Pulse Park

Watch the video and then click on this link to learn more about Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s Pulse Park installation at Madison Square Park in NYC. AMAZING!

The Big Apple at Night

"Rent" Final Performance and After-party

It still makes me pause and look...

Awesome- still...

No No Nanette

Friday night, I went with my friend Warren to see "No No Nanette" at New York City Center Encores! starring Sandy Duncan, Charles Kimbrough, Beth Leavel, and Rosie O'Donnell.

Rosie and Beth were amazing at the stage door. I didn't see Kimbrough, and Sandy Duncan couldn't be bothered to actually step off the stoop to greet the people who were waiting in the light drizzly rain to see her.

Here's a video of the evening. You'll spot an additional celebrity encounter in the lobby at intermission. An icon of icons was standing sipping coffee, and I approached her for a photo. Just as Warren was about to snap the shot, someone passed in front of the camera-- I said to the iconic celebrity, "Obviously, he didn't know who I am." She smiled at my joke-- I think.

Here's the link to Rosie's "talkie Blog" post where she mentions the gift that someone gave her at a booksigning in response to her son's question "Whoah! Who made this?" As confirmed in my conversation with her at the stage door, that's ME, and my decoupage box! :) I almost peed my pants.

Jennifer Holliday at Heartworks

Here's the video of Jennifer Holliday at the HeARTworks Gala last week. I was going to edit out my silliness at the beginning while Jennifer is speaking, because, I admit, it is slightly embarrassing. But--- the person I am "carrying on" with is Bebe Neuwirth, and if SHE can get so excited about the performance, I can certainly allow myself a little unbridled giddiness.

Bebe was lovely. She asked a lot of great questions about Marfan syndrome, showing true concern and desire to understand the condition. And it helps that she was as excited as I was to hear that Jennifer Holliday was performing!

Karen Murray, Me, Michelle Smith (Miss Teen Maine International and volunteer extraordinaire) and Bebe Neuwirth

HeARTworks Gala Fundraiser

We held our Annual HeARTworks Gala on Thursday night, raising over $1,000,000 for the NMF. Here's a little video with a few highlights. Jennifer Holliday performed, but I will post a seperate video of that in a few days.

Frozen Grand Central

Very cool video...

Follow the Yellow Brick Road

I was walking un the Upper East Side on the way to a work meeting yesterday morning, anc stumbled across an actual yellow brick walkway on E. 70th. :)

Tourist in My Own Town

I took the day off on Friday to play in NYC with a friend visiting from Tucson. We did the Museum of Modern Art and strolled around Central Park. A PERFECT day in NYC!






The Martin Puryear sculpture "Ladder for Booker T. Washington, 1996." I loved this piece.

Sweet Heart

A heart and an urban cat on a NYC street.

This sweet baby was sitting on top of a stack of freight that had been unloaded from a delivery truck in the flower district in NYC. I stopped to give him a little pet and noticed his heart tag. :)

9/11 Anniversary

Cartoon by Jeff Parker, Florida Today

On September 11, 2001, I left my apartment in Brooklyn at the usual time of about 8:00am to start my daily commute to work in Port Washington (Long Island). My route put me on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway directly across from the southern tip of Manhattan, with the World Trade Center prominent in my sightline, and then north, driving parallel to the NYC skyline to the Long island Expressway. Even after having done the commute to Long Island for well over a year, the City-view with the early morning sunlight ALWAYS made me take note. That particular morning was perfectly clear-- no clouds at all.

For some reason I was listening to a CD that morning instead of my usual ritual of NPR. About 45 minutes later, I arrived to a state of confusion at the office as people were trying to make sense of the jumbled news reports that there was an explosion at the World Trade Center. I had just passed by there on my way in, but clearly had just missed it. We had no television, and the portable radio was inadequate, so I called Dad to see if he was watching the Today Show and could tell me what was going on. I relayed the information from him to my co-workers that there were rumors that a small plane had crashed downtown. Then the confusion was compounded when dad said "A plane just hit the the World Trade Center." I said that we had already heard that, and he said, "No-- another plane just hit the second tower!"

Now, it is certainly a testament to just how naive I was that my first reaction was that something was somehow malfunctioning with the airplanes and air traffic navigation systems at the NYC airports causing planes to crash. I truly believed that for a brief moment, until Dad said, "No-- this is terrorism." In unison with the rest of the civilized world, as has been proclaimed ad nauseum in the media since tht day, I/we lost our collective innocence on that day. We were suddenly living in the "after" version of our world, and we hadn't even begun to realize how deeply it had just been rocked.

