Berlin was almost balmy during the Berlinale. Overcoat-and-scarf weather, for sure, but far from oppressive. Prague was the same — chilly temps that required basic bundling but certainly tolerable and manageable. New York City was in another league entirely when I landed last night. It’s Antarctica here. Icy winds, snow piles, ice on the front stoop. The good citizens of Bedford-Stuyvesant are not exactly vigilant at shovelling sidewalks and scraping ice for general safety’s sake. You could die in cold like this. They could find you on a street corner at 5 am, frozen stiff with ice crystals blocking your nostrils and icycles hanging from your ear lobes.

British Airways wasn’t able to move my luggage from yesterday’s Berlin-to-London hop to the subsequent London-to-NY flight, and I was told last night they might not be delivering it to my Bed-Stuy address until 4 or 5 pm or later. So I had to cancel today’s Virgin America flight to Los Angeles and put myself on a Tuesday afternoon flight. At the cost of $180 bills. 36 hours of New York adventures and intrigues await. Slush and dampness and redness. Kim’s Video. Hot scrambled eggs at some Second Ave. deli. Perhaps a screening somewhere today or tonight. What’s doing? I’m on the prowl.