New York State Of Mind

It turns out that the city was so nice, we just had to visit twice.

As a combination Graduation/Christmas/Birthday/Valentine’s Day/BetterNotAskAgain Present, we took our son and his girlfriend to New York City. His girlfriend wanted to see Tiffany’s . I think our son wanted to spit off of the Empire State Building.

The trip started with a celebrity sighting. My wife said, “Don’t turn around but there is someone famous behind you.”  Like all good husbands, I turned around because “Don’t turn around”  means “Turn around and look stupid, preferably with your mouth open” to us.  I turned around and didn’t see anyone famous.  It would have been great to have turned around and saw George Will. My wife's boss is always running into famous people I want to see, like George Will. However, instead of seeing George Will, I saw a well groomed young man. More on this later.

The trip was uneventful. No problems getting our luggage. It was here the fun started.

Last year when we went to New York, we took a “shuttle” from the airport to the hotel. It was okay from the standpoint that we “survived” a trip with 20 other people cramped into an SUV going 400 miles an hour, but this year we decided to do something a little different. We decided to take a taxi.

At the airport, there is a guy who is in charge of getting your taxi for you. He is straight out of central casting. Big guy, with a booming voice, who spends most of his time yelling at people to “get outta here”.  Since, we were four adults with luggage, we had to have a special taxi.

The Guy In Charge of Getting Your Taxi motioned us to this taxi, which was small, yellow Ford Escape.  We put the luggage in the back. The driver asks where we need to go. I tell him, “Marriott Renaissance, Times Square”.  He said, “Do you have the address?” I was going to tell him that it is the Hotel that had the Big R on it before my son, using the web surfing skills he’s acquired in college, told him the actual address.

The taxi ride was ok. No near death experiences (for us; for a couple of cyclists-yes). I asked the driver how long he’s been driving a taxi. “Six months.” “You like it?” “It’s a living.” We’ve haven’t even gotten to the hotel, and the kids have experienced the real New York.

We arrive at the hotel and the check-in clerk was extra snotty with a dose of passive-aggression. Fortunately, we let the clerk know that this was not Jethro and Elle-Mae coming to the big city and we better get something we want or we will not be happy. Somehow, she found something that made us happy.

We went to the room, deposited our luggage, and went out into the night to find something to eat on Christmas Day.

We were walking in Times Square when my wife pointed at a billboard and said, “That’s the guy on our plane”. It was a picture of George Will. Seriously, it was a billboard for new show  on FOX called "Enlisted" and the guy on the plane was actor Chris Lowell. He was Skeeter's boyfriend in "The Help". That's how my life is now: I don't recognize anyone on a billboard in Times Square.

Believe it or not, there were a lot a places closed on Christmas Day. We stumbled into The Hard Rock, which would have been great if it was 1994. We amazed our waitress (who informed us later that she had "partied" with George Will Metallica) by telling her we had been to The Hard Rock in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. My son, the college graduate, committed the ultimate faux pas and asked for "Sweet Tea" to drink. Kids, you try to train them right.

The only bad part of the vacation is that we all came down with this killer strain of an upper respiratory/swine flu that was just awful. One evening, everybody wanted to go shopping some more, but I couldn't take it, so I went back to the room. When they came back to the room, they told me they saw another celebrity: George Will The Naked Cowgirl.

The Naked Cowgirl is a subsidiary of  The Naked Cowboy, INC which is a guy that stands around wearing a cowboy hat and a pair of briefs playing the guitar. The Naked Cowgirl is the same exact thing except she wears a bra, too.  My wife said she had a big Ponderosa.