Charlotte Ins

I just had drinks in the lobby bar of the Millennium Hotel just off the world-famous Times Square. It was a "business meeting" in that three of us "met" each other and told each other our "business."

The bar (named "Charlotte") is predictable - lots of wood paneling, big leather seats, twenty kinds of scotch on the menu. It's the kind of place out-of-town business men go to talk loudly on their cellphones and charge things to their expense accounts (burger = $17).

The three of us, being the only people in the bar sans ties, sat under the television and talked loudly of movies, books, and theater:

"The Life Aquatic was an emotionless debacle!"

"Have you read Michelangelo's Notebook? It's as if someone put The DaVinci Code on playing cards, shuffled them, and dealt them out in random order!"

"I can't wait to see Spamalot!"

We were very opinionated. And very important.

"We should make this a regular thing," one of us said as we were leaving, "When you talk about this stuff in a dive bar it's just hipstery and pretentious, but when you talk about it here, it feels like we're actually doing something."