I walked out of the airport and caught a cab to Brooklyn, where my cousin lives. There was a lot of traffic, so I sat back and listened to the driver tell me about how he just lost at the race track and needed money to pay off his car insurance and parking tickets. Then he told me, "hang on, I gotta make a stop real quick." I was thinking, "WTF is going on, I am SO going to get mugged", but it was funny in a Dave-Chappelle-sort-of-way. He pulled up next to this guy standing on a street corner, who slid him a bill or two through the window. Later we made another stop where he actually got out of the car, left it running with me inside (double-parked), ran into a building, and then came back out with some more money. Finally, we got to Nathan's house, and I gave the driver a nice tip and told him not to blow it at the race track.
After greeting my cousins and talking for a bit, Johanna (Nathan's wife), suggested that we go to Coney Island. That sounded good to me, so we took Caleb and Nico (the kids) and caught the subway there. We hung out on the beach for a while, and then decided to go check out the amusement park rides. Johanna suggested one in particular that sounded fun, the Cyclone. It's a roller coaster that isn't really fast or has wild twists and turns, but it is so old and rickety that it feels like it's going to fall apart, and that's why it's scary. Unfortunately, after riding it, I realized that I no longer had a cell phone. Most likely it had flown out of my pocket during the ride, and had smashed into a million pieces underneath the tracks. Bummer.
At that point we had to leave because I had made plans that night to meet my friend Thomas, his sister Nina, and his girlfriend Ludia, who were also in town for the wedding, to go see the broadway show Spamalot. So after rushing back to my cousin's house to change, Johanna gave me some hasty subway directions to get to Times Square. However, in my frenzied state, I (of course) got on the wrong subway, and wound up in Queens. Eventually I figured out how to get back to Times Square, found the theater, and walked into the show an hour and a half late.
I didn't bother trying to find a seat because I figured the show was almost over, and besides, they were right in the middle of a song. Soon enough, a lady usher came up to me and asked, "Do you have a standing room ticket?" I said I didn't know, so she looked at my ticket and told me it was upstairs, and that she would take me there after the song was over. I said fine. A short while later she came back to me and said, "You know, there's a seat up front that's empty also, do you want it?" Of course, I said yes, so after the song, which had something to do with not being able to have a broadway show without Jews in it, she brought me to a front row seat right next to the stage. The people next to me were all dressed up and looking very professional, which was great because I was just wearing a t-shirt and pants.
The show went on, and for those of you who haven't seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail, basically it's a comedy about King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table who go searching for the Holy Grail. In the broadway show, they also give it a small twist in which they also are looking for Jews so they can get to broadway. A short while later, King Arthur and his men find a cave in which a word is carved into stone. The letters read "AIOI". Confused, they called upon God to help them decipher the clue and lead them to the Holy Grail. At that moment, from the top of the stage, a giant hand descended slowly downward, in a pointing gesture, directly over my head. I was sitting in my chair, staring up at this hand, as I realized that I was sitting in seat #A101. Then the actors on stage called out to me, "You there, peasant, stand up!" I complied, and one of them came down to my chair. He reached down, underneath my chair, and pulled out a golden chalice! "At last, we have found the Holy Grail!", they exclaimed. "And it is all thanks to you! Come up here and receive your reward!" Of course, I jumped up on the stage and found myself standing next to King Arthur (Tim Curry) in front of what felt like a thousand people all staring at me. Thomas, Nina, and Ludia, who at that point had no idea that I had even made it to the show, started screaming at me. "What is your name, peasant?", Tim Curry asked. I said "Kouri". "Kouri what?!" I mustered all the Jewishness in my body and said "Rosenberg", as seriously as I could. The audience cracked up. Even the actors paused. "Kouri Rosenberg... your name will go down in New York history along with Rudolph Guiliani and Joey Buttefuco!" More laughs. Then they sang a little song with my name in it and presented me with an award for the Best Peasant in New York (given by David Hyde Pierce). I was grinning like a madman the entire time, so much that my face started to freeze up and hurt. Then they took my picture with the cast, and sent me back to my chair.
After the show, several people came up to me and asked if that whole thing had been planned, and if I was in on it. "You were great", they said. I assured them that it was totally random, but one guy insisted that I sign his playbill. It was too funny. Eventually I met up with Thomas and company, and we went to go get some food in Times Square and talk about the day's activities. All that had made me very tired, so we said goodbye and I went and tried to catch a subway back to my cousin's house. Of course, I didn't have directions for getting BACK, so needless to say, I spent about an hour walking around Brooklyn, at night, with nothing except my Monty Python trophy, before finally finding my cousin's house at about 2am. Was it worth it?
Hell yes.