I was gone, you may not have noticed, and now I’m back. Here’s what I miss about where I was:

I miss Helen and Tony and my cute nephews and nieces, and all of their parents, too.

I miss Jimmy and Freddy and anyone named Anthony and vowels showing up at the end of last names.

I miss E. and the Teddy Roosevelt museum and how we giggled when he accidentally kicked the historical chair. I miss E. being six blocks away.

I miss the frogs upstate and Mike and Megan and weddings and flowers and all their promise.

I miss M. and D., and Jimmy Heath and James Moody, and the tall sax player who never stopped smiling.

I miss gin martinis, I miss Gusto and the little radishes in anchovy paste, I miss that $18 glass of champagne. I miss talking politics with everyone on my side.

I miss A. driving in the city, one hand on the wheel one on the horn grinning wildly. I miss taxis and subways and people on the street, I miss diners and the playgrounds at Helen’s apartment. I miss her apartment and her piles of books.

I miss Jr. and G. playing ball in the side yard.

I miss the heat and the walking. I miss uptown and downtown, I miss the George Washington Bridge. I miss Central Park and all the other parks, I miss the Met.

I miss Vanessa Redgrave’s valiant effort to get through Joan Didion’s poorly edited play. (You had us giggling, V., when you plucked her book from stage left and read to us like it was the book tour at B & N).

I miss the guy next to us who fell asleep and the permed woman with patchwork pants across the aisle. I miss C.’s ipod playing, muffled, under her chair.

I miss smuggling foie gras out of the city (soon to appear here) and getting locked out at King Street and seeing Jane in the lobby (she said A. was cute).  I miss King Street.

I miss thruways and parkways and turnpikes and tolls. I miss Newark airport. I miss conjugating irregular verbs on the plane.

I miss NY.

(More later.)

Sad news:  The man who owned Napoleon’s penis died.  (One would hope that the penis was adequately provided for in the will.) 

Happy news:  Repeating the word “penis” will get me more hits.

Unrelated news:  A. and I have noticed curious things about cursing on cable.  You can’t say “ass” on the Food Channel, for instance.  You can, however, say “ass” and “asshole” on A&E (The Sopranos), but you can’t stick anything in an ass, it has to go in the nose — i.e., “he’s got his thumb up his nose” or “pull your head out of your nose.” 

Send your own censorial observations here.

Desiderate un po di gelato?  Ancho’io. 

Sarah Bernhardt’s lover, Belgian Prince de Ligne, escorted her to the door after she burst into his mansion with news she was pregnant. His barb on her way out: “when you sit on a patch of thorns, you can’t tell which particular thorn has scratched you.”

More when I wake up.

Larry Doyle — screenwriter, TV writer, New Yorker humorist plus some more — has a book out and is blogging at Powells this week. It’s hard to write funny, but I read an excerpt of “I Love You, Beth Cooper” and he may have done it.

I really only say that because I have nothing to say, nothing. Mark sent me this piece from the Times: “The Greatest Mystery: Making a Best Seller.” Then pointed out a little detail about Curtis Sittenfeld’s “surprise” best seller — uh, she had four publicists. Duh.

To apply to be my publicist, click here.

I don’t know why it does that, see my Hopper post? All tiny letters and bunched on the right? It makes me mad.

The Friday picture was of a morel-picking spot, from Jake Rockwood’s plane. You look for clear cuts, that’s the trick. No one won the rootbeer float.

Double or nothing, though, if you fix my stupid formatting. Make it never ever ever happen again, as long as I live.

[Photo courtesy of Chris Chennell.]

These guys are nuts. [Courtesy Zulkey].

Oh, looky! — Slate posted a slide-show Edward Hopper essay to go along with the current retrospective (oxymoron?) at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts!

David Butler introduced me to Hopper (not in the literal sense, of course; Hopper was long dead). He sent me a postcard of Summertime one year; he said it reminded him of me. (I don’t see it actually, I rarely wear hats; I’m more Hotel Lobby. Though in my 20’s I fancied myself Room in New York.  Which Hopper are you?)

It was a great introduction, thank you, David, I still owe you. I could stare at Hoppers all day for a week. Andiamo a Boston, presto!

I’d like to write the way Hopper painted, of course then I’d be Richard Yates. Theirs was a world before prozac. A place with long, lonely stretches of time — a world of brooding, and mildewed dreams and ice melting in drinks and painfully slow fades.

A. and I passed by Hopper’s house once, in Nyack. I didn’t know it was there we were just walking. It’s on the main street, to the left if you’re going uptown. Nothing remarkable, just a little sign which caught my eye. I don’t remember whether you could go in it or not, it would have been closed, this was at night.

Two years ago, Chair Car sold for $14 million dollars.

And that’s that. 

What’s this? A rootbeer float if you guess.

Zulkey’s fun, read her. I have work to do.

Julie Nipp said I looked nice today, she likes my jeans.

My father-in-law has a cell phone and voicemail but he doesn’t check the messages, he assumes you’ll call back. Keep this in mind if you get his voicemail.

More later.

He was working on making this happen when we had dinner. (Click on “walk of fame archives” — October 28, 2006, though it was actually 2005.)

In other news, I’m slicing new potatoes!

(Helen, call me today if you get a chance. I don’t have any of your numbers on my cell phone and when I call your son to ask he says in a really low, scratchy voice, “I’m in a meeting.”)

Yawn, I know. Hey, it’s slow here, what do you want?