Two stories about the UES

Okay, this first story is not mine, it's Dominguez's - we sometimes commiserate about the UES because he spends time there too. In a cakeshop, he overheard an obsessive woman purchasing a $150 cake for her child's third - mind you, third - birthday party, which she was planning, as it turns out, six months in advance. Why? Because last year she had made the mistake of only giving herself three months to plan and she "simply won't put little Dillinger through that again." Or Soren. Whatever.

The other morning, I was in line at a Starbucks... Let me preface this story with another story, about the one time I recognized a celebrity without being prompted. Her name was Marcia Kurtz, and I checked her in at the Calgary Airport. I knew it was her even before I looked at the name in her passport. I know, you've never heard of her, but she played Joel Steinberg's fucked up victim-accomplice wife, permanently disfigured from BDSM, in the Law & Order adaptation of that case. Well this woman in front of me in line at the Starbucks could have been her, IRL. She had painted a ring of orange lipstick around her mouth. She was carrying six or seven battered Duane Reade tote bags, full of her belongings and a lot of crumpled kleenex, but obviously wasn't homeless. She spoke both to herself, and to the man behind the counter, as though they were other people.