NYC Trip (plus sweet videos!)

Erica's Catching Up Blog, Part II.

Mike and I planned a trip to NYC for March 18th-21st for me to meet his friends, for him to see his friends again, for us to see (his best girl friend) Jadelynn's show, and for us to see where we will potentially live in 2008.

We actually did all of that and more! We got to JFK on sunday afternoon, and after traveling on airbuses and subway trains, we finally made it from Queens to Upper Manhattan where Mike's good friend Elliot lives with coworker (and Mike's former coworker) Jimmy and his girlfriend Wendy. I didn't snap any pics of Jimmy and Wendy, but I feel bad that I forgot so I'm gonna steal one from Wendy's myspace and put it up to give them props for letting us stay with them.
So that's Jimmy and Wendy, you'll be seeing a lot of Elliot later in this blog. Who you should also meet though, are Jimmy and Wendy's animals, two dogs and a cat who all hang out together, and are adorable:

Anyway, we find Elliot, get to their place, put our stuff down, and have just enough time to grab a bite to eat at a scary pizza place before going to the Looking Glass Theatre where Jadelynn's off-off Broadway play was.

This play was....interesting. It is a Brecht play, who I'm told is an absurdist. The play was more like a musical I guess. There were lots of songs and things (and Jadelynn has a great singing voice), but the most interesting thing was that Jadelynn played the title character, Baal, who is historically a god of fertility. She was human in the play, but very god-like, and VERY sexual. She basically humped everything that moved, and had a few sex scenes and topless scenes. Some of the other girls did the same, so I saw lots of boobs that day. I of course, got no pictures of that, but it was a very interesting entertaining experience.

After her play she took us to someplace called The Living Room, where "her friend" was performing. Well I didn't hear all the details of who or where we were going, I was just following people, and when we got there I realized we were seeing Joe Purdy. I had already heard of him from the Grey's Anatomy soundtrack, but apparently he's had like 5 songs on Grey's and at least one song that was played on Hurley's radio on Lost. He has a band, but was doing a solo acoustic show, and sounded very Counting Crows-ish.

So we're waiting in line, we finally get in the room to see him (for free because he put us on his VIP list), and we get the last available seating. Jadelynn starts talking about how they used to hook up awhile ago, and how he wrote a song about her. I'm not sure if this is because he knew she was there or what, but his second song he sang was the song written about her. (if you are interested, the song is titled "Broken Town Blues" and Jadelynn's birth name is Jamie. (it makes sense if you hear the song)

It was a good set, although he was kinda drunk, and after the show we hung out and waited to say hi to him. He came out and hugged Jadelynn forever, they talked seemingly forever, and we got increasingly more drunk. He bought us all a round of drinks and remembered all of our names, and I took a pic of him with Jadelynn. (not the best pic of her, believe me, she's gorgeous) and Mike and I got a semi-cute one of ourselves (we were pretty gone by that time)

Mike, Elliot, and I left shortly after that because this lady who I think was his agent was annoying the hell out of us (well me at least) but since we were drunk we were hungry and silly. We decided to stop at McDonalds, but before that, we got a random drunk streetwalking pic:

At McDonalds we made a friend. His name was supposedly "Happy" (that's what it said on his jacket) and after making racial comments and talking slurredly at us, he gave us a little dance:


The next day we woke up late and went to lunch with Mike's good (slightly older) friend Bob. Bob is a great guy. He took us to lunch at a cute place and found out I loved celebrities so told me a few stories of some people he knows. He used to be Hollywood agent in the 70s and still does headshots for people, so he's met TONS of celebrities. We talked about Anne Hathaway when she was little (he did her headshots), showing Scott Bakula around, and his best friends, 70s Bond Girls. He also encouraged my film critiquing, wanting me to intern with Robert Dinero and friends at the Tribecca film festival, which made me love him instantly. He took a picture of Mike and I and sneakily stole the bill for lunch, it was a great time.

Oh he also took a pic of us with a Star Wars mailbox, which I am stealing from Mike and putting up because I have no non-drunk pics of the two of us from that trip:
After lunch we saw Union Square (and Mike's old restaurant there) and went to Best Buy with Wendy. We all went back and ate a great spaghetti dinner courtesy of Jimmy. After dinner Mike and I met Jadelynn and Elliot out at El Cantanero for frozen strawberry margaritas, which were great. Here are more not so sober pics from that night (and a continuation of the bike pic thing):


On the way home from El Cantanero Elliot bought some candy in a subway station, but we had a few problems with the candy and voiced our opinions via video on Mike's camera:




The next day we went to Williamsburg in Brooklyn and saw Mike's old place and ate some very Italian and awesome pizza, then went to Park Slope to visit Jadelynn at her place and to walk around that part of the city. It was cute, there were actual trees around! If I lived anywhere in NYC (that wasn't super expensive) I'd want to live there. We couldn't walk around all that much because it was super windy and my ears hurt, but we had fun regardless.

We did a little shopping and then went to One If By Land, Two If By Sea in Manhattan for dinner. Jimmy waited on us and Elliot and Wendy ate with us. You can visit Mike's myspace blog for more details, but the meal was delicious. We had 6 courses, only paid for 3, and I got to try Lobster Bisque (which I loved). I also tried Foi Gras, which I hated, but not everyone can be fond of duck liver, can they? My favorite was the Halibut, which I'd also never tried, but was deeelicious. I never knew I could like fish so much. It tasted almost like chicken. Mmmm good.

After our 4 hour dinner we went home, hung out for a little while, went to bed, and started our traveling back to Rochester. Oh by the way, this is a picture in my favorite subway station, they have these little things all over the station:

And that was my trip, great fun all around! When I move there I'll have many more crazy stories, I'm sure.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Deal with Kevin Spacey: Part 2

Celebrities May Be Smaller Than They Appear

Reflections