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The New York Trip: Lollapuzzoola, Theatre-Going, Food, and Mysteries
Almost finishing the catch-up on what I’ve been busy with, I went up to New York last weekend. I had booked the trains early enough to get a good price on the Acela, which is helpful in that it got me in early enough to spend some time at Macy’s. I need lots of things, but they didn’t have exactly what I was searching for. (If anyone knows of a good brick and mortar source of skorts, let me know.) I did, however, succeed in restocking my supply of Jockey for Her (which was on sale). I also filled another New York need with a tongue sandwich at the 2nd Avenue Deli. (It’s really the pickles and the “health salad,” i.e. vinegary cole slaw, that are only in New York things.)
The main purpose of the trip was attending Lollapuzzoola 5. This is a crossword tournament I had heard good things about and I am glad to say the good things were justified. There was a sort of mixer in the form of Bingo cards that asked you to write in the names of people who met various criteria. Some of those were easy, e.g. “is a member of the National Puzzlers League,” while others were more challenging, e.g. “can chirp like a smoke alarm.” (Note that the cards were not identical.) Going around asking people things like “do you have a black belt?” was reasonably amusing.
As for the puzzles, the first one was straightforward, but the theme was not particularly interesting. The second puzzle had some nice wordplay in the theme answers and I got through it cleanly, though I did get bogged down timewise in the southeast corner. I got far more bogged down on the third puzzle and ended up using one of the google tickets on it. Those are a cute gimmick, which give you a non-theme answer but cost you points, making for an interesting strategy decision. I will also admit to not having fully grasped the puzzle theme until, oh, about ten o’clock that night. Had I been doing it in my own living room and coming back to it throughout the day, I would probably have thought it brilliant.
Next came the lunch break. I ate with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bugsybanana and her mother (who were in the pairs division). After lunch, there was a team game which involved trying to identify categories based on partial words. You got points based on whether you got the answer from the first, second or third clue. My teammate was better at this than I was, but I was still useful on some of them.
The fourth puzzle was the killer. I figured out the rebus aspect fairly quickly, but struggled with a lot of the fill. Resorting to a google ticket was a very good move, as it alleviated some of the frustration. The fifth puzzle went a lot better for me. The theme was challenging but fun and the only real issue was how you were supposed to enter certain answers so the judges would realize you understood what was going on. I found the instructions at the top to be quite helpful in that.
There was another group game while scores were being tallied. This involved one word being transformed into another by adding double letters. The teams were made up by splitting the room in half and the leader of one team chose someone from the other team to answer. I got a number of the answers, but never got called on, so you can decide for yourself if I was just taking up space. (Actually, I was useful since a number of hands had to go up to decide which team got to answer.)
The final puzzle (solved on the stage by the finalists in each division) was quite challenging, especially in the express division. I will admit to being glad I was nowhere near having to solve that one publicly. In the end, I finished 70th our of 122, which is solidly middle of the pack. I would, of course, prefer to be in the top half, but I’ll survive.
After the puzzles, there was pizza, fulfilling another New York need. Then I walked back downtown. Yes, there is the subway or the bus, but the weather was nice out and I like to walk. I also feel obliged to revisit certain buildings on every trip to New York, so I paid my respects to Patience and Fortitude (the library lions) and the Chrysler Building, a.k.a. the most beautiful skyscraper on the planet. I also got some ice cream from the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck. (I got the Bea Arthur which has vanilla soft serve ice cream, dulce de leche, and nilla wafers.) And I solved a mystery.
See, a couple of years ago I went on the Brooklyn Reality Tour (a popular flyertalk event) and the pickup spot was on 43rd Street. Walking over to it, I noticed a building with interesting bas reliefs of the months of the years around its arched doorway. Google failed me and it turns out that I had missed a critical point about the building. Apparently I have to look at a building four or five times to notice that it goes through to the next block. Sure enough, the same bas reliefs are repeated on 42nd Street and using that address let me identify it as the Salmon Tower. It’s really quite a nice entryway and I highly recommend it to people wandering around midtown Manhattan. (You don’t even have to go out of the way as it is right across from Bryant Park. I will not tell you how many years it took me to make the connection to William Cullen Bryant. Who I still confuse with William Jennings Bryan.)
My evening was occupied with seeing Old Jews Telling Jokes. I’ve been a big fan of the website more or less as long as it has existed. I thought that an entire evening of old jokes might get tedious, but the show was: a) reasonably short (under 90 minutes) and b) structured with enough variety that it wasn’t just one zinger after another. In addition to three old Jews, it had two younger performers and even some music, including an original theme song written by Adam Gwon, who I’ve been a fan of since I stopped confusing him with Adam Guettel. (Sorry, Guettel may be the grandson of Richard Rodgers, but I find his music dull and pretentious.) I do wish the program had given credits for the other music used. For the record, "Hanukah in Santa Monica" is by Tom Lehrer and "I’m Not a Well Man" is from the musical I Can Get It For You Wholesale by the underappreciated Harold Rome. (Elliot Gould sang the song on Broadway in 1962. That musical was also the start of Barbra Streisand’s career. But I digress.) There is also, by the way, an indescribably hilarious version of "Old Man River."
