Ran into Meljo and Angela DeManti at McManus on Monday, so made plans to meet up with them sometime on Tuesday, and as we were getting in the car Sunday night, I PMed Tiff Morningstar to see if she was around Tuesday. At lunch, Tiff met up with me, Charlie, Anthony and Bryan at Dallas Bar-B-Q. Charlie had to zip off for the intensives, so after lunch, the four of us remaining went to Chinatown in search of white maneki neko with a moving arm (unsuccessful mission). But we did hit the Chinese candy store, where Anthony tried crab candy (the report: f-ing nasty) and I found little maneki neko candy holders for each of us.

We stopped for cold beverages and I got gelatto (tried a spoonful of green tea gelatto, which was interesting at first and had a nasty, awful aftertaste). I was unable to finish the gelatto mountain that I was served, and no one would help me. I am still upset about that.

Tiff took off to do some errands, so Ant, Bryan and I tooled around and then headed back to the apartment. Ant left to see Barry Wyner debut some songs, Bryan and I stuck around and ate dinner at a thai place with DeManti and her friend Emma, who is in Charlie’s intensives. And we played an interesting game of phone tag with Sandy Sulzer, who is interning with Random House.

Then, headed over to Harold Night, where I got to load up on NY style improv (poor Bryan; he, like Ladybug, cannot seem to escape the improv scourge when in NYC). We met up with Sandy and Louie Perlman, and briefly saw Matt Pack.

I’ll gush for only a moment about Creep, Arsenal, the Shoves, and Reuben Williams. OK, I’m done. But man, I love game-based improv. I need to come to NYC to watch it more often, brush up on that side of the brain. Also got to see Billy Merritt’s new Documentary class… and holy crap, our forms, while still related, are moving further and further apart. Doc fest… one day.

As we were walking out, Jonathan Fischoff, who I haven’t seen in probably five years, approached– he’d seen the second show and the Doc. So we wandered down to McManus, drank beer, and talked until the wee hours. I got some pictures, but as I looked through them later, I realized that I never got one of me with Charlie. He took like five, and I never got one with him. Dammit!

Matt Pack was there, with a girl he is sweet on, and seriously, a ten-minute talk with Matt Pack can recharge your soul. He is a tremendous human being in every way. (And everyone should give props to Matt Pack in the comments… he gets his MEd degree later today.)

backdated to Tuesday when I had the chance to post