Wedding Singer, A Review

Ever since seeing Avenue Q (my first show) on Broadway this past spring, I have been hooked on the Broadway experience.
Considering my thoughts while standing in line to see Avenue Q “I can’t believe I am going to see a play [like the ones in high school]. Not only that, but this one is $60 and has puppets!” now I can’t believe I was so short-sighted in my views of Broadway. Avenue Q was great and the score was instantly addictive with songs like [favorites listed]: What Do You Do with a B.A. in English?, It Sucks to Be Me, Everyone's a Little Bit Racist and The Internet Is for Porn.
Needless to say, I am hooked. When I was in New York for the first two weeks in October, shows would have to added to the list of things to do. I had lined up The Wedding Singer and Monty Python’s SPAMALOT for the two weeks that I was there. Unfortunately I had to bail on SPAMALOT till the next time I am in New York.
The desire to see The Wedding Singer over one of the other comedic Broadway Musicals was driven by my love for Stephen Lynch and his musical comedy. The Wedding Singer tells the story of Robbie Hart, a popular New Jersey wedding singer, who begins to ruin other people's wedding days after his fiancée leaves him at the altar. Things begin to look up after he meets Julia, a warm-hearted waitress -- who is also engaged to be married.

The Wedding Singer was a bit of a shallow show, and very predictable (especially if you saw the movie with Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore). The cast is good and the score is good but I was waiting for a breakout from one of the main characters the whole show – it never came. It is a fun “date show” that doesn’t require much thought or emotional investment. I don’t see it becoming one of those shows that is on Broadway for multiple years, like Les Miserables or RENT. If you are looking for a light-hearted comedy, see it only if you can’t get tickets to Avenue Q!

Shadyness on Canal Street

Chinatown in New York City is unofficially known as the place in the city to get good knock offs of popular name brands like Coach, Rolex and Louis Vuitton. One cannot take five steps out of the train station before being assaulted by all sorts of people standing on the sidewalk, inconspicuously, saying the brand names that they offer. If you are interested in some of their knock off wares, you should acknowledge the person and they will take you to some back room of a storefront or in my case, a beat up mini van a block off Canal Street (the main street in Chinatown).
The person I was with was interested in getting a “Coach” bag. I was totally against such activities, but since the person from whom we would be buy said “Coach” bag was known by one of the people I was spending the day with, my uneasiness was abated – momentarily. We were ushered down a back street towards a beat-up mid-80’s mini van. I didn’t know what to expect, but apparently we had reached the place of business. I was planning on waiting outside the van since my instincts of self-preservation were kicking in at this point. I was ushered into the van where I found myself sitting on a wooden plank that was supported by two milk crates. Around me were hundreds of knock off bags. They were on the “after-market wooden shelving” installed in the car as well as all over the floor. While my companion and merchant were talking about the bags, I noticed that there was a thick black felt cloth that was stapled to the ceiling blocking out the visibility from behind the driver’s seat as well as heavy blackout window tint on all of the windows in the rear of the car.
Anyway, this super shady, obviously illegal, operation got me thinking as to how much money someone could make selling knock off handbags to people on the sidewalk. My friend asked him if he made good money selling bags. He responded that he had made about $1,000 bucks yesterday (Saturday). $1,000 for a weekend seemed pretty typical in the way that he responded. Assuming a 100% mark up, that would mean he and his wife (this is a two person operation) would make $1,000 profit, per weekend. Of course there would be no taxes to account for. Not bad if this is your side job! Unfortunately, this is highly contingent on many factors like the presence of the NYPD (a night in jail and $10,000 fine if caught) and weather – since not many people like walking around on the sidewalk in the rain. Not to
All in all a pretty interesting experience, one that I would not like to repeat anytime soon. Maybe I will be more accepting of this type of “back-door” business if I were to travel to Asia or Europe.
[Unfortunately I didn’t get a picture of the interior of the mini van, it would have been a sight, but I leave you with a sign of one of the “legit” street vendors.]

The Way I See It #178

I was sitting down to my computer this morning with my obligatory grande house blend coffee from Starbucks when the brown cardboard sleeve that the coffee comes in slipped off revealing the "Way I See It" series. I always knew that it was on there, but never took notice since I was always rushing around. The purpose of the series is to get people talking and engaged in "good, healthy discussion."
Here is what my cup had to say:

The measure of genuine civilization, it has been said, is the quality of life for a nation's poorest and least priviledged people. By that measure, we are barbarians. Our current level of inequality cannot be justified or sustained.
--Robert W. McChesney Author, media critic and professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

As I sit here in downtown Manhattan, one block from Wall Street, I wonder how I can work to better the quality of life for this nation's poor. Short of donating money and volunteering my time I don't have a good way of bettering society's ills. Hell, I have enough of a problem keeping myself above water.
More thought on this is required.

Tough Decisions

This is becoming an ever increasingly difficult decision to make.
Paper or Pixels?

So Pissed

It is 11:30pm and I am getting ready to sit down with In an Uncertain World when I realized that I left it on the Amtrak train when coming up to New York City this morning. Time to find the closest bookstore in the morning.
What a let down :-(