So, on Saturday I was going to go out early, do my errands, see a movie, and come home not too late. A day away from the TiVo nipple, a day without rehearsal, a real day off.

That paragraph looks like I'm going to say that everything was shot to hell, but it wasn't and I don't know why I wrote it that way, I just didn't leave the house until after 4p, that's all, no great horror. Why I feel that I must put a sense of foreboding in everything all of a sudden, I don't know. Must have been from watching that Planet of the Apes documentary on AMC. Or something. Maybe I'm sleep deprived.

So anyway, Fran and the kids were in the backyard, so I joined them for awhile and found out later in the evening that my shoulders were a little red! My first colour of the season. At one point, we were comparing the relative pastiness of our skins, and I held up my arm and looked at it and yelled, "O my God, I have all these veins!" and Fran answered, "Never look at your skin in direct sunlight! You'll go blind!"

I swear, we are the skim milk family. And I'm not even related to them!

Anyway, I finally strolled out of the house sometime around 4p to run my two errands and see my movie. The first thing that I wanted to do was to go to the Oscar Wilde Bookstore and get that book of my Da's.

I went into the city, took the subway downtown, got out at West 4th and started walking to Christopher. The Village, both East and West, will always mean college and the 80s and being in school and putting green in my hair and wearing a beret and black lipstick and Beatle boots and little round sunglasses and glowing my bangs down over my eyes.

I am so not different from that person, I am walking around with my pink hair and pierced nose and the ass so completely ripped out of my jeans that I have to wear leggings underneath. If I'm still the same, though, how can the Village be so different? And in the places where it hasn't changed, like that stretch of lower Broadway near the 8th St. stop on the R train, if I haven't changed either, why am I almost 37?

There are places that take you back automatically, whether you want to go or not, and the Village will always be where I was young and stupid and the subway was 65¢.

So I walked to Christopher St., passing that great ice cream place where Tracing and Colleen and I always go, getting a mint chip and coconut because they were out of the white chocolate, and it was kind of a hot day, so I had to eat it as fast as I could without killing my cold-sensitive teeth, before it just turned to a lovely mint chip and coconut soup.

Had to do a little backtracking once I go to Christopher, having not realized how much closer to 6th the store was than 7th, and went in and claimed my book. My $189 book. It so totally isn't worth that much in a thousand years, but it's my father's book, and the only people that have any right to own it are my mother, my brother, my sister, my niece, or me, and since I am the one who found it, I am the one that had the obligation to buy it. You know, or my Mom did, because I used her credit card, but I'll pay her back as soon as I get my tax refund.

The guy at the counter said, after I gave him $189 and six pints of blood or whatever, "You must be really glad to have that," and I said, "I'm going to give it to my Mom," but I was probably lying. I haven't told her why I needed the money, so I still might, but I'm not sure. I really want to own this book.

After that, I wanted to go down to the Mercury Lounge, because Glenn Tilbrook is playing there again Wednesday and Thursday week.

I saw him there a few years ago, and I saw Squeeze play there, too, after the Fleadh that first year. It's a great place to see artists, because it is so beensy, and you are right on top of them, but since it's all standing, it's also incredibly hard on the feet, and you come out completely exhausted. Worth it, though.

I had to go down from Christopher to Houston, which isn't very far, but I think I remembered it being a trifle farther than it is, because I decided that it would be worthwhile to take a bus. I had to wait a while, but once you start waiting for a bus, I hate changing my mind and deciding to walk, what with my already investing the time and energy into the wait, so I just waited until one came.

Finally one did, and I got on and settled down with my magazine. I looked up when we got to Canal, where I was overwhelmed with confusion. It Houston before Canal? I'm almost certain that it is, which means that I passed it, but I didn't want to leap off the bus and go back if it was ahead of me, so I stayed. It's a dyslexic thing, sometimes, not being able to tell which street comes first. It's hard to explain why that's dyslexia and not sheer stupidity, but it is, trust me.

Anyway, when I saw Chambers St., I knew that I had gone way too far. Wasn't it clever of me to realize before actually driving to Battery Park City? I mean, I've only lived in this city for nineteen years. Anyway, I got out and the subway was right there, so I thought I'd take the train back. I had a choice between the A,C,E and the 1,2,3,9 and decided to take the 1,2,3,9 because that has a stop right on Houston.

Of course, that stop is a local stop (for local people, there's nothing for you here! Sorry.), and I was on the express, which I noticed when I looked up from my magazine and saw 14th St. So, sighing, I got out of the train and went round to the downtown side to take the local back down.

I seemed to have my "I know everything about the 1 train" tattoo lit up on my forehead, because two different women came up to me asking if it was running, if it always took this long. And boy, was it taking a long time! Finally, when the third express train came by, I turned and saw that it was a 1 train. Which meant that the local wasn't running local. Not that there were any signs or announcements or anything about it. God forbid.

