When it was announced that Arthur Darvill (Rory Williams, AKA Rory Pond of Doctor Who fame) was taking over the lead role in the Broadway musical, Once, Julie and I immediately knew we had to see it. She loved the film and I...bought it for her. I actually liked the film too. I don't remember loving it, but I am a fan of Rory...er, I mean Arthur. OK, I'm a bigger fan of his Doctor Who wife, Amy Pond...but she wasn't performing in New York this weekend.
Julie looked into tickets and instantly put the kibosh on the whole shebang.
"It's too expensive."
We have seen a few shows on Broadway. They are expensive, but always worth it.
"We are about to have a child," she reminds me. I don't need the reminder.
"That's exactly why we SHOULD go!" I reply.
We know these opportunities will be few and far between when our little Pond gets here. So Julie happens to mention our situation to our dear friend and jet setter extraordinaire, Tara. Tara sends Julie a link for a "buy one get one free" offer the next day. BAM! Tara is what I call "an enabler." And I love her!
So Julie & skipped out of work early on Friday and caught a train to New York City.
Right in the middle of Fashion Week! Holy Traffic!!! Thank God we decided to take the train and not drive. Who knows what time we'd end up getting home with all of this mess.
(That's called "Foreshadowing" kids)
We had dinner at a very nice Vegan restaurant called, Blossum
(W'oh!)
After dinner we walked about 30 minutes to The Bernard B Jacobs Theatre. It was a hell of a hike for a pregnant lady...and for an out of shape Dad to be. We knew that the walk back to the train would be about 15 minutes.
The show was as amazing as we'd hoped it would be. Our seats were in (about) the 9th row, I think the tickets said 11th, but there were only about 8 rows in front of us. The cast was phenomenal, all playing their own instruments, while singing and dancing. The use of the minimal set and the space was perfect for this show. Darvill and Joanna Christie, who plays "The Girl" (opposite Darvill's "The Guy") were incredible together. I highly recommend running out and seeing this show.
Afterwards we met our Doctor Who star. I took Julie's picture with him and got another fan to take one of all three of us together. Artie, as I call my new buddy, couldn't have been nicer. "You are amazingly tall!" I said to him. He laughed and thanked me. We told him how great his performance was as well as the overall show. He spent time talking to everyone, taking photos with them and signing autographs.
We looked at the time and realized the train left in 20 minutes, if we missed it we'd have to wait a WHOLE hour for the next one. So we left Artie with the intention of catching up with him again soon. It was our intention, not necessarily his. We headed through the theater district and ran smack into the middle of RUBE CENTRAL, Time Square. It was PACKED. We decided to duck back down the next street (44th) to cross back to Madison Square Garden with less traffic. As we were booking ass down 44th, we noticed Kinky Boots and Annie were both letting out. I wasn't sure if there we any other Doctor Who cast members who might be lingering about in these shows (John Barrowman in Kinky Boots would be killer, right?), but we had no time to stop.
We made it to the train station with a handful of seconds to spare. We still had to buy tickets and we both needed to pee. There was no way we were making that train, and that was fine. We had our memories of Artie to talk about and carry us through to the next train in an hour. Julie bought a lemonade from Nathan's and we just hung out talking about the show. I also googled Annie and Kinky Boots to make sure I didn't need to high tail it back to catch up with anyone.
The hour flew and we boarded our train which would eventually take us back to our car in Hamilton, NJ's train station parking lot. The train was pretty packed for this time of night, because the Yankees game let out late, which meant a bunch of drunken, disappointed fans were on the train with us. Oh yeah, the Yankees lost. The commuters included two girls who's voices could not have been any more annoying. The one girl would say "fuck this" and "fuck that" in a high pitch squeaky voice, while the other one just talked about how she was going to "throw up" starting the second she sat in her seat. I pointed these girls out to our unborn daughter and immediately grounded her to make sure the lesson sunk in.
