Tea For Two

Congratulations to Ed for correctly guessing the Very Famous New York Restaurant: The Russian Tea Room. Although, I suppose it was a bit misleading for me to call the booths "rounded" -- they're more curved, I guess. If you must know, I looked rather fetching in a robin's egg blue mohair sportcoat; white shirt; yellow, black and robin's egg blue silk tie in a tiny diamond print; pale yellow linen handkerchief; black mohair trousers; and black calfskin benchmades. Against that red leather, darlings, I looked rather divine, if I do say so myself. We actually sat in the booth featured most prominently in the photo above, and the MAN and WOMAN of my little drama were seated at the table directly in front of us -- you can see the back of the MAN's chair in the right corner of the photo. 

My best friend and I celebrated his birthday last night at '21', which was actually pretty fabulous. I have to say, though, that not even '21' is impervious to the economic downturn: the portions have downsized to the point where my Steak Diane looked almost like nouvelle cuisine; I remember when the meat covered the entire plate, and the vegetables had to be served separately. It's also no longer flambeed tableside, I guess because the portion has shrunk so much. Oh well. We were seated at a fantastic table in the front room, so I suppose we've graduated from Siberia at long last.

Strange story: my friend and I went to see Boeing Boeing after dinner, which was hysterical (and a longer review to follow later today or tomorrow), but it was a very odd experience. Seated directly to my left was a handsome, older Egyptian fellow and his rather glamorous wife. I found it strange when they approached their seats that the man couldn't keep his eyes off of me, and I say that without any egoism: he kept staring me up and down, and even when seated, he would turn and look directly at me. It was a little unnerving, but I didn't think too much about it. After the curtain came up and the lights came down, this fellow kept maneuvering his arm and hand closer and closer into my seat, until he was practically rubbing against me, all while he was holding his oblivious wife's hand on his left. 

I sweated through the first act, and then made my way to the men's lounge at intermission, taking care to go the opposite way of my admirer. When I got to the men's lounge, I noticed that he had somehow beaten me to the punch; but the line was long, and I was somewhat relieved that he was a good five men ahead of me. Timing is everything, though, and when it came my turn to take my place at the Wall O' Urinals, guess who I ended up next to?

Let's just say that the intermission turned out to be even more uncomfortable than Act One, and Act Two seemed endless.