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Last night, just when I planned on kicking back on the official Virtual Memories fainting couch and reading some of Herodotus’ Histories, I got a call from my buddy Adam, who was planning on going to some chanukkah parties in NYC.

Before I left the house, I considered grabbing my digital camera, but thought, “Ah, I’ll end up dropping it in the sink when I’m washing my hands, like I did in NZ.” So I left it on the hall table.

I seriously regretted this decision two hours later when, at the Manhattan Jewish Experience party, we were treated to the rap stylings of “50 Shekel.” You can’t imagine how dismayed I am that I don’t have any photos of this for you. When he went onstage, I was in the midst of explaining to a Frenchwoman how NYC is sorta defined by plasticity, by the capacity of reinvention, both in its architecture and in its inhabitants. She gestured up at the stage and said, “Say no more.”

After this party, Adam & I headed down to a club near 12th St. for another gathering of Jews (as well as some, um, members of the lost tribe, if you get my meaning). We gallivanted and debauched in a fun way. It was fun to be clubbing at a time when most of New York was asleep. While the gentiles were having their dreams of sugar-plum fairies, a girl took one look at me, grabbed me by the lapels and pulled me close so we could dance to Sean Paul. It was a little Jewish wonderland. I just wish it hadn’t been so loud.

The lowlight of the evening, though, had to be when Adam & I double-teamed some poor girl on the dance floor, a la the Butabi brothers. Or maybe the real lowlight was when we were hitting a street-meat kiosk at 2am. It’s all a bit of a blur, I’m afraid.

Anyway, for any of my Christian friends who are so bored that they’re actually reading this on Christmas day, I want to extend my wishes for a good holiday. God is love, and the constant unfolding of creation is our daily miracle.

Y’know, the Greeks would’ve treated this as a pretty serious omen . . .

In the Auckland airport, I sent myself a postcard. It showed up today, ten days later. Since it’s the last one I sent, it means if you didn’t get one, I didn’t send one. This one’s of the Waitomo Caves, and the back reads:

Hey, man,

You did something right.

–Gil

Nine days after getting back from NZ, I finally have heat back in my home. After a couple days of jury-rigging, the furnace gave up the ghost on Saturday. I spent Sunday coming up with ways to keep the pipes from freezing, and now I’ve got a brand-new furnace installed. All it took was a few days of suffering with the cold (and several thousand dollars)!

In other news, I’m having a little trouble with FrontPage’s FTP, so I can’t send up the first few days of the NZ slideshow. But it’ll be up soon, and then you can wade through pix of the most beautiful place on earth.

In today’s Washington Post, Everett Ehrlich writes a great piece about the way the Internet (and accompanying information revolution) has changed politics. He writes about it much better than I did, back in November.

Thanks to Mickey Kaus for pointing this one out.

My buddy Adam woke me up after 4 hours of sleep (I was crashed out on his living-room sofa), following a drunken Saturday night in NYC, to let me know that Saddam Hussein got nabbed by the U.S.

He’s calling all his friends & family now. Here’s a great quote:

Adam: “Turn on the news . . . No, Brent, it’s not about Nomar!”

It was great to see the reactions of the Iraqi press at the conference. They must be partying like it’s 1999 out in Baghdad. Wonder if the BBC’s going to refer to it as the “kidnapping” of Saddam.

Adam’s hoping that the guy at the press conference who they keep showing making the “first down” sign gets a job in the NFL. He just handed me a glass of champagne.

My furnace is working again. My filling is repaired. My fridge now has spicy Thai chicken sausages. My magazine’s big issue is almost wrapped up.

(My New Zealand pix via Flickr)

Are you a fan of the films of Hal Hartley? Well, Hal’s a fan of Paul West’s The Immensity of the Here and Now: a novel of 9.11 (which I recently published)! Here’s what Hal had to say about the book:

“It’s a beautiful and penetrating evocation of the confused emotions and intellectual turmoil the whole 9.11 event brought into being, a mood I had no name for.”

So do me (and yourself) a favor and buy the darn book.

Home at last: 10,000 miles in 24 hours, with 19 hours of flight time.

I landed with a busted filling and terrible weather, and when I walked in the door I discovered that the furnace had shut off days ago. This meant the house was around 40-45 degrees (5-7 degrees C to my metric buddies). I’ve spent the last two days trying to get it up and running. I think it’s working now, but even the repair guys who showed up today (responding to my “emergency” call Saturday night) were befuddled by the inability of the pilot light to stay lit.

I’ve been optimizing images from the trip, and hope to have a slideshow set up by this weekend.

I’m sitting in LAX right now, waiting about 90 minutes for my flight back to Newark. This follows 2 hours from Queenstown to Auckland, and 12 hours from Auckland to LA. I’m one tired little zombie, I tellsya.

Moreover, after all my macho adventures of the past two weeks, I busted a tooth eating a muffin during breakfast on the Auckland flight. I mean, seriously: helicopters, bungee-jumps, mountain hikes, drunken Australians, and I get my ass kicked by a blueberry muffin?

Good thing I’m a new man…