The Upright Citizens Brigade

I've mentioned I had family in town last week so let me tell you a little about my aunt Carla. Carla visits us here in NYC every 6 months. I kid you not. She first came up just a couple months after we moved here and since then she comes every spring and fall. Every time she visits, she has a list of places she wants to go, including tourist spots, restaurants, and half the time it's places JP and I have never even heard of. This time, I was able to take the entire week off from work, which gave us a ton of time to tackle her list.

Every time she comes, she plans a secret thing for us to do and doesn't tell us about it until she gets here. Once it was Accomplice, a walking tour/scavenger hunt/theatre show, though I can't tell you too much about it or I might get in trouble (for example, once you buy your tickets, you don't know where you're supposed to go until you get a voicemail telling you - and it ends by saying you must delete it immediately). Another time, it was taking a sailboat around Manhattan. So this time it was a night at the Upright Citizens Brigade theatre!

We saw the show Death by Roo Roo: Your F'ed Up Family. For those who might not be familiar with this theatre, it's an improv and sketch comedy spot. It was started by Amy Poehler, Matt Besser, Ian Roberts and Matt Walsh in 1999 - it not only has shows, but it also has a training center for people who want to train in improv and sketch comedy. The show was saw had two parts - in the first half, they talked to someone in the audience to hear about their totally f'ed up family. Unfortunately, the volunteer we saw SUCKED. He was weird and none of his stories were f'ed up and the guys in the show just made fun of him to his face. Then the improv bit they did based on his family also just sort of made fun of the guy most of the time - they were hilarious! It was great to see that even with a crappy volunteer, they could put on a great show. The second half of the show was them making up an entire scene for 30 minutes based solely on a word given by an audience member. It was equally funny and we had a great time.

I highly recommend this and any of their other shows!

The Tony's and Fried Pickles

I've been a little busy (and also a little lazy) lately, but I've done a few things and been to a couple places I'd like to tell you about!

First of all, a couple of week ago I got to go to the press junket for all of the Tony nominees! My friend Suzy works for Backstage (a website for actors, specifically a place for them to find auditions) and she asked my friend Molly and I to come help her by running sound and camera and setting up lights. Unfortunately I didn't get to meet the super famous people like Tom Hanks, but I really loved getting to meet the famous Broadway people. Everyone was so nice and I had a blast.

Suzy and me

Molly the amazing camerawoman

Richard Kind

I have also discovered a great bar/restaurant that serves SWEET TEA and also fried pickles. Y'all, this is a big deal. This little southern girls loves to have sweet tea with dinner and it's an absolute travesty that only a handful of places here even know what it is. Anyway, the spot is called The Mason Jar (appropriate right?) and I highly recommend their chicken fingers, their buffalo chicken, their fried pickles, and of course, their sweet tea.

The Mason Jar

43 East 30th Street

New York, NY 10016

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In the same vein, I recently went to a bar called Live Bait that also had amazing fried pickles and an excellent happy hour (the fried pickles were also part of happy hour so I was sold). It's super country looking and I loved it.

Live Bait

14 E 23rd St

New York, NY 10010

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A Mug Addition for a Mug Addiction - The Last Five Years

Last night, after loving the show and calling it my favorite for years, I finally saw The Last Five Years. And it was amazing. I won't bore you with all my critiques and the things I loved about it (which far outweighed the critiques), especially since most of you would just be lost and that's ok. Suffice it to say, I was great. Really great. Oh and if you ever get a chance to see Betsey Wolfe in anything, do it! She was phenomenal.

I leave you with a behind-the-scenes look of Jason Robert Brown (the composer of the show, which is based on his life, and also I just want to point out that he retweeted me on Twitter last night!) giving a little direction and working with the actors through my favorite song in the show. It's the one song that they sing together and it's when he proposes and they get married. It's gorgeous.

