Over the Rooftops!

This past weekend was my last in The City (for now), so I definitely wanted to make the most of it. Luckily, it was one of the best weekends yet.

Friday night I decided I really needed to see Slumdog Millionaire while it was still in theaters, so from work I went up to the AMC in Times Square (one of the few theaters still showing it). I grabbed some quick and delicious hot dogs on the sidewalk then went in to see if it deserves its spot on the pillars of the Kodak Theater.

As I was told I would, I definitely thought the movie was great. I loved the framing of the story around the interrogation. The acting was top-notch, too, especially from the young kids at the beginning. Of course any movie that ends with a dance sequence and awesomely designed closing credits is sweet in my book.

Wouldn't it be fun if the movie inspired abc to bring back Regis and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire in primetime? I'd watch sometimes.


Saturday morning Joan and I went to Times Square to try and score lottery tickets to the new West Side Story revival. It wasn't to be, however, so we took the subway down to the financial district and checked out Trinity Church before making our way over to the South Street Seaport, an area I can see from work in Brooklyn and have wanted to go, mostly because of the sight of old ships.

As we walked through the area, I was amazed at how cool it was. Cobblestone streets, old brick buildings. This is the kind of historic city area that I love. Walking through here was like stepping back into the early 1800s, as long as you keep your distance from the Gap, Abercrombie and Sharper Image, that is.


Looks like it could actually be an old photograph, doesn't it? Nah, I took it myself on Saturday. Isn't it wonderful what a minute of photoshop can do?

Joan and I had lunch outside in the sun on the pier. It wasn't super warm, but it was warm enough for a lot of people to eat outside. It felt great, and gave me a little taste of how amazing it must be here in the Spring.

The rest of Saturday consisted of some hanging out in Prospect Park back in Brooklyn, a delicious dinner at Joan's apartment with Gabe and Dan, all of us playing a few hands of Bananagrams, and watching "Big." I was surprised I actually stayed up for the whole thing, but it is a great movie. Unfortunately though, this time while I was watching, I couldn't stop thinking of how messed up both of the main characters were going to be after living through the events of the movie. It would definitely take a lot of psychiatric help to resolve all their issues.

Sunday, Mom flew in for the day! She got in around 10:30, and we headed off to Chelsea Market, someplace I knew she'd love. We found out it used to be an old Nabisco factory, and the market has only existed for about 10 years, which was a surprise. It is so cool. Mom ate what she said was some of the best Lobster Bisque she's ever had, and I had a delicious cup of Chicken Pot Pie Soup. Mmmm.

From there, we took the subway up to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, another place I was sure Mom would love. The museum is pretty ridiculous. It is all so well-kept with some incredible pieces. We took about half of a free museum highlights tour, then ducked out to join an Old Masters tour, which is some of my Mom's favorite work. Our tour guides in both cases were older New Yorker men with great accents. I actually learned a lot and was shown some great paintings on the Old Masters tour.

We also checked out a few other things, like some of the American Landscape paintings. Those are some of my favorites. There's just not much more artistically impressive to me than a beautiful mountain perfectly painted.

From the museum, Mom and I had a fun Italian dinner at Carmines on 44th and ended up with a huge amount of leftovers. From there, it was time for the Theater!


We walked over to the New Amsterdam Theatre, the theater Disney owns. Apparently the theater sat vacant, decaying and falling apart for something like 15 or 20 years before Disney bought the historic property in 1993 and began their renovation.

The renovation work is pretty amazing. You can see some before and after pictures here.

So how was Mary Poppins? Well, there's really only one word to describe it...

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. There you go, enjoy my cheesy-ness.

I love the self-awareness of Mary's comment at the beginning of that song, "Of course it's a word, and unless I'm very much mistaken I think it's going to prove a rather useful one."

Truly though, Mary Poppins is an amazing show. The music, the performances, the sets, are all awesome. Don't even get me started about the theatrics and effects of it all. I knew most of what was going to happen before I saw the show, and I was still very, very impressed. Even knowing as much as I did, I was still surprised by a lot and even got chills during a few scenes, including one involving Mr. Banks and the children near the end of the show. And the entire "Step in Time" scene above the rooftops of London has got to be the greatest dance sequence I've ever seen.

