(no subject)
So. I went to NYC. Photos at www.leesmith.shutterfly.com. Let me just say this: I did NOT want to come home. At all in the least little bit.
Friday: I go to Marta and arrive at Hartsfield by myself. Find out my flight had been canceled, so I had to change flights by myself. GO through all the stuff and get to the terminal and board the flight all by myself, all feeling very cool and grown up because I'm by myself. Then I sit down and wonder who'll be next to me. It's an older man who looks like he'd be very nice and I get excited. So I say 'Hi!' and he says 'Shh". Then I get scared and curl up in the corner with my hooded jacket all zipped up and over my head and go to sleep on my knee for the rest of the flight because I was scared of him. Arrive in NYC at Laguardia and get a taxi by myself to the hotel. Meet up with Renee, Nancy and Siri in the hotel. Siri and I go out to explore the city, and I fall in love with it. Meet up with D2 at some point. Go back to the hotel, (Milford Plaza), meet up with the rest of the group and wander the city a bit more. We stop by Virgin Records and the giant Toys R Us, where D2 finds his long lost childhood toy and I buy Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans. Then we go out to eat at Stardust Cafe, where the waiters and waitresses all sing to you. Then we walk around Rockefeller Center and Times Square and have a generally AMAZING time. A rather late night. I stayed in the boys room for a while talking with Sam and Ryan, until Sam fell asleep. (Sometime around 1:30), then go back to my room and finally fall asleep around 2:45, then get woken up every time the elevator stops on our floor, because it's directly across the hall from our room.
Saturday:
Wake up early and eat breakfast in the little diner thing below the hotel. Then we walk over to the Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids office a few blocks down from our hotel and have a meeting all day. Meet Joe Norton, the coolest guy who knows everybody in New York. We break for lunch for 1 hr and wander a little street fair that was going on below the office. Super awesome. Then back to meetings until 5 something. Then we run back to the hotel and get changed for the show that night- The Producers. We arrive at the St. James Theatre at 6:15 and are shown in the stage door by Bob, the hero of the ITO. We get a FULL BACKSTAGE TOUR, including costume and makeup rooms and artists, cast members, assorted crew members, walk around on stage, play with the props (Like Adolph the pigeon :) and walk around the set, meet the musicians, go way down into the bowels of the theatre, see all the electronic equipment (AMAZING)... a full package. Then we get free tickets and watch the show. Post show, we are shown again into the backstage area and meet the actors, and we drag Brad Oscar (Max Bialystock) and Hunter Foster (Leo Bloom) onto the stage and take pictures with them. I WALKED AROUND A BROADWAY STAGE with BROADWAY ACTORS! In short... amazing. Head back to the hotel; crash.
Sunday:
Wake up even earlier (5:45) and get ready for the flea market. We arrive there around 6:50 and spend the next hour and a half setting up the tables and booths all along the street and Shubert Alley for the BC/EFA fleamarket and auction. Then we set up our booth and sell stuff and walk up and down the street getting people to come to our booth until 6:00, I think. We eat behind our booth at some point in there. Oh- and meet a LOT of famous people. Joanna Gleason, Rosie O'Donnell, Anthony Rapp, Tim Curry, to name a few... And Hunter came and visited us at our booth too:). Other visitors- D2, Caryn Herring and Stephen Simon! At some point the BC/EFA guys steal Ryan and me to go help them- keep in mind we've been standing pretty much since 6:00 the night before (we stood during The Producers) so our feet are KILLING us- and we go hand out little flyers to people coming out of the Broadway shows. I felt like a genuine street vendor- it was SO cool. Except for the part where my feet were dying. The booth next to ours- the Broadway Bares booth- was selling costumes from the stripper show (a BC/EFA fundraiser) and I bought one because the gay man gave it to me for a very cheap price, and then at the end of the day, the other mostly naked gay man gave me a white lace corset. Not sure what I'll do with a black minidress and a lace corset... but I have them! And as the first gay man said, 'And now when I look at them I'll know that someone stripped in them for a good cause!' Sometime many hours later, Sam says he's booked us a table at Sardi's, the famous restaurant that has caricatures of bunches and bunches of famous people (most signed) on its walls, and we eat there. When we come back to the hotel, Siri and I take off our shows and my feet are so ouchy and swollen... but SO worth it. I go hang out in the boys room with Sam and Ryan and Stephen, and Stephen and I have a nice little chat while Sam falls asleep and then Ryan and I have a nice little chat while Stephen falls asleep, and then I leave.