As for the rest of the show, the jokes are familiar but funny. The younger woman character ("Debbie", played by Audrey Lynn Weston) gets many of the best lines starting with the little girl being told by her father that babies comes from the stork and replying, "who fucks the stork?" Later she says, "My boyfriend got 'I love you' tattoed on his penis, so I told him not to put words in my mouth." It isn’t all foul-mouthed. She makes fun of another stereotypical Jewish character saying, "They’re making a talking doll of my mother. You pull the string and it says, 'what? Again with the string?'"
My favorite joke of the evening was the one about the man who went to a shrink explaining that since he found work in the pickle factory, he’s had a strong desire to stick his schlong in the pickle slicer. A few weeks later he comes back and explains that he did it.
"What happened?" asks the shrink.
"I got fired," the man replies.
"No, I mean with the pickle slicer."
"Oh, she got fired too."
All in all, the show was exactly what I needed it to be, reminiscent of the glory days of the borscht belt. I called my mother the next day and told her she needs to get my uncle to take her to see it. I also recommended it to a couple of friends. I have two caveats, however. The first is that a lot of the humor is off-color (as you can tell from my examples above). The more significant one is that I am not sure if it will make any sense to anybody who isn’t a M.O.T. (If you don’t know that means "member of the tribe," you might not get much of the show.
Sunday featured brunch with a high school friend. I had intended to show her the Tom Otterness sculpture by the New York Hilton on 42nd Street, but they fell victim to renovation. I found this article explaining the situation. Sigh.
Ca Va by Todd Oliver was offering a restaurant week deal, but the regular menu was also available. I had the ricotta pancakes which were light and lemony and very tasty, while Ellen had the smoked salmon sliders. I would have ordered one of their sparkling drinks but apparently New York State doesn’t allow the sale of alcohol before noon on Sunday. We also had time to walk around the area some and, overall, it was a lovely morning of catching up after way too many years.
Then I headed over to Studio 54 to see the final public performance of Roundabout Theatre’s production of Harvey. (There was apparently an evening benefit, too.) The draw was that Jim Parsons of The Big Bang Theory was playing Elwood P. Dowd. He was thoroughly charming in the role. The play is a bit dated in ways, but is still funny. I have always liked the line, "Well, I’ve wrestled with reality for 35 years, Doctor, and I am happy to state I finally won out over it."
I, alas, had the reality of the train trip home (plus more than usual weekend Metro track work, resulting in a tedious shuttle bus ride from East Falls Church to Vienna). All in all, it was an excellent weekend, but I am looking forward to staying home for a few weeks.
The main purpose of the trip was attending Lollapuzzoola 5. This is a crossword tournament I had heard good things about and I am glad to say the good things were justified. There was a sort of mixer in the form of Bingo cards that asked you to write in the names of people who met various criteria. Some of those were easy, e.g. “is a member of the National Puzzlers League,” while others were more challenging, e.g. “can chirp like a smoke alarm.” (Note that the cards were not identical.) Going around asking people things like “do you have a black belt?” was reasonably amusing.
As for the puzzles, the first one was straightforward, but the theme was not particularly interesting. The second puzzle had some nice wordplay in the theme answers and I got through it cleanly, though I did get bogged down timewise in the southeast corner. I got far more bogged down on the third puzzle and ended up using one of the google tickets on it. Those are a cute gimmick, which give you a non-theme answer but cost you points, making for an interesting strategy decision. I will also admit to not having fully grasped the puzzle theme until, oh, about ten o’clock that night. Had I been doing it in my own living room and coming back to it throughout the day, I would probably have thought it brilliant.
Next came the lunch break. I ate with
bugsybanana and her mother (who were in the pairs division). After lunch, there was a team game which involved trying to identify categories based on partial words. You got points based on whether you got the answer from the first, second or third clue. My teammate was better at this than I was, but I was still useful on some of them. The fourth puzzle was the killer. I figured out the rebus aspect fairly quickly, but struggled with a lot of the fill. Resorting to a google ticket was a very good move, as it alleviated some of the frustration. The fifth puzzle went a lot better for me. The theme was challenging but fun and the only real issue was how you were supposed to enter certain answers so the judges would realize you understood what was going on. I found the instructions at the top to be quite helpful in that.
There was another group game while scores were being tallied. This involved one word being transformed into another by adding double letters. The teams were made up by splitting the room in half and the leader of one team chose someone from the other team to answer. I got a number of the answers, but never got called on, so you can decide for yourself if I was just taking up space. (Actually, I was useful since a number of hands had to go up to decide which team got to answer.)
