Basta: Fun Weekend

Brooke came to visit me this weekend, and it was great. I met her at the airport Friday night, we dropped off her bag at my apartment and headed out to try for Saturday Night Live tickets. We got to NBC around midnight and no one was in line, which was surprising. We were both really hungry so we went and got pizza and dessert, but after more waiting at Rockefeller Center we went to Duane Reade at Times Square for supplies. Brooke had the idea of checking to see what time the Duane Reade opened on 49th St. right by NBC. That's when we found the real SNL line. There were tents, people in sleeping bags on the street...it was awesome. We went to the end of the line and found out that the people in front of us had already been there for hours, which made us feel better about standing on the wrong side for so long. The people at the front of the line had been there since 3 a.m. on Thursday! Talk about commitment. We made friends with the people around us, but we were the last in line for a while until this guy came with a trash can and a towel. He was friendly at first, and even offered us his towel to sit on (he was sitting on the trash can). Then a couple of guys arrived behind him, and trash can guy just completely shut down. He stopped talking and acted like he didn't want anything to do with anyone. It was definitely odd. Trash can guy also told us that we should ask for tickets for the dress rehearsal because we'd have better odds of getting in but more on that later. We did pretty well, it wasn't too cold outside, and we didn't even get tired until 5 a.m. or so. We laid down and finally dozed off around 5:30ish just in time for a guy to come YELL at us around 6 a.m. to stand up. He said that if we wanted tickets we had to stand up. Rude. So we stood for the next hour waiting for tickets until finally we received our instructions. We got to the front of the line and told the guy we wanted dress rehearsal standby tickets, and we were tickets 46 and 47. Trash can guy asked for live and got ticket number 36. Jerk. I still think though our odds were better for the dress rehearsal. We had to be back at the studio at 7:15 p.m. to stand in line for our chance to get in.

We decided to get breakfast at Norma's, and walked up to 57th St., which is the address on the hotel's website. When we got to the door though, the entrance was closed and said to go around to the 56th St. entrance. At first we were irritated because we were so tired, but fate was on our side. As we're getting to the corner of 56th St. a man passed us, and I said "that looked like Mike Huckabee," and Brooke said "you think so?" We had been playing a game called celebrity lookalike, so it wasn't an odd thing for me to say. A guy cleaning the street came up and said "you know who that was? That was Senator Huckabee!" He's not a Senator, but I thought "ok, maybe it really was him," and I took off running toward him. Brooke jogged behind me just in case. I said "excuse me, Mr. Huckabee?" He didn't hear me so I got closer and said "Are you Mike Huckabee?" He turned around and smiled and said "well yes, I am!" I was beyond excited at this point. I told him I went to his rally in Abilene, and he said "seriously? what are you doing all the way up here???" Brooke took our picture and told him she went to school in Arkansas, and he seemed happy about that. He was very nice and accommodating for us.

Brooke's friend, Brooke B., met us at Norma's for the last half of our breakfast. She went to get tickets for a Sunday matinee for us at TKTS while Brooke and I slept. We got up around 2 p.m., slowly got ready and then headed for an early dinner at Rosa's at Lincoln Center. I had actually eaten there before on my family's vacation to NYC, but it was a lot better than I remembered. Maybe it was the two pomegranite margaritas...hmmm. We went to the standby line for SNL after Rosa's. We got to know the NBC page, Tim, really well while we waited to find out we weren't getting into the show. We were a little disappointed, but we had been realistic the whole day about our odds to get in. We also felt a lot better when we saw our line friends didn't get in either.

Sunday we walked through Central Park, grabbed lunch at Five Guys Burgers and Fries and saw Spamalot. On the way to the theater we walked through a street fair. I bought a scarf that I had been eyeing from other street vendors, but I got it for $5 instead of $10. I felt like a true bargain hunter. Spamalot was funny. They pulled a lot of scenes out of Monty Python and the Holy Grail and then changed some of the in between stuff for the show. The best part about it was that we were about 10 feet from the stage. No squinting was required for this show. After the show we went to Chinatown to get purses, wallets, watches and hats. I got two really cute hats and a purse. Brooke got two really cute purses and a wallet. I bought Wes a fake rolex. We had another huge dinner at Il Palazo in Little Italy, which was fantastic. The staff was very attentive, and the food was excellent. Then we bought dessert at Cafe Roma, which is where I had bought a cheesecake about a month ago. One of the waiters actually recognized me. He said "weren't you here about a month ago?" Good memory. Brooke and I hung out at my apartment last night just recovering.

She's out exploring the city right now. There were only two sad things about the weekend which were Brooke lost her camera, so we don't have pictures of our night in line or from Norma's, but at least we have the rest of the weekend. The other sad part is that Brooke has to leave today. Why can't people just move up to NYC with me???

Here's Brooke at the Central Park Zoo.