After sitting on the track for what seemed like an hour (it was about 10 minutes), the train start chugging towards our destination.
Something seemed wrong as the train lumbered along, and never seemed to get to full speed. The train's interior light began acting weird and it took forever for us to get to the first stop, Secaucus. Once we were in Secaucus an announcement came over the speakers that there is a power issue and they we going to "reset" something on the train. None of us were engineers, but everyone knew this was some bullshit. The air conditioning didn't work during this entire time either, so it grew hot, QUICKLY. After much more bitching, drunk girls #1 & #2 got off the train. The rest of us rejoiced silently, but remainder on the motionless train. About every 10 minutes there would be an announcement that basically said, "We don't know what's wrong." Because, that's what you want to hear from a high speed train you're currently inhabiting.
Then the announcements came every 15 minutes. "Still no idea what is happening, however there's a low voltage issue on all of the trains through the entire Northeastern Corridor." HOLY SHIT! IT'S THE TERRORISTS!!
Here's a tip, your trains run like SHIT!
Seriously...it is the fucking Terrorists, because we as a country have funneled so much freaking money into chasing the bogeyman that we have let the infrastructure of the nation fall to shit. Be careful on bridges ladies and gentlemen, because they are just going to start falling into the abysses they stretch across (my predication for 2014).
They called in the cops in case we became unruly.
This looks like a Michael Jackson video is about to happen.
Luckily, I have a penchant for whining on Facebook, this resulted in a couple of friends offering to help us with our current predicament. One of those friends, Amy, was only about 6 or 7 or 8 or...well she was in Freehold. Which is about an hour away. Did we want her to come get us? OF COURSE! But, how do you ask a friend to do this? I'm looking at the clock, which now is past 1am and I know I have to be on site filming somewhere at 8:30am. Finally at about 2am, the train is still not moving and the announcements have slowed to once every 25 minutes or so. Amy says, "Screw this, I'm on my way." Actually, this is not how Amy talks, as she is a lady...though a lady from New Jersey, so she probably said "Fuck this, I'm on my way."
At 2:45 am Julie and I have exited the train and are now sitting in the Secaucus Terminal. Where we find:
-a Sbarros that is closed. Dammit, I wanted that black & white cookie...I could probably reach my hand in...
-a Pepsi machine where everything is "SOLD OUT"
-a crappy piece of art
-a statue of two dudes "bro'ing out"
-and of course Edward Snowden.
Jesus, that really is Edward Snowden! Or a guy I thought looked like him so I made Julie take our picture together.
She gets the "Boy Who Waited",
I get the "Dude Who Summers In Russia."
Finally Amy is here...well, not HERE exactly. It seems there is road construction and the exit to get to us is closed. BUT, Amy has heard on the radio that the trains are running again. We run to our platform (Announcements have become nonexistent).
"There's a train going to Hamilton behind this one" we are told.
"Wait, what happened to our train?" We wonder out loud.
"It already left. I think they made an announcement."
FUCKERS. They didn't. I bet the drunk girls are already home. I extend the grounding of my unborn daughter another week.
FINALLY! We are on the train. And exhausted. It's about 3:30am and an announcement comes: "If you fall asleep and miss your stop, the next train leaves Trenton at 4:45am" Eff you Jersey!
Still, the night was worth it.
I love Arthur "Artie" Darvill, Rory Williams, Rory Pond, Amy Pond, Amy Martin, Tara Bennett, Joanna Christie, Joey Lawrence, Bernard B Jacobs, John Barrowman, Edward Showden, The random guy who let me take his photo because I told him he looked like Edward Snowden at 2:45 in the morning, my unborn daughter and of course my lovely wife Julie. If I had to be in this mess, I"m glad she was there with me.
We got home and into bed around 5:30am. I had to be in Wilmington, DE (30 minutes away) at 8:30am giving me the possibility of about 2 and half hours of sleep. Julie woke me up at 8:37am. SHIT!
Well, at least we weren't in Trenton.
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