And Now Live From New York It's Saturday Night

I'm sitting here at LAX waiting for the next leg of my journey to commence, the 14 hour flight to Sydney. Therefore the title of my post couldn't be more misleading. It's not live, I'm not in New York and it's not Saturday night. The reason for the title? Well it's the opening line of that most famous of American TV shows, Saturday Night Live. It's been running for more than 40 years.

This show has not been a regular feature of the Australian TV landscape, at least until the advent of pay TV. I stumbled across it after being mesmerised by its former stars in their movie roles. Think John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Steve Martin, Chevy Chase etc. In my awe of these guys I sort out their early stuff on VHS and consumed many hours of Saturday Night Live by way of specials and artist compilations. The names became known in every household, as they left the show they were replaced by a new generation of comedians.

It was a well done exhibition with it taking you on a week's schedule getting the show to air. You finally end up in the director's suite at the dress rehearsal and then at the main event with a mini show starring Tina Fey. Sadly they didn't focus on the early stuff nearly as much as I would have liked but there were still a multitude of household names represented. Think Chris Farley, Tracy Morgan, Dana Carvey, Mike Myers, Jon Lovitz and many many more.

It was a diverting way to spend a few hours but I couldn't totally ignore the fact that I would soon be trudging back to reality. I headed back to the hotel, grabbed my bags and hailed a yellow cab to take me to JFK. This cabbie was great, it was back streets and horns, talking to me about New York, sorting out my love life, showing me things I should have seen and then pretending to drop me at the Qatar boarding gate instead of Qantas. 

We fought our way through New York traffic, remember this was 2.30pm on a Saturday afternoon. They had cops doing point duty at many of the busy intersections, this happens everyday. It's not because the traffic lights don't work but because the New York drivers are so pushy they clog up the streets so no one can get through. I don't think we'll have that problem in Muswellbrook for a while.

So the next post will be from Australia and that will be a wrap. The Geek Wanderlost Caravan will be parked up until next time.  Who knows where it may lead.

The Metroplitan Museum of Art

I was feeling a little melancholy, being my last day in New York and the States for that matter. I was dwelling on the long flight home and didn't think much could lift my spirits. More out of due diligence than any real desire to go I attended the Metropolitan Museum of Art or The Met as it is known in these parts. It was massive. I got the Subway to 86th Street and wandered across, arriving at about 10.30am. Stopping for lunch at a quite second rate restaurant in the museum itself I left at 4.30pm and still didn't see it all.

Having said all of that I don't think I have seen so many famous paintings, sculptures and artists all in one place. There is also a massive display of Egyptian antiquities. When I say massive that's exactly what I mean. In two cases they have bought the entire tomb back and in lesser examples just the entire wall. There were over two dozen mummies out on show along with statues, jewellery, pottery and various other items of interest. I am not sure how I feel about the cultural rape that must have taken place to obtain these works but they were impressive none the same.

Of course being American it had an impressive display of weapons and armour from throughout history. I pretty well swanned past all that.

The thing that actually got me excited was its display of rare and unusual musical instruments. It had a complete collection of all the brass and saxophone models designed and built by Adolphe Sax. The saxophone in the photo below doesn't do it justice. It is taller than me and would create a mighty sound. There was a two keyboard Bosendorfer piano along with a range of other curios including a valved trombone.

There was so much more to see. I took in the old masters, the impressionists, some amazing sculptures and lots lots more.

I didn't end up doing Gershwin's An American in Paris as I was a little exhausted from walking around the Met. I went back to the Hotel and got one last dinner recommendation from John the concierge, who hasn't put a foot wrong with his tips. He had me spend Friday night bar hoping midtown New York. I was a good boy and home in bed by midnight. I assume I'll need some sleep before I fly home then train it Muswellbrook.

I have a few hours to kill before my flight so I will stow my bags at the hotel and go and see the Saturday Night Live Exhibition seven blocks up. Then it will be time for a cab ride to JFK, Qantas and the sweet strains of Peter Allen singing I still Call Australia Home as we land at Kingsford Smith. The weather looks bleak and the forecast is for thunderstorms. It may be symbolic of my mood. I'll see many of you soon. 

Top of the Rock & Something Rotten

I finally made it. I have been to the top, the Top of The Rock. After three attempts I got there. 

I have now been to the three main observation decks in New York City. Firstly the One World Trade Centre Observation Deck which is the newest and the tallest. For sheer whizz bangery it is pretty damn impressive and for that end of Manhattan there is no finer view. Secondly the Empire State Building, truly spectacular architecture forms this iconic building and it offers spectacular views, but you cant see Central Park. Thirdly the Top of the Rock which also has amazing architecture along with many pieces of impressive art throughout. You do get to see Central Park and the Empire State Building itself. It also has the best designed observation deck so for my money, if I had to rank them, Top of the Rock would be number one.

