Post Birthday Post

I hope someday to get back to the freewheeling, multiple-posts-a-day, one-topic-per-post style of a few months back, but every so often I develop an actual social life---and last night was particularly busy, what with it being my birthday and all. So while I've got a few minutes still at lunch I want to thank everyone who showed up at Chumley's (Andy, James, Jeff, Leslie, Ryan) and a HUGE big mushy public hug to Rose for putting the thing together. I also apologize to Cassie, who I seem to have missed by a fraction of a second. It would have been cool. (If you're reading this, by the way, and wondering, "Hey! Why wasn't *I* invited?", the answer is that it was arranged with only a week's notice, and I decided to only call the people most likely to come: friends who I've hung out with one on one since my move here, who live in Manhattan proper and are unmarried and/or without children. Or, in the case of James, people who showed up to Andy's "Liar" show and who I remembered I liked and decided to invite in person.) Thanks also to everyone who sent me wishes or gave me a call.

Scratch a comedian/humorist and you find a sentimentalist. Sometimes it expresses itself in the kind of anti-sentimentalist bitterness that Mark Twain and H.L. Mencken eventually succumbed to; the kind of anger at the world that wouldn't exist if you couldn't stop believing it should be better. But mostly---and in performance--it's the schmaltz of every screen comedian dangerously handed the freedom to do anything, a tradtition that started with Charlie Chaplin and has found its most recent Waterloo in Robin Williams---who, between Patch Adams and What Dreams May Come, demonstrated definitively that his blood courses with equal parts cocaine and treacle.

I mention this because I'm a sentimental fool, and I hope I don't hacknify when I say that I was really, really moved by everyone's presence (and occasional presents---Damn, that's fine bourbon, Andy!), and while I'm not certain exactly WHY I find it amazing that people are pleasant to me (Lord knows I had a nice enough upbringing), I can still be brought to tears by a birthday cake and a bunch of friends singing. So thanks, everyone. And if I missed you, I have a twin brother and a sister born on the 2nd, and so we always had a relatively loose definition of "Birthday." So don't be afraid to holler. I'm happy to hang out and share drinks.