Life is really unexpected. You just never know what is going to happen. This is why my new obsession is Doomsday Preppers, the show where ordinary people hoard a decade’s worth of food in their basement in the unlikely event of a water landing. Even today, I was crossing Sixth Avenue at 48th Street and an SUV was driving the wrong way toward me, right past the cops permanently stationed by their cars outside Fox News. Always ready to channel Albert Finney in The Dresser, a movie I have never seen, I stood in front of her car and simply lifted my hand. She slowed to a stop and gave me a funny look and I showed her the error of her ways by merely gesturing back past her. Seconds later, she was completing a U-Turn and we were both on our merry way. The cops didn’t even bother getting in their cars and chasing her. That’s New York. And if you are going to freak out at every little thing, don’t come here.
I was making a rare Saturday night appearance in the city for back to back birthday celebrations. It is also Mike’s birthday on Sunday but he doesn’t feel like celebrating this year even though now that we have our glorious new coffee station in the kitchen, amazing new bathroom and showstopping fireplace, there is every reason to rejoice! I even upgraded the shelves in the closets so our own doomsday prepping won’t look as sloppy as that girl in Houston who plans to shoot her kittens in the head when we run out of oil.
First stop was The Tenth Rail down on 10th Avenue and 33rd Street. The neighborhood is so sketchy, the highlight is the well-traveled drive through McDonald’s next door from which the pernicious glare of the fluorescent lighting is a vision direct from the worst nightmares of the Dowager Countess, minus the gaiety. Perhaps they should rename the place The Seventh Circle, although we were really only there for the Third. As the strangers streamed into the empty bar from the street, each entered with a bewildered look on their face. “I took the M-11 bus!” one woman declared incredulously. I would have been less surprised (or concerned for her safety) if she had said she took an M-16.
