The Johnny Bacardi Show

I'll say goodbye to all my sorrows
And by tomorrow, I'll be on my way
I guess the Lord must be in New York City
I'm so tired of gettin' nowhere
Seein' my prayers go unanswered
I guess the Lord must be in New York City
Well, here I am, Lord, knockin' at your backdoor
Ain't it wonderful to be,
Where I've always wanted to be
For the first time I'll be free here in New York City
Say goodbye, to all my sorrows
And by tomorrow, I'll be on my way
I guess the Lord must be in New York City
So tired of gettin' nowhere
Seein' my prayers go unanswered
I guess the Lord must be in New York City
Well, here I am, Lord, knockin' at your backdoor
Ain't it wonderful to be,
Where I've always wanted to be
For the first time I'll be free here in New York City

Apologies if you thought this one was gonna be a Nilsson post. Be of good cheer, I think I might just do one eventually. This is a picture sleeve for a 45 which was from the 1969 Harry LP, from which "Lord" comes. It illustrates the Newman cover from that album, "Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear"...but I don't think that was a 45 release. Anyway, it's what came up when I did a Google image search for that song.

ANYway, like I said several posts ago, I made the return trip to New York this past Monday and Tuesday, and things went as smoothly as I could have hoped for, especially considering the circumstances. You may recall that the occasion for the trip was so my daughter, aspiring singer/actress, could participate as well as serve as a chaperone in a workshop a friend from the local theatre here in Horse Cave had recommended her for. Since plane tickets were too expensive, it was incumbent upon us to drive her up there and back. Mrs. B and I left our old Kentucky home about 1 PM on Sunday- I wanted to get in most of my day at the radio station- and drove, this time, up through Ohio and across Pennsylvania, the objective this time being to enter into the belly of the beast through the Holland Tunnel. After another long and tiring drive with precious little of interest to see on the way (unless you groove on mountains), we arrived in NYC sometime around 4 AM EST, and emerged from the Tunnel into a City in the opening throes of Republican National Convention madness. Our hotel (the best priced one we could get on short notice- not exactly great travel planners here; plus we didn't realize the Convention was going on, not big political buffs here either) was the Clarion on Park Avenue South, pretty darn close to Madison Square Garden and the newsworthy protests of that afternoon. In fact, we passed by the Garden on our frazzled way to the Hotel- but other than seeing three cops on every street corner and a general air of chaos, encountered no other hassles. As I said, we finally got in our extremely tiny one-bed room (thought we were getting a two-bedder) about 4:30, and no sooner had we settled our brains for what we hoped would be a long Monday nap than we heard a faint scritch-scritch-scritching. Apparently a mouse had gotten in our room and had found a bag of snack food we had brought along for our trip...and was having a fine feast! I took the handles of the grocery bag, tied them together, and set the bag out in the hallway, too tired to be mad but annoyed just the same. Later that morning, I went downstairs, explained what had happened and that we needed another bed due to another person joining us that night, and they gave one to us pretty darn quickly. This new room was cavernous by comparison. One hurdle complete. After walking around for a few blocks that afternoon (it was hot and humid, and we didn't last long), we went back to rest up for the workshop showcase later that evening. We took a cab to the Orpheum theatre, a small venue (Stomp is playing there, in case you're interested) which was located somewhere around St. Marks and 2nd Street. For some reason, it took forever for the workshop people to open up and sell tickets, which caused a long line to form in the afternoon heat and caused tempers to get short. I took the opportunity to do a little exploring, finding a neat little record shop just across the street, called "Wowsville", which had a lot of indie and punk stuff (of course) as well as an import vinyl copy of T.Rex's Zinc Alloy album, which I would have picked up if they didn't want 18 bucks for it. I'm not that crazy about that record, and even less crazy about paying that much for it. I also happened upon the St. Marks Comics shop, which was a small place jammed in between various bars and alternative lifestyle clothing stores. I went in to have a look around, and if I had had more time I might have dug a bit deeper but didn't really find much that interested me that I didn't already have. As I looked around, I overheard a conversation between a young boy who was asking the clerk (an attractive young Asian girl with a lower lip ring) if she had some sort of Spider-Man collection or something. She wasn't aware of what he asked for, and undaunted he went on to remark that it wasn't fair that it was always Gwen Stacy that died, that Mary Jane should get it once in a while. Couldn't help it, I laughed a bit, the girl chuckled at me, and I told him "That's just part of the myth- Gwen has to die. Wouldn't be right otherwise!" He just nodded and went on into the back of the store, presumably to look for the latest issue of Mary Jane. The girl confided to me that she had no idea about what was going on in Marvel books, that she was a Vertigo-type girl. I said, "Me, too...well, I'm not a girl, but you know what I mean", which made her laugh as well. Now gentle reader, lest you think I was flirting with this nice young comics shop girl, fear not- I asked her, in the interest of potential blogfodder, nothing more- which Vertigo titles she liked, and she cited Lucifer, and of course The Sandman trades, and Grant Morrison titles. Like Seaguy? "Sure!" I asked her how well Seaguy sold, and she said it sold pretty well at St.Marks...which surprised me a bit and I remarked that it didn't sell as well overall as DC hoped. Meant to ask her if she read The Witching, but I didn't get to follow-up, as another customer came up to her with a question and I knew that I had to move on, so I said "Nice talkin' to you" and made my exit stage left. I had originally set out looking for some flowers for Abby, and came up empty in my search, so I went back to the Theater, and after another long while we eventually got in. I mention my St. Marks Comics experience to keep my comics blogger credentials intact, by the way.

