Joan of Arc in the Cloisters

Last night, my parents and I drove up to the Cloisters to see Joan of Arc. My old theology professor is a playwright in his spare time, and wrote the play we saw. This particular play experience is different than most, in that it is set in Ft.Tryon Park. The actors move from one makeshift stage to another, while the audience follows the show. The lights set up around the ground which the actors stand on reflect nicely in the trees above the stage, and provides a nice atmosphere for Joan of Arc.

The experience was very different. While moving from one part of the park to another, members of the audience would carry flashlights so everyone could see where he or she was walking. The play, which started at 8 pm ended at 10 pm, and guides escorted the bunch back to the park’s entrance at the close.

One of the nice things about this play was the size of the audience and proximity to the cast. The audience, about 50 people, provided a small but nice crowd to follow the cast around. Since the number of the audience was relatively small, everyone could have a close-up view of the actors and every expression.

Joan of Arc was put on by the Gorilla Repertory Theater Company and can be seen until Aug. 2nd.

JONAS Concert

On Monday night, the Jonas Brothers performed at Long Island’s Nassau Coliseum to a sold out and very boisterous crowd. Part of their World Tour, the brothers were slated to perform for 3 consecutive nights on Long Island before disembarking to their next stop, Philadelphia on Thursday.

Fans who come to the Jonas Brothers concerts are in for an extremely fun evening, from singing along to all the Jonas hits to being pelted with soap suds as Joe and Kevin spray the crowd with what appears to be water hoses. The special effects and equipment alone is amazing; the preparation and care that goes into filming and recording is unbelievable. Also on tour with the popular boy band and opening the concerts are season 6 American Idol winner Jordin Sparks, Honor Society, and the Wonder Girls.

Nassau Coliseum, or Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, was opened in 1972 and sits on 63 acres of Mitchel Field, a former Army and Air Force base. The Coliseum is currently the third-oldest arena in active-use by an NHL team, after Pittsburgh’s Mellon Arena and Madison Square Garden and has the smallest capacity of all arenas in the NHL without standing room.

New York City Shopping

Want to indulge in world class shopping and dining? New York City is definitely one of the best places in the world to shop. Rockefeller Center is surrounded by shops, with a J. Crew and Anthropologie right in the building. After hitting the stores, head to the basement, where you’ll find eateries from Godiva Chocolates and Ben & Jerry’s to Hale and Hearty Soup, which boasts the best soup, salads, and sandwiches for miles. While there, you’ll see Rockefeller Center’s businessmen and women milling about buying lunch. Tables sit all around the basement, with a select few of them positioned right in front of the windows. These tables boast a close-up view at the ice-skating rink, which draws million of people in the fall and winter and draws huge tourist crowds in every season. In the spring and summer, the rink is turned into an outdoor eating area, with umbrella-covered tables and gorgeous displays of flowers.

Next head to Lord & Taylor-- the first major store built on Fifth Avenue. Samuel Lord and George Washington Taylor founded the company in 1826, and the flagship store on Fifth Avenue between 38th and 39th streets opened its doors on February 24th, 1914. In December 2007, it was named a New York City landmark. If you visit the department store at Christmas time, be sure to take note of Lord & Taylor’s Christmas windows. The store was the first to present innovative Christmas windows filled with holiday displays rather than merchandise.

Macy's, however, is the most popular stop on every city shoppers' list. Macy's was founded by Rowland Hussey Macy in 1858. Macy moved to New York City and established a new store named R. H. Macy & Company on the corner of 14th Street and 6th Avenue; it later expanded to 18th Street and Broadway on the Ladies' Mile, the 19th century elite shopping district. It remained there for nearly 40 years. After Macy’s death in 1877, R.H. Macy & Co. was acquired by Isidor and Nathan Straus; and in 1902, the flagship store moved uptown to Herald Square at 34th Street and Broadway. The flagship store has been recognized as the world’s largest department store since 1924.

Fire Island

On Sunday afternoon, my parents and I drove about an hour out to Fire Island. Fire Island, a barrier island 32 miles long, is located in Suffolk County on the southern side of Long Island. Its roots go back to 1653, when Isaac Stratford of Babylon constructed a whaling station on the island and named it Whalehouse Point. Stratford and crew would haul boats across the sand island to the ocean and builds towers from which men could watch for the spouting of a whale. Later in 1825, the federal government constructed a lighthouse at the western tip of the island. The Fire Island Light was an important landmark for transatlantic ships coming into New York Harbor at the turn of the last century.

