Summer is taking its good, sweet time leaving New York. It was balmy out last night—likely one of the last warm evenings of the season—so J and I had drinks on an outdoor deck that was 14 floors above Broadway and 54th St. To the left, down below, the marquee for the David Letterman show jetted out onto the sidewalk. To the right, Broadway flowed into the evening glow of Times Square. The tourists, God bless them, were out en masse.

J is a producer at a major news organization. She just won an Emmy for a piece she did on a children’s hospital in Iraq. I asked her where she was going to keep the statue and she said she wasn’t getting one. Apparently, when you win an Emmy, you have to pay for the statue. It’s $350 and she doesn’t want to spend the money. D, her husband, said that he’d be happy to pay for it but she is resistant. She can certainly afford it. She just doesn’t want to pay for it. She’s crazy, right? Wouldn’t you buy your Emmy if you won one? I would.

Here’s another sure sign that summer is coming to a close: They are rolling up the sod in Bryant Park to make way for the ice skating rink. Construction will start next week. By the time the autumn winds start to whip down 42nd Street off the Hudson River, the hot chocolate kiosks and morning skaters will be back.

My mom was just diagnosed with Pulmonary Fibrosis. Her lungs are badly and irreparably scarred. She is too old for a lung transplant and needs to be on oxygen 24/7. She can’t walk more than 100 feet without losing her breath. That parameter will shrink and eventually she’ll be bound to a wheelchair. She can only sleep sitting up.

She got this way, of course, because of cigarettes. The doctor asked how long she has been smoking. Ironically, she has never smoked a cigarette in her entire life. Not one. Her father and the two zeros she married were chain smokers, so she has been living inside a cloud of cigarette smoke her entire life.

If you smoke, you are no longer permitted to read my blog. Go away and don’t come back. Fucker.

This publicity still from the new Micky Rourke film The Wrestler has made the rounds since winning the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.

What you can kind of see in this pic (depending on your monitor resolution), but is as clear as day in this morning’s print version of the New York Times, is a sign held by someone in the audience. In the print version, on the front page of the Arts section, they forgot to darken that sign in Photoshop. It reads:

I’m picturing all those staid old crows on the Upper East Side doing a spit-take with their morning French press. It’s a cheap laugh but since we’re in for another financial bloodbath today, I’ll take it.

Actual front page headline from this morning’s New York Times:

In ‘Sweetie’ and ‘Dear,’ a Hurt Beyond Insult for the Elderly

Yet another piece of piercing investigative journalism from The Grey Lady.

Last week I sent a text message to R, esq., asking him if the horrendous market gyrations have had any effect on his accounts. He texted back:

Here’s what I get for trying to invest: Fucked. Rubes and the market don’t mix.

The irony is that we were led into this meltdown by a group of people who were supposed to be the finest minds in the business. You could paper Madison Square Garden with all the advanced degrees from Wharton, Duke, Yale, etc. It turns out those guys didn’t know SHIT about investing. Or they knew but ignored what they were taught at those august institutions. I can’t decide which is worse.

I was blasting the radio while driving The Daughters around this past weekend and they started a chant from the back seat. It began quietly and then it rose to a shriek. “No jazz! No jazz! NO JAZZ!”

They’re just a couple of punks who don’t know anything about music. Yet.

I finally saw Knocked Up over the weekend. I liked it. The best line:

Life doesn’t care about your vision.

Boy howdy! Judd Apatow got that right, didn’t he?

I have a theory that everyone has something on their iPod that they are secretly and deeply ashamed of. Something that they PRAY doesn’t come up in a shuffle in mixed company. Well, I’m willing to show you mine if you show me yours. I am putting my reputation as a cutting edge sophisticate on the line, but I’m willing to do it for the sake of a decent post.

On my iPod, you’ll find the theme to almost every James Bond film. I suppose I could have wiggled out of this by claiming a 60s hipster panache for Nancy Sinatra’s You Only Live Twice or Tom Jones’ Thunderball, but how can I possibly defend Matt Monro’s From Russia With Love or Gladys Knight’s License to Kill? I can’t! It’s terrible! Please don’t judge me. It’s bigger than I am and I can’t seem to help myself.