If you truly love your friends, gather them together, ask them to get their affairs in order, and make them the fried chicken I made last night, which, after being soaked in buttermilk for 24 hours, was then fried in a mixture of lard, butter, and bacon. Listen to them moan in appreciation of how delicious it is, and then watch as, one by one, their cholestrol goes through the roof, their arteries clang shut and they topple backwards out of their chairs. Then pile them in a corner and finish their desserts for them. They won't need dessert where they are now.

As the banks topple and the economy goes into a nosedive, it's good to start entertaining at home. It's also good to start economizing in other ways. You can make a lovely evening dress out of Bounty and duct tape, and a pair of spraypainted shoeboxes make lovely dress shoes, sure to be a conversation starter in any situation.There are also simple ways t make extra money in any situation. When dining in a fine restaurant, bring a large waterbug with you, and at an opportune moment, slip it into the foie gras. You will certainly enoy a free meal. Be sure and take the cutlery with you when you go: restaurants love the free advertising that comes when you use their monogrammed silver to entertain your own guests. Also, I find, when hobnobbing with rich people, a good thing to do is to ask them how much money they have, and then ask for some. They love that. You can also keep up appearances in many small, easy ways: a chandelier perks up any small cardboard dwelling, and when cooking for guests, there are many delicious casseroles that can be whipped up in a minute using Little Friskies canned food as a delicious and economical base. A quaint 18th century French custom saves on water: rather than washing, use copious amounts of perfume, and if someone complains, you can denounce them as decadent aristocrats and have them beheaded. Economizing! It's easy and fun!

I hope you enjoy these helpful hints, because I could use new friends, now that the last ones I had are now piled like cordwood in a corner of my cozy one-bedroom apartment.

Chicken, anyone?

Love,
Peri, who might need to adjust her meds.

There are very few things more disturbing than arriving home to find a friend on your doorstep, happy and healthy and smiling, when that friend has been dead for five years.
But I arrived home the other day to find my friend Quentin Crisp standing on my stoop, dressed exactly as he used to, in a fedora and a red suit and something halfway between an ascot and a scarfdance....in full makeup, chatting away in his British accent to a young, handsome man.
Well, it turned out to be John Hurt, reprising his role as Quentin in a new movie, but even though I knew that on some level, it didn't stop me bursting in tears and crying "Quentin!"
He was very sweet. he said"Oh, you were his friend?"
I nodded, and gulped, and swallowed my tears. "Yes." I said. "And -I love your work."

More on QC later, and other magical hijinks, but now off to do two readings and then some bizarre private karaoke. (No, no, it's all aboveboard, just ...oh, will explain later.) Tomorrow, there's a big bicycle event at South Street Seaport, hosted by Matthew Modine and Bobby Kennedy Jr, that I'm volunteering for [and Joe Kelly, may I say hi for you?] --so come on down and celebrate clean, affordable transportation!
love
p

Every time I try to write about Sarah Palin, the flames of outrage shooting out of my head impair my Mac's function somewhat, so instead I BEG/COMMAND/RECOMMEND that you go to the Jezebal blog site and view Samatha Bee's BEST VIDEO EVER and read Jezebal's opinion as well --awesome: REALLY-DO THIS NOW!! (Please.Thank you.)


http://jezebel.com/5045887/the-daily-show-palin-is-able-to-make-the-choice-she-doesnt-really-want-other-people-to-have?autoplay=true

http://jezebel.com/5045934/why-sarah-palin-incites-near+violent-rage-in-normally-reasonable-women

Hoo boy. Love,
Peri

I feel like Judy Garland, except without the addictions, the self-destructive genius, the string of hit MGM musicals and the failed marriages....oh, okay, wait, maybe I don't feel like Judy Garland at all. Except for the "comeback" thing. Hers was at Carnegie Hall (seats 3000), mine was at the Metropolitan room (seats 120)...you know what, maybe we'll just drop this whole Judy thing and just go on with our lives, yes?-Good. Thanks.

