A Man and His Dog

I was in Chelsea Friday night for a going away party. One of the comics I've met through Dave, Erin, is moving to Los Angeles after living in New York for the past ten years. You may have seen her in the AOL commercial as the girl who at the end says, "Who wants cake?" She’s also in the Philadelphia Cream Cheese commercial as the angel sitting on the couch. When I asked her why she was moving, she told me she had to "get out." She had reached that point where the energy and the chaos of the city had overwhelmed her. She says she knows she’ll end up back in New York eventually. This happened to my friend Jeremy too a couple years back. He had to get out and in a span of three weeks, he quit his job, got rid of his apartment, and moved to San Francisco. He lived there about a year and now he's back. I wonder if that will happen to me. If I stay here, will the city become hectic enough that will need to get out?

While we were on the stoop saying our goodbyes, a guy with his dog walked past us. The dog was cute so we started petting it without asking the owner for permission. This petting went on for about 30 seconds. Finally, we realized we should not detain the dog’s owner any longer. About two minutes later, Erin said, "Wait...Do you know who that guy was?" Turns out it was Ethan Hawke. I suppose the picture above ruined the surprise. We were so enamored by the cute dog, we neglected to pay any attention to the dog owner’s identity! Had I known it was him, I would have told him I loved his ass crack in the play I saw last year, "Hurly Burly."

After the party, we went to Barracuda, which is not my favorite gay bar, but we were in the neighborhood. Just hanging out when this guy named Keith that I dated briefly from 1998 approached me! He was there with Skye, another Minneapolis transplant. It was so weird to see each other, and furthermore, to learn that he knows a bunch of the lesbians with Minneapolis and Madison origins that I know.