The Year of the Dog

I tagged along with Carl of The Wire to Jenny Yip's Chinese New Year dinner at her appropriately-named Miss Yip restaurant. Our table included Carl, entertainment columnist Thomas Barker, promoter Edison Farrow, and WSVN anchorman Craig Stevens among others. There was so much gossip traded at that table I thought could hear the closing bell of NY Stock Exchange.

Another thing we discussed, again appropriately, was our slavish devotion to our dogs. All of us agreed to being doggie-whipped. Thomas admitted to caving in constantly to those hurt eyes when he leaves the house, Craig confessed to guilt about reasoning with his dog, Jack, on not getting on the sofa, and I had to admit that KiKi will often ignore the meal I prepare for him unless I pretend I'm going to eat it, saying, "Yummie, yummie."

The sumptuous feast was topped off by the classic dragon dances and a barrage of firecrackers. (Memories of New York's Chinatown danced in my head as well.) When the almond cookies were gone we all headed upstairs to Jenny's surprise birthday party hosted by her partner, Amir, and Ian Schrager at Buck 15. I always get a thrill out of events like this; the exciting atmosphere of New York is easily found in a town of so many transplanted Manhattanites. I gleefully trotted up the trendy, graffiti-painted staircase with our table companions and met up with an old friend from those reckless summers in Westerly, RI, Alan, who is working on the Palm Beach lawsuit Mrs. Henry Ford has filed against the contractors of her latest vacation home (there are seventeen lawyers involved).

I was surprised when Alan's email arrived and asked how he found me. Alan explained that he had been in a Boston bar when he noticed a cute red-head giving him "the eye" and in the ensuing conversation learned that the cutie was from New York. Alan said he used to visit the city every weekend way-back-when and would go to Mars nightclub with his friend, Alexis. The red-hed stared at him and said, "I speak with Alexis almost every day." Alan stared back and screamed, "Lahoma van Zandt!". Upon returning home he googled Lahoma and found my birthday tribute. Thus, fifteen years later, Alan, my housemate Bob, and myself were reunited and having a viscously good time; all three of us agreed that--amazingly enough--none of us had aged a day, while the same couldn't be said for our contemporaries.