In photos.

Talking today with my brother’s partners in his real estate development company, both of whom are fluent Spanish speakers, I flashed on a friend from college who couldn’t speak Spanish at all, but who, after spending a summer in Mexico, returned able to say exactly four phrases:
– “There’s a little man dancing in my pants”
– “Where are the lesbian girls we love?”
– “Show me the way to the nearest keg”
– “May I kiss the baby?”

Apparently, it was the best summer of his life.

While my trip to LA a few weeks back was exceedingly productive, there were a handful of meetings (and a talk to give at USC’s film school) that I couldn’t quite fit in. So, the first half of this week, I was back in Los Angeles for a very short trip – in Monday morning, out Wednesday afternoon.

And while the trip was certainly worthwhile from a business perspective, it was the non-business stuff that made it truly memorable. Mainly because, the second evening, I got to share dinner with Ole Eichhorn, a long-standing online friend whose kind words and wisdom I’ve much appreciated over the years.

But also because, the first evening, I ended up having drinks at the bar of the Thompson Beverly Hills with a middle-aged black guy who was in from Atlanta ostensibly to visit his friend (who lived in LA, and was at the bar) but really to celebrate his eighth anniversary with his Canadian mistress (who was also at the bar, and seemed more than happy with her ‘other woman’ status), all of whom were chased off by Ridley Scott’s wife, a late-50’s eurotrash cougar who kept buying me drinks until I had to excuse myself to the bathroom and sneak out of the bar before she realized I was gone.

It’s official: the details are all locked for the Palo Alto High School Class of 1997 Ten Year Reunion.

Therefore, it’s also official: I’m old.

In truth, I probably wouldn’t be attending the reunion, except that, as student body president my senior year, it’s apparently my job to plan it. I didn’t realize this when I ran for the office, didn’t get the memo until just this year, which is probably why our class never had a five year reunion.

But, this time, for the ten-year mark, we are. Not some big event in the gym with balloons and streamers and nametags and speeches, but an evening at a Palo Alto bar the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Lower key, it seemed, might be more likely to get people to actually show up.

And, by now, more than a hundred of my classmates have RSVP’ed. I’m curious to see how we look as a bunch by now – how much hair lost, how much weight gained. At least two people will be bringing small kids, and many more their husbands, wives and significant others.

Jess, wisely, will instead be visiting her younger sister, abroad for the semester in Copenhagen, so she’ll be spared. So I’ll be facing things solo – and, more to the point, very drunk.

In other news, today at lunch I inadvertently got the shortest haircut I’ve had since, well, ever.

I’ve been busy. Exceedingly busy. Which is why, though ‘get a haircut’ has been on my to-do list for weeks, I hadn’t managed to stop in for a trim.

This weekend, however, my brother pointed out that I had started to grow payis. Then, this morning, Jess told me I had ‘lady hair’.

So, at lunch, I headed off to Jean Louis David. Which, while admittedly French for ‘Supercuts’, has normally sheared me well. Today, however, there were only two stylists at work, and a shaggy-haired lineup waiting for them.

So, short on time, and remembering that my intern Jed recently had his hair cut at the nearby Astor Place Barber Shop, I headed there instead.

Located in a dingy basement below the corner of Astor and Broadway, the Astor Place Barber Shop is enormous – apparently about 9,000 square feet – and packed to the rafters with more old Greek and Italian barbers than I could count, each with electric trimmers buzzing.

I was more than a bit worried about plopping down in ‘Einstein’ Enrico’s chair (as his sign proclaimed) – his stooped stance, mildly shaking hands, and thick, thick glasses didn’t inspire much confidence. Nor did I feel much better when he launched into cutting, taking off giant chunks in one fell buzzer swoop.

The entire cut took less than three minutes (which, at $12, is perhaps all the time I had paid for). But, in the end, it looks surprisingly good. A bit short, perhaps, but overall pretty nice.

Nice enough, in fact, that in six weeks, when I next need a trim, I suspect I’d once again live on the edge, and head on back.

For the past several years, I’ve had an account on Facebook. A good friend of mine was their head of biz dev, and another served a stint as the company’s president, so I signed up on their request, to provide some user interface feedback in the relatively early days of the site.

After which, I more or less forgot that I had even signed up in the first place. Being old and out of school and no longer even vaguely aware of what’s cool with the kids these days, I had no idea that I was supposed to be using the site obsessively, checking in several times each and every day (as the average user inexplicably does). Instead, my account lay largely fallow. Which was perfectly fine with me.

But then, a few months back, I started getting friend requests from anyone I’d ever met two to ten years younger than I. As a result, suddenly, at least a few times a week, I was logging into Facebook. And while I must admit I still don’t completely grasp the site’s appeal, I’m finally and undeniably on there, a real (albeit rather uncommitted) Facebook user.

Early this week, I took my Facebook-ship up a notch, having been added by my brother as an officer to my very first Facebook group: “I Live at the Russian Samovar”. (Which, as I do, how could I possibly refuse?)

And though I’m not really sure what that’s about either, I have the sense that I’m supposed to now be pimping the group out. I’m sure there’s some way to link to it, or to invite you all, or whatever. But as anyone likely to join on probably understands the site far better than I have the patience or desire to, I’m just going to say it’s out there, and that all of you young alcoholics should get in on it, whether you’ve actually been to Russian Samovar, or whether you’re just happy to support the undisputed category king for “New York Russian mafiosi vodka bar part-owned by Mikhail Baryshnikov.”

For those on the fence, I copy below our group’s manifesto:

Comrades!

Let us leave our plows to instead join arms in a unanimous decry of solidarity!

Let us lift high our glasses to toast the People’s Party of Inebriation!

Let us cast away the opressive yoke of capitalist early morning work hours!

Let us marinate like fine matjes herring in flavored vodka until we cannot speak our home addresses to impatient cab drivers who retrieve us on the nearby Broadway corner!

Let us honor mother Russia with shot and shot and shot of Russian Samovar’s fine fruit-infused vodka until we vomit on the poor out-of-town assholes waiting in line for Hairspray next door!

Long live the Party! Na zdorovje!

Join up. And add me as a friend, I guess. But don’t send me messages on the site, because fuck knows I’m not going to try to figure out how to pick those up.

As on most Halloweens past, tomorrow night I’ll be playing big band jazz at the venerable Theater for the New City’s Vintage Halloween Costume Ball, a masquerade party replete with liquor, food, live music, and weird, weird East Village types.

And, setting aside how my lack of trumpet practice time over the past month may leave my chops worse than mangled by the end of a two hour set holding down the solo trumpet chair, I’m primarily concerned about my lack of appropriate apparel. In prior years, the tuxedo dress code left me with little choice on the costume front, aside from toting toy gun and martini glass in my best attempt at Bond chic. This morning however, the bandleader emailed to say that we’d now be free to costume ourselves however our swinging hearts desire. Which leaves me, in short order, to come up with my best attempts at items-already-available-in-closet assembly.

As my backup choice is to wrap a bow and ribbon around my neck, going as god’s gift to women, I’d better think fast.