So I went back downtown, and there was an announcement on this train saying that we were in fact going express, and if you want local stops, get off at Chambers St. and take the local back uptown. So there I was, right back where I started probably 45 minutes before, if not an hour. Sigh.

Finally got a local and got off at the legendary Houston St, which, like Brigadoon, only appears once every hundred years. I walked to the cross-town stop and there was a bus immediately, so I knew that the Houston Curse had been broken. Driving across town to Avenue A, I though, "See, I was right to take the bus! See how far this is! And if I had walked from Christopher is would have been, well, about the same distance that I walk twice a day to work and back. Oops!"

And it only took me an hour and a half! Anyway, I got to the Merc Lounge and got my Tilbrook tickets (had they been sold out, I probably would have throttled the woman), then there was a bus immediately going in the opposite direction, back to Broadway, because clearly I had done all of my waiting for public transportation that day and every time the merest thought of taking a bus or a subway would cross my mind, one would come flying up to me like the wind.

And I was even early for the movie! Though how that happened, I'm not entirely certain. Actually, I was early for buying my ticket, then I went out to get a soda and sat reading in the lobby, and I must have missed the announcement that they were letting people go down (this was the Angelika, also known as "the train to Auschwitz" because of the way they line you up to go in and are very mean), because when I finally went down, there was but a few minutes before the show started.

I decided to get some nachos before going in, and discovered that here on the train to Auschwitz, they don't pay their people shit, because I have never had such lackadaisical service in my life. There was no-one in line in front of one guy, and I realized afterwards that was because he was putting out the S - L - O - W waves that I didn't happen to catch, so I went right up to him and asked for a nachos. He took my money, S - L - O - W - L - Y, rang it up, then proceeded to take the next guy's order and ring it up, after asking him about six times if what he was having was actually a medium drink.

Hours went by, seemingly, but there was still five minutes before the movie started, so I didn't say anything. Then he ambled over to the nachos and started filling the little nachos tray. And he filled it and he filled it and he filled it. Then he dumped it out and filled it again, S - L - O - W - L - Y of course, then he dumped it out again and went off and got a glove and filled it for a third time, using his hand instead of the little tongs. And the evening and the morning were the third day.

Then this little woman came up to him and took my nachos away and he went back to the register, and she dumped it out and began filling it again, choosing only the most beautifully formed nachos and lining them up in straight lines. I mean, it's a lovely thing to take pride in your work, but not when it's 7.15p and the movie was supposed to start at 7.10p. Finally, I got my motherfucking nachos, having aged visibly since I originally gave the S - L - O - W guy my $4, and the woman apologized and told me she liked my hair, and all was forgiven!

Until I went into the theatre and found it completely full, but completely. Most theatres say a movie is sold out when there are fifty seats left, they don't count the first two rows and don't sell them--when the Angelika says a movie is sold out, it is sold out, by golly. I finally found a seat almost all the way in the back, all hemmed in, and then I found out another thing. This theatre was definitely too crowded to eat nachos in. When I got out at the end, I was covered in cheese from head to toe.

The movie, by the way, was Ghost World, and was absolutely perfect. It is about two alienated teenage girls Enid and Rebecca, who basically only relate to each other and spend all of their time making fun of everything else around them, and they play a rather mean trick on this sort of sad-sack guy, with whom one of the girls ends up becoming friends. "He's the opposite of everything I hate," she says.

Thora Birch in a Louise Brooks bob and thick black-rimmed glasses plays Enid, and Steve Buscemi plays Seymour, and it is one of the most original pairings I have ever seen on screen--these two people who are completely different from anyone else around them, finding each other and giving each other hope. And of course, I am Enid, though every single girlfriend of mine who sees it will say the exact same thing. We are all Enid.

Boy, does that sound dull the way I have described it. Okay, wait, I forgot the part about how it's a comedy! And it's really funny! And the performances are outstanding--Scarlett Johansson is great as Rebecca, I loved Bob Balaban as Enid's dad, and Illeana Douglas as Enid's art teacher, but it really is Thora Birch and Steve Buscemi's show. He's either the sexiest dorky person or the dorkiest sexy person alive, or possibly to have ever lived, and the only thing I didn't like about the film was the ending, simply because I didn't want it to be over.

I think it's time for me to pick another movie to see more than once. I think this might be it. It's awfully different than Moulin Rouge, but it's nice to have variety in one's obsessions, don't you think?

Today's horoscope:
You and a household member feel torn between playing it safe and taking a chance. Create security amid some changes.

One year ago today:
"I don't allow language like that to be spoken around me, I find it extremely offensive!"

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