When I start to eroticize Eastern European trapeze artists, it’s all over. I can only claim extreme mental and physical duress brought on by chronic sexual frustration. My Manhattan grad school life resembled not so much Sex and the City as it did a less successful episode of Monk. Let me cry you a river. Oh wait, I’ve been doing that here since 2001.

Of course I would appear far more Manhattan savvy if I actually called it Randall’s Island, and not Randall Island. But this merely proves my larger point; living in New York hasn’t made me any smarter, only given me a bigger mouth. San Franciso, I apologize to you in advance. But I will now use that mouth to promote a gay rugby tournament this coming weekend starring the scrappy (or scrummy) Jimbo, at Randall’s Island. You too can take the M35 bus, and thus reach the same rarified heights of cool as yours truly.

Speaking of cool, I saw the new Conor McPherson play, Shining City (which has a couple of great scenes involving escorts, always a crowd pleaser) last week, and any doubts that I had the city’s hottest ticket dissolved when I saw Frances McDormand out on the sidewalk after the show. I was like, this close to her. One of my fellow grad students works for her and her husband, Joel Coen (of the Coen Brothers) as a nanny to their four-year old son. She told me that once she was over at their place for breakfast, and the little boy, who obviously has grown up around many Hollywood types, drained the milk from his cereal bowl, wiped his mouth, turned to his mother and, apropos of nothing, said, “Fwances, I luv your work.”