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Trip Report New York City April 2008
Tuesday
This was our last full day in New York.
We stumbled awake and Mrs. Bart said, "Maybe
we should try to get Letterman tickets."
Whenever she says, "Maybe we should..."
that's like gold in the bank.
In 1987, we were driving to Vegas and she said, "U2
opens their Joshua Tree Tour in Tempe tonight,
maybe we should check that out,"
and that idea turned into thousands of hours of fun for us.
She's done that dozens of times over the years, so I just take
that as a sign from God.
Around 10:30, once I got my head straight, and we headed for the lobby.
On the elevator, three hotel personnel joined us, and they asked, "What's
up?"
Generally when that happens, I look down and clear my throat.
Have I mentioned how much I don't like people?
But this time I said, "We're looking for Letterman tickets,"
and the dude says.
"Check with Tammy at the Conscierge's desk.
She might have some tips."
So Tammy the Conscierge at The Benjamin gave us
a tip sheet on how to get Letterman tickets.
The door dude summoned a cab for us, and we were
on our way!
The turbaned cabbie said, "War
too?" and I took that for "Where to?"
so I said
"Take us to the Dave Letterman show," and
he said, "What address?"
...so I said, "The Ed Sullivan Theater," and he said "What?"
I said, "The Ed Sullivan Theater, David
Letterman, the Ed Sullivan Theater,
the Beatles first gig in America"and he
looked at me like *I* was the nut.
So I said, "54th
& Broadway" and I was gonna slap him
if he'd never heard of Broadway.
Christ, don't you have to pass a test to drive
a cab in The Greatest City in the World?
I wonder if he knew where the Empire State Building
was?)
So we finally find Dave's theater and we saw a line so we got in it.
We were told if we wanted to enter the lottery
for tonight's Dave tickets, we had to show them ID's,
we had to prove our address & verify our
cell numbers, ...then we had to agree to be interviewed
...for the Letterman Show ticket lottery.
Geez, it was easier to get inside the White House in 1998.
Note: I looked for that link for 2 hours, ran out of time.
Finally, after passing the pre-interview, we were led behind some barriers
and then faced the bright
lights for the interview. I guess the NY cops wanted video evidence
in case we were suicide bombers?
Yes, we're Okies,
yes, we love Dave,
Our favorite bits? We love them all!
(See? They couldn't fool me like they'd fool Bill
Richardson. He would've answered
the questions wrong and then found his ass watching
Letterman from his hotel room.)
Yes, we'll be here on time,
Yes, we'll laugh even if Dave does nothing but
Monica jokes.
That chip on my shoulder started to get a little heavier.
She said she'd call our cell numbers if our audition score was high enough..
Sidebar:
Cell phones barely work in Times Square. It's
possibly the most valuable square mile
of real estate in the world, and my cell went
blank and it would not ring. Our phones
are super-old, maybe 2003 or so, so I want to
get new phones - any suggestions?
Should we spend the bucks for an iPhone?
Or do I need a Blackberry?
I'd like a GPS, a decent camera and a ringer
that works, so what should I get?
I won't need to carry 5,000 songs with me at
all times, if that's a factor.
I'm an expert on cell phones, bart - and here's what you need to get!
So we had 3 hours to kill, we took in Top of
the Rock.
That's 30 Rockefeller Center, where they shoot
SNL and tons of NBC shows.
The elevator to the 67th floor is a trip.
As soon as you start, all the lights go out and you look up and see
the elevator shaft
has red lights every few feet and you're going up very, very fast.
It's a good thing
I don't have a history of fainting for no damn reason.
Then we get to the top and out we went.
This is looking North into Central Park.
Mrs Bart saw the patch of green and said, "I'm
tired of concrete, let's go there next."
Without thinking - I agreed.
Then my phone rang, but when I answered it nobody was there. Sure enough,
2 minutes later
it starts blaring the most obnoxious Bahama music ever, which means
we missed a call.
It was the Letterman interns and they said "Be
here at 3PM, if you arrive at 3:01, you
are S.O.L. because we don't take crap from
anybody - because we don't have to."
Once again, that chip on my shoulder got a little heavier.
I mean, weren't we their guests?
Sidebar:
I could do another limo-ride-type story here, but I'll spare you. We
were on Floor 67,
you can also go up to Floor 69 but the rest rooms were on Floor 68
- makes sense, right?
I mean why put the rest rooms on the floor where all the damn people
are?
