I <3 NYC
Last night was eventful. My mission was to get to midtown for a special sneak preview screening of the "Life" premier. So I left work at 4:35, hopped the PATH to the World Trade Center while trying valiantly to ignore what the day was. Minor fail on that front.
For the uninitiated, the PATH station is literally in the hole at Ground Zero. It's disconcerting on the best of days, but on 9/11...it's not somewhere I ever expected myself to be. Right outside the station entrace was a couple of guys quietly holding up a "9/11 was an inside job!" sign while people took pictures of the depressingly small amount of flowers which had been stuck in the fence. Over at St. Paul's Chapel there was a guy preaching to an attentive goth girl, people milling around the prayer station, people taking pictures of their friends with the churchyard cemetery as a backdrop. I shuddered and hurried down the steps to the Chambers St. station to take the E uptown.
Rush hour in New York pauses for no man, woman, child, political candidate, or national day of mourning. I'm happy to snag a seat but soon the train fills, then fills more, people clambering on at every station until we get to 34th where some leave, then more depart at 42nd creating some sort of equilibrium. I get off at 5th and 53rd, start going the wrong way on 5th (I always, always do that), turned around to 52nd to find ye olde Paley Center for Media, arriving at 5:25.
"Are you memeber?"
"No, just here for the screening."
"Come back about 6:25."
"*facepalm*"
So I took to wandering. The joy of wandering midtown is you can't get lost thanks to the handy street grids. Also you can't be lost, there's there's Radio City Music Hall, there's Rockefeller Plaza, there's Winter Garden where "Mama Mia!" is showing, there's a couple guys doing commentary for SNY, there's St. Patrick's Cathedral. I'm not lost, I'm in ~*~America~*~.
Skipping ahead to the return trip, I emerge from the Chambers St. station and look up, up, and up some more to behold this, the memorial lights for the twin towers. Thinking about it on the subway downtown I thought I'd blubber a bit, but I ended up being irritated that they lights themselves do not originate within Ground Zero, they're set up further south. Take the PATH back to Hoboken ("Where's Exchange Place?" the guy beside me asks his buddy, who shrugs as we roll through, and I refrain from going on about the Jersey City waterfront), walk down to the river to get another view of the lights but from Hoboken it looks like one beam. Somewhere in all of this I find myself musing that I'm not used to coming home from the city at this hour stone-cold sober. It loses some of the magic.
SCROLL ON BY IF YOU WANT TO AVOID NOT-REALLY-SPOILERY "LIFE" THOUGHTS.
Okay so YAY that was fun. The screening had maybe fifty people in a wee auditorium, and the programming was introduced by NBC's New York director of publicity (I think that was his title), who was funny and snarky ("If you want to know why we're #4... *points at self*"). He was also very enthusiastic about introducing the new shows and gave little blurbs for the stuff we'd be seeing that night. I liked him.
ACTUAL SCREENING STUFF. I've never seen "Chuck", I will fess to that right now but I'm glad I caught it tonight because I was laughing my ass off throughout, they made it very accessable for newbies. Now I want to go back adn check out season 1, so well done NBC on that front.
And then there was "Life." You guys, no one left after "Chuck," they all stuck around. They laughed at the funny bits, the gasped at the shocking bits, they warmed to Charlie and Dani right away, the music was as usual amazing. There were some bits that were different from the casting sides (one which I was very grateful to see dropped but a couple I would have liked to see), and I came away very excited. OUR SHOW IS BACK, Y'ALL, HAVE NO FEAR!
And then like EVERYONE left before "Lipstick Jungle" started. I almost felt bad, then decided against it. I'll probably do a more in-depth review under flock and key, so expect that.
Okay you can read again!
Lastly: After the screening I make my way back to the 5th Ave. station to get the E back downtown, and discover that there is a classic crazy (homeless) guy on the platform spouting nonsense. The nonsense he is spouting is epic. Behold:
"Hillary invented the lesbian vote. There was no lesbian vote before Hillary, she created it! Thirty million lesbians all lined up to vote, and you know what you have to do to get the lesbian vote? You've gotta squeeze it. You have to squeeze the lesbian. How do you get orange juice? You squeeze it! You gotta squeeze the lesbian to get the vote!"
