Okay, Dan, okay...

:) Yes, I promised you follow-up yesterday. I have been swamped at work, and have been going in at 8:00 and getting home at 8:00. I have a couple of more days of that to go, and we have company coming this weekend, so we have been tyring to clean the house a little at a time each night. I get home, I immediately launch into housecleaning for one hour, and then it's time to watch a little television or do some computer work and go to bed. So that's why I missed my intended follow-up.

So we went into the city on Saturday for a little fun. We met up with Byrne and Patrick. We caught the 2:00 p.m. matinee of the Broadway show The Farnsworth Invention, which stars Hank Azaria as media mogul David Sarnoff and chronicles the invention of television (the idea was formed in 1921!) by a young man named Philo Farnsworth. Farnsworth spent a long number of years trying to get his invention to work properly, and the show chronicles his work and the rather dirty work of Sarnoff. Written by Aaron Sorkin, the creator of The West Wing, it moved at a very speedy Sorkin clip, so much so that sometimes it was hard to make out certain pieces of dialogue. It was a very good show, well-cast and well-acted, and the sets were somewhat spartan but what props there were, were nice, and thoughtfully executed. Some of the chandeliers they used, for example, were simply gorgeous 30s and 40s period pieces.

In any event, I was a little disappointed with the ending, but I really enjoyed the overall show, and it made me feel like Broadway still has some good stuff to offer...once in awhile. We don't need another movie made into a Broadway show.

After the show, we decided to have a drink, so we walked over to a bar called The Ritz. It had a crowd of guys mostly our age or older, and a lot of them had a lot more attitude than they should have for their age. Apparently we were sitting in the seats that some regulars to the place usually haunt; they arrived about 20 minutes after we got there. They were in a bit of a snit over it. Too bad.

I drank Canadian Club whiskey sours, Byrne drank dirty martinis, and Patrick was drinking vodka and cranberry juice. Jess drank Diet Coke, since he's my designated driver. The bartender mixed his drinks strong; mine were a lot of whiskey and a little sour mix...and they were terrific. So terrific that I ordered four of them. I never have four drinks, certainly not four strong ones. Holy crap.

After about 90 minutes of fun conversation, we left there a lot more wobbly than we went in, and then we walked to find some food. We wound up at a burger joint called Lucky's, and I don't know whether it was the buzz or just the food, but it was delicious. I had a chicken sandwich and some very tasty onion rings. I don't remember what anyone else had (bombed!), but we enjoyed about another hour's worth of conversation there.

Leaving and going our separate ways, Byrne to Astoria, Patrick to midtown,and us to Long Island, we caught the train and were home by 9:00. It was a nice day.