Bright Lights, Big City

Let me tell you, last night was like a scene from "Grumpy Old Men" around here. Picture me on one couch and Sean on the other.

"My feet hurt."

"Mine, too."

"My hip just popped."

"I have a cramp in my thigh."

"I just wanted my shoes off."

"I'm wearing my slippers for the rest of my life."

You get the idea.

Our legs and feet were sore because yesterday we decided to go into New York City, and we walked everywhere, all day.

Our morning started with a sad dumpster staring at us at the Ronkonkoma station on the Long Island Railroad:



We had to drive almost an hour to get to the train, and then the train ride itself was about an hour and a half into the city. Once we got there, the whole rest of the day was subway travel, which sort of looks like this:



except that there are somehow no people in that photo. They must all be standing just outside the frame. I took that, and I don't think it's real, because the subway is nothing but crowds, crowds, and more crowds. And also stairs. Endless waves of short flights of stairs, with nary an escalator in sight. We may have encountered three, all day, but one of them was turned off, so it was also stairs. I'm not sure if this is true or just my impression, but the New York City subway system seems dated, suffers from obvious deterioration, and seems to be trying to handle way more people than it was designed for. I'm not an urban planner, though, so my impression could be completely wrong.

I bet it's not.

Our first stop of the day was one of the ones I was most excited about: we went to the High Line, and walked the entire length and back.





If you're not familiar with the High Line, it is an urban park modeled after one in Paris, France, constructed on the remains of an elevated train line above the city. It's very popular with joggers and tourists, based on what we encountered along it yesterday.



It currently runs from Chelsea to the Meatpacking District, but there is another expansion planned. When you walk it, you get to see a lot of graffiti:









including this one, which baffled and intrigued me:



It's hard to see clearly in my picture because of the glare on the windows, but toward the bottom you should see a mouth, then a nose in the middle, and then eyes in the top sets of windows. I have no idea how they did that, but I saw it all at once and the image clicked in my head and I gasped an "Oh!" loud enough for Sean to come over and see what I was looking at. I don't know how they did that, but it's very striking.

The High Line also gives random glimpses of neighborhoods from a slightly different perspective:



and you can spot a few famous landmarks, too, although they're far away:





and it has some art installed along the walking path:



("Why is Colin Powell holding a vial of meth out like that?"

"I don't know. Are you sure it's not a crack vial?")



("Cover your shame, satyr.")

and, best of all, the High Line has benches!



So many benches, great and small, in case you get tired from walking and from interacting with the crowds.

Everywhere should have benches.

After the High Line, we went to meet up with my friend Leo for brunch. Leo and I haven't seen each other in person for eight or nine years, so it was fantastic to sit down, catch up, and then walk around the city for a while together. She suggested the Tenth Avenue Cookshop, where the griddle cakes with apples turned out to be delicious:



and I somehow managed to get a photo of them that's approaching food stylist quality.

After brunch, we took the subway down to Times Square, where Leo showed us the New York Times building:



and the cafeteria:



which had stunning views of the city on all sides.

Times Square itself was pretty much unchanged since the last time I was here: flashy, noisy, and crowded:









but visiting it just seems to be one of those things you do when you come to the city. I have, every single time, even if I came to the city alone. We went into a few of the stores, but I didn't buy anything, and then Sean and I had to head back to the subway to get to our theater in time for the purpose of the trip:



"Heathers: The Musical", which is based on my all-time favorite movie of the same name.

It was great. The show is funny and slightly campy, and it's a nod to the fans without being a scene by scene reconstruction of the film. This disappointed some of the people in the audience, who were discussing it at the intermission, but I was ok with it. The spirit of the film is there, and I hope it moves to a bigger venue soon so that they can release the soundtrack. I want to hear again and sing along with Martha Dumptruck's plaintive song of love and heartbreak before she flings herself into traffic, and that's not even the best song in the show. I'd say that's probably a tie between "Dead Gay Son", "Candy Store", and maybe "Dead Girl Walkin'", but the last one is the weaker of those three, so maybe it's not a three way tie.

Either way, it's a good show. You should see it if you can.

After the musical, we did the subway again and then a taxi to get to S'mac, where they only serve mac and cheese. It's kind of a long wait, and seating is very limited, but it was totally worth it for this Buffalo Chicken mac and cheese:



The plastic fork is a bit of a challenge, though. I get that they're using it because they don't want to scrape up the skillets, but the skillets are hot enough to bend and distort the fork, so you have to eat very carefully and never leave your fork in the skillet.

After dinner and more subway (and boy was I tired of being bumped and jostled and crowded by people on the subway at this point in the day), the sun started to set on the Chrysler Building:



and the lights came on in the Empire State Building:



and we took the train back to Long Island, where Sean is still sleeping off our exhausting busy day.

