Geek Wanderlost: 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.