Day 32:
Monday, March 20
Coming
home Sunday night was odd in that, as in the morning, Pidge wasn’t there. The
only advantage to that is that I can sleep in the middle of the bed, since
sleeping at the edge has been killing my back to the point where I bought “back
pills.” I don’t know what’s in them, but I can take only so many in a day—and am
supposed to drink a full glass of water with them. My back is a little better, but
there were times in Tuesday’s shows I felt 90 years old. (We’ll deal with that
in good time, though.)
My
priority for Monday was another visit to the Apple Store. This time, I chose
the one in SoHo, which was closer than the one on 14th and 9th.
It was a beautiful day—the first in more than a week (and quite a contrast to
last Tuesday)—so it was a pleasure to walk the mile to get there.
In spite
of the warmer weather (which is, of course, all relative), there are still
massive piles of snow everywhere—to the point where I saw a story on the news
Sunday night about how people are complaining that mountains of garbage are
amassing and not being dealt with. The Sanitation Department insists it’s doing
all it can, but was giving priority to getting rid of the snow (and they haven’t
been exactly johnny-on-the-spot on that … ), and would be getting to the
garbage as soon as they could. (When I was leaving for the theatre, I saw a guy
dealing with this building’s garbage. I asked if the garbage men would be able
to take it all, and he kind of nodded and said he hoped so, mentioning that he’d
seen a garbage truck just that day come down the street, get about a third of
the way down, and then have to give up because it was full. I suppose it’ll all
get dealt with in time; it just is annoying now. Fortunately, it’s not too warm—yet—so
it hasn’t started to smell—yet.)
Stolen from a friend's Facebook page; a not-untypical scene
Anyway, it
surprised me, while walking through the Village, that Mercer Street was still
full of snow and slush in the middle of the street—a week after the storm. It
was especially surprising in that there was a lot of traffic on the road, and I’d
have expected that NYU, which seems to own almost all of that part of the
Village, would be more vigilant on getting it under control.
The reason
I was going to the Apple Store again was that my podcast app had gone belly-up
and wasn’t working. I had done everything I could to restore it, but it was
just not responding.
Arriving
at the store, I proceeded up the ubiquitous glass steps—which had an ominous “caution”
sign at the bottom, a bucket for collecting dripping water halfway up, and a
guy mopping—something—near the top. This trifecta did not bode well.
You want to walk up these when they're wet? I didn't
I got up
to the “Genius Bar” and was met with two things: a lecture hall area where some
guy was droning on about how to use some feature on an iPhone and no clear area
to check in. I parked myself at one of the many, many tables and tried to make
myself obvious, but all the geniuses was skilled at ignoring people. Finally,
after a couple of minutes, I noticed people in an apparent line, talking to two
people with iPads who were apparently checking people in. I went over, got in
the line, and soon found myself checked in. I went back to where I was sitting
(which was next to a guy who kept repeating, to no one in particular,
variations on the phrase “Fucking iPhone gonna fucking die. Fuck it.”)
After a
few moments, an actual Genius came over, diagnosed the problem, had me delete,
then restore the app (which I didn’t realize I was able to do; I thought it was
unremovable), which solved the problem. My podcasts restored and I suddenly had
far more time than I’d expected I would. I spent a few minutes going through my
email, then left to do…something. I decided the best course might be to come
home and update this blog, so I started walking home along Houston.
Along the
way, I had someone ask me where Ludlow Street was. It turned out to be just two
blocks up, as well as the corner on which (at Houston) Katz’s Delicatessen is located. I’ve been here
more than a month and still haven’t been there. I’ll have to remedy that soon,
even if the last time I was there was very disappointing. As I passed by it
this day, I looked in, saw the usual horrific lunchtime horde, and decided this
wasn’t the day. I was peckish, though, and decided I was so close to Little Italy
that I should get a slice. I consulted Yelp, found a highly-rated place nearby
and went—only to discover that, not only had a “pizza tour” occupied the place,
they were doing their best to not move to let anyone else in. I fought my way
to the counter, ordered a couple of slices (which were okay at best), then
tried to get some toppings—to no avail; those people weren’t going to yield an
inch to anyone. I finished my slices and left, walking back along First Avenue,
trying to determine if I should get a haircut for the show.
I’ve been
torn on this matter. Even though I’m not trying to emulate Sam Beckett in terms
of looking gaunt (my “boyish, all-American” looks are getting in the way of
that … ) or doing an Irish dialect, I have tried to get his upright hair. I
haven’t wanted to go to the extent of getting it as short on the side as he
did, but I’ve tried to get that Heat Miser thing going. The problem is that my
hair is too thin on top and what is there has a wave rather than being as
straight at Beckett’s. I thought a barber might be able to figure something
out, but am relying on “product” for now. I ultimately decided to forego the
haircut—for now.
