Driss-A-Blog

In my quest to pick a place in NY, I've often asked people about what a particular community is like. Many a time I've gotten the answer that a place is great because there's a great mix of types and some families and some singles, etc, etc. It's very frustrating. If I wanted a mix of people, I wouldn't be bothering to move. I'm looking for something different. The Upper West Side is different. Very different. And right now, different is good. The Upper West Side is now definitely number one on my destination list.

After dinner ended at about 11:30, I started back home. On an ordinary Shabbos, I would have just found my way to bed. But this was New Year's Eve, and I had this vague sense of loneliness. So I went back to where I was staying, dropped off my coat, and announced my intentions of walking the streets aimlessly. I mentioned that I might try the riverside, but my host reminded me that the eiruv didn't reach there and that I might try Broadway instead.

Now, this is 101st, so I'm nowhere near Times Square. Not that I'd want to be--I was there on Thursday, and it was already getting crowded, plus the ball is about 200 feet up in the air and barely visible. Why would I want to do that? But I turned south onto Broadway and started walking.

At about 95th I was crossing Broadway when I heard a toot from a party horn. I turned around, startled, to find that a taxi driver had his horn out the window and had blown it at me. I waved and smiled, and suddenly the loneliness lifted. I wasn't alone in the city any more.

Saturday, after lunch, I wandered Central Park. It's enormous, and there's more stuff to do there that I could have possibly imagined.

After Shabbos was over, I went home, changed and went over to the Bangitout party. I had imagined it to be more of a bar-type scene, but it turned out to be club-by. (Probably because it was held at the Iguana, a club on 54th.) The music was loud enough that I didn't get to talk to anyone, except a guy in line waiting to get in. And the DJ running the show on the dance floor? Terrible. One problem: Wild swings in the music. Madonna, Eminem, or No Doubt? If you're careful, you could probably pull it off, but this guy was changing types abruptly. A far worse problem, though, was that the guy couldn't beat match worth a damn. And instead of giving up and just fading each song into the next (ugh), he just let one end and the next one begin, with about two to three seconds of silence due to the fades in and out. Seriously. I saw him have the whole dance floor going to It's My Life, and then lose 80% when the song ended. Ow.

Sunday was pretty slow. At that point I was pretty much done with what I had to do. I went to the mother of my host to see her apartment building. After that, I did mincha/ma'ariv at OZ and then went to see a movie.

Flight of the Phoenix: ★☆☆☆☆

Spend two hours watching cookie-cutter characters interact to solve a problem that has them stranded in the desert. Get frustrated when you can't hear dialogue because the cheesy orchestral soundtrack is mixed in much louder. (Get mad when you realize when writing this review that they didn't feel they could rely on *gasp* dialog to get your emotions and had to work the score.) Shout at the screen when the characters do mindblowingly stupid things on the order of a horror movie (“No! Don't go over that hill!”). Yawn at the anti-climactic ending. Be too bored to even bother trying to find the plot holes.

The flight home is worth mentioning. It was two legs: LaGuardia to Columbus to Detroit. The first leg was scheduled to depart at 8:45. I left the house at 6 and was at the gate by 8:15. Every 15 minutes, another flight was announced as departing from that gate (actually, just a door going down a staircase). Soon enough my flight was called, and I went down the stairs to a bus. They bussed us over to the Embraer. Settle in the seat; it's 8:45. 9:00, 9:15 and we haven't moved. 9:30 we start moving. We get in line to take off. Apparently, they only felt like using one runway today because there was an enormous line to take off. Finally, at 10:00, we're in the air.

At this point, I'm pretty much resigned to trouble. Either I have to race to my connecting flight (boarding at 10:50, departure at 11:25) with no way my luggage will make it, or have to rebook that leg entirely. So when the plane pulls in at 11:20, I jog over to the stairs, run up them, and over to the board. And the only flight that is delayed in the entire airport is my connecting flight, rescheduled for 12:45. I take my time and stroll over to the gate.

The flight is rescheduled again to 1:00, and the plane finally shows up. I find out the story. Apparently, the flight originated in Minneapolis, and the plane originally intended for the flight had been sitting idle for two days, covered in ice. When they tried to start it up, they found that the heating system was inoperative. It took them hours to come up with a plane that wasn't in use. That's how they ended up taking a DC-9 (with quadruple the needed capacity) from Columbus to Detroit. It was slightly amusing to see the stewardesses (ahem, sorry, flight attendants) coping. We hit cruising altitude, and they tried to serve refreshments from whatever they could find on board. The flight attendant walks around with a stack of plastic cups and a bottle of water. “I have water, or, if you wish, we have some orange juice.” I took the water. The second attendant came around with the juice while the first went back to rummage around some more, and came up with some coffee. Then she offered pretzels. And five minutes after we'd started eating, we started our descent into Detroit.

They were very apologetic. “We thank you for flying Northwest, and hope to serve you better in the future.” The delay was fine with me. The attendant on the first flight said that delays like that on my first flight were common when flying out of LaGuardia. Remind me never to book a two leg flight leaving LaGuardia ever again.