I knew he was putting on an act, because I’d already heard the opposite from the horse’s mouth. “The Horse” is what I’d called Roth when he and I shared an office space in the late 60s while he was working on Portnoy’s Complaint and I was working on a similar but superior work, Feldman’s Penis. Roth had earned his nickname because he ate a lot of apples and oats, and also because he loved to saddle up with the shiksas. No one knows a writer as well as his contemporaries. Roth and I are as contemporary as they get.

One morning a few months ago, as I sat in my third-floor study in my chateau near the summit of Mount Winchester, my rotary phone rang downstairs. My beleaguered manservant Roger answered it, and came knocking at my door a minute later.

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University, as you know, is the only time in one’s life when anything really worthwhile happens. I met Hitch there. The first time I saw him, he had a bird on each arm and a woman by his side. She beamed as he read aloud passages from "Homage to Catalonia." He looked up.

“Who the hell are you?” he said.

“I’m your housemate,” I said.

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"They're so beautiful this year," she said. She sighed. "I wish I could be there."

This was the spousal equivalent of a Bat Signal, a distress call from a sinking midlife ship. Regina's 40th birthday loomed only three weeks away. We'd been trying to figure out what would be an appropriate celebration. A party didn't seem like a good idea. While I wasn't entirely happy about the fact, we'd pretty much turned the corner from the party period of our life toward the middle-years, middle-class, middlebrow New Age fruitcake period.

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One afternoon in New York, I found myself on a street corner in midtown, licking salt off a slightly burned soft pretzel. I gazed about in a wondering daze, transfixed by the LCD nightmare. Time seemed to stop for me just then, as though I were Dr. Manhattan from "Watchmen," only without the continually erect blue penis. Suddenly, I knew that everything in Times Square -- the breeze-blown fliers for some outlier porn shop, the vaguely contraband luggage stores, the endlessly replicated advertisements for TV shows that never had a prayer, even the tourists from Nebraska -- was part of a larger cosmic reality whose boundaries we can't begin to perceive. The power of the universe, I realized, is transcendent, infinite, all-knowing, beautiful beyond measure. I quaked at the awesome kindness of its eternal might.

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"I was curious about something," she said.

"Sure."

"I wanted to know if you had any feelings about circumcision."

"Nope."

"I was doing some research..."

With Regina, that's always a dangerous clause.

"The American Pediatric Association doesn't recommend circumcision anymore. It used to be medically recommended, but now they're neutral."

"I would say that I'm neutral on the topic as well."

"They don't use anesthetic, Neal. They cut off nerve endings and it decreases sexual sensitivity. In two words: It's barbaric. I can't do it to him. I just can't."

"You must leave me to think on this question for a while," I said, and yes, I do talk like that sometimes.

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"I'm at my wit's end," she said.

This wasn't some early-childhood education major in her first job since graduation. Elijah's teacher had been doing this for 25 years. And now she was admitting defeat at the hands of a 2-year-old.

"He bit again today," she said. "There was blood. We've tried everything. We can't stop him."

The next day, Elijah chomped on another kid, and scratched still another one over the eye. The day after that was a Friday. An afternoon teaching assistant called us at home. Elijah had put a rock up his nose, and they couldn't get it out. When we picked him up to take him to a doctor who would stick a vacuum up his schnozzle, Elijah's teacher told us we had to have a conference Monday afternoon.

"We're probably going to talk about solutions," my wife, Regina, said.

"No, we're not," I said. "They're gonna expel him."

"Don't be negative," she said.

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Still, this is different than the usual glee felt when, say, Tara Reid's boob flops out of her dress or when Lindsay Lohan goes on some ridiculous slutbag spree. There's a special joy in watching the reaper scythe of fate swoop down on the talentless and sleazy. With Dave Chappelle, it's different. Not only is he uniquely talented, he's also honest about his failings. And it's impossible now not to assume that his parodic portrayals of mentally disturbed loners are so dead accurate because he obviously knows the subject all too well.

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As always, the Grammy selection committee tortured us with some duds. Hoobastank? Melissa Etheridge, no, Tim McGraw, no as always, y pienso que Los Lonely Boys son overrated. And then there were the usual safe nominations for dead guys. It doesn't exactly take a lot of guts to toss a Grammy to Ray Charles or Johnny Cash now. Plus, shouldn't a song be exempted from Grammy consideration after it's been used as a theme for the NBA Playoffs? I'm looking at you, Black Eyed Peas.

But a closer examination of the list dampened my raging cynicism. Tom Waits, Jill Scott, the Scissor Sisters? Got a Grammy nomination? But I saw the Scissor Sisters live two years ago! I'd never seen a live band before they received a Grammy nomination. Who cares whether I liked them or not? My thesis was holding water! I had no idea, though, that I was about to watch one of the most entertaining musical events in television history.

