Favorite headline of the day, from the New York Times: "After 7 Years, 'Rings' Director Looks Like Hobbit."

Friday night George and I saw "Liza Minelli's Christmas Spectacular" at Town Hall, and it was awesome! "Spectacular" meant nothing more than her singing a bunch of Christmas songs peppered with some old favorites from "Cabaret" and such. The stage was adorned with two giant, red, beaded lamps that looked like they were salvaged from the half-off bin at Pier One. They were atrocious. But Liza rocked! She told stories and joked and sang beautifully. I had tears in my eyes when she sang "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." I never realized how wistful and kind of sad that song is, talking about the "happy golden days of yore," your troubles being miles away, being with your friends "if the fates allow." Yikes! I was all choked up. We met two older ladies whom we snuck into front-row balcony seats with us since the show wasn't sold out. They walked us through the show, telling us what the songs were, where they were from, etc. I asked one of them is she was a big Liza fan and she said "No, I'm a New Yorker."

Last night we went to a bar called Boogaloo to hear our friend Michael DJ, but unfortunately we got there after his set. The bar was in this creepy part of Williamsburg that our cabbie didn't even know how to get to so he had radio to his home-base or whatever for directions. It was a pretty neat place, but around 1am or so all these thugs showed up with their fur-lined hooded parkas and knit caps trying to sell drugs to everyone. One interesting tactic was "Hey man I've got your coke." Oh yeah, right, I was looking for that. Thanks! Trying to TRICK someone into buying something? I thought that was pretty funny. A more straight-forward method was the guy who simply plowed through the crowd saying "Marijuana. Marijuana. Marijuana." just loud enough for the people right next to him to hear.

My friend Leslie and I have decided to start a Kurt Cobain Book Club to read the diaries and one of his biographies. I don't know when this will actually happen, but I look forward to reading the diaries over Christmas. I love Lisa Carver's Generation L essay which starts with the line "I'm sad Kurt's dead because now I have to hear about him even more that when he was alive."