Patty’s parents are in town so Trash Day around here sort of got trashed. On the other hand, we did get approved for our shiny new apartment (we’re signing the lease tomorrow and now we just have to figure out if we’re going to be able to paint and what day we’re moving), and they took us to see Paul McCartney last night.
McCartney, I suppose, isn’t really my speed (although considering the stuff currently in rotation on my iPod, that seems inaccurate). But Patty’s parents are as fannish about all things The Beatles as I am about my own obsessions, so there were were, and it was a pretty mind-blowing show in terms of technical skill, audience engagement and sheer length. And, of course, I knew a ton of the songs, and the audience was just so so so present; Billy Joel made a surprise appearance at one point, and I certainly teared up more than once (the entire audience singing “Blackbird” in the appropriate context; a lengthy mention of John Lennon; the overwhelming sense that this might be one of the last chances to see McCartney like this).
Unfortunately, we also discovered that you can’t bring laptops into Yankee Stadium because they “might interfere with the internal communications systems.” Whatever. Yankee Stadium is not an airplane, and that’s all crap too. But we had to (and thankfully we could) check our bags at a parking garage a couple of blocks up that does just that for people like us. So now we know, and so do you.
I don’t really have a lot of links this week. Life here at home has been so busy with logistics, I feel like Patty and I haven’t even really had time for ourselves. It’s how are we going to do what when, and if you’ve never done the apartment search in NY, I can’t really describe the level of stress involved. But considering a couple of hours we got to spend in Brooklyn yesterday with an old (and complicated) friend of mine, I’d be remiss if I didn’t link to an article on the impending destruction of the building holding Mars Bar.
The building, and the one next to it, is part of an older, uglier, more brutal New York. And Mars Bar a the site of not just a lot of the stupidity of my 20s, but also what passed for my family in my twenties. Year after year, it seemed, I wound up there in the winter with a group of people I’d met in an online community, until someone would invite the whole crowd to their house to continue the party, and we’d walk outside and it would start to snow. That snow, then, always felt like my good luck charm.
Sure, we went other times of year; I think it was summer the time we actually got kicked out of the place. But if I’m telling the story, it will always be winter, my friend Tom slinging an abandoned Christmas tree over his shoulder as we walked through the snow for no good reason.
So on that note, I have some work to do before catching up with Patty and family again this evening and before we throw ourselves back into the logistics again tomorrow.
Oh yeah, and for those playing along at home, there’s still plywood on our window.
Letters from Titan 
Yay new apartment!