Monday:
Woke up slightly later (very nice) and have breakfast... somewhere. Then we set out to the Subway and I'm very excited and they all laugh at me, because they've all been there before. We go to Chinatown and Canal Street and SoHo and all that and wander around and shop. Which was a lot of fun until they all wanted to go look in shoe and clothing stores and I didn't like it too much, but it wasn't too bad. I mean come on- it's NYC. Do you really think I'll have any kind of a bad time in NYC? I buy a few random things here and there, and Casey buys a long trench- style jacket and fedora that look, well, HOT. And I really like a white long trench jacket from H&M that was rather reasonably priced and I completely would have gotten it were it not for the fact that I live in Georgia and it doesn't get cold enough. We then head back on the Subway to the hotel, pick up our luggage and grab a taxi back to Laguardia... and I become very depressed. Stephen changes his flight from the 5:00 to the 4:00 so that he can fly back with Renee and I, then I change my seat and make 3 people move so that I can sit next to him and be able to talk. Also I was scared of my last solo flying experience with the 'shh' man. But 3 people moved for me!:) Had a good conversation with Stephen that covered just about everything. And at the airport we started meeting our weird people. Started with a crazy lady who wouldn't check her luggage in the terminal. Then the woman who got up after takeoff and they came over the intercom and said all people should stay seated. Then the drunk man who wandered around during landing and tried to pay for the free snacks and drinks and carried his cigarette around and wouldn't sit back down. Then the security guard on the bike at Hartsfield who was just chilling on Renee's car. Then the woman in the parking ticket area thing who couldn't get Renee's time ticket thing from the parking lot to show up with the numbers, so she made Renee give her driver's liscense but wouldn't explain how that helped the times show up. Then Renee threw her money in the toll on 400 and it didn't register. It was just a bunch of little weird things that just didn't quite go right. Then We arrived at Starbucks off of 13, Renee dropped us off and both my and Stephen's mommies picked us up, and I was completely depressed because in between Pikes Nursery and the Waffle House of Forsyth County Georgia was one of the LAST places on earth I wanted to be.
All in all.... I pretty much absolutly without a doubt beyond all belief LOVED New York City and will absolutly live there sometime in my youth. And I did not want to come home. At all. And I'm really tired. And I found that if I don't eat every time everyone else does like I usually do, and only eat about half those times, (still not just when I'm hungry, but not as much as normal people) that I feel a lot better. And I wonder, if I didn't eat until I was hungry, how long I'd go. I've never really tried it, except when I'm sick. But that's when I"m sick and I don't eat for about a week then. I really just don't need much food or sleep to live. But I LOVE New York. SO MUCH. Thant's about it. Goodbye!
Friday: I go to Marta and arrive at Hartsfield by myself. Find out my flight had been canceled, so I had to change flights by myself. GO through all the stuff and get to the terminal and board the flight all by myself, all feeling very cool and grown up because I'm by myself. Then I sit down and wonder who'll be next to me. It's an older man who looks like he'd be very nice and I get excited. So I say 'Hi!' and he says 'Shh". Then I get scared and curl up in the corner with my hooded jacket all zipped up and over my head and go to sleep on my knee for the rest of the flight because I was scared of him. Arrive in NYC at Laguardia and get a taxi by myself to the hotel. Meet up with Renee, Nancy and Siri in the hotel. Siri and I go out to explore the city, and I fall in love with it. Meet up with D2 at some point. Go back to the hotel, (Milford Plaza), meet up with the rest of the group and wander the city a bit more. We stop by Virgin Records and the giant Toys R Us, where D2 finds his long lost childhood toy and I buy Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans. Then we go out to eat at Stardust Cafe, where the waiters and waitresses all sing to you. Then we walk around Rockefeller Center and Times Square and have a generally AMAZING time. A rather late night. I stayed in the boys room for a while talking with Sam and Ryan, until Sam fell asleep. (Sometime around 1:30), then go back to my room and finally fall asleep around 2:45, then get woken up every time the elevator stops on our floor, because it's directly across the hall from our room.
Saturday:
Wake up early and eat breakfast in the little diner thing below the hotel. Then we walk over to the Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids office a few blocks down from our hotel and have a meeting all day. Meet Joe Norton, the coolest guy who knows everybody in New York. We break for lunch for 1 hr and wander a little street fair that was going on below the office. Super awesome. Then back to meetings until 5 something. Then we run back to the hotel and get changed for the show that night- The Producers. We arrive at the St. James Theatre at 6:15 and are shown in the stage door by Bob, the hero of the ITO. We get a FULL BACKSTAGE TOUR, including costume and makeup rooms and artists, cast members, assorted crew members, walk around on stage, play with the props (Like Adolph the pigeon :) and walk around the set, meet the musicians, go way down into the bowels of the theatre, see all the electronic equipment (AMAZING)... a full package. Then we get free tickets and watch the show. Post show, we are shown again into the backstage area and meet the actors, and we drag Brad Oscar (Max Bialystock) and Hunter Foster (Leo Bloom) onto the stage and take pictures with them. I WALKED AROUND A BROADWAY STAGE with BROADWAY ACTORS! In short... amazing. Head back to the hotel; crash.
