Pie for days

I spent most of the weekend eating slice after slice of my boyfriend's homemade strawberry pie. I'm a big fan of strawberry pie, as it turns out.

Let's see ... we went out to our favorite Asian restaurant on Friday night. He had honey wasabi shrimp, and I had shrimp with tomatoes, peppers, onions, and pineapple. For dessert, we had strawberry pie and pistachio ice cream. We started The Illusionist.

On Saturday morning, we had cereal for breakfast, stopped at the coffee shop for a granita, and headed out to a festival. This was our first visit to this festival. It's a lot smaller than Jazz Fest, and it was fun to walk around downtown, check out musical acts from Belgium, Finland, and Mexico, and eat festival food like a pink lemonade snowball and crawfish maque choux.

We got back to town, went to a backpacking store, and went home, where I made chicken stroganoff for dinner, inspired by this post of Jackie's. I liked it, but I thought it could have used some cayenne pepper or something to make it a little more fiery. We had more pie and more pistachio ice cream for dessert. Also, we finished The Illusionist, which I definitely do not recommend. It was terrible. Maybe not quite as terrible as The Holiday, but close. It was boring and ridiculous, and I felt embarrassed for all of the actors. Except for Jessica Biel because I don't expect anything better from her. But Edward Norton and Paul Giamatti are really good actors! How are they not mortified to have appeared in this nonsense? Argh. And we also watched Hollywoodland, which I liked but did not love, while playing a game of Scrabble. I thought everyone in this one did a great job, especially Adrian Brody and Ben Affleck, and I thought my beloved Diane Lane was a little over the top, but I still liked her performance.

On Sunday morning, we went to the coffee shop, sat outside, ate a white chocolate raspberry scone and a whole wheat bagel with veggie cream cheese, and read the paper. Soon it was time for him to go home. I did some chores like hedge trimming, went grocery shopping, lay around watching episodes of How I Met Your Mother online, and so forth. I took the dogs on a walk that went awry when Daisy got out of her collar and took off like a rocket after a cat and I ended up trespassing in someone's backyard and ultimately cornering her, which was not an easy task. It's always an odd moment when Zuko's the dog that comes out like the angel of the situation.

Last night, I was watching The Riches, and I had a flashback to when Minnie Driver was on The Rosie O'Donnell Show and she and Rosie sang "Truly Scrumptious" in harmony. It made me really like Minnie Driver from that moment on. I wasn't sure about this show at first, but I've decided that I like it. And I really wish I could find a clip online of them singing, because it was adorable. Truly, I probably still have it on tape somewhere, so maybe I'll dig it out.

I am trying to turn over a healthy new leaf this week. I've been packing on the pounds since finishing the half-marathon training and skipping my crazy exercise class for a few weeks, and I've also been eating like an out-of-control lunatic. It really has to stop. It was almost exactly a year ago that I started Couch to 5K, and I somehow completed that (9 weeks), One Hour Runner (10 weeks), and training for the half-marathon (16 weeks), but I find myself floundering when it comes to health and fitness right now. After missing class for a couple of weeks, getting back into it has been so difficult. It might be because the temperature has been pushing 90 lately, and it feels like it's about 190 in the class. I was doing some move with an exercise bar where you lie on your back and hold it over your head and then do a sit-up with it and on the bar's way back over my head, I hit myself in the nose. Dazed, I reached for my nose and thought it was gushing blood, but the dripping liquid was just a river of sweat! Delightful. I really want to commit to doing the class three times a week and throwing in a day or two of running in there for good measure. And start eating more healthy foods. Just as soon as I finish this strawberry pie.

Denied

Shelley teaches spinning in New York City and is more interested than most in hearing about all of the details of my crazy exercise class. She has become somewhat obsessed with it from across the country, and we both put it on our calendars to go to the class together when she was in town this week. We've been completely excited about it to the point of near hysteria.

