enough to drive even the most level-headed person at least a little crazy, especially women, who are held to different standards than men anyway. It's a very cruel fact of life--TV can take a perfectly nice ass and make it a wide load. Even Bill Hader, a male SNL cast member, looked a little chubby in a tight t-shirt in a skit with Annette Bening--but only on TV, not when I was watching it in person. Perhaps we need to apply our technological meddle to eliminating this video distortion-we could save a lot of psyches that way.

Patrick and I made it into a Saturday Night Live show last night. We got tickets to a rehearsal show--there's a rehearsal performance before every show--Patrick and I barely got in--we were the last two people who made it. We got up Saturday morning to stand in line at 6 a.m. to get stand by tickets that might or might not get us in. The weather is probably the only reason we got in--it was about 28 degrees Saturday morning, and to a lot of NY people, that's arctic cold, so the lines weren't as long as usual. They won't let you wait inside for tickets at Rockefeller Center any more because a few years ago, some people waiting in line vandalizing the building, and it is an incredible building--it's Art Deco--I know nothing about architecture, but it's so beautiful you can't not be amazed by it--that is one of the things that really knocks me out about Manhattan--there are just so many incredible buildings--it is hard to fathom the tons and tons of marble, gold, silver, and expensive stone, etc., that are on this relatively small patch of land.

The SNL studio itself is TINY--it all looks so big on TV, but the entire thing, including the balcony seating, is maybe half the size of the stage alone at Table Rock, if that. I have never been so close to famous people before--Alec Baldwin and Robert Downey Jr. were in the audience, and of course the cast and guests--I could have spit on Lorne Michaels if I'd wanted to--not that I did--but he stood right beneath us for a long time--he seemed a little crabby. From the balcony seats you look down on a swarm of people all building up and tearing down sets and moving giant cameras in the smallest space you can imagine--it's amazing nobody gets hurt. There are tons of people--there are even people whose sole job is to just stand around holding used cue cards.

Annette Bening comes out and starts the show, and it is just surreal--Patrick and I are so overwhelmed by our surroundings that we have trouble really listening and laughing and clapping when prompted--they have all these giant flat screen TVs hanging from the ceilings that have applause signs under them that flash when you are supposed to clap--even the applause signs are Art Deco. When you are in the audience, it is actually hard to see all of the show because they move from set to set, and sometimes cameras block your view, so you need the TV screens to see everything.

Gwen Stefani comes out to perform, and these teenage girls from Jersey that are behind us just go beserk--they were so hilarious with their accents: Ohhh my GGGAAWWWDD, would you just look at hehhhhr--she's so buuootifulll! Gwen, we love you! We'll see you on toouhhr! Oh my Gawd, she looked right at us!" They stood up while Gwen performed and did her whole routine with her, singing and all--they just went nuts. Gwen's exit was right beneath us, and as she leaves the studio the girls literally climb over Patrick and I--we were lucky enough to be in the front row--to hurl themselves over the balcony railing to give Gwen all these really tacky hand-made x-mas gifts they made her. Gwen was really sweet to them--she stopped and talked to them and let them hand down their gifts--if I were her I think I might be afraid to take stuff like that from strangers. While this is happening, I see this man start motioning wildly from the other side of the stage--it's Lorne Michaels trying to get the NBC pages to restrain these girls, but it's way too late--he comes rushing over and stands right beneath me, glaring up at the girls. I think he might have thrown them out, but it was actually the biggest laugh from the audience all night--it was very innocent--they were like kids at Christmas, so the audience just roared. It actually was quite surprising how close to these celebrities you can get--you have to go through a metal detector to get into the show, but anybody can get tickets to these shows, and if they make it in, they can do all kinds of things before there is really anybody close enough to stop them--it's kind of scary.

I was really excited to see the x-mas tree at Rockefeller Center--there are so many amazing holiday decorations in that area, on the storefronts, in the parks, etc., but I have to say that the tree was a let down--it looks okay at night because it has so many lights, but when you see it in daylight, it is a lot of limp, underwatered branches strung together and it looks pretty pathetic--ah well, can't have everything.

It is really amazing and interesting here, but it is also very snooty--everything is about status on the island of Manhattan--there are lines for SNL ticket holders, SNL VIP visitors, SNL stand by tickets, all sorts of levels and sublevels between VIP and "little people," and people here are very conscious of this and very into this game--even at the grocery store this morning, they made us wait until they were ready to unlock the doors, a good 10 minutes after the store was supposed to open. If someone can make you wait or boss you around, they probably will--it's all about power. Even on the SNL set--right after Annette Bening did her opening spiel, the second she was done an SNL staffer came running up and grabbed her by the arm and yanked her off the stage to hair and make-up--I could tell by Annette's face that she didn't appreciate it--it shocked me that someone would treat her like that--this staffer just grabbed her like a rag doll. This place is so much about status
that people will do odd and/or extreme things to feel important--the night security guy at the grocery store can feel like he is somebody because he can make a bunch of people wait in the freezing cold a little longer than they should have to, just cause. It's a crazy world, but fun to observe--very entertaining.

We are looking forward to moving to our apartment--Park Slope is a great neighborhood. We can stay in corporate housing until Feb. 15th--it is a nice high-rise extended stay Marriott, but it is tiny and not very homey, and it is in Chelsea, which is very bitchy--it's all obnoxious modern art galleries, the Martha Stewart Show, the Parsons School (Project Runway)--so basically the streets are full of mean fags and their even meaner fag hags, not any fun gays, and snotty fashion design students--it's fun to look at what they are wearing though--I get a free fashion show every day. It is just simply very clear that we are NOWHERE near cool enough to live in Chelsea, even temporarily, never have been, never will be ... we are living in the middle of as hip as it gets central, and we are polluting the place with our sweat pants, our Bud Light 12-packs, and our mutt dogs.