It was meant to be his day. He had chosen to visit Intrepid and go to a New York Yankees game. He thought he was safe from musical references but New York is just full of them and I couldn't help myself. We walked to the Intrepid as I sang, "New York, New York , All the scandal and the vice, I love it" . Intrepid is a great big boat with airplanes on and lots of tubes and pipes. It goes over my head a bit but to look at tubes and pipes and marvel at the engineering is just the LSH's thing. First, we went into the submarine, Growler (great name), which was both interesting and dull at the same time but I did enjoy making the 'beep, beep' sounds in the sonar room, which always reminds me of a song so I started singing, "All I think about is you, when I'm la la with my boo." (I couldn't remember the words). The cruise missile on the front caused a small burst of Sting, "How can I save my little boy, from Oppenheimer's deadly toy?"
Then we went onto the aircraft carrier. There are no songs that can convey just how huge this thing is but I was humming something. Luckily the LSH knew what it was; the Theme from Top Gun, so we stopped for another selfie.
It was time to make our way to the game. I sang, "New York, New York is my kind of town. The sidewalk's up and the subway's down." The subway is so familiar but all films have completely failed to capture it's dragonesque smell. If they do keep dragons down there that would explain the sudden blasts of warm sulphurous steam that occasionally and suddenly blast you when you are walking over the grills up above on the sidewalk.
The game started with a beautiful rendition of the National Anthem (stand up, grab left breast) sung by three high school girls, which sent me off on a little rant about how the Americans do music education so much better than we do. Honestly, it was stunning. A Capella, three part harmony that I'd never heard before (they'd probably worked it out of themselves) which was really pretty and perfectly in tune, despite the Star-Spangled Banner not being the easiest of National Anthems to sing.
There is so much music in a baseball game. You are familiar with it all because it's in every film. Baseball is a game punctuated with Hammond organ riffs. You know them, things like 'da da da dah de der'. Queen have a lot to answer for when it comes to sport. I wonder if they realised that whole stadiums would regularly stamp stamp clap when they wrote 'We are the Champions'? In England those organ riffs would be pre-recorded but I heard a mistake and realised it was live. I was so excited. I wanted to go and find the musician straight away (after all, who doesn't love a man who knows how to use his organ?) but I decided not to spoil the LSH's birthday. They confirmed my suspicion when they anounced, "sing along with the Cartier, Paul will play Irving Berlin's God Bless America," and so the crowd stood, grabbed their left boobs and belted it out, proudly and tunefully.
The Yankees won! Celebratory selfie taken.
Outside the stadium were buskers of all descriptions. Well, mainly saxophonists and percussionists playing household objects.
In the evening we walked up 5th Avenue to the Rockerfeller Center (cue songs from Annie) round to Bryant Park (where there was Shakespeare rather than song), Times Square, which is just too loud and bright and bonkers for music and then it poured with rain; a short heavy burst that sent us scuttling into Rosie O'Grady's for steak and cheesecake. On the way back into the hotel the LSH said we should stop for a drink one night but not tonight as he was too tired. I think the bar looks a lot like a tart's boudoire but it does have good music, so maybe we will stop tomorrow.
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