But the elevators wouldn't take Floor 68. We punched, we waited
- nothing.
Other people, seeing the Okie rube trying to figure out how an elevator
works
came to our rescue but they couldn't make it work, either. Archi-bastards.
So I ask the guard how to get to Floor 68 and he looks at me and says
real sarcastic,
"You might try the elevators," like
we don't have elevators in Okie-homie..
Anyway, that lasted far longer than it should have - and has anyone
in New York
ever heard of signs? The whole city could use a shitload of signs
that say,
"Exit," "Rest Rooms" "The line forms here"
"Entrance," etc. That would save
some person from having to answer the same damn question 500 times
every day.
This is looking East, so I guess that's The
East River and Queens.
.
Looking South you see the Empire State Building and, if it was
taller, the former Statue of Liberty.
Looking West from 30 Rock I should see the UN Building, but noooo.
Did John Bolton get drunk and have it blown to pieces?
Then Mrs. Bart reminded me about Central Park.
We took the elevator to the ground floor and grabbed
a snarly cab.
We told him "We
want to go to Central Park, on the West side, to the 72nd St entrance."
(I did my homework - you see, I have a laptop.)
Well, Snarly Cabbie didn't want to go all the
way to 72nd St, so he dumped us out at 65th.
I toild him, "Keep
driving - we want to go to 72nd St," but
he said we had to get out
and I think I figured out why. I think
he figured me for a tip-stiffer (I would never).
Maybe he was related to that limo driver who screwed
himself out of $20. The cab fare
was at $7 and he figured he was going to get
a $10, a whopping $3 tip, but if he kept driving,
the fare might end up at $8.50 and he wanted
that extra $1.50 so he pushed us out.
So we got out at 65th and started walking into
the park. It was nice, nice weather,
birds were chirping, dogs were running and playing
- but we didn't see anybody having sex.
I guess that's another difference between San Francisco and New York.
So we just kept walking and we kept walking...
I started getting thirsty, so we found a place to get a bottled water.
So we kept walking...and we kept walking...
...and we kept walking...and we kept walking...
That looked kinda cool, but I couldn't tell what it was, so we
kept
walking...
After a while, my knees started to hurt (anybody
remember the turkey waddle injections
I had in my knees in 2005?) because we got lost.
There are no signs or maps in Central Park.
Would it hurt to have signs? All those
local taxes and Central Park is still without signs?
We started asking people if they knew the fastest way out of the park
- nobody spoke English.
One guy knew a little English, so I asked him how to get out and he
said, "It's your country."
So we kept walking and now & then we'd run into a hot dog vendor
- who didn't speak English,
but the shirking of his shoulders and his foreign-language grunting
were very helpful.
We decided that we'd walk around the lake and leave the park wherever
that left us,
but after a long walk we turned a corner and it said
"Path under construction, go back or
climb this giant hill that leads to the center
of the park." We decided to go back.
So we kept walking and kept walking and we had this 3PM
deadline from Letterman's Luftwaffe.
So we kept walking and we kept walking ...until I
was just hoping we'd run into Kurt Russell.
(Thanks to Chigago Jim for the joke.)
Coming back around the lake, we saw this fella...
That's the biggest pidgeon I ever saw.
We eventually came into a clearing and saw this...
Still not sure what that is. but it looks like the building in Ghostbusters.
So we kept walking, and I heard a weird sound and one of New York's
Finest shot past me
doing what must be the top speed on a Segway. Seeing him as our
last chance to get out before dark,
I yelled, "Dude, sir?" and he spinned
around and came back and gave us directions.
Sidebar:
Unlike every other park I've been in, Central Park is surrounded by
a ten-foot high wall.
Is that wall there to prevent help from reaching you if you're in serious
trouble?
Is it there so helpless women can be more easily cornered?
Is it there to keep the bears from mixing with the rest of the city?
Finally - we made our way out of the park at 72nd Street and we saw this.
I knew what that was - The Dakota where that shitbag shot John Lennon.
I didn't want to see that any more than I wanted to see Ground Zero.
If I wanted to be depressed I could've stayed at home and watched
Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann throw nasty slurs at Hillary..
Finally, we grabbed a cab and made it back to the hotel to get her heavy jacket.
On the way from Central Park to the hotel, we drove past St Barts!
I never expected to have a church named after me,
but this seemed like a good choice.
For years we've heard about Dave shooting his show on that refrigerated
stage,
and Mrs Bart hates being cold so we grabbed her jacket and headed
back to Times Square.
