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impromptu dinner in Hell's Kitchen
Tuesday, September 17 2002
Gretchen and I both love the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and so some time ago Gretchen arranged for us to get some general admission tickets to sit in the audience of a show. The tickets we got were for tonight, so at around 5pm Gretchen and I met at the Daily Show's headquarters in Hell's Kitchen (near 54th Street and 10th Avenue). Since we were coming from two different places, I was there for a short time before Gretchen. I went to the back of the general admission line, behind two chicks poring over an issue of Vogue, turned on my MP3 player and tuned out.
After a forty minute wait, turned out that the Daily Show audience was just two seats too small to accommodate our part of the line. Studio audiences are always over-booked to ensure a full house, and we were the leftovers. As a conciliation prize, we were given VIP status to attend the next available show, which would take place in three weeks.
On the corner of 54th Street and 10th Avenue there is a little Arab-owned Deli called United Deli & Grocery. The name of the establishment is presented in big rounded sans-serif white letters on an off-red banner over the door. Interestingly, though, there's been a makeshift addition to this banner since it was originally printed. Directly beneath the word "United," in the same font but in a less-dingy shade of white, is the word "States," changing to the name to United States Deli & Grocery. Obviously the management thought that the best way to eliminate any problems with irrational anti-Arab sentiments was to make the name of their store seem awkwardly patriotic. The thing is, though, that most people never even notice the name of a corner market when they duck in for their smokes or a six pack. But once noticed, it's impossible to not feel a sense of pity for the owners and shame for your people. At this point in the paragraph I'd normally conclude with a pithy saying, but the best I can come up with is the following meaningless non-sequitur, "In the land of Rush Limbaughs, a one-track mind is king."
We were walking south down 9th Avenue when we decided to grab a quick drink at Julian's, a fancy restaurant with a pleasant outdoor section along the sidewalk. We thumbed through the latest copy of the New York Press hoping to find what was going on tonight, but the week-long period it covered started too far in the future, tomorrow night. By the way, the New York Press is the first tabloid I've ever seen with advertising on its front page.
While I was counting stories on high rise apartments off to the north (they had about forty apiece) and Gretchen was expressing concerns about the state of my punk rock tooth (the gum line is receding and the root is sort of greyish, same as always), a passerby on the sidewalk called out my name. It was Sam, a guy I hadn't seen since the days when I lived in Charlottesville. Back then he was a good friend of Jen Fariello's. He was also famous for the huge crush he had on Matthew Hart. Today, though, he was in the company of a genuine boyfriend, a guy named Joe he'd met in Texas. Joe is a freckly redhead and is only about 24 years old, the same age as Matthew Hart. "Look," Sam said, after joining our table, "I actually found a guy who is really gay." He'd had a hell of a time finding gay guys back in Charlottesville. There, even in the hippest, edgiest of Charlottesville's creative scene, even the gayest-seeming of guys were entirely, if on occasion somewhat apologetically, straight.
Maintaining an interest evident back at the Brick Mansion in the 'Hood, Sam had a trusty video camera in his backpack, and he brought it out to tape me momentarily. Under the relentless pressure of Moore's Law, video cameras have shrunk remarkably since I last saw Sam. His current device is a tiny Sony model whose five hour battery protrudes like an ungainly parasite. It's an easy thousand dollars to lose in a couch.
It turned out that both Sam and Joe knew key production staff at the Daily Show and they could probably hook us up for any particular show we wanted to attend. This led Gretchen to float her wackiest fantasy of all, that Jon Stewart preside over our wedding at City Hall. Sam said he could see to it that a letter making such an absurd request reached the higher-ups in the Daily Show hierarchy, but that was probably the best he could do.
Gretchen and I stayed at Julian's longer than expected. She even ordered an entree, which arrived after Sam and Joe took off. As for me, all I had was the calamari appetizer. Somehow it was worth the $10.
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