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New York adventures
(I suck at writing sometimes, so this is really about the weekend of Jan 3-4, and should get backdated shortly)
So Saturday morning I got up super-early and was out the door at 9:30 to meet up with Stewart. He picked me up and we drove to Hamilton station on the NJTransit line. It was PACKED. Our train was at 10:36, we got there around 10:20, but there were so many people we couldn't get tickets, which sucked. We ended up paying a $5 penalty on an $8.75 ticket or something like that, for buying on board. Sheesh.
We took the train to Newark and then Hoboken. That train station is freaking gorgeous and old and green copper and so on. Apparently it used to be the main terminus for New York back in the day when you'd take the train there and then a ferry to Manhattan. I wish I could have spent more time just running around there taking photos, but we were just in time to meet up with our gang. I convinced Stewart to take a photo of me by the river, but it didn't really come out:
(I have a face, but...)
We went to what seemed like a main drag type street of Hoboken and a restaurant called East LA, which basically had mexican food and brunch. Stewart and I met up with Honus, shortly joined by Benoit, and THEN the "locals" showed up a bit later, Kevin Watkins and his wife Sarah, and Corey Kosak (they all live in the same building). We had a lot of coffee and a lot of food and hung out talking there for like 3 hours, and just like zephyr, it eventually degenerated into Stewart and Corey talking about FiOS and the rest of us just kind of looking onwards.
(It's like Wednesday night in Pittsburgh, only transplanted 500 miles and 3.5 days and 8 years and...)
Honus ducked out after that to go back to NY, and Benoit and Stewart and I all ended up going over to Kevin and Sarah's place, where Kevin played Katamari and the rest of us watched and chatted. Sarah turns out to be a very cool person, which totally makes up for the WTF factor on Kevin being married to a woman (given that he was gay back when I spent a significant amount of time hanging out with him). They seem very happy and very good for each other and I think it's pretty cool.
We convinced Corey to let us come up and see his ubercool penthouse apartment, which is FREAKING HUGE and has a VIEW. Seriously, I think the place is a 3-bedroom, with a gigantic livingroom and diningroom and kitchen. It's big enough that he and Frank have separate work areas within that living area, plus there are the other rooms. HUGE.
Oh, and Frank (Longo) is just as awesome as always! I talked to him for a while about Broadway musicals and crossword puzzles and it was just like old times. He showed me some neato Sudoku crosswords he's working on, and offered me a copy of his latest brainbending book, but I apologized because I hadn't even made significant progress in his last one that he gave me and Eli before we left Pittsburgh. So instead he gave me a copy of a Point and Solve crosswords book that he did a few years ago, and I started working on that on the train home from NYC. Much more on my level :)
Also Corey and Frank have this funny 20Q gadget that guesses objects. I thought of a castle and it asked seemingly-irrelevant questions and managed to get "castle" in 20 questions, but the second time I played with it, with Benoit's help, I thought of a carabiner and it guessed a Pez dispenser. So there.
Stewart noticed he was hungry around 8pm, so our gang of 5 went back into the city, to Koreatown, and to a restaurant I never caught the name of, which has a piano on a balcony on the second floor, and yakiniku grills that we weren't allowed to use. I got Bibimbap and couldn't actually finish it. Maybe I should have tried to make us go to a Japanese restaurant, but oh well, it's okay, I rarely have Korean food anyway, and going with friends was more important.
After dinner, Sarah went back to Hoboken, Stewart went back to Haddonfield, and Kevin and Benoit and I went down to Battery Park to see Slumdog Millionaire, which of course I had seen already, but was good enough to see again. I noticed a few things I hadn't noticed the first time, either, so that was good, plus this time I knew when to shut my eyes for some scenes. Good times. Plot hole, though: how the HELL does Latika know how to drive? I didn't think about that the first time, but I can't figure out what circumstances would exist for her to learn.
Kevin threw us in a cab after that and I stayed up too late talking to Benoit about a ton of stuff, before he realized he needed to get some sleep before heading to his conference the next day, so we crashed.