O is for Once

Once is an amazing Broadway musical that's based the movie by the same name. When I went to see the show, I had not seen the movie and really didn't know what to expect. I only knew that it was up for a lot of Tony's and I had heard reeeeeeaally good things about it. I was completely blown away. The performances were out of this world (everyone plays their own instruments!) and the story...the whole production just makes you feel. That was the only way my aunt and I could describe it. It just makes you feel.

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Check out their Tony performance, where they performed my favorite number! The two people the camera shifts focus to at the end during the applause are the two who starred in the movie together.

L is for Last Five Years

Today I'm talking about a show that is very near and dear to my heart. The Last Five Years, by Jason Robert Brown, is about Jamie and Cathy, a couple who meet, marry, and divorce in the span of 5 years. They each take turns telling their side of their story - Cathy starts at the end of the story on the day their divorce is final, then Jamie sings about the beginning of their story on the day they meet. Their stories intersect in the middle of the show where they sing a duet on the day they get married.

The premise is very sad and maybe a little depressing, but it's also so beautifully done. Oddly enough, it's the show my husband and I sort of think of as "our show." I know, we may just be inviting bad kharma, but here's why. When JP and I started dating, he made a playlist of fun and sometimes romantic songs to listen to on our first date. Included was "Next Five Minutes," the song from their wedding scene in L5Y. I'd never heard of the show so I quickly got the album and fell in love with it while simultaneously falling in love with JP. (There aren't really any lines to speak of outside of the songs, so if you listen to the album, you know the show.) The little things we say to each other are often sweet lines from this show.

The reason this fits into my NYC theme is because there's currently a revival happening off-Broadway and JP and I have tickets on April 23 and I could not be any more excited!! I can't wait to tell you all about it!!

My twin's wedding.

Two weeks ago today, I was on Tybee Island for my soulmate's wedding. Colby and I have known each other for 4.5 years. When we met at callbacks for Beauty and the Beast at Macon Little Theatre, we had no idea that we'd just met each other's soulmates. Yes, a lot of people associate "soulmate" with their significant other, but not us. Our husbands are the loves of our lives, but we are each other's soulmates. We bonded instantly and now there's a certain level of inescapable codependency (which is alright by me). She understands me more than anyone else ever has and I don't know what I'd do without our constant texting throughout the day, every day.

So yeah, it excited me to no end to be able to fly down to Georgia for her beach wedding. I've watched her fall in love with David (and even told her beforehand that I thought they'd end up together) and am thrilled she's found someone who understands her sometimes more than I do. Their wedding was so special and several times I got teary eyed at the sight of how incredibly happy they are. They were truly meant for each other.

From the moment they set a date, I started planning a shower. I knew I wanted it to be awesome (duh) and I wanted it to be something Colby would love (double duh). I debated a beach theme, I debated a theme involving really bright/almost neon colors, and I also thought about something sedate like a tea party...then I found craft projects on Pinterest involving glitter and all debating stopped. A glitter shower. Perfect. (I'll follow up this post with a more thorough list of things I did for the shower.)

The wedding itself was at the beach on Tybee Island. We had the rehearsal dinner the night before at a little Italian restaurant in Savannah. By the time it was over, we were all exhausted.

The next day was spent setting up the reception area and of course...getting married. It was a beach theme so they had a sandcastle cake, messages in bottles instead of place cards, and bowls of fish as the centerpieces for every table. Everything looked really great.

Here are some parting pics of them being cute.

Congratulations, David and Colby.

Caffeine and Abba

I am hyped up on caffeine and Abba.

Mamma Mia! was AMAZING. Pierce Brosnan sang. Yikes. I mean, it was just a little weird to see my favorite James Bond belting out S.O.S. However, despite the awkardness he still carries himself so well that I can totally look past the cheesy seriousness he was portraying.

In personal news, I am enjoying a night off from the run of Guys and Dolls. In it I play a Hot Box Girl. It's really quite scandalous. Well, it gets most scandalous when the hot box girls take pictures after the Take Back Your Mink number...when we are wearing leotards (or spankotards as we like to call them), tights, and fish net thigh highs (or fish highs as we like to call them).

Before:

After: