When you know...

I have every intention of drinking some stellar coffee and watching Serendipity tonight while Zoey sleeps peacefully and I pine for friends like John Cusack and Jeremy Piven. I'll brainstorm Christmas gifts for June, and dream about skating in Central Park. I'll play Bing Crosby during the commercials.

I don't care if I have to hand in my man-card for liking Serendipity...we're talking about a couple of awesome buddies, Kate Beckinsale, and New York City...I shouldn't have to even justify it. The definition of man is so $#@%ing lame these days anyway. If you watch movies that things blow up in then you're a dude, I guess. Whatever...I'll take Jonathon and Dean's buddyhood over some Band of Brothers frat crap.

How come I don't have a buddy like that? Why don't I know an Obits writer from the NY Times who's willing to wild goose chase with me across time zones and embrace all the fleeting manly whimsy that two dudes can stir up? I'd like a friend like that...I've got a few good ones, but none exactly like that. And come to think of it, I need a little more of that impetuous frivolity, the kind that Piven and Cusack go chasing after all film long.

"If you want to improve be content to be thought foolish and stupid"...Epictetus said that. Write that down. It's good advice.

I think I'm going to place an ad for a friend like Dean, but for right now I want to be in New York with my wife and daughter, and I want a Shawn Colvin soundtrack in the background and yellow cabs and Central Park ice rinks and buildings that drift up into a snowy sky. This Saturday night is just fine the way that it is, but I wouldn't be too upset if somehow we were just transported to a dinner table in Brooklyn with friends and a city all to ourselves. That'd be practically perfect.

What do you want right now?