Family Guy Sings! at Carnegie Hall.

When I heard that the show was coming to town, it was something I definitely wanted to check out but didn't actually think I would - two nights only, no one to go with, etc.

Earlier this week Jimmy, who it turns out is friends with writer/actor/performer-in-show John Viener and his girlfriend Jessica, tells me that he's going to the show and I joke that he should get a ticket for me, too.

Yesterday at about 5:30 Jimmy messages me to tell me that the two other people he asked before me can't make it, and if I want to go, his other ticket is mine - belated birthday present and all that.

We meet up about 2 1/2 hrs later, finally get to the front of the will call line and joke that the seats are probably nosebleeds or behind a pillar or something -- nope! 4th row center!


The show is incredibly hilarious, of course. Live reading of the two-part "Stewie Kills Lois" episode interspersed with a greatest-hits of musical numbers from the show, the Vegas live album, and a couple numbers written especially for the show, accompanied by full orchestra and chorus.


After the show we meet up with Viener and a couple of his friends and hang out backstage. The fun seems to be happening in one of the loungey green rooms, but because of the big crowd of people everyone keeps getting shifted around until basically we're just kind of standing around the lobby area where the elevators let out. Macaulay Culkin walks past me twice (not a fan). Were I a chick I would absolutely hate Mila Kunis for being able to wear that dress, and being able to look that good in it.


I want to tell Seth Green about the time I rode on the bus with him (M72, crosstown), but he is mobbed by tweens, plus the story isn't that interesting anyway.


Mike Henry, nice guy and voice of Cleveland, creepy Mr. Herbert, and a thousand others.


Mike Henry and John Viener (writer, voice of thousands of "incidental" characters on the show, including Morgan Freeman, Harrison Ford, and the "We now return to..." guy).


Jimmy with Seth MacFarlane.

Afterwards it's across the street to the Carnegie Club with Jimmy, Viener, and friends for chat, laughs, smokes and Sidecars. Really don't want to go work tomorrow.

Happy birthday, Priscilla!

Join the Impact's protest against California's proposition 8, City Hall.



I'm no good at estimating numbers, but people are packed on BOTH sides of Broadway (and into lanes of traffic) from Park Row to Chambers.


View looking downtown.


View looking uptown.









When we say the words and sign our names,
If they take it away again someday,
This beautiful thing won't change.

-Vienna Teng
"City Hall"

Jeni on the Brooklyn Bridge.

Brooklyn.

Duncan Sheik, Town Hall, with Shannon, Izzy, Jeni, Levs, Ken, Alayna, and Danelle.




Holly Brook.



Lauren Pritchard opens; I love her voice, and am liking her songs more and more every time I hear them.

Set list (virtually identical to the Mamaroneck show):

1) For You
2) Wishful Thinking
3) Such Reveries
4) Mama Who Bore Me (w. Holly Brook)
5) Touch Me (w. Holly Brook and Lauren Pritchard)
6) The Dark I Know Well (w. Holly Brook and Lauren Pritchard)
7) The Guilty Ones
8) Don't Do Sadness / Blue Wind (w. Lauren Pritchard)
9) She Runs Away (w. Lauren Pritchard)
10) It's Better to Be Dead
11) We're Here to Tell You
12) The Tale of Solomon Snell
13) We Don't Believe in You
14) Earthbound Starlight
15) Take a Bow

Encore:
16) On a High
17) Home
18) Fake Plastic Trees

Somewhere in between the beginning and the end
September took the tourists and settled in for good.
You could hear the trains again, Brooklyn girls in scarves.
Summer left and no one said a word.

- Matt Nathanson
"Bulletproof Weeks"

Tell me Satan himself wouldn't live in this building.

Election Night at Pacific Standard, Brooklyn.

It's New York City Marathon day, and every year my thoughts drift back to life on 1st Ave., to my first two years living in NYC. I lived in a second floor apartment near E.70th, and the marathon went right under my window. More than the unending throngs of people, more than the triumph and inspiration of unbelievable human accomplishment, more than the heart-melting spectacle of people cheering on their friends and fathers and sons and mothers and daughters and complete and total strangers, more than any of that my overwhelming memory of the experience and privilege of living right on the marathon route is...the horrible bar band that set up in the plaza directly across the street to play the same eight Bon Jovi and jam-bandy covers over and OVER AND OVER AGAIN, ALL DAY.

The Schwartzes moved to Central Park South last December, into an apartment just two floors above the street, and having to listen to the cover bands across the street all afternoon is giving me major flashbacks. (And to the question of what is a more inappropriate song for a bar band to play along the marathon route than "Material Girl", the answer is "Video Killed the Radio Star".)



Thankfully, this guy does a lot better.