Editors Note: The following post was started two weeks ago. Then work got in the way. Ergo, let's pretend it's two weeks ago and everyone's excited about the new Superman movie.

Yet again, 4th of July weekend is the best weekend ever. Yours truly was blessed with a five day weekend, and ho boy did it rock.

Saturday night we went out to Roxy, and had a surprisingly fun time. The crowd at the club has changed pretty drastically since the dark days of 2001 where everybody on the dancefloor was a shirtless steroids-addicted Chelsea clone, completely zombified by the apparently enjoyable mixture of crystal meth and ghb. The crowd is actually a bit more diverse and, for lack of a better word, normal now. Mike Cruz was spinning what felt like an endless onslaught of vocal tracks (remixed circa 1997) of three varieties (I got my man, I got yo' man, You can have my man - he a skeez!) but after 4 a.m. the music became a little more underground and started to resemble actual house music (side rant here - why are gay clubs with second tier DJs stuck in this horrible rut of playing this unmelodic Hi-NRG screaming diva stuff that was tired in 1999? Please try throwing in something a little more forward thinking or minimal, this is NYC not Syosset, Long Island).

Anyway, we ended up closing the place. The whole night the other half was in this sense of amazement, like when Principal Victoria on South Park got stoned before the annual Christmas play. And rightfully so - we didn't have to take care of complete strangers about to overdose! At 5 a.m. he was up on one of the speakers struttin' his stuff, a few classics from my old Tunnel and Vinyl days were dropped, and later we walked home in the morning sun, completely deaf (this is actually pretty cool when you haven't done it in a while).

Sunday night was the Madonna concert, and hence by far the highlight of the weekend. I've deliberately missed her past two tours because of the exhorbitant ticket prices and my usual inability to enjoy big stadium concerts. But with Esther falling off horses, I wasn't sure how much longer I would have the opportunity to see her be the Madonna we currently know and love, so I splurged. Thankfully so. She's brilliant.

The night of the fourth we walked over to Columbia Street to watch the fireworks. So, OK, Columbia street is only about five blocks from where I live, yet I hadn't been over there in years. Figure that one out. Needless to say, there's a lot of fun stuff going on over there. The fireworks were fantastic. No matter how old and jaded you get, watching colors explode in the sky never loses its thrill.