I won't go into any details about what magic stuff actually does happen in the show, because I don't want to ruin anything for anyone, but it really is all great. Our Mary and Bert were absolutely fantastic. During the bows, Mom and I rose to our feet from our seats in the front row of the mezzanine when Bert ran out, while most of the rest of the audience stayed sitting. The lady behind us said "Down in Front!" but one second later, the whole audience was standing as Mary came out for her bow.

Normally, I try to avoid doing things that take away from other peoples experiences at shows and theme parks and whatnot, but look lady, your kid was kicking the back of my seat during the entire show. I'll give my standing ovation to whoever the hell I want to.

The actor playing Bert just seemed to be having the time of his life in the role, and rightfully so, considering all that Bert gets to do in the show. In fact, seeing Mary Poppins made me want to be Bert. Not really play Bert in a musical or anything, but to actually be him.

You know, I think good Digital Designers are actually a lot like Bert...but that's a conversation for another time. I do think I'll make a great Bert on some future Halloween, though.

After the show, Mom and I went down to the basement of the theater to see this beautiful room called "The New Amsterdam Room." I'd expect it's used for special events and parties, and anytime Bob Iger is in town. Here's a shot of the amazing ceiling in the room. As you can see, since the renovation it's pretty awesome. It's nice to know Disney is capable of doing some really classy, good things in the world.


Good work, Disney.

As you can see, my last weekend in New York was a great one, topped off with what was probably the best show I've seen during my time here, Mary Poppins. The first few days of this week have had significant events themselves, but I'll save that for later.

For now, have a great week, everyone! I look forward to seeing many of you soon back in the Nati!

A Stack of Playbills

I have a week left in New York, and as I look back on the quarter I've spent here, I can't help but ask myself one question.

Has this quarter amounted to more than a stack of Playbills?


There are a lot of things I wanted to do this quarter that didn't happen, namely volunteering and connecting to both a community and the city itself. Those things happened fairly easily and naturally in Los Angeles, so I just expected the same here. Well, that just wasn't the case.

On the other hand, there were plenty of things I hadn't planned on. For one, I've been able to spend time building friendships with some great people I didn't know well before this quarter, like my fellow Cincy co-ops Joan and Drew, and Amber, my LA roommate Garrett's older sister (She made me dinner last night, it was very delicious and fun!). With the case of Joan and Drew, I'm looking forward to spending some time with them both next quarter when school starts, and I will definitely be staying in touch with Amber to keep her updated on my time in Africa.

Somehow, I've actually kept The Good Morning Experiment going every single day I've walked to work for the last three weeks. I've gotten the whole range of responses, from big smiles and a "Hey, how's it going?" to people completely ignoring me. So far I don't think I've actually seen anyone twice, but it has been great to walk to work with a goal in mind, so much more perceptive of the people around me. Even when I'm feeling worn out or empty myself, saying good morning to someone and getting a happy response gives me a jolt of energy. I hope for at least some people, my good mornings do the same for them.

Losing my wallet, I was forced to rely on other people and I got a taste of what it is truly like to have no money for a while. If I had forgotten to ask Dan to borrow some money for the subway, I don't know how I would've gotten to or from work. What do people do when they don't have anyone to help them out? Maybe I shouldn't be so resistant to give people money in this city. Sure, sometimes they'll just use it to get high, but sometimes they might actually need it.

In any case, something amazing happened. Prayers were answered. The person who found my lost wallet actually returned it. There really are unbelievably good people in New York City. Who would have thought?

Tonight after work it was something like 55 degrees outside and I didn't have anywhere I needed to rush to, so I decided to walk down to the Brooklyn Bridge Park at the end of the street. As I looked across the river at the lights of downtown, I actually thought to myself, hey, I really do like it here. I've survived winter in New York. The toughest time of the year to live here. I could do this.

The other night on the phone, Nate asked me if I thought I'd miss New York. It was a weird question to hear because it really wasn't something I'd thought about. I don't know when it'll hit me, or why, but I do think I will miss "The City," and it will be interesting for me to see when and why those feelings arise.