Acting Lessons

On Monday, I had a small part in our campus production of "8", the play by Dustin Lance Black about the Proposition 8 trial for California marriage equality. I played Jeff Zarrillo, one of four plaintiffs, a role originated by Matt Bomer.

Matt Bomer and I, as I'm sure you are aware, are very similar. Go google him, then come back and compare.

The resemblance is uncanny, right?

This production marked my return to the stage after a long absence, my first work since playing "guy violating noise policy" and "rowdy drunk student who talks too much" in the Summer 1996 Orientation Skits at SUNY Cortland, so I was a little worried that my acting chops might be rusty. In order to combat that, I watched a lot of movies while rehearsing my lines, and spent the final weekend before the play watching movies in which someone put on a stage production. (I was going to watch movies about making movies, but decided that I should focus on the stage, which is a totally different animal.) It turns out that I only own eleven movies where a stage production is mounted (not counting movies where the production in question was a pageant, cookoff, fashion show, or cheerleading competition; doing so would have swollen the movie total to somewhere around twenty), but I learned something from each one of them.

Here are the valuable lessons that I gleaned from my viewing:

1) The Little Mermaid: The lesson here is that you should be sure to show up to your part and do your best. Your fellow performers, whether they are fish musicians, your father's crab, or your mersisters, have all worked really hard, and you will let them down and bring shame upon the kingdom if you miss your debut for any reason.

Especially if that reason is that you're off searching shipwrecks for a fork to comb your hair with.

2) Mean Girls: This quote sums up the lesson best:

"But I'm always on your left!"

Hitting your mark and following your blocking exactly as you rehearsed it is incredibly important. If you don't do it just like you did during rehearsal then someone is going to screw up and kick a radio into Jason's head, and Miss Norberry might not be there to jump onto the piano and haul your cookies out of the fire.

3) Moulin Rouge: Your production won't really come together unless everyone believes in the underlying message, whether it's "freedom, beauty, truth, and love" or it's the idea that all people should be equal under the law and that families with same-sex parents are just as valid as more traditional family models.

Also, you should make sure that none of your leads have consumption if you want to run for more than one night.

4) Valley of the Dolls: Again, I offer a quote:

"The only star that comes out of a Helen Lawson play is Helen Lawson, and that's me, baby!"

Every cast has a star, and if that's not you then you should be super nice to everybody, so that when the star demands that the director cut out all of your lines your agent will feel bad for you and get you onto a telethon singing a song that's just an endless bridge continuously building to nowhere, which you'll then parlay into a nightclub act and then stardom of your own.

Barring that, you should just be the star. Look out at the world defiantly while you stand inside a giant plastic mobile and loudly sing, "I'll plant my own tree, and I'll make it grow!" and let everyone know that you'll get to the top even if you have to do it all yourself.

5) All About Eve: Make sure you have no understudy. That way she can't manipulate your friend into draining the gas from the car, making you miss your train and giving her the chance to call all of the press to watch while she steps into your role and usurps your spotlight.

Also, Butler can be both someone's name and someone's job. It's a valid point; an inane one, but still a point.

6) Black Swan: Be perfect, even if that means stabbing Winona Ryder in the face with a nail file or slowly going insane and losing touch with reality to the point that you can't be sure if you stabbed Winona Ryder in the face with a nail file, if your evil double stabbed Winona Ryder in the face with a nail file, if Winona Ryder stabbed herself in the face with a nail file, or if Winona Ryder never got stabbed in the face with a nail file at all.

7) Scream 2: If you have personal pain, draw on it to bring realism to your role, whether your pain is the discrimination and casual oppression that you have faced as a gay man in America, or the pain of having a copycat serial killer stalk you while murdering all of your friends in college just like a serial killer stalked you and murdered all of your friends in high school.

8) Stage Fright: One of your costars may or may not be a murderer, but you shouldn't let that hinder your craft. If anything, it should drive you to take on a second role so that you're playing a character playing another character, but you should also try not to become the murderer's next victim.

9) Torch Song: Don't try to sing if you're not really that good a singer. Especially don't try to sing in blackface.

10) The Big Cube: Once an actor, always an actor. The theater will always call you back, no matter how long you've been away or if you've been given LSD by your stepdaughter's boyfriend.

11) A Mighty Wind: If your show is going to be for one night only, make sure it's the best one night only that it could possibly be, even if it means you have to kiss your now-insane ex-boyfriend.

I think that on Monday night we definitely made the best of our one night, and I didn't have to kiss anybody or stab Winona Ryder in the face with a nail file to do it.