(photo by Christopher Payne)

When the prod. co. with the first look with Sony showed interest (please see post behind this one, 'Starting Out') I thought Yay! I've made it! They introduced me to five agents and I picked one. I started looking at houses to buy. Four months in the prod. co. disbanded and I got the script back. I stopped looking at houses.

My agent sent the script around and suddenly it was hot. Aents at William Morris and CAA called - I went back to the real estate listings. My home would have at least three bedrooms.

Then just like that my script got cold.

I had been writing a new script, JOYVILLE, a dark comedy about competition. I gave it to my agent and she took it out. A V.P. at a dream production company loved it. He nurtured the project through the gears of his co. and at the top it came down to my script and an action pic. Action won. The V.P. called my agent and said,"I'm going to fuck my boss for not making this. I'm giving it to the competition." He gave it to a producer at Brillstein Gray. She read it and loved it. I was back to four bedrooms.

Two weeks later she left on maternity leave.

A manager liked my first script and wanted to rep me. "What can you bring to the table?" I asked. He brought me an Oscar winner. The Oscar winner's current movie opened and bombed. She got into bed and wouldn't get out. The manager vanished. My script , again, was cold.

My agent sent JOYVILLE to Howard Stern's production co. His head of development loved it, but not for Howard Stern. I told him I had another script and pitched the project the Sony group liked. There was a great part for Howard Stern in it, too. The HoD read it, thought the part was too small for Howard Stern, but was I interested in TV? I was very interested in TV. The HoD gave me a headline he saw on CNN that he thought was interesting. Could I do anything with it? I took the headline, blew it up into a show and when I finished we were happy with it. Finally, I had something moving in the pipe.

I saw a contest in The New Yorker in collaboration with HBO: write an episode idea for THE SOPRANOS. There would be five winners and I ended up being one of them. I turned the idea into a spec script and my agent gave it to a TV agent at her agency. Suddenly I had meetings with Dick Wolf's guy (LAW AND ORDER) for a new show they just shot a pilot for. The meeting went well, the show was something I could definitely write for, when would I move to LA? NBC dropped the pilot. The show was now dead. I met Sydney Lumet's showrunner/TV guy. We clicked, it was great, then his show didn't get picked up. Goddamn.

My TV agent came to New York, we had a strategy meeting, then he vanished. Literally. Rumor had it he had two wives and one of them found out about it. He was in Spain, Portugal, maybe South America. I was on Shit Street heading toward Fuck-You-ville.

I wrote a horror movie. Even for me it was a little too far out.

Painting and drawing had been going well and I got into a big show. This would be the one that would catapult me into the world. The show opened, my phone started ringing, I got reviewed well, it even sold okay. When the show came down and it got quiet again. Very quiet.

I had a studio visit with a major museum here. It was the worst studio visit I ever had. (Two months later the curator came back and bought a painting, for herself, not the museum. I still didn't get in the show.)

Part of my agreement with Howard Stern's production company was I would get the TV series back, sole owner, if it didn't go into production in three years. I got it back. Because I was focusing almost exclusively on TV, my relationship with my film agent ended.

I was brought in to adapt an Elmore Leonard short story for a TV director. A month later the financing fell out.

I could go on. There's a lot I'm forgetting, blips I'm leaving out, grants I was short-listed on, etc. Every time I got something I was sure it would rocket me into stratosphere, it would be the one. Instead it was just a baby step. I kept telling myself no matter what, keep going. So that's what I did.

Then then three years ago I didn't want to anymore. I'm hardy, a New Englander by birth annealed by New York City. I've been mugged at knifepoint by a tranny (she was better dressed than me); chased by a machete-wielding crackhead; was wrong time/wrong place for a suicide (he jumped in front of a subway); and had a neighbor hang himself from a landing above my door. I've seen things I wished I never saw and have done things I wished I never did. I've had as much inside chaos as outside, then seven years ago I punctured an artery cutting a bagel. Sitting in the trauma unit at St. Vincents pushed me to a bottom, which slowed me down enough to peer inside. I started sorting through the past and present and two years later my mother was diagnosed with lung, brain and bone cancer.