So we showed up at the gym. I had the ridiculously high $10 guest fee in hand, and after I scanned my membership card, I told the woman at the desk that I had a guest. She informed me that guests aren't allowed after 5 pm. Shelley and I just stood there and blinked in surprise. The woman pointed to an explanation of this policy taped to the counter. Shelley said, "But we've been planning this for two months!" The women looked unsympathetic. I said, "But we just want to go to the class. What if we ask the teacher for permission and he says yes? Could she come then?" And another woman sitting in an office behind the counter said rather loudly and meanly, "NO. That's the policy." So we turned and walked out, quite bitterly disappointed. I was feeling the angry tears come on, the kind that spring to your eyes when you're not sad but just plain old mad. I might have even gripped the steering wheel and made angry wailing noises. We consoled ourselves by ordering a ton of take-out sushi and heading to Maryelizabeth's, where we were cheered up by her kids' cuteness and the surreal save the world episode of American Idol. Can I just say once again that I love Josh Groban? I know, it makes no sense.

I am trying not to let my rage at being denied so harshly at the gym diminish my love for it. I truly do love that gym in all of its stinky, crowded glory. I feel like it's the gym of the people. And the policy, while totally not conducive to our plan, is posted. And I guess it does serve the purpose of depopulating the gym at its peak hours when there truly are not enough treadmills and weight machines to go around. I wish they would have let us ask the teacher for permission, because there is no way he would have turned away a willing body at whom he could scream, "LOVE YOURSELF!" And I really don't think one more body in that class would in any way tax the resources of the gym, particularly if they were paid that astronomical guest fee that they charge. But whatever. I am still going to love my class and its teacher and ignore the existence of those bitches behind the counter who did not even try to pretend to be nice about squelching our aerobic dreams.

I'm sad that Rosie won't be returning to The View next season but not surprised. My love for her remains unconditional and unwavering, and I will keep reading her blog and watch and see what comes next. Frankly, after enjoying her old show so immensely, it was a total coup and blessing to be able to watch her on TV every day again for a whole season. I love her, love her, love her.

I find myself having building anxiety about the presidential election. I am just not sure that America is ever going to truly recover from the across-the-board debacle that has been the George W. Bush presidency. I feel the only way that this country can redeem itself is to not allow its next president to be elected by the evangelical, redneck, gun toting right. I'm sure lots of evangelicals are lovely people, but it's the maniacal ones, like those who support the recent Supreme Court decision on abortion, and think that intelligent design should be required to be taught in public schools, and think that stem cell research kills babies, and think that only a Republican president will keep the terrorists away, and who think that there is actually a way to "win" in Iraq -- that there is something actually to be "won" there, what the fuck, seriously, what are we trying to win? whom are we trying to beat? what is the definition of winning in Iraq, I really wish someone would just tell me -- who frighten and horrify me on every level. (Elisabeth Hasselbeck actually said, relative to the election and terrorists, that certain Democratic candidates would not be able to keep the terrorists from striking. Because some of them want to pull us out of Iraq. Like the two are connected. What? Is this not 2007? Has she learned nothing? What is going on?) I truly am frightened that they are so much more organized than the left will ever manage to be that they are going to win again. And it really is a crippling fear that strikes me deep in my heart. I was listening to the political junkie on NPR in the car the other day, and someone called in to say he was a conservative evangelical and that none of the Republican candidates are conservative enough for him. He was an intelligent-sounding, humorous guy, but come on. COME ON. The political junkie said that someone like Sam Brownback might end up swooping in. And I actually was so chilled to the bone by that statement that I felt myself freezing up to the point where I could hardly pay attention to the road. I am in absolute denial of such a scenario. Something like that cannot happen. It just cannot happen. I haven't even picked a Democratic candidate to support -- at this point, just give me a Democrat, any Democrat. I have gotten to the point of feeling totally exhausted and defeated by George Bush's second term and just living for the day when it is OVER. And the thought that someone other than a Democrat will take the White House and that this nightmare of anti-same-sex marriage, anti-stem cell research, pro-war, pro-gun HORROR will continue once that fucking idiot is out of there is enough to make me ... I don't know. Make me deeply sad and deeply scared.

