The Conical Glass: I don't want to go to Margaritaville

Monday, June 25, 2007

I don't want to go to Margaritaville

I covered Wednesday in the last blog entry; here's what else I was up to in New York:

Because there are literally thousands of things to do in NY, I can never get to everything on my list. Last time we visited, I hadn't had time to go to the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, so I wanted to make sure to check it out this time. I'm a big fan of visiting historic homes and have been to many all over the country. They tend to be gorgeous, perfectly restored houses that belonged to the super-wealthy. The Tenement Museum is different -- it was home to 7,000 (!) recent immigrants during the 70+ years of its existence as a cheap rental. In 1935, city housing codes were made more stringent and the owner of the building didn't want to bother making the necessary changes, so all the tenants were evicted. The ground floor storefronts were rented out, and meanwhile, the rest of the building was untouched for decades. Voila -- authentic peeling wallpaper and scuffed floors. Even a painting in the front hall has been left intact; you can barely make out the image because it's so covered with coal dust.

The museum can only be visited on a tour (given every 20 minutes) and groups are small (15 people max), so I had to wait around for an hour or so, since the next couple tours were already sold out. Luckily, there's a nice big museum shop, plus a gelato place down the street, so waiting is no hardship. My group's guide was a typically loquacious New Yorker and full of interesting info about the neighborhood. We learned about two real immigrant families, one from Italy and one German Jewish, who lived in the building.

Joe didn't think visiting a cramped tenement on a hot day sounded like fun, so he went to Times Square to see if he could get some half-price Broadway show tickets at the TKTS booth. Last time we were in NY, we had wanted to see "Spamalot," which had just won the Tony Award for Best Musical, but even full-price tix were completely sold out. Two years later, the tickets were available. All of the stars (Tim Curry, Hank Azaria, David Hyde Pierce, the Tony-winning Sara Ramirez) had long since moved on; in fact, two of the major roles were played by understudies. This year's Tony winner, "Spring Awakening," was the hot ticket in town. (Luckily, "Spring" is coming to San Francisco next year.)

I'm still not completely sure why I didn't care for "Spamalot." It seems to have a lot in common with another film-to-musical adaptation, "The Producers," which we saw in '05, some time after Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane had departed the cast. And yet I loved "The Producers." I'm a big fan of "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," so it's not that -- I did enjoy seeing some of the classic bits from the movie, like the Black Knight and the French Taunter, reenacted on stage. Maybe it's because the movie of "The Producers" was about a musical, whereas "Holy Grail" was just a lovably low-budget comedy that doesn't lend itself to huge, gaudy production numbers. For me, the play's worst sin is including "Always Look On the Bright Side of Life," which all Python devotees know comes from "Life of Brian," not "Holy Grail." The "Life of Brian" scene, where the cheerful song is sung by men hanging from crucifixes, is shockingly hilarious; in "Spamalot," the number just doesn't fit. It seems awkwardly shoehorned in. At least Mel Brooks didn't try inserting "The Inquisition Song" into "The Producers." Here's a good anti-"Spam" piece from Slate.com that states things more eloquently than I just did.

At this point, I'm going to interrupt my NY travelogue (though there's more to come!) and talk about Jamaica. No, not the one in Queens; the one in the Caribbean. When I lived in Baltimore, I used to catsit for a woman who went on a vacation to a different Caribbean island every year. Photos of palm trees and white sand beaches decorated her walls. For some reason, it never occurred to me to want to visit the Caribbean. St. Petersburg, FL, where I travel each year to visit my parents, seemed tropical enough. And yet somehow -- thanks to a charity auction -- I have wound up in Jamaica for a week. Ironically enough, I've been stressing out for months about my impending vacation to the land of "no worries, mon." We arrived yesterday, flying in from JFK. (Celebrity sighting!!! Joe spotted Kevin Smith and his wife in the New York airport. Despite the fact that they were going first class, which has separate lines, it took them just as long to check their bags and go through security as it did us poor peons in coach. Not surprisingly, the film director/professional raconteur boarded an L.A.-bound flight at the gate right across from ours.)

We are staying in a palatial home with a wonderful staff and a breathtaking view of the ocean. The food is exquisite -- huge platters of rice & beans, plantains, tropical fruits, et al. And yet I can't help but feeling that I wish I were back in crowded ol' New York with eight zillion entertainment options to choose from. Am I too type A for the islands? Practically the first thing we did after arriving was set up the internet access, which had been installed, but the modem & cables were still in the box.

This morning, Joe & I walked down to the beach (which is a private beach belonging to a super-fancy, pricey resort called Half Moon, but they're OK with letting you in as long as you look like a well-off tourist -- i.e. white -- and also want to have a drink or buy something there), and then I sat by our home's pool and I finished the second of my stack o'books, Carolyn Hart's The Dead Days of Summer. Right now, it's 10 PM and our eight housemates are off at Margaritaville in downtown Montego Bay. Going to Margaritaville, to me, sounds about as pleasant as having a cavity filled. The people we are staying with, whom we don't know all that well, are pleasant companions but they're more interested than I am in going out & partying. I explained that I'd been to the M'ville in Las Vegas and it was too crowded and noisy and smoky for me, so I assume the other clubs in the chain are likewise. Tomorrow, they're all going to Negril, which is about 90 minutes away; travel advisories like this one have me frightened of crime & harassment, so I probably won't go along. Because I carry on my family tradition of being a huge worrywart, I feel more comfortable staying in our gated estate or visiting Half Moon, which has an even higher gate, plus guards. And I'd only go there during the day.

Probably a lot of the people reading this think I'm insane and wish they could trade places with me right now. I have six days left so I'll try to relax & enjoy it a little bit more.

posted by 125records @ 7:31 PM

1 Comments:

At 9:20 PM, 2fs said…

Having a cavity filled? The idea of going to Margaritaville - no doubt full of idiotic Jimmy Buffett worshipers - is more like having teeth pulled sans anaesthetic by a very sweaty person who's just eaten eight cloves of garlic. I'm pretty sure that if there's a hell, my hell will be rather like Margaritaville.