Two years into her illness was three years ago. If you've ever been close to someone with an illness like this there's a moment that gets crossed when you know they're going to die, for real, no matter what. Not next week, not next month, but this year will most likely be your last together. When I saw that point I was traveling nonstop to be with her, my career was stalled, I was stalled. One day I came back from visiting her and sat down in the middle of the path. That's how I pictured it, my life as a pine needle path through trees. I sat down and didn't want to get up. Wasn't going to get up. I felt done, with what I didn't know. Whatever it was, I was quitting.

I had never, ever done that. To sit down meant I was a failure, a loser, someone who had lost the fight. I sat there not caring. It was like I emptied out: worry, concern, care, angst, passion, fear and joy - it all became inert. I sat there feeling nothing.

Two days later Diane called. "What are you going to do about it?" she said, tough friend she is, then added "Get up and get going." I put my feet under me and stood up. I wasn't relieved or happy or sad or optimistic. There was no cheerleader saying This is good! You're back on your feet! I was still empty, simply up.

I roamed aimlessly around my house and the next day I roamed in a muttering, puttering and scratching kind of way. Which meant there was life brewing. I cooked dinner, put one foot in front of the other, watched traffic. I got an idea for a new project, a one-hour pilot about a group of teens that would be fiction, but personal. Very personal. Personal would be new for me. What was strange was how calm I felt even though I had just done the worst thing I could ever do, give up. The calm gave me a moment of objectively and I asked myself why it was the worst thing, why quitting scared the shit out of me. And it hit me that the calm I was feeling was lack of fear. I had given up, done the one thing I swore I'd never do, and now I was on the other side of it.

I wrote the pilot and a new world opened, personally and professionally. A head fuck got replaced with faith. I didn't see it coming. It so wasn't how I thought things went.

In the summer of 1997 I was getting ready for my first solo show and a heat wave hit. I had been in group shows and two person shows, but this was the first time I'd take over a whole gallery. The show was set for October and though I had finished the paintings I still needed to varnish them. The humidity was making things too sticky, so I couldn't work until the heat wave passed.

I paced around for two days, agitated, and then from nowhere - to this day I don't know why or what came over me - I decided to write a screenplay.

Though I had watched a lot of movies I had never seen a screenplay nor had ever tried to write anything. Two uncles were writers, one crazier than the other, and after seeing what writing did to them I wanted to flunk English and go straight to art. Writing wasn't just something I hadn't done; it was something I didn't want to ever do. But there I was, sitting at the kitchen table, opening a notebook. What would I write about? An image came to mind of the Paula Cooper gallery on Wooster Street. I wasn't interested in writing about her gallery or people I knew, but I saw I did want to write about a world I knew. That was enough. I started writing.

It was like I was possessed. Eight days later, barely eating or sleeping, I had a finished draft. It was a love story about failure, set in the art world, a blend of comedy and drama. Half way through it a title came to me, BIG WORLD. Painting had always gripped me, but the specificity of words was a whole new thing. Writing was as satisfying as painting.

I had guessed at screenplay format so I ran to B. Dalton Books. There was a book of screenplays by William Goldman that seemed good and since I had never seen a screenplay I didn't know that he was the only screenwriter ever to use his own format. When I got home I dragged out an old IBM Selectric and over the next two days transposed my notebooks to typed pages. I didn't know how to type and went through two boxes of correction ribbon, and when I was done stared pleased as pink at the first draft of my 185 page screenplay.

By this time the heat wave had lifted so I went back into the studio and finished the paintings. I also signed up for a class, Directing the Actor, since I was going to make the script myself. The 6-week class started in August and during the first half of the class I rewrote BIG WORLD. I also burned out the Selectric and bought a ProWriter, a typewriter that could remember about 40 words and had built in correction tape. Goodbye correction ribbon.

