The idea was that while we were in New York, Jane Wiedlin's Boyfriend and I were going to see one of two shows for my birthday. The contenders were Avenue Q and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, which are playing about six blocks apart. The plan of attack involved the Times Square TKTS booth which, if you've never been, involves 40 gazillion people snaking around Times Square trying to avoid the fact that a single Broadway show ticket these days costs $100, because if you stand in line there, you can get same-day tickets for $50. There's also a TKTS booth way downtown, but as it happened, the subway just outside the hotel ran directly to Times Square in about five minutes, so... why not do that, right?

On Saturday, we knew they opened up the booth at 10:00 in the morning for matinees. So at about 9:00, we got into Times Square and checked the board, only to find that neither show had tickets available for that particular day. At that point, we decided to look for a place to have breakfast and think about what to do next, and somewhere from the back corners of my brain, I retrieved the location of a diner where some friends and I had eaten several years ago. I was insufferably proud of myself for locating it again, and I still loved the cinnamon raisin French toast, and the cashier came out from behind the counter just to feel my jacket. After breakfast, we decided to just walk back toward Times Square and think about what to do next.

On the way, we walked smack into the Museum of Television and Radio. (Pause while the New Yorkers among you triangulate where we had breakfast.) It wasn't quite open yet, so we continued walking but decided to come back later. In the meantime, I took care of an administrative bit of stupidity that I hadn't taken care of, JWB surfed numerous outdoor tables for the perfect pair of $5 street gloves, and I got my one millionth Starbucks mocha, qualifying me for the free Starbucks tattoo, I'm sure. I learned quite a lot about street gloves, including the fact that you should always inspect them for flaws before purchasing, or you will find yourself sitting on a bench fifteen minutes later trying to figure out whether a particular hole goes all the way to bare skin.

By the time we got back to the museum, they were ready to open, and while we were standing in line, one of the guide types came over and chatted us up. We were muttering back and forth about going back to Times Square later to check at the TKTS booth for the evening shows, and she put up a finger knowingly. "What you should do," she said, "is try the ticket lotteries. Front-row seats for 25 bucks." We took note.

We spent an hour or two at the museum, first watching a screening of The Curse Of Mr. Bean, which started out stupid, but ended up hilarious, particularly when Rowan Atkinson shook the water out of a lettuce leaf in his sock. It's possible that you have to see it to understand. We then did what you do there, which is to surf their gigantic collection of TV shows and choose something to watch at your very own console, but we totally choked and couldn't figure out anything from the entire history of television to watch that they actually had. This is the curse of everything being out on DVD. We ultimately picked the Newhart finale, which he'd never seen and had always meant to, and it was surprisingly satisfying, particularly given the brief appearance of a Long-Island-accent-affecting Lisa Kudrow. She sure does love to do that voice.

Somewhere around this time... or maybe this had been on Friday... we dropped by the TKTS line again, long enough to see that Ellen DeGeneres was interviewing Usher right nearby, leading to a giant backup of people trying to stand on each other's heads to get a glimpse. Of, you know, Usher. We left.

Shortly thereafter, having visited the theaters and finding that we had one lottery to hit at 6:00 Saturday night and another to hit at 6:30, we had a chat about checking out the other TKTS booth, and when JWB stopped to ask a police officer about getting there, he got the interesting and highly questionable news that there was a Mystery Secret Third TKTS Booth right down by where the Staten Island ferry leaves. Not the South Street Seaport one, but another one.

Hmm. Or in the alternative... eh?

Mostly out of curiosity, having some time to kill, and believing there was about a 5 percent chance that this was true, we went off with the officer's directions in hand, determined not to make the Amazing Race mistake of doubting the locals. We took the train all the way down to the very end of the line and hopped off. "Two blocks north" was the extent of our directions, followed by the famous line -- wait for it -- "You can't miss it." Suffice it to say, we missed it. But we did walk around a part of the city I'd never strolled around in, and we did see a lot of water and experience a lot of wind. Also? Found yet another Starbucks. Mystery Booth? We do not believe it exists.

Somewhere along the line, there was pizza. Very, very fine pizza, which I accidentally dumped a heap of garlic on, but which was very tasty anyway. Eating pizza here always makes me want to abandon Minnesota pizza forever. No, really -- forever. How do I go back?

At 6:00, there were probably 75 people there for the Avenue Q lottery for the 8:00 PM show. Twelve tickets available. We each wrote our name on a card, asked for two tickets (you can ask for one or two), and dropped it in the giant bucket. We knew that if we didn't get tickets, we needed to hightail it to the Spelling Bee theater to try our luck there. And indeed, that's exactly what happened. Six pairs of tickets, and none for us. We turned and started to walk uptown toward the other theater, and it was somewhere along here that I started to mutter about being worried that this was not a plan that was going to work. I feared that we'd try it that night, try it all day Sunday, spend all our time running around to ticket lotteries and booths, and get nowhere. By the time we got to the other theater, I was... tense. Of course, my negative attitude cursed us even more, so we didn't win over there, either. "See... I don't think this will work," I told him. "The odds look really bad." "Right," he said, "but we have two more chances tomorrow for each of these shows, and we have as good a chance as any of these other people." I relented. "I -- okay. I know. It's your plan. You can make the plan." "Always stick to the plan," he said darkly.

