Tag Archives: Harlem

Oh Hugh

November 6, 2011 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , 1 Comment

This was a kind of a dreary week that turned on a dime thanks to Wolverine.  Michael came home late Sunday night to spend Monday and Tuesday with us before heading back to DC.

We stopped at (hopefully) our new apartment to see if there was a lease for us to sign or something to make this whole thing official. They said they hoped they’d be done by the first of November. Great. We have Jacques’ until November 15th. Should we try to extend that? ‘No,’ they said, ‘it will be done by the 15th.’

Great.I’m too nervous to get excited yet.

Michael also wanted to be there for the baby’s 18 month check up, which was most unpleasant. 3 shots and a blood test for lead levels. Ah yes. Remember those? It seems so long ago doesn’t it? That’s because it was. It is not lost on me that this is the baby’s 18 month check up. He was diagnosed with lead poisoning at 12 months. That means we left our apartment 6 months ago and never looked back.

Needless to say, he did not handle this check up well…because, why would he? Plus we got two pieces of annoying news.  1-His lead levels were at seven three months ago. Now they are six. Six? Unacceptable.  However…everyone says it’s fine, it’s just exposure (>10 is poisoning), have him tested again in 3 months. And I’m sure it is fine, but I would like his levels to be below 3…today.

So again, we wait.

The second thing is that the baby was speaking.  Now he’s not.  The Pediatrician wants Early Intervention to come and evaluate him. She said to forget about the lead (how?), it’s not that, he might be having trouble creating full words with the muscles of his mouth. Early Intervention will check just to be sure and of course it could also just be nothing.

I won’t sleep for a month of course.

But right after we received this news, a friend sent me a text that said, ‘Get a sitter we’re going to see Hugh Jackman – Back on Broadway!’ Just thinking about it now makes me go

‘Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!’

This friend is of very sound judgement, I do anything she tells me to do.

Seven years ago Hugh Jackman did this show, The Boy from Oz that people said was so amazing they saw it multiple times. In fact, he was so good that when he was out for a week, they just cancelled the show all together rather than giving him an understudy. We’re talking about Wolverine. I only know Hugh Jackman from the X-Men movies and he was great, but I just never made it to see him play Peter Allen.

But then I saw him host the Tony Awards and I thought, ‘Wow. He is amazing.’ I had no idea how talented he was. And to my husband’s eye, he was apparently moving his feet to one rhythm, his arms to another and his voice was following another. Which doesn’t make any sense but clearly sounds very hard to do.  Plus I’ve heard he loves loves loves all the talented musicians and dancers on Broadway and feels honored to perform with them…not the other way around, plus he’s really charming, so sign me up already.

Well, dear Reader, my report is as follows…I am not a, ‘jump up and down and dance all around’ kind of lady when I’m at the theatre, but I will tell you that Hugh Jackman is so charming, and so talented, the whole audience did absolutely everything he told them to do. If he had told us all to go out into the street and strip down to our skivvies, I think we all would have done it.

Not to mention that my dear friend surprised me with second row seats on the aisle!

Eeeeeeeeeeeeee!

The two seats in front of us were empty so when Mr. Jackman came down off the stage to sing in the audience (!!!!!) he got on his knees in front of my friend, held her hand, looked her right in the eyes and sang his heart out.  I just held onto her arm and squealed like a 15 year old girl.

hughjackmanonbroadway.com

Anyway…he must have bad breath or something…anything. There has to something wrong with him. There was a woman in the front row, who let’s just say was maybe a little too enthusiastic.  He didn’t care.  He hugged and kissed her and tapped her head with maracas.  She must’ve worked hard to get those front row, center tickets.  He was going to be sure she wasn’t disappointed.

He kept yelling offstage to get the baseball scores for the men in the audience.  He said he knew they were only there because their wives made them come. He pulled a woman in her 60s from the audience and brought her up on stage to sing with him.  After the show we all told her how amazing she was and she replied all in one breath,

‘I don’t know what happened! What did I do? My kids will never believe me. What do I do? Never wash my hands again? Freeze dry this outfit?’