I just finished a run of a one woman show (I was the one woman--apparently multiple personality disorders don't count) called "Famous In France." First time back doing a full-on solo cabaret show since 2002. And last night, finally, everything fell into place. It was one of those nights when, as a performer, you feel like things are going SO well with the audience that you could probably do your laundry onstage and they'd still be with you, although that's not something you really want to put to the test. I DID do a few light handwashables, though, and they LOVED it. -Um, joke.- But it was great.---Oops, damn, must run.

Thanks for all the support, my dears. Videos will be up soon.
xxx

Over the top great reception, if I says so meself. Many famous humans showing up, which is sweet. Everyone having a BIG party at the show. COME and PLAY!!!!

Thanks...love
Peri
Peri Lyons' new neo-cabaret show, "Famous In France", is an insane meditation on our culture's obsession with celebrity and includes "An Explanation", a song written from the point of view of the wife of the Marquis de Sade, and the cult hit "I Google You", written by NY Times bestselling author Neil Gaiman ("American Gods", "Good Omens", "Stardust").

Wednesday, September 3 @ 9:45
Cover charge- $15

IMPORTANT: CALL FOR RESERVATIONS ASAP! 212 206 0440!

The Metropolitan Room

34 west 22 Street

It's quite nice to perform again. It would also be quite nice if I could, just once, remember the words to my opening song, "Peel me A Grape". It seemed like a fun, easy song to do, but either I have a mental block or it's actually clinically impossible to learn the words. It is some comfort that Diana Krall blows the lyrics on her recording of it. But she ain't up on stage with me, so screw her. "Peel me a grape...crush me some ice..skin me a peach, save the fuzz for my pillow..." How hard is that? Sheesh.
Luckily, I DO remember the words to my own songs.-Mostly. My friend LeAn told me she sings "Moon Is Full" to her baby daughter, except she sings it in a "mouse voice" and changes the word "you" to the word "cheese". Like this: "The moon is ful....The moon is full of..CHEESE..tonight..." I think I might do that in all of my songs. Or in any song I sing. For instance, in "Michele" (which i don't sing but is the first "I love you" song that came to mind), the bridge would now go "I love cheese I love cheese I LOVE cheese", which would work for me, because, in reality, I do truly love cheese. Also, I could replace the word "love" with the word "lunch" in all songs. "What the world needs now...is lunch sweet lunch..." "All you need is lunch! [doo de doot de doot)". GOD I'm a genius. And also, now, rather hungry.

Brought Eddie Sebastian Private Eye (who is a cat) to Brooklyn, to my fella's house, because it was breaking my heart to see him wandering around my apartment looking for Shirka. Why he would do this, I don't know, because in real life, they HATED each other. But there he was, walking around and going "rroOOW?" interoggatively, and it just killed me. -Now, however, he is happy as a clam [ARE clams happy? Youth Wants To KNow!] and is thrilled to be able to get all the attention AND the FULL can of cat food for himself. Elizabeth Kubler Ross defined the five stages of grieving [when a loved one passes] as denial, bargaining, anger, depression and acceptancxe: but Eddie has added a new phase of the grief process..."Unashamed and Greed-Inspired Jubilance". I can't say it's becoming. -Sigh.

The show is going VERY well. VERY VERY well. Yay!!!
The brilliant Neil Gaiman song, which was written by the brilliant neil gaiman (funny how that works) is the show's big hit, and justifiably so, it's absolutely...brilliant. "I Google You", is the title, and you should come see the show just for that, never mind that i slaved over my OWN songs for simply HOURS....noooo, Mr. "I Can Write Anything Better Than You" can take ten minutes out of his busy schedule of accepting every known writing award while fending off comely young women who want to be his personal love slaves, and knock out a song that is better than most written by professional songwriters.- Bastard.-Ooops, I meant "thank you." -Sometimes I got those words mixed up, and merry hijinks ensue!

