NJ Day 6 - Skylines, Sculptures, and Sketch Comedy
I spent most of this morning getting to see a bit more of Jersey City with the added benefit of sunlight. I got my coffee at 9 bar which seemed like a pretty hip place, but they had a card minimum which can always be a bit inconvenient if you just want coffee.
Jack and I made a loop of different parks around the city starting with Van Vorst park and working our way all the way up to Liberty State Park., which was about a four mile round trip. To keep our energy up for this long trek, we stopped at a really upscale artisanal fried chicken restaurant called Popeyes. There was a special on popcorn chicken, and it was a heck of a tasty bargain.
Liberty State Park was really a highlight. From there you could see the NY and NJ skylines as well as a great view of the Colgate Clock, one of the largest clocks in the world, and also a big Beautiful Green lady on an island.
After the walk I finished the other half of my Calzone from Porta and drove to Rutherford to see some giant bronze statues a local artist made and put in front yard just to decorate his house while also in his words "striving to capture the mysteries of the gods whi refelcting on humanity". They're definitely more than a few cuts above your run of the mill lawn gnomes.
From there I drove to Hoboken to see Frank Sinatra's birthplace and also a spooky cave which were two different things. Along the way, I drove by the Meadowlands, which are an extended track of meadows, marshes, and swamplands that are filled with beautiful parks and wildlife as well as a good amount of dumped toxic chemicals and dead mobsters through the ages.
From Hoboken, I navigated the NJ-NY bus system to see a show in the Big Apple with my friend MIke. It's a little bit cheating, but the show we were going to see was a sketch show put on by people who had been rejected by SNL and was intentionally coinciding with the premiere of the new season, so I thought that thought that special topicality would make it worth checking out. Before the show I met Mike and some friends at a bard called West 3rd Common. It was a really nice place. The entrees were a bit pricey but the apps were entree sized, so I did that instead. I had Mac and Cheese which was really good, and you could tell they made the pasta themselves. They also had a cool thing where you could special deals on a specific pairings of beers and shots, s everyone at the table did that which was cost-effective and deceptively intoxicating.
The show unfortunately didn't quite live up to our expectations. We figured with the sheer number of people who try to get on SNL, there must be some pretty amazing people who slip through the cracks. This group wasn't bad, but they were defintiely young and still working on writing and performing, so you could understand why they probably got cut this round. A lot of the sketches had very solid premises, but the timing wouldn't quite be right which can really kill a sketch. One pet peeve of mine, was that a lot of sketches would have a character essentially explain the premise of the sketch rather than having it shown through action, which to me really destroys comedic momentum and underestimates your audience.
That being said, there were still some highlights especially when they kind of went more outside the box. They did a fake pharmaceutical commercial for "Not Masturbating in the Morning" which I thought was clever, well acted, and just the right length for a sketch. They also did a really funny video short a la Andy Samberg with a bit of a Tim and Eric bad informerical vibe.
By far the best part of the night though was the musical guest, a comedy-music duo called Pretty Sad White Girls. They were both really good singers, and the two songs they did (one about going to a dog park and the other about dating a man and finding out that he's too into Disney for an adult) were good songs as well as the best sketches of the night.
While the show overall was lackluster, the venue was super cool. The People's Improv Theater puts on a ton of shows, it's decorated with cool pop art portraits of great comedians, and their bar has a house lager which is very good indeed if I do say so myself.
Favorite Random Sightings: A jeep with "Bones Crusher" written on the side; poor sign placement that unintentionally said "Say No to Liberty State Park"; Clean Underwear on Demand; "100% Brazilian Human Hair"; A billboard for an upcoming Paul McCartney concert in NJ that had a pole blocking one letter so it said, "Welcome to New Jersey, Pal!"
Regional Observation: I've always been told it's rude to pass people on the right, but NJ has more left exits than I've seen before so you get a lot of slow drivers in the left lanes and sometimes it's hard to be the most polite driver you can be.
Albums Listened To: Doolittle by the Pixies; Downtown (single) by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis (it's a very dumb song, but it's just so catchy)
Nobody had any favorite jokes for me today so I googled joke of the day:
What do you a donkey with three legs? A wonky
Song of the Day:
