happy my sister's birthday

it's dreary in New York (read: drizzling).

and last night I left the apartment for the first time in three and a half years (in people years that's about nine days since I left Queens, though I did go for a couple of long, enjoyable walks over the weekend) for the opening of The Pictures Generation, 1974-1984.
(New York brush with greatness: Salman Rushdie)
(I also met Paul McMahon (his image, "Untitled (Nixon)" is above); nice fellow)
and it was more than drizzling.

over the course of the night I ingested asparagus, pecans, Jack and Coke, chicken meatballs and shrimp wonton.
which possibly explains the internal (yet matching) dreariness.

what I was listening to on the rainy way there: Yo La Tengo's And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out
what I was listening to after the rainy walk home: Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

no day baseball today (with more than a few rainouts in the offing this evening), and Rolling Stone (God help us everyone) has proclaimed Kings of Leon as "America's Hottest Band" on their cover.
puh-lease.
(my most recent (last Fall) interview with the Kings of Leon's primary songwriter. note: they have not, by any stretch of the imagination, cured all of their formatting ills from the recent Voice makeover)

so it seems only fitting that The Deerhunter's playing on my television as we speak.