ACTUALLY, the OTHER big hit is "Dead Egyptian Blues", a song about visiting the Tutenkhamen exhibition and...well, it's GREAT. Michael Peter Smith is my other favorite living songwriter. I do three of his songs in the show, including the one that gives the show its title. I'll post a link to his webpage tomorrow, when it's not 3;36 a.m. (it IS tomorrow already, though, isn't it?) Michael is a genius and he's adorable. As is Neil..frankly, if Neil lived in NYC I'd be on him like a duck on a junebug, but 1) he doesn't, and 2) ALL women who read his work feel that way, and 3) I DID just meet the love of my life, and one mustn't be greedy. Besides, polyandry [the chick version of polygamy] isn't even legal in Utah. I will content myself with reading "The Graveyard Book" when it comes out in four weeks. It's his best ever--okay, I love "Good Omens" too--oh, just go buy all his stuff. Now, please.

Getting away from music and boys (but why would you WANT to?), I think it's simply wonderful that McCain appointed a woman to his ticket to attract Hillary voters. Never mind that the only Hillary voters who will vote for this woman are ones who, after Hillary stepped down, mourned their loss by getting a frontal lobotomy. The only thing this woman has in common with Hillary is that they are both carbon based wingless featherless lifeforms with bilateral symmetry.-And even THAT might be pushing it.-But McCain seems to think that a woman is a woman is a woman. Frankly, we ARE all interchangeable. We all look alike too. I'm so glad he had the guts to acknowledge that fundamental truth: that us girls are just girls, when it comes right down to it.Whether we believe in creating a workable healthcare plan, as Hillary does, or we believe that our sister's exhusband shouldn't be a cop because we don't like him so it's okay to get him fired, as Palin does...underneath it all, we're just sisters under the skin.-Honestly, it would have been a lot more direct of McCain to just go to the houses og=f every woman in America, ring the doorbell, and when a woman answered , just slap her. It would have been marginally less insulting. But the important thing is this: we may now have a creationist, Dominionist (google it, you'll be TERRIFIED), would-be-totaslitarian-fundamentalist a heartbeat away from a Presidency, but I can sleep at night because that woman KNOWS how to gut a moose.
Jesus.

Okay. Come to my show at The Metropolitan Room. There will be a minimum of moosegutting--encore ONLY, I promise. There will be MANY good songs and some amusing patter and maybe I'll fall off my shoes. Hey, you never know your luck.

Love and a hug
Peri

Happy, because last night's performance went really well, at least jusdging by audience reaction; sad, because I lost my beloved calico Shirka to cancer the same day. Shirka was the most beautiful, loving and special animal I have EVER known: I miss her tremendously--she slept on my back with her paws hugging my neck every night for 16 years. But she had a life filled with love,much petting, and delcious canned food...rest in peace, my little one.

The show was SO fun. First time onstage for 5 years--nervous as hell at first, COMPLETELY effed up first song--but made it work, I think.Nothing like blitzing out spectacularly to get an audience on your side.- I hope.- WONDERFUL audience: the beautiful and talented Laura Dawn was there (go check out her music-when she's not busy saving the world through her amazing work at MoveOn, she sings with a band called "The Little Death", which Moby plays bass for-GO TO THEIR NEXT SHOW, she's AMAZING); and Anthony Michael Hall, from "Breakfast Club" etc (I loved him in "Dead Zone") was there as well. Tonight I think Heather Graham is coming. The Neil Gaiman song "I Google You" was the biggest hit, along with a song I wrote for Handsome Charming, called "What Time Is It In Texas". It was really fun, and I didn't even fall off my six inch stripper heels (the heels are six inches high, that is:not the stripper.) And I kind of like the song sung from the point of view of the wife of the Marquis de sade.

Anyway...at the Metropolitan Room for three more nights: tonight at 7, Tues at 7, and Wed at 9:45. 212 206 0440 for reservations. Please do come, if you're in town. Or even if you're not.

