Getting Loose

Don't Tell Mama

One image that I still cannot get out of my mind was the time that our two youngest sons and I spent on a Tuesday night last week at Don’t Tell Mama in New Amsterdam. There was a piano player there, by the name of Tracy Stark who had to be one of the most phenomenal piano players I have ever heard. She rarely looked at the keys. She could sight read anything. She had tons of tunes stored in her head. It was like that the piano was an extension of her soul. I was shocked, astonished, amazed. There were several open mike singers that evening, and all of them were helped because of the amazing talents of that woman. We were treated to a whole panoply of styles from wickedly funny to cutting edge mea culpa recognition for crimes of the past (performed by son # 3 no less). You should have been there.

Give My Regards

Well, I got to see my first Broadway show, Mamma Mia! It was electrifying to be there.  Mind you, I have been in about 12 different plays or so, including musicals, but I had never witnessed something with this kind of sophistication. The closest I had come to seeing its like was a production of Madama Butterfly in 1998 Houston.

At any rate, all the technical aspects were superior. The story line was exceedingly thin, but I know that that was to find a barely disguised device to concatenate a pile of ABBA songs into one show.

Sweet little Carey Anderson (Hmmm . . . I wonder if I am related to her–she is from Indiana after all) had her Broadway debut, but who stole the show was Gina Ferrall.  My goodness, that fat girl can sing and dance and is she funny!

You Tawkin' to Me?

One thing that I noticed on this trip to NYC were the number of people listening to iPODs. It is apparently a custom there that you do not look into people’s eyes, and want only the minimum amount of interaction with other people.

At the Metropolitan Museum, I tried to engage an officer in some conversation asking him things like, "I see you are in some kind of special service here for the Met. Is that a highly sought after position?" And he gave basically one word answers to my questions and grew visibly anxious as I would try to wait a few moments and ask another question. He started lumbering back and forth like an elephant does in a cage when it is nervous. He would smile and say things like, "Yes, that’s it!" Or "You got it!" Or "Absolutely." He grew so pensive and distraught, that he physically walked over to another section of the Museum so that he would not have to interact with me. I was posing no threat. I look fairly decent. He was really doing virtually nothing, but he interpreted me as a nuisance. He didn’t want to converse. He never said that. He didn’t say, "Hey, what’s with the drill here?" He just walked away. He was on overload. A few moments later his superior officer came up to another officer and asked, "Hey, where’s Billy?"

"I don’t know . . . wait, maybe he’s over by the check closet."

"He’s supposed to be here. What’s up with him?"

I smiled.

But another time, late at night I asked a man in a suit where the nearest subway station was, and in a loud voice has shot back"Yeah, where ya going?"

Well, I did not know where I was going. The subway system is a maze to me. I had to look at our middle son and ask, "Where are we going?"

And he mumbled something.

The New Yorker said, "You want to go to Grand Central? What train you trying to catch?"

Well, I did not have a clue what train I was trying to catch. I just wanted to get to a station so that I could look at a map on the way with all these blue and orange lines overlapping each other as if it made some kind of sense and just try to guess where I was and where I was trying to go. So I said, "The S train." I did not know if that was right or wrong.

He says, "The S train? Ya wanna go on the S train?"

I thought I did, but maybe I did not. I mean I didn’t know. I just wanted to find the nearest subway station.

‘Well it’s up here." And he basically walked off.

Now what does "Up here" mean? (At least it was better than Up Yours).  I mean was it like 2 blocks? Was it three? Was it four? Which side of the street. Was I just supposed to keep walking the same way I was walking? I began to see that the people who live on Manhattan island only want to talk to people they know. Somehow it is dangerous or annoying to talk to others. Hence, they never meet your eyes. And they are wired for sound with iPODs. On the trains at first I thought, I couldn’t believe what a literate group you got here in NYC, then I realized that for the most part they were reading trash, and a face pointed toward a book was a device to avoid your stare or meet your eyes. I thought, "Man, what an island."

The Neon Lights Are Bright on Broadway

Our son who lives in New Amsterdam lives in a 5^th floor walk-up. I can’t tell you how many times I went up and down those stairs. (It does help to build up your quadriceps, tho). He has a very nicely furnished tiny space decked out in granite and bamboo. It is very conveniently located near Broadway and the Port Authority (which is a bus stop from the airport). All the time we were there, he was busy working and auditioning. I didn’t get to see as much of him as I thought I would, however, I did get to hear him sing a couple of "open mike" songs at Don’t Tell Mama. I could surely tell improvement in his voice from the last time I had heard him. He is so eager to make his mark. I could never do what he does, but he seems happy and secure and is hopeful about breaking into the business before too terribly long. I wish him well.

Hoofing It

   I've been in the Big Apple for three days now, and I have a variety of impressions. 

   Everything is the same, and yet it is a little different.  Let me amplify.

   The last time I was here, there were no world trade center towers.  They had not yet been built.  The same, because of a travesty, is true as well today. 

   One thing that jumped out and slapped me in the face is how cleaned up the subway system is.  I could not believe what I was seeing.  I was expecting gangs, thugs, teeming masses of poor unsavory types, graffiti galore, and instead I have been met with people who are courteous, clean trains, no graffiti, and intricate tile work embedded in the hall ways of the underground corridors.  I was astonished at what I was seeing.

  I can't believe all the places I have already been--World Trade Center, the piers on the East River, Battery Park, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (stunning), the flagship store of Brooks Brothers (6 floors of clothing), the the Body Worlds display , Wall Street, Central Park, among others.

We have hoofed it everywhere we went, along with the help of the MTA. We have covered miles and miles of ground by walking, and my dogs are talking to me . . . no, they are barking, to be honest. Thank heavens for our middle son, who can get me to where I want to go!   (N.B., #3 son could do it just as well, but he is too busy auditioning for shows to be a lot of help to this neophyte).