In a New York Minute

I spent the weekend (and by weekend, I mean the 30 hours between Saturday mid-day and Sunday early evening) in New York. It was a very New York getaway, in that I tried to cram too many things and made an effort to see far too many people in that span of time.

I left at the crack of dawn for the Greyhound on Saturday. The bus was crowded, but the trip there was pretty uneventful, and I am blessed with the ability to sleep anywhere, under any conditions, in any position, so I was out for the duration. I awoke as we were passing through the Lincoln Tunnel with my eyeballs feeling as dry as two hard marbles, but as soon as my contacts moistened up a bit, the world came back into focus.

New York is hot. I forget that New York gets really hot too. Not quite DC humid, but it smells worse than DC. There are fewer trees, I think, to clean the air -- in Manhattan at least -- and so it smells. (Trees clean the air, right? They do something like that with the whole consumption of carbon dioxide combined with the production of oxygen?)

Once off the bus, I headed up to the Library of the Performing Arts, not quite sure what I was looking for. The next show I am working on uses some "mixed media" ideas. This is something that is a bit out of my comfort zone, and is certainly not my "thing". But the script was written with the idea of exploring these conventions, and since for both the playwright AND myself, it presents a new challenge and an opportunity for growth, we are going to stick to that idea. (That sounded really arty-zen-touchy-feely. Sorry.) I guess I was looking for images of stage designs where projections were used, as some sort of inspiration.

Once there though, I realized that the place is much too overwhelming for such a non-specific search, and that it was lame to look to other stage designs for ideas. That borders on plagiarism. My inspiration should come from non-theatrical sources.

Anyway, I roamed a bit, checked out their exhibit on the Public Theater, and got lost in the stacks. While there, I nearly ran into (literally - I was looking down at my call numbers and nearly bumped into this guy in the middle of an aisle) this guy in a jersey adorned with Greek Letters. He looked like a sort of meathead cum white hat, and he started telling me about how he was looking for materials to write his thesis, and what was I researching. I was so confused by the encounter ("What was a meathead doing at the Library for the Performing Arts? Why is this twenty year-old kid talking to me? And why would he be displaying Greek letters? Drama Frat? Shudder to think") that I couldn't really engage in conversation (and I'd just been on a bus for four hours, so I really didn't want to) but I wandered away, a bit confused.

Had I really seen Greek letter man in the dramatic theory section, or was it all just a dream?

Anyway, from there I headed downtown to meet this filmmaker guy who is (probably) handling the one more complex projection/film sequence in the play. He is friends with the filmmaker, and after much email and phone tag, I think we have approval from everyone involved to use him for this. We met here, which is just across the street from two other "only in New York" type locations, Moby's Vegan bake shop Teany and the female friendly Toys in Babeland.

He had that uber East-village-hipster-filmmaker look about him (dark rimmed glasses that he kept pushing up on top of his head, white t-shirt, dark jeans, bald head) but nonetheless -- I liked his ideas, so I think it will work out well.

From there I headed to Brooklyn (Brooklyn!) to meet my best friend of all time and then some, T. T is pregnant, and was part of the childhood girlfriend reunion I had in June. She is more pregnant now (that's the way it works, I guess). We had scrumptious cheap middle eastern food here and I drank Anchor Steam byob beer while she had a non-alcoholic guiness (who knew?)

We caught up on our lives and other people's lives, and work and relationships and movies. On the way there we stopped at one of the super-cute Brooklyn boutiques (the burrough is crawling with them) and she bought a onesie adorned simply with "718".

Ahh, the Brooklyn-obsessed. Though admittedly, it is hard to blame them.

I then headed back into Manhattan to hang out with a playwright friend who moved to Alphabet City from DC several months ago. His apartment was throwing a party, I was not game for actually staying at the party since he and his crew all graduated about two years ago making them, yes, twenty-two to twenty-three years old, and I thought maybe I'd feel a bit, well, old.

So I caught him pre-party, we (ate?) jello shots and (drank) tequila shots, I re-lived the hey-day of my early twenties (which was probably the last time I did a shot) and then moved on. From there I went to Big Bar, which is a complete misnomer, and met my friend J who lives in Russia, and her friend K who lives in New York but is from the Ukraine.

J and I worked together for a very short time about five years ago when we were both living in New York. It was one of those abbreviated but intense friendships. We had some good times and funny memories from a very short period of time. We were working together in a crazy atmosphere, were both living it up in New York, both in our mid-twenties, and both ready to jump into the deep end, as it were.

After that year, she moved to St. Petersburg and I moved to DC.

I think we are both considerably more stable, now, be that a good or bad thing. Perhaps a bit more grounded. But she still has this amazing contagious laugh, and is so smart and interesting and worldly. I am so glad that we were both in NY at the same time this weekend. That was amazing good luck.

Finally, I headed to the West Village to meet my dear friend B (my best friend who is a guy) who was having a drink after getting off his work shift. We relocated to Blue Ribbon, where we finished out the evening, me -- tired, a little drunk, and rambling on and on about how I think I want to have kids someday.

At 4am, we took a cab uptown to his apartment.

I wish I was kidding. Like I said, I am getting too old for this.

The next morning I felt like I'd been hit by a Mack truck. I was going to see a run through of my friend J's show that he is rehearsing for the Fringe Festival, since I won't be able to see an actual performance.

The show is quite good, the actors are very talented, and J looks and sounds great. It was good to see him as well, albeit briefly. They were rehearsing in the set designer's Chelsea loft which was ah-maz-ing.

I want one.

From there I headed down to meet my brother, we picked up his lady friend from her job, and then I had an extremely authentic Greek salad at the Waverly Diner. Hairy anchovies and all. Mmmmmm.

On the bus ride home there was one very loud, verbal argument, and one person trying to smoke in the bathroom. Which completed my Greyhound experience nicely.

I love New York.