February 25, 2007
On Friday night in New York, Paul Hutton and my son Thomas Charles, who took the bus up from Philly, ate at Victor's near Times Square. It's a Cuban restaurant and I've eaten there several times (in 1982 when Kathy and I first went together to New York, and then in 1995, or so, when Allen Barra came in from New Jersey and took us there). Great food and good convseration about graphic novels, history and movies. The only mishap was a server spilled wine on my jacket. They gave me club soda and offered to pay for the dry cleaning and I guess I could have gigged them for a free meal, but I didn't. I didn't want to ruin a good time by acting like some rube from out of town.

As we finished dinner, Thomas' old girlfriend Mirium, from Guinea, dropped in after work at Bloomingdales, and we took a cab from there to go clubbing. Actually, that's too strong. Kid's go clubbing, we went to a single club—Tao, which was techno, world beat loud, and full of the beautiful people. That is, if you don't count the aging college professor and the executive editor of a certain old west magazine (heavy on the "old"). It was fun to watch though, especially the lengths young people go to in order to "hook up." It really does have a primitive tribal aspect to it, which I could never have seen when I was in it, because, well, I was too horny to see past my antlers. And speaking of antlers there were quite a few big racks on full display.

From there we took a cab (it was bitter cold, in the low twenties with a sharp wind) back to South Central Park and walked down to the Park Lane Hotel for a nightcap. My son and I had the sipping brandy and The Top Secret Writer stuck with his Amstel beer. We ended up at this cozy upstairs bar all three nights, and it was the polar opposite of the noisy Tao, although I did spot several big racks there as well.

We all went to the Museum of Modern Art on Saturday, and had to listen to the indignant Hutton ripping all the modern art, on several floors. One so-called painting really got to him and he made me come back and look at it. Consisting of three blank , white, framed canvases in a row, Hutton riffed on the ridiculousness of it: "That's obviously a framer's statement about what is important." Hutton was in rare form, affecting an English accent as he described how he would report to his students whenhe got back to UNM: "Why yes, I went clubbing at Tao and then I went back to the New York Athletic Club and slept in my tie." He was quite funny and frankly, right on about most of the art. However, he, and all of us, appreciated the Pablo Picassos, the Klimts, the Van Goghs (two, including "Starry Night") and the Toulouse la Trec.

Flew home last night arriving at Sky Harbor at 9:20, got home at 11. The Top Secret Writer was stranded in NY by high winds in Dallas. American Airlines cancelled his flight home to Albuquerque (he had to change planes in Dallas) and he had to spend the night at a Holiday Inn on Long Island. I don't think he slept in his tie.

Back To The Drawing Board
The bad news is our prototype did not generate the heat it needed. The good news, that's what a prototype is and we think we know what we need to do to make it fly. I sketched all the way home (five hour flight) and did about two
dozen sketches of scenes I want to do.

"Vision without execution is daydreaming."
—Bill Gates