So Many Adventures...So Little Time

Ok ok..so I haven't done the photo tour yet....I'm working on it!  I finally got my posters up in my room so I can only assume a photo tour is not far behind.

But first!  I've been having a lot of fun adventures recently so this will be yet another super long post with a lot of pictures.

The countdown has started and my summer fridays are slowly dwindling (in fact I only have one left) so before they are gone forever (or until next summer) I decided to enjoy them!  So last weekend when I got off work on Friday I ended up going to the Intrepid Museum.  It is a museum that is on an old military aircraft carrier.  It also has a submarine that you can tour.  I had never been so it was really interesting to go and see everything.  It is also currently housing the Enterprise Space Shuttle, which was really awesome to see.  The best part was that when I got up to get my student discounted ticket they informed me that as a Columbia student I got in for free!  (Sometimes I love having gone to Columbia).

The outside of the Intrepid

The Space Shuttle!

This is a picture from when they flew the Enterprise around the city

There was a Disney Cruise Ship parked next to it

The Submarine

There is a typo on this sign and it made me laugh...can you find it?
(hint: 2nd paragraph 3rd line)

Random interlude between activities:
I made pie!!!  It was just chocolate pudding inside a ready-made chocolate graham cracker crust but it was DELICIOUS

Also when I was walking to the Intrepid from work the Glee people were hanging out in Times Square to promote the 3rd Season on DVD.  They had a purple piano so I went and played it!

Saturday morning of that same weekend was a little bit crazy in that my roommates and I all got up at 5am (5AM!!!) in order to go to Central Park (we got there at 6:30am) and wait in line for tickets to see Into the Woods (part of the Shakespeare/Sondheim in the park series).  I've always wanted to see one of these shows which are free and in the really cool theatre in Central Park but tickets are hard to get.  They don't hand out the tickets until 1pm and since they're free people line up super early to wait.  Into the Woods is a musical that I love and fun people like Amy Adams were in it so we decided to try.  So we waited from 6:30am until 1pm through a pouring thunderstorm while half asleep.  We got tickets though so it was totally worth it!  Even though we got there so early we were not at the front of the line by any means.  In fact I found out the people who were at the very front (like first 5 or so) got in line at 2am.  Now that's just insane.

The line in front of us

The line behind us

Me guarding our place in line (yes I caved and bought a chair from
the guy running up and down selling them)

The other funny thing about waiting in the giant line is that there are these guys who bike up and down selling umbrellas, ponchos, and camp chairs for actually not outrageous prices.  There is also a deli that you can call and will actually deliver your food to the line.  We did that for lunch and it really wasn't bad.  So all in all it wasn't a bad experience (mostly after it stopped raining).

On Sunday I took a trip to the Bronx Zoo!  This is supposed to be one of the best zoos in the country actually and it was a very good one I have to say.  I haven't been to a zoo in ages so that in itself was super exciting plus just to be going there was fun.  Again, I was able to get cheap tickets online through my Columbia connections.  I only brought my cell phone which isn't the best for animal picture taking so I don't have that many pictures.

And finally, last night (basically a full week after the other events in this post) Kari and I were able to get last minute tickets to see The Best Man.  This is a play I've been wanting to see and since it's closing the first week of Sept it's a good thing I got to go!  It is a play written by Gore Vidal about the presidential primaries in Philadelphia in 1960 but the interesting thing is that it is still very relevant to today.  There was also a massive amount of celebrities (names are on the sign in the picture) in the cast so that was fun as well.  It was a really good play even though I think a lot of the references kind of went over my head considering I don't know that much about politics and I especially don't know that much about politics in the 1960s.

Catching Up

I know, I know, it's been forever since I've posted.  But I've had a good reason, well 2.  One reason is that I was moving which involves lots of packing and generally being crazy and the second is that I didn't even have internet again until last week.  But I'll try and hit the highlights in this post and once I've finally finished organizing and unpacking I'll do a photo tour of my new apartment :)

So, starting out.  The moving!!!

Moving was very stressful, but I did it!  A couple of key points:

I drove the following van through NYC loaded up with my stuff.  Be impressed, I know I am.

