night out on the town...culture, etc

*Note: due to an excessive amount of criticism and an overwhelming lack of a sense of humor, i have edited my previous post about my day out with jj.

so, last night, i hung out with a new friend from school. yeah!! but before that...

i dont know if i have mentioned that jj is an actor, and he knows all these different actor people. a guy from jj's acting school was performing in a one-man show, and jj invited me to go. the first exciting thing about the evening was that i got to finally meet jj's wife!! this was exciting to me on different levels. first of all, it is always fun to meet one of your "good" friend's significant other. secondly, tracy is the elusive wife. she is a cardiologist or something and works crazy hours, and constantly. alex, who has known jj now for a couple years, has himself only just met her recently. but i was impressed. she is absolutely beautiful, and really nice.
anyway, so, i meet jj, tracy, and jj's friend ian (another friend from acting class) out front of this random building near madison square garden. we're all standing outside what looks like a regular apartment building, except the front doors are locked. it almost seemed sketchy, and we were all kinda looking at each other trying to figure out what is going on. then, this guy (we later found out he was the director) came and let us in.
so, we go into this tiny little theater that seated maybe 20--however, i think there was at MOST twelve people. that included our group of four, jj's actor friend chris' parents, and a group of people there for the second performer.
so, chris' performance...what can i say about his performance....well, he came in and sat on a chair and performed this random dialogue, that we finally figured out had to do with death. i mean, at first, it was easy enough to understand. it was an old man who had just died and was facing Death. from there, he went in to all these different characters talking about random things that were OBSCURELY related to death...i dont know. tracy and i looked at each other when it was over and were just all "uuuh...did you get that?" "no. did you?" "no." thank god. i thought i was just really dense. chris did a decent job, though.
so, then the second "show" started. my god. i will never get those twenty minutes back. by the end of his performance, i was almost ready to beat my lost time out of him...
so, this guy (jj didnt know him, thankfully!!) comes out on the stage. he literally looked like he just rolled out of bed. he badly needed a hair cut, or, if not, a hairbrush. he needed to shave. he was wearing a shirt that was probably two sizes to big for him. his pants looked dirty and they didnt really fit, either. now, at first, i thought that it was a costume. however, no. no it really wasnt. (ill explain momentarily)
his performance was basically him being obsessed with a girl and just an endless dialogue about how she doesnt want him or need him and he loves her. and then he did this horribly long speech about how he has changed himself to please her. he dyed his hair. he toned up his body, etc etc. and in my mind, if that is going to be your dialogue, and you are trying to make this a point, you would WEAR clothes that were more fitting to this specific point. you wouldnt come out looking like trash.
this guy had no emotion in his face, he was unable to connect with the audience, and he chose the most annoying dialogue EVER. no, seriously, three minutes into it, i wanted to stand up and tell him to quit whining. ick, im irritated even now. afterwards, our group of four ran outside to bust up laughing and critique this guy. it was unfortunate.
from there, we went to this irish bar to meet up with chris and tell him he did a good job, blah blah blah. when we got to the bar, chris, the other performer, and their director were sitting at a table, and there wasnt really room for us to sit, so we were just kinda standing near their table. this waitress came over and told us we couldnt stand there. so, tracy and i went and sat at another table, and jj and ian came and stood next to us. jj and ian were told to move. then the waitress asked us what we wanted to drink, and ian ordered something, but the rest of us did not. so she told us that we couldnt sit at the table because there was going to be some live music soon and all the tables were reserved. we looked around at the 80% empty tables....but we moved. we went to this weird random tall table in the middle of the room that we all stood around. the waitress brough ian's drink over, and jj asked for a water. she told him no and went away. we all looked at eachother, and thought she MUST have been drinking. she came back a second later and basically threw the check at ian (he hadnt asked for it. im pretty sure he had been planning on ordering another) and jj asked her if she was refusing to bring him a water. she gave him a dirty look and walked away. we couldnt believe it. i mean, that level of customer service...wow...
from there, i met up with my friend elena from school. she and i had been talking about going dancing for the past week now, so we were determined to make it out! jj suggested that we go to this place called lit, which was actually a really cool place. it was not at all pretentious (except for one of the DJs who was an ASS!), and i cant even begin to explain the style. there were hard-core punk kids, people dressed nice, and everything in between. it is a two story place, and when we got there, we hung out upstairs. no one was dancing yet (this was around 1230) but the music had a decent beat, so we kinda bounced in teh corner. and then we went downstairs, and it was awesome. when we got down there, the dj was rocking the jackson 5. nice! he busted out a little violent femmes, a little clash, some cyndie lauper, etc. however, i went up and asked for my personal favorite, new kids on the block, and he said he didnt have any. so then i asked for bon jovi. and he said no and told me he didnt do "that" kind of 80s music. and then he gave me this super condescending look and went back to his business. i wanted to kick him.
elena and i had a lot of fun. danced for a few hours, and then decided around 3am that we should go home. however, we got outside and thought, hey! let's go to alex's bar and say hi! ten blocks away....i was in heels. in which i had been dancing for a few hours. ow ow ouch. but we got down to alex's bar and we got a double shot of water and went and busted out dancing barefoot (ew) in one of the rooms of the bar. fun!
around 4, we decided that we really needed to head home, and we decided to grab a cab because we didnt want to have to deal with the subway system (which is super messed up on the weekends, anyways). almost as soon as we had come out of the bar, i saw a cab and i waved to him, then realized that he had his "off duty" lights on. but he stopped anyway and asked if we needed a ride. we said yes, but he was off duty, and we could just grab another cab. he said no. i told him we needed to get to brooklyn, and he still said it was fine. i loved this man. he got us home SO quickly! it was great. so, home close to 5am....and its noon now and i am actually awake....impressive....
another fun-filled evening in nyc.





random thought: Sense of Direction in New York City
so, i dont know how many of you know this about me, but i have a relatively good sense of direction. if i can find one place that i can recognize whereever i am, i can find my way back to where i need to be. i can do this pretty much anywhere--except for new york city. and here is the really ironic thing. nyc is a friggin grid. a lot of streets are numbered. you would think it would be super easy to figure out what direction you need to go. but it never ever fails for me. i ALWAYS, initially, end up going in the wrong direction.




fargo lifts me up where i belong.