My Favorite Chihuly

Bodies (with and without skin)

-Last night was Penny's last performance with The Wedding Singer. For those who don't know, Penny is the actress who played the rapping Grandmother in the show. So what does one do to celebrate with a 74 year old woman? Why take her to the Australian male strip show of course!

-We were able to get a block of comp tickets to see Thunder From Down Under, so we had a group outing last night after our show ended. As it turned out, the Wedding Singer group made up at least 1/3 of the audience, and I have a feeling we were one of the rowdiest audiences that the Aussies boys have experienced here in Atlantic City.

-Unfortunately we could have been the quietest audience that they ever had for all the difference it made. The show itself was pretty lame. The guys looked really awkward, and the choreography was sub-par boy band dancing. We were able to get Penny up on the stage for a bit of audience participation. That was a hoot!

-Today I decided to go see the Bodies: The Exhibit presentation at the Taj Mahal. This is one of the touring exhibits of human bodies that have been preserved with a polymer and then posed and dissected to show various parts of the anatomy. I very much enjoyed seeing the preserved bodies. In fact they were far more entertaining and informative that the live bodies from last night!

-I was especially glad to see the exhibit given the fact that I just finished reading a book called, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. Stiff is not a book for everyone as it deals with topics like putrification, human dissection, and various other ways a human body is used after death, but I loved it. The most amazing aspect of the book is that everything is told in a lighthearted yet respectful manner. My favorite bit being the joke about "I (liver sign) my Pekinese" bumper sticker. Okay so you have to read it to understand the joke.

-In Stiff the author describes the process of preservation that is used on the bodies that were in the exhibit. Everyone has been asking me if the bodies are creepy, and they really are not. They look realistic and plastic at the same time. The best way to describe them would be an anatomy textbook come to live.

-Sadly I reached my information overload midway through the respiratory system, and did not spend as much time in the second half of the exhibit as the first. Aside from the full body figures, my favorite part of the exhibit was the blood vessel displays. It was really surreal to see only the blood vessels of a person's left foot. Very cool!

-Given my obsessive tendencies (and copious amount of free time), I can foresee making a return visit. Maybe they will let me start at the end and go backwards?!?

Introducing the new Dorothy

Everyone knows that I am going to be touring with The Wizard of Oz starting in October. But what nobody knows yet is that I have been cast as Dorothy. Just wait until you see the dress!

Chihuly at the Borgata

The first thing that you notice upon entering the Borgata is this glass sculpture. Now I am not very well educated in the world of art, but I know enough to recognize a piece of Dale Chihuly's work. As I explored the Borgata, I kept seeing more of Chihuily's work so I decided to take pictures of some of my favorites. I hope to get better shots of a couple of these, and I have yet to photograph my favorite one. That one hangs in Specchio the Italian restaurant. There are always a bunch of people in the lobby of Specchio so I feel like a tool going in and snapping a picture of the art. When I do get a satisfactory picture though, I will post it.

Life Is Funny Sometimes

Whoopi Goldberg was performing at Harrah's last night after our show. All day I was wondering if I would get to see Whoopi. So who did I see at the theatre last night? Paula Deen

Presenting The Rare and Elusive Goober Bird

It is not such a stretch of the imagination to see where Pixar got the inspiration for their "For The Birds" short cartoon!

A Weekend with the Uncle

The one person I was sure would visit me here in Atlantic City was Uncle Glenn. Every year he plays in a golf tournament in Pennsylvania, and wines and dines some of his produce people in Atlantic City. After comparing schedules we discovered that our time on the Jersey Shore overlapped, and that time was this last weekend. In typical fashion it was a fun crazy weekend, that will require a couple of different posts to do it justice. Needless to say he once again went above and beyond for me, and I am grateful for everything! (The reflection is The Water Club tower which is mentioned below.)

Bally's and Borgata

(This is the only picture that I got at Bally's and I only took it because it is the ugliest planter that I have ever seen!)

I began my crazy Glenn weekend by meeting up with him and Kent at Bally's on Friday. He had made dinner reservations at the Reserve Steakhouse in Bally's and invited me to come along. So I met them at the top of the escalator by the ATM machine on the casino side of Bally's. (If you think that sounds confusing, you are right. There are escalators and ATMs everywhere in these casinos!)

