“MUFASA WELCOMES YOU AND REMINDS YOU TO TURN OFF YOUR CELL PHONES.”
[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]
After plumbing the depths of Grant’s Tomb we had an afternoon appointment for our very first Broadway show: The Lion King. But first we had to get there. The trip down from 122nd Street to 45th Street wasn’t a short one.
Literally the closest we’ve ever been to Harlem, which was a few blocks northeast of here.
There’s that wife of mine, once again on her quest to catch ALL the dead Presidents. It would require our longest subway ride of the week, but a special treat was waiting for us at the end of the line.
[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]
Lin Ze Xu welcomes you to the south end of Chinatown, but not your opium. His 19th-century version of the War on Drugs happened long before Nancy Reagan taught us all to just say no.
[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]
Chinatown was like nothing we’d ever stepped into before — block after block of overpacked mom-‘n’-pop shops, restaurants with all-paper signage, dingy dives with no English names out front, and respectable businesses stacked atop businesses with even more businesses crammed under and between them, their streets teeming with life and bootleg lady-shopper bait (useless against my wife, who’s not into fashion shopping) and the worst smells we hope we’ll ever know, whether from the deadliest spices known to man or from all the endless displays of fresh-slaughtered seafood, some of it still writhing. My son wanted to see every single block of it, even the blocks ruled by Vietnamese or Thai shopkeepers instead of Chinese.
Some movie posters want to sell you happy fun times using all the colors of the rainbow. In terrible times like these, not everyone wants to embrace the dark side. Sometimes even our creepiest antiheroes are redrawn to radiate with kaleidoscopic pop-art joy in hopes of convincing tourists and natives alike that our next trips to the theater will leave us smiling and cheering while murderers and other malcontents save the day. Apparently that’s why the Suicide Squad now stands tall above Times Square looking as far removed from murky Zack Snyder dystopia as possible.
Meanwhile in other universes, other antiheroes couldn’t care less whether you smile or shudder.
I can see Springsteen from here!
Flying to this year’s vacation destination had its advantages — faster travel time; free tiny snacks; no road construction delays; no rental car to return afterward while we’re all exhausted; and no danger of accidentally winding up in Newark again on our way to Manhattan. Sure, they could’ve diverted our plane to the wrong airport, but thankfully that didn’t happen. We also reviewed the New Jersey hotel options that we took advantage of in 2011, but price variances in both states over the past five years leveled the playing field in our absence. So this faraway glimpse is as close as we got to New Jersey this year.
He is a name, but I am a number.
For our second trip to Manhattan we decided to do something we’d never done before: attend the live taping of a late-night talk show. Tradition holds that such shows may air in the wee hours of bedtime, but they’re recorded before a live studio audience that day’s afternoon. Sadly for our chosen week, most hosts were either on hiatus or already sold out by the time I thought to look them up. I found a few TV shows that we could have attended, but none of us three had any remote interest in either Maury Povich or The View. Fortunately there was one man who’s airing new episodes this week, who had tickets available, and who wasn’t the complete opposite of us.
That man was Stephen Colbert. That show was The Late Show With Stephen Colbert starring Stephen Colbert. These are the results of that time we showed up to watch Stephen Colbert record the July 11th episode of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert starring Stephen Colbert.
Please enjoy this evening view from our NYC hotel where we’re staying for this year’s family vacation, on a one-lane street a few blocks southwest of Times Square, a few blocks north of the Port Authority, and inside the boundaries of Hell’s Kitchen, the neighborhood famous for having a Gordon Ramsey show named after it and for going down the tubes every time Matt Murdock is too busy recuperating from fatal wounds or being Elektra’s lapdog to come save the day. A coworker back in Indiana who once worked on Broadway for years recommended this hotel, and when we get home I have questions for him.
It took me 44 years to catch my first Pokemon in the wild, but the goal I never had until today has been achieved at last thanks to rapid advancements in phone technology and Japanese monster-tracking software, whose use was made possible by a slow day at Indianapolis International Airport.
To learn more about the Brooklyn Bridge, MCC recommends you check out David McCullough’s The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Brooklyn Bridge. I’d loan you my wife’s copy if you lived nearby and we thought you could be trusted.
[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]
The World Trade Center Visitors Center offered more emotions to explore and lessons to impart, but we had to skip their basement displays because we had an appointment to keep. The walk down Liberty Street, as with numerous other neighboring streets, was made of claustrophobia. I can’t imagine Storm of the X-Men flying through some of those passages without hyperventilating.
One World Trade Center as of July 2011. Reboot in progress.
[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]
The E train took us south from the Port Authority to the world-famous World Trade Center complex, a week after Independence Day and ten years after 9/11. Someday the area will be usable and photogenic again. At this point, unless your idea of photogenic is lifesize Tonka Truck construction playsets, no such luck. But it’s interesting to dream what’ll be made of the place.
You, too, can see Alexander Hamilton in Manhattan without tickets.
[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]
Hey, kids! It’s Hamilton! And some other special guests from previous centuries.
[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]
The east side of the Natural History Museum faces Central Park, one of the larger stops on our brainstorming list. This felt convenient enough that we sashayed on in to see what we could see before we succumbed to the summer heat.
Unda da sea! Unda da sea! Pretty you betcha, until they getcha! You’d betta flee!
[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]
The B train carried us from Rockefeller Center underground up north to the American Museum of Natural History. Our primary motive wasn’t to search for correlations between the real museum and its counterpart in Night at the Museum. We’ve previously visited the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC in 2003 and Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History in 2009. Checking out NYC’s own Natural History museum seemed a logical step to continue that tradition.
