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The Trip That Goes Like This
So yeah, after a whopping, um, hour? two hours? of sleep, I got up, went to 30th Street Station, got on a train, and went to New York.
Found Carl really easily once we got there (he stands out in a crowd). He greeted me with a big box of homemade holiday cookies. (I've been fortunate to end up on his family's holiday cookie list the last few years. Even when I was in Japan last year!)
We went to Carmine's, on the Upper West Side, for lunch. I'd been there one time before, in the summer of 2005, with Nick, who had been silly enough to order TWO dishes for two people, and had to eat leftover rigatoni for a week after that. Carl and I were smart enough to split one eggplant parmesan for lunch. He ate almost half of it, and in what must be a first-ever occasion, I only ate maybe a quarter of it, less than he did. Whoa.
While we were at Carmine's, it was funny -- a group of Japanese tourists walked in, maybe 8 people, and I'm like "Hey, look, Japanese tourists." Carl's like "How did you know?" and I'm like "I just DO," and when they walked past our table, sure enough, they were all speaking Japanese. Kind of funny -- I don't know why, I could just tell.
Anyway, after lunch we went to the theater district, and to the Shubert Theater, and we saw the matinee of Spamalot. It was not our first choice of Broadway show, to be honest -- more like our 3rd or 4th. And, in further retardedness, the show was supposed to start at 2pm, and I think the doors opened at 1:50pm or something like that. At 2pm, I was waiting in line to use the restroom and an usher comes in like "Ladies, the curtain goes up at 2:05pm, so y'all better hurry up." I don't really understand why that happens that way.
The show itself, by the way, was... MUCH BETTER THAN EXPECTED. I mean, I got sick of Monty Python pretty early on in college after people quoted it ALL THE DAMN TIME so I was kind of expecting to flinch a lot at the Holy Grail stuff, but actually, it wasn't so bad. What really made the show for me was the meta-ness of it -- with song titles like "The Song That Goes Like This", you know. They were really making fun of Broadway as well as Monty Python, and it was nice feeling like I was in on all the in-jokes. My favorite moments:
1) When Herbert randomly spits out "...and another hundred people just got out of the swamp, and are looking around, at another hundred people--" NOBODY else was laughing, but since I'd just been saying how Company is my favorite Sondheim musical, well.
2) Arthur's... tap-dancing.
3) When Clay Aiken, as Sir Robin, had some line about being "and I'll be the idol star of the show". Which was, you know, like THREE levels of joke, being as he's the American Idol dude, but ALSO in that Sir Robin was Eric Idle's character in the movie, and Idle wrote the musical in the first place.
4) When the french taunters added in a line about "I throw my shoes at you!"
Seriously, it had enough Python to be Python but not enough to make me want to strangle someone, and it had enough musical theater to be entertaining. I still wouldn't say it was anywhere near one of the greatest shows I've ever seen or anything, but it was good, and I'm glad we got to see it before it closes.
After that we went to The Library. I capitalize because I mean, it's The Library. It's all historic and stuff. And it was in Ghostbusters! But, finding actual BOOKS in The Library is hard. They did, however, have a hand-written copy of Beedle the Bard there, one of 7 in the world or something like that. I took a photo (but photos are in this post under the cut).
We also took an opportunity to go to Book-Off and Kinokuniya. Book-off wasn't so interesting to me since we have that in Japan, although -- their prices have gotten a LOT better it seems! I pondered buying a DVD but ended up not. Carl got some manga and I read through a non-Dokaben baseball book by Mizushima Shinji to waste time. Kinokuniya was a lot faster -- I just bought the latest Shukan Baseball weekly magazine. I've been going through freaking WITHDRAWAL the last few weeks without it, I swear. And this week's is the New Year's issue with the calendar! Of course, paying $9 for a Y420 magazine is not my idea of fun either.
Then we were going to get Japanese food for dinner, but failed to find the area we were thinking of from our trip to NYC in 2001 for the JLPT with the good places, so oops. Eventually, after wandering past Rockefeller Center, we... ended up at a Chipotle, on 8th. That was absolutely perfectly fine with me. I wasn't sure I could finish a burrito, though I did manage to.