Who knows what the future holds. I definitely don't. But I can probably concede that this really is "The Greatest City in the World." Does that mean I'll live here again? I have no idea.

For now, all I know is that the quarter has been significant in many unexpected ways. Should I have put more effort into finding a community and volunteering? Definitely. And I know my love for the theater was a fairly selfish reason for me to try so hard to get a job here. Regardless, I can't regret anything now, as I have become connected to this place, and although I've loved seeing some great shows (and am extremely excited to see Mary Poppins with Mom on Sunday), they haven't been the most important part of the quarter. I've learned a lot and have hopefully even learned many things I haven't even realized yet. Although I haven't been sure what my answer would end up being, now I can confidently say it.

This quarter has been much, much more than a stack of Playbills.

Boys Becoming Men, Men Becoming Wolves

So my 22nd birthday is about to come to a close. I can definitely say it's been a birthday to remember, both in good and bad.

I'm not going to go into the details of the bad very much, simply because I don't feel like it. Basically today at work, the dire state of the economy took it's toll in a way no one had expected it to. It was a definitely wake up call, after feeling like the design and advertising industry was fairly protected from economic woes for the past few months. Things really do suck, and they might not get better anytime soon.

My birthday wasn't all horrible news, though.

Today I got some cards, facebook posts, and phone calls from many people I love very much. Thanks to all of you who helped make my birthday great! The best thing I got today, however, came from somebody I don't know, and will never know. On the phone, my brother told me that a package came for me today, and that inside was my lost wallet. Everything was intact, minus the 22 or so dollars that were in it at the time. I couldn't believe it when he told me. How ridiculous. The person probably used some of the cash they found just to ship it back to me! And was it a coincidence that it arrived on my birthday?

These are questions I'll probably never get the answer to, but it's amazing that my social security card, license, insurance card, school id and more are all still there in the wallet. I won't have to go through any of the pain and stress of getting those things replaced.

Over the last week, I've had the idea of someone sending my wallet back to me in the back of my mind, but I didn't think it would happen and didn't want to get my hopes up. The people in this neighborhood really are great people. My good mornings will be especially sincere from now on.

Whoever you are, thank you so much for returning my wallet. You are amazing.

* * * *

Well, I'm going to have to go to bed soon. I just got back from dinner with some of my favorite people in this city: Dan, Kristen, Emily, Joan and Drew. Where did we go to celebrate? Why, the Life Café, of course! Where else would I celebrate?

At the Café, who should walk in but the curly haired guy with glasses from 30 Rock! His name, I've found out, is Judah Friedlander. We didn't bother him or anything, but Emily did take a stalker picture while her camera was sitting on the table. Man, 30 Rock is an amazing show. As we left the restaurant, I couldn't help but sing the themesong to Werewolf Bar Mitzfah, hence the title of this post.

After dinner, we grabbed some giant oreo cookies from this hip east village restaurant that was annoyed by all of us coming in for cookies, then headed home.

Thanks again to all of you. I have some more exciting news I'll be sharing in a few days. Until then, have a great week. I love and miss you all!

Blame Epcot

It's been quite a while since I wrote a blog post. A lot has happened, both good and bad. Here's an abbreviated explanation of the last two weekends, interspersed with some photos of the trip I took this aftertnoon to Flushing Meadows, aka the site of the New York World's Fairs of 1939 and 1964.


Last Friday night night, Emily and I went to the Allen Room for Lincoln Center's "An Evening With Alan Menken." For anyone who doesn't know, Alan Menken wrote the music for almost every Disney animated movie in the last 20 years, and other cool things like Little Shop of Horrors. First of all, check out the ridiculous performance space here. It's gotta be the coolest space in the city.

As for Alan's performance, it was amazing. He played every song you could want him to, including some great and less popular stuff like "Out There" from Hunchback and a whole Newsies medley. He performed some songs with a backup band and 3 female backup singers he referred to as his "Menkenettes," and some were just the man and his piano.

