What a November it's been so far. We've been very fortunate to not have experienced too much hardship with Hurricane Sandy-- worst thing was losing power for a few nights and having long work commutes, but no destruction of property or any bodily injuries were had, so we have been lucky.
The week of the hurricane itself had been relatively uneventful, though that Monday had been a little scary when we lost power at the height of the storm that night (I had started reading World War Z, which was a much much scarier read with the power cut, the wind howling, and the sounds of trees falling down outside). I wasn't able to get back into work in Midtown Manhattan until Friday that week, with both the MTA trains and the NJTransit trains being down. That Friday I actually had to plan an alternative bus route leaving Princeton at 6:10AM in order to get to work by 8:30. By the following Monday the NJTransit train I normally take began running again, but on a limited schedule where I also have to take a 6:12am train every morning. Commuting 4+ hours a day on completely packed train cars hasn't been pretty, but I'm very impressed with both the MTA and NJTransit at how quickly they're working to restore service for everyone.
Last weekend I also had a pair of tickets to that week's SNL Dress Rehearsal:
The week of the hurricane itself had been relatively uneventful, though that Monday had been a little scary when we lost power at the height of the storm that night (I had started reading World War Z, which was a much much scarier read with the power cut, the wind howling, and the sounds of trees falling down outside). I wasn't able to get back into work in Midtown Manhattan until Friday that week, with both the MTA trains and the NJTransit trains being down. That Friday I actually had to plan an alternative bus route leaving Princeton at 6:10AM in order to get to work by 8:30. By the following Monday the NJTransit train I normally take began running again, but on a limited schedule where I also have to take a 6:12am train every morning. Commuting 4+ hours a day on completely packed train cars hasn't been pretty, but I'm very impressed with both the MTA and NJTransit at how quickly they're working to restore service for everyone.
Last weekend I also had a pair of tickets to that week's SNL Dress Rehearsal:
With all the hurricane business, I was really concerned that they were going to cancel the show. Luckily, they powered through, so Colin and I made our way into NYC last weekend. When I first got an email saying that I had won the SNL lottery for a pair of tickets, the host hadn't been announced yet and I had made peace with the probability that it was most likely going to be a so-so celebrity. Two weeks later when they announced that it was Louis CK, I couldn't believe my frickin' luck. There seriously could NOT have been anybody else I would have preferred. If Lorne Michaels came to me and offered to invite on anybody I wanted in the entire world to host that night, my answer would have been Louis CK. Incredible incredible luck.
The dress rehearsal go-time was at 8PM, confirmation email said to be there by 7PM the latest, so we arrive to 30 Rockefeller a bit after 6pm. Stood on line for a while behind a nice older couple and a really annoying pair of 20-something girls who wouldn't stop talk-shouting at each other. I heard about how the SNL Studio (8H) is terrible for the studio audience in that pretty much all seats have obstructed views, especially the ones that are all the way off to the sides. I knew that arriving early to get in line wasn't necessarily a good strategy for getting good seats, since if you get seated first you might be escorted to fill in those seats all the way off to the sides. It didn't matter very much actually when we got on line, actually, because at some point a page came up to us and, while counting off, pulled both Colin and myself as well as the pair of girls out of that line and put us in another one (where we were at the very end of this line).
Some other lines start going through the metal detectors and loaded up into an elevator. After a little while, our own line went through the metal detector. Since Colin and I were at the end of our line going through the metal detectors, we were the last ones loaded into the elevator, and subsequently the first ones coming out of the elevator, so we ended up now being first in line outside of the studio doors. We must have waited for another 20 minutes on this line before they finally brought us into the studio.
When we walked in and realized that we were going to end up with 2nd row center seats on the floor (right in front of the monologue stage and also pretty much right in front of the band stage), I couldn't even express my disbelief at how INCREDIBLY lucky we were. I looked behind me and saw everyone else (at least 200+ people) stuck in the balcony/riser seats, with the majority of the seats being partial/obstructed views, and couldn't believe that Colin and I were lucky enough to be on the FLOOR. I did a count-- the floor only had 4 rows of seats, with 8 seats in each row. Out of 200+ people, we were lucky enough to be one of the 32 people in a seat right on the floor. Considering that we could tell that the majority of our floor seat companions were VIPS (seemed like some were friends/family of NBC personnel or friends/family of the host/musical guests), it seemed like Colin and I were ones of the 2% of people plucked out of the general audience for floor seats-- AMAZING.
Anyway, Louis CK is awesome. The dress rehearsal was 2 hours long while the live show is only 1.5 hours, so we got to see a bunch of extra sketches and even got a much longer (about 15-20 minute long) opening monologue than the live show. It was interesting to watch the live show later on Hulu and compare. For instance, I KNEW that Louis was going to have to cut one of the stories he told in his monologue since it went on for forever, but I didn't think he was going to end up cutting the one he did and going with the old-lady-in-the-airport story instead. The Lincoln video that aired during dress was the Director's Cut and included an additional scene that didn't air on the live show. There were a lot of sketches that were cut that I didn't necessarily think should have been cut-- the children's drawing show/Robot Ant sketch, the The Voice sketch where Louis CK made it as a finalist (actually, I guess that one wasn't so great), the NBA basketball theme song sketch, the Cologne murder sketch, etc. Any one of them could have been swapped for the Mountain Pass sketch, in my opinion. It still was good times all around.
