A DAY IN NEW YORK - or How I Spent My Day-Before-New-Year's-Eve

The producers of Lion King surprised us all by agreeing to having me flown to New York for a second costume fitting, this one focusing on the flying harness. Not nearly the adventure in the city of the previous trip, this one was an in-and-out quickie.

5:33 a.m.

Ivy (the cat) stomps over me, purring, and settles in for a cuddle. This is a morning ritual and today, a fortuitous one since the alarm that I had set for 5:25 has malfunctioned.

6:15 a.m.
Into the car













6:22 a.m.
On to the cold, dark highway.














7:20 a.m.
Arrive Pearson Airport

8:00 a.m.
Arrive at gate 155 boarding lounge

8:40 a.m.
Announcement made that 9:15 scheduled departure time has been pushed back to 9:30 due to a 'mechanical issue'.

9:00 a.m.
Announcement made that 9:30 departure has been pushed back to 10:00.












9:41 a.m.
Announcement that departure gate has changed. Migrate to gate 161.

10:00 a.m.
Posted departure time suddenly, and inexplicably, changes to 11:20. No announcement.

10:10 a.m.
Over-priced airport breakfast. Consider having a martini. Decide it's too early, even for me.

11:30 a.m.
Departure, at last.

12:30 p.m.
Arrive La Guardia Airport.













12:35 p.m.
In a taxi to costume shop in mid-town Manhattan.

1:15 p.m.
Arrive Parsons Meares costume shop, 8th Ave & 36th St. Fitting begins. Breakdown as follows:
-Clothes off. Into flying harness supervised by flying technician.
-Hang in underwear from temporary metal frame constructed in elevator lobby of shop.
-Brief lesson in weight control and harness balance.
-Harness off. Detailed costume fitting begins as pieces are added and discussed one by one.
-Strip off full costume back down to underwear. Flying harness on again.
-Full costume back on OVER flying harness.
-Holes are marked and cut in costume to allow for harness attachment points.
-Hang in elevator lobby again, this time in costume.





3:15 p.m.
Fitting finished. Back out onto the street, hunting for a taxi.

3:45 p.m.
Finally manage to flag down a vacant taxi. Driver tells me that his credit card processor isn't working. I tell him I have $30 cash and ask if he's willing to risk it. He is.

4:15 p.m.
Taxi gets me to La Guardia $24 dollars later.

4:20 p.m.
Check in for flight. Upgrade to Executive Class.

4:25 p.m.
Clear security. Begin looking for bar.

4:32 p.m.
Exit secure area. Continue looking for bar.

4:41 p.m.
Martini












4:50 p.m.
Eat something called "Buffalo Chicken Wontons".

4:55 p.m.
Martini












5:35 p.m.
Re-clear security.

6:07 p.m.
Plane departs a full 20 minutes early. Discover I am the only person in the Executive Class cabin.

6:15 p.m.
Flight Attendant begins off-loading excess wines and cheeses on me since I am her only passenger.












7:02 p.m.
Arrive in Toronto forty minutes early.












7:30 p.m.
Fall asleep in arrivals area waiting for Michael.

9:15 p.m.
Arrive back home.

9:25 p.m.
Martini

11:45 p.m.
Asleep

A SCAR IS BORN

The producers of The Lion King arranged for me to go to New York for a costume fitting since all Lion King costumes have been, and are continuing to be built at a costume shop there. When Pam found out that I was going, she decided to tag along, making this her first visit since she went to school in The City That Doesn't Sleep 20 years ago.

My producers had originally planned on flying my in and out on the same day. I suggested, however, that if there were a few days between my arrival flight and my departure flight, I could probably find something to keep me busy.

The result was three days of all-out assault on the city. Shopping, eating, seeing shows, walking, walking, walking and more walking. By the end of it, our eyes were burning from too much input and spinning like a gecko's eyes, independently of each other.

ARRIVAL DAY

Pam is already doing her shopping warm-up in the Duty Free store in Toronto before departure.

A prearranged car is waiting at Newark Airport to drive us into Manhattan. I decided that, though the train or bus is cheaper (and sometimes faster), it's nice to see the city growing larger as you approach it.

We check into the hotel. By this time it is almost 6:00 p.m. I have a ticket to see a show at 7:00. We grab a quick martini in the hotel lounge and I leave Pam drinking alone as she is waiting to meet up with a friend from school whom she hasn't seen for two decades.

Since the hotel is on 50th St. at Broadway, it's an easy walk for me to the theatre where I'm seeing "American Idiot". Passing through Times Square on the way, however, I realize two things: 1) I live in the country. 2) The invention of new lighting and billboard technology has turned night into day as every advertiser on the planet tries new tricks to imprint their message on your corneas.

BROADWAY LIGHTS

The show is short and I'm back on the street by 9:44. I'm a little hyper-active because the music and performances were so energetic and SO LOUD!! I meet Pam and her friend Darren back at the hotel and we hop on the subway to go waaaaay downtown for supper. Darren takes us to a fantastic little Italian place called, oddly enough, Supper.

SUPPER AT "SUPPER"

DAY TWO

Pam, the farm-girl that usually gets up at 5:00 a.m. to feed the horses, sleeps until 8:45! A rare and unusual luxury. Pam is ready to show New Yorkers how to shop, so we start the day at Macy's. It is a miserably day. Pouring rain with gale force winds. The umbrella I purchase is useless. Pam remarks that a wet-suit would be more appropriate.