I think she was in shock.

And can I also just say (and then I’ll stop with the Hugh Jackman, I promise), he pointed out his two dancers who were having their Broadway debut in his show.  He applauded his conductor, his drummer, his pianist, his guitar player…well you get the picture.  He told us how lucky we were to get to hear them play.  And he was right.

AND GET THIS!!!  They are filming a movie version of Les Miserables and Hugh Jackman is playing the lead, Jean Valjean.

Shut the front door.

After the show we were going to sneak backstage to say ‘hello’ to three of the musicians who are colleagues of my husband’s (I was feeling a little shy about this, but my husband insisted I do it).  When we got out of the theatre though it was madness.  Madness.  You couldn’t get anywhere near the stage door.  There were policemen and caution tape like the President was in town.

If you’re not sick of Hugh yet, you can click right here to see a little rehearsal video…

To round out the week, a girlfriend took me to some Soho Art Galleries.  This is her area of expertise as her mother is an art appraiser.  She offered to teach me a little, to help me develop my own educated taste.  How lovely.  Of the several galleries we went to that day, these are the paintings that stuck with me.

Of course these beautiful oil paintings of Paris views by Claude LAZAR

claudelazar.com

claudelazar.com

claudelazar.com

And these beautiful still lifes…Paintings by Ilya Zomb.

zombart.com

zombart.com

You would think all of this culture and entertainment would have pushed all my worries about the baby right out the window.  Well of course we all know it didn’t.  Oh Mr. Jackman came close didn’t he?  But my dear and heroically honest friend Leigh posted some insight this week on her blog, in case i’m gone, that comes at a good time.

Worry doesn’t take away tomorrow’s troubles; it just takes away today’s peace.

I need to needlepoint that on a throw pillow.

More DC

November 4, 2011 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , 2 Comments

On Michael’s day off we had a picnic in the park and then went to the Smithsonian National Zoo.

Of course our favorite was the Panda…how could it not be?

We opted not to go to the International Spy Museum since it seemed like a whole ‘to-do’ and instead wandered for quite a long time in the National Portrait Gallery. I love it in there…one of my favorites was seeing this portrait of Edith Wharton (author of The House of Mirth, The Age of Innocence, among many others) as a little girl. I’ve only recently learned about the Gilded Age of New York, so it’s fresh in my mind.

npgportraits.si.edu

We ended the day with another stair climbing mission to the top of the Jefferson Memorial.

That place is big!

The next morning we took a somber stroll through the Arlington National Cemetery. The weather was beautiful.

arlingtoncemetery.net

After we dropped Michael at the Kennedy Center, the baby and I headed for the National Archives to see the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. They are both held in this big rotunda made of marble. It did not take the baby long to figure out that the acoustics in there were fantastic. This is how he tricked me into possibly the quickest viewing of these documents in history.

archives.gov

We moved on to the exhibit about America and food. I did the speed through viewing while I chased the baby through the hallways. I LOVED this donut poster!

archives.gov

So the National Gallery of Art was where it really happened. Uncle Jack, I may be addicted. I have never appreciated a museum more and thought perhaps I should start to get a little bit more of an education in art for goodness sake. This museum is big and wide and the art is hung high on the walls so the little man could run free without putting his elbow through a Picasso. The place is SO big we really only made it through part of the first floor.

One of our friend’s favorite story about the National Gallery goes like this…when she and her brother were little, her parents took them there and suddenly her brother started howling. Their Mother said, ‘I don’t understand. He’s usually so well behaved.’ That’s when their Father pointed out, ‘Yes, but we’ve been here for 6 hours!’

