tuesday july 23 2002 | 2:25 a.m.
"you're my cheerleader, miami beach babe, sort of scholarly muse..."
that was quoted without permission. i love you, b__.
it is the hot, muggy night of a hot, muggy day, the kind that sounds good in old hollywood movies and books from the jazz age but in practice is just short of unbearable. where you break into a sweat from just being, and the heat crawls up your legs like fire, and you can't roll down the car windows to smoke a cigarette, not even with the ac cranked, because you risk suffocation.
it sucks.
see, only birtish tourists have it right. they know to come when miami is twinkly and temperate, in late fall, and to leave without a second thought in mid- or late march, right before hurricane season. the rest of the vacationing world just throws itself lemming-like into the rapture of summer: off it goes, and you watch it curbside, kind of wincing at the sad inevitability of what's coming.
occasionally d____ says smart things, and one of them was about the distinction between vacationers and travelers. which is so obvious, right? i'd just never considered it.
i keep drinking enormous glasses of ice water, one after the other, and i still feel dehydrated.
i feel good lately, i think, in general. the dreaded manager has been gone for two or three weeks now (a cruise followed by a mild heart attack), so work has been a lot easier to deal with. i finally talked to d_____ last night about my dalliance with j____, and things are better between us, i think. i have little time to read, but that only means that empire falls is stretching out luxuriously before and after me. the recent ugly, ugly weeks seem to be over. i hope so.
you know what i need? i need a good, cold columbus winter. followed by a languid coastal spanish spring. all funded by good intentions and wishful thinking.
the dismemberment plan is back in heavy rotation, anticipating the fall. the walkmen play on friday, and i need someone to go with. depeche mode hasn't left the general vicinity of my stereo in months. fischerspooner is brilliant. i miss machete. i wish the new issue of magnet would come out already, and that i'd won the collected sonic youth from insoud or pitchfork.
here's a listlet. it's up to you to guess what it's a list of. like it's that hard.
top five, to be continued
1. anthony bourdain
2. benicio del toro
3. ewan mcgregor
4. jude law
5. vin diesel
