NYC is for PLAYERS!

It took awhile to get used to the high cost of living in NYC.

The biggest price-tag shock was for musicals and plays. I sort of eased into it by going to comedy clubs, for which I have pretty consistently been blessed with surprise cameos by well-known comedians!

That's Colin Quinn on the far left

I was very fortunate to meet Patrice Oneal before he died :(

Most recently: Janine Garafolo!

If I haven't already mentioned it before, I also bit the bullet and paid THREE TIMES to actual ticket price to see Joe Rogan at the Manhattan Center, and hit the jackpot when his two openers turned out to be Joey "Coco" Diaz, and Duncan Trussell! Wendy and I hung out after the show to meet them and they were really nice and took pictures with us!

If you've never seen his "Drunk History 6" video on Nikola Tesla, GET ON THAT NOW!
http://FunnyOrDie.com/m/3wv0

But my first introduction to Broadway was a discount ticket to Seminar, staring Alan Rickman and Jerry O'Connell (in his first Broadway role) at the Golden Theater:

As I realized that everything in the city is expensive, I allowed the flood gate to open and just stopped caring how much a ticket costs, as long as it was for theater. Here is what ensued!

Kevin Spacey at the Brooklyn Academy of Music as Richard III

Then Wendy got us tickets to the Lion King for our anniversary and took this cool pic of me to boot!

That's Broadway and Times Square below, by the way.

My next impulse buy was not a musical, but a play, because the cast included James Earl Jones (who after the play told a child "You should go see Lion King"!), Angela Lansbury (I grew up watching Murder She Wrote), John Larroquette (who will forever be, in my mind, the prosecutor from Night Court!), Candice Bergen (aka Murphy Brown), and a few other people I'd seen before but didn't know from where. Anyway! The play was perfect, not only because of their high level of performance, but because the subject was a presidential convention, and oh, isn't this an election year? Topical! Wendy and I got to shake Mr. Jones' hand after the show too!

 The next musical I saw, Triassic Parq, was completely different in that it wasn't a Broadway production, and there was no big-name cast, but it is a musical version of Jurassic Park.. told by Morgan Freeman (but not the real Morgan Freeman)... from the perspective of the dinosaurs! If that isn't enough of a reason to go, nothing is! NOTHING! This show is still running, and I highly recommend you get tickets:
http://www.triassicparq.com/
Basically, it was absolutely the funniest play or musical I had ever seen, brilliant cast, costumes, themes, and the T-rex duets (yes, I realize the fact that I can even say "T-rex duets" is in itself amazing) were so beautiful I got shivers. Shivers people! Seriously, good singing. And here is the set!

I didn't sit in on of the on-stage seats, but they look intensely fun!

Then, as if karma was rewarding me for not only watching shows with famous people, who should walk out of the same show behind me, but Woody Harrelson! I didn't have time to take a picture, but the expression on his face as everyone waiting outside to see the cast saw him, was pretty damn funny, too.

Finally, the most recent musical I got to see was Chicago. I went with my co-workers because Yonekura Junko, the famous actress and star of the Japanese version of Chicago (produced by none other than TBS), learned her part in English for a special one-week showing here with the Broadway cast. She did great and they even threw in a couple references to her being/speaking Japanese which were funny, but I have to be honest, even though I'd say Chicago is worth seeing, it probably isn't one of the best musicals on Broadway. Just my opinion.

Next on my list is Phantom of the Opera, Spider-Man Turn of the Dark (although I've heard mixed reviews), and of course, the top of everyone's To See list: The Book of Mormon!