the underwear drawer

dinner with friends

I was walking down to Union Square yesterday morning when I passed by a theater with a 11:15am showing of "We Don't Live Here Anymore." I looked at my watch: it was 11:18am. Well, what the hell. I was one of only four people in the theater, also lone movie-goers who were also maybe feeling slightly guilty about ducking into a dark theater on a warm, sunny Saturday morning instead of enjoying more wholesome outdoor activities like, I don't know, frisbee or something. The movie was not so good as The New Yorker sold it to be (that is to say it wasn't the BEST MOVIE I've EVER SEEN in my LIFE--an uncharacteristically gushing New Yorker review) but roughly as good as the New York Times reviewed it to be. Worse than The Ice Storm, better than Dinner With Friends. So based on that, you can decide if you want to see it or not. Well, based on that, and your own assessment of how distracted you'd be by the fact that Mark Ruffalo looks just a teeny bit like Jud from "The Real World: San Francisco."

So both Bob and Andy were in town this weekend, so we went out for a big med school rotation group reunion last night down in Alphabet City. There are a few pictures (though really only a few, I kept forgetting that I had my camera on me), but they are rather unflattering shots of the participants, so I choose to be kind and keep them in the non-public sector. What was billed by Kal as a night of ethnic delights (Japanese food, a hookah bar, French-Carribean dancing) was downgraded to just Japanese food and a regular old white bar, but we had a good time nonetheless. I miss those guys. It's sad that everyone's so spread out now, though I have to say they all seem very happy with their new lives, and I'm happy for them. It just makes everything so inconvenient. Why can't all my friends live in the same apartment complex, like in "Melrose Place"? That way, we could see each other all the time, be all up in each other's business, and have the occasional wedding day catfight that ends up with two of its participants falling into a swimming pool. Now tell me that wouldn't be fun.

I've just pencilled the next "Scutmonkey" strip, another reader submission from Betsey H. in Texas. All my exes live in Texas. The comic will be up as soon as I ink and scan it, but that might not be for a day or two, since I'm on call tomorrow night. It's a-comin', though. In the meantime, why not submit your own "Scutmonkey" story? In the words of my mom, who sometimes talks like a fortune cookie, "It is very fun and cathartic for you." Please enjoy your nice Chinese food with chopstick, the typical and glonus of Chinese history and cultural.

Currently reading: "The Time Traveler's Wife," for subway reading, "Persepolis 2" for the dog park, because it requires slightly less concentration allowing me to keep half an eye on my hell hound. I also stopped by the bookstore today to pick up a copy of "In the Shadow of No Towers," but then I realized that 1.) the book was huge, the size of an end-table, and 2.) the pages were made of cardboard, so it weighed approximately as much as an end-table as well. And it's only 42 pages long. Maybe I'll wait for the paperback edition. Hell, forget paper-back, I want the paper-inside edition.