Yesterday evening I was walking across 33rd St. towards Penn Station for the long train ride home when I witnessed a horrible sight; thousands of people streaming out of Penn Station onto Seventh Avenue. The last time I saw a mass of people that large all pouring down an Avenue in one direction, a jet had just slammed into a skyscraper. Thankfully, it was nothing that serious. It was a train station power failure—every commuter’s worst nightmare. The dumb masses scattered in search of a way home. There’s a ferry across town that goes to New Jersey and there’s always the lovely, dignity-sucking busses of Port Authority.

To hell with all that, thought I. These problems have a way of correcting themselves in two or three hours, so instead of running around town in the stupefying heat trying to find an alternate way out of the city, I walked around the corner to the Loew’s 34th St. movie theater and saw The Dark Knight instead. It was quite good, although not as good as they say it is. I’ll tell you what they’re right about, though—Heath Ledger deserves an Oscar. Creepy x 1,000.

By the time I got to the theater the movie had already been playing for about five minutes. Under normal circumstances, that would have been a deal-killer for me. I HATE walking into a movie late, but these were extenuating circumstances and it couldn’t be helped. I was a bit euphoric over the quick-thinking originality of my decision to not follow the masses and instead use that time in a more entertaining fashion. Good ideas don’t bubble up in my head very often so when they do, it’s something to celebrate. I flew up four flights of escalators to the theater, threw open the door, chugged up the ramp to the seats and at the top of the ramp, right before you turn left into the seating area, there it was:

A stroller.

What kind of fucking horrible shithead monsters would bring a little baby into a dark, noisy, violent, ugly movie like Batman!? It’s an act of absolute selfishness. A baby is like a sponge. They take in everything that’s going on around them. They were, of course, a very young couple who had gotten careless with their contraception and accidentally had a baby. Children with children. I gave them the hairy eyeball. All throughout the film you could hear the baby babble, cry and coo. I shouldn’t judge. I am NOT the greatest parent of all time, that’s for damn sure. There are times when I want to run and hide from the suffocating responsibility of it all. But JESUS CHRIST some people need to be STERALIZED. That poor kid doesn’t stand a chance.

Stop your messing around
Better think of your future
Time you straighten right out
Creating problems in town

Stop your fooling around
Time you straighten right out
Better think of your future
Else you’ll wind up in jail

There ya go. If you know that song—a bouncy, cheerful melody wrapped around an ominous message to Rudy—it will now play over and over inside your head for the rest of the day. No need to thank me. Best trombone solo ever.

Before my meditation class last night I had dinner at McDonald’s because, as you know, I can’t do anything nice for my mind/body without first trying to sabotage my good intentions. I was hoping that during the opening mediation, the essence of my Big Mac would emanate from the pours in my skin and fill the air, making all of those closet meat eaters hungry.

While enjoying my fries, the McD’s muzak station played Love Is Like Oxygen by 70s British glam band Sweet. That song rocks! I love it! Who doesn’t? It’s one of the very first bar chord riffs I taught myself.

Love is like oxygen
You get too much it gets you high
Not enough and you’re going to die

I bit into my hamburger and suddenly realized that Big Macs are like oxygen as well. You get too much, they get you high (or sleepy or fat or constipated), not enough and you might as well die. After Sweet, they played More Than This by Roxy Music off of their seminal album Avalon, which is also a great song, but not in a jokey manner like Love Is Like Oxygen. It’s a great song in a serious manner. There’s nothing jokey about Roxy Music. I wish I were Bryan Ferry. I wouldn’t be sitting here typing in this idiot blog, I can tell you that much.

I went to sleep at 10:00 last night, woke up at midnight and have been up ever since. It doesn’t occur often enough to be considered an ongoing problem but it does happen on occasion. I’m scheduled for a workout at 5:00 and a meditation class from 7:00-9:00 p.m. There’s a fine line between being filled with meditative light and being passed out cold and I think I’m going to cross that line tonight.

* * *

During a portion of my train ride into the city we pass over a bridge that stretches across the entrance to Raritan River. It’s a pretty view, particularly at the hour I travel because I get to watch the sun come up on the Atlantic Ocean. The river is dotted with dozens of anchored sailboats, all of the occupants presumably still asleep. Everybody has problems, right? Nobody escapes the difficulties that are inherent in the human condition. But I wonder what the people inside those sailboats, gently bobbing in the morning tide, consider to be “problems?” How hard can life possibly be for them?

The numbers of evenings during the year that Mrs. Wife can come into the city and join me for dinner are few and far between. It requires military-like planning. There are train schedules to pour over and children to abandon. Shoes and outfits must be selected and quickly rejected. A restaurant must be chosen. It’s a lot of work and these opportunities are not to be wasted. Fortunately, my food standards are so low that it’s almost impossible for me to have a bad meal. It’s the secret of life! Keep your sense of value low to the ground and almost everything becomes an unexpected treat.

So when she makes the effort to come into the city and we meet a few friends in an Italian restaurant and the food isn’t fit for dogs, it can be a bit of a disappointment. Italian! How do you fuck up Italian food? Aside from Chinese, Italian food in Manhattan is almost always a sure bet. Do yourself a favor and avoid Otto on 5th Avenue in the West Village at all costs. Undercooked pasta (should pasta be crunchy?), s-l-o-w (albeit pleasant) service and it’s not so cheap. Dinner for 4 was $120. That’s a lot of beans for causal Italian dining, don’t you think? Plus we had to sit through a story about a stolen car that went on twice as long as it should have. Mrs. Wife almost passed out into her glass of wine from the tedium.

The evening wasn’t a total bust. Mrs. Wife got into the city early, visited an old friend and had a pedicure at one of those little Korean joints. As I type this, I’m still picking undercooked bits of pasta out of the crevices in my teeth with my tongue. Vaffanculo!