I assume most of you have heard of this The Gates nonsense that will be unveiled in Central Park on February 12, 2005. Seems some outside agitators, namely the annoying husband-and-wife artist duo Christo and Jeanne-Claude, have been given free rein to erect 7,500 saffron-colored fabric “gates” in our great park. I find a number of things troubling about this. First, Christo, for those of you who somehow repressed the memory, is the guy who concocted this monstrosity; the one-named Bulgarian is the art-world equivalent of the one-named Gallagher, and you know what that means: break out the plastic parkas, suckers, ’cause here comes the slegehammer-and-watermelon routine. I also think it’s disturbing that anyone would look at Central Park and conclude that it needed to be adorned by artwork, saffron-colored or otherwise, when Manhattan’s finest outdoor space is a work of art itself. I mean, really — would anyone want Harry Crumb to paint a ‘stache on The Mona Lisa? Finally, just to show you how horribly pretentious Christo and Jeanne-Claude are, and hopefully to help you conclude that we made a mistake allowing The Gates to occur, take a look at this. All of which leads me to conjecture that, with the fabric hanging just seven feet off the ground, these structures seem easy pickin’s for maurading art-defilers. Maybe “gating” will temporarily replace “wilding” as the favorite pastime of Park-goers?

WHY I’M ANGRY TODAY

As I walked under an awning today, a drop of water fell and landed on the lid of my coffee. Awning drip!