Go and see what the Rumpus Room actually looks like in this article, which containa lots of cool pics of the pad, as well as the most unflattering picture of me ever seen by human eyes. It’s a very complimentery article, but I winced a little while reading it to see how even the simplest remarks can be misinterpreted by someone who doesn’t already know you, and who has to summarize you. Am I a vicitim of media manipultion? Or just a Virgo control freak who likes things just so?
The article is a bit weird: It’s loaded with little embellishments and things that miss the point, but I can see how someone who didn’t know me well could come to those conclusions. For instance, I don’t actively collect action figures, but I never throw anything away so I’ve found myself owning a bunch after years of getting a kick out of them. (By the way, I only have a couple dozen, not a couple hundred.) And I’m not all that zealous about home improvement, either. I painted my bathroom after two years of procrastinating about the day-long project. It also makes me seem really, really gay, but I guess I am. Whatever. It’s a nice, flattering article, even though it features a disturbingly unflattering picture of me in the photo slideshow.
You can see what a museum of various, uncurated pop junk the Rumpus Room really is. There aren’t any carefully cultivated collections of anything, but there are lots and lots of cool things lying around. If nothing else, a close look at the photos reveals just how many treasures there are to be found in thrift stores and sidewalk junk piles. After all, I don’t own a stick of new furniture, only thrift scores and trash relics abandoned by assorted friends and strangers. Behold the scavenger!
CGI Paris. Goofy, yes, but a pretty way of making a 3-D version of a painted backdrop that would have made MGM proud. Also, I it made me all sentimentalto see Montmarte showed like that, since I stayed right at the foot of the hill, down the block from the real Moulin Rouge (a horribly tacky tourist trap), when I was in Paris last February. Also, cheers to the Man in the Moon who lurked in the background now and then.
On a totally different pop-culture note, I’ve found myself talking with lots of guys recently about how they also always thought that 
It’s not everyday that you find yourself sitting around with a group of friends gabbing when you come in on a conversation midstream to hear a woman you know say, “So I said to Madonna, ‘You gotta get out!’” True story. Apparently Madonna had sublet a room in Mimi’s apartment back in the early days when they were both struggling dancers, and Madonna had this thing for wandering around the place naked after she showered. Mimi asked her to knock it off while her mother, who was freaked enough about her daughter living on the mean streets of New York, was in town. Well, Madonna still let it hang loose — hairy pits and all — so Mimi decided to give her the old heave-ho (so to speak).
It was a moment of jaded, insane name-dropping that could have come directly from