Castles & Comedy

Today we headed to 'The Cloisters', an annex of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Here in the 'states they call art galleries museums, although this one was an actual museum... but also with art. They also call mains Entree's and entree's Appertiser's - very bloody confusing I must say, but I digress...
Seems back in the day, the rather flush Mr Rockefeller went souveniring (new word!) all over Europe and shoved it all in a castle that he imported & reassembled here in Manhattan. So in this lovely park (thanks Mr. Rocky) now stands a castle filled with an interesting collection of Medieval artworks.

Out the beautiful windows is view of a surprisingly tree filled part of Jersey. I later learned that Rocky bought up the whole area across the other side of the river in Jersey so his castle kept its forested view.

Must be a bit of dough in oil...






Back at the loft for dinner, and we were entertained by band practice. This time it was Daud and band playing very cool jazz electronic piano-y music (um, I don't really know what genre, but I liked it. Alex would be able to describe it better than me).

Daud (the flattie) is on the left at the piano.





After missing out on getting to see the show at the Comedy Cellar last night, Alex & I booked ahead for tonight's show.

The place was jam packed, with a groovy brick wall stage. There were 6 or so comics doing their thing & some were bloody funny.


The compère was, like many Americans, a bit fuzzy when it came to geography and showed this when he picked a Swede out of the audience and milked what he thought was a rich comic vein of how militant Sweden is, how tight they are with Germany, how famous they are for cheese, etc while I muttered to myself 'that's Switzerland you fool...' Oh, I'm just being a snob, they were really very entertaining. The hapless Swede was later picked out by a different comic who said more or less the same jokes - once again about Switzerland instead of Sweden. In defense of that comedian he also poked fun at the American people's lack of knowledge in geography and politics, both local and international, and mentioned how smart and aware Europeans are by comparison.


As I said the previous night we missed the show (it's very famous and was fully booked) but the opportunity was not at all wasted as we spent a happy evening sampling the local beer at the Comedy Cellar's upstairs bar. Then sampling it again, just to be sure. I was introduced to a lovely young man (by our friend Gabe, behind the bar) who loved NZ music and wowed us by rattling off some very obscure kiwi artist's - then lost many brownie points telling me how close New Zealand is to Iceland. This is proving to be a theme...
Oh well, it's off to Europe soon where most people can find their own country on a map.