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:

1. John Winthrop's City Upon a Hill speech (delivered by John Oliver)
2. Chief Seattle's "We Will Haunt You" speech (Sarah Vowell)
3. Mario Cuomo's Democratic Convention speech response to City on a Hill (Bobby Cannavale)
4. Washington's letter to the Hebrew congregation in Newport (Sarah Vowell)
5. Interview between Woody Allen (Bobby Cannavale, who does a perfect impersonation) and Reverend Billy Graham (Eric Bogosian)
6. Abraham Lincoln's 2nd Inaugural (Ira Glass)
7. Theodore Roosevelt's The Strenuous Life (John Hodgman, complete with push-up breaks and "bully!")
8. Queen Elizabeth to her troops before defeating the Spanish Armada (John Oliver)
9. Buffy the Vampire Slayer's battle pep talki (Ira Glass)
10. George Patton's address to the 3rd Army, 1942 (Sarah Vowell; George used some salty language)
11. Dick Gregory's speech after release from Birmingham jail (Wyatt Cenac)
12. Don Rickles and various other oddities and outbursts (Amy Sedaris)
13. 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)
14. Eric Bogosian's own spiel on normalcy in the Reagan era
15. 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.