I’ve had an interesting past week or so.

Last weekend, my friend Amy Tibbetts came down for a visit, along with her Odyssey-classmate Brian. I did a lot of walking around Manhattan with them and The Geek Posse. I got an extended tour of Battery Park and Central Park for the first time, having only previously walked through small parts of each. I have to say, both are pretty impressively designed, and the architecture around Battery Park is pretty futuristic-looking.

On Thursday, I drove into Manhattan for the first time (all previous trips having been via mass transit). I also traveled through the Holland Tunnel for the first time. I didn’t actually travel *far* into Manhattan; my destination was right near the tunnel, but even so I felt like I got much of the NYC driving experience. It’s a crazy place.

The purpose of my trip into the city was to help Gordon and Ellen Datlow clean out the storage locker of the late editor Robert Legault. As payment for my services, I was allowed to go through the boxes of books we took away and take whatever I wanted. I ended up with about three boxes worth, though only because I tried to restrict myself to taking only anthologies (though a few novels slipped in). I didn’t know Robert, but I felt like I got to know him a bit, between going through his collection and talking to Ellen and Gordon.

On Friday I headed back into the city for Pinchbottom burlesque, which has become a regular activity of mine, thanks to NYC culture queen Liz Gorinsky. This time around, it was Indiana Jones themed, as you might guess from the image there. It’s titled: “PINCHBOTTOM and the Raiders of the Temple of the Kingdom of the Golden Boobs of Doom Crusade.” How could anyone pass up on that? In truth, it wasn’t quite as good as I’d hoped it to be (I had high expectations), but it was a lot of fun, as their shows always are. Prior to the show, I came up with a totally awesome idea: Apocalesque!

Friday night, I crashed at my pal Rob Bland’s place, then alternately hung out with him/did some work on my laptop during the morning and early afternoon on Saturday before meeting up with pal David Barr Kirtley, whereupon the three of us went to see The Incredible Hulk. I found the movie mostly entertaining, but ultimately it didn’t quite work for me.

Later that evening, we met up with the geek posse for the second installment of Movie Night at Rob’s™. Our first MNaR event consisted of a Sixteen Candles/Robocop double feature, inspired by the fact that several of us had not seen Sixteen Candles, and one of us–appallingly–had never seen Robocop. This time around, we had intended to do a double-feature of Fight Club and Gattaca (planned upon learning that Rob of MNaR’s fame had never seen either). We got off to a bit of a late start, however, and Fight Club is more than two hours long, so we only managed the one flick. I hadn’t seen FC in quite a while, but it’s one of my favorite movies of all time. After the movie we had a bit of an impromptu panel discussion about the film, which kind of made me feel like I was at a convention. 

On Sunday, I headed over to the Met with Dave Kirtley to check out the new exhibit Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy, which focuses on the costumes of superheroes. The exhibit runs through September, but on Sunday the was a series of lectures by comic book writers and artists and academics. The exhibit itself is pretty small, but it’s worth checking out if you’re interested in seeing superhero costumes brought to life. (In the three-dimensional sense, not in the Spiderman’s living black costume sense.)