our music video, dance concerts, le fooding, why i'll never get married

roberto! this guy was my regular when i waited tables at the soho house during law school. he'd be there from morning to night. he added me to his mailing list for new films. i started getting these envelopes with my address handwritten in red sharpie. the writing resembled my grandma's; slanted, slender cursive the way you'd have been taught in the 30's and 40's. inside, a crude photocopied flyer about whatever his new film was.

they remind me of the letters my mom used to get from emo phillips. i was in high school and we saw this production of damn yankees with jerry lewis (who was definitely drunk for the whole performance and was beyond awful) and my mom swore emo phillips was sitting next to her. she looked him up, wrote him a letter asking if it was him. she got back a letter, written on a typewriter (how kitsch!), saying that it was him. they were pen pals for several months. the letters were as odd as you think any correspondance from emo phillips would be. if i can get my mom to dig them up, i'll post some. they're amazing. typewriters! used unironically!

i've been listening to this cover by lady antebelllum pretty much constantly. and i wouldn't even consider myself a country music person. also: i'm yours, jason mraz from the casa nova sessions. listen hard to the muted trombone at the end. the bouncy, meandering, off-beat 16th notes or whatever. so cute. and i've been waking up with bon iver which has been lovely.

le fooding: not great, but it was for charity, so fine. it took an hour to get in and then you had to wait in a separate line for each booth. some of these lines had 45 minute waits. i did witness dave chang yell and swear a bunch about something. and 5 minutes later he's smiling and has his arm around this older woman who was a security guard at the event. we did wait in line for the bourbon vanilla ice cream and lo, it was good.

ryan and i attempted hollandaise. i think i added a drop or two too much butter because it was a tad thick. and it needed flavor. julia only called for salt and pepper. anyway, it only took three tries because we weren't paying enough attention and kept doing things in the wrong order and hollandaise, i learned, is really more about temperature control than anything else. if i were you, i would not try it at home. actually knowing what hollandaise is made of makes me never want to eat it again.

we made the video. the corporate loft was insane. there aren't words...but, if i had to pick two i'd use: pimped out, or bitch ass, or even holy shit. for example, see: the pool table. there was a recording studio with a perfect view of the empire state building. two hot tubs. each table and chair was probably worth at least 15K. and we were given free rein of this 20 million dollar space so that we could play around and make a funny music video for an ailing friend. it was bananas. one of those moments where i had to stop and say, "is this really my life? OMG IT'S AWESOME" people went all out with some sordid outfits from burlington coat factory that involved much faux fur and some ed hardy and, possibly, huge gold earrings that said "apple bottom". one scene involved me, ted, lots of fake dollar bills, a rubber chicken and a magnum of champagne in a bathtub. there was a dance sequence. it was silly and just an unbelievably good time.

i had a discussion recently with a bunch of friends about how our tastes had changed as we got older. foods we hated when we were little but die for now, etc. my example was how i used to be a prince william girl but now, oh, now i'm SOOOO prince harry. not sure why/how/when it happened, but how cute is this?

latisse: changed my life. they're actually so freakishly long, that now people are saying to me, "your eyelashes are amazing! latisse?" and then i sheepishly have to admit that, yes, i totally bought these gorgeous things. they are not mine. the knowledge of how well this stuff works is widespread. it's changed the look of my face. i never wore that much makeup to begin with but a simple curl of the lashes has my eyes popping out all over the place and i need nothing else but maybe a spot of bronzer. in short: WORTH THE MONEY.

colin is out of the hospital and is doing pretty well. well, as well as one can be on a no fat diet. since they messed with all his innards and basically had to remove and then replace all his intestines, his digestive system is sort of delicate at the moment. we've been spending a lot of time trying to keep him company though he's still getting pretty fidgety at the house. i'm going to cook him dinner thursday. any non-fat recipe suggestions welcome!

trying to plan a 30th birthday dinner for rebecca. would love to go to locanda verde but not sure we have enough people. also, we need pasta (why go to locanda and NOT eat pasta?!) and the 4-course meal is pretty pricey. pricey enough that i could walk in and order and entire 4-course meal by myself and still probably not spend what they're asking per head for a group. BUT we'd get glimpses of chef luke ostrom at whom i can only really glance because i'll never talk to the man. why?

