Now I'm stepping out this old brown shoe

Here are more recollections from my internship in New York City in 2003 (check the last post if you're curious what prompted this burst of nostalgia). The previous batch of memories were all directly related to my internship, but this group will be about stuff I did when I wasn't working.

--I (along with the 30+ other interns in my group) lived in a place called International House, I-House for short (although I don't recall ever eating pancakes there). It's located on the fringe of the Morningside Heights neighborhood, and I had to walk into Harlem to get to the nearest train station--125th St. and Broadway, on the 1/9 line (the 9 was still running then), one of the few above-ground stops in Manhattan.

There was a security detail in the station at all times. I'm not talking police--there were heavily armed soldiers there around the clock. It was only about 18 months after 9/11, but I don't know if that's why they were there (they certainly didn't have troops in every station). I could never decide if their presence at 125th made me feel more or less safe.

--It's funny to look back at how nervous I was about setting foot in Harlem, since I ended up living there without fear for a year and a half. My friend Natalie and I checked out Amateur Night at the Apollo one Wednesday, and were both pretty anxious as we walked along 125th back to I-House. So young and naive.

--Speaking of Natalie...she and I worked together at BYU Broadcasting and were very good friends, and we did a lot of fun stuff together in the city. We felt lucky to see Les Miserables on Broadway about two weeks before it closed (I felt a little betrayed when it was brought back just a few years later), we got to sit on the front row at a Letterman taping, and we also went to see the new Blues Brothers (Dan Akroyd and Jim Belushi) at the China Club. I won tickets to that show from the radio station I listened to out there--yes, the same station that produced the top 500 list that monopolized my blog last year.

--A few of us tried to get into a Daily Show taping on standby one afternoon. We would've made it, but one of our group was late, and we waited for them rather than going in. Instead, we were invited to attend a taping of Tough Crowd With Colin Quinn. You probably haven't heard of that show. There's a good reason for that.

--I also saw The Lion King, Aida, Thoroughly Modern Millie, and Beauty and the Beast on Broadway. The Disney productions were my least favorite, but still very good (I probably would've liked Lion King more if I had an actual seat instead of a standing room ticket).

--I've never officially chosen a favorite movie, but circumstantial evidence indicates it's probably A Mighty Wind. It was the first movie I ever purchased on DVD, and it's the only movie I've ever seen more than once in a theater--both times during my internship. If you've never seen the movie, I urge you to do so.

--Those were my first experiences paying $10 or more for a movie, but not everything in new York is overpriced. I caught a number of free performances, most notably a James Brown concert (it was his 70th birthday party).

--Almost everyone's internship started a day or two after we got to New York. But a few of us had an extra day to hang out in the city before we went to work. One of them, a fine arts intern, seemed to be flirting with me fairly heavily that day. And I was definitely cool with that. I was pretty surprised when, a few weeks later, her husband (whose name, as you would expect, is Rocco) flew out to visit her! Though it's not surprising if I was deluding myself about the flirting (it's happened before), she definitely wasn't wearing a wedding ring at the time.

--Mostly, though, my experiences with my fellow interns were fantastic. It was during this time that I met my friend and faithful blog reader Larissa. We did lots of stuff in big groups. I have fond memories of taking the long train ride out for my first Coney Island experience, or of nine of us crowding into a medium-sized limo and paying about $6 each to be driven to dinner in style.

--We had so much fun together that, as spring term drew to a close and we prepared to go our separate ways, I came up with a way to pay tribute to all of the good times we shared. I distributed high school yearbook-style ballots throughout the I-House and prepared trophies (cheap souvenir shop postcards) for our end of internship awards.

There were the standard "Most Likely to Succeed"s and "Most Popular"s and "Best Dressed"s (I won Best Sense of Humor--I promise I didn't rig the voting, there just weren't many funny people out there), but we also had some NY-centric categories.

We voted on who was most likely to get lost on the subway, who was most likely to never leave New York, and who was most likely to become the I-House pub DJ (way to go, Randall Jeppeson!). Larissa was the runaway winner in the Most Likely to Appear on Broadway category. Amazingly, our faculty advisor Kevin Stoker beat me out for Most Likely to Get Booed Off the Stage at the Apollo. I guess we didn't have a very informed electorate.

Jeff Mulcock was voted most likely to win a "Mormy" (awards at the singles wards' film festival that have since been renamed "Lingos"). Jeff stayed in New York, and I'm pretty sure he did win a few. Here's a Lingo from last year that I'm in. The jokes I make were staged, because Garrett the filmmaker kept hearing me make funny comments and then making me repeat them while the camera was rolling. Kind of lame. Here's a classic 2008 Lingo starring my then-roommate Ryan.

That ought to be enough to make my point. That point being, of course, that I love those brown shoes. Oh, and that New York is an amazing place to visit and to live. Hopefully I'll be able to do both again someday.