Wrap your wand Professor Snape

Chicago friends Dan and Emily and NY burb friend Maria came into town on Saturday. The reason for the reunion was a one-woman play starring their friend Bree Elrod (Novak...see the singing at sing sing previous blog post). The play was called "My name is Rachel Corrie". It consisted of journal entries, emails, letters, etc from the real Rachel Corrie. This girl was my age, but could write more profound meaningful prose than I could even imagine. She moved to Palestine and brought a different prespective to the holy land war. I will not spoil anymore of the play....you will just have to see it yourself. I will stay, it was quite moving (made old ladies in the audience cry) and Bree did a fantastic job. The subject matter was so emotionally draining, that we were all impressed she could do that play over and over again without committing herself. Afterwards, we hung around to congratulate her and confirm plans to meet up after dinner. While waiting, a tall distinguished man walked by and low and behold it was Alan Rickman!!!!! He was the director of the play, so it would make sense that he would be around. I have liked this actor since playing the Colonel in Sense and sensibility. Other movies like Love Actually and Harry Potter (professor snape) have further encouraged my afection. Luckily I behaved and did not rush him to "hump his leg" as Emily put it. Later Emily said Bree once went to his office, and an obsessive fan (hmm, no not me) sent him a gift basket with food, knick-nacks, and "wrap your wand" harry potter condoms! Ha ha ha!

Speaking with condoms, while walking to dinner, the four of us passed by a novelty store in the Village called "condomania". The place was full to the brim of different types of condoms, and even had blown up versions on display so you can see what they looked like (I personally found the triple color mood indicator condom a hoot).

We had dinner at a swanky (yet really reasonable) place called One Little West 12 in the meat packing district. I had always wanted to see that area, and now I can say it is cobblestones and warehouses. If you are a dessert fan, you MUST stop by this place. I recommend the carmel apple fondue (seriously Emily and I were debating scrapping the carmel out of the pot to finish off the dish). Later we met Bree's roomie Laura out at a wine/beer bar (okay yeah that is strange that it only serves wine or beer) in the East Village called "Marshall's Stack". Yep that made me think of Marshall and the fact he is away in Manhattan, Kansas enjoying Rock-a-belly (soooo jealous). Here is a picture of Maria (aka the NY native) looking at a map. Many many bottles of Champange and wine later, we were throughouly sloshed. Sadly Bree did not show (she also got sloshed but somewhere else), so we met up with my friend Phil at a bar I cannot recall (yep hazy sets in). We hunted out a pizza place (note Maria and I had pizza before the play at the place feature in Spiderman...whooo) and called it a night.