This weekend was the annual ABAA antiquarian book fair in Manhattan. I start looking forward to it right around February and it never disappoints. Imagine the one material thing you love the most. Now, imagine an armory filled to the rafters with the best of the best of that one special thing. When I walk in it smells like old paper and glue. I get woozy.

I collect rare books but this stuff is way out of my league. No matter. I have to go. It’s like the literature museum except everything has a price tag on it. A dealer from California was selling a book that use to be part of my collection. The asking price was a hell of a lot more than I remember selling it for. That’s always a bit of a shock. Here’s a few high spots.

This is a fourth folio of the works of Shakespeare. It was printed in 1685 and is in pretty miraculous condition. When you collect books, condition is king. Yours for $225,000. And that’s for a fourth folio! A first, if it ever came on the market, would easily run into the millions.

Agatha Christie’s most popular novel is And Then There Were None. It’s been made into films and plays and has sold millions of copies. In the U.S. it was originally published as Ten Little Indians, which is kind of racist. But it’s not quite as racist as the original title from the UK first edition.

I suppose this wasn’t a big issue in 1939 but it’s pretty difficult to look at today. The illustration of jungle savages is particularly grating. Agatha Christie! My God! What was she thinking?!

This isn’t a first edition but it’s still pretty valuable. It’s an early copy of The Wizard of OZ that signed by the cast on the left free end paper…[You can click on this to study the signatures.]

…and by a bunch of Munchkins on the right free end paper. $85,000

There’s always at least one nice copy of The Great Gatsby and this one is a beaut. The stunning jacket, one of the most iconic in American literature, was designed by Francis Cugat (older brother of bandleader Xavier Cugat.) $175,000.

We now move from the sublime to the ridiculous. This is purported to be Ernest Hemingway’s typewriter. The asking price is $110,000. For that kind of money, you could get a near-complete run of his first editions. Wouldn’t you want that instead? I would.

And if you’re interested in beat literature, then you must, must have Jack Kerouac’s pants. That’s right, his pants. These are his jeans and what they’re doing in a rare book fair is beyond me. Looking for a sucker, I suppose. $5,500.

There’s always a few first editions of On The Road and Catcher in the Rye in the room. Each of those titles would set you back thousands, but I see them with such regularity that it makes me question their rarity.

That’s my obsession. Have you got one?

I am doll eyes
Doll mouth, doll legs
I am doll arms, big veins, dog bait
Yeah, they really want you, they really do
I want to be the girl with the most cake

Doll Parts
Hole

Have you ever had an evening that wasn’t suppose to amount to much, but turned out to be magic? I love those.

I am full of hidden prejudices. I’m working hard to rid myself of them but the fact is that I have preconceived notions about some people. I am predisposed to dislike certain types. It’s ugly and unfair.

For instance, politicians. In my mind, politicians are inherently prone to corruption and are not to be trusted. The fact that you would even want to be a politician is an indication that you have a flawed personality. If one of The Daughters marries a politician, I will fell like I failed them.

I was in the city for an interview. Afterwards, I was meeting someone for dinner, but the dinner fell through at the last minute. I sent out a few text messages on my way to the train station and received an invitation to meet a friend and his girlfriend for drinks. They were drinking in one of those unique Manhattan pubs. It’s a converted barge that’s anchored off the 26th Street pier. They were outside on the upper deck. You walk along the side of the ship to the stern and then up a spiral staircase. Cool breeze. Sun setting over New Jersey. The Hudson River slowly floating by. The pub gently rocks. To hell with the train, I decided.

My friend’s girlfriend represented the Dominican Republic in a recent Miss World competition. I’ve seen pics of her and have been wanting to meet her (OF COURSE). She’s a beauty queen. What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think of beauty pageants? Yeah, me too. JonBenét Ramsey, the nauseating world of child beauty pageants and vapid contestants.

In person, she is so stunning that I was taken aback when I first sat down. Once I regained my composure, I realized that she was speaking in complete, coherent sentences, despite the fact that English is her second language. (She taught herself English by watching TV. She speaks three languages to my one). She couldn’t have been more charming and down to earth. Funny. A good listener. She told interesting stories about living in China for 40 days while in a pageant.

She can’t work in the U.S. because of some immigration documents that haven’t been processed yet. What does she do with all that free time? Does she walk up and down 5th Avenue and spend my friend’s money as quickly as possible? Sit all day and chat with models? Nay. She volunteers. She took it upon herself to find where she could be of good use to the underprivileged. Nobody was looking over her shoulder. It wasn’t to bolster her resume.

Quick to judge. Slow to understand. I wonder what else I’m wrong about?

By the time we left, the boat was packed, packed, packed with the after-work city drones. We walked down the spiral staircase and there was a narrow path out through the crowd. We had to walk single file, my friend first, then his girlfriend, and then me. As we walked through the crowd, I saw men and women freeze in their spot and just stare as she passed by. As though they couldn’t believe their eyes.

Follow me boys, follow me,
When you think you’re really beat
That’s the time to lift your feet,
And follow me boys, follow me,
Pick’em up, put’em down and follow me,

Follow Me Boys
Written for the Boy Scouts of America
by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman

I’ve added a Followers gadget over to the right. To those who are psychologically evolved, inserting a tracking gadget is a non-event. Sadly, my insatiable neediness turned it into an angst-ridden ordeal.

As I’ve discussed with Daisyfae in several email exchanges, I spend far (far) too much time pouring over my stats and comments. I realize that maintaining a blog is something that is purely for the ‘self’ and that worrying about the size of your audience is a exercise in futility. Wishing for more readers is inane and pointless, but I’ve never permitted sound reasoning to interfere with my foggy judgment and I’m not about to start now.

Last summer I received a flattering review from the hard asses at Ask and Ye Shall Receive that I thought would result in a media firestorm. Those guys aren’t easy to please, you know! There was a big spike in the bar chart which has since tapered off.

At my worst, I get into comments/unique hits pissing contests with people who are completely unaware that they’re in a pissing contest with me. A Followers gadget seemed suicidal! Which evil genius wrote the code for a gadget whose soul purpose it is to cast a harsh spotlight on how few readers I have? Did he/she do it specifically to mock me? I think so.

But there it is, chuckling. Ridiculing me. I might create a dozen false accounts just to goose up my number.

3-Year Old Daughter removed the flat, wooden slat from its sleeve at the bottom of the window shade, stood up on our bed and stuck it in the rotating ceiling fan. It made a terrible racket. I bolted upstairs and shouted at her.

“What are you doing?!”

“I wanted to see what it felt like. Now, you made me cry. Waaahhhhh…”

She’ll be the one who dates a biker. And not one those weekend pretenders, either. You’ve seen them. Actuary accountants who don expensive leather jackets and get all manly on Sunday mornings. She’ll date the real thing. This is the same innocent flower who took a pair of shears to our curtains.