IT'S OCTOBERFEST, DUDE! CHILL OUT!!!

Oktoberfest ended sunday, you ignorant american.

At nine? The 4th grade? I was still into Dark Shadows. My Patty Hearst/Stephen Weed/SLA obsession didn't start until the 6th grade.

You were writing comparative essays in the 4th grade? Holy crap.

Climbing the Buddha. And he's OK with that.

Jerk.

Wow. I vividly remember reading it as a senior in high school while I was baby-sitting. The house was tick-tock silent and I'm still having nightmares from it. I had a hard enough time handling the book at the age of 17.

Yikes. What kind of school IS your kid in ?

Last night I went to the movie and before it began there were commercials. After the usual L

Ran into Tom Valenti and his wife at the cat show. They have five Maine Coons.

Last night I went to the movie and before it began there were commercials. After the usual LA Times ad, there was a Scion advert followed by a Honda advert. What was weird was that each of the auto ads featured a scene shot in the Second (or is it Third?) Street tunnel. It's ubiquitous. It was in Blade Runner.

I don't think I'd recommend In Cold Blood to a nine year old kid, regardless of reading level.

No worries. He's not reading it.

So tonight I'm at a friend's Brooklyn apartment for a dinner gathering and just after we finish dessert (pie) we hear the pop, pop, popping of fireworks. So we run up to her roof where we have a perfect view of the East River near South Street Seaport, one of the locations where they do the big Macy's Fireworks Show on July 4. Except today is October 14. What the hell is today that there is a big fireworks show? And it's big, and long, definitely as big as July 4, and almost as long as July 4. It's a clear cold night and the colored lights are blooming in the sky and we're all standing up there singing patriotic marches and oom-pah-pah-ing and trying to figure out what the hell we're all celebrating.

One of the gals swears that her Indian contractor (she's having some work done on her apt) says it's Ramadan (the end of). And I say, well, sorry but last time I heard Ramadan doesn't have a corporate sponsor (it's expensive to put on a big long fireworks show over the East River).

So finally it ends, we come back down to the warm inside and google it up. It's Indian Diwali, and by goodness, they do have a sponsor. Big party, dancing girls in saris and everything. (Makes me think of The Office.)

A festival of lights, indeed.

Happy Diwali, everyone, and Happy end of Ramadan to all.

eid-ul-fitr

Thanks, lovely -- I wondered what it was, too. There was some really neat stuff, with four or five stages, I think.

Hollywood: was that the tunnel that just had that terrible accident?

No, that tunnel is downtown. The accident tunnel is on the 'skirts, like Newhall or some such place. It's a freeway tunnel, not a city street tunnel.

La la la.......reading in bed last night, while house/pet-sitting for a week. Cruising through the steakhouse chapter in Ruth Reichls' "Garlic and Sapphires."

In the bed
of the penthouse
of the owner
of one of the most venerable steakhouses in Manhattan.

No, I'm not making this up. Nor was it planned.

when going to work this morning, i walked past a woman with a walking cast on one foot and a stilleto heel on the other.

Hubby stopped to buy apples on the weekend, at a little impromptu stand in front of someone's farmhouse. They had some vegetables, too, including a giant elongated purple squash, the likes of which he'd never seen before. When he asked what kind of squash it was, the proprietress said proudly “that's a winter squash!”

Danish speed limit campaign video NSFW

Ron Johnson, this one is for you:

Terry Gross asking Peter Sagal "When was the first time you saw porn?"

Don't know whether this belongs here or in Annoyances: every morning this week, around the time I get up (6:00-6:15), someone on my block has been playing this oddball vocal piece that sounds like a cross between a soprano's aria and an angelic choir. Lots of repetitive "aaah-aaah-oooo-oooo", etc. (I don't rule out that it's actually someone doing vocal warmups.) It's eerie and worms its way into my brain, and by the time I leave for work it's stopped so I can't pinpoint where it's coming from.

I heard that interview. Gross appeared to be dead set on completely covering the swingers' club portion of the Sagal's book. They didn't talk about gluttony.

I wonder how much producer had to prep her on swingers clubs.

I caught that interview and was laughing my ass off thinking about your comments on Terry Gross. The bad part was that the next night I had a very disturbing sex dream about Terry Gross. I'm still not recovered from it.

Terry was WAY too into asking Sagal questions about swingers clubs and the orgy rooms. Like she hasn't been one every thursday night for the past ten years . . .

I'm still house-sitting in the Sutton Place apartment. The neighborhood is quiet, like coffin-quiet. Suddenly, there's the boom of a marching band, banging out all the marching band Sousa faves, up the street, at East 56th Street and 1st Avenue. Can't see 'em, but they sound big! I feel like I'm at a college football game.

Who are these people? Is there some reason I should know either of them?



Is it a Philip Glass piece?

saw her again today on the way to work. walking cast and a flat shoe this time. she looked somewhat more comfortable.

Search me. I've no clue what it could possibly be.

This week I've met a baker allergic to wheat and a lactose-intolerant pastry chef.

What crazy genetic stew allowed this


to spawn this?

probably the same one that brought forth this



from this



though she does look more and more like him as she gets older.

I don't remember Mira's breasts being so large. Are they a recent addition?

oh, does she have breasts? i was admiring her eyes.

You're saying Andrew Lloyd Webber fathered a muffin?

Well, I dunno, back in the day...:

Who's that with him?

Tim Rice

Second grader suspended from school from drawing a picture of what might be a gun..

or, maybe a water pistol

I must have taken a wrong turn when drawing all those tanks, bombers, jets, guns, rifles, daggers, etc.

Our long drought combined with Santa Ana winds resulted in some fires over the weekend, notably in parts of Malibu. As unfortunate as that was, the winds made the air over the LA basin incredibly clear and the heat and the particles in the air made the sky before sunset amazing.

Last night Blovie and I were walking along Riverside Drive. At about 88th street a guy in his car pulled up alongside us and the following conversation ensued:

Driver: "Am I in New York City?"
Blovie: "yes, you're in NY."
Driver: "but am I in New York City?"



(FWIW, my wiseass response would have been "no, you're in Manhattan")

you should have asked him if he knew what kugel is.

Reminds me of the Worst Tourist in Stephen Pile's "Incomplete Book of Failures":

"The least successful touist on record is Mr Nicholas Scotti of San Francisco. In 1977 he flew from America to his native Italy to visit relatives.

En route the plane made a one hour-fuel stop at Kennedy Airport. Thinking he had arrived, Mr Scotti got out and spent two days in New York believing he was in Rome.

When his nephews were not there to meet him, he assumed they had been delayed in the heavy Roman traffic mentioned in their letters".....and so it goes on.

I was researching yeasts and came across these:

Infectuously Cute Plush Microbes!


The Saccharomyces cerevisiae plush toy is actually pretty cute.
Chad

On a subway platform this morning I heard a Jamaican steel drum band play Onward Christian Soldiers.

James Lipton was a pimp:
He says, "This was when I was very very young, living in Paris, penniless, unable to get any kind of working permit... I had a friend who worked in what is called the Milieu, which is that world and she suggested to me one night, `Look, you'll be my meck... We would translate it perhaps... as pimp. We were earning our living together, this young woman and I, we made a rather good living, I must say."
Lipton reveals in his new book Inside Inside he would set up sex shows for clients of his lady friend."

Did you really have to share that?

Explains why he makes my skin crawl.

Well, well, he is as sleazy as he looks.