The new draft had a gaping hole I didn't know how to fill, so I put the script down since I had an idea for another. This new screenplay would be set in the mall I worked at in high school and would be a story where the bad guy gets away with it and the bad guy's a girl.

When my show opened a classmate of mine from the acting class came to the opening. He was producing an indie he co-wrote and I told him my new idea. Right then he optioned it. It meant I'd get paid to write it. While he went into production on the indie I wrote a draft and while he was in post production I showed him the finish. He loved it, I was happy with it, nothing could happen with it until the indie finished completely, so I went back into BIG WORLD.

Synchronicity is a wild thing. Right then I got called for jury duty and brought a copy of it with me since there'd be a lot of idle time. I read it while sitting in the jury pool area and noticed the guy next to me kept glancing at the script. We started talking, his name was Jim Denault, he was a D.P. (Director of Photography) and I told him I wanted to direct the screenplay. He suggested I crew to learn how a film set worked and gave me the name of a producer crewing up. I called her, she had nothing available, I asked her if she could suggest anyone else I might call and she gave me the name of a production designer, Sharon Lomofsky. I called a few times and found out Sharon was crewing up for a movie called BAD MANNERS. "I'm an artist and I can make anything out of string and duct tape," I begged and she brought me in as an intern, an on set prop assistant, unpaid.

Shortly after that film wrapped the indie producer's film hit the festival circuit and started winning audience awards. He got a big agent, moved to LA, and was going to remake the indie into a big budget movie. When the option on my script came up he didn't renew it and I started throwing it over the fences of production companies. I had no idea what I was doing, but I was doing it.

On the set of BAD MANNERS I noticed this girl, Jessica Lichtner, was always huddled close with the director and producers, was front row for watching the cast in action, took notes on every shot, remained on set when the set was cleared, etc. Her title was script supervisor and I started talking to her during meals, asking her about her job. This girl knew her shit and let me tail her one day so I could watch what she was doing. When filming ended she took me on a two day gig she was doing pro bono for an MFA student at Columbia University and after the first day she turned it over to me. That job led to other student films, then back to low budget features. Here and there I'd day play as a grip, a production manager, a location scout, set dresser, etc. but mostly script supervisor.

For three years I crewed and the most important thing I learned was someone had to have a clear vision for the project. If a director or producer didn't, the project always bombed. (The indie producer's big budget remake never happened, despite his having a very clear vision. I was also starting to learn all the ways a project can derail.)

Eight months after the option expired on my script I contacted a production co. with a first look deal at Sony. They agreed to read it, they liked it and I started rolling my rock of Sisyphus forward.

Photo by Charles Dharapak

Joe is an excellent driver. Years ago he was a paramedic in the Bronx and often drove the ambulance, and though that's not proof of good driving skills he had a lot of opportunities to hone his skills behind the wheel.

We often drive to Long Island to visit his family, which means going over the Williamsburg Bridge. The lanes are narrow, the cars are fast and while hurtling over it Joe will sometimes glance over and say "How's that brake working?" I don't even realize I'm slamming my foot on an imaginary brake, making a racket while my shoe hits the floor mat. "Not very well" I'll answer, braking the whole time.

A lot of crazy thoughts go through my head on any given day and writing or drawing means I have buckets to dump them in. When I was a kid I just had me. At ten I became obsessed with quicksand and though we didn't have it in Danvers, Massachusetts nor were we geologically capable of having it, I knew it was out there in the woods behind my house. I'd run through the trees looking for snakes and pheasants and I’d suddenly freeze, positive the rock in front of me would give way if I put my foot on it. I knew the ground around it would cave in and I'd disappear, sucked down by natural causes. I could stand there for hours, my heart pounding, unsure of how I'd get home. Eventually my dog would come by, or Mr. Bellevue, our neighbor, would come through picking up trash, and I'd follow them out, stepping where they did.

