Waiting to Get There. Usually on the A/C/E in Chelsea, New York City.

 So this whole thing started when Maria sent an urgent text from Stockholm. She said I simply must go see Tango in the Dark, featuring tango dancers from Buenos Aires. They were coming to the Joyce Theater up the block from us. She had seen them in London and the audience was standing on their seats at the end.  Maria fires a flare into the air. Tango in the house! tbh, I had no intention of going to see this show. First of all, I got confused and thought it was already over. Second of all. There is no second of all, I thought I'd missed the show. Then I randomly walked by the Joyce, read the marquee, and realized I was mistaken. I had not missed Tango After Dark. It was currently playing.  I went online and all the shows were sold out. So back to square one, I had missed the show.  But then I noticed a Saturday matinee. With 1 (one!) ticket remaining.  I know! This blog post is pure adrenaline-fueled ups and downs! I wasn't going, I am going, I can't go after a...

I discovered that in the entire universe, it's apparently me and 32 other weirdos who continue to honor November as National Blog Post Month by writing 30 posts in 30 days. Well hurrah for all of us who made it in 2024. This year I was pretty tight with my sandbagging approach. Pluses and minuses there because I think it's pretty clear I wasn't you know brunching on a random Tuesday like some geriatric scarlet. Anyway, in the spirit of celebration, let me leave you with this dance video I've been forcing friends and family to enjoy repeatedly for several months now:  Thanks much to all twelve of you who read this blog. 

Admittedly I'm sandbagging with these NaBloPoMo blog posts. I want to maximize my chances of NaBloPoMo success and my life is incredibly overwhelmed right about now.  So I saw this Andrew Lloyd Webber revival on Broadway a month ago and I'm being clear about that so no one thinks I'm out of the loop re: what everybody is talking about in Chelsea. "The gays love Sunset Boulevard" and that is a direct quote.  I went to the show with my middle-aged ladies book club. Ok fine, in the moment, my cool factor was minimal at best but I'm not about to bring that up in this blog post.  So, I swanned into the performance with my posse and we took our seats that were. Not great. We were way up in a balcony.  Plopped in the seat to my left was a 20-something guy and seated in the row in front of him was his.. friend? boyfriend? Unclear and irrelevant. I guess they couldn't get seats next to each other so they picked the next best option. I say all this to say that I was...

Bruce got the tickets for the Marriage of Figaro show at Little Island weeks and weeks ago. He asked if we wanted to come and I said yes immediately. There was no investigations or research. Nothing was looked into. I had a vague notion it was an opera... which made sense since Nardo is a big fan of the opera.  Nonetheless, I ran out of time and failed to deploy my Opera Best Practices checklist. This is where I read about said opera in advance. Otherwise, as I have discovered the hard way, most operas are completely incomprehensible. Even if they were in English, I'd still be tragically lost.  Which feels even more tragic when it's hour two into a three or four hour show and very likely the heroine is out in the garden or up in the attic or out of a boat impersonating the other heroine while meanwhile the villain is in the mix and the hero is going to misunderstand the whole scene and probably there will be a duel in which either the wrong person will die or someone will beco...

Let's hear it for NYC. David was talking about how excited he was to move to San Diego when he retired (granted from Miami, he's never lived here) and Bruce is all about Spain and Helen and Matt are looking to cruise in the Caribbean for a couple years and rent out their place in Harlem. Sometimes (ok, often) this town is a rough place to be, to work, to just deal with.  And then you have a week like I just had. Maria was in from Stockholm and we took this city by storm.  For example, on Thursday evening, on the way to the train, I took this golden photo and that's kind of when my whole OMG I will never leave this place kicked in full gear: Not even sure what caption to write. This view shows the site of where the WTC used to be if you weren't aware. I mean, literally two hours earlier: Hanging in the park by the river watching the sunset and Leela James and objects are much closer than they appear in the viewfinder, I just feel the need to mention. This is after seeing...

Incident #1: We went to see Home on Broadway with Casey who had gotten tickets at an exteremely affordable price. She's excellent when it comes to getting tickets at an extremely affordable price. Usually the deal involves making yourself available with correspondingly extremely short notice... like the tickets are for a show that starts in three hours. But yeah. That's why I heart living in NYC. Anyway, Tom and I go to the show. It's good! Casey goes to lots of shows and has a clear plan for how to properly commemorate the event: Casey's photos of Home on Broadway In contrast, here's the photo I took: Photo I took to commemorate the evening   Clearly one of us is better at commemorating Broadway performances we have seen.  You be the judge. Here's the main point of all this: During the curtain call, I notice that the older gentleman in the row in front of us crying real tears. He's wiping his face. And my heart went out to him because I could see how the pe...

