I’ve spent this entire week both working and prepping for a big family get-together, so I have nothing particularly interesting to share. However, I do have charts for you to enjoy. And I’m working on some creative things that hopefully I will share soon. In the meantime, charts.
Last weekend I saw the move Exit Through The Gift Shop and I feel a need to talk about it. First of all, it’s an excellent documentary. It got great reviews and is well-worth watching, and it’s streaming right now on Netflix, so go see it. That being said, I was infuriated by the last third or so of it. Here’s the basic plot summary (don’t read this next paragraph if you want the film to be a surprise):
There are street artists. No one has ever documented their actions. There is a crazy French vintage-clothing-store-owner named Thierry (Terry) living in Los Angeles who is obsessed with videotaping everything. His cousin is Space Invader, a well-known street artist. Thierry films his actions and is introduced to other street artists, including Shepherd Fairey. Shepherd introduces Thierry to Bansky, the most famous street artist ever. Other stuff happens. In order to edit Thierry’s heaps of footage of both Banksy and other street artists into a film without Thierry being involved, Bansky tells Thierry to make some art and have a small show, basically to get him out of Bansky’s hair. Here’s where I start to fill with rage. Thierry, who has no artistic training or skill or experience, rents a gigantic building in L.A. and hires a massive staff to make his “art”. He is clearly crazy, his artwork is utter pointless crap, but he understands hype, so he hypes the hell out of his show. When his show opens, tons of people show up, people who are desperate to be “cool”, Thierry sells all his crap art and rakes in a million dollars. Jessica bursts into flames. The end.
Here’s the deal, people. Artists aren’t the people who come up with the ideas, okay? We all come up with ideas, all the time. Good ones, dumb ones, weird ones, etc. “What if blah blah was a blah blah blah?” The artists are the people who pluck ideas, theirs or others, out of the ether and make them into something we can see and touch and feel. They are inspired by something and the make something in the hopes that you will feel the same way they do about that thing. I’ll give you an example from my own life. I worked with a guy named Jd at BBDO, and he mentioned to me that every time he went to a new job, shortly after he started everyone else was fired, a whole new staff was hired and everything started anew. Apparently this seemed to happen every time he switched jobs. It was a joke with him and his friends that he was like Kali, the Hindu God of Destruction and Rebirth. I thought that was a funny idea, so I made a ink drawing of him as Kali.
I did not have the idea. I heard it, I liked it, I executed it. Who’s the artist in this situation, Jd or me? So when you (and when I say “you”, I mean you, Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst) hire a big ole staff and you wander in and say, “Wouldn’t it be cool to cover a skull with diamonds?” or “I think a giant sculpture of a balloon animal would be neat,” and then you leave the building while your staff actually makes the thing and you touch nothing, but then you go and take credit for all the work, that doesn’t make you an artist. That makes you a hype machine. Your staff is the artist. And I hate you.
By the way, I love the skull covered with diamonds and the giant balloon dog. That’s not the point.
We here at Publicis New York have a window case that is two feet high and nineteen feet long, and living in it presently is a timeline of the company. It’s been the same timeline in the same design for at least three years now, and my boss (the CMO) has grown weary of it. He asked me to redesign it, so I promptly starting rummaging through my research books. A while back I saw an article called “Cutthroat Capitalism” in Wired Magazine and I thought it was a terrific marriage of positive and negative space, so I cut it out and put it in my book.
I wanted little ornate headers and footers to incorporate into the document. I remembered B. had recently sent me a link to the calligraphy on the bottoms of maps that was fascinating, so I looked at that as well.
So, combining some of the elements from both of those documents, I spent three days redesigning the timeline. The beginning part looks like this:
Here are some details where you can really see the things I pulled from my research.
Some of the pictures given to me were really low-res and pixelated, so I converted them into art. Like the radio announcer guy, I made him into stripes where the thickness depended on the amount of light and dark, and then for the bus, I traced it in Illustrator and made decisions about what I wanted knocked out and what I wanted solid. See, solutions to problems. When God gives you lemons (or low-res images), you make lemonade (or graphic icons). We’ll see if my boss likes it and I can continue on in this style.
Addendum: Alas, it was shot down. Too “wacky and dark”. But I don’t care. After shrieking into a pillow, I decided I’m going to keep working on it and add it into my portfolio. Always with the lemons / lemonade thing, I am.
