What to do in New York!

The next in my continuing series on the fabulous places I visit, what I do there and the things that I eat. Today, I'm back in New York City! The Big Apple! The City that Never Sleeps! I arrived yesterday and am on my wait out today. Let's relive the high points, shall we?

Best Lunch: Teresa's Deli on 42nd Street

This little piece of New Yorkiana combines the hurly burly of the New York Stock Exchange trading floor with the stolid comforts of sandwiches. Zipping out from a planning meeting in a nearby office, I had a Turkey and Swiss with lettuce, tomato and mayo, and a bag of Cape Cod potato chips. The turkey was sliced sublimely.

Best Place to Walk from One Building to Another: 42nd Street to Park Avenue

After our planning meeting, we took a delightful jaunt from 42nd Street to Park Avenue. The rain had stopped and it was a freshly minted sunny Spring day. I soaked in the sun through my dark suit and took a deep breath of cigarette smoke and exhaust. Ah, New York in the Springtime!

Best Place to Have Your Flight Cancelled: LaGuardia Airport

I arrived at LaGuardia after a successful day of pitching my company's wares the home base of an important (foreign owned) American company. Flush with excitement, we cabbed it to LaGuardia, our Blackberries tapping and beeping with the manic energy that serves as the soundtrack to American business today. Upon Arrival, I quickly discovered that my flight had been cancelled. No worries, I was flying Northwest Airlines. Surely my hometown airline would have no trouble getting me home from New York! But, alas, 'twas not to be. No flights, no way home, no how. But surely there would be a hotel nearby -- I could see two outside the window. But alas, 'twas not to be. A quick call to my travel agent confirmed that no rooms would be available this night. Drat! I was forced to cab it again to a fine hotel by JFK airport.

Actually, I'm not sure what is best about LaGuardia. Presumably many plans fly in and out daily. Just not mine.

Best Hotel: The Doubletree Hotel, JFK Airport

It wasn't just the comfortable, utilitarian room, or the available iron and ironing board, or the lineup of "Still in Theaters", "Hollywood Hits" and "Adult Desires" movies on demand or the hot, fresh chocolate chip oatmeal cookies they give you when you check in, it's...

Actually, it is just these things.

Best Steak: The Doubletree Hotel, JFK Airport, "Welcome to New York Strip"

• I asked for it medium rare. And it was! Not to rare, yet not too well done. Yes, indeed. This was a medium rare steak. Yessir! And what a delightful name. Sitting cross legged on my hotel bed, chewing carefully and slowly the way you're supposed to, sipping my Coke and dutifully eating my peas and carrots, I felt truly welcomed to the fair borough of Queens.

Best Neighborhood: The Doubletree Hotel, JFK Airport

I can't answer this one, because I never left my room.

Best Place not to be Stuck in the Airport: JFK Airport

Geez! I gotta go. Catch you next time!

Captain America - The Scoop!

It's not often that my hobbies and profession come together so nicely. Here, the comics news site Newsarama interviews New York Daily News reporter Ethan Sacks about how the paper got the scoop on the death of Captain America in the pages of Captain America #25:

NRAMA: Speaking of the scoop; there had to be a good level of coordination between you (the NY Daily News) and Marvel Entertainment. Approximately when would you say the exclusive was agreed upon?

ES: The exclusive was agreed on about two months ago. The New York Post – the Daily News’ arch-rival (picture an Australian Galactus running a paper) – had an exclusive when Spider-Man unmasked in Civil War #2 and I heard plenty about it from my editors. When I whined to Marvel that they should’ve kept me in the loop, too, they promised me a future exclusive when a story with mainstream interest would surface. So two months ago, I got a call from Marvel’s PR contact calling me into the Marvel Bullpen for a little powwow. They revealed the plans for Cap right then and there. The publisher wanted several conditions for us to get the exclusive: That we commit to most of a page up front and put a good-sized piece of art with it. It was a no-brainer for us, and my editor gave the green light later that afternoon. I didn’t even tell my wife.

Some scoop. Sacks whines about not getting the story the last time Marvel had a story that might have mainstream interest. Marvel PR says, "OK, we'll take care of you next time." And, with two months advance notice, they managed to get the story in the paper. Not exactly the classic image of the reporter dogging the company and the editor shouting "stop the presses" to get that story to us for working his deep cover contacts, is it?

It's not Sacks who trumpets this as a big scoop -- it's Newsarama. Public relations -- the art of how companies communicate to the public through media and influencers (today's definition) -- should be a required course in the media age. How organizations and media build relationships that lead to stories shouldn't be such a mystery -- it ain't rocket science folks.

It can be fun though...next time you see a big entertainment story -- or even a business story -- that strikes you as a little odd, that has you asking, "why was this on the news?" ... play the game PR people play from the outside. Ask: Who wanted this story told? Who were the unnamed sources? What did it take for this story to make the big splash that it did?

Captain America - RIP

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/story/503132p-424376c.html

And, of course, this video tribute (view at your own risk...Oy!)

Captain America died today.

As an imaginary character living in an imaginary world of superpowered heroes fighting outlandish villains, Captain America was still, well, a little different.

His modern incarnation -- a man born of the depression and created during World War II revived and forced to reconcile his values in today's world -- was at once uncomfortably cornball and choke-back-the-manly-tears inspiring.

In the comic world, this is going to piss people off. But there's a tradition here. Back in the late 60s, the writers had Captain America quit and become "Nomad" when he couldn't represent the America he saw on the streets and in the Capitol. In the 90s, I've read, he was forced by the government to hand over his shield to John Walker -- more "my country, right or wrong" than the exemplar of the American Ideal.

What captures America today? Captain America has never been more a 'man out of time'. His government no longer holds itself out as a shining beacon meant to bring the free peoples of the world together. Instead, we hold forth that we must protect our own at all costs, and if the rest of the world won't go along, we'll go it alone. Where legitimate dissent is viewed as anti-American. Where supporting the troops means putting more of them in danger, for reasons increasingly unclear. Where we act like bullies and fools and wonder why no one likes us...

It's been a few years...time for Captain America to be recast.

If I were the storyteller, by the way, I'd call the assassination of Steve Rogers a ruse. The original Captain America goes underground, while others take his place. Steve Rogers dons a new mask and takes a tour of his namesake country to rediscover who Americans are these days, for real. To get back to basics. To find out the price of milk. He gets on the Internet, finds out what makes people happy and what really scares them. Discovers who we really are and what those ideals are that we really need a Captain America to uphold and protect.

And, along the way, who really needs a good kick in the head.