not only is he successful/talented (with the good judgment to get on board with carmellini who is genius-like) and kind (i've seen many a friend stop in to see him so one assumes he's not a huge dick), he's the kind of good-looking that takes my abundantly socially graceful self and turns it upside-down, wherein i become a stuttering, quivering, dopey mess. i'll probably get an e-mail from peter saying something like, "you're hot, stop being ridiculous." but i cannot help this. so it's best for me to imagine luke happily married with a tall gorgeous wife who gives better head than me (unlikely, but not impossible!) and who has naturally luscious eyelashes that she didn't have to get a prescription for. this, folks, is why i'm totally going to turn into molly shannon's character in "year of the dog" i will adopt 20 dogs and fall in love with a gay man (wouldn't be the first time!). then i'll get a visit from that hoarders show. BUT, and i'll side with peter on this, i'll probably be the hottest person they've ever staged an intervention for. or, at least, i'll have the best boobs that show has ever seen.

anywho, we'll likely end up at hearth for the birthday dinner instead. and since canora has peaced out of insieme, maybe he'll actually be in the kitchen. chefs in the kitchen = a good thing.

in what i'd call a severely passive attempt to become fluent in spanish i've taken to listenting to a puerto rican talk radio station all day. i'll report back on whether this actually works. i find myself with a high level of comprehension on news subjects but i keep missing all the jokes. the pertinent words are not in my vocab and then i hear raucous laughter and i'm left guessing at what was so funny. this happens several times a day.

saw the third fall for dance program on sunday. basil twist's petrushka was mesmerizing. the puppets are tall and each manned by three people. the coordination in making these things move is pretty astounding. and two of the puppets totally get hot and heavy at one point. monica bill barnes had in impossibly cute piece called, i think, "i feel" to james brown's sex machine. (which, incidentally, is still stuck in my head and the head-nodding i've been doing to it at my cube is embarrassing.) also on the program: crowd-pleasing male ballet dancers in drag, the trocs! one of whom, as a woman, was definitely prettier than me. and as a finale, the female-objectifying-scream-inducing dancebrazil. each guy had, i dunno, 4 sets of abs more than the average person and they danced in teeny boxer briefs in red, the color of love. and these women LOOOOOVED all over these men, bulls, ready to charge. literally, screaming. i was embarrassed for my gender. it was chippendales but sans alcohol. and with children scattered about. at 4:30pm. in midtown. on sunday, which, need i remind you all, is GOD's day y'all. or so i hear...

epic post. and i didn't even get into my healthcare rant and all those fuckers on the finance committee doing their best to kill the public option today and somehow forgetting that you only need 51. READ IT 51 votes to pass a bill, not 60. i want to see republicans filibuster a healthcare plan that 60% of americans say they want.

Chang and Dufresne!

linkdump, a new video, vaccinations

this is great. why is it at theawl.com and not on the shouts and murmurs page?!

david has this project/new video idea. it involves a borrowed soho loft, a borrowed range rover, many magnums of champagne, some bling, fur, and i'm apparently supposed to go to strawberry to get a bright colored bra to wear under a wifebeater and some huge hoop earrings. and was also instructed to bring my swimsuit because the loft has two hot tubs. and some of this will be recorded. sometimes it does not pay to ask questions. and the song? is one about LOVE sung/rapped by a child who i think is like 8 years old. (you can't see it but i am shaking my head, vigorously, at the thought of all this going down.)

i want this outfit.

going through my starred items in my reader (i.e. things i didn't have a chance to look at and then 4 months later rifle through) i found this crazy thing. i met that man when i went to paris for the very first time. he recognized us immediately as americans and sat with us for several hours, regaling us with stories of paris and the visitors to his famous bookstore/library hostel. now i'm thinking the only reason he talked to us was because he's kind of strange and pervy...

le fooding is this weekend. also, fall for dance, a couple brunches. my iphone battery has decided it doesn't want to work anymore. leaving it idle during the day, manually checking e-mail, and charging it all night = battery life of less than 10 hours. IDLE. it's still under warranty. i know a guy who works at the apple store, here's to hoping i can get upgraded to the newest version.

i got all my vaccinations for kenya: yellow fever, polio booster, tetanus, hep a and a flu shot for good measure. my arms are crazy sore today though. i also have typhoid and malaria pills and some cipro (wooo cipro!) in case i happened to get sick while there. we're booking our safari and mombassa hotel next week so i guess this trip is acutally happening...

free seashells, online sample sales

my friend adrienne is moving to DC. while packing she found a box of shells (the building she lived in was her aunt's, the box might have been her cousins at one point). so she put an ad on craigslist. "box of free seashells" i meet her at a bar last night and she tells us she had nearly 10 responses in the first 5 minutes.