Movie warning

In case you've been interested in seeing The Holiday, please let me advise you to think again. It's bad. It's so bad. I can't even believe there is a movie featuring Kate Winslet that I dislike so violently, but there is. The only person who acquits himself decently in this movie is Jude Law, of all people. He's very warm, funny, and likeable. He should abandon his eternal character actor quest and just start starring in every romantic comedy and accept that it is his destiny. The rest of them are just kind of idiots. In what universe are we supposed to believe that Kate Winslet is pining hopelessly for Rufus Sewell? The Rufus Sewell of Dangerous Beauty, possibly, but not the strange Rufus Sewell of modern times, the one who always plays a cad or a murderer and looks like he's had a botched eye job. Poor Kate. This was just not a good part for her. Cameron Diaz is ridiculous. She was as plastic as Jude Law was genuine and engaging. Jack Black tried, it seemed, to scale back the Jack Blackness, but it's impossible for him, I think. Luckily I think Jack Black is pretty funny, and I enjoyed his singing of the movie scores in the video store. But so many parts of this movie made me cringe or want to nod off because it just dragged on forever. I had high hopes for it despite its generally poor reviews, including my sister's, who warned me that it was terrible, not only because of Kate but because Nancy Meyers also wrote and directed what I think is one of the best romantic comedies of the last ten years, Something's Gotta Give. That movie is better than The Holiday by leaps and bounds, almost unfathomably. So please, spare yourself. Other than making me want to go to England when it's snowing, this movie was a giant waste of time. Skip it.

Pineapple=good

The weather is gorgeous, and it pains me to be inside all day.

After a crazy work week, I headed to see my boyfriend, and we ate sushi on Friday night. On Saturday morning, we headed across the lake to do some cleaning at his house for the Jazz Fest renters. We cleaned our hearts out for a little while and went to eat lunch at Fellini's, sitting outside. Their spicy tomato paste on pita bread is probably one of my favorite things to eat in life, I've decided. We cleaned some more and he embarked on the adventure of replacing his kitchen light fixture, damaged when his ceiling was felled by Katrina, with the assistance of his next-door neighbor. We got take-out for dinner (he had grilled pork over noodles, I had tofu and vegetables over rice), stopped for gelato (he had white chocolate almond on a cake cone, I had strawberry and chocolate hazelnut in a cup), and headed out to see Shelley and her new fiance. We posed for a picture and pretended not to be old.

The next morning, we did some more cleaning and had some lunch (he had a cheeseburger, I had a caesar salad with grilled shrimp and fries), and I headed home. I had dinner with an old friend (she had sweet and sour chicken, I had shrimp lo mein) and got to spend a little time with my godson as they're visiting from Italy.

Tonight was boiled crawfish with Shelley and Maryelizabeth and their broods, along with garlic bread and corn on the cob and red potatoes and pineapple broiled in brown sugar and rum for dessert, which excited me very much. I haven't been to my crazy exercise class in two weeks, and I can't wait to go back soon. Last night I had a new version of the same anxiety dream I have on a pretty regular basis, the dream in which I haven't shown up all semester for classes required for graduation from high school or college. Last night the guidance counselor trying to help me sort through my academic freak-out was Craig Ferguson. And I guess that's about it for now.

Except that I have no idea why this entire blog is now gray or why my bullets are no longer cute and no longer match up with the text beside them. I guess something got screwed up in the template some mysterious way, and I'll be damned if I know how to fix it.

Parents and children

Lately I've been thinking about parents and children.

One of my two closest friends just had her second baby, and I'm watching her take care of a three-year-old and a three-week-old simultaneously, and it's all very baffling and inspiring to watch. She is a mom, their mom, but she is still totally herself, the same person I've known since the age of 10. She still reads many books, likes celebrity gossip, is faithful to Gilmore Girls even when it has long ceased to deserve it, still likes peanut butter, still likes cheese, still speaks in the same evolving nickname- and abbreviation-riddled language with me that we have always spoken. How people change and stay the same after having kids is something that interests me. Obviously she has changed in ways internally that I cannot fathom, but in many ways, to me, she is exactly the same.

