I flew back to New York on Tuesday for the first time in a couple of months. I enjoy the city but don’t miss the hassle associated with flying into La Guardia and getting transportation into the city. The drive was particularly long this trip due to all the traffic coming in to see the Christmas tree and decorations at Rockefeller Center. The hotel is located between the iconic art-deco Chrysler building and Grand Central rail terminal.
On the flight I watched the film “The Children Act” starring Emma Thompson and Stanley Tucci. This is based on the Ian McEwan book of the same name and he wrote the screenplay. I read the book a couple of years ago and so the story was still pretty familiar to me. Thompson and Tucci give very good performances and the ending is just as saddening in the film as in the book.
I braved the bitterly cold weather to head out of the hotel for dinner and some brief exploration. The Grand Central terminal building is really impressive after the renovation several years ago.
At peak times you can certainly see the origin of the phrase, “busier than Grand Central station”. A nice part of the renovation is that there are many good restaurants at various price points throughout the building. My boss and I enjoyed lunch at Cipriani on the main concourse on Wednesday afternoon as we prepared to present to our major investors and the analyst community on Thursday morning.
From the rail terminal, I headed up to Rockefeller Center to take a look at the famous Christmas tree. It was still busy there at close to 11pm on a very cold night.
I enjoyed the light and music display at the Sak’s Fifth Avenue storefront and some of the characters milling around.
All this Christmas excitement reminds me of a sign that I saw at Eddie V’s last week and forgot to share in the post. I’m hoping the Martini fairy might visit me once or twice this holiday season:
I’ve been enjoying the new solo album from Wilco front man, Jeff Tweedy, this week. Here’s a good song from “Warm” and I’ll include one or two more at the bottom of the post.
Tweedy also released a memoir in the last few weeks that has been garnering positive reviews. Maybe it’ll end up in my Christmas stocking.
Making a dinner reservation on Wednesday night in midtown Manhattan proved challenging. My boss’s nephew is executive chef at a fancy steakhouse but they were fully booked with holiday parties and couldn’t get us in. After many rejections, I found a Northern Italian place on 47th street, Allora, that could get us in. The reviews promised a classic New York Italian restaurant experience and that’s exactly what we got. Good food, waiters trying to rush us along with humor, finally giving up and buying us grappa on the house. I enjoyed a couple of delicious appetizers (the waiter wasn’t listening and got them wrong before bringing us what we really wanted in addition) and then an excellent mushroom risotto – one of the best I’ve tasted. I snapped this picture of the bridge outside the hotel with its holiday outfit on.
I would not choose to stay in midtown Manhattan during Christmas again. The traffic (both cars and on the pavements) is crazy with folks in to see the lights and decorations.
Our presentations and meetings with investors on Thursday morning went well. They seemed interested in new systems and applications that we’ve been developing. Then it took over an hour to drive what should have been a twenty minute trip to the airport.
Friday and Saturday turned out to be very busy days – mostly entertainment busy, so no good reason to complain about it. Friday evening began with Diana’s Christmas party at her office. This was very nice with drinks and hors d’oeuvres and a pleasant group of folks. We stayed for about an hour and then had to leave to drive down to the Elton John concert – Diana got tickets to the work box in recognition of her big project to create a new spin-off company that went so well.
On the drive to the concert, Diana asked me what songs I was hoping to hear. My reply was, in this order, “Someone Saved My Life Tonight”, “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”, “Funeral for a Friend”, “Song for Guy”, “Rocket Man”, and “Daniel”. Five out of six isn’t bad – only “Song for Guy” didn’t make the show. Here are videos of my number one choice from the amazing “Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy” album.
Elton is on an 18 month farewell tour and has stated that he will not tour again when this tour is complete. The last time I saw him was in Edinburgh in 1984 – hard to believe it was 34 years ago. I remember being hugely impressed with his band and the sound in the Edinburgh Playhouse. The band on this tour is even better and the sound at the arena was the best I’ve heard – perhaps even better than the Eagles – certainly louder. Here’s one of his best known songs, “Rocket Man” – with the lines about living on Mars that start to sound less and less fantastic as Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson race into space tourism:
“Funeral for a Friend” sends everyone into a melancholy mood but the music and performance were excellent after the very theatrical lead in:
You can tell that the stage set and the videography were very well done. I particularly enjoyed watching the exemplar percussionist, Ray Cooper, on the top tier of the stage with his five timpani drums, tubular bells, bongas and multiple other percussive accoutrements. He puts more energy into playing the tambourine than anyone that I’ve ever seen.
The second and final encore of the night was “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” and it was accompanied by a wonderful video showing Elton John from a kid through all of his crazy performance outfits. It really did feel like a farewell performance at that point:
Elton came across as being exceptionally thankful for his career and fans throughout the evening and I was very happy to be able to participate in his final tour. His music has meant a lot to me through the years and I enjoy attempting to play it on my own piano at home very much. I will never forget his reinterpretation of “Candle in the Wind” as “Goodbye English Rose” for Princess Diana’s funeral. They did so much for AIDS patients together and I have no idea how he held it together for that performance.
We spent the night at the downtown Omni hotel and I snapped this picture of the Pegasus outside with the downtown Dallas skyline:
Saturday was a warmer day than we’ve had in a while and I caught these pictures of the Dallas morning skyline before we headed for our workout.
The Christmas ornament balls out front are huge as you can tell from the person pushing a cart beside the large stack in he center. We tried to have brunch at Hattie’s in Oak Cliff but they didn’t have their brunch menu on Saturday – only Sunday. A quick regroup and we walked to 
Bolsa for a delicious brunch – this is such a relaxed and great restaurant that we continue to enjoy year over year. From there we walked back to Wild Detectives (my favourite store of any kind in the Dallas Fort Worth area) and enjoyed a coffee with our crossword on their back patio. I showed D a few books for my Christmas list while we were there.
After brunch we had several hours to kill before our Saturday evening plans. I found a few good places to explore in the Uptown neighborhood, just north of downtown Dallas. We started at the Standard Pour – a brunch and cocktail bar that looked very promising – we’ll have to check it out one weekend. From there we walked through Uptown, had a coffee, and then visited the Bowen House. This was the first “Prairie Style” house built in 1865, and now housing an excellent speakeasy style cocktail bar with a very interesting menu – we resisted as dinner was fast approaching.
A friend had invited us to see the 10th annual Ricki Derek Christmas Show at the Granada theater on Lower Greenville on Saturday night and we met for dinner at the Sundown restaurant prior to the show.
We enjoyed some ridiculously good tater tots before our friends arrived for dinner. Tater tots are Diana’s favourite comfort food and these were a huge hit with both of us.
The Ricki Derek show was excellent. He’s a classic crooner in the Sinatra, Michael Buble style and had a 16 piece jazz orchestra accompaniment. I loved the campy nature of the variety style show with comedians, excellent guest singers, the Grinch, Frosty the snowman etc. Here’s a video of a guest vocalist joining Ricki for “Winter Wonderland”:
We arrived home around 11pm with good leftovers from brunch and dinner to see us through Sunday.
The Cowboys could have clinched a playoff spot with a win on Sunday, but as usual had a huge let down against the Indianapolis Colts and will have to try again next week. This amazing hurdling run by Zeke Elliott on the opening drive was indicative of the great Cowboys plays that ended up going nowhere:
We’ve covered a lot of musical ground in this post, and so I’ll save the new musical discoveries of the week for next week.