At the same time I went through a white food phase that had been going on for a year. I would only eat white food, which meant no crusts on my marshmallow sandwiches. My mother was an great cook who put effort into each meal and she had zero tolerance for my food fetishes. I shed more tears over those crusts: she wouldn't cut them off, but since crusts were brown I wouldn't eat anything they touched. What made it worse was I had just come from a triangle shaped food only phase and she insisted on cutting my marshmallow sandwich into square quarters, not diagonal halves. There was a brief tube food phase -- mustard spread on baloney that I’d roll into a tube and eat like a jackrabbit, bite bite biting through. This ended when she slammed a plate of spaghetti in front of me and insisted the spaghetti was hollow and therefore a tube. It wasn't, but when I scraped the sauce off and saw all that non-tube whiteness, I found nirvana.

It wasn’t the taste of white food I obsessed over. White food was quiet. White food was a blank page. White food let me find my courage and not cave in. My father would make me a marshmallow sandwich or spaghetti and butter to calm her down and he was also the one who dealt with my quicksand obsession. For a whole summer he tried to appeal logically, then one Saturday afternoon a Western came on the television. In it, a cowboy got stuck in quicksand and my father walked me through the process of how to get out of it: lay flat, don't struggle and no matter what hold on to your horse.

Ten years ago I was positive I had worms. This followed a period where I was sure my hair was falling out. Before that, right after I quit smoking cigarettes it was "Do I have bird shit on me?" This coincided with being sure I was growing a mustache, to the point where I bought a mustache bleaching kit. I bleached, nothing changed and I had to concede that maybe, just maybe, I didn't have a mustache. Worms, though? I could have worms. When I felt one of these tics sinking its teeth in my flesh I'd ask my friend Bill "Quick question -- do I look bald to you?"

"No,” he’d say, “but your mustache is getting bushy."

When I quit drinking and drugs I started dealing with my shit and a lot of the noise in my head got loud enough to actually hear. It meant I could question it, which let it start to ebb. Once in a while when I'm stressed I hear new crazy thoughts, and in the car going over the Williamsburg Bridge it hit me that though I was afraid of crashing, what I was really doing was narrating my impending death. And had been doing so for a few weeks. I hope this elevator doesn't fall when I get on it and I hope my shirt doesn't light on fire as I stir a stew on the stove. Plugging in a charger I hope I don't get electrocuted and when it's raining I hope ball lightening doesn't roll around my living room. I hope a plane doesn't careen through the roof in the bedroom and I hope an axe doesn't fall from the wall and chop me up. We don't have an axe on the wall; I've never seen ball lightening; and the only time I've gotten an electric jolt was when I grabbed an electric fence on purpose to see what it'd feel like. I'm stressed because I'm finishing a new project and am gearing up to take it out and I want to control all that I'm powerless over. That's what this is.

What helps is to let it go through me and hug it along. In the car late at night when I'm hitting my friend the invisible brake, we listen to WFUV and I actually enjoy the ride thanks to Vin Scelsa's radio show 'Idiot's Delight' and Marshall Crenshaw's 'The Bottomless Pit.' Hearing the Ramones segue to Iron Butterfly or The Chemical Brothers followed by a band I don't know (Hundred Waters) always roots me back to earth. Music soothes the beast inside, no matter how hairy or wicked it be.

Yesterday I finished a deadline and today I'm giving Bucky the Albino Woodchuck a good cleaning. I love Bucky.

(photo above by MK Metz; photo below by Steve Baldwin)

My uncle Harvey died this weekend. He was failing, but I didn't expect him to go this fast.

When I was a kid I didn't know him or his kids well, given he lived in New Jersey and we were up in Massachusetts. We'd see them once in a while, but when he and his wife divorced we saw them even less. He got married again around the time I moved to New York City, and though he was still in Jersey I started seeing him and his wife, Charlotte, my favorite auntie, once every couple of months. Plus we'd go to Massachusetts together every Thanksgiving to my mother's, until that eventually slowed due to illness, family fighting, and my mother's illness and death. Over the last decade Charlotte and I became closer and I started to get to know my cousin, Sacha, and in time I became their family and they became mine.