The pictures show the view from the top observation platform of the three available. There is no glass or fence obstructions for nearly all of it so while you are only on the 70th floor, as opposed to the Empire State's building 86th, you really cant notice the difference.

The top picture is of 432 Park, a new residential development where the top three floors were recently sold to a Saudi Prince for $95,000,000.00US. You can buy the sub penthouse for $90,000,000.00. I checked my credit card statements and couldn't quite squeeze that amount out. Maybe next time I'm in town. The next photo, with yours truly, has the Empire State Building in the background and the One World Trade Centre in the distance and if you squint really hard you might just make out the Statue of Liberty on the Hudson River to the right. The only really obscured skyscraper is the Chrysler Building and then only partially.

So that was my big ticket item for the day now it is on to the night and Something Rotten. Those of you who are familiar with Shakespeare's Hamlet will recognise the title from the phrase "something is rotten in the state of Denmark". The premise of the plot is two second string writers want to one up Shakespeare so one of them consults a soothsayer to get the low down on what Shakespeare's biggest hit will be. He advises that it will be "Omelette" as opposed to "Hamlet". He then works in references from Cats, Phantom of the Opera, Fiddler on the Roof, the Sound of Music, Sweeney Todd, Annie and whole bunch of others that I either missed or have forgotten.

Shakespeare gets winds of their efforts and infiltrates their acting troupe to try and subvert what they are doing but realises Omelette is rubbish, and at the risk of injecting my own poor attempt at humour, eggs them on. All the while the other brother writes Hamlet on the side but before he can get it produced they are arrested and deported to the New World (America) while Shakespeare takes the credit for Hamlet. All is fine though because they come to America and invent the musical. It was frivolous and fun and I can now say I've seen two plays on Broadway.

Tomorrow is my last full day in New York and the United States. My diary is empty. I may try and get to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and if I feel so inclined see a more serious musical, something like Gershwin's "An American In Paris". The trip is winding down and so is the blog. I'm not sure what tune from the great American songbook best sums it up. I will think about it over the next few days and let you know.

Ticking All The Boxes

I had quite the day today. Tried to do the Top of the Rock again. Too late. I just can't seem to get organised. I went to the 9/11 Museum, pretty powerful stuff. Headed off to see The Book of Mormon where I had an encounter with a famous person, well Australian famous, and then I went to the top of the Empire State Building to take in the night time skyline. The list of things I want to do here is getting quite short. I have a ticket to see Something Rotten so that's tomorrow night taken care of. I want to do Top of the Rock. I would like to get to the Guggenheim and the Metropolitan Museum of Art and lastly go to the Saturday Night Live exhibition. Its countdown to Saturday night. At 6.45 pm New York time or 9.45am Sunday home time its wheels up for the long slog home.

So the 9/11 Memorial was pretty powerful, the 9/11 Museum takes it to an entire extra level. I remember the night it happened. It was about 7.00am in the morning here and 10.00pm at home. I had the TV on waiting for the late night news to come on and there was some lawyer show like Ally McBeal that I was waiting to finish. I wasn't really paying attention and I was in and out of my office and went to the kitchen to make a coffee. Then I turned around and looked at the TV and saw this disaster movie playing. I thought what the hell's going on here. Where is the news? Then after a moment or two I realised it was a live feed from New York and the second plane went in. This was the news!

You are literally at ground zero. I meant to get a photo but every gallery you enter shows your relationship to the former World Trade Centre buildings both horizontally and vertically. When you reach the bottom of the museum (it spirals down) you actually see the cut off steel columns that made up the structure of the original buildings.

They don't hold back. They have kept steel from the impact point of both jets and put it on display. There are remnants of an elevator motor, the radio antenna mast from the top of one of the towers and most poignantly of all a destroyed fire engine that had been parked at the base.

Much of the museum you can't rightly photograph but there is an exhaustive time line of each of the four plane crashes with full media. They play the TV, audio (including 911 calls, messages to family and the emergency services communications). What key people were doing at what time, the President, Vice President and Secretary of Defence. 

Each year they have a ceremony where the names of each victim is read. They have captured that and have it playing in a theatre with an accompanying photo and short biography. I couldn't stand to be in there. Nothing has been missed. It is almost overwhelmingly thorough. The hijacker's are dissected. The type of Islam they practised is put in context. The financing is discussed. The place is littered with artifacts. Nothing of any size survived. There was one, awful in its power, display where they had saved the composite material that was created when the buildings concertinaed on to itself. It was maybe 20 centimetres thick and represented five floors of one of the towers. I spent over three hours there and could have easily spent more. It was incredibly well done and even the gift shop (they always have a gift shop) was done tastefully.

