NYC Day Four

On our last full day in New York, we again woke up late. We had an appointment to meet Doreen’s decorator (mentioned below) at a Fifth Avenue apartment. When we did, I was floored by the opulence. It was enough to make you a Bolshevik. I won’t say any more about that for now.

We went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and saw a couple of their shows. In particular we saw the Rauschenberg show, and the Kara Walker exhibition. (A funny story: We have a Rauschenberg print from an illustrated version of Dante’s Inferno that I bought at Doreen’s first Evening in the Park silent auctions. I told a former boss that I had bought Doreen a Rauschenberg and he looked shocked that I could get my hands on such a thing and asked me “Did they know it was a Rauschenberg when they sold it to you?”)

We then met one of Doreen’s other New York Friends, Linda, for brunch at Café Ronda. That was great fun, as always. As we were leaving Woody Allen and Soon Yi walked by me on the street. I didn’t say anything, just was cool. I didn’t even stare.

After lunch Linda walked us down to the Boat Basin Park, very close to where we were staying. It was a very nice place. We walked back to her place for a cold drink, and then we picked up our tickets for our final show.

That show was The Three Penny Opera. It had just opened in Previews, and Jack was able to get us seats. Doreen really wanted to see this because Cyndi Lauper is in it. Alan Cumming is in it, too. We saw him in Cabaret a couple of years ago.

Since it was a Sunday night, the show was full of working actors. I knew some of them – Cynthia Nixon was there, Michael Cerveris (he played Sweeny Todd, and is a Yalie. Doreen went up and introduced herself to him) and Tony Roberts was there as well. Those are the only ones that we could recognize (well, that Doreen could recognize. I think my hit rate would have been lower than that)

The show was startling, set in sort of a modern day mythical city. Brecht is trying to teach us something. As he often said:

Erst kommt das Fressen First the grub (lit. "eating like animals, gorging")
Dann kommt die Moral. Then the morality.

We ate, then we were moralized.

Then after we were moralized, we at again. This time at Molyvos, a fancy Greek place not far away.

Then we walked home, got to sleep late one more time, packed, and flew Home.