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Greetings From BAHS-TON
Boston. City of Light. The Big Easy. Hog Butcher to the World. At last, then, it's come to this. I suppose you could say, technically, that I'm not in Boston. Or in Massachusetts, for that matter. The Democratic National Committee, which, I want to interject, has been nothing but accommodating toward my fellow bloggers and me, couldn't get me a hotel room closer than Connecticut. But I'm staying right on the state line, close enough to smell the Democratic process, and my credentials allow me to cross into the Granite State whenever I want. So what are my thoughts on the convention thus far? Pretty minimal. My laminates instruct that I'm only supposed to watch the first 15 minutes of every televised hour on MSNBC. But I can say that I'm very impressed by Barack Obama, the senatorial candidate from Illinois. For many years now, I've been saying to myself that the Democrats need a strong black leader who isn't really black. Obama strikes me as our Colin Powell, without the military record or the history of lying to the United Nations. Hang on. I'm getting an Instant Message from a friend of mine blogging live from the convention floor. Max Cleland just wheeled by! Incredible. [10:52 a.m. ET, July 26, 2004]

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Fade in ...

With "butterflies" in his stomach, Rush describes his experience in rehab as having been "intense," "educational" and "informative." It was as "important as the first grade, and maybe the second grade." He read a newspaper once or twice at the clinic, which he fooled everyone into thinking was in Tucson, Ariz., when it wasn't. But he didn't watch much television. Following the news would have been "counterproductive," he says. He tells his audience that while he was away, he realized "how much I love all of you," and thanks them for their supportive calls and e-mails.

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5:32 p.m.
I'm informed that this is the longest red carpet in the history of the world, 336 feet. I try not to have grumpy thoughts about wasteful spending during a near-depression. This is made more difficult when Ashanti tells Soo-Jun Park and Kurt Loder that she's wearing $3 million earrings. Then one of the guys from Good Charlotte says he went to the ATM today and got out 40 bucks, which means a lot to him, because, you know, Good Charlotte's had a hard road. Another Good Charlotte guy tells the red-carpet interview guy that he loves his suit. It doesn't take much to poke holes into the punk-rock claims of Good Charlotte. Predictably, the five Queer Eyes for the Straight Guy show up. Carson Kressley hogs the camera, instructing the host how to button his jacket. Great. Six weeks ago, "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" was a delightful surprise. Now for the rest of our lives we'll be forced to endure Mr. Blackwell version 2.0.

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Over the last two weeks, Lounge Ax scheduled a series of shows that crammed the club every night, culminating with a reunion of the defunct lounge band the Coctails on Saturday. I attended several nights, and each was rife with what regulars call Lounge Ax moments. A guy passed out from heat exhaustion and had to be dragged outside by his friends. The roof over the stage developed a leak. Fans waited for hours in lines that stretched into the alley half a block away.

Still, most of the people who got in were in a mood to reminisce. One young woman remembered how she'd conned her way into a label party at age 17 by pretending to be a magician's assistant. Someone else recalled how he'd thrown up on his wife's shoes during a Nashville Pussy show. Then there was the tattoo artist from Madison who'd never been to Lounge Ax until closing night. Meanwhile, a small throng waiting outside in the cold was coveting his spot. "I just thought I'd come down and check it out," he said.

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It's all very strange.

Once again, police brutality is making its way to the front pages of American newspapers. Last week, ministers from Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition sat down with Hillard to discuss the recent shootings, and the U.S. Justice Department is considering launching an investigation.

But this case is notably different from the recent charges of excessive force in New York and California. In February, when four white New York City police officers gunned down Amadou Diallo, an unarmed West African street vendor living in the Bronx, it was easy to frame the incident in terms of race. But these Chicago shootings do not follow any familiar pattern of police racism. The realities are more complex, and in many ways more disturbing. In Chicago, where police always take care of their own and where many politicians are former police officers, achieving justice in such matters is nearly impossible.

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It wasn't supposed to be this way. Rush is the most serious challenger Daley has faced yet. He nearly ran for mayor in 1995, but at the last minute let Joe Gardner, a longtime city bureaucrat, get served up as sacrifice. He also stood by and watched as Daley handily took care of former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris, in the general election. Having to run two campaigns became a hassle for Daley, so he managed to get the Legislature to declare municipal elections "nonpartisan." There would be no more primaries, just one shot, one opposition candidate. For 1999, there was no confusion: Daley's opponent would be Bobby Rush.

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"He said he couldn't come that day. We have somebody die, he say, the African people. They shoot Diallo."

Jobe immediately knew who Diallo was -- the West African community in New York is relatively small -- and immediately knew that he had to do something. "I went to protest. I don't talk about anything, but I hear everybody say they go to City Hall to demand justice from [Mayor Rudy] Giuliani, justice for this guy, because they made a mistake."

Diallo, a native of Guinea, was gunned down in the vestibule of his Bronx apartment building by four New York police officers just after midnight on Feb. 4. He had been unarmed, yet officers unloaded 41 bullets at him, hitting him 19 times. Public anger built in New York, spontaneously and quickly. Over the weekend, the streets in front of his former home were mobbed with peaceful protesters, many of whom had never been to a political event in their life.

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