I went on WireCutter and looked up the best sleep headphones. Then I just bought the top pick, despite the Wire Cutter write up being a little on the lackluster side even as the top pick.  After that, I went and told Helen I'd seen an article the WireCutter was shutting down. I swear I saw an article that WireCutter was shutting down. Helen became alarmed. She fact-checked me and, yeah, turns out I was misinformed. WireCutter is not shutting down. With that ding tarnishing my reputation as a reliable narrator... let's talk about this headband that plays my music, podcasts, and/or audiobooks while I am falling asleep. https://amzn.to/49xpn44 Frankly I love it. Or, I love the whole idea of it as I have not tried out any other brands as aforementioned. Not that you can trust me anyway due to my new rap for making shit up and spreading false rumors. But I am really sure I read somewhere that WireCutter was shutting down. It's amazing what a little audio distraction will do to ...

  https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/the-cure-live-rarities-1234733522/ The Cure show in MSG was unmissable and I'm so glad we went. I was thrilled to see an all-ages kind of crowd. Some of the kids are alright, or at least have commendable taste in music. We took this video: Mary went too, she got last minute tickets upstairs and ha ha, took the exact same video we did but from a different angle: I mean, Just Like Heaven --  who in that place was not taking a video? But this was not, frankly, a consistent goings-on. I noticed this when it was only me and like some other old lady at the end of the row freaking out and singing along when they played Six Different Ways or Burn or like, the song before Friday I'm in Love on the album. Because, yeah. It's only the old folks who actually were forced to listen to the whole damn cassette tape over and over and over again. It's hard to skip a song on a cassette tape so you just listen to them all. And then you know a...

On Friday we saw a show at 59e59 called Prejudice and Pride. It was a gender role reversal set in modern day Tennessee of Pride and Prejudice. It was also a musical.  It was a fun show, go see it. Two things of note: 1) One of the actors either was or looked a shit ton like a guy that I was introduced to at a recent work conference. This conference happened during the Time of the Wildfires -- One of those days a couple months ago when the forest fires in Quebec were raging and all the smoke turned Manhattan orange.  NYC Freaks out about Orange Sky Many people who had signed up for the conference, including a few speakers, canceled due to the smoke. Margaret, the conference organizer, is from California. Margaret was well and truly flabbergasted by all the New Yorkers who actually would fail to show up to an indoor event due to a "little bit" of smoke outside. Or, all euphemisms aside, she was fucking pissed.  And fair enough, really. Everybody has a stash of N95s in their...

  The Yacht Rock Review On the exact same day and time as last year, we headed down to Pier 17 to watch the Yacht Rock Revue. This is the band that coined the term "yacht rock" which... is a term that I think means whatever this band decides it means.  All I can say is the crowd goes wild when they play that Piña colada getting caught in the rain song or the Brandy what a fine girl song or the She's a man eater song... tunes like this that blared out of your mom's radio unit that literally had legs and stood on the floor.  But whatever the song is, rest assured you will know all the words even if you have no idea where or when you learned them. It's a hoot and the band is great... "they sure found their niche" is how Tom D. put it.  After the show ended, we told Andy and Stace and Kelly and Tom D that we'd take the subway up to Moynahan Station with them and grab a drink at the new bar in there. They had some time before their trains, and so, sure. E...

The Cure is on tour! I was speaking at a thing in Washington, DC. I was supposed to step off the stage at 3:05 PM. Bad timing because this same exact day, Tom and I had gotten ourselves free tickets to the Cure show at Madison Square Garden in New York City beginning at 8:00PM. Excellent seats I might add. And so, the race began -- not only to make it back to NYC in time for the show, but also to figure out how to make it back to NYC in time for the show. At first, Tom and I kind of thought driving would be the best option. I mean, if we drive, we can depart immediately without waiting for a train or a plane. This felt like fully utilizing every minute available.  This impression lasted until we talked to Jeff and Shannon who used to live in DC, who commute back and forth frequently and who laughed uproariously when we explained our logic. Which was catastrophically flawed. Because traffic. It was only after they reminded us about traffic that I remembered attempting to make it bac...

I dressed up, it felt like the thing to do. So did Erin and Guy and Nardo so we were a good looking bunch headed to see the Metropolitan Opera performing Aida is all I'm saying.  Tom unexpectedly couldn't come, so I had texted Nardo three hours before curtain and offered up the ticket. Nardo couldn't have said yes faster. He's a fan of the opera. He mentioned he knows several of the songs in Aida by heart. He also said he's thrilled to see it because this might be the last time the Met uses this particular Aida scenery, a BFD in opera parlance. The last time I'd been to see the Met at Lincoln center was...  years ago. My Great Aunt Holly was an opera guild member and therefore could get tickets to preview shows.  My great aunt holly with Jack and my cute mom on his shoulders. With my Great Aunt Holly, my mom and my grandma, we saw Billy Budd, La Boheme, Lady Butterfly. Spoiler Alert if you haven't seen them... they all end rather badly. Also spoiler alert: S...

At Friendsgiving, Stacie asked what the name of my old band was and I told her: Fred's Been Shot.  Stacie asked if there's a Fred... I said, yeah, my Pop. Was he shot? she wondered. Well... I had to tell her the whole thing. Pop was a volunteer park ranger in Hawaii. He was out in the park picking up something on the ground and he stood up really fast. He scratched his head on a low-hanging tree branch. He didn't realize the cut was bleeding, especially because he was all sweaty. As Pop started back along the beach (he was in Hawaii so odds are there'd be a beach), he encountered one of the other park rangers leading a group of tourists.  The other park ranger shrieked, "Fred's been shot! Everybody get down!" And they all hit the deck. Meanwhile, Fred was very confused. I told this story I guess to my bandmates and they laughed as hard as Stacie and somehow that became the name of the band. 