Harvey was a writer, novels, and though none had been published it wasn't for not trying. He wouldn't let me read them, but I knew from conversation they took place in museums or cafes and had lots of intrigue and sex. They had great titles -- 'Sunday Afternoon at the Beauborg' - and in between working on books he'd send letters to creative types he felt a kinship with but felt needed some guidance. 'Dear Quentin Tarantino,' one such letter began. While 'Pulp Fiction' is a work of art, 'Jackie Brown' is awful. What you should've done is...'

He and my mother had two other brothers, one of whom we'd sometimes visit on Thanksgiving. This brother was recently thrown out of an assisted living facility for asking the female residents "Would you like to see my penis?" The other brother, Malcolm, is a poet who lived most of his life with his mother (except for a brief sojourn on Leonard Cohen's couch in Montreal and a briefer visit to the local insane asylum), and now lives on his own near where they all grew up. The brothers were never close; if anything they were highly competitive, so none were expected at the funeral.

Harvey wasn't religious, so instead of a service six of us met yesterday morning in the crematorium at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. Green-Wood is a historic landmark, a Gothic Revival relic set in a park-like setting, though the crematorium is glass modern with a hint of Asian temple. It was quiet, sedate, and once inside we were led to a room that had a long pine box at the head and multiple rows of semi-circular padded pews. We walked to the box then sat together in the front pew. The box was a simple rectangle, the top doweled on, and we talked about what we'd miss and what we loved about him. After about fifteen minutes the director came in and gently let us know it was time, and that he'd be back shortly, meaning they were taking Harvey in to be cremated. My aunt stood up to go in with him and we all stood and joined her. I don't know if this was the plan, but the director nodded, then opened a pair of invisible doors. The six of us followed him and the box through the doors.

The room we were now in was like a wide hallway. Harvey's box was on a casket carrier and a worker wheeled the box head first to align with set of doors that were a little bigger than the box. There were eight sets of doors altogether, stacked in two rows of four. The worker unclasped the doors, swung them open and I could suddenly hear the roar of the furnace fire. I glanced in and could see light reflecting off the wall about ten feet in. I realized this was the actual oven. The worker then rolled the box off its carrier into the face of the oven, onto a conveyer belt made of metal rollers. The carrier also had metal rollers -- they were like the kind airports have for handling luggage or the one that the Stop & Shop Supermarket had when I was a kid for loading in heavy boxes. He guided the box into the neck of the furnace and my uncle quietly rolled into the heat. The worker closed the doors. And that was it.

It was so final, so complete. My aunt and cousin wept quietly and I wept with them. Then we came back out into the main room and my aunt's sisters had to go the bathroom, and after they did that we all went outside. Down near the cars I noticed a headstone topped by a statuary that had been worn away by weather and time, a possible cherub that now had spindly arms and moss-mottled legs. Death is impermanence, life is filled with impermanence, and I frequently hear how we are powerless over it. Yet what I was feeling was absolute permanence, absolute life. Green-Wood is home to a flock of wild Quaker parrots, which adds mystery and 'other' to the already surreal landscape, and as we got into our cars and headed for the Brooklyn Bridge my feeling of humble quietude matched the fury of the furnace.

Many of my favorite recipes come from Cooks Illustrated. When blueberries are out of season I make this with chocolate chips and sprinkle sugar on top instead of the lemon/sugar topping. Also, I like turbinado sugar for baking. I give it a few spins in the food processor to improve the texture before adding it to the recipe, but use as is for topping.

If buttermilk is unavailable, substitute 3/4 cup plain whole-milk or low-fat yogurt thinned with 1/4 cup milk.

