New York! New York!

First of all, New Yorkers are CUNTS who will steal your taxicabs and then glare at you for not pelting them with offal in retaliation. Cunts, I tell you! Cunts!

Whew! I feel better! Sort of. (Stupid cunts.)

Anyway, I cunt can’t let another moment go by without telling you all about my fabulous New York weekend!

FRIDAY
First of all (oops—I guess I'm already at second of all), our client presentation Friday morning (the whole reason I was in New York) went so well, I just may be promoted to President of the Nick Lachey Fan Club World. Our clients were so thrilled with our work, in fact, that the meeting ended a whole hour early—giving me a whole extra hour to start the vacation part of my vacation.

First stop: my ultra-expensive, ultra-foo-foo hotel, which turned out to be quite lovely indeed—and conveniently located within walking distance of almost everything I had on my itinerary. (Special props go to the bed, which was so amazingly comfortable I had to forcibly remove myself from its heavenly folds when it came time to do things like attend $100+ Broadway shows and poop. It even came with a “pillow menu” (I shit you not) that asked me to choose among pillow options like organic-hull-stuffed, hypo-allergenic and Swedish-space-technology. I opted to go with whatever the default pillow was, because after one test head-lay, I didn’t see any need to mess with perfection.)

My first order of actual tourist business was the Guggenheim, which, quite frankly, sucked. First of all, I walked three miles (in dress shoes designed to make my feet look large-penis huge for fashion, not comfort!) up Madison Avenue trying to hail a cab to take me there, and the only three cabs that were unoccupied were brazenly stolen from me by cunts common New York street cunts. I thought things were turning in my favor, though, when my bloody stump-feet and I finally dragged ourselves across the museum’s swirly toilet-bowl-shaped threshold—having just saved a ton of cab fare—and we learned that there was a surprise 20% discount on admission due to construction in “some” of the display areas. Well, that “some” was more like 90% of the whole frickin’ museum—which seems like a pretty self-serving “discount” to me. (Why do I have no problem using cunt here (eight times so far!) but I find fucking to be somehow vulgar and inappropriate?) Granted, my real interest in this visit was to experience Frank Lloyd Wright’s magnificent spiraling architecture, with the not-very-celebrated Guggenheim art collection coming in a distant second. But part of my interest in the architecture was seeing how it was used to display the art—which was pretty hard to do when every display alcove in the spiral was completely empty. And the art that actually was on display in the three tiny display closets? Yawn.

Fortunately, the disappointment portion of my vacation ended permanently the moment I got flushed out of the giant Guggenheim toilet bowl exited the building. First of all, I immediately found a southbound bus heading almost directly to my next destination. And second of all, New York buses don’t take cash (how stupid is that?), so the driver just motioned me to sit down and quietly enjoy my free ride. (Total transportation tally so far: free walk uptown, free fallen arches, free bus ride downtown!)

And my next destination was totally and completely kick-ass: I hit the new Museum of Modern Art just in time for Target Free Friday Night! (I’m not sure whether or not that means it’s sponsored by Target, but I do know it means anyone can see the whole museum completely free on Friday nights from 4 to 8 pm.) And after touring the new building and the exhibits and the collection, I would have gladly paid even $30 for the experience. Since it was a free night, the place was PACKED—but the new building is designed to accommodate big crowds (except around the wee tiny escalators) and everyone there was in a good mood (because Hey! Free museum!) so the three hours I spent there were thoroughly enjoyable and fascinating. And the art! The collection ranges from rock-star stalwarts like Van Gogh’s The Starry Night to the thoroughly avant-garde (like a row of empty silver buckets labeled “spit,” “urine,” “sweat,” etc.) to things you wouldn’t always think you’d see in an “art” museum—like thoughtful displays of architecture and design and foldable paper chairs and even a helicopter. But the crown jewel of the whole collection (to me, at least) is Picasso’s stunningly large, turn-the-art-world-on-its-ear Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, a breathtaking display of shape and form and color and perspective that gave abstraction a radically multifaceted new identity at the dawn of the 20th century. Art rarely gives me literal goosebumps, but Pablo’s (I call him Pablo) slutty, fabulous demoiselles almost took my breath away when I spotted them leering at me (at least I think they were looking in my direction—with Picasso it’s sometimes hard to tell) from their place of honor on the top floor. And after they’d had their way with me, I retired to a charming balcony café overlooking MoMA’s modest sculpture garden, where I capped off my visit with an exceptionally delicious Mediterranean chicken salad and a hypersweet triple-chocolate sorbet concoction. And I was in a very happy place.

But apparently the gods weren’t done doling out the good stuff, for soon afterward I found myself (sitting next to a San Diego college student named Jake, no less) at my first Broadway show of the visit: Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, which was, in a word, spectacular. I loved the Steve Martin/Michael Caine movie in the ’80s, and this musical retelling of the story only makes it funnier and more spectacular. The leads (John Lithgow! Joanna Gleason! All of them, actually!) were in dazzling form Friday night, and David Yazbek’s music and lyrics are even more cerebral and clever and imagery-laden and pan-genre-ic (I just made that word up!) than they were in The Full Monty. (You have to respect a lyricist who can logically squeeze akimbo into a show before the word count even reaches the double digits.) Best of all, they gave everyone in the audience a FREE cast album on Friday night! Woo-hoo! (Oh, and paging Mr. Sondheim: I have been a loyal fan of your work—particularly Sweeney Todd and A Little Night Music—for most of my life. But Mr. Yazbek is giving you a run for your money. A big, promising, equally-devoted-fan-base-career-trajectory run. I’m just sayin’.)

Unfortunately, the visual excitement of my day had started to work its sinister magic on me, and by intermission I started feeling the delightful early warning signs of a migraine: sharp pain over my left eye, slight nausea, the unsettling feeling that I kinda have to poop but maybe not. And I still had one more adventure on my itinerary: drinks with Jere at a nearby establishment purported to be a hot spot for Broadway royalty. Caffeine sometimes helps my migraines, so I chugged a Coke while Jere entertained me with fascinating theater stories and we both kept our eyes peeled for potential celebrity drop-ins. At one point he thought he’d seen Stockard Channing walk by us, but we decided upon further gawking and staring subtle observation that it probably wasn’t she. Then I decided you people following along at home wouldn’t be any wiser if I just pretended the man sitting next to us was Bea Arthur, so I’m proud to report that Bea, Jere and I shared a round of drinks and a couple rousing choruses of “Bosom Buddies” and now Bea and I are Best Friends Forever. But by the time Bea and I had worked our way through the Johnny Mercer songbook, the migraine had sunk its claws deep into my eye sockets, stomach and lower rectum terminal alimentary canal, and I couldn’t pretend any longer that I wasn’t in pain. So I bid Jere goodbye and headed home (in a cab that nobody stole from me!) to bury my head between my default pillows (to block out light and sound), focus on my breathing (to stave off the urge to hurl) and eventually find a way to drift away from the terror.

WHEW! I think that’s enough of my babbling for one post. Stay tuned for Saturday’s adventures, where I discover that my housekeeper has thrown away (or maybe stolen!) my toothbrush holder (a toothbrush holder is not a cab, you cunt!), I attend a Broadway musical that (gasp!) actually kinda bores me and then I regrettably have a total missed connection with Joe.