How to Be the Best at Broadway (Without Trying Too Hard)

This is a story from three weeks ago, it slipped my blogging mind.

Say you want to see a Broadway show, say you want to see something like How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying starring Harry Potter and John Larroquette?  Tickets to the show are like $120 bucks and the "cheap" tickets at the TKTS booth are $84?  There has to be another way!  A cheaper way!

There is.  Go in the morning of the day of your show and line up for day-of rush tickets.  Just $30.  Problem is, a popular show like How to Succeed draws quite the early morning line.  Can you find me in this line?

How about now?  See that guy with his arms up way over there on the left.  That's me.  I'm first in line!  I didn't mean to be, but I was.

And you may wonder how my rush tickets turned out, probably got a spot in the very back or something for that budget price, right?  

(I don't know what I'm doing with my jaw here)

Or, I don't know, maybe the front box seats?  We were so close to Harry!  I could have thrown a snitch right at his sweaty head.

Best seat in the house, indeed.

And how was the show?  You might know that I don't always take to musicals, but I liked this one quite a bit.  You could even say I liked it a ton.  Harry really gave it the old college try and Mr. Larroquette really knew how to play the crowd (I believe they gave him a Tony, right?) but my favorite character was the heel, that other guy down in the mailroom trying to get ahead in business like Harry.

Best You Deserve a 21 Minute Break

Do you remember that show called the Simpsons?  About the cartoon family?  Turns out it's still on TV and last week they had an episode all about Teddy Roosevelt!  And it was awful funny!  Truth be told, I knew the Simpsons was still on TV but didn't know it was still really funny sometimes.

Now I know you're not really going to click on this embed and watch the whole episode but really, you should.  If you've got the time.  And the love for TR.

Best Bombing of Broadway

Have you heard about the Broadway Bomb?  It's this annual thing where skaters skate down Broadway from Morningside Heights to the end of the island.  This year I happened to be right in the neighborhood when it came by Lincoln Center.

A herald.

The skating masses . . . there were a lot of them this year, probably took ten minutes for the whole armada to pass through.

Some pedestrians were amused, others quite perturbed.  There was no crossing Broadway while the Bombers passed through, it was like impossible Frogger.  A Frogger beyond anything George Castanza's could dream.

Lazy bandit.

I know that dude.  For real.  "Occupy Broadway."  I like it.

And that's Josh.  I know him, too.

Uhh?

And finally, Jeff.  And right behind him, B Swiss.

I watched the Bomb with Cassandra, remember when I met her in DC?

And who did I find just across the street? Jenn and . . . shoot.  The girl on the right.  What's her name?  I always forget.

Best It Is Hard for Me to Say This

But Diablo Cody's new movie looks good?

"We can beat this thing together."
Oh yeah, it's called Bad Author Young Adult.  12/9/11

Best Well . . .

My happiest Apple memories are from when Steve Jobs wasn't even with the company. Mainly I'm talking about my surprise gifting of a PowerBook 520c Christmas 2004 (wish I could find that picture somewhere).

Man, I look at pictures of that old laptop and just feel too much love. I don't think any Apple device ever made anyone happier, and the only thing its screen did when you touched it was get blurry.

But there was that time in 2003 when I was at the few-days-old Pasadena Apple Store and Mr. Jobs was there, having a look around. I asked one of the Apple Store workers "Is that Steve Jobs?" and they said "Yes." I stared and stared. Black turtleneck, blue jeans, water bottle.

So it goes.

My Apple timeline (including family computers):

Macintosh Plus, 1986
Macintosh SE, 1987 or 88
Macintosh 520c, 1995
Some LC or something that we had at home when I got off my mission ???-2000 (we couldn't have had an SE for 12 years though, right? There must have been something else. But all during High School I had the Plus in my room and used it for everything)
G3 Desktop, 1998-2003
Family got an iMac, 2000
Titanium PowerBook, 2001-2006
Family got that iMac that looked like a lamp, 2003 or so
Owen's PowerBook while he was on his mission, 2006-2008
MacBookPro--the redesign, 2008
Family got a hot iMac, 2010

Let the record show, we were Macintosh OGs.

