I! AM! HOME!

Notes on an unexpectedly long visit to New York:

• The bustling, clueless-tourist crowds are exciting and almost amusing for exactly five days. Add two more against your will and they become murderously intolerable.
• You cannot go ten feet on any New York sidewalk without walking through a crowd of marijuana smoke.
• No matter what they’re wearing, New Yorkers just dress cooler than the rest of us. Even when they look ridiculous, they OWN IT.
• Hot, athletic men with perfect lats and well-broken-in T-shirts walk alarmingly fast in Hell’s Kitchen and make it frustratingly difficult to keep up with them and fulfill your creepy-old-stalker obligations.
• THE. ARCHITECTURE.
• I would drive myself to abject bankruptcy if I lived in such a vibrant world overflowing with theater, art, music and museums. But especially theater.
• tiny. bathrooms.
• I’m not much of a foodie and I’m trying to avoid fast food, and there just aren’t enough plain-old, boring diners to suit my proletarian needs.
• Apparently the cabbies are contractually obligated to yell FUCK YOU! at pedestrians and other drivers. But in a sexy Brooklyn accent.
• I love hearing and seeing the melting pot of languages and clothing and cultural indicators that you walk through every ten feet (between the marijuana clouds) everywhere you go.
• People lose their humanity and become mere obstacles on the narrow sidewalks. Nobody looks up to say hi or even meet your eyes. It is what it is, but if I moved there and didn’t know a soul it would make me feel profoundly lonely.
• Thankfully I do know someone there. I’ve known my friend Chris probably since kindergarten, and he and his husband and their futon graciously saved me the cost of a hotel when my flights got canceled.
• THE. ARCHITECTURE.

Literally the only Broadway show I could get a ticket to on my (hopefully) last night here is Beetlejuice, which has been getting pretty dismissive reviews

I was even ready to throw in the towel and finally see Phantom, but it was sold out early in the day. So I got a ticket to this show. This show. This show.

Something cool we stumbled on at the New York Public Library!

The RMS Titanic hit an iceberg and started sinking 107 years ago today, at almost exactly the time I’m posting this

I’ve had a lifelong fascination with the tragedy—mostly from the perspective of wanting to know what it was like to be on such a grand ship ... and then to have it slowly, terrifyingly disappear under my feet. I’ve recorded the sinking as an annual event on my google calendar so I get a pop-up reminder every year to take a moment to think about the people who died and the horrors they and the survivors endured.

I just saw a matinee of the incredible musical Come From Away, which tells the story of the small town in Newfoundland that almost doubled in size for a week when American airspace was closed on 9/11 and flights from all over the world were diverted there. Now every flight out of NYC was canceled tonight due to weather, and I’m stranded here until Tuesday. But I’m safe. And I’ve found that these two events have subtly enriched whatever emotional connection I’ve given myself to the Titanic passengers and crew I technically know nothing about but still mourn.

Don’t wait for tragedy. Don’t wait for averted tragedy. Take a moment every day to be thankful for the people you love in your life.

Last-minute TKTS tickets aren’t always worth the $99

My seat is literally staring directly at the stage-right lighting/sound scaffolding. Stage right is six feet to MY right, and I can see probably 51% of the stage.

Even if Jeremy Jordan trips and catapults off the stage, there’s still almost 0% chance he’ll land in my lap. But at least I have lots of shoulder room to my left.

When life gives you canceled flights, make canceled-flight pie

The irony is our last flight out tonight just got canceled so we’ll be staying an unplanned night here

The fortuitous thing is we’d already booked an extra night in our hotel because we had points and we didn’t want to haul our luggage to the theater.

I thought I knew where the Angels in America angel is in Central Park, but clearly I don’t

So instead I’m commemorating my final run with a selfie in front of this gorgeous blooming tree. I’m pretty sure it’s not a cherry tree, and google isn’t offering any useful information to help me identify it. So we'll just call it gorgeous.

Also: El Camino shirt!

Tossed salad and scrambled eggs indeed

Nine years ago tonight after seeing Sondheim on Sondheim at Studio 54 (where I just saw an appallingly lackluster Kiss Me, Kate tonight), I found myself seated at a table next to Kelsey Grammar at an après-Sondheim dinner at noted celebrity-sighting restaurant Joe Allen. I’d heard Kelsey was kind of a dick, but he demonstrated on no uncertain terms how he’d earned that reputation when also-celebrities Tony Shalhoub and Kathy Baker made an appearance at the other end of the restaurant. Kelsey jumped up from his table and pushed his way toward the two of them while yelling their names and knocking my coat off the back of my chair as he stumbled by. He stopped in his tracks, looked back at my coat on the floor, did some quick cost-benefit calculations, decided taking two seconds to pick it up wasn’t worth the effort, shrugged, and continued on his quest to meet up with his socially valuable celebrity friends.

Dick.

Sniff Me, Coke!

I mean Kiss Me, Kate!

Sorry—I was having flashbacks to my Studio 54 days.

Vessel at Hudson Yards: A Celebration of Geometries and Metallics and Tickets I Couldn’t Get to Go Inside

see also: That Thing That Looks Like a Giant Shiny Shawarma

Shit. I forgot to take my long-traditional marquee selfie! I RUINED MY PROM.

But here’s a shot of my program framed by the beautiful Longacre Theatre proscenium:

Mile 2.5! Ish!

But probably not at all that far! Shhhh! Don’t tell anyone!

Mile 2!

Repping the I-P-R in the Central PAR!

My kick-ass Garmin running watch that stalwartly got me through every mile of last year’s Summer Of Running Away From Being 50 not only stopped syncing with the app on my phone this year but it didn’t even hold its charge from three days ago. Grrrr. So I’m running on a 10-minute-mile assumption using my phone—with selfie/Facebook breaks at every mile, duh—and just enjoying the scenery. And the hills. HOO BOY there are hills.

But!

My kick-ass runner-tech running shoes that I bought solely because they look totally cool are unfortunately—on this, their first-ever run—noticeably exacerbating my pronation issues, so as soon as I get back to the hotel they’ll be demoted to just kick-ass runner sneakers that look totally cool.

But in the mean time, my break’s over. Onward!

I know it’s just the skeleton of a building being built across the street from my hotel,

but when I take my glasses off it looks like a galaxy of stars. Just like all the ones I’m seeing on Broadway this week.

And every night all the men would come around ... and lay their money down ...

It’s not a trip to NYC without a visit to my beloved Hearst Tower

The stone base was completed in 1928 as the foundation for a matching tower that got put on hold during the Depression and never got built. The magnificent new diagrid tower was added in 2016 and rises in a muscular, majestic dialogue with its citadel-like base. It’s all but a literal diamond shimmering among the grand old and shiny new architecture just south of Columbus Circle, and I make a point to stop by and say hi every time I’m here.

Tourist. Times Square. Tacky tselfies.