"OMG I collect seashells..may I have them please?
thank you,
Susan"

"hi I would like to pickup the box of seashells i like seashell and i would love to have them please call me @ 212-748-XXXX Nancy"

the next day i get this e-mail from her:

"I can't. Seriously. I had like forty more emails when I got home, and I will officially never give anything away for free on craigslist again."

and then, THEN, she arranged to meet the first person who'd responded...who never showed up. adrienne sent her an e-mail saying she waited for 20 minutes. she replied saying she was 30 minutes late and waited for half an hour.

kate sent me her first set of ultrasound pictures. at 9 weeks the thing looks like and is pretty much the size of a gummy bear. kate refers to me exclusively as "aunt jasmine" now. it's going to take some getting used to.

GAH! the cuteness.

this is utterly hilarious. just, so great. LOVE

i await my morning emails from rue la la, hautelook, and, worst of all, gilt. and when they arrive i pray that none of the designers will be ones i'm interested in. but, oh god, malandrino is at gilt again. and so i have to click, just to see. and that clicking starts a wave of desire, lots of "ooooh! i need, NEED that!" and then the trying to find your size and the adding your name to a waitlist, and then trying for your size again and sometimes having one pop up and then you MUST add it to the cart. but wait! it's only reserved for 9:59 minutes. so you scramble to see if there's anything else worth picking up. (because after all, if you're already paying shipping you might as well load up, right?)

people, it's a sick cycle. i think i'm addicted to online sample sales.

however, i've been successful and i never spend more than $150 on anything and most of the stuff IS designer and at a hefty discount. and so i'm the proud owner of several more dresses than i had at the beginning of the summer. and i've only been to bloomingdales once since probably march.

oh, see? i'm trying to validate. boooo. help!

i want to read the new raphael yglesias book now that i'm done with infinite jest but i can tell, already, it's the kind of book that's going to make me want to find the kind of love that most people will never have, ever. the kind of love that makes any love you might find seem small and insignificant in comparison. the kind of work that makes you want to be loved in the way that most men aren't capable of loving. kind of like anything written by calvin trillin about alice.

the kevin fitzgerald bit on this wait wait is awesome.

colin is in surgery today. he'll be in the hospital all week. i'm bringing dinner to his parents tonight who are basically planning on being there 24 hours a day with short tradeoffs in the evening to sleep. keep him in your thoughts!

professional disco dancing, culinary cabs, john oliver

friday night was a girls night at my dive bar. we managed to wrangle a booth which is good, but always leads to a parade of weirdos approaching us because we're a captive audience, somewhat trapped and obviously not going to get up and give up our prime seats just because some guy is being weird/annoying/homeless. this time it was a guy who was strangely rude and aggressive. it's like, "hey man, you keep coming over to us! sorry that we're offending you by not loving all over you." he introduced himself and claimed, seriously, that he was a disco dancer. he looked like ben stiller. i wanted to ask him do to "blue steel" but didn't trust his temper. then when julie went to the bathroom he accosted her in line and when she politely declined his offer to hook up with her in the men's room (at a dive bar! gross!) he told her that she was destined to have a pathetic life because she obviously wasn't a risk taker. let me get this straight: she rejects you and so, by definition, she's a psycho who has bad taste. YES. MEN IN THIS CITY ARE AWFUL.

 

speaking of awful men...over the weekend i got a note from a little birdie who reads the blog, she was sending over this article which is about this douchebag.

 

i arrive at the vma after party, am standing at the bar waiting for my drink (sprite, splash of cran because it is a school night!) and standing next to me: none other than tabber benedict! he is less good-looking than i remember. old and slimy-looking in fact. pocket square in tact. with a blonde who was just a train wreck. UGH. ugh ugh. when i got inside i was standing no more than 2 feet from gerard butler. justy and i had this conversation, "gee, doesn't that guy look like gerard butler?" him: "yeah, totally" me: "oh, someone just called him gerard" justin: "that settles it i suppose." and then there was mark ronson. oh, mark ronson. i do not know what it is about him (i doubt it's the hot pink shirts and skinny ties) but i just could look at him all day. when justy was ready to leave i said, "give me 5 more minutes of mark gazing..." would this creep him out? certainly! i'm a crazy-ass lawyer who looks like she's stalking him when, really, he keeps ending up at events where i have friends working, etc., etc.