Ingredients:

Lemon-Sugar Topping 1/3 cup sugar (2 1/3 ounces) 1 1/2 teaspoons finely grated zest from 1 lemon

Muffins:

2 cups fresh blueberries (about 10 ounces), picked over 1 1/8 cups sugar (8 ounces) plus 1 teaspoon 2 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour (12 1/2 ounces) 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon table salt 2 large eggs 4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter , melted and cooled 1/4 cup vegetable oil 1 cup buttermilk (see note above) 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

FOR THE TOPPING: Stir together sugar and lemon zest in small bowl until combined; set aside.

FOR THE MUFFINS: Adjust oven rack to upper-middle position and heat oven to 425 degrees. Spray standard muffin tin with nonstick cooking spray. Bring 1 cup blueberries and 1 teaspoon sugar to simmer in small saucepan over medium heat. Cook, mashing berries with spoon several times and stirring frequently, until berries have broken down and mixture is thickened and reduced to 1/4 cup, about 6 minutes. Transfer to small bowl and cool to room temperature, 10 to 15 minutes.

Whisk flour, baking powder, and salt together in large bowl. Whisk remaining 1 1/8 cups sugar and eggs together in medium bowl until thick and homogeneous, about 45 seconds. Slowly whisk in butter and oil until combined. Whisk in buttermilk and vanilla until combined. Using rubber spatula, fold egg mixture and remaining cup blueberries into flour mixture until just moistened. (Batter will be very lumpy with few spots of dry flour; do not overmix.)

Use ice cream scoop or large spoon to divide batter equally among prepared muffin cups (batter should completely fill cups and mound slightly). Spoon teaspoon of cooked berry mixture into center of each mound of batter. Using chopstick or skewer, gently swirl berry filling into batter using figure-eight motion. Sprinkle lemon sugar evenly over muffins.

Bake until muffin tops are golden and just firm, 17 to 19 minutes, rotating muffin tin from front to back halfway through baking time. Cool muffins in muffin tin for 5 minutes, then transfer to wire rack and cool 5 minutes before serving.

There was once this blue chip art dealer who used to schlump around her home in a frumpy house coat and slippers while wearing a million dollars worth of jewelry. She was my idol.

My thing with beautiful jewelry started after 9/11 - literally, days after. I was roaming up Prince Street looking for nothing, simply getting out to get out of my home and head. The wind had changed direction and my neighborhood was filled with a smog of white ash and the few of us out wandering stopped for brief hello's even though we didn't know each other. After a few blocks I was ready to turn around and absently stopped outside a jewelry store, Reinstein Ross. In their window they had postcards of their jewelry leaning on tiny stands, showing dainty and carefully made gold and beaded rings and bracelets, and I just stood there, staring. Their jewelry was charming and sweet and, maybe because of how little it meant in the big picture it suddenly meant a lot.

Over the next few years, if I found myself midtown with time to kill I'd roam into Bergdorf's and look at their jewelry counters, then walk down Fifth Avenue and bang out Tiffany and Van Cleef's windows. I still do that and once in a while I even go online to look at what's coming up at the Sotheby's or Christie's jewelry auctions. What I've discovered is I don't envy or covet or lust for these things; it's more, there's something about the perfection of beauty that lets me clear my head, shake out a demon or two, let my thoughts mindlessly roam.

I'm quite happy flopped on the couch, fishing around in my pants for nothing in particular, Joe sitting next to me mining a pint of ice cream as we stream tv episode after episode like a couple of crack heads. When I'm on a deadline, like I am now, I become a real bore since all I can think about or see is the thing I'm working on. Zoning out on a tv show or a Lorraine Schwartz bracelet is the pause that lets me reset.

Usually when I'm working like this I don't go out much, but this week I said yes to everything. I had a concert, a quiet dinner, a dinner party/game night, a birthday party (great drag queens), a lunch and a book party. My friend Pam shares a similar love for jewelry and she invited me to the book party because it was being held at Verdura, which meant good jewelry ogling.

