July 9 - July 15
Tuesday - Day ThreeNICO AND PHILIP'S THIRD WEDDING ANNIVERSARYYes, it was three years ago today (July 11th) that we got married and that was shortly before that other road trip we took from Miami to Victoria, which lasted for about two weeks. Tomorrow is the last day of the first half of this road trip which means, starting on Thursday, we have 31 days to go. * Today we hung out in the apartment until it was time to go downtown to meet up with Bonnie. We were meeting her at a place called L'Express at 20th and Park, a twenty-four hour French bistro not far from where she works. She arrives in her customary black, and looks well. She is almost green (that is, her green card has been approved and she will be getting it soon, and will be able to leave the country at long last). Bonnie, for those of you who may not know, is a graduate of Pearson College (year 11 I believe), as well as being the sister of one of Nico's closest friends, and so not long after taking her seat she starts to ask what's going on at PC. That pretty much takes up the remaining conversation. As she is on her lunch break, our time with her is limited, and so she soon has to dash off to a meeting and we cross over to Fifth Avenue and start walking uptown. We are keeping our eyes open for possible places to buy our clothes for the wedding. Since Nico is not sure how formal or casual this wedding is, it truly is an exercise in window-shopping. Philip is also on the lookout for a new jacket. As we continue our walk up the Avenue, we dart in and out of numerous camera/computer stores, looking at two items that we are determined at some point to own: a still digital camera (David envy), and that 22-inch Apple Studio Display we fell in love with in Los Angeles. (Nico is a little concerned about conspicuous consumption/ostentation, but Philip sees both as possible business investments, as one of the things he is considering doing is freelance publishing and video editing when he gets home.) While on this journey, somewhere around the Flatiron Building, Philip starts to get hives. (Not literally.) When I ask what's wrong, he explains that this was the neighbourhood where he worked for below minimum wage pushing a huge mail trolley through the snow to make money in order to stay in school. Not a pleasant memory. He also points down a street to the Academy of Dramatic Arts. We walk past his first apartment, 'the Dive', where he lived in his first year at the academy. In fact, in that building, he lived in two apartments: one single room on the sixth floor with a bath down the hall (!!) and then a larger studio (one-room) apartment on the eleventh floor with a bath and a kitchen, from whose window he could spit at the Empire State Building. The apartment building appears to have undergone some renovation ("Thank God," mutters Philip as we pass). Despite all, the address always sounded impressive - 31st Street between Broadway & Fifth Avenue. Eventually we stop at a phone booth to call Carly Evans, a Year 2 graduate and a member of the Pearson College Board, whom we have arranged to see later in the day. We tell her to meet us at Colin's, and that we'll go for a drink or something before we go to the theatre. This she does, and we have a very pleasant walk to a faux-Irish pub, where she and I have a beer (Philip has his customary Coke) and we all chat once again about Pearson. At seven she has to go home to protect her kitchen from her son's cooking, and we stroll casually over to the West Side, the sun shining in our faces, towards the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, where we are to 'czech' out the celebrated Stoppard revival, The Real Thing. * Well, after last night's performance, which seemed to have a story concocted to provide reasons for songs to be sung, The Real Thing was the real thing. That is, the play was tight, seamless and intelligent, but not incomprehensible - Stoppard at his best. Philip, who had seen the play before, when it premiered on Broadway in the early 1980s, was as impressed with this production as he was with the first, although the two were quite different. This production, which was initially mounted by an experimental theatre company in London, had a rawer, more working-class feel to it. (The company, the Donmer Warehouse, is headed by Sam Mendes, the man who directed American Beauty, but the director of this production was one David Leveaux). Brilliant writing, brilliant direction, brilliant acting - all in all a brilliant production. * We dined in an outdoor brasserie after the performance. The dinner was pleasant, and we did a postmortem of the play over it before our half-hour walk back to the apartment. There were many more people out on the street at midnight, it being a Tuesday and not a traditionally 'dark' night on Broadway (i.e. *all* plays are open on Tuesday nights, and not just the hugely popular like Phantom). We know that we have a matinee and an evening peformance to attend tomorrow, and so we put ourselves happily to bed. |
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