Sunday:
Wake up even earlier (5:45) and get ready for the flea market. We arrive there around 6:50 and spend the next hour and a half setting up the tables and booths all along the street and Shubert Alley for the BC/EFA fleamarket and auction. Then we set up our booth and sell stuff and walk up and down the street getting people to come to our booth until 6:00, I think. We eat behind our booth at some point in there. Oh- and meet a LOT of famous people. Joanna Gleason, Rosie O'Donnell, Anthony Rapp, Tim Curry, to name a few... And Hunter came and visited us at our booth too:). Other visitors- D2, Caryn Herring and Stephen Simon! At some point the BC/EFA guys steal Ryan and me to go help them- keep in mind we've been standing pretty much since 6:00 the night before (we stood during The Producers) so our feet are KILLING us- and we go hand out little flyers to people coming out of the Broadway shows. I felt like a genuine street vendor- it was SO cool. Except for the part where my feet were dying. The booth next to ours- the Broadway Bares booth- was selling costumes from the stripper show (a BC/EFA fundraiser) and I bought one because the gay man gave it to me for a very cheap price, and then at the end of the day, the other mostly naked gay man gave me a white lace corset. Not sure what I'll do with a black minidress and a lace corset... but I have them! And as the first gay man said, 'And now when I look at them I'll know that someone stripped in them for a good cause!' Sometime many hours later, Sam says he's booked us a table at Sardi's, the famous restaurant that has caricatures of bunches and bunches of famous people (most signed) on its walls, and we eat there. When we come back to the hotel, Siri and I take off our shows and my feet are so ouchy and swollen... but SO worth it. I go hang out in the boys room with Sam and Ryan and Stephen, and Stephen and I have a nice little chat while Sam falls asleep and then Ryan and I have a nice little chat while Stephen falls asleep, and then I leave.
Monday:
Woke up slightly later (very nice) and have breakfast... somewhere. Then we set out to the Subway and I'm very excited and they all laugh at me, because they've all been there before. We go to Chinatown and Canal Street and SoHo and all that and wander around and shop. Which was a lot of fun until they all wanted to go look in shoe and clothing stores and I didn't like it too much, but it wasn't too bad. I mean come on- it's NYC. Do you really think I'll have any kind of a bad time in NYC? I buy a few random things here and there, and Casey buys a long trench- style jacket and fedora that look, well, HOT. And I really like a white long trench jacket from H&M that was rather reasonably priced and I completely would have gotten it were it not for the fact that I live in Georgia and it doesn't get cold enough. We then head back on the Subway to the hotel, pick up our luggage and grab a taxi back to Laguardia... and I become very depressed. Stephen changes his flight from the 5:00 to the 4:00 so that he can fly back with Renee and I, then I change my seat and make 3 people move so that I can sit next to him and be able to talk. Also I was scared of my last solo flying experience with the 'shh' man. But 3 people moved for me!:) Had a good conversation with Stephen that covered just about everything. And at the airport we started meeting our weird people. Started with a crazy lady who wouldn't check her luggage in the terminal. Then the woman who got up after takeoff and they came over the intercom and said all people should stay seated. Then the drunk man who wandered around during landing and tried to pay for the free snacks and drinks and carried his cigarette around and wouldn't sit back down. Then the security guard on the bike at Hartsfield who was just chilling on Renee's car. Then the woman in the parking ticket area thing who couldn't get Renee's time ticket thing from the parking lot to show up with the numbers, so she made Renee give her driver's liscense but wouldn't explain how that helped the times show up. Then Renee threw her money in the toll on 400 and it didn't register. It was just a bunch of little weird things that just didn't quite go right. Then We arrived at Starbucks off of 13, Renee dropped us off and both my and Stephen's mommies picked us up, and I was completely depressed because in between Pikes Nursery and the Waffle House of Forsyth County Georgia was one of the LAST places on earth I wanted to be.
All in all.... I pretty much absolutly without a doubt beyond all belief LOVED New York City and will absolutly live there sometime in my youth. And I did not want to come home. At all. And I'm really tired. And I found that if I don't eat every time everyone else does like I usually do, and only eat about half those times, (still not just when I'm hungry, but not as much as normal people) that I feel a lot better. And I wonder, if I didn't eat until I was hungry, how long I'd go. I've never really tried it, except when I'm sick. But that's when I"m sick and I don't eat for about a week then. I really just don't need much food or sleep to live. But I LOVE New York. SO MUCH. Thant's about it. Goodbye!