Peri Lyons' new neo-cabaret show, "Famous In France", is an insane meditation on our culture's obsession with celebrity and includes "An Explanation", a song written from the point of view of the wife of the Marquis de Sade, and the cult hit "I Google You", written by NY Times bestselling author Neil Gaiman ("American Gods", "Good Omens", "Stardust").



Saturday, August 30 @ 7:30

Sunday, August 31 @ 7:00

Tuesday, September 2 @ 7:00

Wednesday, September 3 @ 9:45
Cover charge- $15

IMPORTANT: CALL FOR RESERVATIONS ASAP! 212 206 0440!

The Metropolitan Room

34 west 22 Street

NYC, NY. 10010

For more information

Came back from a week in provincetown, where I had the interesting experience of being the only heterosexual in a supermarket that was the size of a small town. It was Carnivale week, and same-sex couples were pushing carts and chasing their kids and bickering over ice cream choices, just like couples of every kind everywhere. I'll never understand the opposition to gay marriage: nothing could be less threatening than two guys with awesome arm developement, arguing over the transfat levels in different potato chip brands, which is, essentially, marriage in a nutshell.
Provincetown was great, although the situation was a bit daunting. If your new fella invites you to meet his family, I'm going to say it doesn't necessarily occur to one that there will be TWENTY FIVE of them. Eight half-siblings, all intense and smart and interesting, and thier assorted spouses, kids, and character quirks. One gorgeous and slightly beleaguered stepmom, a little like Cyd Charisse stepping into the Florence Henderson role in "The Brady Bunch"--although this episode was written by Kaufman and Hart, with a script edit by Eugene O'Neill.-But it all worked out, and by the end of the week all of us were as loving and mildly contemptouos of each other as any other family. I missed my own family something fierce...but that's another story, for another, and slightly sadder, day.

the Carnivale parade was very sweet. It was exactly like any other small town summer parade, except that, in this case, the mayor just happened to have his bum hanging out of his leather chaps, and the pretty girls waving from the floats had started life as boys. The marchers threw candy and bead necklaces, and one two-story float featured bordello life in the Old West, complete with naked cowpoke in bathtub and suspiciously heavyset dancehall girls. Some of the bead necklaces were promotional tools, and I will always treasure my "KY Lube" medallion necklace, although it's hard to think of an occasion to wear it to. -Oh, dear, now it's hard to STOP picturing an occasion to wear it to.Help. I think I might have to go back into therapy.

On my return, found an apartment filled with my two elderly and extremely angry cats, who had made their displeasure known in very direct and extremely smelly ways. I had to spend hours petting them and telling them stories [mostly ones in which various dogs met very unhappy endings] and they finally forgave me, but I think if i stay away any more, they will construct an effigy of John and burn it in the town square.

And that's that. Rehearsed the show today for six hours: we open at the Metropolitan room on Sat Aug 30, 7:30; then it's Aug 31 at 7, Sept 2 at 7, and Sept 3 at 9:45.
The Met Room is the best cabaret venue in the city, and one of the best in the world: it's at 34 West 22nd, between 5th and 6th,www. metropolitanroom.com. The show's shaping up to be both funny and pretty moving: it's a meditation on celebrity, called "Famous In France." 212 206 0440 for reservations, and let me know if you wanna be comped.

big love
Per

Since the whole point of this exercise is to write first and think later [if ever], got some corrections to make to the last entry. First: actually, the night WAS fun beforehand, because I saw some great music with some treasured friends.-But including that happy note would have interfered with the whole "Poor Poor Pitiful Me" theme of the last entry, so somehow...didn't mention it. -Funny how that works.

Second, many of John's and my friends ARE happy for us, they just worry that it's all going a bit fast. I mean, we only met a month ago, and already we have two point four children (the oldest is in college now) and a mortgage.-Okay, actually, no we don't, but we ARE radiating high-intensity smugness rays, and I'm going to guess that's irritating.

