REPORT: Well Met in New York

[Murthy Yenamandra]

			  WELL MET IN NEW YORK
				   or
		     HOW I SPENT MY SUMMER VACATION
		     ------------------------------

Well see here I was in Nueva York a couple of weeks ago and was promised
a free drink if I could rat on the real whereabouts of certain
p-listers.  Having managed to hook up with that ever charismatic Chris
from a pay phone at the MOMA (damn these phones in NYC keep asking you
for some more money every minute it looked like, not like back home
where a quarter buys you enough time to dictate Gravity's Rainbow) for
details about how to cash in that coupon, I was told that I'd already
missed Heikki but not Eric and was directed to wait until the following
week so that she could round up the straggling few who couldn't find a
good enough excuse to be somewhere else.

So I managed to take in the sordid charms of Manhattan and suburbia for
a few days before actually meeting the PLNY crowd (well, more than three
and that's good enough for me). Highlights of the tour were the film
posters and plot summaries from the haydays of constructivist soviet
cinema, several completely random runnings into Mittelwerk on the
streets and subways of Manhattan (he kept denying it was him, but of
course, I easily saw through the lame facade and begged him for more
jokes about Dodi), and a trip to Ellis and Liberty Islands (paraphrase
of a choice quote from an italian immigrant: "When I came over, I
discovered three things: one, the streets of America were not paved with
gold.  Two, they were not paved at all.  Three, I was the one who was
expected to pave them").

So the following week I walked into the somewhat dark but not smoky
Cafe Reggio in the Village for our date and tried to look like the
typical out-of-towner squirming about trying to find a friendly face in
New York City. It was easy and it worked. I was spotted by the
eagle-eyed Chris and Eric, introductions were made and we all accounted
for the labor day weekend, which I had really spent not sightseeing but
playing pictionary with my nieces and trying to draw Wilt Chamberlain (I
had them guessing as far as a tall guy playing basketball before my time
was up).

Soon enough we were joined by David Fischer, Monte Davis, and Jeffrey.
We all observed a minute of silence to think about the tragedy of the
week and to consult the menu and it turned out that this was like the
only cafe in New York without a bar - I think we were expecting
Mittelwerk and taking reasonable precautions. We discussed his heartfelt
eulogy for the by then very late Princess and David Fischer offered up a
half-hearted rough draft of a conspiracy theory involving the House of
Seagrams which we all lapped up pending a later revision with peer
review.

The evening went on with wild speculations about the next small book
based on pynchon-l that no one may read, the way pynchon-l was hijacked
from SFU and whether it was really owned by someone or was a co-op, the
various reasons why we all love that Chris so (she seemed oddly
suspicious of this and kept trying to think up ways to be mean), and
what we can do to have people get with the program and stop sniping at
M&D.  Everyone indulged me by sticking to the Spoiler Warning Guidelines
for the evening as I hadn't yet finished the book - every time someone
said SPOILER I'd dance with someone else singing Who's Afraid of
Virginia Woolf until they stopped talking. This worked reasonably well,
but somehow I got this impression that there was a cemetery scene near
the end of the book, which sucks cause I hate bad endings and am not
sure if I should go ahead and finish the book or should trust Keith
and Kirn and just wash my hands off the smashed idol whose magic is now
surely gone.

Pretty soon it was time for hugs and treacly farewells (but with some
ironic distance!) and plans for lunch the next day. Ever gracious Chris
was good for the free drink and Monte gave me a lift across the river to
Jersey City. I managed to get back just in time to catch the anti-climax
of a Hindi movie with the right guy getting the girl after all.

I didn't manage to meet Chris and Eric for lunch the next day, but
did continue to feel the warmth of the PLNY company even west of the
Delaware Water Gap and well into Pennsylvania on the way home and I
thought, by golly, why don't all these people just move to Minneapolis
and save me the trouble of coming back here someday? Think about it
folks! Or at least swing by here the next time you're visiting North
Dakota.

Thanks everyone who showed up for a good time and sorry to have missed
all of you who were somewhere else. Family and friends tried to warn me
that meeting virtual strangers in New York City was a bad idea, but
looks like it all turned out okay after all.

-- 
Murthy Yenamandra                  mailto:yenamand at cs.umn.edu
Dept of Computer Science           University of Minnesota
"Every heart/to love will come/but like a refugee" - Leonard Cohen