Addendum to the previous addendum: It’s back! The head person likes it! She wants a deep red background, but other than that, I’m good! Hurrah!
I had lunch yesterday with B. who is going to Berlin this summer. On his way home he plans to stop off in Iceland just in time for puffling-rescue season. Brace yourself, this is a lot of cute coming up. Puffins live in Iceland, and they all have babies around the same time. Near the end of summer the parental puffins are done with the parenting thing, so they leave. The baby puffins, called pufflings, emerge and try to fly off into the North Atlantic. Unfortunately, the lights of people nearby throw them off their game, and many of them fly into town. Since they need water to take off from, they are hopelessly landlocked and would most likely die, either from starvation or being eaten by a cat or dog. However, for many generations now people go into the nooks and crannies of their villages, collect the pufflings and bring them home for the night. The next day, they are released into the ocean to fly or swim away as intended. It’s a whole lotta cute. Here’s a video about it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tn1Ym3TQdiI
So B. might get to fling ornery baby waterbirds into the ocean like a quarterback. I am envious.
Now, The Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. I go every year. Here’s a previous blog entry I’ve done. The dogs, as always, were spectacular. The owners/handlers were, as always, extremely weird. If your dog needs to gain more weight, there are online shops that offer effective and safe weight gainer for dogs.
Here are some of the pictures I took.
Here is my favorite breed of dog, the Borzoi (or Russian Wolfhound). So pretty, like a giant hairy cloud.
In order to keep the long-haired and/or long-eared dogs from getting shmutz on their fur-ends, the groomers have come up with a myriad of preventative devices and techniques. This is a Yorkshire Terrier getting its fur wrapped up in plastic bags and rubber bands.
And this is an Afghan wearing a snood.
I’m not a big Chihuahua fan. I’m not opposed to them either, I just don’t care very much one way or the other. This particular chihuahua, however, was extremely sweet. I could learn to love him.
Aside from the actual judging of the beasties, the other main activity is grooming. I’ve been in Supercuts that had less equipment than this event. There’s the dogs that should have smooth, straight fur:
And then there are the dogs that should have floofy, puffy fur.
The most astonishing thing to most people is how the dogs don’t bite or nip or anything. Mostly they just lay there and take it.
The most impressive example of this was the woman who, with a flashlight and an electric razor, was carefully shaving a Boston Terrier’s genitals. I am not making that up.
This groomer was great. She was grooming her Shih-Tzu in the middle of Madison Square Garden in her petticoat and bra. I guess she didn’t want to get her show outfit dirty, but have we learned nothing from The Jersey Shore? This is the ideal time to wear the shirt before the shirt.
There was also people-grooming stations. That’s the first time I’ve ever seen that.
The dogs have a lot of time to kill, so they nap, and play with small squeaky toys, but these two Shelties just stood there. Occasionally they would say something to each other. They were like the twins in The Shining.
And here’s a plethora of shots I found around the internet taken by other people.
I’m done! The complex background is done. The beasties are done. They have come together in a beautiful medley of weird art that makes me so happy. Gaze upon on the gloriousness.
I spray-painted the pattern after I weeded out the vinyl stencil. Then I painted highlights with some sparkles on some of the thicker areas of the lines. The spray-paint bled a little into the wood grain on the beetle board, but I think it looks cool, so I ain’t sweatin’ it.
Then I drilled a hole in the center of the board and affixed the insects into place. And voila! Months of toil comes to an end. I am super-pleased with how they turned out.
Let’s look the leftover photos I have from the London trip.
Cricket and I were walking past the Millennium Bridge and we happened on this weird neat-o fountain. It looked like a ship with all kinds of wacky alchemy stuff attached to it. My favorite part was the figure in the back who looked like a giant-nosed Napoleon with an umbrella on his head.
St. Martin-in-the-Fields (real name) Church is one of the best churches you could have the pleasure of visiting. They turned their crypt into into a lovely tea room with stellar cafeteria-style food service (like lamb shank and roasted root vegetables, yummers) and you only feel slightly horribly guilty for enjoying tasty snakkies on top of the graves of people. You can also do bronze rubbings and listen to different kinds of live music. Cricket and I took the time to go up into the actual church-area and I was surprised at what I found. Their main window is clear glass, and in the center is a milky-white-stained-glass egg that is lit by special lights, so it looks like it is glowing. I think that is genius. Instead of having the whole bible story mapped out, they left a little to the imagination. And darn it if it doesn’t look ethereal.
