I have officially become the first rube in the history of the world to actually be surprised by a surprise birthday party.

Special thanks to my brother for masterminding the wonderful evening, to Tova, Joe, Colin and Yoav for helping him pull it off, to all of my friends who showed up, and to Mikhail Baryshnikov for walking in to Russian Samovar as we were all there drinking, shaking his head, and walking upstairs to get away from us.

Also, you know you’re already rather drunk when you stagger into a surprise party being thrown for you and initially think, “that’s funny, there are a lot of people I know in this bar tonight.”