Frankly I only had a semi-inkling what Yacht Rock was before we went to the big concert on Pier 17 with Stacie and Andy earlier in July. At first, when Stacie and Andy asked us to go, we declined the Yacht Rock invite because we were supposed to be in Mexico celebrating Tom's mom's windfall $$ from the Round-Up class action law suit that week. The trip fell though, which might have been pre-destined anyway because it turns out it's the lawyers who make most of the money in class action lawsuits. Getting to go to the Yacht Rock show became the silver lining of that whole fandango however. Not that I'd ever admit it, but I still do not entirely understand the actual definition of Yacht Rock. I guess it's one of those things you know it when you hear it: Tom said it's the kind of music that white people listen to on boats. I think it's the kind of music that  Milennials and GenXers assume white people older than us would listen to on boats.  The word ironic pro...

We went to a local art festival last weekend. The most memorial part was stumbling upon this band, the Gypsy Funk Squad. They took the stage right after we got there. It was 90 degrees in the shade, but that did not stop a scattering of intrepid belly dancers from congregating on the dance floor lawn.  The gentle jingle of their golden belts seemed a little incongruous in the humidity but I could not have loved it more.  I think our guests for the weekend were pleasantly surprised by the diversity of entertainment available in the wilds of New Jersey. The beer might be basic out here but appreciators of music are deeply unafraid to just do their thing.

 Tom went over to Westside Market to pick up some non-dairy milk before the snowpocalypse. He was the odd man out with his little quart of West Soy. Most everybody else in the huge ass line for checkout had arms full of beer and a lot of fancy cheese. Because beer and fancy cheese are clearly homebound essentials south of 28th Street. Anyway, "It's Raining Men" starts playing through the grocery store speakers. Most men in the entire giant-ass line are tapping their feet and bobbing their heads.  Never change, Chelsea. 

And here we are, at the final post of National Blog Posting Month, 2021. Here's me finishing with a flourish. I leave you with this clip from the musical Hadestown. I saw Hadestown in March 2020 with Mary and Ella. I think we saw it the day before Broadway closed down for the pandemic. So it is entirely possible that I saw the last show of that year. Last show, last post. So very tidy. I need to make a little bit of a disclaimer before you click play on this video. It's a f*ing earworm this one. I've been humming it under my breath for a solid week. And this isn't the first time this has happened. If I'm being entirely honest, one of the reasons I'm posting it here is so I can find it easily. Anyway, beware. Or enjoy. Probably both. Also thanks to Tom who read every post this month. If you did too, thank you very much and send me a text because I probably know you. 

 Today was definitely a day of recovery. We were up until the wee hours last night. It's hard to leave when you can't find the door, as they say. And also because we were at our own house. For the first time since pre-pandemic, we hosted band night. We had two basses (because no band is complete without two basses) a drummer, a guitar/piano player and a singer. The beautiful thing about playing bass with another bass player who is way better than me is that there was more than one moment last night when I surprised myself by how great I was playing. I turned down the volume on my bass and my playing got even better. Nothing is more gratifying than when it all clicks and the music sounds great. Hot tip: This "sounding great" isn't really all that hard (for me) when there are a critical mass of former pro-musicians in your band. I cannot fathom how they do it... learning a song in like T-minus 2 minutes and then just... playing it.  Frankly, it wasn't rocket sci...

In case you didn't know, Grant Wood was the one-hit wonder who painted American Gothic: American Gothic by Grant Wood. Grant Wood's other works are obscure. Perhaps for a reason. At the solo exhibit at the Whitney, this painting caught my attention: Grant Wood painting of George Washington I stared at the central theme - a young George Washington brandishing an ax after cutting down his pop's cherry tree. "I cannot tell a lie," he blabbers. This tell-all gambit seems like a totally straightforward best move, given that young George has just been caught brandishing an ax in the middle of the yard.  Let's zoom in on the action: Zooming in on young George And tighter: What head? Aha. Now I see what is so peculiar. If little George is so smart, why is he out cutting down cherry trees in satin Tory Burch ballet slippers? Not only are these a genuinely bad idea for ax-work, but they're also a crappy get-away choice. ...

Saw the Pet Shop Boys in Morristown, out  in Suburbia . (ha ha ha, that's super funny if you were a teenager in 1986.) We packed into the theater along with every other flavor of white people. All around us and up in the mezzanine, they bounced and shimmied and flapped a shoulder and knocked into an occasional +1 with crossed arms. Some were very tall and towered up in the front row. Luckily I had the foresight to wear some mighty big shoes.  Under the multi-colored lights, we looked green, red, yellow and occasionally blue. Our skin tone is an excellent canvas for LED pyrotechnics. Day 10