In other various miscellaneous news, my friends' play The ABC's Guide to Getting Famous opens TOMORROW night, November 12. Tickets and more information here: http://horsetrade.info/Show/251. Show dates are the 12, 13, 19, 20, 25 and 27th. Go!
Between Hurricane Sandy, losing electricity, SNL, my birthday, postponed Halloween, etc, it seems that both Colin and I forgot and disregarded our anniversary this year, ha! We don't actually have an anniversary date set in stone-- it just hovers around some time around Halloween weekend, I guess. Oh well. Happy 5 years to us!
I finally (sort of) completed our portraits which will be going on the bedroom wall over the bed. They're still really wet but can't be hung, and I'll want to still do some little changes to them here and there in the upcoming days, but here they are:
The dress rehearsal go-time was at 8PM, confirmation email said to be there by 7PM the latest, so we arrive to 30 Rockefeller a bit after 6pm. Stood on line for a while behind a nice older couple and a really annoying pair of 20-something girls who wouldn't stop talk-shouting at each other. I heard about how the SNL Studio (8H) is terrible for the studio audience in that pretty much all seats have obstructed views, especially the ones that are all the way off to the sides. I knew that arriving early to get in line wasn't necessarily a good strategy for getting good seats, since if you get seated first you might be escorted to fill in those seats all the way off to the sides. It didn't matter very much actually when we got on line, actually, because at some point a page came up to us and, while counting off, pulled both Colin and myself as well as the pair of girls out of that line and put us in another one (where we were at the very end of this line).
Some other lines start going through the metal detectors and loaded up into an elevator. After a little while, our own line went through the metal detector. Since Colin and I were at the end of our line going through the metal detectors, we were the last ones loaded into the elevator, and subsequently the first ones coming out of the elevator, so we ended up now being first in line outside of the studio doors. We must have waited for another 20 minutes on this line before they finally brought us into the studio.
When we walked in and realized that we were going to end up with 2nd row center seats on the floor (right in front of the monologue stage and also pretty much right in front of the band stage), I couldn't even express my disbelief at how INCREDIBLY lucky we were. I looked behind me and saw everyone else (at least 200+ people) stuck in the balcony/riser seats, with the majority of the seats being partial/obstructed views, and couldn't believe that Colin and I were lucky enough to be on the FLOOR. I did a count-- the floor only had 4 rows of seats, with 8 seats in each row. Out of 200+ people, we were lucky enough to be one of the 32 people in a seat right on the floor. Considering that we could tell that the majority of our floor seat companions were VIPS (seemed like some were friends/family of NBC personnel or friends/family of the host/musical guests), it seemed like Colin and I were ones of the 2% of people plucked out of the general audience for floor seats-- AMAZING.
Anyway, Louis CK is awesome. The dress rehearsal was 2 hours long while the live show is only 1.5 hours, so we got to see a bunch of extra sketches and even got a much longer (about 15-20 minute long) opening monologue than the live show. It was interesting to watch the live show later on Hulu and compare. For instance, I KNEW that Louis was going to have to cut one of the stories he told in his monologue since it went on for forever, but I didn't think he was going to end up cutting the one he did and going with the old-lady-in-the-airport story instead. The Lincoln video that aired during dress was the Director's Cut and included an additional scene that didn't air on the live show. There were a lot of sketches that were cut that I didn't necessarily think should have been cut-- the children's drawing show/Robot Ant sketch, the The Voice sketch where Louis CK made it as a finalist (actually, I guess that one wasn't so great), the NBA basketball theme song sketch, the Cologne murder sketch, etc. Any one of them could have been swapped for the Mountain Pass sketch, in my opinion. It still was good times all around.
In other various miscellaneous news, my friends' play The ABC's Guide to Getting Famous opens TOMORROW night, November 12. Tickets and more information here: http://horsetrade.info/Show/251. Show dates are the 12, 13, 19, 20, 25 and 27th. Go!
Between Hurricane Sandy, losing electricity, SNL, my birthday, postponed Halloween, etc, it seems that both Colin and I forgot and disregarded our anniversary this year, ha! We don't actually have an anniversary date set in stone-- it just hovers around some time around Halloween weekend, I guess. Oh well. Happy 5 years to us!
I finally (sort of) completed our portraits which will be going on the bedroom wall over the bed. They're still really wet but can't be hung, and I'll want to still do some little changes to them here and there in the upcoming days, but here they are:
Closeup and the (reverse) process:
I think his portrait ended up being better than mine, but I think that's because I'm more used to looking at his ole mug than my own, so painting it came more naturally than doing my own.
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