In between songs, he told short stories about what was going on his life when a certain song was written. Some of the most interesting stories came when he mentioned that his late lyricist partner Howard Ashman had wanted to work on Newsies, but he was too sick in the late stages of AIDS that he simply wasn't able to. Another interesting insight was the story that when he was writing the beautiful song, "Will the Sun Ever Shine Again," (from Home on the Range) in the months after September 11th, that everyone at the studio connected with the song and really felt like it put into words what everyone was going through.

Basically, it was probably the best night of the quarter. Needless to say, I got chills when he performed one of my all time favorite songs, "Suddenly Seymour," and the night made it very clear, Alan Menken is Seymore Krelbourn.

You don't get to have nights like that one in many other cities. An intimate evening with one of today's greatest living songwriters. Good work, New York.


That Saturday consisted of some fun stuff, including Emily helping me take some pictures of myself in front of the giant Ashley Brown/Mary Poppins poster in the Marriott in Times Square. I also went up to check out Columbia University, and walked through a bit of Harlem on my way to the Museum of the City of New York. After dinner at the very tacky but fun Starlight Diner (The waiters and waitresses get microphones and belt out songs when they aren't serving tables), Emily and I saw Oliver Platt and Lauren Graham in the new revival of Guys and Dolls. It was great. They were both actually really good, and "Sit Down, You're rocking the Boat" brought the house down as it well should. Check out pictures from the weekend in this facebook album.

Then Sunday night, as most of you probably know, I lost my wallet. It was a bummer. I was stressed and never found it. Now it's just a pain having to get everything replaced. Oh, and it was especially bad since I had my social security card in there. Hopefully nobody steals my identity.

I've gotten by borrowing some money and writing Dan a check. Hopefully by tuesday my new atm card and passport will have arrived. Life will be a little easier then. It's weird to not have any identity. If I get hit by a bus, they might not even know who I am.


Let's see now, this weekend Dan's friends Alex and Julia came down from their co-ops in Boston for a visit, and yesterday we met Drew and went to the MOMA, which was quite cool, especially Broadway Boogie Woogie. Is it bad that's almost the only thing I remember from Art History? Just kidding. I do wish I could go here with Cindy Damschroder, though.

After the museum, we met up with Emily and went to Mars 2112 for dinner. Basically its this ridiculous restaurant themed to Mars. You even ride a motion simulator to get into the place. It was very fun in it's absurdity, but service was bad and the food was eh. If I'm going to pay that much for a themed dinner, I'd like to go somewhere I know the atmosphere and food will be good like my old friend, the Hard Rock.


After we wandered through Times Square a bit, we headed down to Soho but I guess technically ended up in Noho. We all got drinks at a cool little place called Think Coffee and played a mean game of scrabble before deciding it was time to head home and crash.

Today I got up and took three trains to get up to Flushing Meadows to check out the old World's Fair site. Most of the buildings and structures were unfortunately torn down after the fair ended, but a few are still around. Also, my pictures don't do justice to the size of any of these things. The Unisphere for instance, the giant steel globe, is 120 feet tall. It's huge!

The ruins of Philip Johnson's New York State Pavillion are pretty crazy too. All rusted and retro futuristic. It's pretty sweet.

What else do I need to explain? Ahh yes, inside the old New York City Pavillion, now the Queens Museum of Art, is the New York City Panorama. It's a 9,335 square foot model of the entire City of New York, outer boroughs and all, in a giant room. It's pretty insane. You could probably stare at it all day. I found my neighborhood and everything. Apparently during the fair, it was a ride and you got in these helicopter cars and "flew" over the model while an audio track explained what you were seeing. Now you walk on a walkway with a glass floor. It's still sweet and very impressive.

Well, after building a little structure out of pipe cleaners and straws to add to an art piece they wanted everybody to add to, I headed back to the train. It was cool to visit the park and see the remnants of something as sweet as the World's Fair. It'd be great to have another World's Fair soon. I guess the internet and Epcot kind of killed the World's Fair concept, though. Oh well. I do love Epcot. I'll probably add these and more pictures from the park to facebook at some point.


While riding the E home I missed the stop to transfer to the G, so I decided to just stay on the train all the way down to the L at 14th street. Instead of getting right on the L, though, I went up above ground in Chelsea and went into Chelsea Market which absolutely blew my mind in it's coolness. I think I'll be taking Mom back there when she comes out for her mini-visit.

