Sunday morning, June 17, 2001 was rainy, dark, grim. I drove to the airport in the morning, cutting the time a little closer than I would like, but getting away with it because the Burlington airport is so small, and they don't board the turbo-props until a few minutes before take-off. A lot of flights were delayed because of thunderstorms, but mine was punctual. We landed at Laguardia right on time (I've heard nightmares about the delays there), and I grabbed a cab to midtown. The cab took me in on the FDR highway, which was definitely a different route than the way I came in last year; we passed a large building called the "Center for Science and Mathematics" that caught my eye. (As I later found out from Cheryl, that was the Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics, a public high school in East Harlem.)
I arrived at my hotel and got checked in. Last year I stayed at the DoubleTree (Broadway and 47th), where I had a nice two-room suite for around $200 a night. This year my finances were a little tighter, so I stayed at the Best Western President (48th and Broadway), which Traci had recommended. I had booked a room with a double bed for $129 a night, but when I checked in they said they were giving me a queen instead of a double for the same rate. Good deal. I was also told about the phone rates from the room: each local call is $1, and long distance within the US is $8, count them, 8 dollars per minute. I would not be calling home to check my voicemail. A family from Spain checked in just ahead of me; they were warned not to call home from the hotel. They would have had to take out a mortgage to pay for the call.
The room was a bit small (which really didn't matter), and it took a master's degree in mathematics to figure out the tricky plumbing. To get cold water in the sink, I discovered, I had to first turn on the hot side full blast and let it run for a while, then turn on the cold, keep both knobs on until the water finally started to cool a bit, and only then turn off the hot side; otherwise it was hot and hot running water. The hotel staff was nice, though, the place was clean, the location was great, and the price was right. Oh, and it had cable TV. You may not think this is a big deal, but I do not get the cable, cannot get the cable, the cable is not available, at my home. My, oh my, it was nice to have a clear TV picture without lines running up and down the screen, and lots of channels to choose from (by "lots" of channels, of course, I mean anything more than two). CourtTV was running a Father's Day Rockford Files Marathon. Wahoo!
Around 3:00 I grabbed a cab to Karen's apartment for the annual DaveAnon Party for the Women of AFL. (This whole "hailing a cab" thing is still somewhat new to me, BTW. At home, if you need a cab you have to call a cab company on the phone and wait for them to send you one. I don't think you could even get one to come to my house.)
Karen threw a great party. There was plenty of food, lovely beverages, good friends, and videotape of Dave. Traci brought a compilation tape with clips of Dave's appearances on Password, the $20,000 Pyramid, and a really bad Canadian cooking show. These clips were from the late 1970s, a time when Dave wore poofy blow-dried hair, striped rugby shirts, and white drawstring pants. I'm sure that Dave would be absolutely mortified if he knew that a roomful of women had sat around watching this stuff as the highlight of a party. Don't tell him, OK? Traci also had a little footage of Dave on Freeze Dried Movies and doing the weather in Indiana. Ann (Malficent) brought some tape of Dave on Johnny Carson (the Wapner sequence), which reminds you what an excellent guest Dave was/is, and Dave's very funny appearance on Bonnie Hunt's show, playing a robber (he had a mask over his face the entire time). Oh! We also watched the Late Night "Waiting for the Cable Guy" episode, and two segments from the first Film Festival: Dave's film "With My Own Eyes", and the band's "Dress Cool". Dave's film was fantastic; he did a surprisingly good acting job, as did Tom Brokaw, and the whole thing was funny in a very Dave way. (When was it from, 1983? It was only vaguely familiar.)
After the party broke up--we all hated to have to go--I headed back to the hotel for a little more Rockford Files as I nodded off to sleep.
Monday morning, after a good breakfast at the hotel (the price was half what I paid last year at the DoubleTree, and the service was twice as good), I had a bit of time to burn, so I went for a stroll up Broadway. I came to the Ed Sullivan Theatre a little before 10:00, and briefly considered hanging around to watch for Late Show staffers arriving, but they had a show to put on, so I decided not to make a pest of myself. There would be plenty of time for that later. Instead, I turned the other way on 53rd and walked over to the Museum of Modern Art. Turns out MOMA doesn't open until 10:30, so I walked down 5th Avenue, past big name stores like Saks and Rolex, and theme stores like the NBA Basketball store. Naturally, the only store I went into was the Gap. Well, that got boring pretty fast, so I walked over to Rockefeller Center and hung out people-watching for a while. A tourist carrying a suitcase asked me how to get to 7th Avenue, which I guess must mean that I was somehow managing not to look like a tourist myself. I got a bit flustered--what I really wanted to say was "Why on earth are you asking me?"--but did finally manage to point him in the right direction.
I went back to MOMA at around 10:30, and spent an hour or two there. They are in the middle of a big construction/remodelling project, and much of the museum was closed off. I did see a small Andy Warhol exhibit, which included the Campbell's Soup cans and the S&H Green Stamps (remember those?). I don't think I ever understood the soup cans before, but seeing the painting in person I suddenly got it--the different flavors with little comments like "Old Fashioned" and "New! Creamy Style", faithfully reproduced on the otherwise identical cans seemed witty and, dare I say it, almost Dave-ish. I also saw a Jasper Johns exhibit, someone named Joseph Beuys, and some stuff from the museum's permanent collection, including a lot of Picasso, Monet's lovely and huge "Water Lilies", and one of my all time favorites, van Gogh's "The Starry Night", which has a lot of texture that you don't see in prints. By the way, is that Steve Martin narrating the video about the MOMA expansion?
After MOMA, it was back to the hotel to get ready for the Big Show. I had a few minutes, so I turned on some gripping CourtTV drama: live testimony of a woman whose father was on trial for murdering her mother. She was a good, articulate witness, and it was really quite compelling to watch. I guess I'll never know how the trial turned out, because the jury took a lunch break, the CourtTV commentators came on, and it was time for me to go see Dave.
Part 2: Hanging Out Before the Big Show