Jesse and I did hook up for dinner (at the same place I took my friend Tom to lunch), so there was the expected discussion of friends and acquaintances from ten years ago, movies, Daniel Pinkwater books and the central (yet curiously unheralded) role of monkeys in American entertainment. The hotel he was put up at has two notable elements:

• The elevator had a chandelier in its ceiling. Due to the way this so-called 'chandelier' was constructed, once the elevator got underway it pulsed with unholy life. At any moment I expected it to drop on one of our heads and begin digesting us, like that Conan story I'm blanking on the name of. You know, the one with the guy who summons the monster with the flute? And Conan's trapped because the pillar the monster's lurking on top of is magnetized and his armor is stuck to it? Anyway... I also wondered how one was supposed to escape the elevator if it stopped between floors and the ceiling was occupied. Surely Mrs. Helmsley wouldn't leave her guests at the mercy of a luminous and carnivorous gumdrop-shaped thing?
• Perhaps in answer to the above question, the floor Jesse was on had a card reader-style lock in the far end of the hall. Not incorporated into a door in any fashion, you understand. So perhaps this was the secret escape route from the Elevator of Doom. Either that or one of those secret passages that water starts pouring out of, threatening to drown people. Or I have an unnatural fear of old hotels.

After that, we decided to see Cremaster 4 at the Manhattan Film Forum. After an entertaining death spiral through Greenwich Village, we arrived at the theater only to find that we'd misread the time Cremaster 4 was showing. Disgusted, we made our way back uptown, where I picked up my work laptop from Jesse's hotel room and slinked home. Exhausted by my ordeal, I couldn't work up the energy to see Jesse talk at the Junto Thursday night, so I wound up curling up with a good book at home. God bless the Mysterious Bookshop.