My mind is a bit spotty from an unfortunate event that happened last night. Let’s just say – wear your seatbelt when riding a cab. I won’t be able to go to work tomorrow.

But I do want to share some observations from the weekend. I’ll spare my usual verbosity and try the bullet point format, although I have a feeling some may run long.

* Thank You for Smoking directed by Jason Reitman was incredibly entertaining. Aaron Eckhart, whose performance in Neil Labute’s In the Company of Men was magnificently cynical and villainous, does a superb job portraying Nick Naylor, the “morally flexible” Big Tobacco lobbyist. I was reminded a bit of Citizen Ruth, the dark satire about abortion from 1996 (dir. by Alexander Payne), but Thank You for Smoking packs more jokes and laughs and leaves us with an uplifting feeling rather than one of disgust. I also watched Spike Lee’s The Inside Man (clever, but too long) and James McTeigue’s V for Vendetta (exciting but too heavy-handed).

* Whenever I go to hang out with a more “white” crowd from my 2005 Columbia class, I find myself being identified solely as “Class Correspondent,” the title I retain from reporting news about classmates in our alumni magazine. But I still had fun at Lily’s party and got to see how Joyce usually spends her time with such crowds. Also – when I went to pick up Joyce from the Hudson last night, one of her Music Hum classmates, some Jewish girl, happened to be a former resident of mine in Wien. When I brought this to the girl’s attention, she told me tartly, “You were a bad RA.” I guess I wasn’t the best RA ever, but my pride felt a small prick.

* It’s sometimes exciting to know that in a matter of days, or even hours, you can go from knowing nothing about someone to playing a crucial role in their venture. And while this requires some luck and coincidences, it’s usually up to your own actions to make things move forward. I guess that’s the lure of business. And sometimes, you can solicit someone to accept your services and open a bunch of new doors for yourself as a result. Sometimes, you can let things be and at other times you can say, “What the heck, let’s just do it.” The latter seems to be a recurring preference for me these days.

* John Jung bought me vanilla-flavored cigars from the Dominican Republic. He joked that since I barely inhaled when I smoked cigarettes, I should have no problem smoking cigars.

* The new New York Times layout will have to take some time getting used to. Web 2.0, while sleek and usable, is starting to take on a conformist look and forcing sites to lose their flavor. Is Times New Roman such a great evil?

* I am an A- student in life, but have been getting a lot of B’s lately and definitely trying to skip classes, or rather, trying to transfer out altogether. I am spread thin and I would like things to slow down. Many motions, little retained. Spin, zero substance. Headache.

* I sometimes wish I could play the saxophone again.