Sunday morning after a stupid subway error on my part, I made my way up to a place called the Irish Rogue, in the theater district, where I was attacked by a man with a camera.
(he looked surprisingly like Jason Specland...)
We had Irish brunch, which was good, although I didn't realize it would involve alcoholic beverages, so I was lame and got juice and coffee. There were a whole bunch of people in there even though it was 11am, watching some soccer game in some other part of the world.
I told stories about baseball and Jason told stories about his family and about theater. He's in Equity and actually has friends who are performing on Broadway, so it's kind of neat to hear about things from another perspective. Also we talked about old Scotch'n'Soda people, which always makes me realize that I knew a lot of SNS people despite that I only was really involved for that one semester I stage-managed for Assassins thanks to the benevolence of Darren and Jeremy.
We did the tourist thing around Times Square and Jason took a whole bunch of photos of me, which I'll have to wait for him to post.
(...the staircase doesn't go anywhere, it's just there to sit on and take photos?)
Then, at 2:30 or so we made our way to the Gershwin Theater, and I said goodbye to Jason and hello to the Land of Oz, when I saw the musical Wicked. I was sitting in row K, which is really like the 14th row or so, but still quite close. Single tickets are good.
The show was fantastic! I know it's big and bad and hyped but it's really that good. Neither of the leads are anyone I'd heard of before (CMU grad Megan Hilty is already gone), but it was funny because the girl playing Elphaba was totally channelling Idina Menzel. I couldn't figure out if it was because the music was written that way for that role or because she was really trying to do the diva thing or what. I mean, it wasn't in a bad way, there were just a lot of vocal turns she took that I was thinking "I've heard this before" on.
Plot hole #2, incorrectly regarded as goofs: how on earth could Elphaba melt if hit with water? I mean, I suppose this is just plain a goof in the original Wizard of Oz, but it makes me wonder.
I don't really want to ruin the show for anyone by saying more about specifics, but I'll just say that it was very very good, well worth paying full price for. I laughed, I cried, it was better than whatever, etc. It's just a very good show, you really feel for the characters, and the music is really fun and very Broadway. I just wish I remembered the Oz story better because I actually was having trouble remembering the sequence of events.
After that I found my way down Broadway a bit, and called MetsGrrl, who is a baseball blogger that I guess I've known online for a couple of years now; even though we aren't in the same spheres of baseball, we have similar approaches and thoughts on the sport and on blogging. We'd planned to meet up for dinner, so I had to find my way down to 26th and 6th or so, to a place called Hill Country. It had really good BBQ, Texas-style, they supposedly even fly in the wood for the fire from Texas. MG brought her boyfriend along, and he's a die-hard lifetime Mets fan, so we had some good stuff to talk about there (though I think he really just wanted to hear stories about Bobby Valentine). In general the three of us just hung out, ate yummy food, and talked about baseball for almost 3 hours.
MG suggests I should write a book. I've been thinking about it more, but I'm still unsure I have the drive and dedication to actually DO it.
(Some Japanese tourist and a baseball blogger. Wait a minute...)
I wanted to get the 9:14 train home, so we ran to the train station around 9, and I did get on the proper NJT train to Trenton, and then caught the R7 out of Trenton to come back here after that, with about a 30-minute wait inbetween. On the two trips I caught up on the last two episodes of メンドル, which I had loaded onto my new iPod for this very purpose. Not so sure watching video on it is such a great idea -- it sinks battery life a ton. The good part is that taking NJT and SEPTA works out to around $22 total and 3 hours, rather than the $45-77 or so for Amtrak's 1.5 hours. I'm used to 3-hour trips between cities in Japan so it's not that big a deal. It made me want even more to do the 10-hour local train journey to Nagoya when I get back! :)
Whirlwind trips to cities to visit people and see music is fun!
