TT n Sheldy

Friday, January 7, 2011

a night walk to e houston

A few images from the other night when we walked down 2nd and 1st Aves to dinner and a movie in the East Houston St area

These are the sorts of lights I'd keep up all year

The musical, "You're A Good Man, Charley Brown" ran at the above venue for 5 years. Sheldon thought it was still on and is fighting with the box office manager

This is a café on Orchard that we discovered on one of our previous visits.

You enter through a recreation of a French newsagency and inside it becomes a provincial grocery store with authentic tins and bottles.

The waiters are all French or very good acting students. The lighting is extremely flattering and my Charbon burger with blue cheese (vegan diet fled screaming) was wonderful. Sheldon had roast chicken.

Here is Sheldon screaming at the box office man at the Sunshine Cinema. He insisted that the film we wanted to see starred Edward Norton and was most put out when the film turned out to be this one

The film was fabulous and it was amazing to see a rendering of Edinburgh which we visited for a week in 2009 when I directed Rick Lau in his one man show and Sheldon had his first enforced holiday from the London “Priscilla”. The 1959 Edinburgh was so beautifully clean and unhurried. “I’m longing for a simpler time’ could have been the title song for this animated version of a Jaques Tati script that was discovered after his death.

We walked back home speaking fluent French.

Sometimes I wish we drank

Biggest Boop I've ever seen

And Vick rang Maeve at nine. They arranged to meet at the Mars Bar at eleven fifteen. He gave her a tiara and she gave him a tooter and they had two bottles of bubbly before midnight. The snow was really coming down when they piled into a cab and he pulled a yellow streamer out of her hair.

Hotel Pierre

I had a photo call at the Pierre Hotel on 5th Ave yesterday so I thought I'd have a quick squiz at the decor as it seems unlikely I shall ever be invited to set foot on the premises again. Unless I'm hired as the cleaner.

Lady Mary Fairfax used to live in the penthouse here. I think it might have been an entire floor. She probably had the view of Central Park

but here's a view from a single room on the 20th floor

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Kens Frenz

Hi Guys Ken here. In response to a reader’s request I am proud to reveal our new posing area on the memorial Judy Garland dressing table.

We snuck out yesterday and had a gander at some shops along Broadway. Our new friends at X-Tensions posed merrily for us.

Order in the court

This is not Peter Eyers!

This last crone was a leftover from Halloween. Either that or Taylor in the dentist chair.

Grace Church

Here’s a view of Grace Church yard cnr Broadway and 10^th.

Volare Oh Oh

We had a light supper at a great Italian trattoria on 4^th St. There has been an eatery on the site for over eighty years. Once called Mother Bertolottis it is warm and friendly with lovely Lautrecish paintings by Cleon Throckmorton who designed “Porgy” in 1927 and the original New York production of "The Threepenny Opera" in 1933.

Among other famous residents was the great music hall artiste, Lillian Russell.

Past e fagioli and Insalata tre colore ( rocket, endive and raddichio) will be on our menu a lot

A glimpse of a Throckmorton oeuvre

The drawing above our table. We did not have dessert

We know Lillian Russell's room was the one with the air con.

To Barrow and Back

We went to the Barrow St Theatre to see “Mistakes Were Made” with a stirring performance by Michael Shannon as a put upon theatrical producer on a slide in to purgatorial madness. He was totally brilliant in a play with a few longuers and a bit of far fetched plot but the event was very very well done with a great support from a puppet goldfish. Here are some night shots taken to and from the theatre.