The workshop showcase was essentially an opportunity for the participants to take the stage, one by one, and perform a monologue of some sort. Some were very good, some were not so much, but people, let me tell you- my daughter was as good as, if not better than, any of them. I say this with a little prejudice, true, but I know amateurish acting when I see it, and she was not that at all. Perhaps it was her already strong theater background, but she shined. She made a definite positive impression not only that night but during the course of the previous week as well; whether or not anything will happen for her as a result of this remains to be seen. She did get an offer to work for the fellow who runs the whole enterprise in an administrative function, but is unable to take it right now due to her Kentucky Repertory Theatre commitments. All in all, a very positive experience for her, which made us very happy as well. We decided long ago that we'd do whatever was humanly possible to help not only her but her brother as well to realize their performing ambitions, and this was just another instance of that.

After getting back to the hotel around 11-ish, we had a pizza delivered (nothing like pizza late at night and right before bed, oy), had a very late dinner, and went to bed. We got up a lot later than I would have liked on Tuesday morning, and set out for home about 10:30 AM, ensuring that we wouldn't see bluegrass until well after midnight. The trip home was pretty uneventful (although it was novel to see Pennsylvania in the daylight, which I have managed to avoid on my last three trips up), and we rolled in, finally home, about 2:30 AM...and I had to get up at 6 AM to go to work. Needless to say, I was pretty much in a stupor all day. I'm only just now getting back up to par.

And that's my latest NYC adventure. I did something I never thought I'd be able to do- drive in the City proper (right through Times Square on the way home). When I had had a day in the City back in 1985, I thought the traffic looked hellish...but I really didn't have any difficulty, much to my relief. I wish I could have looked up some of my online and phone acquaintances while I was up there (and I did look for some names in the phone book- unlisted, I assume, 'cause I didn't find any), but it just wasn't in the cards. Who knows, maybe someday we'll go back, but you can bet your ass that if I can avoid driving up I will. I'm glad that there were no Convention-related shenanigans while I was there. The only thing I saw was a group of chanting protestors somewhere in the vicinity of the Orpheum...don't even know what they were chanting.

This concludes my rambling travelogue. More hopefully entertaining stuff later, just not tonight.