New York --

City of Beautiful People on Nasty-Ass Sidewalks . . .

Had a wonderful time here . . . my first visit. Spent an hour or so walking Times Square around midnight. Nobody tried to sell me anything: the guys with the $5.00 Rolexes and the $10.00 Guaranteed Designer Handbags just nodded as I went past. The poor bastard hading out free tickets to Comedy Central's Premium Blend just shrugged -- THERE's a job I don't envy . . . like running a carnival kissing-booth in a leper colony . . . Even the bums -- I guess in N'Yawk you call e'm panhandlers -- just smiled. "How's it goin', big guy?" Me:"Not bad. You?" Him:"Can't complain."

This from a bum that I'd seen -- not thirty seconds earlier -- summoning tears to work a dollar off a tourist. "Come ON, man, just a dollar, what's a dollar to YOU? You know how long it's been since I had sompin to eat? Come ON, have a heart, brother . . . "

Guess I looked sullen enough that everybody thought I live here.

Did an extended interview for Book Look TV, which was just about the most fun I've had on tour so far. The host is James Michael Tyler, who you FRIENDS fans out there will know as Gunther the Coffee Dude . . . who turns out to be warm, charming and astonishingly smart (especially for an actor -- I mean, jeez, you ever hear the story about the actor who was so stupid that the other actors NOTICED?) not to mention a hard-core SF geek from way, way back.

I mean HARD core. This guy even watches ENTERPRISE. Not because he LIKES it (I told you he's smart) but -- as near as I can tell -- he just has to keep feeding that SF addiction.

And what the hell, anyway. Not everything can be STAR WARS or the new BATTLESTAR GALACTICA.

He and Chuck Cirino -- the director -- really went all-out to help the book (and camera-newbie me) look as good as they could make it, and I'm really grateful. Not to mention that they -- along with Skye Van Raalte-Herzog (who is actually as cool as her name implies, which takes some doing) had the intestinal fortitude to sit through my entire event at the Union Square Barnes & Noble so they could get it on film -- and they STILL weren't sick of me . . .
We all went out to dinner afterwards at one of those Oh-So-So Chelsea bistros, with Colleen the Publicity Guru and Chris the Marketing Maven, and JMT (as us pretentious name-droppin' wannabe types call him) told a couple of stories about his FRIENDS-related visits to Amsterdam, having to do with a certain phrase he spoke in Dutch in a certain episode -- one I cannot repeat and refuse to translate -- which not only proved that nobody at the FCC speaks Dutch, but made him into a national hero in Holland and nearly had me spewing jerked pork and plaintain out my nose.

In brief, that's New York for you.

Now, on to the Promised Land of Consumer America . . . the Largest Mall On Earth.

Well, it used to be, anyway. And it's about to be again, I guess. I'm told they heard some place in Russia passed them up, so they paved over twelve surrounding counties to open an extra three bazillion Gaps.

In round numbers.