Thursday - Musing(s) on Wednesday

Wednesday was an interesting day. When I woke up at the usual 8:00am and looked out the window I had a gut feeling that the gray nastiness would turn into a downpour and rain out my 1:05 game at The House That Ruth Built. As the morning went on it remained gray but no rain. I just chilled for the morning.

I dressed in my usual summer Yankee garb - shorts, a Yankee cap and a kinda ratty looking official Yankee T-shirt. The T-shirt is actually about 9 years old but I don’t want to jinx the Yankees by getting a new one before this season ends. Headed out to the stadium at noon and made great time and wonder of wonders, the 4 train from 125th Street to 161st Street/Yankee Stadium was not jammed like a sardine can as it usually is. It was still dark and gloomy out and the air was very heavy.

Found my seat, part of my 20 game season ticket package. For reasons I just don’t understand my seat for this game was the worst I have ever had from any of my season packages for a midweek day game. Oh, yes, it was in the usual Loge but it was far far into right field. In fact, the only difference(s) between my seat and those known as The Bleacher Creatures, was that I was one section up from field level, had a roof over my head and had paid $55 for my ticket and they had paid $20 for theirs. Oh well, nothing I could do about it, so I settled in. The game was a total sellout at 54,114 for a Wednesday afternoon game. WOW!!

Oh, I have to add that sitting to my left in the next section over was Jack McBrayer who plays Kenneth the Page in the hit NBC comedy 30 Rock. He spent a lot of time between innings waving and smiling at people but amazing to me - no one invaded his space and he was able to enjoy the game with his buddies. Nice.

It was an excellent game. Mike Mussina aka The Moose, pitched 8 innings of 6 hit ball, giving up 0 runs, 0 walks and striking out 7. He won his 13th game. It is remarkable because at the beginning of the season most of the buzz was whether Moose would even be in the rotation. Now he is our Ace. The Yankee bats were alive enough to bring in a 5-1 win, a 6 game winning streak and insuring that we remain in the race in the AL East. It didn’t rain but it was very nasty when Mo recorded the final out via a called third strike.

Made decent time back and was in the apartment at 4:30 with plenty of time to take a shower, have the usual fruit and cheese plate, finalize the entertainment schedule for next week and basically just chill until it was time to head out to The Theater Row Theaters on W. 42nd Street for my evening show, “Perfect Harmony,” which I have described in an earlier posting.

It had begun to lightly mist when I left the apartment, dressed in my usual black outfit and carrying my umbrella in my messenger bag. Yes, folks, I said messenger bag, not the usual backpack. What the fuck is going on, you ask? Well, I am giving the messenger bag a try and so far it works OK for the summer anyway, but I am rather confident I will return to the backpack when winter arrives.

{sorry to interrupt this ... it is 6:25pm on Thursday and I have to get ready for my show, “Buffalo Gal”... will finish and post when I get back}

It is now 10:15 and I am back and “Buffalo Gal” was great and I will write about it later, so ... where was I?

Oh, yes ... the show I had scheduled was “Perfect Harmony” which I described in detail in an earlier post. Briefly it is about two High School acappella groups, the perennial National Championship male group called The Acafellas and their struggling female counterparts The Ladies in Red. I knew that the show was 1:40, without intermission, so I asked the main usher if I could change my otherwise excellent center orchestra seat to far house left aisle so I could extend my left leg if necessary. She said no problem and kept shifting me and a late 20s woman to different seats and finally we were able to settle in. Just before the show started I found out that the lady was the costume designer for the show and that this was one of the last previews before Opening Night. She was pretty uptight.

Well, I loved the show. It was a bit long but the young cast, both male and female, did a wonderful job. They acted and sang well. The audience seemed to be really into the show and gave the cast a very loud round of applause. I leaned over to the woman and told her that I loved the show and she said: “Oh thank you so such,” and then lightly kissed me on my right cheek. Nice.

When I walked out of the theater, however, it was anything but nice. The wind was blowing and papers and things were flying through the air. It had begun to lightly rain. I walked as fast as I could to the subway station. I had to hold my Yankee cap on my head because the wind was gusting so hard.

When I walked out of the subway station at 53rd Street the rain was coming down in sheets and the wind was howling. Honestly, it was one of the heaviest rains I can ever remember in The City. I took out my umbrella but that didn’t help. Even though it is only 2 blocks back to the apartment I was drenched and soaking wet all over. The only good thing - it wasn’t cold.

Took off the wet clothing and hung things up to dry, dried myself off, heated up the last of a sausage roll and pizza slice, watched Jon Stewart and then the first 30 minutes of Letterman. A little after midnight I called Ginger Flowers in Atlanta and we had a nice 20 minute chat.

Updated the log and did other stuff and then crashed at the usual 2:00, thus ending a great and eventful day/evening in The Big Apple.

It is just after 11:00 and I am hungry so will post this now.

Billi Pod
wanjr@aol.com