London has a Chinatown, much like most other cities do. Theirs is much smaller than the one in New York. And they have a wall dragon as you walk in.
The lanterns are a really nice touch.
And their pharmacist has this great poster in the window. The tank illustration gave us the giggles.
We visited two major stores: Harrods and Hamleys. Harrods is one of the most famous department stores in the world, and I must say it is fancy. If you do go there, make a point to go to the food court. Holy Moses, it is glorious. They have every kind of food from anywhere in the world. It was mind-blowing. For example, here is a photo of a section of their terrines. Terrines are basically patés or finely ground meatloaves. With such a vast selection of gourmet items, the store relies on high-quality storage solutions to maintain freshness and ensure an organized shopping experience.
And that’s just one little corner of the magic. Another cool thing about Harrods are the 11,000 lights on the exterior.
Hamleys is a very old and very large toy store. Here is the lowdown on the floors:
5th floor: Boys — Action figures, vehicles, and an open cafe.
4th floor: Hobbies — Model kits, remote-controlled vehicles, model railways, Scalextric, etc.
3rd floor: Girls — Dolls, Arts & Crafts, Hello Kitty, Dress-up, etc.
2nd floor: Preschool — Toys for young children.
1st floor: Games — Board games, science, jigsaws; also a Build-A-Bear Workshop and Sweet Shop.
Ground floor: Soft toys — a wide variety of stuffed animals, and also a Marvin’s Magic section.
Basement: Interactive — Lego, construction toys, Red 5, novelties and GAME (retailer).
I don’t really care one way or the other about toys or games, but I did geek out really hard when I got to (wait for it) the Harry Potter Wand Store section.
Every wand for any character from the film. So exciting! It made me believe, just for a moment, that there’s a train that could take me to Hogwarts.
Now, everyone says the British are more elegant and reserved and classy, and I am inclined to agree, based on the fact that they made an opera of (not making this up) Anna-Nicole Smith’s life. Really. And it’s at the Royal Opera House, not some avant-garde experimental theater space. That’s pretty wild. (It got great reviews, by the way. I would have tried to see it, but it opened after I left.)
Two final random shots: One, an old ship with a terrified-looking deer as the figurehead which I found really funny for some reason.
And a men’s store’s spring window display. The smallest figure is spinning while only wearing underpants. You can almost hear him saying, “Whee! I’m nakee!”
That’s it. That’s my trip to London. If anyone has any questions or queries, feel free to contact me. I have 300 other photos that I did not share here which I would be happy to show you.
OMG, museums! Today it’s the British Museum. But I’d like to start us off with some random shots.
The weather wasn’t always glorious. Some days were exactly what you would expect if you went to England.
Cricket and I split up one day: I went to the V&A and he went to the Churchill War Rooms and Buckingham Palace. Right next to the Churchill War Rooms is St. James Park, which has a lovely assortment of ducks and geese.
And whatever this thing is. Its legs make it look like it’s wearing a black unitard with a skeleton painted on it. Odd little waterfowl.
Doorknobs in the center of the door. Europe – things are different there!
Okay, The British Museum. I think when it was originally built there were a bunch of buildings in the Grecian style around an open courtyard, and it appears that at some point a large rotunda was built in the middle of the courtyard and a glass roof was installed over the whole thing, connecting all the buildings without having to go outside. It really is huge, the rotunda, so I tried to make a rough composite shot of the space. It’s very impressive.
There’s a lot of controversy surrounding the British Museum because a large portion of the exhibits are stolen or looted from their place of origin, like a goodly portion of the Egyptian section, or the stones off of the Parthenon (Greece really wants those back, they’re very cranky about it). But I was just excited to see all the historical things. For example, the Rosetta Stone.
And the plethora of Egyptian relics.
These ladies were terrifying. They’re about the same height as a man, and you can feel them silently judging you.
And they have so many dead things. Like mummified cats.
And a mummified ibis next to a mummified falcon.
And canopic jars for holding your internal organs.
And let’s not leave out Ginger, a seriously dead guy surrounded by his grave-goods. Ginger died in 3400 B.C. and is naturally preserved. And dead.
I really enjoyed looking at the hieroglyphics. I kept seeing this reoccurring slug hieroglyphic. I wonder what it represents. Or it could be a startled snake, with cartoon “startled” marks around its head. I also wonder what that would represent.