Third: I'm just going to keep writing here, because, in actual fact, I am using this as a way of putting off doing the dishes. The dishes, which now reach the ceiling in a Dr. Seuss-like-trembling-stack-of-imminent-catastophe. And yet I will do them, because that is a way of putting off vacuuming. It is important to have a "procrastination-priority-plan." -However, writing SEEMS productive. Perhaps it's time to simply type in the text to "Moby Dick" here. -Yes!! -no, the dishes are now calling me by actual name. This is not good. We do not want out utensils becoming sentient. Damn.

Okay, fine.

love
p

The Marco Polo restuarant is a classic, truly mobbed-up Ritzy 50's Italian joint in Brooklyn: red carpet, flocked wallpaper, gold filigree trim everywhere--and the it's also last place in the world I ever expected to be accused of being a golddigger.
"Peri," a very toasted Walter said, leaning into me in confiding yet hostile way, "there's no trust fund, you know. I mean, I think you should know that. In case."
John hadn't returned from the restroom yet, and I guess Walter thought he'd better get things straight. I think he was defending his friend, but it was odd.
"Um, trust me, Walter. This is not about money." [Note:.I decided not to mention my recent phone call with The Prince, where he invited me to stay on his yacht and I told him I had met someone. He then asked me to come stay in his castle-y type place in the hills outside Florence, and I repeated that I had met someone. there was a pause. I think the Prince always liked me because: 1) I always said "No, I do NOT want to go on a shopping trip to Gucci, thanks,", 2) "No, I do NOT want to go back to your hotel with you," and 3) "On the other hand, I WILL go out for coffee and talk about botany and the history of science with you." -If i was a golddigger, I would be digging in Gucci and Florence right about now. But probably not Brooklyn.]

A month ago, I walked into a bar I didn't want to go to, for a party I didn't feel like attending, on a night I wasn't really enjoying up to that pont, quite frankly. I had just had the slightly surreal experience of hearing that a woman I'd never met, had been telling folks I'd been mildly stalking her, something that would have been much easier for me to do if I'd known her name, workplace, or, say, borough of residence. Or perhaps, more importantly, cared. I was pondering why people take the time and energy to do stuff like that, when they could use the same time and energy to write a book, or learn Texas Hold Em, or do volunteer work, when I bumped into her consort at the concert. Much non-hilarity ensued.- So by the time I strode into the party, I was a wee bit of a Grumpy Gus.-Admittedly, a Grumpy Gus with a tan, red lipstick, and the white Marilyn dress, so when I was stopped in my tracks by the need to stare at a golden eyed James Dean standing by the bar, he actually took a moment to look back at me.

And that was that.

I've been grazed by Cupid's arrow before, and once or twice hit squarely by the little flying bastard, but he'd always used a conventional bow and arrow, not this enormous industrial strength sized crossbow with some sort of psychic curare on the tip. The last month has been spent catching up, talking about books, ideas, art; laughing, and coming to terms with the recognition that we seem to have found something more elusive than a glimpse of an aye-aye: actual, nonfictional True Love.

It's not all sunbeams and roses. There is someone I care about a lot, and the idea of giving up that fantasy has been a little rough. And there has been a strange outbreak of bonedeep jealousy and hostilty among some of our most loved friends...the "golddigger" accusation was just one of the manifestations of that. But I think I'd react the same way, in their position. I didn't trust that men like this existed: enormously emotionally forthcoming and brave, utterly trustworthy, chivalrous, successful, handsome as hell. -Or, if I did, I knew them as the men who were husbands to my women friends, and therefore they existed but were, of course, offlimits to the point of being a separate species.

Finding this kind of thing is traumatic. Terry Pratchett pointed out that there couldbe bad miracles as well as good ones: when a tornado swings out of its way to randomly matchstick a farmhouse, it's a BAD miracle. In the same way, we think of trauma as always being negative...but having to get used to something so outside of one's realm of possibility, can be traumatic in a good way.