Oh yes I am so submitting that shit.
Now how do I tag this...
For the uninitiated, the PATH station is literally in the hole at Ground Zero. It's disconcerting on the best of days, but on 9/11...it's not somewhere I ever expected myself to be. Right outside the station entrace was a couple of guys quietly holding up a "9/11 was an inside job!" sign while people took pictures of the depressingly small amount of flowers which had been stuck in the fence. Over at St. Paul's Chapel there was a guy preaching to an attentive goth girl, people milling around the prayer station, people taking pictures of their friends with the churchyard cemetery as a backdrop. I shuddered and hurried down the steps to the Chambers St. station to take the E uptown.
Rush hour in New York pauses for no man, woman, child, political candidate, or national day of mourning. I'm happy to snag a seat but soon the train fills, then fills more, people clambering on at every station until we get to 34th where some leave, then more depart at 42nd creating some sort of equilibrium. I get off at 5th and 53rd, start going the wrong way on 5th (I always, always do that), turned around to 52nd to find ye olde Paley Center for Media, arriving at 5:25.
"Are you memeber?"
"No, just here for the screening."
"Come back about 6:25."
"*facepalm*"
So I took to wandering. The joy of wandering midtown is you can't get lost thanks to the handy street grids. Also you can't be lost, there's there's Radio City Music Hall, there's Rockefeller Plaza, there's Winter Garden where "Mama Mia!" is showing, there's a couple guys doing commentary for SNY, there's St. Patrick's Cathedral. I'm not lost, I'm in ~*~America~*~.
Skipping ahead to the return trip, I emerge from the Chambers St. station and look up, up, and up some more to behold this, the memorial lights for the twin towers. Thinking about it on the subway downtown I thought I'd blubber a bit, but I ended up being irritated that they lights themselves do not originate within Ground Zero, they're set up further south. Take the PATH back to Hoboken ("Where's Exchange Place?" the guy beside me asks his buddy, who shrugs as we roll through, and I refrain from going on about the Jersey City waterfront), walk down to the river to get another view of the lights but from Hoboken it looks like one beam. Somewhere in all of this I find myself musing that I'm not used to coming home from the city at this hour stone-cold sober. It loses some of the magic.
%2025-5346.jpg){kind=link}
SCROLL ON BY IF YOU WANT TO AVOID NOT-REALLY-SPOILERY "LIFE" THOUGHTS.
Okay so YAY that was fun. The screening had maybe fifty people in a wee auditorium, and the programming was introduced by NBC's New York director of publicity (I think that was his title), who was funny and snarky ("If you want to know why we're #4... *points at self*"). He was also very enthusiastic about introducing the new shows and gave little blurbs for the stuff we'd be seeing that night. I liked him.
ACTUAL SCREENING STUFF. I've never seen "Chuck", I will fess to that right now but I'm glad I caught it tonight because I was laughing my ass off throughout, they made it very accessable for newbies. Now I want to go back adn check out season 1, so well done NBC on that front.
And then there was "Life." You guys, no one left after "Chuck," they all stuck around. They laughed at the funny bits, the gasped at the shocking bits, they warmed to Charlie and Dani right away, the music was as usual amazing. There were some bits that were different from the casting sides (one which I was very grateful to see dropped but a couple I would have liked to see), and I came away very excited. OUR SHOW IS BACK, Y'ALL, HAVE NO FEAR!
And then like EVERYONE left before "Lipstick Jungle" started. I almost felt bad, then decided against it. I'll probably do a more in-depth review under flock and key, so expect that.
Okay you can read again!
Lastly: After the screening I make my way back to the 5th Ave. station to get the E back downtown, and discover that there is a classic crazy (homeless) guy on the platform spouting nonsense. The nonsense he is spouting is epic. Behold:
"Hillary invented the lesbian vote. There was no lesbian vote before Hillary, she created it! Thirty million lesbians all lined up to vote, and you know what you have to do to get the lesbian vote? You've gotta squeeze it. You have to squeeze the lesbian. How do you get orange juice? You squeeze it! You gotta squeeze the lesbian to get the vote!"
Oh yes I am so submitting that shit.
Now how do I tag this...