Pam first needed to make a pit stop at Taffin, James de Givenchy's jewelry showroom, a jeweler high on my ogle list. By the time we got there most of his inventory had already been put in the safe, but he led us around his showroom before the rest went in. I found myself staring into a glass dome that held an exquisite diamond bracelet that had half-inch long bronze colored eggs hanging from it. The eggs were elegant, studded with tiny diamonds, and I couldn't figure out what they were made out of. He took the bracelet out of the case and fastened it onto my wrist and surprisingly, despite the size and number of eggs, the bracelet weighed nothing. I looked closely at the eggs, still not able to figure out what their material was.

"It's an AK47," he said.

"You mean the gun?" He nodded. "You're repurposing AK47's?"

"It's a new material I'm working with." He pulled out a 4-inch egg, also studded with diamonds. Small squares of metal overlapped to create a surface that stayed cool despite my hand being around it. Maybe I was cool to it; magnified to this size, the egg felt like a grenade. It got me thinking about a piece of jewelry's history, how it moves from hand to hand, auction house to auction house, mother to daughter, friend to friend, father to son, the meaning it imbues and embeds and carries. James de Givenchy seemed quite respectful of the material, and though I later read about this collection being an agent of change and of being about new possibilities, I got the sense that he had removed it's history and was in the process of simply making the metal his. Is that what we all do with history?

After Taffin we went to Verdura and once Pam said her hellos (she does PR for a publisher) we wove through a few rooms, ogling this and that. I love Verdura's old-school cuffs and jewelry from the '40's, especially the over the top tacky pieces. Verdura I would pile on, and as the rooms got more and more crowded that's what women were doing. I've never been to a book party where guests were that interactive with their surroundings, but then again I've never been to a book party that was catered like this one was. Whoever did the food was killer -- fried sage leaves, yellow pepper mousse in parmesan spoons, salmon wrapped in crepes with chives, filet with a red pepper coulis, arctic char on a puree of fava beans -- all of it bite-size and beautiful. After Pam and I had our eye fill of jewelry we found a nice couch to sit on where waiters brought tray after tray of these gorgeous little snacks, and since no-one else was eating our couch became food central. I stuffed my face and would've knocked over a few Gulf Stream socialites to palm a few more of those sage leaves if I had to, that's how good they were. After an hour I was ready to go home, as was Pam, and though the waiters were sorry to see us go we happily rolled on out of there.

The first album I ever bought was Déjá Vü by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. I bought it at Lechmere, in the Liberty Tree Mall in Danvers, Mass., and I barely left the store before going back in to buy Eat A Peach by The Allman Bros. In a bin nearby was Black Sabbath's Master of Reality and I wanted it so badly I tried to cram it down my pants, under my coat. At 80 pounds the record was wider than I was and it took a week of saving quarters and another trip to Lechmere before I could scream along to Sweet Leaf and Into the Void.

Déjá Vü made me want to hear more Neil Young and I bought Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, After the Goldrush and Harvest. After the Goldrush I bought on vinyl, cassette, CD, vinyl again and then as an mp3. Same with Harvest, minus the cassette. I listen to everything from punk to pop and change songs on my Shuffle weekly, yet I always leave something from one of those albums. It's not nostalgia I hear when I listen to him; his music shows me what I know but didn't know I knew.

On Tuesday I went to see Neil Young play at Madison Square Garden, first time ever. My entertainment lawyer has become a close friend and her law firm has a box there. The box is far back from the stage, behind the sound board, which means the band is far away but the sound is perfect. Neil Young came out on stage and kibbutzed around a bit, then he casually hit a note on his guitar. It was a gutteral plang, beautiful and raucous. It was what I grew up with and pure today. What surprised me the most was how rock and roll his sound was. It was like hearing him for the very first time.

Happy Thanksgiving, courtesy my friend Darragh:

What Security Cameras Also Catch

Rockaway is still devastated. People who live there have to get to work and the MTA trucked subway cars in on flatbeds to act as shuttle trains. Here's more information and some great photos.