Day 280 - Guggenheim, Russell Brand and Souk

Our first stop today was the Guggenheim museum for the Louise Bourgeoise exhibition, which was interesting and cool, although Clare had already seen it and as a consequence she was done a good hour before we were. We got Snocones (flavourless and horrible, by the way) and walked through Central Park for a while. Clare was boiling and a little but against the idea (remember "no relief" from yesterday's weather forecast), until we found a bit of the park where Pat and I could lie in the sun and watch some people playing baseball, and Clare could lie under a tree and have a read. We also found a castle, and the Turtle Pond, which is full of turtles swimming about under a layer of pondweed. These cheered Clare up a bit, and as we walked through we suddenly happened upon a massive concert about which we had heard nothing. Central Park is just too massive. I forget what our original plans were for the afternoon, but I do remember that we failed to achieve them. On our way home we happened to spot that Russell Brand was doing stand-up in the Blender theatre near our hotel. I ran (no idea why, it was still at least 30°) up from the restaurant we were in and there was a queue round the block, so we gave up and settled down to an awesome sushi dinner. After this we wandered by the theatre, and found that there were still two tickets left after the queue had dissipated, so Clare and Pat got those and I nipped round the corner and got one off a tout for $60, which wasn't too much of a markup. The chap on the door was very kind and let me in, even though it clearly said Eleanor Davies on the ticket and it told him he had already scanned it, which was awesome of him. The show was incredibly funny, and as a result of his ubiquitous media presence - especially from his weekly podcast, almost all of which I have listened to - I felt quite a lot like I knew him, and I had heard radio friendly versions of a few of his tales, which made the fully explicit versions even funnier. Russ's sex tips was an entertaining segment of the show. In summary, this involved spitting, gagging, raspberries, embarrassment,  and other things I shall remember until the day I die. Clare was genuinely shocked for a lot of it, saying afterwards that she had never heard anyone say some of the stuff he had said out loud before. After the show we walked along 3rd avenue for a bit, and consequently decided that the girl we had met in Still a few nights earlier was lying about this being a big college area. Some girls we saw told us to check out Souk, which turned out to just be a fairly average arabian bar with the same dull music as in Rehab, however it did have apple Hookah available and some girls going round selling shots in giant syringes, which they insisted on administering to us. Once again, this place was full of gorgeous girls, many of whom were attached to older middle eastern guys, in a series of improbable matchups. On our way home from this place we stopped by the amazing Gramercy Café, at the end of our road and open 24 hours, with an incredibly extensive menu. Here we indulged in some Sloppy Joes before collapsing into a greasy slumber.