By the time that was all done with, it was pretty much time to find our way back to the train station to catch our trains back to our respective cities, me going south and him north, around 9pm. I slept for maybe an hour on the train, except that it jolted around a lot and my neck hurt like hell. I kind of think one of those U-shaped neck pillows would be a really good investment for sleeping on long train rides, actually.
Got back to 30th Street and caught a SEPTA train and got home a little after 11pm I guess. As an aside, I had forgotten to bring my keys with me, so I'd called my dad that morning to tell him that, and he said he'd tell the doormen at our building to let me in, BUT when I actually got up to the apartment I knocked and knocked and got no answer, AND my cellphone wasn't working, some weird SIMcard error. Eventually I powercycled it and called my dad, like "WAKE UP, I'M OUTSIDE THE APARTMENT, LET ME IN!!"
Oh yeah, and the box of cookies also had fudge in it, which I gave to my dad, and he greatly appreciated. Honestly, I'm proud that I pretty much only weigh maybe 1-2 pounds more than I did when I came back to the US from Japan, so it seemed like a good strategic move. But the candy cane cookies are ALL MINE.
Whee.
It's not like we planned it to work out this way, but I really needed a day like this to get the hell out of Philly and take my mind off everything (especially with the big family gathering tomorrow, heh). It was a really nice holiday present.
I want to go back to New York next weekend, actually! I hope I can spend more than just one day there, and see more people and stuff.
Here's a whole bunch of photos from the day -- I'll LJ-cut out of the goodness of my heart.
The Rockefeller center tree.
The tree at Bryant Park, by the ice rink and the library.
Inside Astor Hall in the library, a huge Christmas tree.
The display case with the Beedle the Bard book.
It's like the book aisle just stretches into the horizon.
I thought this looked cool.
That eggplant parmesan was THIS HUGE!
This is totally the funniest ad I saw. Bonus points if you know why.
The theater showing Spamalot, all decked out.
Found Carl really easily once we got there (he stands out in a crowd). He greeted me with a big box of homemade holiday cookies. (I've been fortunate to end up on his family's holiday cookie list the last few years. Even when I was in Japan last year!)
We went to Carmine's, on the Upper West Side, for lunch. I'd been there one time before, in the summer of 2005, with Nick, who had been silly enough to order TWO dishes for two people, and had to eat leftover rigatoni for a week after that. Carl and I were smart enough to split one eggplant parmesan for lunch. He ate almost half of it, and in what must be a first-ever occasion, I only ate maybe a quarter of it, less than he did. Whoa.
While we were at Carmine's, it was funny -- a group of Japanese tourists walked in, maybe 8 people, and I'm like "Hey, look, Japanese tourists." Carl's like "How did you know?" and I'm like "I just DO," and when they walked past our table, sure enough, they were all speaking Japanese. Kind of funny -- I don't know why, I could just tell.
Anyway, after lunch we went to the theater district, and to the Shubert Theater, and we saw the matinee of Spamalot. It was not our first choice of Broadway show, to be honest -- more like our 3rd or 4th. And, in further retardedness, the show was supposed to start at 2pm, and I think the doors opened at 1:50pm or something like that. At 2pm, I was waiting in line to use the restroom and an usher comes in like "Ladies, the curtain goes up at 2:05pm, so y'all better hurry up." I don't really understand why that happens that way.
The show itself, by the way, was... MUCH BETTER THAN EXPECTED. I mean, I got sick of Monty Python pretty early on in college after people quoted it ALL THE DAMN TIME so I was kind of expecting to flinch a lot at the Holy Grail stuff, but actually, it wasn't so bad. What really made the show for me was the meta-ness of it -- with song titles like "The Song That Goes Like This", you know. They were really making fun of Broadway as well as Monty Python, and it was nice feeling like I was in on all the in-jokes. My favorite moments:
1) When Herbert randomly spits out "...and another hundred people just got out of the swamp, and are looking around, at another hundred people--" NOBODY else was laughing, but since I'd just been saying how Company is my favorite Sondheim musical, well.