I remember once, at a photo shoot, I had found a tiny stray kitten on the way to the photographer's: when I arrived, he was just finishing a shoot with a sushi chef. The sushi chef, a kindly man, took an enormous slab of raw tuna [useless for human eating because it had been under hot lights) and set it in front of the kitten. "For you!" he said.
She took one look at the slab of toro, three times bigger than she was, and promptly ran and hid for five hours. She'd been living out of trashcans: she couldn't adjust to her sudden wild good fortune.

I'm trying not to hide. But I'll tell you: this is one big slab of tuna. I know just how that kitten felt.

much love
a gobsmacked
Peri

* my guy's late and much beloved father was a legendary novelist, who sold (luckily for the Universe) a LOT of books, but whose infinite appetite for life included, eventually, 6 exwives and nine children. This does not bode well for a trust fund hunter, frankly. But since it never occurred to me anyway, who cares?

1) The screen on your Macbook dies. You can only check email in public places until you get: an external monitor.
2) You can pretty much only FIND a good cheap external monitor on Craig's List.
3) You can't BUY it off Craig's List, because public computers, for some reason, DON'T WORK with Craig's List.--No, really- trust me on this. They don't.
4)SO- You need to access Craig's List from your own macbook. So you can buy an external monitor. But you can't SEE Craig's List from your macbook.Because you don't HAVE an external monitor. Because you need to GET one off of Crai-...oh, never mind.

At this point, you feel a migraine coming on, and go lie down.

*****************************************

Stopping smoking. It has NEVER EVER been this difficult. I have a free counselor at the NYC Stop Smoking program (dial 311) , and he was trying to help.
"Hi, this is Mark. What is the problem?"
"Mark", I said, "I love smoking. I just do. Smoking is great. And all the cool kids do it."
"Terry", he said, as everyone always has, and always will,.."It is very very unhealthy.Terry, smoking is bad for you. Smoking kills."
"Yes, Mark. I think I heard that somewhere. But what do you DO?When you feel you want a cigarettte more than you CARE about that remaining 40 years you'd have otheriwse?
Mark breathed in and out stentoriously. I suddenly thought, "Oh my God! He's smoking!!"
He wasn't though. He was thinking of new ways to make me unhappy.
"Kerry..." "Kerry, did you get the Help Booklet, that had all the drawings of cigaretts on it? The Quit Book. With the, like, the drawing of a pack on it."
"Yes Mark."
"Well, did it help?"
I paused. "Well, Mark, to be honest...not."
Mark: "Mary, why not?"
Peri: "Because, Mark. I smoked it."

He wasn't sure I was kidding. Frankly, neither was I. Mark sounded like, if he'd ever smoked, it was because all the other kids were doing it. Not becuse it was cool and made you look French and outrageous. He sounded like...well, he sounded like a quitter to me, pal. Nobody likes a quitter. "I don't CARE if these Newports are making you ill. You get in there and inhale, young man!"

Anyway, as my ol'Southern pal Cracka used to say about this great aunt, a former burly-Q dancer and singer who always wore a beehive, a caftan and purple eyeliner: "My Aun' Selma, she dint smoke fa nicotine. She smoke fa ........styyyyyle."

Well, don't smoke, kids, and don't do drugs. You'll have a long, insanely boring life,but I'm sure you'll prove a point or two. Self-righteous little bastards.

snooze
love
p

The title is from Nora Ephron.
***************************************************************************************
William Blake said:.."if a star should doubt/ it would immediat'ly go out."

I have always loved Blake's insanely committed stance on the importance of experiencing transcendance just as hard and as irrationally as you can. But let's face it: he's dead. -Not saying the "Ecstasy or Bust!" stance killed him--the fact that he'd now be about 198 years old probably did--but....actually, have no idea what I'm saying. Help.--What I'm saying is that Blake's binary, "it's either off or it's on", approach is admirable, but not practical.-Although, since Blake didn't exactly present himself as a self-help guru, I don't know why I'm criticizing the man for not being practical.

There are people who are natural romantics, and then there are the people who, if they see a tidal wave of emotion sweeping towards them, grab for a flotation device just in case. Neither is better. The latter is probably more cowardly, but having seen a few tidal waves in my time, and still being here to describe them, I can attest to its efficacy.

