Well, after four nights in a row of partying, something had to give, namely my energy, and all I’ve managed to do so far today was go out and meet a visiting friend for lunch.

I also watched two episodes of Not Just the Best of the Larry Sanders Show DVD set and the extras are truly remarkable. Shandling, who has never topped this show since (well, very few people have), went out with cameras to interview some of the guest stars from the series but is not aiming for cream puff interviews here. To wit:

Shandling, who is 58 years old, boxes. Seriously. And he has Alec Baldwin (49 years old) meet him in the gym to spar while they talk. Shandling manages to piss Baldwin off, Baldwin lands some solid blows and pins him against the rope …..

You learn in the extended segment with Sharon Stone that Shandling and Stone had the same acting teacher and were involved early in their careers. It also appears that Stone is no dummy, regardless of how the press often positions her. She says some stuff that Shandling notes, in a written postscript, had him trembling for the rest of the day.

If you have never watched the Larry Sanders Show and you are a fan of Larry David or Ricky Gervais, you owe it to yourself to discover this show – David and Gervais clearly owe a lot to it.

Latest BC column is up. Extended review of new covers albums by Bryan Ferry and Patti Smith. This didn’t set out to be the sole topic of an entire column but sometimes the thoughts just flow, the fingers dance over the keyboard (ugh) and before I know it, a thousand words are there.

And what am I going to write about next time? How much I like Singapore? How much I like Singapore girls? (Better, but that would be pushing the envelope of what BC would be willing to print.)

And forget the next column, what else am I going to do tonight? It’s past 1:30 AM and I could get in bed and put a movie on (I tried watching A Scanner Darkly earlier but fell asleep 15 minutes in, which doesn’t bode well) or I could go out and get something to eat and we all know how that’s gonna end, don’t we?

But before that …. useless thought of the day …..

Ignoring for the minute about whether or not the government is right in redeveloping those areas of Wanchai, because it is a done deal, a fait accompli, like the Star Ferry terminal they are determined to proceed and they will not be stopped because the potential profits in the hands of a few billionaire real estate developers is more important than the desires of the masses ….

I’m fixated on how when you walk around Singapore, there is green everywhere. When you walk down Orchard Road, not only is it relatively Orchard-like, but the public space includes lots of benches along the road for people to sit on.

Now, take these side streets just south of Johnston Road. These are very narrow, twisty streets. The medium sized buildings are going to be replaced by bigger size palaces of greed. And let’s not even bother to think about how the local infrastructure will be affected when there are thousands or tens of thousands more people traveling to and from that area every day.

(The same thing is about to happen in Taikoo Shing. Swire is building the massive “One Island East” in an area that is all single lane streets. At least they did provide some nice public space in and around Taikoo Shing but what’s going to happen to the busses, MTR and surrounding streets after this building opens and tens of thousands more people are coming and going every day? I’m so looking foward to whatever shopping mall they will put in the podium because right now I have to walk three blocks to get to the nearest Giordano, City Chain and Watsons.)

It would have been nice if the government simply wiped out the old streets, put in fewer, wider streets, and planted a few fucking trees and a little bit of grass and someplace for someone to sit down for a break after a hard afternoon’s shopping (or a hard night’s drinking). I know, it’s not a practical suggestion because all of the buildings aren’t coming down. But it’s really gonna be horribly congested around there in a couple of years.

I seem to recall that at one time (and maybe even today) there was a zoning law for central Manhattan that said that for every X number of feet a building was going to rise beyond a certain level, said building had to set back from the street and provide Y square feet of public space. BECAUSE IT’S THE RIGHT FUCKING THING TO DO. Because once in a while, not all the time but every now and then, you provide for the public at large and not just 6 or 10 billionaires who will never go to that area because the checks come in the mail and they’ve got 10,000 acre estates surrounded by forests and electronic fences so fuck everyone else.

Look at Central. It’s a concrete jungle. When the old Swire House went down and a new one went up, we didn’t gain an inch more sidewalk space. Look at Times Square, which at least does have a huge public plaza – which is often cut down by 2/3rds so that commercial exhibitions can fill up that area – and with thousands of people passing by each day, they provide uneven monkey bars with “seating” for 12 people. Try sitting on the 6 inch high “wall” around the “grassy” areas and a hard will hurry over and politely ask you to stand up.

Yeah, Hong Kong is 70 percent park land, but not where it fucking counts.

Rant over. For now.

Tom Poston is dead. Tommy Newsom is dead. Wally Schirra is dead. And clearly I’m not feeling so good myself.