Aside from the Egyptian section, there’s a whole bunch of other neat stuff that we saw. They have an excellent collection of Assyrian wall art (probably stolen). I studied the Assyrian artwork in art history class. That’s where I learned something interesting about large guard-sculpture’s legs.
The stonecarvers wanted him to be able to look like he was guarding both to the front and to the side, so he has five legs. Go ahead, count them. Five.
I also had to study all these wall carvings with themes like lion hunts and battles and the like. Say what you want about the Assyrians, but they could relief-carve a lion and a horse like no one’s business.
Other things from the British Museum that caught my eye: The death mask of Napoleon.
An impression bead where the animals look like “Where The Wild Things Are” characters.
A Celtic helmet with horns.
And a Roman mosaic of a duck. I liked this especially because it used all kinds of random colors, but if you stand far away from it, your eye blends the colors correctly for you, totally anticipating Pointillism by 2000 years. Go Romans.
That pretty much covers all the musea that I hit up while in London. In the next few days I will finish up the remaining dribs and drabs of photos and then we can get back to business as usual (whatever that is).
More museums! Can’t get enough! But first, a couple of random photos.
Pret A Manger (or Pret, as it’s often referred to) is from England, and I found this window cling very pleasing for two reasons. One, I like alliteration, and two, I happen to know (don’t ask me how or why) that the tool used to stir porridge, the one you see in the bowl there, is called a spurtle.
I mentioned earlier when I was talking about the play Warhorse how creepy I thought it was to have war stories for children. Apparently Warhorse wasn’t enough, oh no! Let’s have a whole freakin’ exhibition of traumatic tales for tots! Nightmares for everyone!
Did everyone read the book The Witches by Roald Dahl? If it’s been a while, let me refresh some points for you. The witches don’t blend into normal society. They have long claws, so they have to wear gloves. They are bald, so they have to wear wigs. They have blue spit, which makes their teeth have a bluish tinge. And finally, they have no toes and their feet end in blunt stumps, making wearing modern pointy shoes extremely painful for them. I used to love that book and read it over and over, and to this day every time I see super-pointy shoes, I think about how uncomfortable those must be for witches to wear. Imagine my glee when I saw these shoes in a shop in Greenwich, in the land that the book The Witches takes place in.
This proves it! The story is true! Witch shoes!
This is a poster from the subway for a drug exhibition. I didn’t go, but I loved the words chosen for the poster.
Now, the V&A Museum. The Victoria and Albert Museum of Art and Design is my most favorite museum in the whole wide world. If I lived in London, I would be there once a month. You simply can’t see everything, even after many visits. It’s a beautiful building in itself:
Which still has shrapnel scars all over from the bombings of WWII.
And inside is rooms and rooms and rooms of every kind of design you can imagine – architecture, garments, jewelry, housewares, armor, etc. Check it out.
You want a room full of Greek stuff? You got it.
How about Early Christian? Not a problem.
Medieval, perhaps? We have a room for that.
How about a long hallway completely filled with every kind of ironwork? Okeedoke.
Seriously, it’s intense. Here’s a picture of a giant super-snazzy Baroque wall of a house. You can’t appreciate it in the picture, But the red parts of the wall is transparent red glass over mirror shards, giving it that extra tackiness. Sparkly!
I decided to focus on the Japanese items on this visit (last time I focused on the art glass section). It was really dark in the Japanese wing, but I still tried to get some decent shots.
The Japanese traditional clothing did not have pockets, so the Japanese originally used little hanging boxes called inro, like little wooden purses. The toggle bead holding the cords of the inro together was called a netsuke. The inro and the netsuke were often exquisitely carved small sculptures made from ivory or hardwoods, accented by metals.
Often natural elements are used in the pieces, like wee beasties or plants. Here is a tiny curled-up rat netsuke.
And here is a snail on a leaf netsuke.
But my favorite, without a doubt, was this one.
A badger wrapped in a lotus leaf?! With a little rain hat? How effin’ cute is that? I totally squee-ed.
Interestingly enough, the thing that blew my mind the most in the museum wasn’t anything I expected. I was walking up to the fourth floor when I passed this enormous wall drawing. It had to be 10 feet by 14 feet. It was huge.
It was an isometric drawing of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Here’s the deal, though: Every single detail is in there. Drawn with pen. Probably a pen with a nib that you have to dunk in an inkwell. It might be one of the most humbling things I’ve ever seen. Since it’s so tall, I could only take pictures of the lower half, but you get the idea.