We went up to his hotel room and awaited the arrival of his luggage, and the other dinner guests. The others involved in the evening were John, Mary Lou, and Marilyn, friends of his and people involved in his Giant Produce relationship (I think). Dinner was very entertaining. Mary Lou and Marilyn are a hoot! The food was good, but it did not impress me quite like I had hoped. I was under a bit of a time constraint because I had to make it over to Harrah's for the show that night so I ordered food that would in theory not take too long to prepare. I basically ordered Tapas style and had crab cakes and seared scallops. They were both good, but not the best I have ever had. The crab cakes were not served with a sauce so they were a bit dry. Oh well every meal cannot be the best I guess!

I was starting to cut it close on time, so I went ahead and hopped in a cab and everyone else finished their meal. As it turns out everyone except Kent came over to see The Wedding Singer. (I don't blame Kent. He saw the full length show in Fort Myers!) They were all very gracious about the show. Mary Lou and Marilyn had fun talking with JJ after the show. We then hopped in the car and drove over to the Borgata and began the events listed below.

We did meet up with that crew again for lunch the next day at the Borgata. Lunch was not necessarily exceptional but for the fact that I discovered the Gelato Bar in the Metropolitan Restaurant. I have just three words: passion fruit gelato!

The Water Club

(Between the 16 hour work week and the random nights in luxury hotels, I just don't know how I am surviving!)

Over the years the one thing that I have learned to expect from spending time with Glenn is the unexpected. So after the show, we all headed over to the Borgata. It was then that I discovered what he was planning. Originally 2 produce guys were supposed to drive in from Pennsylvania to see the show and spend the night at the Borgata. Well it turns out that they were not able to make it until the next day, so Glenn decided to let me use the room for the night. Now since nothing can ever be easy in my life, there was a problem with the reservation at the Borgata. Apparently they had given out all of the rooms with two beds so they sent us over to The Water Club. The Water Club is the newest hotel tower at the Borgata, and it is also the poshest hotel in Atlantic City. As it turns out, I not only got to spend Friday night in a luxurious hotel, I also got to spend Saturday night. The guys could not spend the night on Saturday so I lucked out once again!

The hotel is beautiful and absolutely dripping with money. Any hotel that gives you L'Occitane products for the complimentary toiletries is bound to be pretty nice! (Although the W hotels are still my favorite. They give you Bliss products!) Unfortunately my experience was a bit marred. The security guard refused to let me and my 3 dinner guests up to see the room after we had eaten. Apparently they have some bullshit policy about only 2 people being allowed up to the rooms per key card. I use the word bullshit for multiple implications but mostly because I had been up with 2 other people before dinner. Whatever, at least I got to bitch out the night manager, and tell her how ridiculous it is that 4 guys could not go up to admire the decoration of their precious hotel! Well she did give me a late check out of 12pm (instead of 11am). One hour. Fat lot of good that did me!

There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch...

but sometimes when Glenn is around there is such a thing as a free dinner. As we were walking around the Borgata, Glenn asked if I might be able to get a couple of people together for dinner at the Bobby Flay Steakhouse. Needless to say that it was not such a challenge to find 3 other musicians or actors to go have dinner at one of the nicest restaurants in the poshest Atlantic City casino. So I decided to ask Tommy, Nate, and JJ. Unfortunately in the process of contacting people, my phone battery died, and I had no way of charging it. Thankfully we could not get a reservation until 10:45pm anyway so I had time to organize everything.

-After finishing the show, we cleaned up and headed over to the Borgata for our dinner. And oh was dinner amazing! We started with crab cake and tuna tartar appetizers. I ordered the restaurant's signature dish: the Philadelphia strip steak. The steak had a crunchy spice rub and was served with grilled onions and a provolone cheese sauce. Get it? "Philly" strip steak. They are very clever at the Bobby Flay Steakhouse! Nate ordered the soft shell crabs. Tommy got the Filet Mignon with a spicy chili sauce, and JJ had the rib chop. For side dishes we got the smashed baked potato with creme fraiche, goat cheese, and green onion; and the roasted asparagus with green peppercorn vinaigrette. Sadly none of us had the constitution to even look at the dessert menu. So I have to admit that as smarmy as Bobby Flay may seem on TV, he does know a thing or two about food!

-When we finished our dinner, we found Glenn at his favorite $1 Wheel of Fortune Slots, and thanked him profusely. After 3 weeks of eating at the Old Country Buffet, oh I mean the Harrah's cafeteria, it was nice to eat some real food!