When you are fully grown, to what extent should you follow your parents' well-meaning advice? When it goes against what you want for yourself or what you think is right for yourself, is it possible to turn your back on their advice but not on them? Is it possible to go against their wishes for you and feel okay about doing that? I certainly feel okay going against my parents' political positions, I mean, I am not insane and firmly believe that they are wrong in supporting the ideals of the Republican Party and am not afraid to say it to their faces, loudly and proudly. (Of course, it's not so easy for me to denounce their religious beliefs. That's touchier and much closer to the heart. That runs deep with them, and I understand that, because it once ran deep with me. And still does, really, even if absent. Which might make no sense, but it's true.) But I adore them beyond measure and don't like doing things that I know worry them. I think that knowing someone who loves me is worried about me might be one of the worst feelings in the world.

Does that nagging ache of knowing your parents are worried about you ever go away? Do parents ever have a moment's peace from the day their children are born? How can you watch your children grow up and send them off to college when they could be blown away in their dorm room or in German class?

I think a lot about parents and children, about my friends and their babies, about my parents and my siblings and me. Do my parents wish they had grandchildren? Does it hurt their hearts that they don't and that God only knows if or when they ever will? Can any of us live with ourselves if we don't give them that gift, that part of life that they probably wish they were experiencing and would certainly be totally awesome at? Do they wonder why not one of us is married after 3-for-3 failed attempts, and do they wonder what is wrong with them that all of their friends' children have children and theirs don't? To think of them hurting over that is something that absolutely puts my heart in my throat. It makes me feel like projectile vomiting, really.

Anne Lamott has a lot to say about parents and children. She talks about how the reason that a teenaged boy becomes an awful beast toward his mother is that it's the only way he can distance himself from her so that it won't break his own heart when he has to grow up and leave her. And that makes a lot of sense to me. I guess part of why we separate ourselves from our parents, from their religious faiths or their political beliefs or how they would plan a wedding or clean a house or cook a meal or whatever else, is because we know that we have to leave them eventually, or that they will leave us eventually by getting old and sick and dying, and because that we think that being less connected to them and less intertwined with them will make it easier to lose them, for them to lose us.

It's thoughts like these that sometimes make me believe that I am in no way ready to be a parent and sometimes make me wonder how I could ever doubt wanting to have a child. Which is just one of the many contradictions in my life that make me feel mildly crazy.

And I wonder how other people think about parents and children.

Catching Up

After work on Thursday afternoon, I baked lemon scones. I liked them. They tasted kind of biscuity, and the lemon flavor was present but not overpowering. I might become more adventurous with my next batch.

That night, we had mediocre Thai food at a place that is usually one of my favorite restaurants.

On Friday, I went to work and he went to his thing. That evening, we had another mediocre meal! This time at a casual Italian joint. Two for two. We started Marie Antoinette, which was pretty to look at but kind of boring.

On Saturday, we had egg sandwiches on biscuits at our breakfast joint and fetched a vanilla iced coffee. Then it gets kind of blurry. We finished the movie, still pretty but still boring. He spent a few hours writing, and I spent a few hours taking pictures of the dogs on their cots and playing on my computer. I baked Rolo and toffee brownies. We went to visit Maryelizabeth, the new baby, et al. I got my weekly fix of baby head smell. That night, we went to an old friend's house so she and B. could actually meet each other. I drank too much wine, which I have not done in a long time.

On Sunday, we made egg sandwiches at home, discussed some things, he went home, I mowed the grass, dropped off a birthday gift, and got some granita and a sandwich and headed into work for a few hours, which is always a delightful way to spend a beautiful Sunday afternoon. But I was cheered up by my great visit with the inimitable Mo. I then headed to my parents' house for my mom's incredible tuna salad and a good, frank conversation about my secret dreams of becoming a young adult librarian and, also, living in sin.

Today I am groggy and kind of surly. With no energy to say anything profound or entertaining, I will now post some pictures of my wicked dogs and their groovy new cots.

Would it be wrong to eat leftover brownies for dinner?

Mo + Eliza = Love

Tonight, mo pie and I met up for cafe au lait and beignets. She's in town for a conference.

I hadn't seen mo pie since 2003, but our love has not faded. Hers was one of the first online journals I read, way back in 1998 or 1999 -- I know it was before I started mine in August of 1999, but I'm not sure when it was exactly that I first found her. Anyway, she is, of course, a brilliant writer. It is strange, these online friendships. We remember so much about each other's lives from years and years ago and have followed each other's stories and every now and then we are lucky enough to sit across a table and dip beignets in hot chocolate together.