Here are a couple of the moving photos:

Empty old closet

Empty old living room

The moving van partially full

Piling everything at the new apartment

My old - and tiny- empty room

After all the moving craziness, Kari and I decided to give ourselves a little break and we saw Simon Amstell!  He's a British comedian who I like and who I never ever expected to actually do a show in the US since he's not very well known here.  But he did a show, and I got to go see it, and he was hysterical.  I'm so glad I was able to see him perform live :)

This is a picture of the stage, there was a projection on the stage
saying "NUMB" (The name of the tour)

Me with Simon Amstell!

Other random things:

BBC America has a new show that will air on August 19th called Copper.  There is a lot of marketing going behind it and they have ads all over the Times Square subway station which I think is super cool.

This is Joanna - she's Kari's birdy :)  She's a canary and is super cute.

I had these strange round ice cube things that I had never tried and the other night I got the bright idea to put Midori (and water) into it and see what would happen.  I ended up with  Midori ice cube!  It went great in my Midori sour :)

And then this weekend a family friend is visiting so we've been wandering around the city.  We ended up getting super cheap tickets to a musical that is part of the New York International Fringe Festival. The show was called "Non-Equity The Musical"  It was basically about 6 non-equity actors living their lives in nyc, going to auditions, and how hard it is.  It was cute, but definitely could use some work.

The theatre where we saw the show

Ok well I think that's all I have to update on for now.  I will try to get a photo tour of the apartment up soon.  But basically I loooove my new apartment, I'm so excited to be living with awesome roommates who also happen to be two of my favorite people.  It's a pretty exciting time!

Moving is Awful

I'm packing!  And no I'm not done.  But I'm making progress!

An Oregon Adventure

We take a small break in Big Apple Adventures to bring you an Oregon Adventure!

Yep, for the past week I've been in Oregon visiting my parents and my grandparents who are also visiting.

Basically it was a very relaxing week of shopping (no sales tax, woo hoo!), seeing friends from college, visiting with former coworkers, eating at the restaurants I can't go to in NY, and I'm probably forgetting something but that seems about the gist of it.  I'm actually writing this post from the airport as I wait to take my red-eye outta here.

I made potato chip cookies with my grandma which was fun.  I've always loved these cookies and now I finally know how to make them.

Salem is doing this art installation thing where they placed pianos all over the city that anyone could go and play should they so desire.  So my mom took a couple of pictures of me playing the piano that is on the pedestrian bridge.

I guess the only other major news is that I got my hair cut!  I love that it takes me literally 30 seconds to dry in the mornings again.

I also ended up going through a lot of boxes of my childhood possessions, especially books from elementary school and finally got rid of a ton.  I'm actually going to donate many of the children's books to the library of an elementary school in California named after my great-great-grandfather!  When I was looking through all of the boxes I found all the old vhs home videos my parents had taken through the years and man, they were hysterical to watch.  I ended up recording a few of them from the tv just to have so here's a glimpse.

This is Track Day at the my elementary school in 1994 so I would have been in 1st grade.  Clearly my athleticism knows no bounds.

Well, I think that's everything for now.  New York here I come!!

Stress

So I've kind of been a giant ball of stress and emotion recently, hence the lack of posting.

But I did have a fun weekend a couple of weekends ago when Tom came to visit me!

He was just here for the weekend and he's done most of the normal touristy stuff before so I decided to take him on "Allison's Awesome Adventure Tour".  Stops include Toys R Us, the Nintendo World store, the Lego store, and Dylan's Candy Bar.  Oh and we saw Phantom of the Opera.  Basically, we had a lot of fun :)

On the subway!

Monica came to visit too!  I also met another friend of Tom's!

Other than that I haven't done a whole lot.  I was briefly distracted from real life with the Colorado Wildfires.  Luckily everyone I know seems to be ok but it was a pretty scary couple of days.  And I'll definitely miss the Flying W :(

I've also been dealing with apartment drama but I won't get into that here.  So basically it's been a bundle of emotions, which helps illustrate my theory that I post less when I'm stressed out and you can tell exactly what months are more stressful than others by the amount of posts that they have :P

Oh! I almost forgot!  I have a new baby cousin tooo!  He's completely adorable :).

