After what I would call a fairly bad start to the day, Christmas started picking up when the "outlaws" (my sister in law's family) showed up. They brought over the Christmas presents that were waiting for us at their house (half for my brother, half for me and J) and we gave them the ones we had for them. Then, of all things, the doorbell rang - and it was the postman - delivering a package on Christmas day! Well! We certainly knew for sure that we were in New York, the city that really never sleeps. (In fact, it's been making London feel a bit 17th century. I mean, the subway was running today - with people in the ticket office! It was great!) Then we got to open another present of two, and then call my brother and SIL and visit with them for a while before we headed out for the day.

Then it was off to Dim Sum "Go Go" in Chinatown, where the four of us (after an hour spent trying to park the car, don't ask) had the most amazing dim sum I've had in ages. The variety of gorgeous vegetarian steamed rolls alone blew me away. It was (sadly) all done by ticking off things on an order box, but at least this made it easy to know what the eating options were. The restaurant was half filled with Jewish people, if I'm not mistaken - I felt like I was in the Secret Jewish Christmas Party, and I liked that a lot. I swear people were winking at us and acting generally conspiratorial, like we were all there together. Which in some ways we were. Thanks to koaloha for the hot tip - I want to have dim sum on Christmas day every year!

At this point we said goodbye to the outlaws ... who still thought we had Christmas dinner to go to (it had got switched to Christmas eve after thedivas found out we were stuck high and dry that evening) ... and headed off to the half priced tickets booth at Times Square to see if we could get tickets to Forbidden Broadway (we did). We killed some time at Wacamba, the gay Colombian bar, then stopped in "Carve" (760 8th Ave) for the second best pie we've had (the garlic butter on the crust was the selling point). Then it was down the street to the 47th Street Theater for "Forbidden Broadway," in which nearly every big show on was mocked deliciously. (With luck I'll get a full review up in the next two days.)

Afterwards we went to Marie's Crisis in the Village - a proper divey piano bar, like the Sea Wolf meets Sorry Charlies. It was in the basement of the building where Thomas Paine died, and a man was sat behind an upright with a bar (to hold drinks) attached to it, playing away while he and pretty much the entire bar sang along to whatever he was doing. This was great - really homey and unpretentious. We were joined by koaloha (in person at last) and proceeded to shoot the shit until sometime around midnight or so. She's got an idea for my first movie and I am looking forward to spending a lot of tomorrow with her. She gave us a Christmas present - a cab ride back to Brooklyn (she had the cabbie drop us off before her stop) - which was really great. When we got back, I dug into yesterday's congee and we opened the remaining presents from wordknitter and irrationalrobot. Thanks, guys! We'll get your presents in the mail soon.

And now - it's 1:30 and I am going to bed. Harold Pinter and Eartha Kitt in the same day ... isn't it sad?