The look I want, but can't get
One of the
things I expected to do (but hadn’t yet) was visit Tompkins Square Park, which
is only a couple of blocks away. My schedule and the weather had prevented it
until Monday (and it’s surprisingly still got a lot of snow and slush on the
pavements), but I decided to walk through it on the way home. As I made my way through
the park, I saw a small camera crew, and figured it was either some b-roll for
the news or a touristy things. I went a little farther, and saw a little girl
sitting behind what I thought was either a Kool-Aid stand or (more likely,
given the weather) a hot apple cider stand. Since I’m always up for patronizing
such stands, I went up to her and saw she was selling slices of watermelon for
$1. I pulled out my wallet, told her that that was a bargain—and people started
yelling at me to stop! That it wasn’t real! A couple of young women ran up to
me to tell me that it wasn’t a real stand, but was something for a student film
shoot. We all laughed, and I complimented them for their verisimilitude, and
they complimented me for my wanting to stop.
After
that, it was home to get (almost) caught up here. I was due to head uptown in
the evening, though, to see Kevin Kline in Noël Coward’s Present Laughter. Even though I’d walked
a lot already, I decided I’d like to walk up to 52nd, pick up a
ticket for Groundhog Day (and save
myself $16 in online charges), then back down to the Drama Book Shop before
heading to the St. James for the Coward. I did all of it, getting a good seat
for Groundhog Day, arriving at the
bookstore just in time for them to tell me they were closing.
My piss-poor shot of the marquee
I enjoyed Present Laughter
a lot—after an unusual start. I’d forgotten I’d printed my ticket at home, so
they didn’t have one for me at the box office. Once the woman looked it up,
though, she was able to print me a new one on the spot. I settled into my seat,
and a fellow the approximate size of Andre the Giant sat next to me. I managed
to work my way around him, and when the “pause” after the first scene (Coward’s
first act; modern audiences have trouble dealing with three-act plays) came, he
got up, saying he had to use the restroom. Many others joined him and even
though they’d literally told us before the show that there would be two
one-minute breaks between scenes in both acts, people couldn’t be content to
just sit, listen to the music, or quietly discuss what they were seeing. Phones
came out, people stood up, went up the aisles, and acted as though they’d been released
from prison. When the second scene began, ushers held people back from
returning and disrupting things, so I figured my mammoth friend had been
delayed. He never came back, though, so I assume he either found a friendlier
seat or just plain left.
The play started kind of slowly and, when Kline did
appear, he wasn’t playing it in a traditionally “Cowardly” fashion; that is,
dry and clipped. In fact, no one was. While it was a little off-putting at
first, I gradually realized that the director, the pleasantly-named Moritz von
Stuelpnagel (of whose work I’m a fan) was approaching the play as a new script,
with no preconceptions about how it’s “supposed to be played,” and the whole
thing ended up being delightful and fresh, despite the oddness of the ending
(which is in the script).
That said, I think it’s going to be a polarizing production.
Pidge didn’t like it at all, and I could sense walkouts during the breaks, and,
at the curtain call, it seemed like a significant percentage of people were
bolting from their seats to leave while others were leaping to give it a
standing ovation. (For myself, I enjoyed it, but wouldn’t have stood, except
that I needed to in order to see what was happening on stage.)
After the show, I wanted dinner and realized I still hadn’t
had Italian food, so consulting my old friend Yelp, found a place that was
still serving up on 51st. I walked up, ordered a glass of wine, a salad,
a small plate of spaghetti and meatballs, a chocolate lava cake for dessert
(which somehow turned into cheesecake; no matter). The bill came to a cool $50,
which I just chalked up to it being New York. (But, still … I mean, it was
good; just not fifty bucks good … )
I headed the block to the subway, caught a C train that
had just arrived, and made my way to 14th Street to catch the L. I
was still dealing with the podcast app problems (my library had disappeared at
least twice after the re-install) and totally missed my stop, which meant I was
headed to Brooklyn. That trip was relatively quick, but after getting off at
the first stop in the City of Churches, my return trip was endless. I had a
vision of myself being trapped in this limbo for the rest of time, my phone
stuck at 46% capacity with no Internet connection, but after about ten minutes,
we finally arrived back at 1st Street. (The slowness of the trip
wasn’t just my impression. There were two musicians across from me—she a
violinist, he a cellist—who remarked on how damn slow the train was moving and
how damn long the trip was taking.)
Finally, I was able make it home, climb all those stairs,
and take some back pills, and go to bed.
And that was Monday.
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