7 Things: A Saturday in NYC

— for last week. i missed the week before. maybe i’ll go back to it. maybe i won’t. i’m fluid. like, right now, i’m not even hitting the shift key—

Saturday started so damn early. Like 4 am early. But that’s what you have to do for the good stuff. And why’s it so much easier to get up at 4 am to travel than 8 am to work? Oh, subconscious, I am your puppet.

So, given the 7 am flight, which included Fragrant Smoker Man who sat next to Shawna (a nice bookend to Fragrant Body Odor Man who sat in front of me on the return flight), we got in quite early and arrived in the city before 10 am.

And these seven things happened:

7 – I got to go through the nudoscope for the first time. And by “got to go,” of course, I mean was forced to go, and by “for the first time” I mean hopefully for the last time. Unfortunately, that proved not to be the case, because I got to repeat the experience on the way back. And both times I got free calf massages, so I’m gonna assume that the same high tech equipment that saw all my naughty bits couldn’t see through my baggy pant legs.

6 – We had some people jump us as locals at the airport and ask for help getting into the city. We get jumped as locals a lot. I assume this is because we have been locals in the past and know what we know, but we aren’t currently locals, so, therefore, look more approachable than residents. I don’t know this to be true, but this is what I suspect.

We rode the bus in from LaGuardia with these ladies and got them safely to the subway. From there, I cannot say where they roamed. Except for the Lexington Hotel. Because, clearly, we don’t look like kidnappers.

5 – We emerged from the subway (alone) just as a middle-aged Asian man was walking past in raccoon ears. Comic Con was happening, so it wasn’t an anomaly. It was just so far uptown.

4 – Beginning our trek southward, we went by the Once Upon a Time windows at Bloomingdale’s. Stylistically, they were sweet. Nice apple tree. Decent dragon. Great Rumpelstiltskin dagger. Likeness-wise, not so much. Yes, they were working with mannequins. I spotted them that. But everyone’s hair looked like the curse froze it back in time 28 years. Rumpelstiltskin was Jack Wagner, circa “All I Need,” and Emma was channeling Farrah Fawcett’s Charlie’s Angels look.

3 – We ate Indian for lunch. A buffet. And, once again, I realized something I’ve realized the last few times I’ve traveled to the area. Going to the Northeast from the South for Indian is like people in the Northeast going to India for Indian.

2 – It felt colder than it was supposed to feel, so Shawna bought me a Thomas the Tank Engine toddler hat and girl’s white gloves with a little pink ‘I love New York’ patch. And I wore them.

1 – Linda Eder. Overall, my favorite outing since the first time I saw her in concert. There was a lot she didn’t sing, but her voice was top-form and she sang every song from Jekyll & Hyde, plus a lot of things I’d never heard her sing before. Including Patsy Cline. That’s right, I heard Linda Eder sing Patsy Cline. Normally I don’t abide by anyone other than Mandy Barnett singing Patsy Cline, but this was totally acceptable. And unexpected.

And I suspect even those of you who don’t care a lick about what Linda Eder sang would have appreciated at least a couple of those dresses. Three out of four got the Riley seal of approval.