The night I almost converted to Judaeism and saw Duran Duran play live at the Ethyl Barrymore Theatr

Several mystical occurrences occured on the US leg of our trip. We’re in London now, but here’s a brief summary of some of the strange events that happened along the way.
Tuesday before last there was a bash at the Australian Embassy in NYC welcoming the Aussie SF writing contingent. I accidentally got shitfaced and, after hours of merrymaking, fell in the gutter alongside Kaaron’s husband James. oops. I can’t even remember the last 2 bars we went to, let alone how we made it back to the hotel. When I woke up I realised that something was missing (aside from about a trillion brain cells). My camera. Now, see, this has been wanting to happen for years now, but somehow I always get the damn thing back, or my wallet, or passport or whatever, but not this time. Nope, this was to be the time that I got my just deserts. But it turns out Kaaron had it all along. She, being the least drunk of the three of us, had hauled us both back home to the Grand Union Hotel. Rob and GJ had piked earlier. I was feeling seedy for days afterwards, but GJ reckoned it was a sign from God when the camera turned out not to have been lost at all. The others laid bets as to when I’d start drinking again but she reckoned I’d turn over a new leaf instead.
[I didn’t, but my style was cramped for some days]
So then we did WFC: It was bigger than big. Much bigger than last year’s in Austin. Too big for my myopic Wollongong brain to parse. More fans this time than I remember at the last one. Took me about a day to get full blown celebrity fatigue. I met some of my favourite writers: Peter Straub and Kim Newman. A bunch of stuff happened but its all a foggy blur now.
Anyway, back to the mystical stuff. GJ managed to leave her handbag containing bulk worldly posessions in Starbucks. She got it back.
After the con we caught the Amtrak back to NYC. Next day we ran into Kim Newman in Virgin megastore. How unlikely was that! I mean, how many friggin people are there in NYC? And then we had the dinner thing happen. GJ wanted kosher, I wanted pizza and Rob wanted sushi, and we found a friggin kosher pizza and sushi bar!!! How unlikely was that! And then we went to see Duran Duran, the utter highlight of my trip. Outside the Ethyl Barrymore theatre was a doco crew. Without thinking twice I waltzed up to them and told the interviewer I had come all the way from Australia just to see the band. So they filmed me blabbering excitedly about how much I loved them, including how I thought the new videoclip was crap, and what a shame it was that Andy split the band. Rob and GJ hid in the shadows of a nearby awning, hoping their faces weren’t gonna end up on film.
Inside the theatre, which was awesomely small, I met 2 boys from north Carolina, one of whom had spent $400 on DD merchandise in the gift shop & had seen them 20 times before!
And then the Duranies played. All new stuff, the first set. I’m not sure what I think about it yet. I need to hear songs multiple times for them to embed. But GJ actually fell asleep!!! I mean, how do you manage sleep amidst such noise as a live rock band?
The second set opened with the band doing some sortt of Kraftwerk electronica thing, and then they did their old stuff and everybody loved them. Except GJ. I loved them. I will always love them.
The very next day we ran into Deb in an obscure section of subway up near Columbus circle. We weren’t even sure where we were, so how the hell could we possibly have found practically the only other Aussie we knew in NYC by accident like that? Its the Jewish God again assured GJ. And I was starting to see her point. I realised that if I were to catch my British airways flight to London, be upgraded to business class and find myself seated next to Simon le Bon, then I would be obliged to convert to Judaeism on the spot as signs don’t come clearer than that.
Alas, it didn’t happen. I remain an agnostic. But I have two regrets from this trip firmly in my head.
Number one: fluffing my pitch to [insert name of important person here] when he actually asked me to pitch my novel in an unexpected moment at the tail end of the con. Number two: neglecting to name Astronaut as my favourite DD album when the doco interviewer asked. The pitch thing was one of those cautionary tales. He was just being friendly, teaching me how it’s done and won’t likely remember me or my rambling incoherent synopsis. But I’m figuring that if a few seconds of my talking head makes it into that doco (and it likely will because such programs usually feature the raving diatribes of at least one rabid fan and if its one thing I can do its talk at length unprompted) then the band will probably watch it and I’ve missed the opportunity to communicate my astronauty love to them via the medium of cinematic time travel)