Ta-Da

Here’s the first photo with my aforementioned new digital camera. Presenting Tin Man, age 28.

Twenty-Eight

So, today has been my 28th birthday. Thanks for the greetings!

Yup — at 10:20 a.m. on the morning of December 27, 1973, I was born in a hospital on the Upper East Side in Manhattan. My dad remembers being in the hospital while my mom was in labor. He looked out the window and he could see the trucks moving Mayor John Lindsay’s belongings out of Gracie Mansion, and moving Mayor Abe Beame’s belongings in.

I’ve always felt lucky that my birthday falls in the middle of the holiday season. I never had to go to school on my birthday. (The downside, of course, was that we never celebrated my birthday with cupcakes in class.) It’s always been such an eventful week — Christmas is still echoing in people’s hearts, and the media is starting to review the year just past, and everyone is getting ready for New Year’s Eve, and all the Christmas decorations are overripe. My birthday occurs during the most enjoyable week of the year, and that’s always made me happy.

And I’ve been fortunate to have spent my birthdays in some pretty great places. When we lived in the Far East, we’d always travel during Christmas vacation. So I’ve celebrated birthdays in Hong Kong, Thailand, Australia… and also London, Florida, and Las Vegas. And of course New York. (Not to mention New Jersey.)

My worst birthday was my 17th, at the end of 1990. We were in Thailand, in Phuket (which is pronounced “phoo-KET” but which I prefer to pronounce “fuck it”). I was swimming in the pool at our hotel, and as I got out, I scraped my toe against the side of the pool, underwater. I didn’t feel any pain, but when I got out, the side of my left big toe was gushing blood. My parents took me up to the room and I leaned my foot over the bathtub, and it was still gushing. Somehow there was a small chunk of skin missing from next to my toe, about an eighth of an inch thick. My parents didn’t want to take me to some random doctor in southern Thailand, so ever since my 17th birthday I’ve had a scar on the side of my toe. You pay the price for luxury sometimes.

Today wasn’t like that. It was nice. I did go to work, but it was another slow, uneventful day. At night I met up with my parents and my brother and his girlfriend for dinner in midtown Manhattan. Before meeting them, however, I finally walked over to Rockefeller Center and saw the tree, lit up in red, white and blue — and all the international flags were replaced with American flags. Dozens of American flags, everywhere. A bit jingoistic, but quite pretty, too.

We had dinner at DB Bistro Moderne, a new restuarant owned by Daniel Bouloud, who also owns an apparently well-known restaurant in the city called Daniel. I had their legendary $27 burger. A burger isn’t something you’d think of having at a nice restaurant, but this was quite a burger, stuffed with foie gras, short ribs, and something else, and it was incredibly thick and yummy, and came with these airy ethereal potato puffs.

And for my birthday my parents got me a digital camera. This means that I’ll soon be clogging up my site with photos of everything imaginable.

We had a really enjoyable meal together. My mom got tipsy, which was fun. I love my family, you know that? I do. We’re close with each other, and we get along great, and we have our own private jokes like other families do.

It was a nice way to spend my 28th birthday. And as I sit here typing this, I’m having all these warm, cozy feelings.

On top of that, today was my last day of work until January 2. I had a couple of days of leave that I had to use by the end of the year or else I’d lose them. So after a four-day weekend and a two-day work week, I’m at the start of another five-day weekend. Ahh…

Life is good. Happy Birthday, me.

Had Myself a Very Surreal Christmas

I’ve been withholding a certain piece of information until now. Tomorrow is my birthday! In less than an hour I’ll be 28 years old. To celebrate, I’ll be going out to dinner with my family tomorrow night.

I’d thought of putting together an Amazon.com Wish List, but I never seem to know what I want in the way of stuff. I tend to be an impulse buyer. Then I thought about setting up a Paypal account, but there’s something so cold about money. (Plus they take a percentage off the top.) But if you’re really, really dying to get me something, I could always use Amazon.com gift certificates! They’re quick and easy! All you need is my e-mail address, and that’s right on this page.

Anyway, knowing me, tomorrow night in this very space I’ll be spouting off about my birthday and the day I was born and what it all means to me and blah blah blah blah blah. But that’s for tomorrow. For now, I’m just gonna savor being 27 for a little while longer.

Three cubed.

Numbers are cool.

Anyway…

Tonight I saw “Gosford Park.” It’s Robert Altman’s newest movie, a murder mystery set in an English country manor in 1932. Sort of a genre piece, yes, but some critics have called it one of the best films of the year. I didn’t enjoy it as much as I’d expected to, although there was plenty of choice dialogue. It’s a star-filled film: lots of big-name British actors — including Helen Mirren, Kristen Scott Thomas, Derek Jacobi, Charles Dance — and also Emily Watson and the scrumptious Ryan Phillippe. I couldn’t make out half the dialogue, though; when the movie ended, I was confused and dissatisfied because I wasn’t sure what had happened. And there were so many characters that I couldn’t remember who had what name, and also, everyone looked the same. Afterwards, I read today’s review of the movie in the New York Times, and the reviewer mentioned five or six different plot points that I hadn’t quite caught.

Oh well.

You know, my interests are so fickle. Until lately, I’d been obsessed with Kirk’s book and heavily into Robert Caro’s The Power Broker. But I have 75 pages left in the 1163-page Power Broker and yet I haven’t touched it in almost a week. As for Kirk’s book, for some reason I’ve lost interest. I read it on the train from time to time. I’ve only read 70 pages so far. I guess when I look at his book more objectively, instead of through the lens of envy, I think to myself — why?

My obsessions have changed. Lately it’s been movies and “The Lord of the Rings” and crossword puzzles and especially, most especially, “Buffy.” Why did it take me so long to start watching this show? Thankfully, FX is showing all the episodes again from the beginning, starting on New Year’s Day. I hope to catch them all. Meanwhile, at work today, I didn’t get much done. Instead I downloaded Aimster and with that, I downloaded the “Buffy” theme and all of the songs from the Buffy musical, and I listened to them all.

A generous reader has offered to lend me his tape of “The Body,” last season’s most important episode — a deed for which I’m very grateful.

So, yeah. I never seem to maintain an interest in something for too long before it’s overtaken by another interest. This could be why I’m so boyfriend-averse.

Speaking of which — I spent most of Christmas Day in a bed in a nearly-deserted Columbia University dorm with a cute, intelligent, 21-year-old Jewish transfer student. He was a total sweetie. And he was the first guy I’ve ever seen wearing both a yarmulke and an earring. He had this little loop of an earring in the top of his ear. As for the yarmulke — he’s not Orthodox, but lately he’s been trying to be more observant about his religion. He’s trying to keep kosher, and he figures if he wears his yarmulke, he’ll be less likely to slip up. Also, he was sporting a very thick beard, except on his upper lip, so I guess it looked sort of Amish; he didn’t have a beard in his photo, although he did in fact mention that he had one now. He’d have looked much cuter without it, but he was still cute with it. And can I mention again what a sweet guy he was? Is?

At about 4:30 in the afternoon we left the nearly deserted dorm building and went around the corner for Chinese food. It was almosty dark, and the streets were dead. It was eerie and weird and depressing and desolate. After we ate, he took me down to the subway and gave me a hug. He really seemed to like me.

It was the strangest Christmas I’ve ever had. And now it seems sort of unreal.

I’m not even sure it actually happened. Except that I got an e-mail from him today.

Nitey-nite!