Wilfrid

Having gone down the rabbit hole -- nothing to do with CBGB but I last saw Iggy 29 years ago.

Wow, Tish and Snooky are doing great with a fashion brand and multiple podcasts. Add them to the show. I guess Annie Golden could put a version of The Shirts together.

Okay, it seems The Damned did. Maybe once. Hardly a band I associate with the club. Iggy, no.

They ever play CBGBs?

Keith McNally, I Regret Almost Everything. Finally got to borrow an e-copy. No wonder it's popular. Way better than I expected. He looks back on his life from the perspective of his stroke rehabilitation (I hadn't realized it was so bad). Countless famous faces, of course. If a young woman keeps showing up for lunch, of course it turns out to be Anna Wintour. Nevertheless, the overall tone matches the title: vulnerable and surprisingly humble.

I see there's a one day CBGB festival coming up this weekend. Featuring noone I would associate with the club. Even Marky Ramone surely replaced Tommy after The Ramones outgrew the club. Nice line-up but just seems a little weird. Mind you, who is still out there? The Dictators maybe? https://www.cbgb.com

Well that was a wet one, with the rain sweeping in just before the start of the set. Very little overhead coverage on the Elsewhere Rooftop. But they just get better and better. More videos on IG. IMG_1909.mov

Would be interesting to see Ligaya and Tejal's expenses report for September with meals (plural) at Alinea and Atelier Crenn. Also, I see seven out of the last ten reviews have featured non-New York restaurants. No wonder we don't talk about these reviews much any more.

Thanks for the reminder on Lockwood, I see it came out this week.

I'm supposed to sleep tonight? This time tomorrow they'll be gone again.

"That was the robot, wasn't it?" Her line readings are ridiculous and have been since she was a kid.

Ana, just turned 31, publicly came out as bi today. Not a big surprise. I know she likes guys, but she seems to love kissing Paula on stage. ❤️

No. As a kid I adored her more than Sophia and Gina, although I now know that Sophia was a more substantial actress.

Okay, I have Richmond and restaurants booked.

I've seen off the brothers -- how many people can come down sick with some kind of brain fever in one novel? Read an old piece on it by Somerset Maughan who calls out all its manifold faults but still regards it as a great masterpiece. True enough. Middlemarch is different in every way except length, so I am taking a break by re-reading The Midnight Bell, the first volume of Patrick Hamilton's 20,000 Streets Under the Sky trilogy. Hamilton is best known for his stage thrillers, and the movies based on them, Rope and Gas Light. In his novels, however, he is just one of the funniest writers there is, even when his stories are kind of sad as they usually are. This is also a great London novel; Hamilton knows the West End and its pubs intimately. I think I've read almost all his novels twice, Slaves of Solitude more than that.

They were at Miss Lily's today. So near.

...

Here they come.

Time for Drew Nieporent's memoir: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/16/dining/drew-nieporent-book-nobu.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare I still want to read McNally's but it has been hard to get from my library and I don't really need to own a copy.

Worth looking at some interviews with Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein about working with him, both of them some years younger.

Heathrow Airport (which got my email address because I used their wifi this summer) has sent me a free guide to...New York!

Member previews for the big new Man Ray exhibit, "When Objects Dream," at the Met. I don't know exactly how the Met changed the way it presents these big shows, but it's another rambling one where you're never quite sure which room to enter next. The main focus is Ray's experimental work with forms of photography, especially the so-called "rayographs." Perversely, I like his paintings better and this is the first time I've seen so many gathered together. "Ministry," a show at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, by Joyce McDonald is really worth seeing. Serene, joyful, hopeful: many small clay figures of heartbreaking beauty. And it's free.

Nearly done with the Karamazov brats, but jeez he could have cut Mitya's endless blathering.

I didn't know Guy Fieri had a chicken tenders outlet on 42nd Street. It's called Chicken Guy (geddit?). And offers "great frickin' chicken." Also, "lots of fuckin' cluckin.'" Okay, I made the last bit up.

Ego leaving SNL ☹️