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10/05/2000
yesterday lasted for about 25 years. i'd feel guilty leaving on a downer, so here ya go, the last entry. after this weekend it will be a new year, and yesterday's was too sad to break on.

so here. have an index.

klub . cabdriver . real world . dave&carmen; . cynthia and the west wing . goodbye

got to the klub at 3:30 or something. the line was around the block. mostly black but there were a bunch of the white bunch (mostly the suburban variety) as well. totally mystified. i asked a guy in this tent where to go, and he showed me where to pick up an application, and then he told me to come back so he could interview me for WKYS. "so why do you think you'd be the one they'd pick?" he ast. "cuz i'm all unique," i said. "not that everyone isn't -- " "come on, tell us," he said. "and cuz i'm an orthodox jew," i said.

i also told him my name was moshe. introductions are always the weirdest part. but he pronounced it "mo-SHEH", like the name of an african prince. "You're gonna get on, Mo-SHEH," he said, and kept makin the go-get-em fist when he saw me in line. Totally random confidence, but whoever does the afternoon broadcast on 93.9 and brings real hip-hop to the people, he's got a special place in my heart. reprazent.

so, so kool.

so i waited for 2 1/2 hours and then they closed the line about 30 people ahead of me. i went back to visit my DJ posse and they said to just hang around, so i did, and eventually started talking to someone who Knew Stuff and he squeezed me in. Number 612 in a line of 612 people.

Refer to the cabdriver who took me to U.S. Customs today -- i had to deliver a paper -- who noticed my yarmulke and started telling me, at first angrily and then helpless, about how many people were dying in Israel. He seemed honestly angry, mostly at the people out there, for having the tools to produce the Bible and Jesus and so many great things and then they fucked it all up. I told him he was right: and that some people have this huge potential that they can do anything with, saving the world or killing it.

Then he wanted to know why we didn't accept Mohammed -- who, btw, was born in 612 -- and things got more, umm, concrete. Talking Greater Good is easy. Talking about the specifics of theology, there's where you hit the snags.

so. inside the club, they asked us a bunch of questions. I was at a table with 14 other people and I think everyone else was Howard girls. And Howard girls are more coherent than I am, and more aggressive, and they're *funny.* every goddam thing they say is like a whole novel in 10 words. i wish i could talk like that.

I didn't come off badly. Got my words in and out.

Stopped for good orange juice in a soul-food place, and then I headed off to Cynthiaville.

Do you ever walk through U Street at night? Do you ever notice how quiet and tight everything is?

Even the policemen are playing jazz. And my church -- Freedom Baptist on 14th St, those kindly peeps whose service is better than any punk show i've ever been to -- was open, those tuxedoed guys at the door smoking on the grass outside.

dave and carmen were walking down Connecticut in the other direction. I don't remember how I got to Connecticut, it wasn't on my way, but I hadn't seen them in about twenty million years and, whoa, way to take the world on your own terms and make it give you a scented bath. They both work for nonprofs. They're totally married, only not legally, but they know the way each other moves in the same way that my parents do.

i've been feeling down on ralph nader lately, and carmen totally made it up. now, protesting doesn't even feel like protesting anymore. it's like you're applying for a new job, and/or lifestyle, every time you show up to save a few immigrants. People are getting more violent. People are getting more distanced from the cause, using civil disobedience to show off instead of showing what civil obedience *should* be.

And Carmen talked about the boys who used their airtime to dis the jailers, who only offered them bologna sandwiches, instead of the people that the World Bank kills.

Not that it makes life better, but I'm glad that Carmen's keeping up.

Meanwhile, Cynthia found this instruction manual for dating Jews. It's a total flipout. Instructions on what to wear when you're hooking up with Orthodox boys, posing for the parents, even how to cook chollint. How they distilled a mystical Chassidic formulation into a cookbook, that's beyond me. It's just crazy enough that there are people -- two single girls, of course -- who wrote this book.

I bailed out early last night. Nothing good, I realized I hadn't eaten since 10 that morning (an orange) and was about to pass out. So I went home and Elon and Ari were watching the West Wing, which was filmed in front of our building, and me, i was so dyslexic that I thought our television had turned into a window.

It's good I'm leaving.

ok, i just got off with annalisa. i remember marek telling me one night in prague that we were gonna party like the bongo men of Bugaboo searching for the ghost of Hogofogo.

Not that he spoke English, but that's how I feel tonight.

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