Lost in Manhatten
I met a few friends at a restaurant a few nights ago. They were visiting from out of town, and I had not seen them in at least two years, so there was plenty of reminiscing to be had. One particular story came up about a very ill conceived road trip.
When you live in Boston, as I did back then, and someone is visiting from the west coast, they perceive New York city to be very close and worth a day trip. In the grand scheme of things, distance is all relative. New York City is a lot closer to Boston in the minds of out of towners than it is to Bostonians. Heck, if we lived on the north shore or the south shore, we couldn’t even conceive the idea of driving through the city to see what the world was like on the opposite side of it.
This particular trip, our friends had mentioned that they had an old buddy in Manhatten. He always said that if they were in the neighborhood to stop by. He had a collection of vintage fedoras that he had gradually been dispersing because he just couldn’t move them all any more.
I agreed to drive to Manhatten. All four hours or so. We get into town, and I ask my friends if they had gotten their pal on the cell phone. Dan had sort of a perplexed look on his face. “Oh, I don’t have his number. He’s an attorney, though. We can stop and look up his office in the Yellow Page.” Dan conveniently forgot that it was Sunday today, and it was highly likely that the office would be closed. Furthermore, this friend, that I was beginning to think was imaginary, didn’t exactly have a private practice. He worked for the FBI, so his residence was also unlisted.
Mandy, Dan’s wife, chimed in: “Are you kidding me?? You plan to drive around Manhatten hoping you will run into somebody??” Surprisingly enough, Mandy is still married to Dan to this very day. We also did not think of bringing my laptop, so the idea of checking email to hope that the mystery friend was kicking back on the computer. Even an online travel guide would have worked out at that point, so we could have actually done something or could have gotten tips on leaving the rental car and being flown home!
Next time I go to New York, I am really going to go to New York. I am going to take a New York tour so I can see a few real sights. We ended up grabbing a slice of pizza at a walk up window, watched a guy try to get his car out of one of those double decker parking lots, and then had to go home. I neglected to mention that Dan and Mandy were leaving the next morning bright and early and they were getting on a plane. They had Knotts berry farm tickets in their hot little hands. They wanted to go to some of the amusement parks they remembered going to on the east coast as kids before heading back to Oregon. As you can imagine, we had to barrel down the highway high on caffeine to make it back in time.
As you can imagine, I will go wherever Mandy wants to go, but I am not going to trust Dan without a full investigation.
By the way, speaking of driving around the country aimlessly, I was reading if you sign up for the Trusted Tours newsletter, Dan’s profile is in it every month as a poster child to show what happens when you don’t plan ahead in a strange town. Of course, I am only kidding. What you really get is a chance to purchase discounted tickets, as well as be in a drawing for an awesome travel related giveaway. This time around it is a $150 Magellan’s Gift Certificate. I can think of a few people who need one of those!
A Farewell to One of Cinema’s Coolest
A belated farewell to one of cinema’s finest.
Paul Newman was known for his “cool” style, but never fit the Hollywood mold. He chose roles based on his personal interests and the challenge he thought the role would provide, rather than the paycheck. One may argue that he wasn’t a pauper, but I think it is more of a case of “Do What you Love; the money will come.”
Secondly, he and Joanne Woodward married in 1958, and were only seperated by Newman’s recent death. They met while starring in a stage production together, which is not uncommon for actors. What was uncommon was that the chose to keep their home life private and their children out of the spotlight so that their family life could be relatively normal.
(A little trivia footnote: Paper Moon was to originally star Paul Newman and daughter, who was known on screen as Nell Potts. We know her today as Nell Newman of Newman’s Own. The director changed, and Paul Newman withdrew his daughter when the direction of the film changed. Ryan and Tatum O’Neal replaced them.)
Maybe modern Hollywood should take cues from them. “Too Much Information” doesn’t a long marriage make.
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