Maybe the natural human reaction to any piece of unexpected, great good fortune is to step back and say, "okay, what's REALLY going on here?What's the catch?"' Back when we were cavepeople, we had to train ourselves to constantly scan a peaceful beautiful landscepe for sabertooth tigers....our systems are still wired to look for the danger, rather than to relax and enjoy the peaceful, beautiful landscape. Because we are all the descendants of the people who did NOT say "Gosh, look how delicate a pink the savannah looks in this twiligh----ERGH" [SFX: sudden silence, then sound of sabertooth tiger chewing happily.]

Oh well. I keep remembering a line from a poem:
"In Fool's Paradise, admission's free/
The price is in the leaving."

Maybe reflexive skepticism IS simply a defense mechanism.

And maybe it's time to go home and feed my non-blake reading, intensely skeptical cats.

Yup. The words I thought could not be said. But this gentleman is, in fact, better than Clive Owen.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0537545/resume

He is also the reason I will never laugh at a Harlequin Romance Novel again. Who knew that stuff actually HAPPENED? -I just SANG love songs: I didn't actually BELIEVE them. -But suddenly they sound like sworn affidavits.

I wish this for you.-Well, not with this same guy. That would kinda suck for me. But with someone else?

Yes.


xxx
peri

who finally figured it out. and not a damn moment too soon,thanks.

Trivia: Selected as one of "People Magazine's 50 Sexiest men Alive". 2004.-I don't know why that cracks me up so much. But it does. -Although it's certainly true. But SO not the point. Dude is a very, very good writer. (Also actor: coming up in Oliver Stone's "W".)

And yet, I mention it.

hee hee

The cozy, 24 hour cafe next door is (as I write this at 3 a.m., because my Macbook is down) is filled with the hopeless and the hopefuls. And who is to say which is which? Some evenings, it's very much like a sober
version of "Iceman Cometh"...some evenings its like the green room for purgatory; and during the day, it's packed with obviously Not From Here people holding maps of New York and wearing puzzled but optimistic expressions.

This evening, there is Jamal, the gorgeous young street
musician who believes his ability to dress and look like Jimi Hendrix is the same
thing as actually having talent...sadly, this is not the case. There's Nick, the street prophet who commutes here fromQueens as he has for twenty years, to sit in a lawnchair outside and (until recently) tell people about the one million spiritual practyices he has made a habit of memorizing the rules of...and who has completely ceased speaking this year
unless it's to read a Bible quote,.He has the sweet smile of those who live
in the certainty that is madness.Nick always kisses my hand "hello" and then disappears for minute,
always to return with a gift of a chocolate covered cherry for me, which i've
never told him I dislike. There's Jimmae, the Irishman whose swagger and braggadocio match his bantam rooster demeanor, and make him tough to take--until he shows you the website with his photographs, and they're heartbreakingly sensitive, and you are forced to acknowledge that, once again, you've been fooled by what should be an easy-to-see-through-mask.There's Shmuely, the handsome, native Israeli who owns the place, who always has a stunning woman with him, and in a year and 4 months, I have never seen the same woman more than once.... and here I am as well.(But not, I hasten to add, with Schmuely.) Unable to sleep because I don't quite know how to process the extraodinary luck that's falling in my lap lately.

Receiving real good fortune in a short period of time can be as mildly traumatic as receiving bad luck...good luck is harder, perhaps, because one has to wrestle the "do i deserve this?" demons, whereas nobody (no one I know, anyway) truly feels they deserve their bad luck moments. Having Big Good Luck makes one feel like Wile E Coyote when he goes off a cliff in pursuit of Road runner and miraculously, keeps going, never falls...until he looks down .

I'm scared to look down, right now. Of course, everything will be fine, but I never underestimate my own ability (or anyone else's) to shoot myself in the stilletto-clad foot. Constant vigilance is the only way.. Yikes.

That's all. Good night, and good luck.
love
p