I went back to Apostles for church tonight which was very good and it was great to see Amber there. She offered to make me dinner next week! Amazing, I can't wait.

Tonight we're supposed to get like 8 or 10 inches of snow in the biggest storm of the winter. We'll see. I hope not.

I know this post is obscenely long. I'm really just writing it for myself. I had a lot to chronicle. And I didn't even give details!

Oh well, I hope everybody has a great week. I'll try and have a midweek update of some sort, maybe where I can give some progress on the Good Morning Experiment.

Have a great week everybody! I know I plan to!

The Good Morning Experiment

So between my last post and this one I've had two of the best weekends of the quarter: Key Laborers back in Cincinnati and Valentine's Day this past weekend with Dan, Mark and Caitlin in town for a visit. They were both fantastic. It was amazing going back to Cincinnati and seeing so many people I love so much. Some awesome things happened there. I left that weekend in the frame of mind I wish I had been in at the beginning of this quarter. I needed it a lot.

As for this past weekend, you should check out Caitlin and my facebook pictures, because I'm not going to write about either of those weekends right now. I'm going to write about what's going on right now.

I haven't been very fair to New York City since I've been here. I've allowed myself to blanket New Yorkers with the stereotype that they are all cold and unfriendly, but that really isn't the case at all. In just the last few days I've had some surprisingly wonderful interactions with strangers.

Friday night I walked and talked with a girl who needed directions to Humbolt, and I told her I wasn't sure but that I thought it was just a few blocks ahead. I told her I wasn't sure because I've only been here for a month and a half, and we chatted about my internship and it turned out she was an NYU grad and aspiring actor from Lexington, Kentucky. As we walked together, it turned out I was right and we did get to Humbolt! She was super nice and very thankful for the help.

Just yesterday I made a comment to a woman in the elevator and she actually told me to have a nice day as the doors opened on her floor.

These kind of things are minor, but they've shown me that when you can break that initial barrier, New Yorkers can actually be very friendly and pleasant. Walking to work every morning, I pass by plenty of people on the sidewalk in my neighborhood, and I have been frustrated that no one ever looks you in the eyes when you pass by them. I've really wanted to dole out a few Good mornings on my walk to work, especially on bright, beautiful mornings like so many we've had in the last week.

Well, today I decided to just start saying "Good morning" to strangers, regardless of whether they'll look me in the eye or not. In the first day of this experiment, I had some interesting results.

First, I said good morning to an old woman carrying bags and walking next to the corner grocery. Much to my surprise, as we walked toward eachother, she actually did look me in the eyes, allowing me to smoothly and happily say "morning" to her. She smiled a toothless crooked smile and gladly responded with a "morning" of her own. My first subject was a success! I was filled with instant joy; this could actually be fun.

Next up was a middle aged woman who refused to look up and make eye contact. As we passed I said "Good morning" and she responded with a high-pitched and very surprised "Good morning" of her own, but she didn't turn around at all or look at me. Her surprise made me laugh as I kept walking.

Finally, as I got closer to the subway, I walked toward an older man who did not look very pleasant or happy, and as we passed I quickly gave him a good morning. I noticed he turned around to look at me, so I turned around to find him looking at me with a huge smile and a seriously confused look on his face. He did not say a word and turned and kept walking. It was great.

So I'm not actually conducting any kind of crazy experiment where I'm really trying to mess with the minds of hardened New Yorkers, I'm just trying to look at the world with a different lens. Maybe somehow I can just have a tiny impact on this city.

Now, I know some mornings I won't feel like putting any effort into saying anything to anyone, but I do hope to keep this up as much as I can. Some people might give me weird looks. People might just ignore me completely. Regardless, It's fun to have a little mission while walking to work. The responses I got helped make my day fun and interesting, and if nothing else, I made a few people smile.

Who knows where this will take me in the next month. I hope to stay relatively motivated in this "experiment," and I'm stoked to see what kind of results come out of this.


Before I go, here is one picture from this past weekend. This is me sitting with a duck listening to Hans Christian Andersen tell us a story in Central Park on Saturday night. Good times.


