May 18, 2009
Hanging Out With Bloggers
by JeremyCara and I once again had occasion to spend the evening with Michael Totten and Judith Weiss and a number of other great people in NYC. We had an excellent time chatting over drinks and assorted bar snacks at Fraunce's Tavern, followed by a visit to some other bar in lower Manhattan.
Michael is, as ever, a great guy to hang out with, despite his ever increasing stature as a globe trekking journalist. He just does not carry the arrogance gene, unlike many other writers and journalists. Which is nice.
And it was great to see Judith again. She has been single-handedly keeping the liberal hawks of the greater New York Metropolitan area Keshered up for years now, and we're grateful she keeps us in the loop.
We had not previously met any of the others present, but they were all great company too. Here are a few highlights:
Michael, prompted to tell us about his travels with Hitchens, told us he'd never been more afraid he was going to die than when being attacked by Syrian fascists after Hitchens wrote an obscenity on one of their (already obscene) posters in Lebanon. They evidently had decided to simply make a gesture of brutality by beating Hitchens down. Had Michael and Hitchens been anonymous Lebanese citizens, rather than western journalists, it would probably have been a much more bloody encounter.
Other than using more than my share of butane from Michael's souvenir Portland, Oregon lighter to get my cigar lit evenly, I think I can say I was a much less costly smoking buddy. Enjoying a tobacco break across the street from ground zero, however, made small talk unrelated to war an impossibility.
Also present were:
A very nice and witty guy named Evan, who we eventually realized was this Evan. Evan advised us that one's left wing friends will tolerate one's conservative films but only until those conservative films become popular.
Kejda charmed and entertained us all with insights and anecdotes related to her childhood in Albania and her work as an editor at Commentary. She is, among other things, a self-proclaimed bidet evangelist. Mention any subject to her and, along with an erudite opinion, she will reach into her purse and produce a picture (and yes, that includes the topic of Albania's superior toileting hardware).
Another new friend of ours is kejda's husband Michael, a database guru whose company will one day make it possible to use the internet to find out where your brother-in-law left his car keys, and whose definition of a blowout sale on hard drives is when the price dips below a hundred and eighty thousand dollars for 500 gigs.
We also befriended an evil Zionist college professor (or at least that's what some of her students would call her, on account of her defending the right of Israel to exist). I suck at remembering names unless people send me their URLs via their mysterious pocket gadgets. Cara remembers her name but is at work at the moment. Sorry about that.
I had a nice chat with Steve, who tours the internet in search of discourse and tries to avoid venues where ranting and spewing prevail.
And there were other worthy attendees who I am less able to name, praise, or caricature, but whose presence I enjoyed.
Mini golf in Belchertown would have been fun too, or attending the world's largest pancake breakfast, but I'm glad we went down to the big city instead.
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