Ok, that's all for now.  I'll be in Oregon next week for a quick trip which is super exciting too!

A Sunday Adventure

On Sunday Kari and I decided to have a little adventure and we wandered down to Bloomingdales to check out an exhibit they were having of Broadway costumes.  It was smaller than I expected, but pretty neat!

Phantom of the Opera

The Producers

Sister Act

The Lion King

The Lion King

The wardrobe from Beauty and the Beast

The hats are from Aida

More Aida hats

Since Bloomingdales is right next to Dylan's Candy Bar...we of course had to pop in and check it out / buy candy.  :)

They had a big advertisement for these new Girl Scout candy bars!  I really wanted to buy some but they had already sold out.  I don't think GS had this much marketing in my day....

Don't Dress for Dinner

Saturday night I went to see Don't Dress for Dinner.  It was actually the show's closing weekend so I'm glad I had a chance to see it.

The show is a french farce and so it was very very funny.  I think I laughed practically the whole time.  It's hard to explain what the show is about, but the short version is that it's a married couple who each somehow end up having their lovers invited to the house all at the same time.  So it's a lot of miscommunication and slapstick humor.  Also the part I really enjoyed is that one of the actresses in it was in Urinetown when I saw it on Broadway when I was 14.  She was hysterical in the show and I find it so amusing that I saw her in a different show just over 10 years ago!




I also ended up going to Brooklyn during the day on Saturday and saw some awesome views of Manhattan!

This is basically the financial district

If you look really carefully you can see the Statue of Liberty

The Brooklyn Bridge

The Manhattan Bridge

Another view of the Manhattan Bridge

More Tonys and Harvey

First of all, there is finally a good video out there for Harvey, so take a look!





And then here are my favorite Tony Award moments as promised last post :)

Of course we have the opening number:



And Neil Patrick Harris' opening number:



And an awesome Newsies performance:



The Year in Plays was pretty good. I especially liked the live performance from Peter and the Starcatcher and One Man 2 Guvners:



I think finally just the closing number! I'll wait to post any other cast performances that I liked until I see that show, if I get a chance to see any of the shows haha.



And there you go!

Tony Predictions - And winners!

If you care about not knowing who won the Tony awards last night...well then you'd better come back and read this post later.  That's your warning.

Kari and I made Tony predictions right before they started last night but as I wasn't around my computer at that time, I'll post them now along with who actually won!  We got a lot wrong (mostly when it had to do with Nice Work If You Can Get It, but I think we made some pretty good guesses!  Our guesses are highlighted in blue with winners notated in bold.

We had a total of 13 correct guesses (Kari had 15 because I really just wanted Newsies to sweep the board and she was smarter and realized that Once would win a lot of awards).

I think Once pretty much swept the board with 11 nominations and 8 Tonys as far as musicals go and then as far as plays go Peter and the Starcatcher had 9 nominations and 5 Tonys.

I'll do another post later with some of my favorite moments :)

Best Play
Clybourne Park - Winner
Other Desert Cities
Peter and the Starcatcher 
Venus in Fur  

Best Musical
Leap of Faith
Newsies - Allison's prediction
Nice Work If You Can Get It
Once - Kari's prediction - Winner

Best Revival of a Play
Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman - Winner
Gore Vidal’s The Best Man
Master Class
Wit

Best Revival of a Musical
Evita
Follies
The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess - Winner
Jesus Christ Superstar

Best Book of a Musical
Lysistrata Jones
Newsies
Nice Work If You Can Get It
Once - Winner

Best Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics) Written for the Theatre
Bonnie & Clyde
Newsies - Winner
One Man, Two Guvnors
Peter and the Starcatcher

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play
James Corden, One Man, Two Guvnors - Winner
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman
James Earl Jones, Gore Vidal’s The Best Man
Frank Langella, Man and Boy
John Lithgow, The Columnist



Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play
Nina Arianda, Venus in Fur - Winner
Tracie Bennett, End of the Rainbow
Stockard Channing, Other Desert Cities
Linda Lavin, The Lyons
Cynthia Nixon, Wit



Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical
Danny Burstein, Follies
Jeremy Jordan, Newsies
Steve Kazee, Once - Winner
Norm Lewis, The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess
Ron Raines, Follies



Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical
Jan Maxwell, Follies
Audra McDonald, The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess - Winner
Cristin Milioti, Once
Kelli O’Hara, Nice Work If You Can Get It
Laura Osnes, Bonnie & Clyde



Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play
Christian Borle, Peter and the Starcatcher - Winner
Michael Cumpsty, End of the Rainbow
Tom Edden, One Man, Two Guvnors
Andrew Garfield, Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman
Jeremy Shamos, Clybourne Park



Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play
Linda Emond, Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman
Spencer Kayden, Don’t Dress for Dinner
Celia Keenan-Bolger, Peter and the Starcatcher
Judith Light, Other Desert Cities - Winner
Condola Rashad, Stick Fly



Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical
Phillip Boykin, The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess
Michael Cerveris, Evita
David Alan Grier, The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess
Michael McGrath, Nice Work If You Can Get It - Winner
Josh Young, Jesus Christ Superstar



Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical
Elizabeth A. Davis, Once
Jayne Houdyshell, Follies
Judy Kaye, Nice Work If You Can Get It - Winner
Jessie Mueller, On A Clear Day You Can See Forever
Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Ghost the Musical



Best Scenic Design of a Play
John Lee Beatty, Other Desert Cities
Daniel Ostling, Clybourne Park
Mark Thompson, One Man, Two Guvnors
Donyale Werle, Peter and the Starcatcher - Winner



Best Scenic Design of a Musical
Bob Crowley, Once - Winner
Rob Howell and Jon Driscoll, Ghost the Musical
Tobin Ost and Sven Ortel, Newsies
George Tsypin, Spider-Man Turn Off The Dark

Best Costume Design of a Play
William Ivey Long, Don’t Dress for Dinner
Paul Tazewell, A Streetcar Named Desire
Mark Thompson, One Man, Two Guvnors
Paloma Young, Peter and the Starcatcher - Winner



Best Costume Design of a Musical
Gregg Barnes, Follies - Winner
ESosa, The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess
Eiko Ishioka, Spider-Man Turn Off The Dark
Martin Pakledinaz, Nice Work If You Can Get It

Best Lighting Design of a Play
Jeff Croiter, Peter and the Starcatcher - Winner
Peter Kaczorowski, The Road to Mecca
Brian MacDevitt, Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman
Kenneth Posner, Other Desert Cities

Best Lighting Design of a Musical
Christopher Akerlind, The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess
Natasha Katz, Follies
Natasha Katz, Once - Winner
Hugh Vanstone, Ghost the Musical

Best Sound Design of a Play
Paul Arditti, One Man, Two Guvnors
Scott Lehrer, Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman
Gareth Owen, End of the Rainbow
Darron L West, Peter and the Starcatcher - Winner

Best Sound Design of a Musical
Acme Sound Partners, The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess
Clive Goodwin, Once - Winner
Kai Harada, Follies
Brian Ronan, Nice Work If You Can Get It

Best Choreography
Rob Ashford, Evita
Christopher Gattelli, Newsies - Winner
Steven Hoggett, Once
Kathleen Marshall, Nice Work If You Can Get It

Best Direction of a Play
Nicholas Hytner, One Man, Two Guvnors
Pam MacKinnon, Clybourne Park
Mike Nichols, Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman - Winner
Roger Rees and Alex Timbers, Peter and the Starcatcher


Best Direction of a Musical
Jeff Calhoun, Newsies - Allison's prediction
Kathleen Marshall, Nice Work If You Can Get It
Diane Paulus, The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess
John Tiffany, Once - Kari's prediction - Winner



Best Orchestrations
William David Brohn and Christopher Jahnke, The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess
Bill Elliott, Nice Work If You Can Get It
Martin Lowe, Once - Winner
Danny Troob, Newsies

June

I just realized that it's June 8th and I don't have a single posting for the month of June yet!

So random exciting bits of news.

I have a new baby cousin!  I got to see some pictures and he's adorable!

I'm on the apartment hunt again!

I should really get ready for work instead of writing this!