About a month ago I had to work over a weekend, so the Benevolent Dictators that employ me said I could have a comp day as a sop. Today was the first really nice day outside – plentiful warm sunshine – so I took my comp day and spent it in the Guggenheim and wandering around Central Park. If you are in Central Park on a weekday in the middle of the afternoon, you will bear witness to a remarkable phenomena. People are out and about, casually strolling, enjoying the day, with no particular place to go. A lot of people in New York just do not work. I have no idea how they generate income but I can tell you one thing, they are not sitting in a skyscraper at a specific desk for a set amount of time on the same five days of the week while trying to clandestinely check the baseball scores and the latest Bukowski titles up on eBay. It’s maddening to watch these people. I wish I could take the afternoon I had today and somehow turn it into a money making venture. Now THAT’S a career path worth following!

Last week, I walked down 7th Avenue, took a right on 30th St. and then walked over to 8th Avenue. Here’s what I passed while strolling down 30th St.:

Megaris Men’s Furs (Men’s furs, for Christ’s sake! Super Fly TNT must be back in town.)
30th St. Guitars
Image Anime (The go-to place in New York for Japanese anime mags.)
American Dental Center
The Recording & Rehearsal Arts Building
St. John the Baptist Catholic Church
D.P. Cigars (Proprietors of fine handmade cigars featuring the imported Bravo El Grande 9″ 62 Gauge. Viva!)
Urban Stages Theater (Theater for those whose political leanings are to the left of Mao.)
Rebel Nightclub (Live music, all night long.)
Antonio Oliveri Drop In Center (Yes, there are still junkies in Manhattan. This place hasn’t been COMPLETELY sanitized.)
The Molly Wee Pub and Restaurant

Without straying off this one block, you could conceivably find yourself smoking an expensive, hand rolled cigar in your full length mink coat while buying a new Gibson Les Paul and then taking in some guerilla theater after enjoying a hearty Irish meal and a pint o’ Guinness, during which you read the new issue of Megami. After the theater, you could stop and say a novena that the demo you just cut would get your band a Friday night slot, for which you would look razor sharp with your newly whitened teeth.

There’s more life in this measly 1/5th of a mile than there is in the whole expanse of my sleepy bedroom community in New Jersey.

On Sunday we went to a birthday party for a 3 year-old that was thrown by an insanely wealthy family. Not merely rich and comfortable mind you, but a degree of wealth that is rare, even for this prosperous country. Out in the suburbs, birthday parties for children have taken on the seriousness and grandeur of a presidential inauguration and they require the same degree of planning and careful execution as does a military operation. I believe that this unhealthy trend was born out of a parents’ insecurity about their place in society and, more than anything else, a lack of anything better to do.

I don’t know these people. I hadn’t met them before. In fact, Mrs. Wife barely knows them and we are still wondering why we received an invitation in the first place. However, as soon as we saw the address and realized that it was in the high net worth district, we thought we should go. If nothing else, it would give me a new benchmark for my own mediocrity. The “house” was across the street from Jon Bon Jovi’s “house.” (He has a pretty nice “house” too.) We pulled into the gated driveway and looked up to the top of a hill and saw, what appeared to be, a medium-sized hotel. Six year-old said, “Wow! They live in a palace!” My house, in contrast, has faded yellow vinyl siding and a driveway that floods when it rains hard. We drove up a winding driveway (that, I’m betting, doesn’t flood) through a—not kidding— vineyard where the—not kidding—Mexicans toiled in the field pruning the grapevines. We parked the car and, me feeling a bit like Jed Clampett, walked up a grand stone staircase to the main entrance to the palace. It was beautiful, but in a McMansionish kind of way. It wasn’t the kind of classic old mansion they could use as a location to film an adaptation of a Jane Austin novel. This is better suited to film one of Martha Stewart’s Caucasian tomes.

We were greeted at the door by The King himself and after some perfunctory introductions and an uncomfortable moment, I handed him the birthday gift and made my way into the dining room where a large round table in the center of the room was loaded down with food. It was only 10:30 the morning so they served a brunch. I am here to testify that I had The Most Amazing Bagel I have ever eaten. And I’ve eaten tens of thousands. I sliced open a pumpernickel bagel that was as big and soft as a pillow and loaded it down with lox, Sopressa Salami and whitefish spread. Heaven in every bite, my friends.

After stuffing my face and insuring that I smelled like a fishmonger with a caffeine addiction, I sought out The King to thank him for his hospitality. I told him how much I admired the painting above the fireplace and he said that he picked it up while honeymooning in Bali. Because of the insecurities, envy and deep feelings of inadequacy that I’ve been carefully nurturing my whole life, I badly wanted to dislike these people. I wanted to believe that, despite their ludicrous wealth, they were unhappy and lacked a soul. The fact is that both The King and The Queen could not have been nicer to my family and their two children seemed to be perfectly charming. I had no choice but to put my judgment and negative preconceived notions back on the shelf for another day and enjoy their hospitality. Drat.

Six year old daughter likes to sing. A lot. When she thinks she’s alone and nobody can hear her, she’ll break out into long arias about whatever is on her mind. She makes up the lyrics and tune as she goes along and is heavily influenced by the songs of Alan Menkin, writer of The Little Mermaid, Pocahontas, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, etc. etc. ad nauseam. Yesterday, she thought she was alone and broke out into song and I surreptitiously grabbed a pad and pen and quickly jotted down the lyrics. This, from a 6 year-old’s tormented soul:

I made my decision
I want to go to Disney World
I’ll pack everything
Like my seashell collection
And say, “Disney, here I come!”

I want to be with Meredith (her friend at church)
I want to be with Ian (her boyfriend in kindergarten)
I want him to be in love with me
But I don’t know how to do that
It’s like a fairy tale

That’s correct, daughter. It’s a fairy tale.

I was given the following hygiene report from 6 year-old daughter:

I don’t think Doree brushed her teeth today because she went like this to me—HHHAAAAAAGGGH!!!—and it smelled like pretzels.

Sure, it’s just pretzels now but what happens when she moves on to the hard stuff? Have you ever gotten close to someone who just polished off a big bag of sour cream and onion chips? Or, that neutron bomb of snack foods, Smokin’ Cheddar Cheese BBQ Doritos? It’s a slippery slope, Doree. Please don’t make me organize an intervention.