So Saturday morning I got up super-early and was out the door at 9:30 to meet up with Stewart. He picked me up and we drove to Hamilton station on the NJTransit line. It was PACKED. Our train was at 10:36, we got there around 10:20, but there were so many people we couldn't get tickets, which sucked. We ended up paying a $5 penalty on an $8.75 ticket or something like that, for buying on board. Sheesh.
We took the train to Newark and then Hoboken. That train station is freaking gorgeous and old and green copper and so on. Apparently it used to be the main terminus for New York back in the day when you'd take the train there and then a ferry to Manhattan. I wish I could have spent more time just running around there taking photos, but we were just in time to meet up with our gang. I convinced Stewart to take a photo of me by the river, but it didn't really come out:
(I have a face, but...)
We went to what seemed like a main drag type street of Hoboken and a restaurant called East LA, which basically had mexican food and brunch. Stewart and I met up with Honus, shortly joined by Benoit, and THEN the "locals" showed up a bit later, Kevin Watkins and his wife Sarah, and Corey Kosak (they all live in the same building). We had a lot of coffee and a lot of food and hung out talking there for like 3 hours, and just like zephyr, it eventually degenerated into Stewart and Corey talking about FiOS and the rest of us just kind of looking onwards.
(It's like Wednesday night in Pittsburgh, only transplanted 500 miles and 3.5 days and 8 years and...)
Honus ducked out after that to go back to NY, and Benoit and Stewart and I all ended up going over to Kevin and Sarah's place, where Kevin played Katamari and the rest of us watched and chatted. Sarah turns out to be a very cool person, which totally makes up for the WTF factor on Kevin being married to a woman (given that he was gay back when I spent a significant amount of time hanging out with him). They seem very happy and very good for each other and I think it's pretty cool.
We convinced Corey to let us come up and see his ubercool penthouse apartment, which is FREAKING HUGE and has a VIEW. Seriously, I think the place is a 3-bedroom, with a gigantic livingroom and diningroom and kitchen. It's big enough that he and Frank have separate work areas within that living area, plus there are the other rooms. HUGE.
Oh, and Frank (Longo) is just as awesome as always! I talked to him for a while about Broadway musicals and crossword puzzles and it was just like old times. He showed me some neato Sudoku crosswords he's working on, and offered me a copy of his latest brainbending book, but I apologized because I hadn't even made significant progress in his last one that he gave me and Eli before we left Pittsburgh. So instead he gave me a copy of a Point and Solve crosswords book that he did a few years ago, and I started working on that on the train home from NYC. Much more on my level :)
Also Corey and Frank have this funny 20Q gadget that guesses objects. I thought of a castle and it asked seemingly-irrelevant questions and managed to get "castle" in 20 questions, but the second time I played with it, with Benoit's help, I thought of a carabiner and it guessed a Pez dispenser. So there.
Stewart noticed he was hungry around 8pm, so our gang of 5 went back into the city, to Koreatown, and to a restaurant I never caught the name of, which has a piano on a balcony on the second floor, and yakiniku grills that we weren't allowed to use. I got Bibimbap and couldn't actually finish it. Maybe I should have tried to make us go to a Japanese restaurant, but oh well, it's okay, I rarely have Korean food anyway, and going with friends was more important.
After dinner, Sarah went back to Hoboken, Stewart went back to Haddonfield, and Kevin and Benoit and I went down to Battery Park to see Slumdog Millionaire, which of course I had seen already, but was good enough to see again. I noticed a few things I hadn't noticed the first time, either, so that was good, plus this time I knew when to shut my eyes for some scenes. Good times. Plot hole, though: how the HELL does Latika know how to drive? I didn't think about that the first time, but I can't figure out what circumstances would exist for her to learn.
Kevin threw us in a cab after that and I stayed up too late talking to Benoit about a ton of stuff, before he realized he needed to get some sleep before heading to his conference the next day, so we crashed.
Sunday morning after a stupid subway error on my part, I made my way up to a place called the Irish Rogue, in the theater district, where I was attacked by a man with a camera.
(he looked surprisingly like Jason Specland...)
