Yesterday I ran into my friend Larry Doyle on the corner of 42nd and Sixth. Larry said he had came to New York because he “just had to get out of Baltimore for a day.” Of course, I did that 36 years ago and never really returned, so perhaps someone should check to see if Larry is still wandering around midtown. Larry, once my colleague at Spy and formerly a writer for The Simpsons, recently won the Thurber Book for writing the funniest novel of the year, the pretty damn funny I Love You Beth Cooper, which has been made into a movie that will be released later this summer. We had one of those great Manhattan conversations, in which I, having not much of anything lately, assured him that everything was all right, while he felt obliged to note that the movie was flat and that he was having trouble finishing his next novel and that the financial crisis had cost him so much of his Simpsons savings and that he was going out to Los Angeles next week but wasn’t looking forward to it because they would be certain to lowball him. As the immortal Cindy Adams would put it, “Only in New York, kiddies, only in New York.”
