In response to the International Olympic Committee’s recent decision to drop wrestling from the Olympic games, the United States Congress, in its tireless pursuit of avoiding any actual responsibility, has taken up the issue.

For someone so fat and loud, Santa has a way of sneaking up on people. With just five days until Christmas, and you having accomplished about as much shopping as you have self-improvement over the past month, Evan Allgood and A.C. DeLashmutt (of “Evan and A.C. Disagree” fame) have you covered. Don’t know what to get your mother? That cousin you can’t stand? The man who has everything, or nothing? That girl you just started seeing? Grab your credit card and start—er, continue—reading, and please, for the sake of keyza partiers’ everywhere, check your inhibitions at the door.

My first morning back home in Virginia. I have a piece of toast in one hand and the ear of a Labrador in the other as I bend over the Post, chewing. Jamon is streaming NPR on his iPad, something about Black Friday, door-busting 50% discounts on plasma TVs, strikes, crush injuries. I’m not really listening; I’m hate-reading The Family Circus. Yesterday’s caption was, “I’m not eatin’ as much today because I’m planning on overeatin’ tomorrow.” Today, “It won’t cost you any money, Mommy. You can just pay with a credit card!” I stop chewing, stick out my tongue and let a sodden bite of toast plop back onto the plate. My sister’s face is stricken. “I wish you’d stop reading that one,” she grumbles.

Step 1:

First of all, relax. It’s Saturday. It’s not even raining. On your way back from morning yoga, stop by the greenmarket and pick up a bouquet of fresh flowers, because it’s so gray and uggo outside. While you’re at it, maybe get an organic brioche and some rhubarb preserves to have at tea time. When you witness harsh words exchanged over the last carton of free-range organic pullet eggs, shake your head and tsk. Take heart in your survival of past weather disasters, such as The Blizzard of 1996, when you got to stay home from seventh grade for two entire weeks. When people try to engage you in conversation about the coming storm, shrug and say, “Oh, you should have seen it in ’96. Now that was weather.”

Evan’s log, Stardate One-Zero-Two-One-Two:

A fellow Trop author named A.C. DeLashmutt has fired a wobbly, misguided “photon Tropedo” at the Evanprise, making a case for First Officer William Riker as the sexiest Enterprise crewmember. Though I’m comfortable enough with my sexuality to tackle the Picard-Riker argument head-on, A.C. was too remiss (and sexist?) to even acknowledge the existence of the Enterprise’s female crew. Therefore I feel it is my duty to explain why the sexiest officer is not Deanna Troi, or Dr. Beverly Crusher, or… um… Guinan, before moving onto the main event.

In honor of Star Trek: The Next Generation’s 25th Anniversary, A.C. DeLashmutt and Evan Allgood took a (very) fresh look back at the beloved series of futuristic fables, and asked each other the question that has been hotly debated by fans since the dawn of Comic-Con: when it comes to the Enterprise’s spandex-suited crew of intergalactic do-gooders, who is Star Trek’s sexiest? Set your phasers to “stunning,” because we’re about to run a Level 3 diagnostic on this thing.*

I always walk into Washington Square Park from the southwest corner, the chess quadrant, where big men in do-rags hock games like fruit vendors. “You sir! You look like a chess player. Yessir, you do. How ’bout a game?” Toward the center of the park, around the fountain casting off sunlight in a million droplets, the crowds are already thickening. I find a slab of marble dappled in shadows, and sit down to watch. A pair of boxers duck and jab for a small audience. A beard in a trucker hat holds a sign reading “Free Advice.” Next to me a tall man in a muted plaid shirt presses a pen hard into a notebook on his knee, leaving a line of black letters in microscopic capital. A woman in front of an easel holding an oil portrait is listening to a man with a bike. It takes me a minute to recognize that he’s homeless, and it isn’t because of his generally shambolic state of dress—the binder clip holding up my pants just now obliges me to look forgivingly on the sartorial foibles of others. Nor is it his increasingly earnest talk of UFOs. But the pages of the Daily News he’s turning through are so worn that they drape over his hands like a cloth.

At a party a few weeks ago, a stranger said to me: “Tell me about yourself.”

So I told him where I live, and what I do, and I added that my favorite sandwich these days is peanut butter and banana, by way of communicating my opinion that the command “tell me about yourself” is exactly the kind of asinine conversational shortcut that a man “in finance” would use.

Mountain Standard Time: Saturday, 8:15 pm

I am a wedding guest. Someone hands me a glass of champagne. I am smiling in a sea of cashmere and class rings.  This morning I flew into a tiny airport where private jets gleamed in multi-million dollar rows on the tarmac. “So what’s your tail number?” we ask one another. Around me are tall mountains tinseled in silvery groves of slender trees with leaves whose undersides flash like coins in the mountain breeze. Someone hands me a glass of champagne. Our cheeks are pink from the sun we got fly fishing, hiking, riding the gondola. The bride and groom are glossy blond and blue-eyed and adored. A toast! Someone hands me a microphone, and I talk about happy childhoods and true love and bright futures and make a crack about wearing a bra before my next public speaking appearance. We are laughing, and it sounds like a hundred martinis being shaken at once. Someone hands me a glass of champagne, and dessert is served, a dozen waiters pour through the festooned tent carrying Baked Alaska and sparklers. At every table there is a promotion, a new baby, an engagement, and I say congratulations, congratulations. This is Aspen.

There’s an attitude to summertime loitering that takes a certain knack. Call it, “the art of the stoop.” I like slouching—I’m excellent at slouching—or leaning, or lounging. And until the climate changes, there’s no question of sitting like a lady—no prim attempts at perching, knees together, ankles crossed. No, those are autumn postures.

The midnight streets of Chincoteague have an almost post-apocalyptic emptiness. The air is wet and the streetlamps slime the cracked gray sidewalks in orange light. Houses line the street but nothing moves in them: no TVs flicker, no dogs bark. I pass by a magnolia tree in full, vigorous blossom and breathe in deeply, but there is no scent at all. It’s eerie, is what it is, like a set on a movie lot, or an empty stage.