So we got in line - and they treated us like we were Mrs. Wilson's third
graders on a field trip..
They had a plethora of twenty-something punks barking orders at us.
They marched us inside the Letterman lobby and read off the long list
of things that we weren't
allowed to do and I started to figure something out: The
tickets are free
because they treat you
like such shit, half the people would say, "Screw
it - I don't need this, give me my money back."
Here you can see two she-devil
interns, keeping us from leaving the inquisition.
Example: they told us, "Restrooms
close at 3 PM, so if you gotta go, you'd better go now."
But the show tapes from 4:30 to 5:30, so WTF?
It's not 3 PM yet and I can't tell at 2:50
if I'm going to need a restroom before 5:30,
so WTF?
There's about 500 people there who can't use a
restroom between 3:45 and 5:30?
I have no 'continent' problems, but who can say
at 2:45 they won't need a restroom for 3 hours?
Hell, if you take a Southwest Airlines flight from Dallas to Fort Worth,
you're only in the air
for nine minutes and they have a bathroom - for your
convenience.
So I take them up on their offer and the interns
point us towards the one-flight-down steps to
the restrooms - and who do I see?
I look up and notice I'm following a not-tall, Black gentleman.
Swear to Koresh, I could tell who it was from
the back of his head.
I turned around to Mrs Bart and said, "That's
Biff!"
Sure enough, it was Biff Henderson, Dave's stage
manager who does Dave's field trips.
I chose to grant him some dignity, especially
because we're walking into the Men's Room together.
Biff gave me a glance, as if to say,
"If you're going to ask for an autograph, could you
do it before I whip this monster out?"
I just smiled and kept walking to let him know
I was no stalker, so there we are, a urinal
between us, each of us were going about our business,
when another Black man came in,
looked at Biff and said, "So,
you're a pisser?"
Biff seemed startled, his brain searched for a
reply.
Finally he said,
"At least I can..."
So this dude cuts him off and says to Biff,
"How many times a night you gots to pee?"
Me? I'm looking straight ahead at the wall.
I have nothing to add to this conversation.
So Biff came back with a Samuel L. Jackson-type
reply:
"It depends on how much I had to drink that
night."
The conversation went on, but I was outta there.
If anyone out there knows Biff, ask him about
this.
I predict he'll reply, "The
accuracy of that transcript is f-ing spooky."
OK, so now it's 3 PM and it's 90 minutes till showtime.
We walk outside, mindful that the bladder nuclear
option was staring at us.
We went next door, to Rupert Gee's 'Hello Deli'
delicatessen.
I walked in, just to see if some para-military dudes would tackle me.
They didn't, so I reached for a bottle of water
from that cooler that you see behind
Dave's supermodels when Rupert's guest does or
doesn't do something.
That's not us, I grabbed this
off the web to show you the cooler.
Then I look up, and there's Rupert.
Unlike my encounter with Biff, I said, "Hi,
Rupert!"
But I said it in such a cool manner, he didn't
take me for some Okie rube.
No, he thought I was a guy from the neighborhood,
so he said,
"Hey" like
I was probably that one guy from that one place.
I said, "Rupert, give me one of them Hello Deli Club sandwiches."
(Dave's kidding when he says Rupert's phone number is 212-69e-coli.)
Truth is, that sandwich rocked.
Rupert - dude - you coulda charged me $12
and I would've thought that I
did OK because we were in f-ing Times Square
where a Big Mac costs $10.
So now we're back in the Letterman line.
I'll spare you the long-ass story about trying
to find a bathroom in Times Square!
I asked Rupert's people for a rest room, they said "Try
the Starbucks, one block down."
Like a fool, I trusted them (and I was a customer!) but Starbucks has
no public rest room.
The security guard there suggested several not-gonna-work possibilities.
Who knew nobody has to pee in Times Square during the day?
By now it's 3:45 and the taping starts in 45 minutes
- so we just stand there for 45 minutes,
and the whole time these hyper-active, super-obnoxious
interns are barking at us.
"Do you promise to scream when Dave comes
out? Let me hear you scream!"
So 500 of us are screaming on the sidewalk.
"I can't hear you!!!"
so the other 499 screamed while I said "Blow me."
They acted like we were going to see the Jonas
Brothers (is that their name?)
He went over the drill with us like we were going
to testify in a mob murder trial.
"Do you promise to scream when Dave does his
Eliot Spitzer jokes?
I can't hear you!" and
that continued while my knees were busy torturing me.