2) Arthur's... tap-dancing.
3) When Clay Aiken, as Sir Robin, had some line about being "and I'll be the idol star of the show". Which was, you know, like THREE levels of joke, being as he's the American Idol dude, but ALSO in that Sir Robin was Eric Idle's character in the movie, and Idle wrote the musical in the first place.
4) When the french taunters added in a line about "I throw my shoes at you!"
Seriously, it had enough Python to be Python but not enough to make me want to strangle someone, and it had enough musical theater to be entertaining. I still wouldn't say it was anywhere near one of the greatest shows I've ever seen or anything, but it was good, and I'm glad we got to see it before it closes.
After that we went to The Library. I capitalize because I mean, it's The Library. It's all historic and stuff. And it was in Ghostbusters! But, finding actual BOOKS in The Library is hard. They did, however, have a hand-written copy of Beedle the Bard there, one of 7 in the world or something like that. I took a photo (but photos are in this post under the cut).
We also took an opportunity to go to Book-Off and Kinokuniya. Book-off wasn't so interesting to me since we have that in Japan, although -- their prices have gotten a LOT better it seems! I pondered buying a DVD but ended up not. Carl got some manga and I read through a non-Dokaben baseball book by Mizushima Shinji to waste time. Kinokuniya was a lot faster -- I just bought the latest Shukan Baseball weekly magazine. I've been going through freaking WITHDRAWAL the last few weeks without it, I swear. And this week's is the New Year's issue with the calendar! Of course, paying $9 for a Y420 magazine is not my idea of fun either.
Then we were going to get Japanese food for dinner, but failed to find the area we were thinking of from our trip to NYC in 2001 for the JLPT with the good places, so oops. Eventually, after wandering past Rockefeller Center, we... ended up at a Chipotle, on 8th. That was absolutely perfectly fine with me. I wasn't sure I could finish a burrito, though I did manage to.
By the time that was all done with, it was pretty much time to find our way back to the train station to catch our trains back to our respective cities, me going south and him north, around 9pm. I slept for maybe an hour on the train, except that it jolted around a lot and my neck hurt like hell. I kind of think one of those U-shaped neck pillows would be a really good investment for sleeping on long train rides, actually.
Got back to 30th Street and caught a SEPTA train and got home a little after 11pm I guess. As an aside, I had forgotten to bring my keys with me, so I'd called my dad that morning to tell him that, and he said he'd tell the doormen at our building to let me in, BUT when I actually got up to the apartment I knocked and knocked and got no answer, AND my cellphone wasn't working, some weird SIMcard error. Eventually I powercycled it and called my dad, like "WAKE UP, I'M OUTSIDE THE APARTMENT, LET ME IN!!"
Oh yeah, and the box of cookies also had fudge in it, which I gave to my dad, and he greatly appreciated. Honestly, I'm proud that I pretty much only weigh maybe 1-2 pounds more than I did when I came back to the US from Japan, so it seemed like a good strategic move. But the candy cane cookies are ALL MINE.
Whee.
It's not like we planned it to work out this way, but I really needed a day like this to get the hell out of Philly and take my mind off everything (especially with the big family gathering tomorrow, heh). It was a really nice holiday present.
I want to go back to New York next weekend, actually! I hope I can spend more than just one day there, and see more people and stuff.
Here's a whole bunch of photos from the day -- I'll LJ-cut out of the goodness of my heart.
The Rockefeller center tree.
The tree at Bryant Park, by the ice rink and the library.
Inside Astor Hall in the library, a huge Christmas tree.
The display case with the Beedle the Bard book.
It's like the book aisle just stretches into the horizon.
I thought this looked cool.
That eggplant parmesan was THIS HUGE!
This is totally the funniest ad I saw. Bonus points if you know why.
The theater showing Spamalot, all decked out.
no subject
Andy Plotkin long ago reviewed the first Jurassic Park movie as "Dinosaurs 10, Plot 3."
no subject
Zarf is funny :)