Taking the uptown 4 train to an awards ceremony for work. The bathrooms are a fifteen minute walk through the Upper Eastern Gardens so I sit on the inner rim of a large outdoor auditorium. Zoo animals roam the crowd—a mongrel puppy, a baboon-seal, a giant loon covered in yellow Tyvek—each playing its own version of fetch. I wonder out loud how they could possibly have fitted a 30-foot bird with a full-body space suit; as I say this I realize it must be nothing more than a prehensile balloon animal. Over the course of a four-hour ceremony, the host is promoting eight books with oversize inflatable book jackets that velcro to the belt of his jumpsuit. He shows us the cover of Norman Mailer's posthumous soul album. "Looks like Frank Zappa," I whisper to the delight of the two teenage girls on my left. On my right, Nate says, "This is why I started my own label."