That was the night we stopped right by our hotel and, for some reason that now escapes me, decided we should eat in and have fast-food fried chicken for dinner. Specifically, from Popeye's. We were in that particular Popeye's for approximately ten minutes, during which we observed three separate requests to speak to the manager. They were from (1) You Gave Me A Drumstick Instead Of A Breast Guy; (2) I'm Not Saying There's A Problem, I'd Just Like To Speak To The Manager Guy; and (3) Is That Really All The Fries I Get? Guy, who later also became You Forgot My Biscuit Guy. As for our own visit, the lady behind the counter was out of most of the side dishes and gave me the wrong meal. What we later noticed was that there was, as there is everywhere in the city, a sign up advertising the ability of the Popeye's staff to perform CPR. I commented to JWB that in case of an emergency, I would be presented with an interesting dilemma as to whether I'd rather pray for a bone to dislodge itself spontaneously or allow the staff of this particular Popeye's to perform CPR on me.

Sunday morning, we had some breakfast before we headed back to Times Square, because on this particular day, the booth would open at 11:00 instead of 10:00. When we got there a little after 11:00, there was already a long line, but there were indications that at least for the moment, they had Avenue Q tickets available. We hopped into line, where we "enjoyed" the music stylings of the guy playing steel drums next to the line. He knew two pieces, it appeared: "In The Mood" and "My Favorite Things." In addition to discussing the use of Christina Applegate's face as a marketing tool and how/whether I would survive if dropped off on the middle of a city without any electronic communication devices available to me, JWB and I used the hour we spent in line to discuss his understanding that there was an all-chicken-clucking version of "In The Mood" in existence somewhere in the world, my admission that there is indeed and that I have it on some sort of Ray Stevens collection, his horror that I would be in possession of a Ray Stevens collection, and my subsequent performance of the Jane role in "Guitarzan." ("Shut up, baby, I'm tryin' to sing!") Which was awesome, no matter what he says or how horrified he appeared the entire time. And the people in line were not staring.

In line, before the guy who solicited us for something relating to the homeless but after the Fordham student who interviewed JWB for a marketing class and then took his picture for reasons we found rather perplexing to contemplate, we ran into a young woman waiting for a friend who was supposed to meet her in line. Somewhere near the front of the line, we lost track of her, but not before we told her about the lotteries we'd tried the day before, and how we were going to try them again for the matinees if we didn't get tickets. But, of course, we did. But, of course, they were really crappy seats.

We got out of the TKTS line, not-so-good tickets in hand, at just about noon. The Avenue Q lottery was taking names between noon and 12:30. "You know," I said, "we could wander over there and try to get better seats for less money, and if we win, we could sell these." He agreed, and on a whim, we went straight to the theater. On the way, I commented that if we saw the girl from the line and we won, maybe we could sell the ones we'd bought to her.

You know, of course, that we won the Avenue Q lottery, now that we already had tickets in our fist for the matinee. (Well, technically, *I* won the ticket lottery.) And indeed, we ran into the girl and her friend. We sold them the TKTS tickets for a bit less than we'd paid for them, still leaving everybody better off than they were before.

Avenue Q -- which we dearly loved -- let out at 4:15 or so. We could not help noticing that the lottery for the 7:30 PM show of Spelling Bee was starting at 5:30. We decided that this was a day to press our luck preposterously by making one stab at that lottery before we called it a day, so we ate hilariously overpriced cheeseburgers in Times Square and then walked on over.

The only thing you are asking yourself now is whether JWB won the Spelling Bee lottery or I did, right? The answer, obviously, because it's that kind of story and had become that kind of day, is both of us. My name was called first, meaning that when JWB's name was called, he declined his tickets, allowing them to draw another name and earning him an actual round of applause.

One more mocha between the lottery and the show.

We loved them both. Two shows in one day. Both awesome, both cheap, both close enough to be spit on by Broadway performers, neither badly situated in that front-row way that makes it hard to see. And the spitting kind of happened, especially at Spelling Bee. And I caught a Swedish fish thrown by a member of the cast, and our backs got sore from sitting on the little benches, and at Avenue Q we breathed in the atmospheric carbon dioxide gases representing fog, but aside from the guy behind me at Spelling Bee who kept narrating everything while it was happening ("Because, see, he's allergic to peanuts. He can't have peanuts. Ha ha ha!"), it was just about perfect.

The moral of the story is that ticket lotteries are a very good idea, deciding you are not destined to win them is a very bad idea, and you should always, always stick to the plan. And also that the people working at the Museum of Television and Radio should get a big fat Christmas bonus.