taking advantage of the city

Living in NYC, I often take for granted the array of awesome things that I have the opportunity to do. Sometimes I just end up getting my drank on, singing some random karaoke songs, consuming way too much late night crap and not remembering the trip home.

This weekend will be different. In fact, it already is different. My very cultured weekend began last night, when I attended "Defying Gravity: The Music of Stephen Schwartz" at the David H. Koch Theater in Lincoln Center. It was my first time seeing a show in Lincoln Center, and it was a great introduction to the venue. The show was created to honor Stephen Schwartz, who gave us the gift of some amazing Broadway shows, including Wicked, Pippen, Godspell, and Children of Eden.

The show was about an hour and a half, and featured an orchestra playing songs from Schwartz's songbook, accompanied by amazing talent in the likes of: Kristin Chenoweth, Raul Esparza, Victor Garber, and Anne Hampton Callway (who wrote the theme song for the Nanny, so she's up there in my book). They performed tunes from a variety of Schwartz's shows, the highlights for me being any of the Wicked songs that were performed by Chenoweth. She's such a great performer, and her voice is amazing — it was stunning how much she sounded just like the Original Broadway Recording of the show (probably because she was in it!). But honestly, every intonation and note was spot on. Not to say the other performers were slacking; the entire show was really well done and honored the career of a song writing genius.

The show came to an emotional close when Schwartz himself came onstage and performed "For good" from Wicked with all four performers, and Chenoweth got emotional as she sang the beautiful lyrics of the song, which in this case rang oh so true: "because I knew you, I have been changed for good." I think it's safe to say that Broadway could say the same thing about Mr. Schwartz. Glad I was able to be there for that moment.

After the show we were able to look down from our nose bleed balcony and see the real life elite entering their post show party. It was like I was watching an episode of Gossip Girl, I kept waiting for Blair Waldorf to jump out on the dance floor and take advantage of some sort of explosive blackmail opportunity. But alas, it did not happen, mostly because this was real life.

To continue on with my weekend of culture, tonight I will be hitting up the Tribeca Film Festival's showing of the new film "The Bang Bang Club." I wish I could say I was interested in the movie and sound like I know what I"m talking about, but my real reason behind going is because Taylor Kitsch, aka the one and only TIM RIGGINS, will be there intro'ing the show. So if all goes well, by this time tomorrow I will be carrying his baby. (Is that too weird to say? If it is, and Taylor somehow reads this one day, I apologize). But honestly, second best case scenario (after baby) would be a photo with the man himself. We'll keep the fingers crossed for that one...

And finally to cap off my weekend of activities, tomorrow night I'll be hitting up the Comedy Cellar and guess who will be performing? Parks and Recs very own Tommy Haverford, AZIZ ANSARI!
This is quite possibly the greatest news I heard all week and I'm getting more excited by the second to see him do stand up. From what I've heard, it's amazing. Colin Quinn will also be performing at that show, to round out my celebrity sightings of the weekend.

So I guess the moral of the story is, when you live in NYC, taking advantage of the cool stuff around you can make for fun times and good stories. It also gives you the chance to make babies with celebrities (fingers crossed).