 

saturday night i ended up at a few parties that esquire mag was throwing. my new pretend boyfriend is a guy named tyler who is an editor. dark cury hair, glasses. those are basically my prerequisites these days. david knew all these hot straight guys at the party which makes me angry because he's clearly been holding out on me all this time. i'm hoping lots of talk about my dead, shriveled vagina will motivate him to try to find me a decent date or two. if only to stop the vagina talk. for as much as they love boobs the gays HATE the v-word.

 

and sunday during the day we took a trip in famous fat dave's taxi. i highly recommend this for anyone visiting the city, people who live here who need something to do with their parents. you basically tell dave what kind of food you like and he takes you to these random hole-in-the wall outter borough places that have the best of whatever it is you're looking for. we headed north and did harlem, city island and the bronx. fried calzones, clams basilica, fried whitefish, fried chicken, the best canoli i've ever had, jerk chicken and spicy shrimp near yankee stadium. dave also happens to be a history buff so it's an educational tour as well as a culinary one. he's also pretty funny and an amazingly easy person to hang with for 4 hours. AND as if he weren't knowledgeable enough, we mention we're going to kenya and he'd just been there for several weeks and promptly e-mailed over the names/notes on safaris he took and where he stayed in mombassa. SCORE.

 

on kenya, colin insists on planning the trip even though he likely won't be able to go. between surgery and chemo, he'll have a lot of down time and he's happy to have something to do.

 

i finished the sunday times crossword and did the damn thing in pen which, in the end, was highly unsatisfying. it was obviously an easy one and i didn't feel challenged. in fact, i practically felt cheated!

 

went to 826nyc's comedy night at the highline. it's my new favorite event space. perfectly intimate without being drab. plenty of tables so you don't end up standing at the bar (i'm looking at you blue note!) if you can't be 3 hours early. john oliver performed and j'adore him. dark hair, glasses, again but also DIMPLES and he's outrageously funny so if i saw him on the street i might tear all my clothes off right there and beg him to come with me to the nearest starbucks bathroom or something. wyatt cenac from the daily show was there too. and i liked this dude ted alexandro even though several of his jokes were, apparently, too low-class for the audience (whom oliver referred to repeatedly as "mcsweeneys"). basically, a bunch of frigid liberal rich folks. they can be hard to please.

 

and from the nytimes style mag: how dreamy is this michael fassbender man? i'm not so much a movie person so i don't much know who he is but DAMN. a mix of matthew mcconaghey and kevin kline. and he probably doesn't walk around naked all the time so he's a much easier person to like and possibly isn't 100% full of himself. yet.

 

boqueria, weezer

so the weezer song we're all addicted to is "if you're wondering if i want you to (i want you to)". david has, i guess, tried to put the lake video up on youtube but it keeps getting pulled instantly because the music group that owns the weezers label or whatever has some scanning program? that removes things instantly if the sound matches their scan?  anyhow, he can't get it to stay up there so the masses may have to just do the other miley song, "someday" that we're also all obsessed with. catchy little fucker, indeed. the boys also made a PSA for when the "party in the fip" video hits 1 million views. it's awesome. short, sweet, funny. so go watch their video so that they can post it.

 

we went to boqueria last night and sat at a large table in the center of the small, slender dining room. right near the expo counter/kitchen which meant that i had an excellent view of seamus mullen who is just soooo beautiful. i might have stared some. (i totally stared some. or a lot. or, constantly. whatever.) and the food was great. did i mention how pretty seamus mullen is?

 

colin has all the dates set for more surgery and chemo so at least we know when/what is going on. even if what's going on sucks royally. his parents will be in for over a week so we're planning on how to help keep them entertained because it's not fun for anyone if they don't do anything but stare at colin for 10 days.

