Dear Diary,

Today I walked from 8th and Broadway to 75th and Broadway! To reward myself I went to one of my favorite New York restaurants, the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station. I love how it never changes...

So here I am enjoying my new favorite beer "Chimay", a white Belgian beer on tap. Mmmm.

And I'm still thinking about Jersey Boys! Did I mention the set? Very simple with some stairs and a catwalk, and they used really cool Lichenstein art projections to give you a sense of time of year, and stylistically illustrate and enhance what was happening. Very cool.

Anyways, turns out that "You're Just Too Good To Be True" was almost impossible to get airplay on. The stations refused to play it because they couldn't "place" it -- the song was too different. No matter who Bob Gaudio talked to they just wouldn't budge. But he believed in the recording so much that he kept pushing and spent his own money to wine and dine radio guys all over the country, until finally they played it. Oh and surprise, it was a megahit and sold 3 million copies right away. Which gets me thinking about every story I've ever heard where some writer believed in his song or play and nobody thought it would go and then finally *poof* it's a hit! One small example (I believe) is Gordon Lightfoot's "If You Could Read My Mind" which took forever to get any airplay, and then finally when one station started playing it, and so it grew, grassroots style and *poof* it was a hit. But there are a million others.

It's like those Star Trek episodes, where for a hundred episodes they keep discovering alien forces that have come into the ship and turned everyone crazy, but the next time one of the crew members starts to act weird, they assume he's going nuts on his own.

Doesn't anyone ever learn?

Oh and as I was getting up from my table the waiter said "stay safe out there"! The lady sitting at the table next to me looked at me, and I said "does he know something we don't?". Then she launched into the story of how she has lived in New York 56 years and always stayed safe. Her daughter is in the Peace Corps and was sent to Columbia. She was worried about her daughter, but didn't want to stand in her way so she let her go. As it turns out she was in Columbia safe and sound during 9/11, but would have been up in the World Trade Center if her mother had refused to let her go overseas. I left the restaurant reassured...

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