Riding the subway farther than 5th Avenue (4 stops from home) seemed like such a mountain to climb until recently. The breakthrough might have started when I made trips to Carroll Gardens and got there thinking, wtf, that was nuttin’. But really I think the dread I felt when contemplating an hour long subway ride has been lifted somewhat from the therapy, even just these few weeks in. It might be that making new friends from random reaches of life has opened up something. I was on WBAI this morning in a 5-way interview with a NY Times reporter, an Irish actor, someone else I could not identify, and the director of the phone booth film that played at Tribeca last week. The moderator was pretty good about getting an even amount of talk time from everybody, though the Irish actor (brother of Frank McCourt) probably got in a few more sentences than the rest. It was a short spot but felt nice. Next week I meet another person I do not yet know for a payphone pub crawl on the upper west side.

I was back at Prospect Park today, partly to find a phone booth I saw somewhere on the Internet years ago (and hwich is probably gone) but also to get in to the Prospect Park Zoo for more payphone detail. The zoo was completely mobbed by Passover revelers, as was the Queens Zoo on Monday. But the Prospect Park Zoo seemed way more claustrophobic than the Queens Zoo on account of the crowds. I have not seen so many shtreimels in a long time. I really like seeing that stuff, and for all these years I’ve lived in New York I’ve encountered precious little of the Jewish culture.

Funny thing today, though. Four or five Jewish men were playing football next to the carousel by the Prospect Park Zoo. One of them was wide open in the end zone. He shouted “HAIL MARY!” That is a distinctly Christian phrase that has seen the meaning of its religiosity trivialized by the game of football, where “Hail Mary” is used to describe a pass or any other type of plat that has a small chance of succeeding but that would win the game. In that context I guess the phrase is, for better or worse, religiously neutral. But it was funny to see an Orthodox Jewsih guy running around in traditional garb yelling “Hail Mary!”

…

Hail Mary
Full of grace
The Lord is with Thee
Blessed art thou among women
And blessed is the fruit of thy womb,
Jesus.

Holy Mary,
Mother of God
Pray for us sinners
Now and at the hour of our death.
Amen.

…

Did I remember that perfectly? Probably not. It’s been since college, probably, that I have had occasion to recite that full prayer. The running gag among the jocularly blasphemous at my school was to replace “fruit of the womb” with “Fruit of the Loom”.

I forgot until now that Mary was considered “Mother of God”. Is that really even true? Jesus never in the gospels said that He *was* Him, that He *was* the son of God or that He was anything more than an ordinary mortal. “I AM WHO AM” is the closest he came to answering the question of whether he was the son of God. I seem to remember anecdotes from the apocrypha where clouds on the horizon burst into volcanic explosions moments after Christ died on the cross. This prompted skeptics who were renoving his body from the cross to say “I guess he really was the son of God.” Easy to see how such a flimsy bit of dialogue never made it into the official gospels.

Here I am remembering high school theology lessons (and rumors from the apocrypha) through the fog of the first beer in 2 days.

But as I recall, Jesus was positively Clintonian in his evasiveness about answering questions about whether He was the son of God. And that evasiveness is interpreted by the Jesuits to say that we are all God, we are all Jesus. All ordained members of the Society of Jesus have limited powers to emulate the work of Christ.

Between that last sentence and this I got into a spirited back and forth with a smokin’ hot babe about the wait for the bathroom. I happen to be sitting by the bathrooms at a hipster pub where everyone looks and drinks like they are 15 years old. She asked if I was the bathroom monitor. I said yes, and that I suggest a tip of $1 per visit. To earn my keep I estimated a one minute wait for the first bathroom, and a two minute wait for the other one. She laughed, and laughed, and laughed, she so drunk. Guess I know where to sit next time.

Last time I was here I discovered, shockingly, that I am still attractive to gay men. Well, not so shocking, since David told me that months ago.

Another beautiful woman to my left. Beauty doesn’t mean much to me. Well, it means something. As I told my friend Dave (not to be confused with the abovementioned David), “Beauty is a pain in the ass.”

He did not disagree. Dave and I are old enough to know what not to touch, which is hypothetical for him since, as he never fails to remind me, he is Married….