 

this weekend has turned manic. i think i'm booked every minute from 10am saturday through midnight sunday. big event at a fancy italian place on saturday with david. the VMAs are this weekend and i'm still debating on whether i'm going to the afterparty for that. 11pm on a school night is a bit late to just be arriving at a party BUT mark ronson will be there and we all know how i feel about mark ronson. though, at this point, i may be reaching stalker status. i might not mind that, really. again, i'm debating.

quilting, labor day, weezer, taxi tours

my mom and i can't decide whether the quilt top was made by grandma fetty (my great great grandma) or grandma rieder (my great grandma) but regardless, we've had this finished quilt top made of "grandmothers fans" for decades. i love the quits my family has that have been passed down for a couple generations. we have old photos of my grandma and her sister and their mother, all wearing dresses made from the fabric seen in the fans, which were made from the scraps. my mom used her quilts. they have juicebox stains and grass stains. we'd sit on them at ravinia where people would approach her and say, "oh my god! you can't sit on that! it's an antique!" and others would say, "i'll give you 3K for that, cash, right now." basically, they're sturdy and old and people recognize the quality when they see it. so finding someone to finish this was daunting. so daunting that i've basically had it wrapped up and stored for some 7 years. when i found out katie's mom quilted i asked whether she might know someone who dealt with antique fabrics. she sent it to some group of mennonites upstate who went gaga over it and knew exactly which type of batting needed to go in the middle, what type of backing i'd need, etc. and what was a given, was that it would all be done by hand, the way my great (or great great) grandma would have done it. so a year and a half goes by and i hear nothing. until yesterday when i got sent these photos. it is 1/3rd complete.

another music video was made over the weekend. (sidenote: did i mention that there was a segment on MSNBC about it? they used the "disney was smart not to pull it becuase you want the gays on your side" angle. the male anchor then quoted sex and the city with some line about how "if the gays like something, then the ladies will like it and everyone else will follow." but, MSNBC. it was insane. colin and i were in vegas watching it and he just kept saying, "i'm dead. i'm dying. i'm dead!") so anyway, the boys did some lip syncing bits and interspersed are a lot of cuts of people crashing on their skis and us hanging out. they used the as-of-yet-unreleased new weezer single which is poppy and really fucking catchy. but, you know, weezer is kind of old now so it's debatable whether they wouldn't have it pulled IMMEDIATELY if david puts it on youtube. there is an adorable part of it where each gay is in a line, dancing like a different peanuts character. it's AWESOME. and i want to watch it on a loop, basically, for the rest of my life.

otherwise we skiied, layed out, drank, cooked. every night we'd sit at the end of the dock, listening to patty griffin's heavenly day as the sun set. and for kicks on the last day, some disney sing alongs. we sang "kiss the girl" from the little mermaid, ryan adding in a "don't pussy out" somewhere in there. and "a whole new world" wherein ryan also added to the lyrics a confession from aladdin that he was uncircumcised.

ted's birthday is today. last year was the perfect, perfectly intimate and cozy dinner at graffiti. tonight is tapas in soho which should also be great, as dinner with my bests often is.

and ted's man arranged this tour for ted on sunday and ted invited me with and i'm beyond excited. i mean, driving around the boroughs, just for food, in a checkered cab?! LOVE this. and talk about the new boyfriend winning so many bonus points with me for something creative and food-centered. i'm always meeting gays and saying, "i want a straight one of him!" ted's new man would fall into that, "why the fuck aren't they ever straight?!" category.

Baby cow at the dairy!

Upstate, wine country

birthday, vegas, labor day

ugh, guys.

so much to write with so little time. spoiler warning: i finished infinite jest. my thoughts on the ending of my infinite summer are at the end so stop reading if you don't want to know anything about it.

the gay's miley video made MSNBC which i think was the absolute final mainstream media appearance. i mean, this country is trying to pass healthcare reform! there are more important things than this.

my birthday was a total surprise and really super awesomely fun. justin picked me up at work, whispered a destination to a cabbie and we ended up at extra virgin which is one of my favorite west village spots and home to the crack-like gorgonzola fondue that i have dreams about bathing in. i run to the bathroom and when i head out to the street to meet the gang they're all standing in front of a white stretch limo. HOLLA! we have champagne in glasses waiting inside and we go to pick up some other friends who also have champagne with them. justin asked julie for the "props" and so julie put her hands in the air in a "giving you props!" signal when justin really wanted REAL props. things like a jasmine princess tiara and plastic blinking lightup rings. ted gets handed his and yells, "these will be perfect for the bowery electric!" which was our next stop. they'd all wanted it to be a surprise so immediately his hand flies to his mouth and an "oops!" pops out. it's better that way though because otherwise i'd have been doing nothing but tracking our direction, trying to figure out where the hell we were headed. because i'm an annoying virgo like that.

