I slept 'til two in the afternoon, expecting to go to Brooklyn and play emulated old-school video games with another brother o' mine before heading into the city for happy hour. My hangover nixed the first part of the plan, and I slept for another hour or so, until I received a text from another buddy (one who was out the previous night but had to get up early and shoot stop-motion sunrises with a music video director from LA), saying he was at 5 Pointz a block away, and did I want to come hang out and watch graffiti go up.

So I picked up a couple Gatorades and headed over, watched about twenty different people tagging various walls, and learned a bunch of shit I didn't know about graffitti. Lost most of my hangover, too.

We parted ways after a couple hours and I headed down to the Lower East Side to meet up with my aforementioned Brooklynite friend at Welcome to the Johnson's (Rivington b/t Essex & Clinton), where we drank beer and loaded the jukebox with Motorhead and Buzzcocks and Blondie and Cash and Leppard and Maiden and Springsteen and Bowie and Sabbath and Pixies and Beach Boys and even some Love and Rockets and Skynrd, and camped out on the plastic-covered couch and easy chair in the very front. A few other friends arrived, and we had a great time talking and meeting new people, listening to music and watching the ponies. My horse placed, but I had $5 on the win only, so I lost. But I placed the bet back when the odds were (30-1), so I didn't expect much.

While we were sitting there, a friend of my Brooklyn bro passed by with his girl and it turned out she was the birthday girl and they were throwing a party at Caverna across the street, so after eight the two of us had two parties, right across the street from one another, to float to and from. At about one-thirty the two of us repaired to Congee Village (Allen @ Delancey) for some late night lo mein, then he hit the subway and I hailed a cab home.

On Sunday I was riding the train down to Astor Place to hit the KMart for a beard trimmer. A family got on: a boy of around ten, holding a shallow rectangular white cardboard box, parents in their fifties, the mother paying tender attention to the kid and the father lost in his own world and carrying a matching shallow triangular white cardboard box, and a son in desert fatigues, twenty or so. The boy opened the lid of the box, and I could see some pictures of soldiers, a few books, this and that, and a formal picture of a uniformed third brother (the resemblance was obvious). He pulled out pictures of military equipment and jabbered away at his mom, who answered thoughtfully and quietly.

The older brother got off before the rest of the family, kissed his mom and told her he'd catch up later, just wanted to buy a book. When he left the train, his father snapped out of his revery to ask where he went, and his wife told him, and he sat down, lost again, cradling his white triangular box in arms tattooed with the globe and anchor and "SEMPER FI."

Just as the boy had opened his box upon sitting down, the father peeked in his box to reveal a folded flag inside a plaque, an old soldier who it seemed had outlived his pride and joy.

Your life is exciting. I'm jealous.

Hugh, man, I love how you pay attention to the everyday epiphanies that surround us everyday in New York City. I try to do the same and hope that someday I might do it as well as you, my friend.

and Semper Fi, mac.

Although if I really had the time to sit down and write it out, my weekend was just as exciting, if not in different ways.

In fact, during lunch, I will write out my weekend summary on my site.

I love weekend recaps, and I never listen to headphones when in transit. I read books instead, and yesterday I was reading Charles Simic poems, so I was in a good frame of mind to notice people living past tragedy.

I'll probably put up a couple Simic poems after lunch, with links to where you can get his books. He's great.

My weekend? Friday me and pips went to see Rachel Ray then for beers and dinner at Odessa. Saturday, we did laundry, had a few pops at The Remote (where I watched a man with a dog and a tattooed scalp dance with the barmaid to a Stones song I put on the juke), then we went to the UWS and had a few pops with some fellow mefites and showed a kid who had been in the US, from England only 3 days, around. We took him to Big Nick's for burgers. Sunday, I mainly listened to to music and drank beer naked.

I took some things that were in future tense and put them to past tense this weekend. It feels pretty good, actually. But I'm so tired today.

Great tale of the subway, Hugh. Very sad one.

Friday night I met a couple friends and went to the Stone Church Music Club to see and review a Glen Phillips/Willy Porter show. Saturday had to come in to work to schmooze with some board people, then escaped. Worked out for an hour or so, running and weights, then called Mr. Right Now to catch up on his news. After that I sat down to write the review. Had planned to go out after the review, but had to cancel because I wasn't finished. By 11:30 I hadn't eaten dinner and was too tired to go out, so I heated a frozen pizza and had a couple beers. Woo hoo, BIG times!

Sunday I woke up, read a couple sections of the Times, and went to Friends meeting. Most of which I spent ruminating about earthly personal matters. Talked with the youth group kids afterward, who just got back from a campout at the Heifer Project headquarters. They spent the night in some sort of 'global village', where you draw at random to see what nation you're going to be from, then spend the night in a mockup of a traditional house from that region. They give you a budget, and you go to a 'market' and buy the food that would be available to you. These kids drew Thailand, and ate boiled vegetable water. Quakers are a funny scruffy lot, but you know, I'm happy to be back among them, spending an hour a week quietly, in a roomful of people who think about values a lot.

After that I dropped in at my friends' house to admire their latest home improvement projects and just chat. Stayed an hour or so, came back, took my bike to the gym for another workout, stopped by the newspaper office on the way back to see if the editor thought the review was OK, then went and weeded my community garden plot. After that, off to the Cheap Chain Clothing Store to pick up a couple pairs of shorts to see my through my sailing trip next week. I had to donate my old shorts because I'm too skinny for them now (yay). Came home and grilled some chicken in a thyme, lemon, o/o, and garlic marinade, and ate that with some broccoli raab and roasted potato wedges. Sat down to pay bills, delighted to note I had a small amount left over, and did laundry. Finished more Times sections, wished there was another day in the weekend, and went to bed.