It was so great to see her again. I am really excited about the latest version of her fantastic site, Big Fat Deal. I've read it regularly from the start, and the new design rocks. I am so proud of her for starting such a great site.

I am so proud to know Mo.

Creating Ragtime

Wow! I discovered on YouTube today something I did not know existed, a PBS "Great Performances" episode on the making of Ragtime. It is fantastic.

Favorite parts:

Watching Marin Mazzie sing her red, vibrating face off while recording "Back to Before," seeing her sheer exhaustion after finishing, and seeing Brian Stokes Mitchell come in and embrace her like a proud papa as she slumped against him.

Seeing teeny, tiny little Lea Michele.

Watching the conductor wave his baton in the air during the climax of "New Music," blissed out, eyes closed.

Seeing rehearsals and how the cast members would be only half in costume, wearing a top hat with a t-shirt and jeans or holding an umbrella.

Seeing the veins bulging in Brian Stokes Mitchell's forehead as he sings, "MY law and MY justice, in rhythm and rhyme..." and pulls out his gun.

Watching Stephen Flaherty joyfully pound out "Gettin' Ready Rag" on the piano.

The way that Coalhouse, when singing "And tell them in our struggle, we were not the only ones," extends his arm, gesturing to Younger Brother.

The utter perfection of "Sarah Brown Eyes."

Oh, to go back in time and see this original cast performing this musical.

At least I got to see Mother and Coalhouse in Kiss Me, Kate.

Bells in his hair

Okay. In the eighth grade, Shelley and Maryelizabeth were in a musical version of The Little Match Girl. Shelley was the Little Match Girl and died at the end. Maryelizabeth played a panda bear whose lines were, "SURE we talk. But people rarely listen!" and "Watch your match!" We've been discussing how strange it was that our drama and music teachers decided to stage a musical in which the lead character freezes to death and have it performed for a bunch of children in kindergarten. Even though I was in the other half of our grade, the group that did The Pirate of Penzance, which is almost unfairly better than the depressing tripe my friends had to perform, I still somehow learned the songs for their musical because let's face it, mostly we just sat around singing (to the annoyance of everyone around us) and basically still do.

And one of the songs that we all still remember goes something like this:

God sits behind the sun with bells in his hair

(Bells in his hair, bells in his hair) ...

He's always hungry so he fills the trees

With apricots and honeybees

Golden pears and summer strawberries

Then he sits and he makes a dream for me ...

Or something like that. Maryelizabeth also remembers a verse to that song that started, "God has a whisper only children can hear." And Shelley clearly remembers a song called "Bright Star, Wishing Star" that she sang before her big death scene. So I decided to Google these songs so we could relive them in the entirety of their glory, and I cannot find a damn thing about them. We're starting to wonder if our music teacher just made them up and think that they never really existed outside the stage in our school gymnasium.

I did find this page that refers to a musical version in which the lead character is named Liesl, and Shelley thinks that was her name, so I guess this could be it, but I cannot believe that on the whole Internet there does not exist a tiny iota of evidence that these songs really existed.

Does God sitting behind the sun with bells in his hair ring a bell with anyone?

Catching Up

I feel like I have to catch up now or I never will.

When we left off ... I went to my crazy exercise class twice last week and headed to see my boyfriend on Thursday afternoon since we were off on Friday. We had a nice dinner ... I had a salad with grapefruit slices in it and penne pasta in meat sauce. I hardly ever eat beef so it was a strange experience but also satisfying. We had some sort of scrumptious fruit and angel food cake concoction for dessert.

On Friday morning, he had a doctor's appointment so I went to La Madeleine and read Grace Eventually for a while and then walked up and down the street car line talking to Shelley. We stopped for pastries, and then later we split yam and chicken soup and the barbeque shrimp po-boy for lunch, and he headed to band practice.

I amused myself by enjoying some gelato and reading my book. Then I headed to City Park, where I sat on a bridge and read even more. While I was sitting out there, I knew that deep down my mom was probably distressed that I did not attend Good Friday services of some kind, but I felt more connected to whatever higher power there might be by sitting outside with an Anne Lamott book on a bridge in the sunshine than I would have sitting in a somber service on a beautiful day. I wished I could tell my mother that. And that she would understand.

