How did the party at the Cooper-Hewitt compare with a usual opening-night party?
It was certainly not your usual opening of a winter season by the New York City Ballet.
The last-minute shuffling will almost certainly compound the usual opening-week tumult in the city's 1,100 schools.
Per the usual opening-night custom, the entire roster was introduced before tip-off — from reserves to starters, from Kelenna Azubuike through Stoudemire — with one glaring omission: Eddy Curry.
Finally, more than three and a half hours past its usual opening, the exchange said all trading would begin at 1 p.m.
Wearing a checked sport coat and bright slacks that seem a size or two big, Mr. Stanhope avoids his usual opening-line shock.
At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Microsoft didn't have a booth and didn't give the usual opening talk (instead, Qualcomm took that slot, embarrassingly and hilariously).
His partner was a damn sight better looking than Herschelle Gibbs, his usual opening companion, and the photographers were in a state of frenzy.
Before the group members took up John's proposal, they followed their usual opening routine going around the table and letting people vent about one thing or another, including the most recent Colts game.
The usual opening pair, Alastair Cook and Ian Bell, have been recuperating from their Ashes efforts to the barely hidden disgust of old pros of another era, who look on and see their successors being paid more and playing less.
For "Parsifal," the usual opening-night crowd — it included the German chancellor; various graying, midlevel Bavarian celebrities; and assorted shlumpy journalists — sat rapt for more than four and a half hours (this was one of the slowest "Parsifal" 's on record), then applauded rapturously.
