The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Albany, Part 2

Yeah, yeah, it took a while. But it was still quicker than the breaks in-between Henry's Woodstock story. Okay, so we were waiting for Christy at the airport, with most of us not even knowing what she looked like. I thought Jose should have held up a sign with her name on it, like in the movies and beer commercials so she'd spot us. After nearly everyone from the flight had cleared out, Ali saw Christy. This was it. Jose's big moment.

As funny as it would have been if at the last minute he'd have taken off down the hall like the Cowardly Lion and jumped out the window, he seemed pretty relaxed and didn't try to run (although we were blocking the exits). He stepped up and greeted her. She's a little thing. Jose actually towers over her. She probably hugged him or something and he gave her a rose and a Doctor Who DVD. It was a warm, fuzzy moment.

After everyone introduced themselves, we all went back to the airport parking lot. Jose got in Ali's car to ride with his woman, so Nick drove Jose's car and followed Ali to the hotel. She wasn't sure if the hotel was down the road to the right or the left. So of course we went the wrong way. Nick figured it out before the other car did, seeing the addresses were getting higher instead of lower. Phone calls were made, and we got back on the right track, but not before some crazy person tried to run a red light and kill us.

My part in this trip was to get the hotel. I reserved two rooms the week before, one under my name and one under Nick's. They didn't have any with twin beds, only queen. Adult heterosexual men can NEVER sleep in the same bed together, under any circumstances, so Jose said he'd sleep on the floor, since it would be better for his back When we went to check in, the clerk said the rooms weren't together because they were booked solid. But it wasn't a big deal; we were only going to be there for the night and then be on our way. Michele and I took our stuff to our room, which was as far away from the main building as possible and facing the parking lot of the mini-mart next door. But it was just fine for the price. The room had a queen-size bed, a mini fridge and a microwave. Michele didn't have time to take a shower before we left that morning, so she stayed in the room to take a shower while I went back outside with Lance, Ali and Christy. I called Jose to see what we were going to do next, and he said something about the couch opening out into a bed.

"Couch? You guys have a couch?"

Somehow, they ended up with a suite, complete with a kitchenette, sofa, armoire and a big-ass TV. It worked out better this way anyway, but why would they give the crappier room to the person who made the reservations? That's just tacky. Ali and her gang were supposed to stay at the same hotel, but they hadn't made reservations yet. Like I said before, the place was booked solid. I went up to Nick and Jose's room to see how much better then ours it was, and asked if the others wanted to come up and look at the room. Since it was a suite, maybe they could all stay there and they wouldn't have to find another place down the road. But they said they'd look someplace else, so I left them there to check out the room. Jose had the TV on some weird European channel that had coverage of the World Cup, or whatever that soccer thing is called. In-between updates, they did a story on a giant 175-year-old tortoise that died of "apparent heart failure". I'm pretty sure it died of being 175 years old.

While we were watching TV, Jose's phone rang. It was the others outside, who were waiting for me to come back down and let them in. But they said they were going to go find another hotel! If they wanted to go up the room, why didn't they come with me?

We stayed in the room until about six o'clock. Then we broke off into two groups, since Jose, Christy, Lance an Ali were going out to a Mexican restaurant and the rest of us were going to the charity event for abused women. I'd been emailing NYPinTA back and forth about the Serenity thing for months, helping out with flyers and stuff. But I somehow never got around to asking her when we were supposed to meet. Nick had his laptop with him, so we tried to see if she was online, but she was already at the theater at that point. We had the directions, so we took Jose's car and hoped that we'd just meet up with her at the theater.

And who was the first person we saw when we got inside? I don't know, some old woman selling tickets. But after that, there was the internet's NYPinTA, selling T-shirts and wristbands in the lobby, which I was instructed to buy. I didn't have any cash on me, but there was an ATM conveniently located across the lobby, so I had no excuse not to pony up some cash and buy some swag. We hung around the table for a bit before finding our seats. I ordered an orange soda at the concession stand from a woman who's dog had just died. As I was about to pay, I noticed that they had grape and asked if I could switch. She said it wasn't a problem. Man, that story didn't really go anywhere.

Nick called Caboose again, who was now in New York and wanted to know how to get to the theater. Nick gave him directions and he was in his seat before movie started. I still don't know how he did it. Before the movie started, there was a somewhat muffled announcement that there would be an intermission, "at the projectionist's discretion." With that, the house lights went down and it was time for the show.

The music and sound effects really boomed in that big old theater, but it was so cavernous that the actors' voices were nearly drowned out to the point where if you were watching it for the first time, it could be hard to follow what was going on. As promised, in the middle of the flick, actually in the middle of a scene, the movie stopped and an authentic "Let's go out to the lobby" cartoon from the 50's was shown. It was hilarious, but for some reason, they never announced when the movie would start back up; it just came back on without warning and some people were still out getting snacks. After the intermission the voices sounded a lot crisper, so I guess they adjusted the sound.

Anyway, the whole thing was great, even though I still died in the movie (because I'm clearly Wash. They killed me. Those bastards!) Afterwards, NYPinTA was right back at her table, and Michele kept elbowing me until I went up and asked if she wanted to come with us to go eat. She said she was going to finish cleaning up first, so Michele gave her her cellphone number and we left. At which point we all thought, "Hey, we probably should have offered to stay and help out." It's the thought that counts.

We walked back to the car, which was in a lot a couple of blocks away from the theater. Boosey parked somewhere else, so we saw him drive off down the road while we were getting in the car. As he went past, Nick yelled, "Bye, Boosey!" and a voice from the bushes behind our car yelled, "Bye Lucy!" It was creepy.

Somehow, we kept winding up on dead end roads on the way back to the hotel. We drove down three different dead ends, all of which were next to the airport. We finally found the road back and went to eat at the Bennigans in the hotel parking lot. We got a table for four, but Jose and the others soon joined us and doubled the size of our group, with Boosey's local buddy coming and the possibility of NYPinTA showing up later. We were all starving, but the others had already eaten so were just there for drinks. Perhaps due to the confusion, our waiter took some time in getting our orders. Michele gets frightening when she's hungry, so I tried as best as I good to calm her down. We finally got moved to a larger table and everything went pretty smoothly. Jose ordered an obscenely large dessert that he thought would be small but took up nearly the whole table. Boosey sat at the bar with his local buddy, with Nick going back and forth between the bar and the table while downing rum and Cokes. NYPinTA never called, and we got a little concerned because she was supposed to go to Six Flags with us and we had no way of getting in contact with her. In hindsight, we probably should have gotten her number as well. As it was, she had to call us.

Stay tuned for Part 3, in which the Great Pumpkin emerges from the pumpkin patch, and Lt. Montoya tries to decipher the perplexing puzzles of Gotham's Quixotic quizmaster, the Riddler. Same squeegee time, same squeegee channel!