LIVE FROM NEW YORK…..IT’S ME ON LIBERTY ISLAND



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AND HELEN WITH ME AND RAMESES OR XERCES OR PTAH AT THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART






Hi everybody,

I keep waiting for Helen to write a blog about our wonderful five day vacation and cult trip to New York City. Whenever I think about it, an old tune seems to waft through my mind, like from one of those old Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns…… “THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY.”

Perhaps it would be wise to start with the GOOD.

Helen and I did have a glorious if sometimes frustrating time. We discovered we had a lot in common (besides CA, of course) since we both loved sleeping late, reading, museums, food, and makeup,(more later on this),. First of all, our prayers were answered and ours was NOT one of the 500 American Airlines flights cancelled that morning…..getting up at 3:30 am to get to St Louis was a bitch though.

Spamalot was glorious! We saw it the first night we were in ny. We had sixth row seats on the left (which we had been advised to get by previous attending clayfans.) I initially was quite upset with these seats because since there were described as four seats from the aisle, I had innocently (read; gullibly) assumed that they were counting from the left center aisle……not the left side wall aisle. The bad thing was that we couldn’t see about 1/6th of the left side of the stage. A nice (read; infinitesimal) glass of wine from the theater bar soon elevated my spirits. The good thing was that we could see Clay as clearly as if he were just 6 feet before us. I slapped Helen’s hand several times to try to curtail that grasping motion she developed early in the show. Spam was hilarious and Clay is quite the comedian. And no one yelled his name from the audience. However, a lot of us gave only him a standing ovation for the final bows to which he gave an open arms, palms up “what can you do?” expression to his fellow actors.





Yes, we did go to the stage door to try for an autograph. (yes, i became a groupie rather late in life.)After the show we were rather slow getting out of the theater and then didn't know where the stage door was......by the time we found where it was......and we had walked past it at least 4 times that day......the crowd was 6 or 7 deep. obviously we are not GOODFANS. but we did wait and see him come out but no signed Playbills for the slow....and slow witted.


GOOD AND BAD:

The location of our hotel, the Milford Plaza, was wonderful…right in the middle of the theater district……and lots of deli’s. On the other hand it was quite old with small rooms and very leaky faucets, which Helen reported to the hotel desk . Conversely, they had just installed new elevators which had no floor numbers inside the elevator. On one trip down, we properly pushed number one for the lobby, entered, and when the doors opened we were in Santa’s Workshop, without the toys and elves, however. This floor seemed to be a storage and working area for the restoration crew. Helen was a little worried, but I had her document our predicament with my brownie instamatic (see below) Luckily the buttons outside the elevators worked properly and we were soon in the lobby. Helen complained nosily, and I delighted in showing the conserirge conciurge, conseeirgh…..man in the booth, my digital pix.





More hotel woes the next day when we returned from our day-long trek through (twice) Central Park and when we finally returned to our room we found we were unable to unlock our door and had a doorknob note saying, “SEE THE MANAGER”. I felt like we were students being sent to the principal, and I knew that that Hell-raisin’ Helen had got us in deep doodoo.

Sure enough, they said they were unable to fix the faucet and we had to move to another room……..ohohohohohohoh.

I was right! This new room was the detention area, obviously……even smaller than the first, on the street side of the hotel (ah, the music of a ny night!!) and instead of a closet it had an ancient wooden armoire…..I kid you not. I kept expecting Ethel Merman to jump out of it and sing “NEW YORK, NEW YORK” at any minute…….




VIEW FROM THE DETENTION ROOM WINDOW

Well, we survived….I refused to let Helen complain any more. I have much more to tell about Tavern on the Green, Metropolitan Museum of art, Statue of Liberty boat trip, Macys and shopping on 5th avenue. My lovely daughter Lara Jean came into ny Sunday afternoon to have lunch and shop with us.

Here’s where the makeup comes in. There’s this great shop about the size of Walmart with just makeup and mirrors and samples and little brushes and q-tips and all kinds of sample applicators…and lots of employee-makeup-artists standing around to convince you how lovely you look. We all bought too much….

Then we went to the gigantic Toys R Us with a roaring t-rex……..but that’s too much to tell…..

TTYL, geni