When NY bloggers get together (at least in "my" area of the NY blogosphere) we generally don't charge $500 a person and have lectures in college halls. We go to a restaurant or gather to shoot the shit and have a picnic/barbecue in someone's backyard. Yesterday was the latter.
The day after the very successful NY blogger dinner (see previous posts), Julia H of Sisyphus Shrugged and her husband John hosted about a dozen of us, including Seth "Talking Dog" Farber and wife Liz, MadKane and hubby Mark, Patrick "Electrolite" and Teresa "Making Light" Nielsen Hayden, Mary Beth "Wampum" Williams, Dwight "late of PLA" Meredith, Julia's brother George and of course the girls "Her Majesty" and "The Loquacious Pup." As Julia and John and Her Maj live way the heck out in Queens (in a lovely quiet neighborhood which certainly inspired me to consider looking around there before our current lease is up) it was about an hour and a half commute from Riverdale, made even longer by the sudden discovery that the Manhattan-bound subway was bypassing my station and passengers had to "go up to go down." Which wouldn't have been so bad, except the lone turnstile entrance to the "uptown" line wasn't working correctly, and folks were backed up halfway down the stairs because their MetroCard swipes weren't registering properly, and we had to double-up because some people's cards just didn't work at all (mine did after about a dozen patient swipes) and I missed at least two trains just trying to get onto the platform. Yes, weekend mass transit can sometimes be an adventure, but it wasn't like I was on a strict timetable, and I was actually happy to ride up to Van Cortlandt Park because it's the first local place where I've seen the leaves actually turning and it was quite colorful and pretty. But I digress.
Since Julia had promised a possible viewing of the Yellow Submarine DVD, I wore my Marx/Lennon shirt with the following image:
This Beatles-related page explains a little more about the Marx/Lennon stamps from the Republic of Abkhazia. I have a fair number of these stamp sheets left over from when I bought them in bulk to sell to Firesign Theatre fans back when I was publishing FAlaFal, and I figured this would be the most appropriately appreciative type of group to which I could give some away as pressies. My relief was palpable that they didn't even ask who The Firesign Theatre are, and I was delighted to impart the news that the 4or5 are still recording and have had lots of new stuff out in the past few years. Maybe I can get a few of them to show up on the Thursday chats now...
Mary Beth had to take off fairly soon after my arrival, but I still got to hear about her tomato-growing and -canning prowess of which I'm in awe (I possess, to put it mildly, something of a black thumb), and from her and Dwight about Temple Grandin and her amazing hug machine. It was a pretty cool and esoteric crowd, and the cross-conversations reflected that. As I've said previously, it was like we've all known each other anyway, so everyone's comfort level was pretty high; there was just the formality of "oh, that's what you look like" to get out of the way. (And I found it way cool that all the women there were of substance, both physically and intellectually!) Theresa (with whom I was delighted to finally talk at length, as we have a lot of friends and experiences in common even though we'd never met) said she'd pictured me as a redhead; oddly, so had Robin before we met! So it's settled, I have to "go red" again before Mid-Ohio Con. The left-leaning group didn't touch on politics as much as one might expect, although I enjoyed Madeleine and, I think, Julia getting all catty over Maureen Dowd. Mad and Mark told the story about their adventure in the Utah mountains. Theresa talked about cataplexy and narcolepsy, as well as her fascination with the pathology of people who live in garbage houses and amass tons of neglected animals, which of course led to talk of tigers (see the links in this entry). Everyone seemed to get down with their bad selves singing along to this, and I felt bad that Robin was too exhausted to come with me because he and Patrick would have had a great time swapping obscure Beatles trivia. By the way, we never did get around to watching Yellow Submarine, but no complaints as I had a wonderful time, John's grilled sausages and chicken and Julia's pasta salad were delicious, Mad and Mark's wine was superb, the bourbon cherries and wine-drenched mushrooms were amazing, and the company was stupendous. Guys, we have got to do this again real soon! Thanks so much, Julia and John, for your lovely hospitality!
What? Oh yes, of course I took pictures. Here's my montage. As with Friday's dinner, if anyone wants the full-sized, higher-res, uncropped versions of any of these pictures, just e-mail me.
Update: Check out Mad's song about us! And Julia's going to find us a house, it seems. :) Dwight talked MB into hosting this year's Koufax Awards (yay!), and driver extraordinaire Seth weighs in as well.
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