It's easier to write them than go to them

When you make your travel plans, try not to fly to New York during a Nor’easter. Back from Fun City, where I was really lucky to get INTO Fun City. I had a play in the ANDTheatre Company’s One Act Festival and was excited to see it. After all, this was my first time on Broadway. Okay, well… Broadway adjacent. But it was just around the corner from the Stephen Colbert theatre, so that’s not… Rochester.

We were leaving Los Angeles on Wednesday, just when the storm hit. Our flight wasn’t until 2:34 PM. I woke up and checked the JetBlue website. Every JFK-bound flight was canceled… except for ours. And the two or three taking off that night. I signed up for text alerts fully expecting “DELAY: Now leaving June 1st.” Shockingly, the flight took off on time. Needless to say it was jammed as they squeezed in as many of the canceled travelers as they could.

During the flight I was able to watch live TV. They had the local NY stations, all of whom had STORMWATCH COVERAGE. In LA, we have STORMWATCH COVERAGE if it drizzles. But the scenes I was seeing were horrifying. Adorable Millennial field reporters (all with darling first names like Stacy and Nina and long names with lots of consonants –we support diversity) standing in snow up to their hips with howling winds and snow gusts, saying things like: “We’ve lost New Jersey. It’s gone. No one can find it.” Yikes. Traffic reports declared that the Long Island Railroad was shut down in many areas and thousands of commuters were stranded. The Top level of the Verrazano Bridge was closed. There were fifteen shots of buried cars and guys who looked like Kevin James trying to dig them out. And this is what we were flying into.

Man, this play better be great.

The snow had mostly let up by the time we landed (on time and on the tarmac). But getting into the city was an ordeal.

Let me stop here and say NEVER EVER EVER use Carmel Car Service. The worst. We had pre-arranged a car with them. We were instructed to call when we were ready to leave. We did, they told us where to wait and said it was would be five to seven minutes. Twenty minutes went by. I called again. They put me through to the dispatcher. "A half hour, probably an hour, but maybe sooner so please stand out there." It was 34 degrees and snowing. I said, don’t you pre-arrange a car? That’s why we reserved ahead. “Sorry” was his nonchalant response. NEVER use Carmel Car Service. And please tell your friends. We called LYFT and a guy was there in three minutes.

So we made it into Manhattan. Fortunately, the storm was only one day. Most of the city was sufficiently plowed by Thursday and a hiker found New Jersey on Saturday.

The rest of the weekend was fine. Cold, but I didn’t need to put chains on my boots to walk around.

Happily, the play was GREAT. The whole program was terrific, but I was blessed with a fantastic director, Scotty Watson, and a stellar cast of Michelle Conti and Emmanuel Elpenord. They really crushed it. Big laughs (which is my meth). Thanks also to Kristine Niven for including my play, THE HOOK UP in your program.

Added bonus, I got to meet a few of my blog readers and podcast listeners.

I must say, it was a thrill to have a theatre piece done in New York. That’s always been a dream. When I was in college and Neil Simon was churning out hit plays year after year, I thought that might be a good way to make a living. Maybe live in a nice brownstone, write a play a year, get it on Broadway, make a fortune, sell the movie rights and have Jane Fonda star in it even though she’s not funny. So why did I go to LA and try my luck in TV instead?

Nor’easters.

Thank God for them (with apologies to New Jersey).

from By Ken Levine