Speaking of history ...

It's possible that I've written about this before, I really don't remember and I don't feel like scrolling through all the old posts to check.  It has to do with how this show came to be, and it's kind of a funny story.  Back in the late 90s/early 2000s, when this new "blogging" fad had become all the rage, there was something called a Friday Five.  (Seriously, does anyone else remember those?)  It was basically a weekly writting exercise to encourage people to actually post things on their blogs.  It started out as a series of five completely generic questions (What was the name of your second grade teacher?  What's your favorite shape of Lucky Charms? etc.) that would make the rounds every Friday, and anyone who wanted to could answer the questions in a post.  Eventually, it evolved into a more sophisticated meme, where people on your friends list could ask you specific questions they had designed only for you, and which required you to actually write something.  Or five somethings.  So anyway, at one point my friend Leonard (hi, Leonard!), asked me a series of 5 questions, one of which was:

"If you were writing a 1960s-ish romantic comedy, what New York landmark would be its centerpiece and why?"


And this was my answer:

"Penn Station. The old one, the one they tore down and replaced with the big concrete pile of Velveeta Cheese boxes it is today. Fuckers! Because it was beautiful and glamorous and sexy and all it really needed was a little love and attention and instead they blew it UP! BASTARDS! It would be about two wacky activists born before their time — it’s only like, what? 1962, ‘63? And the whole lying down in the street and protesting thing won’t become fashionable for at least another five years, but they’ll be all “save this beautiful building, history is irreplaceable, you don’t get another one once you throw this one away!” Which is something I believe so much it makes me want to cry. Crazy stupid blinkered pig ignorant asshole thugs who fucking demolish the Hippodrome so we can have another big ugly pile of glass and cinderblock, because God knows, there aren’t nearly enough of those! They should be lined up against the wall of the nearest Starbucks and publicly sodomized with jackhammers before being summarily executed!! JACKALS!!! It would be a whimsical confection, frothy and playful. Something with Kate Hudson, probably."

And about halfway through writing it, I realized I was actually crying a little bit.  I mean, I got really agitated and emotional, and somewhere at the back of my brain, a little voice said, "you know, you might have something here.  Maybe you should write more about it."  And it took like, six years but eventually I got my ducks in a row and sat down and started doing it.  And then I started blogging about it.  Full circle.