Serendipity

On the day before St. Patrick's Day, my only definite plan was to drop off clothing at the deacons' clothing drive.  I had two choices of subway stops, equidistant from the church; I decided to approach from the east. That proved to be a fateful decision, as it required me to cross Fifth Avenue:

Hooray! Men in kilts!

There were extraordinary numbers of people wearing green.  Green hats.  Green beards. Green t-shirts and shorts (brrr).  Green antennae.  One very tall man wore a bright green bodysuit that covered his entire body (including his face).  He seemed to find it somewhat liberating - or maybe it was also the alcohol.  Hard to say.  I was serendipitously wearing a green ski jacket, so I fit right in.

After I dropped off my bag, I came across this cool family of bears:

And a squadron of window washers descending the side of a building.  It was really impressive - like an action movie.  I zoomed in on four of them:

At first glance it looked like spies, action heroes or super-villains
launching a campaign to take the building by storm....

On Sixth Avenue, I headed south and saw buses that were apparently chartered for the occasion.  Hence the crowds.  Who knew that St Patrick's Day weekend - not just the day itself - was a Thing?

Easter Egg!!!

But lo and behold, en route to the subway Times Square, I happened to walk by the Cort Theatre.  Breakfast at Tiffany's was in previews...  so I picked up half-price tickets at the TKTS booth.

That left me with one hour to spend in Times Square.  Just the right amount of time to enjoy dumplings and a glass of wine at Ruby Foo's!

Lights!

Mahjong tiles!

I have never read Breakfast at Tiffany's; I have only seen the movie.   And it is not a movie I know very well.   But still the movie left enough of an impression that I could see many similarities (scenes, characters, interactions, key plot points) -- and the predictably jarring difference: an actress who was not Audrey Hepburn.

I was curious how they would portray Holly Golightly, knowing that any actress would played the role would inevitably be compared to Ms. Hepburn.  Would they try to slavishly re-create her classic role, simply evoke it, or entirely re-imagine it?  I very deliberately tried to be open-minded about this.

What I didn't expect was that even though the actress who played the role acted well (perhaps even flawlessly), her look was distracting in that it just felt "off" in some way that was hard to define.  

Part of the problem was that her hair was down; she looked the ingenue instead of the sophisticate, which gives a very different feeling to the character.

But it seemed like there was something else too.... And when I looked at her bio, it finally clicked: she is Daenerys Targaryen!!!  (And no, I could not recognize her without the blonde wig.)

So it was quite a lovely day, full of surprises.