We always give other people the advice we should really give ourselves. And the other people never listen either.
This is a SECRET SOCIETY
GOOD EVENING. I have a secret message for you at the top of the stairs, but first some public information.
As you know, the Judge John Hodgman live show heads to VERMONT and MAINE soon, and we need your DISPUTES and good company there, as both our Massachusetts shows are SOLD OUT.
But before that, aka TOMORROW (aka Wednesday), I will be going to tea at PAULI MURRAY COLLEGE at Yale.
I will be chatting with Stuart Semmel, an actual scholar of, I presume, PITCH PERFECT 2 STUDIES?—plus any other students or members of the Yale community who would like to be there.
https://cglink.me/2dA/r2283407 is the link for info. There’s plenty of room, trust me.
I am always looking for excuses to sneak back to school and do the TRIPLE LINDY
(That is my code-phrase for wandering New Haven like a ghost, hovering through all my old napping alcoves in the library, scratching at the window of the Anchor Bar like the vampire child in Salem’s Lot, and trying to buy Marlboro Mediums at the used bookstore because there used to be a Wawa there.)
I’m also interested in finally visiting PAULI MURRAY COLLEGE, named for the civil rights activist/legal scholar/poet/Episcopal priest who was genderqueer before the term existed and the first Black person to be graduated with a doctorate from Yale Law School.
(The other new college was named for BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, whom I have nothing against, but has no connection to the school that I know of, and so basically the whole building seems so generic as to be maybe fictional? I’ll let you know.)
I’ve been doing a lot of ghostly wandering lately.
If you saw me on CNN’s HAVE I GOT NEWS FOR YOU the other Saturday, first of all, thank you.It’s a good show, and you should watch it!
My friend the excellent actor and Richard-Kind-brunch-partner ENNIS ESMER came to the show, and when it was over I didn’t know what we should do.
It was Friday night, just north of Hell’s Kitchen in Manhattan. The obvious answer was: “go home immediately to watch YouTube videos about theme parks in bed.” But that seemed somewhat un-festive for an out of town friend.
There used to be a time when I would go out in this city. And even though Ennis said we didn’t have to do anything, I insisted we go out. I AM STILL YOUNG AND THIS WILL BE FUN, I explained calmly.
“I will take you to the first bar I ever went to in New York!” I said.
“Uh ok,” he said.
I explained how the night before I moved to New York, I went to my favorite bar in New Haven, called Rudy’s. I was the only one in the bar that night, aside from the owner, who was a young guy whose name I don’t remember.
I told Unknown Guy that I was moving to New York, and he bought me a drink and told me, “You know, there is another bar called Rudy’s on 9th Avenue. And it has free hot dogs.”
This was at a time when life still seemed fated—full of winking clues and glittering portents that laid a map for me to follow to some purposeful future.
So I explained to Ennis as we walked that as soon as I arrived in New York, I followed the Unknown Guy’s path, and it was like a gracious magic portal—from one dank, sticky dive to another, in a new city, and a new life, and it became a favorite for many years.
Ennis said, “Ok, but wait. Why do we want free hot dogs exactly?”
And as he said it we slammed into the wall of young people who crowded the door at Rudy’s. People in their twenties who belonged there. Loud and sweaty and beginning their own magical paths. People for whom free hot dogs really are something to covet.
I had forgotten: this part of my life is over. So we retreated, shaken, across 9th avenue to some random grown up place across the street, random like life really is: one of any 1000 generic, middling, midtown fake brasseries designed to house after-theater diners and other invisible elderly ghouls like me.
But it was nice. The bartender could actually see us. He was named Jimmy, and he made us good martinis, and charged us for our food. He recognized me from something or another (see above), which was nice. And he told me we had a friend in common, an actor I love and hadn’t seen in years.
“Oh,” I gasped. “If you see him, please tell him I’m sorry.”
I won’t tell you who it was, or why I was sorry. Suffice to say that if you’ve been haunting the same city for thirty years, you’re bound to be a ghost with unfinished business.
Well, OK, I actually will tell you, but only up in the secret room, where I will also read a little Moby Dick to you too.
But before we go up there, Jimmy mentioned he had a podcast, so I’ll mention it HERE.
