I Heart NY Part 2

Hey everyone! So the rest of my NYC trip. Saturday morning I woke up and put on my new Black Sabbath t-shirt. When in Rome, as they say. Cyd wore a t-shirt she bought on the street from Dennis, a young Russian artist. His brand is Piece of Peace. It should be hitting your neighborhood department store any day;). We went to breakfast at a Brazilian cafe and I was immediately complimented on my new shirt and taste in music (yeah, right) by our pierced Goth-girl waitress. Success! After that we wandered about looking for a schedule to the Tribeca Film Festival. I repeated over and over how shocked I was that this info was not in the day's NY Times. We finally stumbled across an information booth. When we asked for recommendations, the Info guy recommended a few hip hop films and then told us we couldn't go wrong with any of the many hip hop offerings. Cyd and I found this particularly hilarious as neither of us know/care a thing about hip hop. We figured once again our t-shirts lent us an air of cool that we didn't actually possess. Completely disregarding his advice, we instead saw Toots, a documentary of the legendary NYC saloon owner Toots Shor. The doc was absolutely fabulous - the perfect New York story. It contained tons of interviews of Toots' friends and customers and great footage of NYC from the 1930s-70s. His was the kind of place visited by Mickey Mantle, Babe Ruth, President Nixon, Jackie Gleason and Frank Sinatra. Man would I have killed to be there in its heyday (the 1950s and 60s). At the end there was a Q&A and we found that the doc was directed by his granddaughter. She did a great job. The last question was asked by an old man in a quavering voice. He told her that back when he was a young man he spent far too much time in Toots Shor's and that her granddad always treated him well. He then started crying and she started crying and half the audience teared up. The perfect end to that movie.

We then wandered about and grabbed sandwiches from Cyd's old neighborhood bodega, ate them in a tiny park next to a hippie passed out on the concrete and made our way to Magnolia. Magnolia was made famous (to me at least) in a Sex and the City episode. It's a tiny bakery famous for cupcakes. We got there and there were probably 15 people in a serpentine line in the store. You grab you cupcake, plonk down $1.75 for it and proceed to enjoy the best icing ever. The cupcake was good, but the icing was to die for. After that we decided to take a chance and stand in line for Ed Burns' new movie, The Groomsmen. In typical fashion, we were in no hurry and about half a block from our destination decided to lie about in the sun for 20 minutes rather than check on the line. This proved to be a fatal error. Once we lazily made our way to the line we saw that it was huge. Feeling lucky, we stood there for an hour only to have the line closed 20 people in front of us. Part of the problem were the horrid ushers letting billions of VIPs (none of whom we recognized) walk the red carpet at the drop of a hat. I have to say the Tribeca Film Fest is only 5 years old, but it has a lot to learn. It was very unorganized and shoddily run. They could take some tips from Telluride.

We were not deterred though and decided to catch a flick starring our mutual crush/Top 5 listee, Scott Cohen. You may know him as Max Medina from Gilmore Girls, The Wolf from 13th Kingdom or best of all, The Guy from Kissing Jessica Stein (if you have not seen this movie, immediately Netflix it. It sounds like it's just a chick flick, but it is so witty and so well done that Thomas loved it too). Anyway, the movie he was starring in was called My Brother's Shadow. We made our way to the theatre and the line for it wasn't too long, so we decided to grab a drink rather than stand in the cold. Time has a way of getting away from us and by the time we made it back to the line it was 7:35 (the movie was scheduled to start at 7:30). Luckily the poorly run festival was running late. As we stood in line, I kept noticing bizarrely dressed people pass by. One was a 40 year old woman wearing a lime green headband and a Rick Springfield t-shirt, next was a guy in a letter jacket holding a football standing up out of a limo yelling "Seniors Rule". Quite perplexed I proceeded to make several snarky comments to Cyd until she got fed up with me and pointed down the street to the mega-club, Webster's Hall. That night was Awesome 80's Prom. I then noticed the huge line of brilliantly costumed people: prom queens, girls in full headgear, Judd Nelson and Duckie wannabees and the like. Next time I'm in NYC, I'm so there.

Anyway, after a 20 minute wait where we entertained ourselves by yelling at ushers and prom-goers, the ushers informed us that the premiere of My Brother's Shadow was sold out. At this point Cyd started mouthing off to a magnificent degree telling one poor usher in particular that there would be hell to pay as Scott Cohen was desperate to see us. By some twist of fate, rather than having us arrested this guy took pity on us and decided to sneak us in for free (tickets were $12). This resulted in several Festival workers yelling at him and threatening us, but by some miracle this do-gooder got us in and sat us on the front row (sold out my Aunt Fannie!). Unfortunately, Scott Cohen played a ne'er-do-well ex-convict and looked quite rough throughout the movie. Judd Hirsch starred as his father. I won't bore you with any more details because it just wouldn't be worth it. Shadow will not be released in theaters if you get my drift. At the end of the movie though, there was a Q&A with the director and cast. So yes, Scott Cohen (and Judd Hirsh - Alex from Taxi) was standing not 6 feet from us during the entire 30 minute Q&A. We could have kicked them, but instead just blinded them with our camera flash. And it turned out that Cyd was right. I think Scott Cohen really was glad that we were there. That made the bad movie beyond worth it! I am glad that to report that he is tall and good looking IRL (and he brought his parents as his guests for the premiere). Once Cyd emails me pics, I will post them.

The next day was unfortunately my last. We grabbed breakfast from Pax and ate it in Bryant Park before I had to leave. Another perfectly sunny beautiful day in NYC. It was hard to leave, but the leaving was made easier knowing I'll return in early June with Thomas, Marlene and Allison to catch some plays.

Boulder Bumpersticker of the Day: What Would W Not Do?

-sunday