Best Worst Team-Up

Fourteen years ago tonight I watched Batman and Robin. It was just about the worst movie I had ever seen.  I've been working on a review of the movie, here and there, for at least the last nine years and finished a (very) rough draft last week.  While I wasn't able to get it done by today I'm hoping to have it finished sometime this month.  Or next month.  It'll be shorter than my Disney report, that's the only thing I know for sure right now.

Best a Few Things and also Manhattan Bridge

This looks like the apartment of a good neighbor.

By my house there is this big new supermarket that's like the Chinese Fairway.  It's full of mysterious things that I don't know if I'm allowed to photograph.

I feel like I've been eating the wrong instant ramen.

In my apartment: Evidence of my youth.

Sunday afternoon I set out to walk to Brooklyn via the Manhattan Bridge.  This is my neighborhood.

And this is my bridge.

Before crossing it I was distracted by a dragon.

To the bridge, now.

And you wonder why the Brooklyn Bridge is so much more popular?

Who is this guy?  I see him everywhere.  Everywhere!

And this guy?  I never see him anywhere.  Anywhere!

Andy lives over there.

No respect for the builders.

Dumbo.

Ah, Brooklyn.

(that would be a kickball game, if you couldn't tell)

Best More Recent Listenings

Araabmuzik, Electonic Dream

So this Araabmuzik fellow is a producer that has been making tracks for Cam'ron or something?  But this is an album of electronic music that sounds new while referencing the electronic music I knew in my late-teenage years: gabberhouse my senior high school, happy hardcore my freshman year of college (among others).  This record is just good listening, good over and over listening.  The whole things sounds dark and shiny, like an all-black Lamborghini.  The new one.  It is good to listen to at work or while doing chores.  Here are some chores I can recommend doing while listening to this record: folding laundry, putting away laundry, washing dishes, sweeping, picking up your room.  Chores I would not recommend doing while listening to Electronic Dream: Probably not mowing the lawn, shoveling snow, or scrubbing the tub.

St. Vincent, Strange Mercy

So good it'll make you listen to the older St. Vincent records again.  Let me throw this out there: Is Annie Clark the American Bjork?  Discuss.

Wavves, Life Sux

Having read a few negative reviews of this EP I was hoping to end this post with a one line review: "Wavvesy done fell off" (to echo my Carter IV review from last time) but actually I like this thing.

Youth Lagoon, The Year of Hibernation

I've listened to this record three times and I couldn't remember anything about it.  So now I'm listening to it a fourth time and I don't remember anything except for this bass-heavy part of this one song called Daydream.  But just because you can't remember something doesn't mean it's bad, right?  This is a pretty good little record, very small . . . but not insignificant.  Like Piglet.  All right, that's my new take on this: Youth Lagoon is indie Piglet.  I would not recommend this record for headphone listening but it would be good for at home in your room listening.

Additional Recommendation: If you hadn't heard of Holy Ghost!, read my review of the Holy Ghost! record last time and decided to give them a shot and found you liked it, might I suggest Washed Out's new-ish record Within and Without?

Additional Recommendation #2: If you're not content with just coming to my blog for yesterday's reviews today, you should follow walkietalkies.tumblr.com, which features weekly mixes of what is brand new and good at that very moment.

Best Really? Really?

So at the New Yorker Fest they had this Arrested Development reunion panel today.  Apparently the movie is really going to happen.  And another season of the show?

Up until now I had been very doubtful of the movie really happening, very "let's just wait and see."  But come on!  This is some news!

Word is that it's going to be an episode per character, a where-are-they now catch up to get us up to speed with the movie.  The movie, apparently, is going to be about people who are making a movie about the Bluth family (with Tobias as the only person playing himself).  The Bluths get wind of this, get upset, try making their own movie about themselves.  Something like that.