Here are some of my photos from my short trip to New York in September 2003 to see Avenue Q.  If you already read my write-up of it, you can skip these paragraphs, since I pretty much just cut and pasted from the review it originally appeared in.
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So, anyway, I was up in New York over the weekend to see Avenue Q (courtesy of my father, who bought me tickets, and Amy, who hosted me), which is sort of an R-rated version of Sesame Street.  Most of the characters are puppets, but the actors wearing and voicing the puppets walk around on stage and act alongside the puppets, which sounds weird but is pretty clever.  It’s about a puppet who’s just graduated from college (“What Do You Do With a BA in English?”, he wonders in one song) and is trying to find his “purpose” in life while he gets to know his new neighbors (one of whom is Gary Coleman, played by a woman).  Songs include, “It Sucks to Be Me” (in which characters argue over whose life sucks most, and then they all decide it sucks most to be Gary Coleman), “The Internet Is for Porn,” “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist,” and “Schadenfreude.”  As those titles hint, it’s very funny, and unlike, say, Urinetown, it doesn’t wear out its joke.  Two highlights:  First, a pair of Care Bear-ish puppets called the Bad-Idea Bears, who love to suggest dubious notions (“You should buy some beer!  Buy a case!  It saves money in the long run to buy in bulk!”) and then, when their idea is accepted, wiggle ecstatically and shriek, “YAAAAAYYYY!  More fun!”  (I mention this mainly so that you will know where it comes from when I wiggle my hands and shriek, "YAAAAAYYY! More fun!")  In the finale, the characters all figure out that, while your life might suck, “it’s only for now,” and then during the chorus, they interject other bad things that are only “for now,” and one of those things is “George Bush,” and I think I almost broke my hand, I was clapping so hard.  It helps a little bit to remember that.

We also went to Coney Island, where we rode the Cyclone (a scary-ass, extremely old, wooden rollercoaster), ate Nathan’s hot dogs, stumbled upon a Brooklyn Cyclones (Class A minor-league baseball) play-off game (bleacher seats four rows from the field for $7 – good, clean, American fun), and, best of all, saw an honest-to-god freak show.  Not, like, Lobster Boy-type freaks (although there was a Feejee Mermaid tucked away in a corner), but relatively regular-looking freaks who swallowed swords, ate fire, conducted electricity, contorted, ate bugs, and walked on swords.

Also, I almost caught a fish.  (Amy and I were walking along the river on Roosevelt Island when a man thrust a fishing rod toward us and urged, “Hold this!”  I took it, and he mumbled, mantra-like, “Don’t pull; don’t let go.  No pull, no let go,” as he climbed over the railing to the stones below.  I could definitely feel something pulling on the line, fairly strong [as one imagines a fish would have to be to survive in the East River], and after I handed the rod down to him and he played the fish, I could see it splashing vigorously at the end of the line.  We waited, anxious to see the fish, but abruptly, the fisherman began reeling in the line rapidly.  He pulled it out of the water – nothing.  He showed us that the fish had bitten right through the hook, pulled the wire straight, and taken off.  So now I have a “one that got away” story.)

  Here's the stadium for the Brooklyn Cyclones; you can see the real cyclone in the background, just to the left of the pole.
 
 
 

And here are me, Amy, and her friend Mae at the game. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

  And this was outside of Amy's apartment building...

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