January 4, 2011
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Concrete Jungle Where Dreams Are Made
Continuing on about my trip to New York City. Saturday morning I got up about 9 and showered and the girls got up at 9:30 to get ready for our day. After stopping for breakfast at a small place, we went to the NBC studios at noon for our tour. Truth be told, I was not too excited about the tour. Even after it was over, I thought to myself that I could have done without it. The tour consisted of a tour of the sets for the Dz. Oz Show, the Jimmy Fallon Show and Saturday Night Live. SNL was really the only one that I was interested, the others I could do without, however one of our tour guides (NBC calls them refers to them as a page) was really cute.
All three of us really wanted to see the Statue of Liberty, especially Kristine, it was a must do for her. I had already seen it and gone up into it including the crown when I went to NYC in 1998. So we hopped in a cab to Battery Park………..or maybe it was Liberty Island? Or was it Ellis Island? I’m not sure, but it was the place that you go to catch the fairy. The line for tickets was very long and pretty much as soon as we got there they made the announcement that tickets were all sold out. We also found out that to get tickets to actually go up into the Statue were only available online and had a wait of several months. Instead, we got tickets to a boat ride that went around the Statue and actually stopped directly in front of the Statue for about 5 minutes.
While on the boat ride, I talked them into seeing the Broadway musical of Green Day’s American Idiot; now we just had to try to get tickets. Christie called and gave them all of her info but lost the call before getting a confirmation. So she called back and did give them all of her info including credit card number only to have them tell her that they needed to try to get tickets for her and they would be calling back or emailing her within 20-30 minutes to let her know if they got the tickets. Well an hour went by and we had not heard anything. We were back at the hotel shortly before 5 and the show started at 8 and Christie had already called to try to confirm the tickets but nobody answered. Finally we called again right about 5 and confirmed that we had the tickets. I could not be anymore excited; I love Green Day and American Idiot is probably my all time favorite album. To make matters even better, Green Day’s lead singer, Billie Joe Armstrong, would be playing one of the characters in the musical that night.
After dinner at a nearby diner, Christie did some shopping down 5th avenue while Kristine and I walked around Times Square and Broadway. On the way, we picked up the tickets at the will call window. We wound up sitting in the last row of the St. James theater, which might sound bad, but it was a very small theater so we were still pretty close. Of course, I have never been to a Broadway show, but I always imagined there being an older, upper class crowd. This was not the case at all as there were a lot of younger, punk type people there; people with hair colored different colors and people wearing Green Day shirts, probably not your typical Broadway show at all.
The show was fantastic; it was everything I thought it would be and then some. When Billie Joe came out on the stage, the crowd went nuts. When he left the stage, the crowd went nuts. I think he might have been a bit of a distraction, but he was still pretty good. The cast pretty much did every song from American Idiot along with a few songs from 21st Century Breakdown and 2 new songs. When it was all over, they were given a huge cheer and standing ovation. The curtain went down and came back up and they took a bow and it went down again. Then it came back up and the entire cast, including Billie Joe was on stage holding acoustic guitars. I knew instantly what they were going to do: play “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)”, which has always been one of my favorite Green Day songs.
We got out of there at about 9:50ish. We did not have much time because we were planning on going to Madame Tussauds which is a wax museum just a couple of blocks away. So we rushed over there just in time before they closed at 10. For those of you not familiar with Madame Tussauds, don’t feel bad, I had never heard of it either. But, here is a link to their website:
http://www.madametussauds.com/NewYork/
The figures were amazing as was the shortened 20 minute version of Polar Express in 4D. I would give more details about Madame Tussauds, but honestly you can just check their website and I will save you the boring details of my writing about it.
After stopping off for a beer at an Irish pub, we went back to the hotel. The next morning we were planning to leave about 9:30. I got up and went for breakfast at Grand Central Station. The weather was nice; 55 degrees out. Before leaving town though, we stopped off at ground zero. While it was chilling to be there, I couldn’t’t help but be a little put off by the people on the street selling things about September 11th, such as a book and dvd.
On the way home we stopped off in New Jersey and I went into a Shell station to get some scratch offs. I won $3 on one of the two scratch offs I bought. The guy then refused to pay out saying that his machine was broken and that I would have to come back after 6, which of course, didn’t work for me because we would be 2 states away by then. I was fucking pissed though, I asked him why the hell he would sell me a fucking ticket if he knew his machine was broke and couldn’t’t pay out. He just kept on saying the machine didn’t work. I yelled at him and swore at him before walking out. Normally I would have really made a bigger stink over this just based on principal alone, but it was only $3 and we still had a 12 hour drive ahead of us.
The rest of the drive was uneventful. Remember that 55 degrees in NYC? Well by the time we had gotten to the Ohio-Indiana boarder it was 15 degrees! The funny part was that Kristine’s car shows the outside temperature so we got to watch as it gradually went down the further west we went.
So that was my trip. Overall a great time, I really love New York, so much that not only do I want to go back a lot, but I also think that I could see myself living there someday. Oh sure, I’m never actually going to live there, but I love it enough to want to live there.
