I made Kath and Cinde have a Memorial Day party yesterday because I am the master and they are just my puppets. I called Cinde on Saturday morning and told her she should have people over, and by Sunday afternoon Kath was calling to invite me over.

"I know," I said. "It was my freaking idea in the first place."

I brought Kentucky Fried Chicken as a concession to Cinde's desires (She had requested KFC when I suggested the party. It's one of those things you want but will never buy yourself.), so as to make her feel like she was really running the show. It came with two large orders of mashed potatoes and coleslaw and a bunch of biscuits. No one really ate the slaw or the potatoes. The sides sat there, lame and sad, all day long. Poor little sides.

It was a beautiful, sunny day, yesterday, and I was amazed at how long the days have become. I kept saying it out loud: "The sun is still out. Damn!" And then someone would respond, "Yea it's summer now. It works that way."

All of the gorgeous knockout ladies were there, the artists, and the designers (interior and exterior), and some unemployed friend of a friend in a skimpy red top, who introduced herself with a hot story about a recent road trip.

"It was my birthday and I was driving around South Dakota. My friend from LA blew me off, so I just decided to go and get drunk somewhere and then sleep in my car."

(If it sounds like there are details missing, you're right. I never figured out the whole story either.)

"So I walked into this bar and announced it was my birthday and I drank for free all night. They kept buying me snake bites...I ended up going home with a lesbian construction worker and sleeping in her trailer. She was so hot, short, and the buffest arms, and a big chest. She was from New York originally. Syracuse, I think."

"It was the best part of my trip. You'd think it was the sign of good things to come, but it went downhill from there. I did pull over during the drive at one point though to cry because the grass was just so goddamn green."

Later Nico showed up with the NY Times and the NY Post. There was a picture of our friend Stuart, who we lost on September 11, in the paper, and a quote from one of the emails he sent (Search "Stuart Lee"). Even a fuzzy picture on the front page of people waving out of windows before the WTC fell was starting to look like him, too. It took your breath away.

We talked about the HBO documentary on 9-11, and about Stuart a bit more. And then, as it turned out, two of the guests knew an artist who had perished that day, so talk turned to him. He was part of a group that provided studio space to artists in the World Trade Center.

"They think he was asleep when it happened," said our friend. "He taught in Brooklyn in the morning, and he lived in the Bronx, so rather than go all the way home, he slept in his studio that night. When they found him it looked like he hadn't really gone through too much trauma, because he was asleep, and then it was just over."

We didn't talk about WTC the entire day, but no one seemed too saddened when we did. It was just a part of who we are now. And I was thinking today: This is the first time Memorial Day has meant anything to almost everyone I know, and it will now mean something to us for the rest of our lives. In the past, it was just another long weekend.

And now, well, it's a day I didn't ever want to need. I was perfectly happy having Kurt Cobain's suicide be the saddest collective experience of my peers (because we really are that pathetic of a generation). But if we've lived through this and lost as we have, the least that can happen is for us to have a day to mourn and remember, once a year, for the rest of our lives.

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