- Best Chris Matthews moment - tie: Fred Thompson's masculine musk; What did Neville Chamberlain do?
- Best killing spree - Stephen Maturin, in The Fortunes of War
- Best informercial - Snuggies: The blanket you die in
- Best Keith Olbermann impression - Ben Affleck
- Best song on the Spinnerette EP I bought, even though it was also the free single - Valium Knights
- Best SciFi channel original movie - Rock Monster
- Best return on investment "hard" mode drum song in Rock Band - Maps
- Best show I attended - Green Jelly at The Gramercy
- Best scone - The maple walnut at Cafe Grumpy
- Best Seven Second Delay episode - Andy Breckman gets waterboarded; runners-up - anything with Kelly Jones
Marc Maron did a show at Maxwell's on Saturday night. He's been doing stand-up shows in and around New York recently as, I think, he refines his one-man show about his bad, ugly divorce from his second wife. I'd been stuck at work for it, but Tom described "An Evening With Marc Maron" at Union Hall as "intense. Not a lot of jokes" -- so I knew I had to see him. I hopped the PATH at 34th St., remembering that I hadn't been to Maxwell's since Chris and I saw The Queers there in high school. What I recall about that show is that there were a bunch of sandal-wearing hippies there who were kind of killing the vibe; that Chris and I got a bunch of dirty looks for putting The Beach Boys on the jukebox; and that the eleven blocks between the station and the club were really, really long. That last part hadn't changed, and I'd remembered halfway through the trip that since comedians don't do 50 minute sets with DJs in between, my plan to skip the openers might lead to me missing Marc himself. So I had to really leg it to 11th St. through the freezing cold, lugging the laptop and book that I'd stupidly brought along, mucus pouring out of my face, using a free hand to alternately and unwrap my scarf around my head. By the time I got to the place I was 'bout ready to puke, but it turned out I hadn't missed that much.
Marc was doing a mix of funny and, you know, scary material, some of which I'd seen him do on Conan or whatever. There was an irritating, unappealing woman who'd stepped right up close to the stage, at some remove from the rest of the audience, who was clearly trying to "connect" with Marc throughout the show. She was drinking a glowing red drink, its luminescence of origin unknown, and she kept nodding and shaking her head and saying "yes, yes" in response to his rhetorical questions.
I've been working late these days, babies, later than a man should work. So, sometimes, when I get out of the office and it's super late, I opt for the ol' C.A.B. line over the F-to-the-D, which can take up to two hours after a certain time of night. It's expensive, but, you know, I do some mental economics about how much the extra hour or two of sleep / girl is worth, and, you know, it's hard to argue against. Anyway, I've gotten sort of pleasantly accustomed to the route we usually take, which goes something like: FDR or 5th Ave. to lower Manhattan; the Brooklyn Bridge on-ramp taking us right past the tantalizing windows of one of the Pace University libraries; over the bridge; a brief drive through Brooklyn Heights before getting on the BQE; the BQE to the 39th St. exit; that U-Turn in front of Peyton's Playpen. The initial leg of the BQE goes by a stretch of the Brooklyn Heights waterfront with some piers and warehouses. There's nothing really going on there at night; it's dark, except for a lone street light that always seems to be on, illuminating the municipal utility vehicle under it, like a lone fisherman fishing through a hole on an ice floe.
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