I hope everyone is doing well! I miss you all.

Ogle Meets Ogre

Last week was definitely a good one. After a few weeks feeling like it would be tough to feel connected to this city in the middle of Winter, I've started to. It was pretty great to just start to notice some of the charm of this place and to realize that there are wonderfully great people here.


Friday night, Kristen and Dan came and met me after work in Dumbo for dinner. While I waited for them, I discovered an amazing rare bookstore right down the street from my office. There is some amazing stuff there, especially in terms of design books. I might have to go back to buy the spanish copy of the information design book, "Open Here."

After we had dinner at Rice, we headed to Union Hall, a very cool bar in Park Slope. The upstairs is like a big den or library and has a full bocce court inside. (Ahh, that reminds me how wonderful Christie's will be in the Spring!) Anyway, we went downstairs to check out some bands playing for an Ethiopia fundraiser. We only got there in time to see one band's full set, Sarah Fullen & the Stanleys. I was definitely a fan. They had a whole lot of soul and a wicked good horn section backing them up.

Saturday morning I woke up early and went over to M&M's World to try and win a lottery ticket to Shrek the musical. I put my name in around 9:30 or so, went back at 10, and was the very first name called! How about that?

I paid $26.50 for a seat in the front row of the right side of the orchestra, but I'll get to that later. After buying my ticket, I headed up to Columbus Circle and walked over to Lincoln Center. Unfortunately it was almost all walled off for renovations, but I hope to head back either for the Evening with Alan Menken or a cheap partial view ticket to the Metropolitan Opera. I'd kill to get inside that opera house. It must be amazing.

After scoping out some books in Borders back in the Time Warner Center, I grabbed a gyro and headed into the park. This time, I was determined to get deep into it.


The two pictures above are two parts of the park I was very excited to reach, the fountain at the edge of the lake and the beautiful bridge at the end of the mall. Both of these feature pretty prominently in movies and commercials and whatnot and are just plain beautiful. I don't have a picture of the amazing ceiling underneath the bridge. Some things you should just experience for yourself.


As I headed into the Ramble it was pretty ridiculous to think about how removed this patch of land is from the hustle and bustle of The City. It was beautiful covered in snow and ice. The lake was also frozen over, with the tracks of animals who braved the ice to cross to the other side. Looking back toward the buildings, everything seemed so calm and peaceful.

I kept heading north, determined to get further into the park, and eventually made my way to Belverde Castle. I climbed to the top and looked out over the park, expecting to be near Harlem by now after walking for what seemed like so long. Of course I was wrong, and I was maybe a third of the way through the park. I made it to the resevoir before I decided it was time to head back for my matinee.


So I got back to Shrek and walked into the Broadway Theatre to find my seat. What I discovered was that on the side of the orchestra in the front row, the stage level is a good six inches or so above eye level, meaning that I couldn't see anything that happened below anyone's waist. Needless to say, as the performance was starting I was eye-balling seats further back where I could see the stage, knowing the show had plenty of gags I was missing, including most of Lord Farquaad's.

Although I stayed up front for the first act, during intermission I went about 3/4 of the way back in the orchestra to an open end seat next to a very nice lady from New Jersey who bought tickets to the show as a gift for her friend and sister. We chatted a bit about co-op and the show and she was very glad to hear how I am trying to make the most of my time here. She was great.

Now I know what you're thinking. A musical version of Shrek? That sounds pretty ridiculous. How good could it be? Well, let me tell you, I went into Shrek having heard good things, but I had no idea how good it would end up being. I've got to say, out of all of the shows I've seen this quarter, (five total) Shrek is definitely my favorite.

Sure, I enjoy the Shrek movies (the only Dreamworks animated movies that I do), but this musical (which has only been open since Decemeber) takes the story and adds so much heart, energy, depth and fun to it that it becomes something really special.

First off, the staging and sets are great. Everything that takes place in the forest is absolutely beautiful. And the creativity and comedy weaved into the staging is fantastic.


Without a doubt, though, the best part of Shrek the musical are the performances of its five leads. Brian D'Arcy James as Shrek, Sutton Foster as Fiona, Christopher Sieber as Farquaad, Daniel Breaker as Donkey and John Tartaglia as Pinocchio were all born to play their parts. All five of them have been nominated for tony's in the past and Sutton has won.

