Gators and Broadway

We certainly had enough fun last Friday night to last us all weekend, but that was only the beginning of our fun weekend! We had more great things going on both Saturday and Sunday, as well.

Saturday, of course, was spent as all Saturdays this time of year are: watching the Gators. This past weekend's game was against USF, which we had been looking forward to for the sole purpose of quieting down all the "rivalry talk" from so many of our USF acquaintances. All the Gators fans I knew were looking at this game as simply another "warm-up" game to start the season, but USF fans were forced to learn that the hard way. Unfortunately, the Gators are only mediocre this year, so the first half of the game wasn't much to speak of. The second half, however, was much more what we expected, and the Gators ended up victorious with a final score of 38-14. Go Gators!

We watched the game from Gin Mill on the Upper West Side, one of the Gotham Gators' six NYC-area viewing locations (note for the future: they have a location in Hoboken, too!). We reserved a table in advance and were seated on a platform above the bar area, which was pretty nice. We made some light conversation with the group next to us, ate some wings and burgers, drank a good bit of beer and even enjoyed some orange and blue "Gator bomb" shots, courtesy of our waitress. It's just so fun to watch the games in that environment, with so many like-minded people, doing the cheers and singing the fight song (and of course, "We Are The Boys" at the end of the third quarter!). Good times.

At Gin Mill, sporting my new Gators dress my friend Amanda bought me last year!

Crowds at Gin Mill

Go Gators!

Beat USF!

On Sunday, we went out to Times Square for this year's Broadway on Broadway concert to kick off the new fall Broadway season. You may recall that I went to this concert last year with my mom and Aunt Debbie. We had such a great time, that I knew I wanted to go again this year! And it was quite fun, indeed. It lasted about two hours, was hosted by Kelsey Grammer and featured performances from many of Broadway's current hits.

Kelsey Grammer hosting Broadway on Broadway

Mandy Gonzalez singing "The Wizard and I" from Wicked

At one point in the program, they stopped to shoot an advertisement for one of the sponsors, Hue Leggings. They taught the crowd a dance and gave them hats to use for the routine. When the advertisement started, the drag queens from La Cage Aux Folles passed through the crowd, then the advertisement dancers came out. At the end, the crowd was given the cue to join in, and the whole thing ended with hats being tossed in the air. Their goal was to put it on YouTube as a flash mob sort of thing, but the first time through the crowd did such a bad job that they had us do it again! Ha! This was our view of the whole thing (the second time around):

VIDEO: Hue Leggings Promotion, from our point of view

And here's the finished product they posted on YouTube:

VIDEO: Hue Leggings Flash Mob

This year's concert ended the same way last year's did: with confetti falling on Times Square! Although the finale song was different this year, and the confetti wasn't as colorful, it still was a good time!

Here comes the confetti!

The woman in front of us had this puppet in her backpack, and she pulled him out for the confetti. Clearly.

Kissing under the confetti!

If you want to see some video of the concert, check out this highlight reel I put together:

VIDEO: Selections from Broadway on Broadway 2010, including: The Lion King; Billy Elliot; In The Heights (featuring Jordin Sparks); Memphis; Fela!; Elf; La Cage Aux Folles; Chicago; Phantom of the Opera; Wicked; Promises, Promises; Rock of Ages; American Idiot; West Side Story; Rain; and the Grand Finale

I realize the above video is long, but it has LOTS of good stuff in it! There's about 30-40 seconds of nearly all the songs we heard (although I did miss a few). If you want to see any longer clips, I did get more of the following (click the musical name to see the video for each): In The Heights (featuring Jordin Sparks); Wicked; Rain; West Side Story; Rock of Ages; La Cage Aux Folles; and the "Empire State of Mind" Finale.

And that was our fun weekend! We had planned to try to get tickets to Freud's Last Session again after Broadway on Broadway, but the weather was pretty lousy (cold, windy and doing that sort-of-raining-so-you-kind-of-need-an-umbrella-but-not-really kind of thing), so we just went on home and prepared for the week. What a great three days!