I was closing up the restaurant last night, and as usual, the servers came to me with Things Customers Left Behind so I could drop them in our Lost and Found (whose contents are surreal enough). One of the Things Customers Left Behind was in a take-out bag, so we figured it was food and we could just throw it away.

It was actually some cheap hair jewelry, bad silver clips and beaded bobby pins, and a $2.99 weave. One that you braid into your own hair. So of course we had a little fun with these items, speculating wildly about their intended use, pretending the weave was a horse's tail, etc., and then I put everything back in the bag and placed it next to the dirty kitchen rags to take downstairs after I finished closing.

Phone rings and I answer. It's "Angie," who has to "perform" tonight and is certain she left something there. She says: "I sat down to braid my hair and I didn't have my hair. I think I left it in a bag there."

Then she says: "I know it's going to sound really weird, but I have to have that bag. Can you put it in a cab and send it to this address?"

She reads me an address and then she gives me a cell phone number. I tell her I hope the cab driver speaks some semblance of English and can understand my request. We laugh for a minute, she asks my name, hey, what can I say, I hit it off with a lot of different kinds of folks.

Then I walk out onto Milwaukee Ave. and hail a cab. Here is my exchange, verbatim, with the cab driver.

ME: Uh, this girl left this bag in my restaurant and she wants to know if you can drive it to this address (I hand him the piece of paper).

HIM: What is the bag?

ME: Uh, just call the number on the paper when you get there. Her name's Angie. She said there's a big tip involved.

HIM: (Grabs bag, peers inside) What is it? Is it drugs?

ME: Uh, dude, if it was drugs I would have kept it. It's just some fake hair. She's a dancer.

HIM: She is stripper! I will do it. Take my cab number in case anything goes wrong.

so, now you know a stripper and a cab-driver. the possibilities are limitless.

You. Never. Know.

Someone left a message on my answering machine in a language I don't recognize. I hope he's not too disappointed when no one calls him back.

Did I ever tell the story about the time Tony Franciosa left a message on my answering machine? The temptation to call him back and pretend to be the producer he was calling was almost irresistible.

"Of course, Tony, there's the scene with the camels. Are you cool with that?"

I got a Skype message in Arabic yesterday, from someone I didn't recognize, asking to see my full personal details. My user name is not recognizably Arab. I hung up but that kind of shit really freaks me out. (When I moved to IL I also got a bunch of unsolicited mail from Muslim charities! Ack! )

Hello, current administration, if you're listening! I heart you too but I am really seriously boring!

(Sorry, was that too political? All administrations freak me out equally when it comes to that kind of stuff.)

I was just Googling a recommended restaurant.

I click on the eG link and two of my own posts are sandwiching the relevent one.

Does everyone In Italy take a winter vacation at the same time? And do they all come to New York? The Rock Center area is aswarm with Italians and on the Fifth Avenue bus last night half the people aboard were speaking Italian.

Au contraire, I assure you.

I just wonder why there are so many of them right here right now.

Funny, I was just noticing over the weekend that San Francisco seems to be full of Italians at the moment.

London is full of Asian yout'.

which kind? asian yout', i mean.

I live very close to the Hudson, so seeing a seagull or two is not unheard of. But this morning there was an enormous flock of them flying around outside my windows for at least a half hour.

Did it remind you of the movie THE BIRDS?

Oh great, do you have any idea how long that song is going to be stuck in my head now?

I am so happy I can't remember it, although that haircut will be with me always.

When my boyfriend and I moved back to Chicago last summer, we sold our car--a 1991 Cadillac sedan Deville, silver, mint condition, a real pimp ride--to my stepmother, who had coveted it for years. It was a good way to keep a good car with a lot of good memories associated with it in the family. It was also a good way to scrape up a quick couple of thou before a move across states.

Yesterday morning my stepmom was hit head-on on her way to work by an SUV which lost control on a wet road and crossed over the center line. The accident destroyed her right knee, her right hip, and her pelvis.

The surgeon told my Dad that these were the worst pelvic injuries he had seen in his entire 20-year career and that my stepmom will need hip replacement surgery in the future. It is uncertain when she will walk again.

The cops told my Dad that they were amazed anyone could have come out of that car alive. One of the cops was so astonished, he took pictures of the Cadillac on his cell phone and showed them to my Dad. They had to cut the roof off the car and pull her out.

Talking to my Dad from his perch in the hospital in Kalamazoo, hearing him list the injuries Becky suffered, I found myself nodding, making the right comments at the right times, making a mental note to send flowers. I was keeping it together. I was proud of myself.

When I hung up the phone I started to think of the Cadillac and how big it was. How guiding it into our tiny one-car garage back home had required what we used to call "precision parking." How many times we'd fought and made up in that car, how many decisions were made inside of it, how many looks were exchanged across the expanse of its roof before we opened our doors and took our seats.

How proud my boyfriend was of it, spending hours polishing and buffing. Keeping up on the maintenance. When I'd had a few too many drinks, I liked to slide across the wide leathery backseat to the tune of Eddie Van Halen or Boston or whatever was playing on WRKR.

The weight of that car. I always felt so safe driving it, with four and a half feet of silver hood in front of me. It never slipped on ice, it never slid on wet pavement. Another car wiped all that out, and almost wiped Becky out with it.

That thought--of the mass of our car, and of the cop saying if she'd been in a different car she would not have survived--was what brought the tears.

It's surreal that something as mundane as selling a car you've been fond of and taken care of to someone you love could maybe save their life.

Wow that's some story.

Sympathies, of course.

(!!!)

I guess they don't make em like that any more. I'm also wondering what happened to any occupants of the SUV. Someday, some agency has to take a realistic, responsible look at SUVs and safety factors both for their occupants (they only have to meet truck standards, not auto standards) and for the people in the cars they seem to inevitably collide with. That said I'm thinking of buying one.

Nero, what a story. I hope she pulls through okay.

The key thing now is for your step mom to get lots of stimulation and eventually exercise in the hospital so she can avoid getting pneumonia. Best of luck.

I have just received the following email.

Tom Brady from Boston is giving Radiology Grand Rounds here next week.

I've been on the receiving end of some phishing expedition that involves a very convincing imitation of a bank website. Fortunately, I didn't fall for it and forwarded the e-mails to the bank, which is conducting an investigation that I hope will result in a prosecution.

Casting call for weirdos in Santa Cruz: silly! All they have to do is go down to the Wednesday farmers market, and they could haul in a shipful of the lunatic fringe in about three minutes.

Oh, and Paul Reubens (!) is going to be in that film. I want to take my Pee Wee doll to have him autograph it!

I got a postcard in the mail yesterday, announcing plans for my 30th high school reunion. They're chartering a 3-day cruise from Miami to the Bahamas and back.

Wait...3 days and 3 nights stuck on a boat out of Miami with a bunch of people I went to high school with? I don't know about anybody else, but to me that sounds like a precise description of hell.

Sounds like hell to me, too.

Gonna go?

Fuck no.

I just discovered that there's a professional ballroom dancer with my name and she's participating in Dancing With Stars.