There’s no heat in hell to match midtown Manhattan during a summer scorcher. The sun’s blister bounces off the steel and glass and is magnified down to the street. The subway keeps the sidewalks cooking from underneath. It’s like taking a casual stroll on the surface of Mercury. It’s humid and bad for your hair and unless you enjoy the feeling of your underwear sticking to your ass, there’s not much to like about it. It smells pretty bad and people walk with a bit more head-down determination than normal.

Fortunately, there is refuge. Dotted all over town are quiet, cool rooftop bars. Check the nicer hotels. There, you can watch the sun set over New Jersey and sip a Ketel One and cranberry (or three) which, I admit, is a bit of a girly drink, but they’re so refreshing that I can’t resist. J and I paid a visit to the High Top, a rooftop on 8th Avenue and 48th Street, and ordered some (very expensive) hamburgers. We talked about the surface stuff first and by the third round we finally got to the good stuff. I like it when she slaps me around and calls me a big whiner. It’s sobering. And I think she enjoys it. I believe it’s a warm-up for her husband. After that, we took a trip to the Cosmic Diner on 52nd Street. Apple pie and a cup o’ decaf for me, chocolate cake and a tall glass of cold milk for her. It’s the fuel you need to survive the heat.

I keep a running list of books that I read throughout the year. My memory chips have been scorched by my early years of overzealous weed consumption and keeping a list prevents me from reading the same book twice. That would be funny if it weren’t true. Looking back, I see that in 2005 I made it through 23 books. Not too bad. Then, in 2006, a friend gave me an iPod as a birthday gift. Thanks to that new addiction, the number of books I read for that year was reduced to 16.

Here we are in 2008 and I have introduced this idiot blog into the mix. Add to that the New York Times every day and two daughters who are getting old enough to require ever-increasing amounts of my time and I am struggling to keep up the pace. I look up at my bookshelf, see the unread copy of Crime and Punishment and realize that if I started it this evening, I might not finish it until sometime in 2010. I miss getting lost in a story.

If you’re not vigilant, it will slip away.

In the summer, the theater community here in NYC takes a holiday. The only plays in town until the Fall are stale Broadway productions that have been grinding on year after year. Casts change and although the show is still running, it’s often just a shadow of what it was on opening night. One of the greatest shows I’ve ever seen, August: Osage County, just lost their principal actors, so that’s that. Many shows start gimmick casting. They hire B-list actors and TV sit com stars to draw the out-of-towners and the morbidly curious. “Taylor Hicks to Make Broadway Debut in Grease!” Barf.

The exceptions to this rule are the small, intimate, experimental plays. These are shows that barely find financing and are produced in non-traditional theaters that are off the beaten path. They can either be an unexpected delight or so bad that they’re painful to watch. CB and I saw one last night, Still The River Runs, at the Center Stage theater. The Center Stage is a black box (an actual term) on 21st Street that you access by taking a tiny elevator to the 4th floor of a building that has more to do with light industry than it does theater. It’s not terribly comfortable. You sit in folding chairs, the lights are bare and hang just above your head, but it’s a pure form of theater.

I’m relieved to report that the show was a lot of fun. CB and I both enjoyed it. (I should mention that he has higher standards than I do and is harder to please. I’m a pushover.) It’s a dark comedy about two rednecks and a stolen corpse. Two very fine actors do the entire show themselves, including the set changes during the scene intervals. They manage to do an awful lot of storytelling with little more at their disposal than a few props and some raw talent and energy.

The little shows are nice, but it’s also interesting to go to Broadway and see what can be done with a bloated budget. And I don’t mean tossing money away on Taylor Hicks.

Every spring, The New York Times publishes highlights from the various commencement addresses given around the country. They print a few paragraphs from the famous and notables who impart their wisdom to the graduating masses. It’s one of my favorite annual features.

That nitwit Clarence Thomas gave the commencement address at High Point University and in it, he said the following:

Let me first confess that I am no good at telling people what to think or how to live their lives.

Pardon me, but isn’t that EXACTLY what the Supreme Court purports to do? He is a small, silly man who wound up with a very important job. J.K. Rowling gave the commencement address at Harvard and her comments were the best by far. Take a moment and read this. It’s worth your time.

By any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

It’s enough to give you hope, isn’t it?

Someone in the UK posted a link to my blog as recommended reading, which is VERY flattering, but they said that I “moan just a wee bit” meaning, I suppose, that I moan quite a lot. Hummm, thought I. So I went back and reread some of my posts and do you know what? He’s absolutely 100% correct! I am a colossal moaner and complainer. How about that! Cone to think of it, I’ve always been a bit of a misanthrope. I might have a genetic predisposition that leans towards melancholy. In the past, some girls have mistaken my moaning for charm. I believe Mrs. Wife might have done that at first, but I don’t think she finds it charming any longer. Well, I’m not going to stop my bitchin’, that’s for sure. As though I could!