To give you a better idea of what the show is like, here's a video for you to check out. This is Brian D'Arcy James, out of make-up, singing Shrek's beautiful "I want" song, "Who I'd Be." This song definitely reflects the big layer of depth that the musical adds to Shrek's character. (1:39 is where the song starts if you want to skip to it)

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Pretty cool, eh? I love the piano in the bridge.

Don't worry though, this is a unique sensitive moment in the show for Shrek, he's also the Ogre we all know and love with plenty of farting, burping and off-color jokes.

Here's just one more video that shows some more of the humor mixed with the heart. This is Sutton Foster as Fiona. You might recognize Sutton as playing Bret's sign-holding girlfriend Coco in the first season of Flight of the Conchords.

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Sutton was definitely my favorite in the show. She has amazing comic timing and performing talent. She's the one I gave my standing O to. She plays Fiona the way she was meant to be played, strong and quirky without the occasional annoyance of Cameron Diaz.

I'm a big fan of that song. And actually if you can't wait for the cast album in March, this song can be downloaded on the website. Enjoy.

Daniel Breaker, as I said was great as Donkey, and apparently he still hasn't seen the movie. Christopher Sieber, who was also in Spamalot and played Mary-Kate and Ashley's Dad on Two of a Kind, was a great Farquaad, pulling off what has to be one of the most physically demanding roles on Broadway, and he also was responsible for one of my favorite moments in the show, a send up of another favorite musical of mine. John Tartaglia was an amazing Pinocchio, which in itself is funny, since John himself is a very talented puppetteer, having stared in the original cast of Avenue Q and playing the title character in Johnny and the Sprites on the Disney Channel. I had a huge smile on my face during the big fairy tale creatures' number in the second act. Then again, I think I had a big smile on my face the entire show.

There it is, my drawn out and unnecessary full review of Shrek. I loved it. I'd see it again in a second. If someone was coming to New York, I'd tell them to see Shrek. It was hilarious, heartwarming, and full of energy and joy. And there is certainly not a better cast on Broadway.

Awesome.

Alright, its Wednesday night. The week has had its ups and downs, but Friday I'm headed back to Cincinnati for the Navs Key Laborer's retreat. I am absolutely stoked to see people and take part in the weekend. It will be amazing.

You know, it's really fun to write this blog. I don't know who reads it, but I'm just glad to have everything written here, to help me store my memories.

New York, I'm actually enjoying living here. Let's see where this relationship goes, eh?

Getting to know The City

I didn't get a chance to write a post about last weekend, and I don't have the patience to do it right now, so instead of a long drawn-out post about the weekend, I'm going to give you this instead. Here are a few pictures of some of the things I did and saw last week.

The view back toward Manhattan on the Staten Island ferry.

The tenement museum in the Lower East Side. (the one with the wooden front on the left) You take tours through the building and see what life was life for the immigrants after they got off the boat. From when it was built in 1863 to the time it was condemned in 1935, 7,000 different people called this five story building home.

The New Zealand Consulate on Flight of the Conchords. (In reality an old trashy medical office)

$14.50 "Can't say no Sundae" from Serendipty 3. I felt pretty sick after eating it...exactly how you'd hope to feel after eating a $14 sundae.

Docks near Battery Park. I love it, it's so "Hitch."

The Woolworth Building, aka where the ball and dragon fight at the end of Enchanted take place

For the ladies, the apartment from Breakfast at Tiffany's.

Body parts from the Muppet Whatnot Workshop in FAO Schwarz. It's basically Muppet build-a-bear, and it's Amazing. Unfortunately its $90. If I got a surprise bonus at work I'd be very tempted...

Last Tuesday night in the park right down the street from my house, filming a scene for the FOX show Fringe

Lady Liberty, as beautiful and impressive as ever.

Hope you enjoyed these shots. I'll write about this weekend soon. It's been very solid so far, and can only continue to be awesome with the Super Bowl tomorrow!

HERE WE GO STEELERS, HERE WE GO!
Now for the other hand...