From there I headed back to the hotel to iron some clothes. First time all trip I have had polished shoes on. Frocked up, I headed up to the Broadway for an early meal before seeing The Book of Mormon. I had dinner at a delightful Irish pub, a real one with real Irish people running it. Then went to the show. I haven't laughed so much in a long long time.

It centres around two missionaries who get sent to Uganda to baptise new member into the church. One is a spoilt brat kid who has never done anything wrong and is the epitome of the perfect Mormon. His idea of perfection is Orlando, land of Disney theme parks and he has convinced himself that is where he will be sent on his mission. The other is a bit of a loser who compulsively tells lies and has no real friends. 

The perfect one cant take Uganda and runs away. The mission has had no baptisms and he feels like a failure. After he leaves one girl seeks him to no avail and when she can't find him asks the loser to come and tell the Book of Mormon story. Trouble is he has never read it and makes it all to suit their immediate needs using parts of Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Star Trek and other popular culture references. The entire tribe converts. The girl is ever so happy and thinks she will escape Uganda and move to paradise, heaven on earth. She thinks she will go to Salt Lake City. 

The brat returns but it all falls apart in the end when the Mission President finds out the truth as the new converts tell the story of Jospeh Smith as taught by the loser in a self produced musical. He disbands the mission and orders all the boys home. It all ends happily though because they can see the good they have done for the tribe so they all stay and become missionaries for the loser and his new book, The Book of Arnold.

So I have kept you waiting long enough. My brush with Australian fame. As I was getting seated I turned to my left and two seats away was none other than Mick Malloy of radio, TV and Crackerjack film fame. We had a couple of chats throughout the night. He seemed like a decent bloke. 

I walked home via Times Square and went to the top of the Empire State Building. The view speaks for itself.

The only big thing I have planned for tomorrow is another Broadway show. I can almost smell this trip ending.

I Recall Central Park In Fall

Today was the day I headed uptown. The streets system is pretty simple here once you have it explained to you. The Avenues run north/south. There are essentially 16 Avenues D, C, B, A, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, Lexington, Park, Madison, 5th, 6th (Ave of the Americas), 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th. When you get above 59th Street on the West side 8th becomes Central Park West Ave, 9th becomes Columbus Ave, 10th becomes Amsterdam Ave and 11th becomes West End Ave. The streets run east/west and basically from 14th St upwards cross all of Manhattan. You will see them called 31st East as is the case where I'm staying. 5th Ave is the dividing line. So if you're west of 5th your street becomes west and so and and so forth. Therefore if you walk more than a block in the wrong direction you are a fool. There is one big exception to the rule and that's Broadway. It starts on 107th St and meanders slowly across the map until it almost reaches Battery Park, basically the bottom of Manhattan. Also once you get below 14th St the grid system ceases to exist so all bets are off and its time to pull out a map.

So I headed up town with a view to visiting Grand Central Station and the UN Building, both essentially on 42nd Street. I caught some nice glimpses of the Chrysler Building as well so all in all not a bad mornings walk.

You can cover a street (i.e walking from 31st to 32nd) in about a minute and an Avenue in about 3 to 4 minutes so Grand Central Station was about a twelve minute walk from the hotel so not worth getting the subway. The UN was a further ten minutes along. The security at the UN was crazy and basically if you wanted to enter you underwent airport like security. Grand Central had plenty of security of its own with uniformed, weapon carrying army members wearing camouflage fatigues scattered liberally about the building. 

From there I headed to Central Park. I crossed back across 7th St (a further 25 minute walk) and caught the subway to 81st St, roughly two thirds of the way up the park. On the way to the subway I made of point of checking out times square by day and doing what I should have done on Saturday night and that's walk up the red steps and take a photo of the neon.

So the park is stunning and huge. It is 341 hectares in total. There is no way you could see it all in a day. I just meandered around and looked at what I thought was attractive. When it was time for lunch I retired to a place called The Boathouse where I met a couple of Aussies who were dining there as well. We got talking and I basically missed my plan to go to the Top of the Rock for sunset. There's always tomorrow. Anyway there are many stunning places within the park but I wont bore you with details except for one.

The object you see above is a genuine Egyptian artifact. It is nicknamed Cleopatra's Needle and was commissioned by a Pharaoh in 1450BC to celebrate 30 years of his reign. London has it's matching twin. It was moved to Alexandria in 18AD and arrived in London in the late 1870's. The park tells you it was a gift from Egypt, the other story is that a Vanderbilt purloined it and organised its current installation.

As you can see quite a number of stunning areas of both man made and natural beauty. Tomorrow I am off to see The Book of Mormon. I have spoken to numerous people who have told me it is a riot. The tickets are still hot property even after 4 years which is pretty impressive. I am also going to try and take in the 9/11 Museum and have another shot at getting to the Top of the Rock at Sunset. I may actually have to get organised.