Amber and I are seeing four shows while we're here, thanks to a friend who arranged for house seats. For those of you who don't know, "house seats" are tickets arranged by someone on the inside. They're not free. You pay face value for them. But they're usually very good seats that are available when all the other good seats have been purchased.
One of our shows is off-Broadway and I have an e-mail printout of our seat numbers for that. The other shows are Broadway shows and our tickets were set aside for me in the various box offices. I've learned the hard way that upon arrival in Manhattan, it's a good idea to immediately visit those box offices and pick up those tix, lest someone who works at the theater succumb to the temptation to give your good seats to someone else and stick you in less wonderful locations. That temptation could be due to friendship or bribery but either way, I wanna get those tickets out of those box offices and into my possession.
So first thing we did Wednesday was to visit those three theaters — all conveniently situated near one another — and claim my ducats. Second thing was to take the subway to meet my editor Charlie Kochman for lunch and to get hopelessly lost. I still don't know how we wound up where we wound up but it was such a remote part of New York City, I actually heard people speaking English.
After lunch, we scurried over to the offices of Sirius XM Radio. Remember what Auric Goldfinger had to do to break into Fort Knox? That's like an Open House compared to what it took to get Amber — since I forgot to tell them she was coming with me — into the Sirius building. But we did and she sat in as I guested on John Fugelsang's fine radio talk show, co-hosted by Frank Conniff. It was broadcast live and I don't think it's downloadable anywhere but maybe someone will inform me I'm wrong.
John and Frank don't really need guests there — they're that good — but it was fun to pitch in and talk about, among other topics, movies which didn't deserve their Oscars, Jack Kirby, How Comic-Con in San Diego has evolved, Gun Control and a few other topics. If you aren't a regular listener to this show, you oughta be. It's great to hear spontaneous, witty conversation between two bright men even when they have someone like me getting in the way.
Then we went back downtown to the offices of Harry N. Abrams Books, the folks who have published my books about Jack Kirby. They had a big author party and I very much enjoyed chatting with other Abrams authors. I was talking with one fellow for three or four minutes before I realized he was John Leguizamo, one of my favorite comedians. Shows you how observant I can be at times.
After the party, Amber and I went out with one of my favorite cartoonist-persons, Mike Peters. Mike, who does the Mother Goose & Grimm comic strip and so many great political cartoons, was with his wife Marian and his daughter Molly. It was Marian's birthday so the five of us subwayed to Benihana's to dine and celebrate and I'm not telling you this because I think you need to know this but this is kind of a diary for me and I just want to remember what happened on what days.
The meal at Benihana's was identical to the meal at any Benihana's. Our chef flipped the shrimp tails into his hat. He made the little volcano out of onion rings. He sculpted the fried rice into a large heart and made it "beat" by putting his spatula under it. I always wonder who invented all those little stunts and whether he or she ever got a dime in royalties. I'm guessing a dime but not much more.
And that was our Wednesday. I'll try to get back here on Saturday to tell you about Thursday.