NYC Rules...Part 1

Whew! I have traveled the world and seen the wonders of the north and have returned to regale you with my tales! New York City was so totally awesome. Here's what we did!

Friday thru Sunday...drive to NYC with Buffy the Big Apple Slayer (Jami), the Cruise Control Crusader otherwise known as Packer Acker (Jason), and Captain Cynical (Michael).
Sunday thru Thursday...see NYC! We went to the Empire State Building at Midnight on Sunday, saw Times Square, Rockefeller Center, Radio City Music Hall, NBC Studios, Trump Tower, Carnegie Hall, Macy's, Bloomingdales and St. Patrick's Cathedral on Monday. Wheew! Then we got to watch a taping of the Letterman Show which was way cool, and a much needed break for the poor feet from walking to all those cool places! That night we met up with one of my actor friends, Lloyd Floyd, man of 1032 different voices and impressions. If you're wondering what he's like, we'll just say he certainly lives up to his name! He took us to this Thai restaurant that was soooo yummy! Then he took us to the Lower East Side to an open mic poetry bar that was...well...unique in so many ways. Each person had 7 minutes to do their schtick, which was a myriad of "music"...guitars, singing, banjos, one guy strapped a tamborine to his foot while he played, and some did stand up comedy which was less than amusing. (Except for Lloyd's, of course!).

The night began with the...emcees...introducing the "acts", which were two women who were...we'll say...feeling pretty darn good. They explained how tonight, we are celebrating the 'festival of the llamas', (I so wished Kara and Amy were there to hear that!) which was very 'vegan' and 'tribal' and 'amaaaaayyyyzing'. After each "act", they told us how it reminded them of a very special time in their feeling good lives, like the time when they annointed a talisman for the gatekeeper or something equally weirdo. Let me emphasize the fact that all this was "amaaaaayyyyzing". They certainly did. Every 4.2 seconds.

Only about 1 in every 8 performances had any wink of talent to it...which made the evening that ended at 3am pretty interesting. The very first woman that got onstage and proceeded to shout at us about how she had nothing at all prepared, so we should ask her questions. (Dude, don't yell at me, not my fault you're a procrastinator!) Then she proceeded to scream about how horrible and disgusting men were. She used a lot more expletives than that, though. I kinda felt bad for Jason and Michael. So the night began.

One guy sang a song about liposuction which was actually pretty funny, another angry Russian guy (I can say that...he said "I'm Russian and I hate you all b/c you don't speak Russian) sang a song about how everything in this world sucks, and one woman sang a pretty entertaining song, but then also told us the details of her STD...after introducing her dad in the audience. Oogy. But the highlight of the night was a performance by a girl which could only be described as constipation in motion. Think Dory on Finding Nemo when she's talking to the whales...only she's stuck on one note for 7 minutes straight...not forming words or having any point whatsoever, just looking and sounding like she should really be in a bathroom. She was booed off stage. At first, I just wanted to rip off my ears and eat them so maybe the agony would end...then me and Jami got the giggles. It was all downhill from there. We should SO not have been laughing, which made it even harder to stop. We just couldn't do it. Jason and Michael, however, didn't find the humor.

But at the end of the night, we could definately say we experienced the true, raw New York arts environment, and we've got lots of stories!!! In fact, Lloyd even said "I didn't bring you because I thought you would enjoy it, I brought you because I wanted you to experience it!" It really was kinda cool though and the more thought about it, the more we realized we really did have fun. And that was only Monday night! Stay tuned for the rest of the trip with more fun stories!