First off, this is brilliant: Trailers of Mass Destruction. And now for what I've been up to in the past 24 hours.

Hit the gym yesterday for the first time in a long time. It was a painful experience. My stomach hurt and I am terribly out of shape. Not as bad as when I got back from spending the holiday season out west, but pretty sorry all in all. My personal rigor has been on the wane over the past month or two; too much partytime.

Then I hit the Dean Meetup down at the Essex. It was my first and I had a pretty good time. I was expecting Frank to show up and be my wingman, but he couldn't come through. Once I realized he wasn't going to make it, I just started meeting people at random. There was a good queer presence -- did I mention Dean's the queer candidate? -- which was nice; gay men are possibly the most socially apt class of people in America today. There was a good mix of old and young as well as black and white. Arrested Development, who are releasing a new album after many years of silence, was set to play a few tunes after the official meetup time had passed.

It was a beautiful crowd, but these weren't quite my people, a bit on the square side for the most part: grad students, wonks, grizzled volunteers and sports-loving New Yorkers. There were a few other freaks in the crowd -- did I mention Dean's the freak candidate? -- but I didn't get to talking with them. I still had good conversations though, got a free button and signed some mailing lists. I ended up sticking around to see the music, having a few mojitos (when in Rome...) and trying to understand how I would get inside. The evening definitely tickled my ambition-bone.

I missed Frank the most toward the end, when the crowd was a bit thinner and we were talking with good-looking politically active young women. It would have been pleasant to direct them his way.

But I took the bike home in the rain. Dropped in on Jeremy at the Lyric and had three beers, which put me over the line. I'd eaten nothing since lunch and had been to the gym in-between, so my calorie-starved metabolism was just mainlining the booze to keep the works in operation. I went home and felt sick, passed out in a fit of incoherence, waking now with a hangover and Bob Dylan's "Paths of Victory" on the hi-fi.