That your grandad had to sweat so you could buy

If you listen to Pizzicato 5's "Good" while staring at this photo, you will indeed feel as if there are about 500 kittens doing cartwheels inside your head.

Which to me is calming, as I'm feeling very Absolutely Fabulous today. In addition to making me want to drink several Stoli Bolis, my imagined AbFabulousness is truly convincing me that I have the right to a car service and a huge puff of blonde hair could easily combust with a flick of a fag.

Instead, I'm doing research on pay scales for returning veterans, which has been interrupted by a sucker email that almost made me believe that my lifelong dream of being an Italian restaurant lounge singer could be realized by forwarding an email from the Dhali Lama about a deaf kid in Burkina Faso to my entire address book.

Right. Back to the kitten circus.

Nuit of the Living Saag Paneer

I was playing Scrabble with David Sedaris in a Turkish prison last night. I'm not sure what we had done to end up in jail, but I have to say that as far as correctional facilities go, this one wasn't half bad. The floors were dirty, but it was spacious and there was light sifting through the cell's stained glass walls.

David was wearing a Franciscan monk cloak, and was sitting on his knees adding letters to my recent seven pointer "live."
"Liverly?" I asked.
"That's right," said David.
"Liverly isn't a word Dave."
"Yuh-huh it is."
"Do you mean livery, like a chauffeur's uniform?"
"No, I mean liverly."
"Use it in a sentence."
"Who's the writer around here? Why don't you go and read some literature before you go accusing me of making up words. Jeez."
"What, like your little stories about you being gay and riding around in a station wagon with your big Greek family are literature?"

I remember saying that and feeling bad, as I love his books, and quite frankly, am not sure what defines modern literature anymore. So I let David Sedaris cheat and get the double word score, because, hey, he's a funny guy, and I figured letting this one slide would give me leeway down the line to remain unchallenged for putting down "fuck" or some nonsensical word like "monkeyjuice."

Suddenly, the room filled up with bright marigold and turquoise light, and hundreds of mice shot through the stained glass and began scurrying around the room. David jumped up immediately and ran to a large tub of water while I stared at the Scrabble board wondering if David would contest the addition of "cant" to the end of "republic" for a 45 point political play on words.

"What the fuck are you doing? Get over here and help me drown these things!"

David Sedaris was on his knees in front of the tub, grabbing handfuls of mice and holding them under the water. They were shrieking and clawing, and when I went over to help him, he rolled his eyes at me and told me to hurry up, or they'd eat our Scrabble game. "David knows best," I thought, and got down on my knees and began dunking mice with America's favorite memoirist.

I now have two competing explanations for last night's dream:
1) David Sedaris is a magnetic cult leader, and therefore allowed to cheat at Scrabble and kill baby mice
2) I ate Indian food a bit late, and finished Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, which ends with a story about him dunking a mouse in a bucket of water in Normandy.

The second interpretation makes more sense, but I vote for the first: David Sedaris is a fucking meme. Prior to reading his books, I would see people with acne and get an unbearable urge to walk up to them and immediately operate on the offending blemish. Once, on a Greyhound bus, a man with a huge shiny pimple on his nose emerged from the bathroom blemish-free. I had been plotting the demise of his nose zit since we had left Oakland four hours ago, and now, it was gone. I spent the rest of the bus ride turning around and scowling at him instead of studying Geography, and ended up describing sleet as a rift in Pangea on a quiz the following day.

This morning, I was riding the train and noticed a woman with a ripe zit on her chin, and now I can't think about work, or even blog without wondering if she popped it, and if she did, did it squirt amazing distances or merely ooze down her neck? Was it a blackhead hidden in a sea of pus or was it simply not ready to burst and therefore left alone?

I don't think I would still be this consumed at midday had I not read about David's ongoing compulsion to touch people's heads on airplanes, and while my prior fascination with acne led to a less-than-satisfactory quiz grade, this morning's obsession could lead to the termination of my employment, and me sitting in Grand Central with a tin can and a sign reading "David Sedaris made me think of acne for an entire Tuesday and now I'm hungry and unemployed. Oh, and he likes to kill baby mice. Spare change?"

The smells of New York

I've decided, after watching The Warriors for the 500th time, that smells in New York are similar to gangs. Like the Lizzies and the Baseball Furies, each smell seems to claim its own territory. On 28th Street, near my office, the Barfs dominate the scene. Closer to home, in Hell's Kitchen, the Sharts run the streets, and Times Square sees ongoing battles between Bad Chinese Food, Overcooked Hotdogs and General Skank. Even my hallway has a new crew, the Chicken Fried Rotten Tampons that seems to be taking over our building from the basement.

The Baseball Furies used to scare the shit out of me. Even walking through Central Park the other day, I was terrified that Yankee-clad gang members were going to spot me, and slowly build a spooky gallop after me while carrying baseball bats.

And now, the MTV is set on remaking a perfectly fine movie to utter shit. The Warriors "2006" will be set in LA, where there is no Coney Island or late-night subway service, and will probably star Lindsey Lohan as the leader of the Lizzies and Robbie Williams as Cyrus. Instead of having the Warriors tear through NYC on the subways trying to get home, maybe Warriors 2006 can have these wannabe singers run through LA in town cars trying to get to a studio and a real producer to make a decent record. Or maybe, they'll all just die at the hands of Morrissey playing Meat is Murder on reverse from his Los Angeles abode.