People in New York are much nicer than they are reputed to be. They don't ordinarily make eye contact, but I've found that if you approach them with big, helpless tears streaming down your face and beg them for directions, they are more than happy to accommodate you.

We had quite a time with the subway. If you get a subway map, it's easy enough to figure out which line you need to get you somewhere—the tricky part is figuring out where that line is and, when you find it, whether it is going in the appropriate direction. We did a whole lot of backtracking, and a lot of walking that we didn't need to. On our way to 34th street, we were about to give up and call a cab when we had an assist by a friendly old couple from Brooklyn ("I tell you, it is not the same Brooklyn I remember"). Even so, it wasn't long before we were walking on bloody stumps. With every step, I cursed those wretched cretins at the shoe store who promised this pair of bricks would be excellent for walking in. May rats vomit on their corn flakes and devour their brain matter. Anyway, about five o'clock I switched to classic tenny runners, and my feet have been recovering nicely since.

We went through all nine floors of Macy's, which was marvelous and had old wooden escalators that reminded me of a contraption that somebody's eccentric grandfather would have made. When we finally got back to the bottom floor, I realized I had left a sack with a comic book in it up in the seventh floor bathroom. Nick and I shook our heads but decided to go through with a quixotic rescue mission anyway. Believe it or not, the bag was still there. What with all the traffic in and out of those stalls, I figured it would have been gone with the wind. Either people here are really honest, or they're just not into comics (hmm...a tough one).

The show tonight (at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre) was incredibly good, but I won't try to recount it because improv never seems as funny when you're describing it after the fact. Suffice it to say, it was well worth the crazy wait outside and the lack of air conditioning.

I saw:

1. an $800 tank top at Barneys
2. an elderly woman with a sexy red leather jacket
3. the Empire State building
4. far fewer people who fit the medical definition of obesity than back home in the portly Midwest (I can see why, what with all the walking that goes on in this city)
5. Grand Central Station
6. a giant button and needle
7. a crapload of moving billboards that stun you just long enough to get steam-rolled by a taxi