Ach! So sorry. Forgot to rename yesterday's Bleat. You want a lot of Bleat today? You get a lot. Yesterday is here.

Done? Okay: Let’s walk! This is our route.

Our first landmark:

The old 777 Theater, which was actually built to be a naughty-movie house. It later had a tenure showing non-XXX movies, so it completely reversed the usual trajectory.

Let's maximize the allowable footage provided by the zoning laws and accumulation of air rights, and commodify the very air itself, shall we?

One of the things I love about our civilization is its ability to make living rooms in the sky, and allow people to sleep where no one has ever been before in human history.

Eighth isn’t the most beautiful street, so you’re pleased to see this:

Alas

I’ve always felt sorry for the old International Magazine Building. It was supposed to be taller; it was supposed to stand on its own as a monument to the publisher. Now it’s a box on which a leviathan stands.

Getting to Columbus Circle now.

It’ll always be the AOL / Time Warner building to me, I suppose. Now branded for a German bank. Twin Towers, blue glass, never a dull moment. I like it.

Now we’re in the park.

Now we’re at the Met! Only took 40 minutes of stern power-walking.

I always forget how many heads are up there.

First stop, as ever, the Greek and Roman section. . .

. . . to interrogate the ancient faces.

I find the Roman wall paintings endlessly fascinating.

Bedroom wall paintings from the Augustan era. There are three of them, with mythological figures guiding your slumbering spirit.

This guy commissioned a sculpture for his tomb, showing him and his wife. They were supposed to fill her in later, after she died.

The check may have bounced.

“Portion of Some Dude”

What happened to the rest, or where it slumbered in the earth for centuries, I can’t tell you.

An angry old biddy? A madwoman? She still demands your attention after all the centuries:

“Let’s go check on the intern’s work, see how he’s doing”

Time to go up the stairs to the European art:

There’s always a moment when you catch sight of a work you knew and forgot was here, and it’s like seeing an old friend across the room.

The Death of Socrates, Jack-Lou David. I love his work. I have a fondness for French pre-Revolution paintings. The David above qualifies, but it has the spirit of the age to come. Noble and truth-seeking and anti-authority, as the revolutionaries liked to think about themselves.

The non-political pre-Revolutionary art interests me more than the wild post 1789 propadanda. It's a world soon to be lost.

These two are particularly tragic.

The Lavoisiers.

Lavoisier is most noted for his discovery of the role oxygen plays in combustion. He recognized and named oxygen (1778) and hydrogen (1783), and opposed phlogiston theory. Lavoisier helped construct the metric system, wrote the first extensive list of elements, and helped to reform chemical nomenclature. He predicted the existence of silicon (1787)[6] and discovered that, although matter may change its form or shape, its mass always remains the same. His wife and laboratory assistant, Marie-Anne Paulze Lavoisier, became a renowned chemist in her own right.

Brilliant people. But on the wrong side of the next historical wave.

Lavoisier was a powerful member of a number of aristocratic councils, and an administrator of the Ferme générale. The Ferme générale was one of the most hated components of the Ancien Régime because of the profits it took at the expense of the state, the secrecy of the terms of its contracts, and the violence of its armed agents. All of these political and economic activities enabled him to fund his scientific research. At the height of the French Revolution, he was charged with tax fraud and selling adulterated tobacco, and was guillotined.

He ws a humanitarian, though, who advocated for clean water and street lights and agricultural improvement. No matter.

According to popular legend, the appeal to spare his life, in order that he could continue his experiments, was cut short by the judge, Coffinhal: "La République n'a pas besoin de savants ni de chimistes; le cours de la justice ne peut être suspendu." ("The Republic needs neither scholars nor chemists; the course of justice cannot be delayed.") The judge Coffinhal himself would be executed less than three months later, in the wake of the Thermidorian reaction.

Revolutions often seem to get away from the people who start it, don’t they. A year and a half after his execution, Lavoisier was completely exonerated by the French government. During the White Terror, his belongings were delivered to his widow. A brief note was included, reading "To the widow of Lavoisier, who was falsely convicted”.

After I had drunk my fill of the European painting, it was back down the steps . . .

To the rest room. At this point I didn't feel like doing any more painting, so I wandered into the room of Small Broken Old Things.

Who had it? What broke it? What did it mean to someone?

I used to be uninterested in rooms, but now I find them melancholic and arresting. If you're by yourself and it's quiet, you can populate them with your imagination. Time has stopped. The occupants have stepped through the door for a moment. They'll be right back.

Or you can populate the rooms with yourself.

I don't know what mood I'm attempt to invoke with that expression. I rarely take selfies and don't usually smile, because it feels forced. Because it is!

Back down Fifth, another 45-minute jaunt. I have a confession to make.

I was surprised to find that I do not object to the supertalls.

I actually like them.

As I approached the hotel, I saw a church, and it was open. You always should step inside if you can.

How many of these spaces exist in Manhattan? How many struggle with empty pews?

Nothing more for the day's explorations - well, lots more, but nothing I need put up, except for a random sight that sums up the then and the now, and offers you a choice. If you had to choose?

In the evening I went to the National Review Institute Holiday Party and made merry for four hours. On the way back I wondered if I'd really had enough to eat. You know how it is. You grazed, you had some meatballs, but was it enough? Not like I could raid the fridge if I got peckish at midnight.

Say, there's a New York tradition! The corner hot dog cart.

Let's have a Sabrett's with everything! The fellow was all smiles, full of cheer, working hard, handing over one meal after the other. These stands sell everything - hamburgers, curries, lamb. I trust none of it. Sorry, I know they're inspected and certified and all that, but I just forsee gut-gripping agonies down the road. So I had the hot dog. Bun on the griddle, hot dog on the rollers, shot of mustard, hand over a fiver: it's a New York Moment. Ah, that first bite of a dog.

Stone cold.

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AI interpretation of the day: "New York Central Park Supertall Skyscrapers"

Well, yes, that would be better. Or would it? Is the Chrysler special in part because there's but one, but would three, as part of a complex, be just as beloved

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Anything else before we conclude? Not really. The next day I went to the airport early - THERE'S A BIG SURPRISE - because I wanted to work on the Peg Lynch podcast. Sat down with a big cup of coffee and put in two solid hours of detailed minute editing on the visuals. I like JFK now, even though I was diverted down into the basement TSA line again. Up on time, thank you Delta, and into the inky empyrean void:

That's it. The time of travels is over, and it's time for the week before Christmas. Thanks for tagging along. Tomorrow, back to normal.

Why, no. Something seasonal and special. See you then.