I took an LA-to-NY Delta redeye last night, landing this morning around 8 am. I slept for a couple of hours at my son’s Brooklyn apartment, and then G- and M-trained over to Sony’s Madison Avenue headquarters to catch a pre-Toronto screening of Bennett Miller ‘s Moneyball (Sony, 9.23). I then stumbled around midtown in the rain, finally settling into a Starbucks on 57th near Lexington.

There’s nothing quite like Manhattan during a windswept, slightly chilly rainstorm. Tens of thousands of bodies, voices and spirits (plus that many umbrellas) all trooping down streets and boulevards, all with the same (or similar) urgency, and all of them damp and alive and alert to the symphony of things. I bought a huge umbrella for only $10 bills from a guy on a streetcorner. I visited the Apple store on Fifth Ave. and 59th — packed to the gills — to get my iPhone diagnosed and my SIM card correctly re-inserted.