Daily Blague

Out of the house two days running - that's unusual. Today, it was a visit to the dermatologist. The good doctor confesses that he is somewhat stumped by my rather painful démangeaisons, and defers the question of what to do next to the rheumatologist. Whom I called from the street when I left the dermatologist, on the off-chance that he could squeeze me in. All of my doctors, you see, have their offices between 67th and 72nd Streets. Walking from Park to the river would have been a hike, but had the chance not been completely off, I'd have made it happily. As it is, I'm reduced to washing my own shirts and shorts, to be certain that I'm not weirdly allergic to some additive at the laundry across the street. I don't mind the washing, but what about the ironing? Good thing they're all flannel... Having put off lunch until now, I was starving. Neil's Diner, at Lex and 70th, was packed with students; in fact, I don't know how I've gotten this far without mentioning clots and crowds of St Patricians all over the Upper East Side. What a lot of uniform I saw! I heard a bunch of tweens ask a kilted guy if his sporran or whatever it's called was made of hair, and when he said "horses hair," we were in Eww! City... Why being very hungry but frustrated at the first try should inspire me to walk all the way back to 86th is hard to say, but it's typical. Nor did I proceed directly. I stopped at Eli's, for Bachman's pretzels and Lurpak butter, and at the Video Room, just to see what was new, or, better, in the "Staff Picks" section. Then I called Wu Liang Ye and ordered pork lo mein.

Yesterday, it was the theatre. We had tickets to Brooklyn Boy, the MTC production at the Biltmore. If I'd suspected that Brooklyn Boy would be the play that it is, I'd have moved the tickets so that Kathleen could see it; it's an extraordinary play, not least in covering very familiar territory with a completely fresh eye. Or ear. (That's because it's also a play about reading in modern American life.) Ms Nola was happy to take Kathleen's place, and we agreed to make an afternoon of it. But our late lunch had us starting out too late for serious museuming. I didn't know where to go, and, frankly, I was so itchy that I didn't really want to go anywhere. Allez, courage! We got onto the 6 train, blithely unaware of the troubles that afflicted the line all day, and at 59th Street we changed to the R train. We got off at Carnegie Hall; I wanted to go to Patelson's House of Music, because I've really got to get Eulenberg miniature scores of the Brahms Piano Quartets. Those weren't in stock, but I bought a Dover miniature of the Requiem, and Eulenbergs of the Horn Trio and the Schicksalslied, two favorites. Then we walked to MoMA, where we had just enough time to see the mostly trivial junk in the exhibition space, the Thomas Demand show, and Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Stills, which resonated all the deeper after last week's trip to the Arbus show... When the museum proper closed, we looked at books, and bought nothing. Then we wandered up Fifth Avenue to Tiffany. Ms Nola has set aside some revenues for the much-needed boost of a deluxe purchase, and at the risk of appearing to be her sugar daddy I looked at some silver jewelry. Prices were noted, and then we went to Coach, across both of the streets that constitute Tiffany's intersection. Coach had just the right bag, but it cost twice the budgeted amount, and Ms Nola is too cool-headed even to consider such a temptation... A few doors down 57th Street, we came to Rizzoli, and I remembered that the bookstore carries unusual CDs. I hadn't been in a record store (that's what I still call them) in eons, and it had been years since I'd last seen a collection as spruce as Rizzoli's. I bought four things for me and one for Ms Nola - the truly essential recording of the Ella-Louis collaboration... Pooped at this point, we headed for the Biltmore, where I figured that we could sit in the lounge until curtain time. Which is what we did.... After the play, we took the R train from Times Square back up to Carnegie Hall, for dinner at the Brooklyn Diner. I took a taxi home, and had the sense to go to bed before passing out at the keyboard.