KEATON AND FALAFELS

Nephew has begun his freshman year at the School of Visual Arts in New York. The cat is LIVING IN MANHATTAN. It's been fun to live vicariously through him. He called me at midnight on a Saturday to tell me he was walking back to his dorm room after seeing "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" at the grand old Ziegfeld ... with the chandeliers and the gigantic screen and seating for hundreds.

Nephew is studying to be a filmmaker. I made it my mission to show him Buster Keaton's masterpiece, "The General." Not that the film itself would influence Nephew (I think he's a Quentin Tarantino/Guy Richie kinda dude), but just for him to see how Keaton approached the craft of filmmaking. So dig this: In a week, Nephew and I are going to catch a Buster Keaton double-feature at the Film Forum with live piano accompaniment. He promised to turn me on to a rockin' falafel place, too.

It looks like the next Burners gig will be Nov. 3, venue to be announced. A huge twist this time around: My foursome with Karch and Fro (now called Mad Jack) will open the show. So Brinie (my bassist/brother) and myself are in both bands, playing an overall three-and-a-half-hour program of music. The rehearsal schedule for the next six weekends is brutal. I can't wait.

But of course, I'm Mr. Tears-of-a-Clown. This week is the one-year anniversary of losing Kathy. Maudlin cat that I am, I will bring my guitar to the spot where I spread her ashes and play a song I wrote for her. I was telling one of my sisters-in-law that two or three times over the past 12 months, I've toyed with the idea that I'm actually in a coma and have been dreaming this entire episode. (It's already too long and detailed to be just a regular dream; it would HAVE to be a coma.) No such luck.