If you're strapped for time, here's the summary:
It was a great time in the old town Monday night.
And I'm getting too old to try down-and-back-in-one-day trips to NYC, by the way.
. . .
All in all, it was a fun night, very hipstery & New Yorky. I met Nancy at Hampton Chutney on the Upper West side and then we walked up to Symphony Space for the show. Good to have some sister time: lots of laughing and good talks.
I won't try to review the whole night (you can get a feel for it in this blog post I came across). It was a great selection of speeches, from lots of different political and historical perspectives, hilarious at times and moving at others. I geekily got out my trusty Moleskine to jot down the names of speeches, since I knew I wouldn't be able to recreate the whole list from my rusty memory. Here goes, with links where I could find them in case you're curious:
- John Winthrop's City Upon a Hill speech (delivered by John Oliver)
- Chief Seattle's "We Will Haunt You" speech (Sarah Vowell)
- Mario Cuomo's Democratic Convention speech response to City on a Hill (Bobby Cannavale)
- Washington's letter to the Hebrew congregation in Newport (Sarah Vowell)
- Interview between Woody Allen (Bobby Cannavale, who does a perfect impersonation) and Reverend Billy Graham (Eric Bogosian)
- Abraham Lincoln's 2nd Inaugural (Ira Glass)
- Theodore Roosevelt's The Strenuous Life (John Hodgman, complete with push-up breaks and "bully!")
- Queen Elizabeth to her troops before defeating the Spanish Armada (John Oliver)
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer's battle pep talki (Ira Glass)
- George Patton's address to the 3rd Army, 1942 (Sarah Vowell; George used some salty language)
- Dick Gregory's speech after release from Birmingham jail (Wyatt Cenac)
- Don Rickles and various other oddities and outbursts (Amy Sedaris)
- John Cleese's funny eulogy for fellow Monty Python-er Graham Chapman (John Oliver) following the Undertaker sketch by Cleese (John Oliver) and Chapman (Wyatt Cenac)
- Eric Bogosian's own spiel on normalcy in the Reagan era
- John Hodgman's own speech at 2009 White House tv/radio correspondents dinner with Wyatt Cenac playing Obama
. . .
Afterwards, I walked the 30ish blocks back to my car (I do love city walking but I had parked at Lincoln Center mistakenly thinking that the theater was in that neighborhood) and started back for Boston around 11:30. Big mistake. There was a ton of construction on the way home, lots of stop-and-waits and traffic narrowed to one lane.
It reminded me of the night I went to Philadelphia for dinner with Nancy and Chris and back home again. But this time (older?wiser?) I gave in. At 1:45, when I realized it was going to be after 4 a.m. before I made it home, I found a little cheap Comfort Inn in Connecticut, texted G not to worry, and declared defeat against my drowsy eyes. Note to self: do not kid yourself. You cannot pull all-nighters anymore.
Still, it was worth it.