SOGGY MANHATTAN

After Macy's, we grab a cab down to Greenwich Village. After a brief walk around, dropping into a few stores, we opt to take our soggy carcasses to lunch at Jeffrey's Grocery Luncheonette and Oyster Bar. After some delicious food and two glasses of Rioja Reserva, we're ready to face the elements again.

We spend the next two hours or so in the greatest cookbook store ever, Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks. She specializes in used,rare, out-of-print, and hard-to-find cookbooks.

COOKBOOK HEAVEN

By the time we leave the bookstore, it's starting to get close to the time for my costume fitting. Another quick cab ride back to the hotel to change clothes and dump the days purchases, and back out onto the street. The rain has finally let up so we walk down 8th Avenue toward the costume shop.

The shop where my fitting takes place is clearly one of the top costume shops around. They built "Beauty & The Beast", "Shrek", "Phantom of The Opera" and dozens of other Broadway shows large and small. They are also the shop where all the costumes for Julie Taymor's latest epic, "Spiderman" is being built. Because of the spidey-show and it's size and complexity, everyone in the shop is a little cross-eyed from exhaustion. None-the-less, they are real pros and are entertaining and fun during the entire 90 minute fitting.

Pam was allowed to take pictures during the fitting but, after some thought, I have decided not to post them here in their entirety because the costume is not finished yet. It seems wrong to me to destroy the magic and the beautiful illusion by showing a half-finished work. Just for fun, though, here are some teasers...

After the fitting, we are back on the street heading toward Broadway to find a martini and some food before our eight o'clock show. We stumble on a restaurant named after Pam's alter-ego, Sophia. It's fate. And the food is fantastic.


After dinner, we head off to The Foxwoods Theatre to see what is only the second public performance of "Spiderman". Before the curtain goes up, we are as wiggly as puppies before dinner. At the end of the first act we can barely control ourselves. By the end of the show, we are speechless. The show is still very early in it's previews and has some problems. The technical elements (and there are MANY) are still not all working properly and the script needs work, but this show, ultimately is mind-blowing. I'm sorry that people have managed to find reasons to poo-poo it.

DAY THREE

We are up at the crack o' crow's piss and start the day with a brisk walk up to Central Park in the cold, but thankfully not wet, morning. We make our way to Barney's for a little high-end shopping. In the shoe department we stumble across what can only be described as mayhem. It seems there is some kind of once-a-year-shoe-event happening and women are crawling over each other looking for deals as their husbands pull out the rapidly melting credit cards. Though many of the shoes are a good bargain ($860 marked down to $400) we decide that most of them look like over-priced hooker-wear and we move on.

Back down near Central Park, we stumble into FAO Shwartz. We do our best to poke around but the place is so full of children that our crowd tolerance dwindles rapidly. Must be time for food and drink.

We head to The Russian Tea Room where I eat a bowl of beet borscht that tastes like my childhood and Pam enjoys tea sweetened in the traditional Russian way with candied cherries.

Yes, that is a flight of chilled Russian vodkas lined up in front of me

It's time to head downtown again, this time to find the Italian mega-store Eataly in The Flatiron district. We take the subway this time and emerge onto 23rd street. We don't get very far before Pam's eye is caught by a display of sweets in a window. We have stumbled upon La Maison du Macaron. Pam has never eaten a real, traditional French macaron. Again, fate.


We each order one macaron, lavender, and an Americano.

Pam eats her first macaron

She immediately returns to the front counter.
Shortly thereafter...

Pam eats her second macaron

On to Eataly which is just down the street. This is the place where you can buy everything Italian under one roof. Produce, meats, cheeses, cookware, pasta, olive oil, sauces etc., etc., etc. As well, there are 5 restaurants serving up all kinds of things made from all the products they carry. I almost buy the t-shirt that says, "La vita e troppo breve per mangiare male". (Life is too short to eat badly)

Contemplating Italy at Eataly

As we are starting to lose steam, we opt for the subway back to the hotel before carrying on. A short (20 min.) rest, a change of clothes and we are back in the hotel lounge, Natsumi, for some fantastic sushi before heading off to see the first New York performance of our very own Rebecca Northan's "Blind Date".

The theatre is packed and the crowd loves the show, as do we. Rebecca rocks New York! We drink with everyone afterward and get to bed late.

DEPARTURE DAY

My eyes aren't opening too easily on the morning of our last day. Could be all the input. Could be the smog. Could be the liquor. Hard to say which.

We wander over to Rockefeller Center since they lit the giant Christmas Tree the night we arrived and we haven't seen it yet. It's big. We make a brief stop in the Lego store so that, once again, I can wallow in the fact that my mother wouldn't let me have Lego as a child. After a brief shop at The Met Gift Shop across the street, we taxi to the upper east side and chow down on some good old-fashioned New York diner food. Mmmmmmm....

We then begin to shop our way all the way down Madison Avenue, cruising designer store after designer store, entering some, scoffing at some, ignoring some. We end up having to do some fast walking to make it back to the hotel in time for our car pick up, but manage to get there just in time to sit stalled in the traffic around Times Square. Aaahhh, New York.

On our way back to Niagara from Pearson Airport, we are so over-stimulated and exhausted that the long silences are only occasionally punctuated by monosyllables.

The wardrobe people said they'd like me back for a 2nd fitting near the end of December. I hope I've recovered by then.