Time Difference: -14 hours (from Brisbane)
Soundtrack: Loads of barbershop, Grease, Lacuna Coil, John Lennon, Beastie Boys
Currently Inspired by: These ladies
Words written: 94,170. We do all that work just to have to delete chunks of it to make it better.
If we are not facebook friends, you wouldn't have seen the video tour I posted of my apartment here. You can click here to see it.
What an eventful couple of weeks! More of an eventful week really. I have NFI what possessed me to fart around
and do so much of nothing last week when I’m so close to leaving, but as it is,
I now have ten very full days ahead of me as I attempt to cram everything in I
want to do. I still haven’t seen the
Statue of Liberty. I haven’t been to the
Guggenheim, the Bronx or to Queens, except for my trip to the US Open which
involved walking 100 metres from the train to the stadium and back. There are still several shows I want to see,
and I am now going to be forced to choose which couple I am able to go to. I have more tickets to a Comedy Club that I
am yet to use. I have not sent out my
book! More accurately, I have not yet
sent out my query letter and synopsis, which is all most of the agents will
accept (of the ones that accept unsolicited queries at all).
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| Loved the African Art |
I have, however, ticked a few things off the list. Feeling that I had taken a sufficiently long
break from museums, I happily checked out the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Saying the Met contains a lot of objects is
like saying New York has a couple of Starbucks.
I understand the number is around three million (of both, probably). From walking in the front door I toured pretty
rapidly for two hours and couldn’t even manage to cover the ground floor. Unfortunately this was all the time I had to
spend there so I had to leave the rest to my imagination, which fortunately has
been well supplied by the endless museum and gallery visits throughout
Europe.
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| Look at that preservation! |
I couldn’t help but smile at the huge difference between
American and European museums. They
might display similar content but the similarities end there. Everything in the Met is spaciously
accommodated, artistically arranged, restored, cleaned and polished until it
shines. It smells like antiseptic and
fresh air. Compared to the European
museums where priceless pieces jostle for position in dark and dusty rooms, masterful
paintings crowd each other on groaning walls, labels are either torn off or
illegible and bored security guards chat or read while the hordes troop through
on mouldy carpet, everything in the Met is brilliantly illuminated, coherently
described and carefully scrutinised by the many staff members. I have to say, the way the Met is organised definitely
appeals more to my new world sensibilities, but it didn’t have any of that
authentic sensory overload of the less manicured museums I visited in Europe.
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| Sammy did us proud! |
The US Open was so much fun (apart from the rain). I just chose a random day and booked tickets, and it turned out to be the day that Sam Stosur was playing Azarenka in the quarter finals. I was glad I was there to cheer her on, however the atmosphere was somewhat strained by the drunk Australian guy who insisted on screaming out the "Aussie Aussie Aussie" chant about every two minutes throughout the match. At first people were enjoying it and humouring him, but the crowd quickly turned. The many Americans around me who were actually supporting Stosur and had cheerfully yelled the "Oi Oi Oi" part many times, began to mutter under their breath and exclaim to each other at his over-the-top carry on, and gradually it was only his equally drunk friends who were responding. I wanted to slap him. These kind of things do not breed positive feelings for Australian travellers, and in fact the exact same thing happened when I saw Mark Phillipoussis at Wimbledon many years ago. Might have been the same guy! Like some demented travelling cheer squad. I wished upon him and his cronies the hangovers of their lives.
Click here to see photos from my fifth Manhattan album.
Against my better judgement, I allowed myself to be swayed
by the reviews of Bring It On: The Musical while standing in line at the half
price booth in Times Square on Wednesday.
My risk didn’t go wholly unrewarded as the stunts and dancing were
pretty spectacular. Unfortunately they
didn’t quite make up for the cringe-worthy dialogue and song lyrics, nor the
forgettable music. A musical about high
school cheerleading… not really sure what I expected. I haven't seen the film. I don’t think I’ve ever met a person who
cheered in high school. Do we even have it
in Australian schools, does anyone know?
As far as I know, cheerleading has always been done by girls around 18
or more and appears to be one rung up the social ladder from stripping (and a
few rungs down the salary ladder). It
was still a high quality production with high quality performers, but it was
not a shining Broadway moment for me.
I have seen two off-Broadway productions so far: one very
good, one mediocre. The mediocre one – a
revue entitled Closer Than Ever - would have been good were it not for its lacklustre
“stars” and the good one was a strange and intense little play by the name of “Cock”. It follows a gay man as he breaks up with his
boyfriend, falls in love with a woman, freaks out and goes back to his
boyfriend and then tells both of them separately he will choose them and leave the
other. It culminates in a painful dinner
party between the three of them where both the guy and girl who love this one
man are waiting for him to drop the bomb on the other one. I won’t give away the ending. Containing plenty of tension and emotion, it
is set entirely in the round in a tiny little theatre where the audience sits
on four rows of circular benches around a stage which is probably only three or
four metres in diameter. So it was quite
intimate and pretty intense.
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| I forgot to take pics of the parks, so... here's a cat |
A friend from chorus hosted a picnic in Prospect Park in
Brooklyn on the Labor Day holiday, so my housemate Vanja and I headed
there. I was amazed at how lovely
Prospect Park was and compared Central Park rather unfavourably to it, and as
it turns out, unfairly. I went back into
Central Park for only the second time on Friday, and it was much, much nicer
than I remembered it being. I think as
you get further uptown, which is where I first entered on my second day here,
it becomes a little barren and boring.
However this time I went in from the southernmost end and it really was
quite lovely. So for months I’ve been giving
my honest opinion which was “Central Park really isn’t nice at all” to anyone
who asks, and now I feel like I have to retract it. If I have given a false impression on here,
please disregard it! I also feel like I
missed a few opportunities to spend nice summer days there because I had no
interest in returning to CP. I’m glad
there are parks a-plenty in Brisbane, where I shall be landing in T Minus 19
days. I intend to come home, shower for
about a week, spend another week or so just breathing, and then I should feel
returned to normal, nice and bored, and ready to take off again. Joking!
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| End of the Parade |
After Prospect Park we stopped off to see the Caribbean Day Parade. This is apparently the "coolest parade in NYC", however we only saw the very messy tail end of it as the dancers and floats were simply crawling along to reach the end of the roped off road, and there was no order or any kind of genuine celebration to it. Already feeling conspicuous, I was more that happy to keep those thoughts to myself. I found it prudent to leave quickly however, once my dear companion loudly exclaimed "this is nothing but a bunch of fat bitches!" I think eleven people were shot at last year's parade. I didn't want us to be the statistics for this years'.
Click here to see the pics from my sixth Manhattan album.
Chorus continues to be wonderful. I have my final rehearsal with the girls on
Thursday night (as I fly out the following Thursday) and then, in a case of
superior timing, this weekend is the region’s local Vocalfest, with education
and bonding for the Sweet Adelines in the area.
I can’t wait, and it will be a great way to say so long to the girls with
whom I’ve spent the last two and a half months.
However I am looking forward to getting home and joining a group I can
commit to properly and long term.
Tick tick tick… Now
that it’s getting so close to crunch time I’m alternating between feeling
wildly impatient to have it over with and freaking out about it being finished so
soon. I think once I have sent my book
queries out I’ll feel better about leaving.
Mostly I think I don’t want to come back and have to get a job – oh boy
that is going to hurt! It will also take
some time for me to be able to deal with sitting still in one place for a
while, so you are all going to have to be patient with me if I get fidgety. Still, I can’t wait to squish everyone to
death. Skype just ain’t the same.
Til Next We Speak
*LOVE*
N
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