so bowery electric is tons and TONS of dancing with gina, our very favorite DJ. and we danced there till 3:30am when i headed back to justys, showered, and sat up and chatted till i had to leave at 4:30 for my flight. i met colin at the airport and we headed to the palms place which i thought was super swank, but he assured me it wasn't as nice as the wynn and kept threatening to move us over there all weekend. we slept in, lazed around, ordered room service breakfast, tried hanging by the pool but it was ridiculously windy the whole time. like, so windy that you had to keep holding your frozen mojito and you also had to put a hand over the top of the glass or else the wind would come and swoosh all the liquid out of it. we're talking minor tornado here.

we ate at carnevino, mario's steak place and it was phenomenal. one of the best meals i've had in ages. the ribeye for two was super crispy and charred on the outside while being almost meltingly tender and red on the inside. perfection, people. perfection. we drank phat wine out of glasses that were, no joking, pretty much bigger than my head. but it's amazing how much more you smell the wine at every sip when your whole face fits inside the globe as you tilt to drink.

we had a bathtub in our bedroom so, naturally, we threw a whole thing of body wash in, put on our swimsuits and made hats out of bubbles and took pictures of ourselves in the bath looking crazy. naturally.

there was a mixology contest thingy where i feel in love a little bit with a dude named daniel victory who is a mixologist in new orleans at a hotel that i can't remember. anyhow, he was so pretty. i may have sat at gazed at him for longer than was appropriate. possibly.

re: the ending infinite jest, i might just ask "what fucking ending?!" DFW spent an awful lot of time building an intricate story, tying things together and when i realized i had only 50 pages left i knew i was screwed in the resolution department. and sure enough, i finished and stared at that last page, kind of flipping to the next over and over hoping that the next time i did that, that some more text would be there. but no. he literally leaves unanswered what seems like half the point of the damn novel. the novel starts in the present and spends the next 1100 pages or whatever looking backwards. and we end in a flashback. after all my flipping back and forth i started at the beginning again, to try to see if there were any clues there as to how the story actually does end. the conflict that exists in that first section (i.e. what the F is wrong with Hal) just doesn't get answered. there are a series of guesses as to what happened, all plausible. he mentions his brother plays football, not played football so you assume he's alive somewhere. he mentions the other main character, gately, digging up his father's head while john wayne watches wearing a mask. which means gately lives long enough to get out of the hospital and that wane is probably doing some service with/for the AFR because theyr'e the ones wearing masks all over the place. but john wayne has legs...??

basically, though "infinite jest" means a dozen things, a multi-layered meaning title, my on personal interpretation is that it's a huge joke on the reader that never ends. the minute you finish, you have the desire to start all over again. and had i read it all over again, i'd probably finish and want to read it yet AGAIN. reading the message boards, i saw that almost every single person there mentioned having done the same thing. naturally turning back towards the front to read the first 30 pages again. who does that??! who finishes 1100 pages and then immediately starts over?! therein lies the genius of david foster wallace. DFW has hidden throughout the book, not solutions, but suggestions of answers to all the clues and puzzles and mysteries that he didn't explicitly solve. which, for a person (virgo!) who needs answers at all times, would make me totally crazy. and as much as i was left hanging, i do want to read it again to try to glean a few more morsels out of the thing, get myself a little more closure.

the message boards have been both enlightened and banal. you really have to scour to get any logical suggestions as to possible explanations for things amid the stupidity of people who didn't read closely enough or who fly off the handle with conspiracy theories when their basic premise makes no sense. so this ends up being kind of a "choose your own adventure" book, the rest left up to your imagination with a sort of rough sketch of possible outcomes hidden in toss-off sentences scattered throughout the text. you have to make up quite a bit of middle stuff to get to the things you know happen while most of the main issues are left for you to guess on your own.

that being said, even though hal is left with isses from something, he's alive a year after what we see as a huge rising, scary, dangerous situation so you assume he did save the world, though with dimished capacity, poor test scores even though he's brilliant, less tennis skills and zero capability to communicate to the outside world. you assume the assassins were unsuccessful. you assume that the ONAN has a hold of the master copy of the entertainment. you pretty much know what the entertainment was when it was filmed but not what it ended up as, and why it's so deadly/entertaining. you have to hope mario ended up okay because nobody would hurt such a kind soul, also, he always ends up okay.

so anyway. i'll probably read it again. but only when i have a plethora of quiet time on my hands. i think i loved it but it's hard to tell so soon after the, "you are fucking kidding me he ended this here" moment.

upstate with the crew for labor day.