The final puzzle (solved on the stage by the finalists in each division) was quite challenging, especially in the express division. I will admit to being glad I was nowhere near having to solve that one publicly. In the end, I finished 70th our of 122, which is solidly middle of the pack. I would, of course, prefer to be in the top half, but I’ll survive.
After the puzzles, there was pizza, fulfilling another New York need. Then I walked back downtown. Yes, there is the subway or the bus, but the weather was nice out and I like to walk. I also feel obliged to revisit certain buildings on every trip to New York, so I paid my respects to Patience and Fortitude (the library lions) and the Chrysler Building, a.k.a. the most beautiful skyscraper on the planet. I also got some ice cream from the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck. (I got the Bea Arthur which has vanilla soft serve ice cream, dulce de leche, and nilla wafers.) And I solved a mystery.
See, a couple of years ago I went on the Brooklyn Reality Tour (a popular flyertalk event) and the pickup spot was on 43rd Street. Walking over to it, I noticed a building with interesting bas reliefs of the months of the years around its arched doorway. Google failed me and it turns out that I had missed a critical point about the building. Apparently I have to look at a building four or five times to notice that it goes through to the next block. Sure enough, the same bas reliefs are repeated on 42nd Street and using that address let me identify it as the Salmon Tower. It’s really quite a nice entryway and I highly recommend it to people wandering around midtown Manhattan. (You don’t even have to go out of the way as it is right across from Bryant Park. I will not tell you how many years it took me to make the connection to William Cullen Bryant. Who I still confuse with William Jennings Bryan.)
My evening was occupied with seeing Old Jews Telling Jokes. I’ve been a big fan of the website more or less as long as it has existed. I thought that an entire evening of old jokes might get tedious, but the show was: a) reasonably short (under 90 minutes) and b) structured with enough variety that it wasn’t just one zinger after another. In addition to three old Jews, it had two younger performers and even some music, including an original theme song written by Adam Gwon, who I’ve been a fan of since I stopped confusing him with Adam Guettel. (Sorry, Guettel may be the grandson of Richard Rodgers, but I find his music dull and pretentious.) I do wish the program had given credits for the other music used. For the record, "Hanukah in Santa Monica" is by Tom Lehrer and "I’m Not a Well Man" is from the musical I Can Get It For You Wholesale by the underappreciated Harold Rome. (Elliot Gould sang the song on Broadway in 1962. That musical was also the start of Barbra Streisand’s career. But I digress.) There is also, by the way, an indescribably hilarious version of "Old Man River."
As for the rest of the show, the jokes are familiar but funny. The younger woman character ("Debbie", played by Audrey Lynn Weston) gets many of the best lines starting with the little girl being told by her father that babies comes from the stork and replying, "who fucks the stork?" Later she says, "My boyfriend got 'I love you' tattoed on his penis, so I told him not to put words in my mouth." It isn’t all foul-mouthed. She makes fun of another stereotypical Jewish character saying, "They’re making a talking doll of my mother. You pull the string and it says, 'what? Again with the string?'"
My favorite joke of the evening was the one about the man who went to a shrink explaining that since he found work in the pickle factory, he’s had a strong desire to stick his schlong in the pickle slicer. A few weeks later he comes back and explains that he did it.
"What happened?" asks the shrink.
"I got fired," the man replies.
"No, I mean with the pickle slicer."
"Oh, she got fired too."
All in all, the show was exactly what I needed it to be, reminiscent of the glory days of the borscht belt. I called my mother the next day and told her she needs to get my uncle to take her to see it. I also recommended it to a couple of friends. I have two caveats, however. The first is that a lot of the humor is off-color (as you can tell from my examples above). The more significant one is that I am not sure if it will make any sense to anybody who isn’t a M.O.T. (If you don’t know that means "member of the tribe," you might not get much of the show.
Sunday featured brunch with a high school friend. I had intended to show her the Tom Otterness sculpture by the New York Hilton on 42nd Street, but they fell victim to renovation. I found this article explaining the situation. Sigh.
Ca Va by Todd Oliver was offering a restaurant week deal, but the regular menu was also available. I had the ricotta pancakes which were light and lemony and very tasty, while Ellen had the smoked salmon sliders. I would have ordered one of their sparkling drinks but apparently New York State doesn’t allow the sale of alcohol before noon on Sunday. We also had time to walk around the area some and, overall, it was a lovely morning of catching up after way too many years.
Then I headed over to Studio 54 to see the final public performance of Roundabout Theatre’s production of Harvey. (There was apparently an evening benefit, too.) The draw was that Jim Parsons of The Big Bang Theory was playing Elwood P. Dowd. He was thoroughly charming in the role. The play is a bit dated in ways, but is still funny. I have always liked the line, "Well, I’ve wrestled with reality for 35 years, Doctor, and I am happy to state I finally won out over it."
I, alas, had the reality of the train trip home (plus more than usual weekend Metro track work, resulting in a tedious shuttle bus ride from East Falls Church to Vienna). All in all, it was an excellent weekend, but I am looking forward to staying home for a few weeks.
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