THUNDERballs!!!

One of my authors and our art director had to spend the night at my house so we could finish up a big project. Unfortunately, I didn't know in advance that they were coming over, so the place was a disaster area. Dishes piled high in the sink, magazines covering the dinner table, clothes strewn around my room like a tornado just struck. Like a good host, I asked if I could get them anything. The author asked for a snack, but there was no food in the house. The art director asked for coffee, which I did not have. So they both settled on a glass of water. Lucky me, at that moment the tap decided to freak out and start spewing a brown soapy goop into the glasses. I managed to clean them out and found some cold water in a long-expired Brita jug in the fridge.

As I carried the glasses back to my room, my brother (who was also my roommate) arrived with several boxes of pizza. The pizza came with a roll of purple paper that you could unfurl in front of you like a royal carpet. It had a picture of a king on it eating pizza. My brother unfurled it into my room, and the author and art director poked their heads out to see what was going on. "This is my brother," I told them. Then a half-naked girl came out of the bathroom. "This is Krissy," my brother said.

Krissy was my brother's new girlfriend. She was also the spokesperson for an edgy brand of bowling balls called THUNDERballs. In their viral-style commercials, Krissy would drive around the country on a bulldozer, breaking down the walls of bowling alleys and "liberating" their old bowling balls. Then she and the THUNDERballs staff would give all the bowlers brand-new, custom-made THUNDERballs and drive off, leaving the bowling alley a wreck behind them.

Just then, my dad popped out of the other bedroom. He had also decided to spend the night unannounced. This was his first time meeting Krissy. I left my brother to do the introductions, grabbed a pizza, and holed up in my room with my guests to work out the cover design for the author's book. I could hear things crashing out in the main room. I gave everyone the benefit of the doubt and assumed Krissy was giving my dad a THUNDERballs demo.

anti-strip search

My family was returning from a visit to Soviet Russia. It might also have been Iran. At the border, guards made us get out of our car while they searched it. As we watched from a distance, they opened all of our bags and put on every piece of clothing we'd packed. One guard had on five shirts, three coats, and a pair of underwear on his head. They appeared to be conducting a Chinese fire drill, jumping in and out of the car and running---prancing---around in our personal effects. This was hard to watch.

To pass the time, we wandered into a freedom garden erected on the non-Soviet or non-Iranian side of the border. A balcony extended over the border, with grates in the floor so you could look down and see the foreign ground. There was a library section with the 100 greatest books of freedom of all time. For some reason it was all American writers from the 1920s. But they were all first editions, and I couldn't help thinking they would be worth a lot of money if they ever made their way out of this garden in the middle of nowhere.

boring, book, parties

My friend, who's a chef, but looks a lot like another guy I know who isn't a chef but is actually a stand-up comedian and a screenwriter, was having a book party for his first book, a cook book which I highly recommend. Danny Meyer was hosting for him, in his loft apartment which doubles as a yacht.

As the party went on, and everyone mostly ignored me as is generally the case at these sorts of events, the loft--yacht detached from the building and floated around the streets of New York City, which were conveniently flooded at the time.

Everyone wanted to talk to my chef friend, so I wandered to the front of the yacht and befriended the housekeeper, who was working double duty tonight as the yacht captain. She showed me how to steer and let me take the wheel for a little while. We reached the end of the West Village and launched out into the Hudson River. There were some great views, but they were hard to see, what with all the rain.

At some point, my glasses fell off my face and flew overboard. I'm pretty sure it was somewhere on the LES. After the party was over, the housekeeper and I backed the yacht up over our route, checking the gutters for them. Of course I didn't find them. I'm pretty much blind without my glasses.

Esther, bluegrass, pheasant

My boss sent me to Kentucky on business and Esther Newberg invited me to dinner at her mountainside restaurant. We sat out back at an unsteady table, in between the lawn gnomes and the bluegrass. I guess we talked about books and ate some wild pheasant. She was nicer than I expected.