We had Irish brunch, which was good, although I didn't realize it would involve alcoholic beverages, so I was lame and got juice and coffee. There were a whole bunch of people in there even though it was 11am, watching some soccer game in some other part of the world.
I told stories about baseball and Jason told stories about his family and about theater. He's in Equity and actually has friends who are performing on Broadway, so it's kind of neat to hear about things from another perspective. Also we talked about old Scotch'n'Soda people, which always makes me realize that I knew a lot of SNS people despite that I only was really involved for that one semester I stage-managed for Assassins thanks to the benevolence of Darren and Jeremy.
We did the tourist thing around Times Square and Jason took a whole bunch of photos of me, which I'll have to wait for him to post.
(...the staircase doesn't go anywhere, it's just there to sit on and take photos?)
Then, at 2:30 or so we made our way to the Gershwin Theater, and I said goodbye to Jason and hello to the Land of Oz, when I saw the musical Wicked. I was sitting in row K, which is really like the 14th row or so, but still quite close. Single tickets are good.
The show was fantastic! I know it's big and bad and hyped but it's really that good. Neither of the leads are anyone I'd heard of before (CMU grad Megan Hilty is already gone), but it was funny because the girl playing Elphaba was totally channelling Idina Menzel. I couldn't figure out if it was because the music was written that way for that role or because she was really trying to do the diva thing or what. I mean, it wasn't in a bad way, there were just a lot of vocal turns she took that I was thinking "I've heard this before" on.
Plot hole #2, incorrectly regarded as goofs: how on earth could Elphaba melt if hit with water? I mean, I suppose this is just plain a goof in the original Wizard of Oz, but it makes me wonder.
I don't really want to ruin the show for anyone by saying more about specifics, but I'll just say that it was very very good, well worth paying full price for. I laughed, I cried, it was better than whatever, etc. It's just a very good show, you really feel for the characters, and the music is really fun and very Broadway. I just wish I remembered the Oz story better because I actually was having trouble remembering the sequence of events.
After that I found my way down Broadway a bit, and called MetsGrrl, who is a baseball blogger that I guess I've known online for a couple of years now; even though we aren't in the same spheres of baseball, we have similar approaches and thoughts on the sport and on blogging. We'd planned to meet up for dinner, so I had to find my way down to 26th and 6th or so, to a place called Hill Country. It had really good BBQ, Texas-style, they supposedly even fly in the wood for the fire from Texas. MG brought her boyfriend along, and he's a die-hard lifetime Mets fan, so we had some good stuff to talk about there (though I think he really just wanted to hear stories about Bobby Valentine). In general the three of us just hung out, ate yummy food, and talked about baseball for almost 3 hours.
MG suggests I should write a book. I've been thinking about it more, but I'm still unsure I have the drive and dedication to actually DO it.
(Some Japanese tourist and a baseball blogger. Wait a minute...)
I wanted to get the 9:14 train home, so we ran to the train station around 9, and I did get on the proper NJT train to Trenton, and then caught the R7 out of Trenton to come back here after that, with about a 30-minute wait inbetween. On the two trips I caught up on the last two episodes of メンドル, which I had loaded onto my new iPod for this very purpose. Not so sure watching video on it is such a great idea -- it sinks battery life a ton. The good part is that taking NJT and SEPTA works out to around $22 total and 3 hours, rather than the $45-77 or so for Amtrak's 1.5 hours. I'm used to 3-hour trips between cities in Japan so it's not that big a deal. It made me want even more to do the 10-hour local train journey to Nagoya when I get back! :)
Whirlwind trips to cities to visit people and see music is fun!
no subject
A Book
My friend
Then again, you still have to figure out the structure of the outline.
Maybe if you start there - or at least start trying to frame it in that context - you'll get a better sense of how things might come together (and get your reserve processing capacity working on it in the background).
no subject
no subject
We're seeing Wicked in SF in March. I'm very much looking forward to it!
no subject
Another plot hole: why would Sarah hang out with a bunch of demons with glowing red eyes?