July in New York (Part 3)

Thursday morning my conference began and I wanted to get over to Lincoln Center early to scope out the room arrangement. I left Jackie (still unconscious in the bed) and went over to the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle.

Last October, Jackie and I had discovered chef Thomas Keller's bakery Bouchon Bakery on the 4th floor there and I was excited to have one of his creations. They didn't open until 8:00am so I watched lots of college interns set up the kickoff for New York City Restaurant Week. Lot's of co-ed's were being sent all over the city wearing blue wigs and advertising free samples from some of NYC's top 6 restaurants- and the cast of Hair would be there at lunch time to sing. I texted Jackie that she should meet me at the Time Warner Center at noon to get tickets (they were free) and we would have a free, gourmet lunch together (with half of Manhattan).

After finishing my breakfast, I went and took the elevators all the way up to the top of Jazz at Lincoln Center. The nice elevator operator told me that the most expensive condo in the United States was at the top of the Time Warner building- and it was 58 million dollars. She told me he had his own elevator and entrance.

The conference started off great with 2 guest lecturers from Julliard. We did lots of fun "bonding exercises" and then it was off to lunch.

The 3rd floor landing of the Time Warner Center had turned into a madhouse. Jackie had gotten there early and had already gotten tickets for the food. We waited in line after line to try bite-sized samples of 5 star restaurants. Coke was there passing out free mini-bottles of Coke products. The cast of Hair was there, acting all hairy. It was crazy and fun. Jackie took off early to go on a walking tour to revolutionary NYC and I retreated from the restaurant madness into Borders.

The afternoon session of the conference was great. We talked to actors from The Little Mermaid, Jersey Boys, Avenue Q, and Billy Elliott. We had seen one of the actresses in an amazing production of Sweeney Todd (she played Pirelli) with Patti Lupone. After the actor chatback, we met with composer Jeanine Tesori who talked about writing Shrek, Caroline or Change and Thoroughly Modern Millie. She was funny and smart- and growing up played the piano but was not interested in musicals at all. She did say that her four years playing girls rugby prepared her for life in the musical theatre.

Jackie met me for dinner but first, we stopped at the world famous Levain Bakery for their cookies. We wanted real food so I smuggled them in my bag and we were off to Compass for dinner. Compass is a restaurant on the Upper West Side and, though normally crazy expensive, they had a pre-theatre dinner for $35 (3 courses). We both ordered off that menu and they threw in an amuse-bouche, appetizer, entree, dessert, cookies AND (the best part), little lemon coffee cakes to eat for breakfast the next morning.

We then caught the subway down to 50th to see Shrek the musical. Jackie had scored tickets from TKTS (I already had tickets from my conference) and it turned out to be a really fun show. I had the songs memorized because it's all Ellis and Millie will listen to in the car. We had a talk back after the show with Chris Seiber (Lord Farquad) and Jon Tartaglia (Pinochoccio- but most famous for being in Avenue Q and his own Disney show, Johnny and the Sprites). He started working for Sesame Street at age 16.

After that, it was back to the hotel to eat our Levain Bakery cookies from earlier that day- and we both passed out into a diabetic coma.

Above is a picture of the famous Levain cookie- and it's worth it.