Since cars are not allowed on the island, visitors can take the Fire Island Ferry, or pilot a private boat or water taxi. On Sunday, my parents and I chose another route- which is to drive to Field 5 at Robert Moses Beach, and walk on the narrow boardwalk to the Lighthouse. The boardwalk winds through bushes and other shrubbery, as well as tall thickets of beach grass. The nice thing about the boardwalk is that there's more than one, so you can take your time walking and get lost in the great atmosphere. With the great variety of vegetation and animal life, there's no wonder that Fire Island is a hot spot for vacation homes.

For the visitors and natives alike there is so much to do on Fire Island. Whether you want to partake in hiking, camping, birdwatching, swimming, surfing, boating, fishing, biking, wagoning or clamming (clams are to Fire Island what maple syrup is to Vermont), Fire Island has it all.

The Little Mermaid

Yesterday my mom and I took an 11:14 train into the city to see a Broadway show. By train we're about half an hour away, so going in is really easy. We decided that rather than pay for really expensive tickets, we would buy 2 in the ticket booth at Times Square, where they sell discounted tickets. After waiting on line for about 45 minutes (the weather was really nice that day so everyone in New York had the same idea), we bought two tickets for the Little Mermaid, which closes August 30th.
The tickets we got were Mezzanine Row B all the way to the left, but the view was really good. We didn't have anyone right in front of us blocking our view, and the theater was really pretty.

The play, which had the brightest and most colorful scenery I've seen, was a magical Disney show, with over the top dance numbers and larger than life talent. Ariel, played by Chelsea Morgan Stock, shines and plays opposite Drew Seeley as Prince Eric. The brightest and most popular number was Under the Sea. Sebastian, played by Rhett George, epitomized the movie character perfectly, with the accent that was right on par and big personality. With a crazy high singing range, Sebastian and this scene earned the most applause. Other big talents include Faith Prince as Ursula, whose evil disposition and big voice earned her a big standing ovation. Making his Broadway debut in the Little Mermaid, Major Curda as Flounder is very talented at such a young age. His amazing voice earned him monsterous applause, and a big standing ovation.

The best thing about this show is the way the crew makes the under water scenes look so real. Most of the cast is on wheels, so it looks like they're floating along under water. One of the best effects however is when Prince Eric falls out of the ship during the storm. The stage looks like water, with wave-like light projected from the back. And in the midst of it all Prince Eric is floating down through the water. This was a real "wow" moment- it looked very real.

On June 18th, I attended the U.S. Open at the Bethpage Black Course. I have attended one other Open in my life, when I was a lot younger, and David Sutherland handed me a ball after he finished a hole. I was standing right by the roped-off walkway. But this Open was different because it was closer to home and my dad knew more about the course. Having played it many times over the years, he explained everything he knew about the holes and the difficulty of the course. As my dad says, "It's a brutal course." And it's brutal just on its own, when the weather is nice. So on the Thursday when it rained steadily, you can imagine how much more difficult it was to play the course, let alone watch the match.

All the crowds were shuttled from Jones Beach to Bethpage Black. Umbrellas were up around every fairway, and every green, so visibility was very bleak. The grass, being pounded with rain, gradually turned to mud. The crowd was laden with ponchos (Hershey, Disney, Universal etc...), rain boots, rain coats and baseball hats. The unlucky majority that did not wear rain boots, myself included, was knee-deep in mud; my jeans were splattered in mud both on the bottoms and around the knees. My sneakers were more or less ruined, but every so often I attempted to clean them by rubbing them in the tall grass. I regretably half- fell but was able to wipe the mud off the sleeves of my rain coat, so all that was left were very faint stains. The fun of walking around the grounds, eating lunch in the sun and watching a good game of golf was noticeably reduced the entire morning, and resulted in everyone holding their food in their pockets.

The biggest disappointment was when the horns were blasted and play was suspended for the day. Although it had been raining constantly, we still got to see a few pros up close: Tiger, Cabrera, Harrington, Leonard, Sutherland etc. All in all we saw almost 2 and a half hours of golf because we got to the course before 7:30. After play was suspended we saw a lot of white vans making their way to the front of the course, which were transporting the pros from off the greens and fairways. The line for the buses back to the beach was about a mile long with a wait that seemed to last forever.