The Underbelly of Manhattan

Our friend Richard (a.k.a. Rico) came to visit us this weekend. For some reason I have seen my friends MORE since moving to New York than I did when I actually lived in the same 100 mile radius as them. If any of you out there are bemoaning not seeing your friends and family, I suggest you move to New York City or one of the boroughs. You will be SHOCKED by how many people come to visit. If you already live in New York and don't see your friends, I can assure you that your friends are sitting in a room uptown or downtown from you, bemoaning that they never see their friends either.

But I digress...Rico came to see us and we got to do exciting things like walk across the Brooklyn Bridge and eat amazing Italian food in the Village. I think we adequately gave Rico the feeling (like we do with all our visitors) that walking across the Brooklyn Bridge and eating amazing Italian food is the norm for us now that we live in New York. New York is always fabulous! Fabulous all the time! That's US! We had just about SNOWED Rico into thinking that New York was not only the BEST place on Earth, but the ONLY place, until we went to go see a movie.

Movies are not usually the priority of tourists in New York--and that's a good thing. If tourists knew how HIGH MAINTENANCE it was to go see a movie in Manhattan, they would think twice about visiting our fine city. When Graham and I were a bit AGGRESSIVE about getting to the theater a full half hour before the movie started, Rico said, "But we have plenty of time--it doesn't start for a half an hour." To which we responded by saying, "Oh, we may be TOO LATE." We were. The 4:15 showing of Knocked Up was sold out. We had to wait until 5:00. When we came back a full half hour before the showing, explaining that New York has this GREAT new addition to the movie experience--advertising and programming while you wait for the movie to start--Rico said, "Oh, I know all about that. The big theater in Santa Cruz has all that." We entered the nearly full theater, forgoing the Milkduds because the lines were too long, Rico sat down in the face of blaring advertising at ear piercing volume and said, "My god, this is worse than I thought." This was followed by the theater growing dark so that we could watch MORE advertisements. Rico shook his head, eyes and mouth agape, "They just played THREE commercials."

Dang, we almost had him!

Yesterday morning, when we knew he was safely on a plane, Graham and I drank coffee in bed and listened to NPR. That's about as good as it gets in this town. That's about as good as it gets anywhere.