Don't I Know You From Somewhere?

The great thing about New York City is that no matter where you go, there's always a chance you'll see someone famous, semi-famous, or thinks-they're-famous. It's one of the charms of our city, our famous people are more regular people than they are in LA. They live their lives shoulder to shoulder with us, simply because they have no choice. They buy coffee in the deli, sit at the next table in restaurants, walk their kids down the street.

Some of my favorite celebrity sightings in New York:

* Alec Baldwin in about 1994 or 1995, walking through Times Square on a Friday night. I never found him particularly good looking in movies up till then, but face-to-face, he was hands down the handsomest man I've ever seen.

* David Byrne walking his bike on a side street on the Upper East Side.

* Chris Meloni, right after Law & Order: SVU premiered, at the next table at a little bistro in Tribeca. I said to my dining companion, "Hey, I recognize that guy from Law & Order!" He responded, "I recognize him from gay porn!"

* Ivanka Trump, all business, striding (if you're a 6-foot woman, you can only stride) past the deli where I sometimes get my coffee in the morning.

* Matthew Broderick, drinking alone at the bar at a restaurant called Indigo that used to be on West 10th Street.

* Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker hand in hand on Bleecker Street. It was a steamy summer night and they were both eating ice cream cones. Man, are they the tiniest couple EVER?

* JFK, Jr., shirtless, in Central Park.

* Vincent Donofrio and Kathryn Erbe shooting a Law & Order episode on Varick Street.

* Storm Phillips at the opening night party for a movie called "Gay Sex in the 70's."

* Ethan Hawke, pushing a baby carriage, post-Uma, in Central Park.

* Randolph Mantooth, walking down Park Avenue, unrecognized by everyone except me and my friend Juliet. Recognizing Randolph Mantooth is proof that I am OLD.

Today's very minor celebrity sighting:

Jonesing for biscuits and gravy, I called on my now-married pal Racer X with a cry for brunch at our favorite cajun spot on 5th Street. When he and the little lady joined me, I was seated at the bar, nursing a spicy bloody mary and reading the Village Voice.

As we were waiting for our table, I realized that I recognized the bartender from somewhere, and after a while, it came to me. It was Mr. Pussy! Now, you'd have to be a Sex and the City fan to have any idea who I'm talking about, but let me just say, Season 2, Episode 15.

Turns out this guy has been the bartender at this joint for years; Racer X and he both recognized each other.

Of COURSE I'm not going to tell you where to find him, lest it become one more attraction for the odious "SATC" mobs that currently mill and litter outside Magnolia Bakery.

What's Not To Like About Sam'l L. Jackson?

At LEAST a Two-Hanky Video

A Fine Waste of Time

Sometimes you just want to kill some time.

Here's one way.

Just close your office door so your co-workers aren't alerted you are fucking around by the mad cackles emanating from your space.

Make-Believe Maverick

If, like me, you kind of had the sense that John McCain's heart really wasn't in the nasty campaigning, and that he is really, deep down inside, an honorable guy, you should read this article from Rolling Stone.

It's very, very illuminating and paints a really unflattering portrait of a guy whose motto shouldn't be "Country First," but instead, "McCain First."

I guess Cracker (aka "Real") America thinks it's okay for a guy to call his wife a c**t in front of three reporters.

My favorites zen teacher says it this way: How you do anything is how you do everything.

Some Belated RIP's

Lefty Rosenthal Without Lefty, Scorsese wouldn't have one of his masterpieces, Sharon Stone wouldn't have an Oscar nomination, and one of my old pals wouldn't have his anonymous blog ID for commenting on my posts.

Levi Stubbs No singer yearned quite like Levi. Go back and listen to "Bernadette" if you don't believe me. See, he's a guy who has Bernadette, but living in terror that he won't be able to keep her, that other men will steal her away. In the first part of the song, before the break, Levi doesn't even sing the melody -- he's just guttin' it out in one despairing shout. You have to love that.

Plus, who else could have played the Mean Green Mother from Outer Space?

Paul Newman Sigh. There's just nothing else to say.

Oldie but goodie - a big laugh

I'm fully aware that lately I am angry and more than a little shrill. I wake up with my jaw clenched and my shoulders hunched forward as if curled to protect my soft nougaty insides. I am drive-by eating and not exercising or sleeping enough. I'm certainly not getting laid enough.

From the important -- a failing economy (along with my own bank auguring in), the scary specter of Dubya in a skirt being one malignant melanoma away from the presidency, my dear old pet coming back from the brink of death, the upcoming first anniversary of my father's death, learning that an eternally young at heart old New York friend passed away tragically in Malibu in August -- to the relatively mundane -- a project going south in a spectacular crash and burn way -- these things have all mixed together to make me anxious and fearful for the past several weeks.

I believe this is a tad bit evident in some of the posts that I have written.

This week I'm in California again on business, and maybe it's the distance from my everyday life, or maybe it's the mood-enhancing, Vitamin D-laden southern California sunshine, but today I feel like a little air has gotten in.

I realized that in the last month I haven't had any really big laughs in a while; recognizing that laughter will oxygenate things even more, I went looking for videos that delight and amuse me, that quite simply, crack me up.

