Hi, Mr. President!

As much as I am looking forward to just starting over with a new life on the west coast this spring, I freely concede that one of the great things about living in New York is the frequency of random celebrity sightings.

True, once back in high school I saw local news anchor Tracy Barry at the Canyon Road Fred Meyer, but -- forgive me -- somehow that's not quite on the same level as passing Julia Roberts in Central Park, seeing Hugh Jackman coming out of the theater after The Boy from Oz, riding in an elevator with Michael J. Fox and Alec Baldwin (not at the same time; they both lived in my voice teacher's building), or sitting in front of Kiri Te Kanawa at a movie theater (Good Will Hunting at the multiplex on 68th Street). Once I even rode in a limousine with David Boreanaz. (Long story involving other WB celebrities. He was very nice.)

I haven't any idea what I'm going to be doing for work back on the Left Coast, but it's a reasonably safe bet that whatever it is, the President of the United States won't be flying past my window on a regular basis.

Here at the national headquarters of The Homosexual Agenda, we are fortunate enough to have lovely, expansive views of Brooklyn across the East River, including the heliport at the end of Wall Street. (My view is less impressive, but I'm grateful for it nonetheless. Yes, that's the Brooklyn Bridge. Or part of it, at any rate.)

"The Decider" is in town today to "bring his economic message out from the shadows of the Iraq war," as the AP puts it, in a speech on Wall Street. Whenever he's in New York, we gather in the better offices to watch the motorcade greet the fleet of helicopters that descend on the pier. Today for whatever reason, they came straight down FDR Drive and flew so close to our building that we could see the faces of the passengers.

As you might well imagine, we simply adore the President and gave him a warm wave.