"Well, we can't all come and go by bubble!"

Broadway. The glitz, the glamour, the incredibly expensive tickets. But not for the more enterprising, or at least the more flexible. For cheap tickets, people flock to the TKTS stand in Times Square, or sit by box office windows early in the morning, or drop their names in hats just before showtime. Recently, a friend and I entered the lottery to see Wicked, and won! For just $25 each, we had front-row seats to a great show.

I'm not going to review, critique, or even describe. The music, acting, costumes, and all those exquisite little details were simply wonderful. Go see it for yourself, you won't be disappointed.

I still have the songs in my head.

Andrew vs. His Computer - Round 37

This will be my third attempt at writing this post. You see, the last two times I've tried to write, they've been lost to the vastness of the internet. Twice have I written witty, and I daresay moving, posts that would enlighten this otherwise dark world with their insight. Twice have I hit the wrong button in the browser window and sent these jewels of wisdom careening off into nothingness. Such is life.

The first, as I'm sure you're curious to know, was a profoundly deep and inspired look at the human relationship between New York City and the rest of the country. In it, were examined the outlooks of several people who have grown up in NYC, moved here, or have simply visited here. Against these were pitted the perceptions of the city of various people who had never been here, but had rather only seen most of the city through movies. The intricate research conducted for this study was unparalleled, taking the better part of the hour I spent sitting in Detroit Metro Airport waiting to board my plane back to New York. I interviewed two people at the gate extensively, or at least listened to them complain about how much the taxi ride from LaGuardia to their hotel was likely to cost.

The second piece was a much more personal account of alienation from a place I used to know incredibly well. With a bit of dry humor, it was related how I was stopped and asked for directions in Novi, a small Michigan town where I spent a great deal of my adolescence. (Hey, that's where the mall was.) I won't spell out the obvious parallel here with my constantly being stopped in NYC. The poignant bit of this story, however, was that I didn't know where to send the poor fellow who asked for directions in Novi. And so followed a heartfelt discussion on what it means to move on from a place and time that no longer belong to you.

Brilliant bits of writing, both of them. Perhaps someday I'll take the time and care to write them again. But probably not.

Movin' East, Movin' In, and Movin' On

How much further east can you go from New York City? Well, Long Island is around 100 miles long. This past weekend was spent way out in Greenport, on the North Fork of the island. It's a beautiful small town with beaches on both the north (Long Island Sound) and the south (Shelter Island Sound). The chair of my department has a house in this little town, and he invited all the grad students and faculty members to come out for the weekend for a retreat. It was a great weekend. We spent most of the time on the beach, swimming and playing volleyball. Dinners were multi-course feasts that included roast duck and swordfish. Cocktails were served an hour before dinner, and a great deal of wine was provided for the rest of the evening. On Saturday night, a few of us even went out to the bar after the dinner conversation had died down. (You know you're back in a small town when the bartender recognizes that you're not from there, and a fight breaks out at some point in the evening.) But all in all, it was just a fun time with some good people. I'm very happy to be in this department.

Yes, it's August now, and the neighborhood is starting to fill up with moving vans. New grad students are starting to arrive, and even some undergrads are poking around the area again. It's been very peaceful here, while school's been out, so I'm not sure how much I'm looking forward to the neighborhood being full of undergrads again. The good side, though, is that a very good friend of mine is, as I write this, on her way here. I'll be helping move her in tomorrow morning. Looking forward to it.

In other news, someone has moved on. And so shall I. And that's all I've got to say about that.