So I Googled something guaranteed to delight me:

Models Falling Down.

Now, the video itself is hilarious. Not only does the model fall TWICE, but when she goes down for the second time, her ankles do this crazy wobble as if suddenly they are cooked spaghetti. And pay attention! Both times, she never lets go of the watering can! But the best part of the video is the news anchor wraparound. After the video finishes, they cut back to the studio, where the anchor is laughing so hard he is unable to speak.

I swear, this made me laugh as hard as the clip of Frasier Crane singing "Buttons and Bows."

And I can breathe again.

And totally unrelated to anything else in this post, how frickin' adorable is Rachel Maddow?

Petulant Old Man Gets Testy With Des Moines Register

Unwittingly hilarious.

"I'm not an astronaut but I understand the challenges of space."

You know, come to think of it, I work on the Upper East Side, and Mike Bloomberg LIVES on the UES, so I must be qualified to be mayor of New York. I ride the subways, so I'm fully qualified to be the head of the MTA.

And I can see Russia from my house.

Do you think if the Smothers Brothers still had a variety show, they'd write a song with the chorus "And I can see Russia from my house."?

And yes, the Smothers Brothers reference outs me as old.

Everywhere Like Such As

Obfuscate
Function: verb
Etymology: Late Latin obfuscatus, past participle of obfuscare, from Latin ob- in the way + fuscus dark brown — more at ob-, dusk
Date: 1577
transitive verb
1 a: darken b: to make obscure
2: confuse
intransitive verb
: to be evasive, unclear, or confusing

Personally I like the translations from the Latin, "Dark Brown, In the Way." Fits perfectly in the palinabulary, which as we've seen from her interviews, amounts to a strategy of "keep throwing shit to eat up the time allotted."

In other words, everywhere like such as.

Seriously, how is it that "everywhere like such as" didn't become a cultural buzz phrase the way "Don't tase me, bro!" did?

TWTWTW

Dear Senator Biden -

I am waiting anxiously for Thursday. Don't go all soft and courtly on me. I want to see blood around your muzzle come 10:30. Publicly humiliate the bitch, then eviscerate her. Leave her entrails and eyeglass fragments in a steaming, stinking heap on the stage.

Oh, and in case you're looking for some talking points of why Sarah Palin is even more dangerous than that crackpot old man (who is exhibiting some symptoms of incipient Alzheimer's) on her ticket, read what Sam Harris has to say in Newsweek.

As an aside -- I'm not kidding about that Alzheimer's thing. I think McCain has Alzheimer's. A couple of stage four Alzheimer's symptoms:

* Decreased capacity to perform complex tasks, such as planning dinner for guests, paying bills and managing finances. Or campaigning, preparing for a debate, and attending a White House meeting.

* The affected individual may seem subdued and withdrawn, especially in socially or mentally challenging situations, like a complex discussion about the economy at the White House, in which he hunched toadlike in a corner and contributed nothing to the discussion.

Can we find a Democratic Drudge to start floating that rumor?

Let's Mambo

With twice daily oral antibiotics, lots of soft food, some force feeding and watering, Mambo is looking and acting like his bright-eyed old self. Albeit with an accusatory and judgmental glint in those eyes that says, "You stupid slut! I almost died!" (he did).

Now he's sitting at my shoulder, ready to accept my bribe of Greenies treats to win back his affections.

And I know he's getting better because he now hurries away when I pick up the towel I use to wrap him up for the antibiotic dosing. You can almost hear him saying, "Feets, don't fail me now." Then when I do manage to catch him, he struggles and fights instead of doing his Chicago '68 "I'm not resisting arrest," thing. Good Mambo!

Honestly, you wouldn't guess that this cat is nearly 18 years old.

The Wheels on the Bus Fall Off, Fall Off

Well, I'm relieved that the post-convention bounce has disappeared. The wheels are coming off the McCain/Palin bus and while I'm not quite ready to do a Riverdance on their graves (since, after the 2004 election I never underestimate the stupidity of Americans), I am managing a restrained Peppermint Twist.

If you read the Palin profile in this past Sunday's NY Times (the Times apparently doing the vetting that the McCain campaign didn't do) you get further evidence that Palin is nothing but a vengeful and petty Northern Exposure Boss Tweed.

Wonder if McCain is now wishing he had done the truly maverick thing and tapped Joe Lieberman (not that that would have helped him)? Unless, as I've posited privately to friends, Palin is being cast as the Harriet Miers character, who will implode under the scrutiny of her abuses of power, cronyism, and secretiveness (sound like any President we know, hmmm?), so McCain can bring Joe L in at the eleventh hour?

Actually, since it's now well established that the McCain/Palin campaign is now just a bunch of desperate liars (well, with the exception of maybe Carly Fiorina, and look where that's gotten her), perhaps I should get out my red patent leather high heeled Mary Janes and get ready to do that dance on their graves.

PS. Three cheers to Hillary Clinton for backing out of a UN appearance after she found out Palin was going to be there. Hillary, better than anyone, knows that if one photo of her appears standing next to the radioactive Palin, it will, somewhere down the road, come back to bite her in the ass.