We didn’t even get to the permanent collections, we spent most of our time looking at the Chester Dale collection. Chester Dale worked on Wall Street.  His wife was an artist. So, naturally, she influenced his appreciation of art. Then when he died, he bequeathed it all to us.

At one point I picked up the baby and carried him around the room with me and asked if he liked certain paintings…

‘Do like this Renoir? A Girl with a Watering Can?’ He shook his head no.

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‘Really? Ok. How about the Girl with a Hoop? No?’

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‘Well how about The Beach at Villerville? No.’

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Snow in New York? But you love snow. No. OK.’

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‘Degas? No. Ok…how about these Monets?’

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No.

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No.

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‘Picasso? But it’s from his blue period! No. Not even the blue period.’

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‘Ok…well how about this one?’

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‘Yes?’ He shook his head yes. ‘Pissarro’s Boulevard des Italiens?’ Yes. He shook his head again.

We went to the East Wing of the Gallery just to see the Andy Warhol exhibit, Headlines. He didn’t really like it. In fact, the paintings were hung low to the ground in this exhibit. When I set him down for a moment, much to my horror, he went running full steam ahead to crash his little hands into the first painting he saw.

nga.gov

Lastly, one of my favorite sneak peeks of the trip was getting to go backstage at the Kennedy Center. They have posters up there of everything that has ever been done there including some Obama/Biden event. If you look closely you can see their names above those wings.

One day Michael was back there working and one of the stage hands and two other men were playing basketball with the basketball net they have backstage. The next day he told the young man he was a good shot. He replied, ‘Thanks. Did you see who I was with?  That was one of the guys from Team 6 and his Dad. I was showing them my basketball moves.’

Team 6 ??? Those are the Navy Seals who got Bin Laden. !!! Yikes!

Well, after all of this ‘America!’ we got on the Amtrak back to Harlem. Saying goodbye was hard, but you know, as soon as you do it, you just fall right back into the rhythm of your own life. It’s hard, but I think it’s healthy. And now I can’t wait for the next visit, which is honestly in 4 days. Michael is coming home Sunday night. We’re ridiculous…I know.

I Dreamed a Dream

October 31, 2011 By in Travel Tags: , , , 2 Comments

The week beginning September 26th still had Michael negotiating.  Oh Jack Donaghy, keep me strong.  But Jacques needed to know if we were going to stay longer than October15th at his apartment.  Well…we still didn’t know if we were in the running for our own apartment on the Upper West Side or if we’d join Michael on the road, because we still didn’t know how Michael’s contract was going to shake out.

Regarding a possible UWS apartment…we had weird, potentially spectacular news. When we stayed at our friend’s apartment on the UWS in July, we became friendly with the building manager. He fell in love with the baby and said it would be so great if we lived in the building. We thought he was just being nice, but it turns out, there’s a 2 bedroom apartment available next door to our friend’s apartment and they seriously want us to have it. Apparently this building, pre-war, does not advertise or use brokers, it fills by word of mouth.

So they think this apartment will be ready for us October 1st, and dear Reader, I don’t believe it for a second. Didn’t they want to make sure we weren’t criminals or bankrupt? But Michael kept popping into the building to say hi, on the off-chance that all of this did magically work out.  He learned the apartment would be ready closer to the middle or end of October because they were waiting for the city to come and do the lead abatement (lead abatement-yes-we love that).

Michael told me to relax (ha) this is how things work sometimes.  We’d be silly to not at least wait it out to try to get this 2 bedroom on the UWS that we could actually afford.  OK.  Maybe, just maybe I’ll have a little faith and we will just waltz right into this apartment come the end of October. And hopefully there is no catch like the owners are warlocks and we’re walking into a Rosemary’s Baby situation. I know! But this is how my mind works sometimes, I can’t help it. It drives Michael crazy.

So—moving on. I ask Jacques if we can stay at his place until November 15th (to be on the safe side).  He said yes. Ok—a place to live until November 15th. Done.

Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

And then FINALLY…

Negotiations came to an end…and our hero was shipped off to Washington DC to become the Resident Director of Les Miserables.  Because this apartment was on the table, the baby and I decided not to join him on the road.

I Was a Dancer

October 28, 2011 By in Writing Tags: , , , , , , , 1 Comment
I Was a Dancer

Well, I wasn’t…but Jacques d’Amboise was and that is what he chose to call his autobiography (which by the way you should absolutely read, it’s really fun. Click here).

Photograph - John Dominis

One fine September day at Jane, we realized that if I indeed survived this French bug, we needed to find a place to live come September 18th. It was then I remembered that a friend of one of our great, great friends had emailed me while we were in Paris to say she knew of a sublet situation for September. It was now September 8th,—but, who knew? Maybe the place was still available and I was feeling lucky—(well, no I wasn’t actually).

BUT, as luck would have it, it was available. It was a ways up in Harlem, but after we saw it, crunched some numbers and measured some commutes, we thought we could make it work for a month or so while we saw how our lives unfolded. And as a side note, the apartment belonged to and was being sublet to us by Jacques d’Amboise.

Jacques is a 77 year old former New York City Ballet dancer. That’s him with his kids up above. In the 1940s, he went to SAB-the School of American Ballet-when Lincoln Kirstein (who Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts is named for) and George Balanchine were just starting to cement NY City Ballet as the premiere ballet company in America (and arguably now, the world). Jacques was invited to join the company before Lincoln Center even existed. From there, he became one of the most prominent members.

Michael was also a dancer and although he and Jacques’ paths never crossed directly, there seemed to be just one degree of separation between them most of the time. Let us count the ways.

1. Michael also attended SAB.

2. His first wife (remember? Michael was married once before?) was a member of NYC Ballet and danced with Jacques.

3. Michael danced in Jacques’ son Christopher d’Amboise’s dance company.

amazon.com

4. Jacques and Jerome Robbins (West Side Story) were contemporaries and worked together often, while Michael danced in Jerome Robbins’ Broadway in Japan.

5. Several of Michael’s friends have performed with Jacques’ daughter, Charlotte d’Amboise, including John O’Hurley. In fact, when Michael and I went to see John perform in the musical Chicago in DC, Charlotte was playing Roxy Hart. We all had dinner together after the show for heaven’s sake.

6. Charlotte’s husband, Terrence Mann was the lead in the first musical Michael ever assistant directed. (Terrance was also the original Javert in Les Miserables, just as a little side note).

And yet, none of the above brought us into the home of the smashing Jacques.

A friend of ours was brought into our lives by the lovely Uncle T, who was brought into our lives by a lovely former yoga client of mine. In the 1960s, this friend’s parents rented the ground floor apartment of Jacques d’Amboise’s brownstone on 70th street (just 2 blocks down from our old brownstone, mind you). Jacques and his family lived upstairs. So when I sent out a big email looking for a place to stay for September, our angelic friend forwarded my request on to her circle and the timing was just right. Jacques needed a sublet. We could move in from September 15th-October 15th. Hopefully by then we would know what was happening in our lives.

The photo of the building above is the actual apartment building we are staying in. It used to be a public school, but has been unused and empty for 100 years or something. So developers bought it from the city to make it into condos under one condition…it had to house a Not-For-Profit.

Enter the National Dance Institute. Jacques founded this Not For Profit ages ago to bring dance into the lives of under privileged kids. Now it has a new home in Harlem and it is amazing. Jacques also bought an apartment in the building, furnished it and is now sub-letting it to us. Why? I don’t know. But it’s fantastic. 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, dishwasher, washer/dryer, big closets, big kitchen, 12 foot ceilings, courtyard, community room, big closets, absolutely no lead paint. It’s a lovely place to come home to. That’s the floor plan up above.

But I will say, when we first arrived we were really trying to enjoy it, but we still had negotiations on the brain.

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