A Map of Last Night

Last night my brother, E and I went to some parties. First we went to Julian Schnabel’s art opening at the Sperone Gallery to see “Navigation Drawings.” The work was painted on top of vintage nautical maps and in a frightening turn of events, my brother began to read aloud from the maps, alerting me to all the countries in the world. Thankfully our father left his body and he turned back into my brother and we found our way into another room where I re-introduced myself to Steve Buscemi whom I had met once before. He asked me if I was the same Amanda Stern who wrote, The Long Haul and I looked at my brother astounded, and my brother looked at me like, doood, you wrote a book?. That was a big highlight. SB said some pretty excellent things about my novel, so nice in fact I’m too uncomfortable to repeat them.

E and I took off, picked up a bunch of overpriced Korean Deli flowers. We walked over to Tibet House for Nena Thurman’s birthday. When we got upstairs, the kids were skateboarding down the hallway and after we said our hellos and happy birthdays we uturned back to the kids. Little Levon gave me a skateboard lesson pronouncing me, “pretty good,” but I “kind of cheated” because my feet were pointed the wrong way. Eammon let Eddie try his weird, cool skateboard type thing. He was “totally good.”

We ditched the kids and talked to the grown-ups for a while. A nod to Uma and her man, and a chat with her brothers. E and A got into an extended discussion about moon days, which E knew so much about, that later, when I explained to him about Asperger’s, we diagnosed him with a “touch” of it.

Then, we left to go to Julian’s dinner at Matsuri. Whaddup Al Pacino? Free bottles of sake, free this: I was very, VERY close to asking the waiter to wrap up the leftovers but decorum, not always on my side, prevailed. E left early and I talked with Leon Falk, a movie producer, about Bat Mitzvahs, MacDougal Street, Friends Seminary, TriBurbia (formerly known as Tribeca) and some other things. His wife, Lisa – director of the New Museum of Contemporary Art showed me an excellent necklace and then we all went home. Just not together. Julian is a most generous and excellent guy. I’ll write more about his work another time. I’m exhausted and have to go to the bar to set up Happy Ending for A Public Space Night.