2003-02-07 - 5:20 p.m.

Well heyyy everybody. No, I'm not dead, but I'm sure I've come close recently. Not that I can remember any specific incidences -- I'm just getting way more paranoid and like to think that 50 Cent is out to get me. At least to rob me.

I did go to Detroit to celebrate my mom's recent triumph: escaping the shackles of the working world. We should all be so lucky! Speaking of working, it was also Joe's birthday. The tipping point in me deciding to come out for a quick weekend trip (though I'd just been there not a month before) was when Matt Z. called me from the Lager House saying I should come in, man, something was planned for Joe's 26th. Alas, it was not, but we made a great go of it anyway. The next night (Saturday) was a blow-out at Gabby's loft, the Griswold St. loft where I'd seen Roosevelt's Inaugural Parade for the first time some seven years prior. I'm sure tons of robbery-oblivious white folks had lived there in the interim, but it's always nice to stumble upon a familiar place.

But of course now I'm back in NYC, where it's all snow and smiles and weekend hopes float like icebergs. I did see a drunk woman take a squatting piss on a moving subway car, big brown moon waving way too close to me. She'd been singing that "even when I'm with my boo" song at top volume so I should have been ready for some wackiness. I have to hand it to my fellow riders -- they were all so jaded that not a scoff or a harumph was heard. Just a light tramping of feet as everyone filed to the next car at the next stop.

I haven't gone anywhere! Well, I haven't gone anywhere you ain't seen me thousands of time before!