Woooooow. Here’s the info card next to the drawing.
I might have stood in front of that drawing for fifteen minutes. If you go to the V&A, make sure you check this out. It’s at the top of the stairs to the fourth floor as you enter the architectural section.
(And here’s a nice photo Cricket took of the Millennium Bridge with St. Paul’s Cathedral in the background.)
So Cricket and I were on the subway, and while he was reading the paper, I caught a glimpse of this article. I bolded the important part, the part that made me make a snorting noise in the middle of a crowded subway.
Mass murderer Jeremy Bamber today lost the first stage of his latest bid to overturn a conviction for the killing of five of his relatives. Bamber, who has always protested his innocence, has served nearly 25 years for the 1985 killing of his family in Essex. He has twice lost appeals against his conviction and remains one of 38 killers who have been given a whole-life tariff. The bodies of Bamber’s parents, Neville and June, his sister Sheila Caffell, and her six-year-old twin sons were found at White House Farm in Tolleshunt D’Arcy. All had suffered multiple gunshot wounds. A total of 25 shots had been fired, mostly at close range. At first, suspicion fell on Mrs. Caffell, who suffered from mental illness and was found holding the murder weapon. Then, attention turned to Bamber after a blood-stained silencer was found in a cupboard in the farmhouse.
Here’s what it sounded like to me: “At first, we thought it was Miss Scarlett with the lead pipe in the conservatory, but it turned out to be Colonel Mustard with the candlestick in the lounge.” I love England. They’re so…British-y.
MUSEUMS. We went to a lot of them. Let’s take the Natural History Museum first. If the museum was empty it would still be amazing, because whoever built it included natural history elements into the actual building all over, in both the interior and exterior.
It’s like going to atheist church. At one end of the giant hall, a dinosaur skeleton (see picture above). At the other end, a sculpture of Charles Darwin. I felt like there should be a choir singing hymns about evolution and survival of the fittest.
Once again, England kicks our American butts because their museums are free and you can take pictures. Here is a coelacanth (pronounced see-lah-canth) or, as I like to call it, the “Seriously, That Is Way Too Many Fins, No One Needs That Many Fins”.
Here’s the interesting story. This is an OLD breed of fish. Like, they thought it went extinct 65 million years ago. Then – poof! – someone fishing found one off the coast of Africa in the 1930s, and they’re back! This particular specimen is from 1964, so it has lost its deep-blue color. Also, and I found this adorable, it has little mushrooms growing on it.
They also have a phenomenal amount of dead stuffed things. My favorite last time I visited was the pangolins. My favorite this time was still the pangolins.
I will never get to see a pangolin in the wild, so this was thrilling for me. Plus, one of the pangolins on the tree looks like a zombie with his little stubby pangolin arms outstretched in front of him. Evil zombie pangolin.
Aside from more dead things than you can shake a stick at, they have a stellar mineral wing. I do enjoy a good mineral. Here’s a pic of the mineral wing.
Rows and rows and rows of neatly labeled rocks. I was so happy. I learned the difference between a pebble and a cobble. Here’s a cobble full of pebbles.
And did you know pumice is just frothy lava? It’s like lava meringue.
I want these agates. I want them real bad. Especially the one on the right.
The Natural History Museum has a terrific insect area, but I didn’t have time to visit it. However, I did get to enjoy its entrance. It has that great big ole beetle over the door, but I love how the many-eyed spider looks like he’s welcoming you in. “Oh hello!” he says. “Come on in! I made crumpets.”
Museums have specialty exhibits, and those you have to pay for. The Natural History Museum has an exhibit on right now called “Sexual Nature”, about the sex lives of animals. Really.
I couldn’t take pictures in there because it was dark in an attempt to be romantic (really, they had Barry White playing in the background), but I don’t know, seeing taxidermied animals posed in states of copulation doesn’t get my motor going. I did get a shot of how foxes have sex, which was totally different than I expected. They just back up into each other, ending up looking like a dog with two heads. Very interesting.
Also, around the exhibits and informative plaques were TVs playing Isabella Rossellini’s “Green Porno”. If you’ve never seen this, clear an afternoon, take some magic mushrooms, and hunker down for some of the weirdest television programming you’ve ever experienced. Here’s one just for a taste.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BckqviVaWl0
Cricket’s favorite Green Porno episode was the salmon. I was partial to the duck one. You really must see them all.
