I’m back in stunny Californee. Farewell Gotham!

Something great about the New York subways is the mosaics in many of the stations.

I particularly like the station at 28th and Broadway. These terrific mosaics are executed by some Italian craftsmen, working from paintings by the the New York artist Mark Hadjipateras — when I first saw them, I’d imagined them to be by the cartoonist Jim Woodring.

There’s even a cute animation/movie online of Hadjipateras with some of these images come to life; he calls them “City Dwellers.”

I think I’ll use the guy in the second picture as a model for some aliens to show up in Mathematicians in Love. I may call them Jimbos.

I met with some of the Thunder’s Mouth Press people helping to publish The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul: my publicist Anne Sullivan, my editor and long-time publisher John Oakes, and head of publicity Karen Auerbach.

We were at the Met earlier. Here’s two shots of a guy going up some stairs.

Back on the street I saw an ad for a new restuarant opened by our national execs. Note the sinister Pig Chef theme — ever consider the fact that pig chefs are cannibals devoted to murdering their fellows and selling off their oil-roasted flesh to the highest bidders?

On a completely random note, a guy called Dave Horowitz writes that he’s having “a tiny party in a small downstairs bar on Avenue A” and to add to the luster of the occasion he made up some posters as if Washer Drop were playing there!

Unfortunately, I won’t be in NYC anymore by then, or I could belt out come choruses of “Chainsaw Crying Clown” and “Hundred-Percent *sshole!”

Today I saw my old friend Eddie Marritz (mentioned earlier in the blog). He was having lunch with his sassy, gnomic, crisp, lovely daughter Leda.

Eddy was excited about getting some of his photographs printed up for a possible gallery show. Like me, he likes taking pictures of moving water. But he’s a pro.

We hung out for awhile at the Miro coffee shop on Broadway in SoHo. Their walls are a nice color.

I’ve known Eddy for a long time; he’s like a brother.

It was really hot today, like 95 and very humid. That classic East Coast summer weather that I haven't experienced in several years.

On Sixth Avenue we saw a woman with hair like 3D Mickey Mouse ears.

Our pal Ms. Jack-In-The-Box led us to Canal St. to look for low-cost knock-offs of the fashionable metallic-looking bags. Plastic, these, instead of leather, and $15 instead of $500. DVDs of the Fantastic Four on offer as well.

We ended up in the East Village, hit a cool shop or gallery or something on Orchard St. called The Reed Space; they had zines that were, like, limited edition and $40 each, very lovely items, I'd never thought of zines as high-end.

Doin’ a Lyndee to a Roong Roong Far sign. I need a character with that name.

Art glass rainbow on Elizabeth St. 90 degrees, everyone walking on the shady side of the street.