What an exciting life!

If anyone figures out what I did this weekend, email me post-haste. I know I did a bunch of work. Someone also flasked me up on Jameson last night, god help us all.

That vignette was really touching, Hugh. It made me sigh deeply.

We had one of my best friends from college and his family over this weekend. He is rambunctious and dramatic (like me) and his wife is very sedate and serious (like my husband). When they first married, right out of college, she couldn't stand me. But I wore her down. I made a point of never asking to speak with him when I called their house. If she offered to put him on the phone, I'd accept. Otherwise, I'd get the scoop from her and hang up. After awhile, she let her guard down and I was no longer just her husband's friend, but hers too. I'm so glad I perservered through those first awkward years, because I adore them both and it's amazing to watch our children play together.

That's really cool, jrossi4r. Kinda reminds me of my theory (yet again put into practice successfully on Saturday) about killing a hangover with a smile. If you steadfastly refuse to frown in the face of pain, and instead grin like a fool as you suffer, the pain will dissipate in no time.

It's not a perfect parallel. But it works for me.

I spent most of Saturday in a tired haze, waiting for a friend to come by so he could help me catalog and take pictures of all the crap that I need to sell (mostly collector's Barbies and other pop culture things). But he was stuck in traffic coming up from Philadelphia and didn't come by until 6 pm, by which I considered the entire day to be a wash and just hung out watching anime and the new Doctor Who episode I had on DVR until my roommate came home and we "talked with Bob." (He's a good friend of Hugh's apparently.)

Much of Sunday was spent at a meeting for AnimeNEXT, the anime con in New Jersey that I volunteer for. I can't tell you about some of the stuff we talked about, but I can tell you that when we announced one of the musical guests we're close to signing, three girls shrieked out with glee. I then went to my friend's place in Englewood and leveled up my white mage and my black mage in Final Fantasy XI. That game owns my soul now.

My Weekend Update, Hugh Janus style. I rarely ever do full recaps of any day/weekend, and writing this made me remember why- it's quite tiring.

Charles Simic is maybe my favorite poet, though my favorite work of his is prose: Dime Store Alchemy, about the life and work of maybe my favorite artist, Joseph Cornell.

My father was two grades younger than him at Oak Park High in Chicago (Ernest Hemingway's alma mater), but didn't know him at all.

These poems are from The Voice at 3:00 A.M., a great selection from his more recent work.

DECEMBER

It snows
and still the derelicts
go
carrying sandwich boards --

one proclaiming
the end of the world
the other
the rates of a local barbershop.

SHELLEY

for M. Follain

Poet of the dead leaves driven like ghosts,
Driven like pestilence-stricken multitudes,
I read you first
One rainy evening in New York City,

In my atrocious Slavic accent,
Saying the mellifluous verses
From a battered, much-stained volume
I had bought earlier that day
In a secondhand bookstore on Fourth Avenue
Run by an initiate of the occult masters.

The little money I had being almost spent,
I walked the streets, my nose in the book.
I sat in a dingy coffee shop
With last summer's dead flies on the table.
The owner was an ex-sailor
Who had grown a huge hump on his back
While watching the rain, the empty street.
He was glad to have me sit and read,
He'd refill my cup with a liquid dark as river Styx.

Shelley spoke of a mad, blind, dying king;
Of rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know;
Of graves from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst to illumine our tempestuous day.

I too felt like a glorious phantom
Going to have my dinner
In a Chinese restaurant I knew so well.
It had a three-fingered waiter
Who'd bring my soup and rice each night
Without ever saying a word.

I never saw anyone else there.
The kitchen was separated by a curtain
Of glass beads which clinked faintly
Whenever the front door opened.
The front door opened that evening
To admit a pale little girl with glasses.

The poet spoke of the everlasting universe
Of things... of gleams of a remoter world
Which visit the soul in sleep...
Of a desert peopled by storms alone...

The streets were strewn with broken umbrellas
Which looked like funereal kites
This little Chinese girl might have made.
The bars on MacDougal Street were emptying.
There had been a fistfight.
A man leaned against a lamppost arms extended as if crucified,
The rain washing the blood off his face.

In a dimly lit side street,
Where the sidewalk shone like a ballroom mirror
At closing time --

A well-dressed man without any shoes
Asked me for money.
His eyes shone, he looked triumphant
Like a fencing master
Who had just struck a mortal blow.

How strange it all was... The world's raffle
That dark October night...
The yellowed volume of poetry
With its Splendors and Glooms
Which I studied by the light of storefronts:
Drugstores and barbershops,
Afraid of my small windowless room
Cold as a tomb of an infant emperor.

Wow, how funny... Charles Simic is one of my all-time favorites, up there with Eliot and Sexton and Plath and Bukowski, and a new find (for me), Franz Wright (son of James Wright). In fact, Jon's bought me a number of Simic books for birthdays, etc. I love, love, love The World Doesn't End. Severed thumb lipstick!

Your weekend sounds marvelous, HJ. Ours was cool, too, nice and low-key (It's naked time -- Ping!). Plus, hot borscht rocks!

I love Odessa. We order up a lot when I'm over at my friends' rooftop on 5th St. Pierogies!

One of the only world cuisines that can be satisfyingly greasy without any cheese at all.

I was in Vegas for the weekend. You can fill in your own cliched blanks from there. Damn sure I can't.

Did you come home richer?

I played about 10 hours of blackjack for a net gain of approximately $30. The swings were somewhat more lively.

I also bet on the derby winner, but only $10 because I'm not really into horseracing.

Also, my friends got married, and another got taken to the hospital for observation after a little much of something.

Damn, gaspode. I'm jealous!

Also, it's nice to associate with people who have favorite poets. I love you, internets.