You're gonna be bothered by how cool I am.

Had a lot of fun at the Mark Does Stuff event, which took place at the Museum of NYC. I was pleased that he hadn't forgotten about The West Wing in the onslaught of Star Trek and Supernatural over the past several months (he even gushed about Donna Moss, which made me immeasurably happy). He read a chapter from his novel, which sounds quite good, although it was hard to get a feel for the context because the chapter he chose is so late in the book.

And, as usual for his events, he read some truly awful things. Last time he was in NYC, he read this fic, in which Garfield (yes, from the comic) interrupts Prince William's and Kate Middleton's wedding, throws William into Big Ben (causing both William and Big Ben to explode), and makes sweet love to Kate Middleton. You may be wondering at this point, "Isn't Garfield a cat?" Well, dear reader, that is unclear, because Garfield does things in this fic that simply aren't possible for a cat -- much less a cat who spends all his time sleeping and/or eating lasagna. Garfield's species is also maddeningly unclear in this follow-up fic, which Mark read tonight. In this fic, Prince Harry tries to get revenge for William's death, but Garfield kills him and has a three-way with Kate and Pippa (oh, and he also has sex with Sarah Ferguson earlier in the fic). Man or cat? Who knows? When your fic has lasagna as a form of currency that can be used in a bet, what place is there for even the most basic logic?

He also read an excerpt from a novel by Sandra Hill called Rough and Ready, which utilizes the phrase "dick aneurysm" as well as "dick Parkinson's." Also "spongy love mounds." You can hear someone else give a dramatic reading of this exact passage here. There was also a lengthy Q&A where he talked about the Great Ginny Slut-Shaming of 2009, the Spuffy Meltdown, and the creepiest e-mail he's ever been sent (which I remembered him reading at LeakyCon this summer).

Afterwards, I headed out for a late dinner with a few of the other ladies who sat near me, and I was excited to be doing something social in the city for a change. But ... I didn't make it to wherever they ended up. At some point, after walking a few blocks, I realized a few things: 1) that I have not had to keep up with a group of people walking in quite some time, 2) that I am short-legged, quite out of shape, and nearly 40, and 3) that the stretch we were walking was all uphill. I trudged on, thinking surely we'd stop soon (or at least be slowed by traffic lights), but everyone just kept going ahead and I was falling behind. One of the girls hung back to talk to me, and I clumsily apologized for my slowness, but the further we went the more I realized that I had never been more out of breath in my life. My heart was also painfully pounding. I felt like I really should not feel that overexerted unless I'd recently been running from a chainsaw-wielding murderer. Thank goodness these women were so nice that I had no worries they'd make fun of me for giving up, because I looked ahead at the hill we were about to go up and was seriously afraid I would collapse on the sidewalk if I kept going. I could not help wondering if I would be needing the services of Mt. Sinai Hospital, which we had just passed. That may sound like I'm joking but it was a little scary.

Coronary scares and missed social opportunities aside, though, it was a good night.