The thing I love best about New York is the way it makes me feel: at the center of the world, wide awake and alert, (over-)stimulated, nerves crackling. I'm still processing all that I saw and smelled and tasted and heard this weekend, but here are the highlights. (See also: the photos.)

MoMA Queens. Washingtonians are always disappointed when they realize or remember that museums in New York are not free, but the Visionary Architectural Drawings and the misleadingly modestly named Painting and Sculpture from the Collection were worth the admission. Some of the works in Drawing Now: 8 Propositions intrigued me, others were not to my taste.

Half-price tickets to see Kathleen Turner (in her last week as Mrs. Robinson) and Jason Biggs in The Graduate at the Plymouth Theater. With her clothes on Ms. Turner was large and intimidating and -- there's no other way to put it -- somewhat masculine. Her arms stuck out from her sides like a bodybuilder with oversized triceps. She was droll and caustic, but not what you'd call seductive. With her clothes off, her thick torso was distracting; she tried ineffectually to suck in her stomach when she wasn't speaking, then expanded it to its full, impressive girth when she took a breath before a line. Jason Biggs, despite appearing in The Most Terrible Movie Ever, had great comic timing and delivery, but I didn't sympathize with him one bit. And if the decidedly unsvelte Ms. Turner gave us full frontal nudity, why did trim Mr. Biggs not step out of his little white boxer briefs and do the same? Because of the eternal double standard, my dear.

Sugar-roasted cashews on the half-price tickets line in Times Square.

Barhopping in the East Village. Puck Fair was cavernous, packed, and deafening. Chez Es Saada was full of beautiful people, or perhaps I was just smitten with the unmarked entrance, handsome doormen, silver platters as wide as my arm piled with olives, china bowls heaped with limes and lemons; the rose petals scattered on the stairs, the descent into the cavelike bar, the incense, the trancy Middle Eastern flavored music, the harem-dim lighting, the candles, the glass-beaded lamps. I hear it was really hot two years ago, so it must be ready for the likes of me now.

The True Mirror shop. Looking in a non-reversing mirror is unnerving.

Coffee at the 2nd Ave Deli was delicious, rivaled only by the chicory-enhanced brew my Lousianian roommate used to concoct. Free refills? "Of course," our waiter, Joe the art historian said with a wink, "Some of those old biddies will charge you for anything but don't you worry about it." Had I known that lox is smoked salmon I would have ordered that instead of my omelette. Luckily some lox-and-bagel orderers couldn't clean their plates so I scavenged and got the full experience.

Garry Winogrand 1964 photos at the International Center of Photography. From his Guggenheim fellowship application:

I look at the pictures I have done up to now, and they make me feel that who we are and what we feel and what is to become of us just doesn't matter. Our aspirations and successes have been cheap and petty. I read the newspapers, the columnists, some books, I look at some magazines [our press]. They all deal in illusions and fantasies. I can only conclude that we have lost ourselves, and that the bomb may finish the job permanently, and it just doesn't matter, we have not loved life.

I cannot accept my conclusions, and so I must continue this photographic investigation further and deeper. This is my project.

Disco nap, Saturday, 4:30 - 6:30 p.m., at the Club Quarters.

Wine and mussels and winter vegetables gratin and Belgian beer and warm chocolate tart and pistachio ice cream at Markt, in the Meatpacking district. Mmmmmmm.

The Brazilian nightclub SOB's. I drank caipirinhas and puffed on a Cuban cigar. I stopped dancing long enough to tell the leader of Ogans, the white-robed Afro-Brazilian band from Bahia, that I was having the best night of my life*. He silently bowed and kissed my hand in reply.

*If I've ever exclaimed to you, "this is the best birthday ever," "the best day of my life," etc., please know that I meant it. That time with you is not being pushed slowly down my all-time "best times" list by other, better experiences. I admit being prone to a certain degree of exaggeration but, dear reader, it's just a manifestation of my sincere enthusiasm.