Note to self: Never go see a 2 p.m. Saturday performance of ANY play on B’way. Why, you ask? Because it’s all old people in the audience and they can be annoying. I’m not ageist, but MAN old people suck sometimes. A gaggle of us went to see “Private Lives” yesterday afternoon, starring Alan Rickman and Lindsey CootieBoy. We had seats near the back of the theater, which kind of sucked, but what was worse was we were positively surrounded by people over 65 year sold who needed to use the headphones available in theaters to hear the actors. And since they were plugged in they tended to shout to their neighbors when they had a question. And the headphones were turned up so loud that I heard the actors’ lines twice – once on stage, once in the row in front of me. Very annoying.
The play itself was all right – not as good as I expected. The sound was horrible – the two lead characters were difficult to hear at times (despite being able to hear the lines twice I missed several funny lines, apparently).
The biggest highlight was that Tony Shaloub was in the audience to see his “Galaxy Quest” castmate. What’s ironic is that Denis had joked about taking our copy of the movie (which we had watched the night before) to get Rickman to autograph it – but opted not to. We could have gotten BOTH their autographs! Tony had much better seats than us, so I doubt he had the same audio problems as we did.
After the play we went over to Howard Johnson’s in Times Square for some quick grub. My chocolate milkshake was delish, but when my french dip came it looked a little off – the meat was sort of GREEN. So I sent it back. The waitress asked if I wanted something else and I said “no thanks”. Did she think I was going to take a chance that my next dish wasn’t spit on because I had sent the original back? I’m not stupid. I stuck with my fries and water, and decided that I wouldn’t go back.
After eating we stood outside the restaurant gabbing with our pals for a few minutes. We were standing in a circle and all of a sudden we heard SPLAT! A bird perched high above us on a billboard had pooped and it miraculously landed DEAD CENTER of our circle. We quickly said our goodbyes and scattered after that.
So in the end, here’s my advice: Pass on both the Saturday matinees and HoJo’s in Times Square. They are so not worth the busfare into the city.
If you really inspected your food at every restaurant you went to you would never eat out. Actually, you’d never eat my food either. Just kidding. I’m clean. I don’t take cany chances with you that I wouldn’t take on myself.
Oh, I know what you mean about matinees. We went to one last month, and good God — just the bathroom was excruciating. I was trying to *leave* (while being very pregnant) and all these old ladies were blocking me, thinking I was trying to cut in line or something. Sheesh. Also, having worked as a house manager, I can tell you that those matinees are even worse for the poor souls working at the theatre.