The confusion became utter disorientation when I looked out the window of my office looking over Manhasset Bay and the Long Island Sound and could see two distinct billowing streams of dark smoke rising up from behind the hills off in the distance. I knew intellectually that I was seeing the smoke from the WTC. However, until that moment, I had always thought that the window of my office faced north. I tried to rationalize that the smoke must be from something else since (in my skewed geographical view of the world) my window faced north. When I managed to "get rational" again about the directions, I was shocked by the distance. All those hours and hours of sitting in my car driving back and forth to Long Island, and I was just over the hill from the City, and I was actually watching the smoke from the WTC rise into the sky in front of me-- not on television, but right before my eyes. When I thought back on that later, it was mind boggling how fixated I had become on the direction and distance to Manhattan.

Everyone has their own story of where they were and what they were doing that day, and it really seems to me that, at least among New Yorkers, we all share a deep understanding of the craziness we all experienced that day as we waited to hear news of unaccounted for friends and colleagues. The hastily crafted "Missing" flyers that appeared on lamp posts and blanketed the sides of buildings by the thousands became their own lasting reminder of the frantic desperation that so many felt. I can remember passing one of the walls and realizing that people were actually stopping and reading them in detail. I saw one face that seemed strangely familiar, although I couldn't place where I knew her. I finally realized that I had seen her sister holding up a copy of the flyer for a news camera and pleading for anyone with any information to call her.

For hours, even days, we watched the television, waiting for the talking heads to add something new from their last live report, but instead seeing more and more people with their printed flyers as hope gradually began to fade. The image of these "Missing" flyers has cemented itself in the American psyche.

This cartoon is brilliant. The message is conveys is disturbing.

CURTAINS Stage door

I love the stage door! This is a (not so good) photo of Debra Monk, who was amazing. David Hyde Pierce was adorable as the detective who would rather be on stage with the cast than interrogating them under suspicion of murdering the atrocious, no-talent diva killed while on-stage in an out-of-town preview. Photos of me with him at the stage door to follow... I asked him for his phone number, but he just let out a nervous chuckle and signed my program. Oh well...

Who says there are no jobs...

Playing tourist in my own town...
I can always grab a guitar, don my skivies, and stand "naked" on the streets of Times Square and take dollars for pics with tourists...

A Night in NYC

My friend Warren had an extra ticket to see "Xanadu" on Broadway. Who would have thought that (arguably) one of the worst movies ever made would be such a truly entertaining night of theater.

Warren's dad's friend's daughters (did you follow that) were visiting from Texas and Warren had agreed to show them around NYC a little. Having never met them, he wasn't sure what to expect. As it turns out, they were a blast, and we ended up having dinner, the show and MANY MANY drinks after at a few different bars in the City.

Mary or Peggy (I can't remember which one-- too much tequila) took this photo just before Warren decided to call it a night. I stayed with the girls and before I realized, it was 4:40am. I put them in a cab to their hotel and then walked (pretty well, I might add) to Penn Station.

This is the emptiest I've ever seen Times Square. It was almost pleasant. No tourists pushing and shoving their through the overwhelming crowds.

These two were out cold. The kind of shots the frat buddies would use to hold over them later. The cops came along and totally "harshed their mellow." Getting the guy in pink to his feet proved to be quite a challenge, but the crowd watching cheered them both. It was oddly uplifting... LOL

It was a great night all around. I got home at 6:30 am, had to be at work at 11am-- I am definitely getting too old for that, but such a great time.

Thanks, Warren!

A higher purpose...

I almost died today... This 8' x 8' section of a construction barricade wall crashed down to the street from about 15 feet up and landed on the sidewalk RIGHT BEHIND me as I passed by. If I had been about 2 seconds later, I would have been clocked on the head! I must have a higher purpose in my life, so it wasn't my time... SCARY!

Ah, Beautiful New York

(click to enlarge)

I was in a meeting at the American Heart Association's New York affiliate in their 18th floor Midtown offices. This was the view across the street from their terrace. I never saw the art deco detail up close before. I had sent this from my moblog, but I was with a co-worker that actually had her digital camera--- it was a better shot so I linked to hers instead. Beautiful!