Song Lyric of the Day:
Tell us about the boy / From New York City
The Ad Libs / “The Boy from New York City”
11:15PM.
Bea, Louis, Rich, and I visited the American Museum of the Moving Image in Queens on Sunday, New Year’s Day. We had so much fun with all the interactive displays that we were there for close to four hours. Rich was filmed for a stop-motion flip book, we added sound effects to well-known movie scenes, and we dubbed dialogue for other well-known movie scenes (Rich was particularly impressive as Babe). And, of course, we got to see really neat movie memorabilia items, including the animatronic Regan from The Exorcist, the first movie cameras, life masks of Christopher Walken and Marlon Brando, a Chewbacca mask, and a miniature from Blade Runner. This is the kind of museum where I’d never get Brent, Vanessa, and Jonathan to leave. Now that’d be a fun field trip.
After the museum, we grabbed a late lunch at a nearby diner. We then decided to head into the city to catch a movie. Bea and Louis decided to call it an early night, so Rich and I prepurchased movie tickets, and then the four of us walked around Lincoln Center a bit before they headed home. Rich and I hit Tower Records and Barnes & Noble, then headed to the Lincoln Center Loews Cineplex where we caught the 10PM showing of Fun with Dick and Jane (I highly recommend it). We would have loved to see King Kong while in New York City, but the only showing left started at 10:45PM, and at 3 1/2 hours, we just couldn’t do it. Interesting sidenote: as we were leaving the theater with our tickets, Bea pointed out “that French actor from the movie about the girl” was entering the theater with his family. “Tcheky Karyo?” I guessed. We turned around to look, and it was indeed him. I’m guessing that unless he’d pre-purchased his tickets as we had, he was going to find out that everything except the late shows of Fun with Dick and Jane and King Kong were already sold out.
Rich and I visited the Guggenheim Museum on Monday. The museum’s current exhibition is Russia!, which featured some truly amazing artwork. While I absolutely loved the exhibition and the museum’s spiral design, I can’t say the same for the actual museum visit. Unlike other museums we’d visited that had clearly established flows (ie: start on the top floor and work your way down), visitors to the Guggenheim were walking every which way. Rich and I also think the museum was way overcrowded. Add to the mix a screaming toddler whose mother really should’ve taken him outside, and you have a miserable (for me, at least) museum visit. Regardless, though, the artwork made up for a lot of the museum’s shortcomings. After the Guggenheim, Rich and I wandered the streets a bit and did some shopping.
Today we set out to visit the Museum of Television and Radio. We already knew that you could watch any TV show or listen to any radio show you wanted, and we were both looking forward to seeing more TV and radio memorabilia. Imagine our disappointment (mostly mine) that it turns out watching TV shows and listening to radio shows is the whole gist of the museum. No memorabilia whatsoever. So rather than shell out $10 each to watch TV without viewing/listening lists in hand, we decided to explore the city some more.
Since were in the vicinity, we headed to Rockefeller Center. We wanted to do Top of the Rock but decided against it since visibility was down to two to three miles (it’s normally 10+ miles) thanks to the bad weather. We enjoyed looking around the building, though. We popped in and out of nearby stores, treating ourselves to $5 pieces of chocolate from La Maison du Chocolat, among other things. Our evening was spent hanging around with Bea and Louis, which is always fun. Tomorrow Rich and I are planning on visiting Central Park. Even though it’s still going to be cold, there’s not supposed to be any rain tomorrow. For the first time in days. That’s all I’m saying. Anyhoo, the plan is Rich will sketch while I take tons of photos. Should be fun.