Right this way for mandatory fossil pics, plus my weight on a comet!
Tourist Anne can tourist like no tourist ever touristed before. I love you, Tourist Anne!
[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]
“See the Empire State Building!” all the travel guides say. “Ride to the top of the Empire State Building!” they say. “The Empire State Building was in good movies! See NYC from the Empire State Building! Empty your wallet inside Empire State Building!” Getting a scenic view of Manhattan is a must, but the Empire State Building isn’t the only skyscraper in town. And what luck that we had one next door with public elevator access…for a price.
“America’s Most Trusted Newsman” are four words that appear nowhere in this chapter.
[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]
Once we’d had our fill of the Today set, many of the remaining minutes before our 9:45 appointment were wasted on scrounging up a meal for my son, who hates breakfast food and had refused any solids at the Bouchon Bakery because his appetite never awakens till an hour or two after he does. Some tunneling through the underground Rockefeller Center shops brought us to an everyday Subway franchise, thankfully willing and equipped to serve lunch before 10 a.m. While we strode back to where we needed to be, he did his best to cram an entire five-five-dollar-five-dollar-footlong chicken teriyaki sub into his gullet as quickly as possible without choking.
He had only a few bites left of his special-needs meal when we arrived at the NBC Studios Store to kick off our official NBC Studios tour.
Right this way for the no-photos tour, a never-before-shared video, and then a few photos!
Superman. Batman. Life-size DOOMSDAY.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: June 10th and 11th, my wife Anne and I attended the 38th annual Superman Celebration in the city of Metropolis, Illinois. In Part One you met Supergirl‘s Mehcad Brooks and Peter Facinelli; in Part Two you met the dueling Jimmy Olsens, Marc McClure and Michael Landes; in Part Three, so very much cosplay.
On our first visit to Metropolis in 2001, we made a point of visiting Jim Hambrick’s Super Museum, their premier tourist attraction and the heart of every Superman Celebration. One of America’s foremost collectors of all things Superman has amassed enough Hollywood souvenirs, props, artifacts, and other prized obscurities to merit a public display space for fellow fans to enjoy. (We’ve even visited other museums that have items of his on loan.) We opted out on our last few visits, but this time we thought it might be nice to check back, see any new pieces he’s acquired in the past fifteen years, and retake some of the photos we took last time that seem to be hiding from us now. For five bucks a fan it’s worth a look-see and guaranteed to show you something you’ve never seen up close before.
Right this way for another peek inside this fortress of gratitude!
Back in my day, we woke up every morning to Bryant Gumbel and Indiana’s own Jane Pauley, and we liked it.
[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]
DAY THREE — Monday, July 11, 2011.
Monday morning was our first time aboard a genuine NYC subway. Indianapolis fails in its lack of public transportation options, but we were no strangers to the concept. I first rode the Chicago El back in 1993, and the three of us had a pleasant experience aboard Washington DC’s Metro in 2003. Based on our experiences throughout our stay, the MTA has done a fine job of keeping the lines safe, clean, and consistently running. Rarely did we find any station approaching the level of cesspool squalor that movies, TV, and comics promise as the status quo.
First scheduled stop: Rockefeller Center, As Seen On TV!
[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]
It’s our first evening in New York City. We’re in Times Square. We’re wandering and gaping and acting like overwhelmed tourists. It’s who we are. We knew sooner or later we had to enter a store instead of just staring at their flickering big-screen ads.
They say there are eight million stories in the naked city. Nine million if you count its toys.
This boy’s big ballyhooed birthday burger banquet at The B Spot.
My wife and I have a twice-yearly tradition of spending our respective birthdays together traveling to some new place or attraction as a one-day road trip — partly as an excuse to spend time together on those most wondrous days, partly to explore areas of Indiana we’ve never experienced before. My 2016 birthday destination of choice: the northern Indiana city of Elkhart, with a bonus stopover in South Bend, both some 100+ miles north of here. Elkhart was regrettably cut a little short because the weather was miserable and tried to freeze us in our tracks, but we had enough fun to fill out another four-part miniseries starring a candy factory tour, a super-hero roadside attraction, and a selection of the “art” in Elkhart. Also, food.
Part Four of Four: that food! It wouldn’t have been my birthday without it. Only one of our three meals was in Elkhart, and it wasn’t a full meal, but I do hope you’ll forgive the aging birthday guy his occasional off-topic digressions. I hear it’ll get worse as I get older.
The glitz! The glamor! The glory! The ads for washers and insurance and Michael Bay films!
[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]
After escaping Newark with our lives, we docked our car at scenic Lincoln Harbor in harmless midscale Weehawken and checked in to our unexpectedly swank hotel. Despite the modest AAA three-diamond rating, our room had two flatscreen TVs, a toilet with two different kinds of flushing buttons, gold-toned bathroom fixtures, an anteroom with couch and spacious desk, luxurious non-threadbare blankets, free AT&T Wi-Fi, and an impeccable, fawning staff. We appreciated the amenities, even though we didn’t need ’em ’cause now we were all hardcore. It’s funny, how driving through Newark changes a man.
With our luggage dropped off and our sense of adventure fully stoked, we took a New Jersey Transit bus through the nearby Lincoln Tunnel (which for me was a moment of WHEEEEE! because long dark tunnels are a peculiar source of fun) and disembarked inside the legendary Port Authority, a multi-level labyrinthine nexus of countless bus stops and other mass-transit connections. Depressing, bustling, underlit, and energetic all at once, the Port Authority and its assorted mall-shaped stores would be our transportation hub for the week.
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 