The screaming intern explained to us how show
business works.
He said if Dave tells a joke that's more clever
than funny, be sweethearts
and laugh like it was actually funny, OK?
He said if Dave tells a joke that's
more amusing than funny, be sweethearts
and laugh like it was actually funny, OK?
You see, the people at home can't hear clever.
They can't hear amusing.
The people at home won't think Dave's funny unless
we're laughing at
an audio level that old people can recognize
back in the heartland.
Once again, we didn't pay for these tickets, so we can't complain.
He's telling us Dave might suck major donkey tonight,
but we should laugh anyway.
I'm so old, I remember when Dave was funny and
didn't need that kind of help.
After what seemed like days, they finally let
us in the theater and every 5 feet there's
an intern standing there, every 5 feet, plastic
smile, every 5 feet, clapping a polka beat.
After making us stand there for 45 minutes, now they wanted us to run
to our seats.
Ever wonder what happened to Seinfeld's Soup Nazi? He
works for Dave now.
"No
aisle seat for YOU!!"
He stood in the center of the aisle and directed fast-moving people
traffic left and right.
And Koresh help you if you didn't understand his flailing, spastic,
semaphore hysteria.
Good thing there's a Starbucks nearby in case his caffeine rush starts
to crash.
We got in THE very last row, which is odd because 25 years ago that
week, in Los Angeles,
(and I'm sure because it was April 1983, our first ever trip out West,
the same day we saw
the Comedy King of Kings, Richard Pyor live) we saw Johnny Carson
from the last row, too.
We've never seen a taping of a TV show that wasn't from the back row.
By the way, the famed "refrigerated stage" Dave tapes on?
That theater was NOT cold,
but then, the thermostat at Casa de Bart stays on 65
dgrees, so maybe it's just me.
Then some old guy comes out to "warm up" the audience.
I was surprised, I would've expected a intern-aged comic.
He was pretty bad, but once again, it's free tickets, right?
I remember one of his jokes, "Times Square
is cleaned up now, but it used to be
nothing but peep shows and prostitues. And
who took their place? McDonald's
and Burger King, who are even bigger whores,
you see."
ha ha
How did this guy get a job as a comedian in show business?
Then comedy boy says Dave will be out soon to meet with the audience,
and he
reminds us how sometimes Dave will refer to his pre-show chat in his
on-air monolog
so get your questions ready for Dave cause he'll be out soon.
Comedy boy then introduced the band, and all the while these interns
are still clapping
this super-cheery polka beat and they stand there clapping and they
look at you like you're
offending them with your non-clapping compliance status.
Then the weirest thing happened. Dave came running out from backstage
at top speed.
It was so unexpected because Dave's maybe 60 years old and he's had
the bypass surgery
and all, but he ran so fast that I wondered how he was going to stop,
but he grabbed the
corner of his desk and his body kept going for a sec and then he was
finally stopped.
If you listed 30 ways a man could enter a room, I would've bet
the other 29 first
because I'd never guess Dave would come running in at top speed.
So everybody cheers, the waiting is over, Dave is finally here.
So Dave asks for questions and one guy jumped up extra-fast and Dave
called on him.
He asked Dave a question about the highways in Indianapolis,
Dave's home town.
So Dave did a little joke and boom! - he was gone.
Frankly, I expected a little more, because sometimes Dave will tell
a long story
about some lady in the audience who did this and that - like a conversation.
Maybe they were running out of time.
Then announcer Allan Calter comes out and Paul's band starts playing
Dave's theme
so the show must have started. The guests tonight are Helen Hunt,
some New York
screaming sports radio ass-monkey and a musician called Kathleen Edwards.
Dave comes out, we all clapped and cheered like we promised.
The monolog was OK, nothing special, but when he sat down, he brought
up
the dude who asked about the Loop around Indianapolis - and Dave made
a funny.
From the Letterman website:
Someone from the audience brought up the Indianapolis
I-465 Expressway that
Dave hoped would be renamed after him. Years
ago, Dave suggested it be called,
"The Dave Letterman Bypass" after his procedure
and his being Indiana's favorite son.
Someone could ask, "How do I get to the airport?"
and you could say, "Get on the Dave
and go 5 miles." His plea fell on deaf ears.
But now he's heard the I-465 IS going to be
named after Dick Lugar. But Dave sees a problem
with that. Now if someone asks,
"How do I get to the airport?" . . . you'd
have to say, "Get on the Dick."
