Take me down to the Alphabet City!

For Shannon's Xmas gift, I decided to give her a vacation in her favorite US city, NYC. The actual gift took place at the end of last month. We spent 6 days over there, and had a good time. And for the first time in my life, I got to go do something in New Jersey! Twice!

The main reason she likes NYC is due to Broadway, so of course the gift had to also include a broadway show. We actually ended up going to two shows, Wicked and Curtains. I enjoyed Wicked and really liked Curtains (David Hyde Pierce played the main character). I am not a musical buff, but I do enjoy the ones that are funny (Like SpamAlot, Young Frankestein, etc) and that is a reason why I really enjoyed Curtains.

We went to a movie/TV sites tour, which was pretty cool. A bus took us to a bunch of places where they have shot movies and TV shows (Mostly exterior shots, of course, since most of the insides for the TV shows in 90s we learned actually happened in LA!) . Some places we visited were the Soup Natzi kitchen from Seinfield, the Friends "building", the Cosby "house", places where they shot movies like Hitch, Ghostbuster, Big, etc. It was very entertaining, and we got to see a lot of New York in the process. One of the stops was this place called Rice to Riches (where one of Hitch's scenes took place), where they server all kinds of flavors of Rice pudding! I mean, I am not too much into rice pudding, but they made it taste pretty freaking good. They had flavors like cookies cream, peanut butter, butter pecan, coffee, etc. Think of it as an ice cream shop but with pudding instead of ice cream.

We also did some more touristy type stuff: We spent a day at the Met, we took a cruise to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island (where we learned a bunch of interesting information regarding the immigration in the late 1800s-early 1900s), we watched the sunset from the top of the Empire State Building, visited St. Patrick's Cathedral, and walked across the Brooklyn Bridge (Nice view and good exercise at the same time :) ). It was pretty fun!

Now, you will say, where does New Jersey fit into all of this? Well, first we went to visit some friends who live in NJ. We met in Hoboken, and had dinner there, at a restaurant that offers a magnificent view of the NY skyline, and then went to see their place. The second time we went to New Jersey was to go to Newark... why, you may ask? Well, noting that my wife is a wonderful person, her Xmas present also involved going to 2 NHL games!!!!!!! The first one was the NJ Devils against the Philadelphia Flyers, which was also my first experience of seeing a game end in a Shootout (Devils won the game), and the other was to see Sid the Kid and the Penguins face against Jags and the Rangers at Madison Square Garden. This game also went to OT, but it was won by the Rangers on an OT goal by Chris Drury.

All in all, fun times was had by all. It left a different impression of NYC than I had previously (where I thought it was just dangerous and dirty).

Okay, until next time! Peace out!

When I think of St. Paddy's day, I think of.... Jack Daniels!

So here is a story all about how... my life got.... wait... no, this is just something interesting that happened. As I was watching to see who was coming to town, I saw that Flogging Molly was coming during the Thursday near St. Patrick's day. However, tickets could not be bought. You had to go to a website and sign up, and hopefully you would get tickets. So I went to this website, and it turned out to be a Jack Daniels website (http://www.jdstudiono7.com). I signed up, and hoped for the best. About 4 days before the show, I went to the site, and saw an announcement that all tickets had been given. I was bummed out about that. Two days later, I get an email from JD saying that I got two passes to go in! I was happy to say the least. So the day of the show, we go in to the venue, and as we entered, we saw Jack Daniels logos everywhere, on the floor, the ceiling, the wall, the stage, etc! It was just an explosion of JDs everywhere. They had a buffet with food, and each person got two drink tickets to be redeemed for two JD drinks (either whiskey, or wine-cooler typed drinks ). They also had free prizes (I got a set of drumsticks) and free cab ride home. It was pretty nice I have to say... Everything free.

So the first band that opened was a local band. They kind of were a rock band with some rockabilly and some punk added to it. Not too bad. Then came FM. They played for about an hour and 45 minutes non-stop. Pretty much every song that I wanted them to play, they played. It was an awesome show. Shannon also saw some bikers beating up a racist skinhead. You can ask her about this next time you see her :)

All in all, we had a great time. A great free concert with free food, drinks, and prizes. What more can you ask for!? Thanks Uncle Jack! Btw, we tried the Lemonade and fruit punch drink they make, and they both tasted pretty good.

Peace out!