To finish off my Natural History experience, here is a giant slice of a very old sequoia (with Cricket standing next to it for scale):
And here is a life-size accurate sculpture of a gulper eel. I made a painting on a gulper eel, but it’s different when you see one up close and personal. I didn’t realize their mouths were tetrahedronal. I was very excited. People around me were concerned.
And here is a poster outside the museum with a very startled-looking drawing of a lemur.
Did I mention that we went to theater? ‘Cause we did. We saw four pieces of theater and some stand-up comedy. Let me run through the theatrical stuff real quick-like for you.
1. Warhorse. It’s going into previews at Lincoln Center right now. It was fabulous, one of the best shows I’ve seen in a long time. I highly recommend it. That being said, it is also a total cry-fest. Ooooh, you’re gonna cry, possibly forever. It’s based on a children’s war story. What the hell, England? War stories for kids? You read that material to them at bedtime? “And then the grenade exploded, and Michael was blown to smithereens right in front of his childhood friend Alan. Alan then had the metallic taste of Michael’s blood in his mouth. Nighty-night kids!” Anyway, the roles of the horses are played by giant, horse-size puppets run by three people each. You can see the puppeteers, but after a while you don’t even notice them there. The horses breathe, and their ears wiggle back and forth, and they snort and slap away flies with their tail, it’s just amazing. It’s going to be one of the best pieces of theater you’ll see in ages. Here are some pictures I found online.
Quick recap: Phenomenal theater, you will cry until your face puffs up and people think you got punched in the face in a brawl over syrup.
2. The Woman in Black. This is spooooooooky bit of theater. Since you’re never going to see it, I can give you the plot summary. Woman A has baby out of wedlock. Her sister, Woman B, offers to take the child and raise it as her own. Woman B is a lady of means who lives in a big house surrounded by spoooooky marshes covered by spoooooky mist. Woman A is distraught but has no other options, so she agrees. Woman B says Woman A can visit the boy, but must not reveal her true relationship to the child. When the boy is six, Woman A, while waiting by the window of the big house for the boy to return from an outing, sees the pony and cart that the child and a caretaker are riding in. She then sees the cart, pony, child and caretaker fall into the marsh and get sucked under. Woman A is completely emotionally destroyed, develops a wasting disease and dies. Her ghost now haunts the big house her sister lived in. If you see her (woman dressed all in black, skeletal face), that means your child will die shortly after. Everyone in the nearby village avoids the house because – hey, shocker! – they don’t want to bump into her and have their kids die in unpleasant ways. But a young lawyer goes up there to close out the estate and organize the finances and creeeeeepy things happen.
Anyone who knows me knows I do not like child-based terror. This show had all the things that make the skin on my back get icy and leave the room. Rocking chair with no one in it? Check. Music box that no one opened but is playing anyway? Check. Flashlight zipping around a room filled with children’s toys and clothes? Check. M. Night Shyamalan-style build-ups of silence and suspense following by loud screaming that caused me to crap my pants? Check.
Quick recap: Spoooooooky.
3) The Children’s Hour. It was meh. It had lots of famous people in it (Carol Kane, Ellen Burstyn, Kiera Knightley and Elizabeth Moss), but some of the people are just not very good stage actors. Combined with a script that is not exactly riveting (Are they lesbians? Aren’t they? Who cares?), it made for a very tepid experience. And at no point did Carol Kane say, “LIAH! LIAH!!”, which was a disappointment. But the good thing is that you can drink beer outside. Here is Cricket drinking beer outside the theater.
Quick recap: Meh.
4) The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Okay, I admit, this is a wholly American show, but I love the hell out of it and I wanted to see how the Brits handled such New-York-y material (answer: really freakin’ well). Since it was the first night of previews, Cricket and I had front-row seats, which was exciting. I was reminded how great a show it was and if it ever comes back to this area, I highly recommend you go see it. I have rarely laughed so hard.
5) And the stand-up comedy. It turned out to be terrific, but I won’t lie – Cricket asked me to pick some stand-up, and I picked this one solely based on the fact that it was being held at a place called The Slug and Lettuce.
If you go to London, go to this show. It’s called Soho Ho, it’s held at The Slug and Lettuce on Saturday nights, and you get a discount to go to an disco down the street called The Loop with a real light-up floor a la Saturday Night Fever in the basement. We did not go to The Loop because we were coming down with Travel Plague, alas, but had we been healthy, we would have.