That was the one joke of the hour that was good enough to laugh at.
Helene Hunt was OK, Dave got off on some tangent that she didn't want
to talk about
and she asked him 5
times to stop, but Dave gets his teeth into something
and he
doesn't stop until he sees the tears well up in his guest's eyes.
But each time they went to a commercial, Dave would whip off his sport
coat and the not-funny
warm-up guy and some mob-looking dude who's never been on camera
run up and talk to Dave.
You'd think Dave could go 4 minutes without having some employees hovering
over him.
Then that sports clown, Christopher Russo, annoyed Dave and they argued
for 8 minutes.
The audience seemed unsure of which side to root for.
The Kathleen Edwards did a song - seemed good, but she was no Shirley.
Sidebar:
Even if you really like Dave - I say pass on
seeing his show live.
You're going to lose a lot of magic once you see
what it takes to put on his show.
It's like if you believe in Santa, don't hide
a nanny-cam inside the Christmas Tree, y'know?
On our last day in fabulous Manhattan, we spent half a day on
Dave.
If we had to do it again, I would've voted to do other stuff, instead.
After that, we stumbled back towards the Benjamin and we saw this.
Look - there it is again - St Bart's!
Who ever heard of a fancy Catholic church surrounded by skyscrapers?
So, our last night in town, we went to Frank's suite with the intent
to play online poker,
but we ended up drinking tequila and vodka and telling old, old stories.
So we kept drinking and telling old stories while Frank played his new
accoustic guitar
that he said cost more than a couple of his Les Paul's and he sang
some songs
that I wish he'd let me use on Bartcop radio. We had the
best time doing nothing...
So, the highlights of our New York trip were:
meeting Raphael, Terri &
Greg and Paul & Wendy
meeting and seeing the living
legend Les Paul and Uncle Lou on guitar
the final evening with Frank
and Lorn, goofing off, telling old stories.
There was one story - from my criminal past, The Talking Christmas
Tree - that I should leave
for the radio show. (Anybody can read this page - if you get my drift,
like in-laws and such :)
You know what they say about all good things? We had to shut things
down to meet
the snarly limo dude at 6:30 for the drive back to Ronkonkona
on Long Island.
Flying Southwest - you ALL know what I mean, since
you're flying for free
or for $39, you have to walk to the very, very,
very end of the airport.
On Southwest, you don't ask, "Which gate?"
You ask, "Which gate is farthest?"
After all these years, I thought we might've broke
the curse coming home.
We were dead tired from being wined and dined
by New York's coolest people
and getting lost in Central Bataan Park so when
I saw "Gate 2" on my boarding pass,
I finally felt like winner on Southwest because
what kind of f-ed up airport would
put Gate 2 a gazillion miles away?
Yep, in the tiny but still-big MacArthur "airport,"
they START at gate Six,
and work their way down to Gate One, thirty to
forty yards per gate.
At least those screaming kids didn't follow us 7 hours back to Tulsa.
Thank you, God.
Looking forward, our new friends have invited
us to a party in November.
They own a farm with bears (No, it's not a bear
farm) 90 miles from the city
and if finances and frequent flyer miles allow
us, we'll make the November Soiree..
Potentially humorus sidebar:
I think we could've walked to New York in the time it took to
write this report.
Second Last Thing:
I was not under oath when I wrote this.
You might get to meet "Frank" soon - maybe at Whalefest LA in
January
and when you find out his real identity I don't want you to think he's
the
wacky guy I portray in these trip reports.
The thing is, Frank and I run in difference socio-economic circles.
When I get hungry, I look for a Subway or an Arbys.
(Remember Tally's shreik in Vegas when I suggested
Vegas Subs? :)
When Frank gets hungry, he asks where the nearest five star restaurant
is,
so to the Okie rube, it's like watching Dynasty and then stepping
into the TV.
Frank's a serious dude with a serious job - like a heart surgeon.
My portrayal of him should be considered nothing more than an attempt
at comedy.
Oh, and Southwest Airlines says we DO have enough credits for another trip.
If you're not charging every penny you spend to your SW VISA,
you're passing up free trips to New York or Vegas or whatever.
With the economy Bush has forced on us, why pass up free vacations?
Southwest Airlines may be run by friends of Der Monkey who don't bother
to inspect their planes, but hey - free is free.
Last Thing:
If the IRS ever contacts you and asks why you read bartcop.com
it would really help if you answered, "For
the Trip Reports!"
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