We reunited and played a game of Scrabble in which he scored almost 500 points. We got Chinese take-out for dinner, and he headed to his gig. My little brother arrived and we headed to the Quarter together and had a great time at the gig. My boyfriend is definitely a fine rocker.

We turned in as early as possible and got up early for the race. I decided not to run, and I'm glad I did, because it was really stupidly cold. My boyfriend ran very well, making it into the top 350 of more than 15,000 runners. We had brunch ... I enjoyed my shrimp and cheese omelet, and he had strawberry waffles.

We got him home, which involved me following him on his motorcycle and having panic attacks, and eventually I headed home also. Thankfully I borrowed his CD of The Partly Cloudy Patriot to make the drive fly by. I am so in love with Sarah Vowell.

On Easter Sunday, I went to mass with my little brother. There were lots and lots of little babies and kids, and we weren't too thrilled with the musical selections. I really do like singing the songs at church, except for when they suck. Who picks a bunch of minor chord songs for Easter Sunday? Idiots, that's who.

My boyfriend drove in and we met up at my parents' house for lunch. My mom made crawfish etouffee, corn, spinach pie, fruit salad, honey baked turkey, and cabbage crunch salad, and my boyfriend supplied the homemade bread. It was a great lunch to be certain.

Last night I finished Grace Eventually in the tub. Thanks again to Grace for the gift. There is really nothing I can say about Anne Lamott but that reading her fills me with happiness and hope. I feel like I can see inside her heart and like she can see inside mine. She makes me want to write better, to think better, to behave better.

As my mom and I washed dishes yesterday, I told her about my thoughts on the bridge, and how I felt connected to a higher power much more meaningfully by reading Anne Lamott at City Park than I would have doing stations of the cross, and she said that she wishes I would say "God" instead of "higher power" because she doesn't like that expression. I gritted my teeth and took a deep breath and said, "Mom, I just wanted to share that with you." And she thanked me for sharing it with her. It frustrated me because I knew it meant a lot to her for me to tell her that, and that she probably wished she would not have corrected my choice of words in my sharing, and it frustrated me that she couldn't just accept without criticizing what I said because I only told her that because I thought it would please her. I guess criticizing is the wrong word, because she said it lovingly.

Ugh.

Anyway, work is very challenging right now, and all I want to do is turn on my Sarah Vowell audio book and for Anne Lamott to come over and teach my mother that she doesn't have to love George W. Bush to love Jesus. And to keep trying to use hot rollers to unsuccessfully force my hair to look like Tami Taylor's. And to eat Reese's eggs until peanut butter starts running through my veins.

Friday Night Lights

And once again, Friday Night Lights has reduced me to a quivering mass of teary goo. Half the time, it's not even the show, it's the damn preview for next week. Pretty much all it takes for this show to make me cry is putting Connie Britton and and Kyle Chandler in the same frame. But they're not the only ones. If you would have told me last fall that a show about small town Texas high school football would turn out to be exquisite television, I would have thought you were crazy. But it is.

It just won a Peabody. The Peabody judges said this about it: "No dramatic series, broadcast or cable, is more grounded in contemporary American reality than this clear-eyed serial about the hopes, dreams, livelihoods and egos intertwined with the fate of high-school football in a Texas town."

And it's true. I love my Ugly Betty and I love my Battlestar Galactica (though it seriously fell into lameness this past season before rebounding at the end), but my love for this show is on a whole different level because it's so real. It's raw and it's painful and it's beautiful.

Drunken Bee's recaps are some of my favorites ever at Television Without Pity, and I've been reading the recaps there for a very, very, very long time. You can read them here.

You can read what one of my favorite TV writers, Alan Sepinwall, has to say about the show here.

You can watch the episodes here, or you can catch repeats on Bravo.

I don't know what else to tell you. To me, this show is perfect. There is no show that has meant more to me this season. If next week ends up being the last episode, it will break my heart.

Babies and witches

Here are some things that have happened since last I wrote.

I got back from New York and plunged into a pretty busy week at work.

My friend had her second baby, and today is her one week birthday. She is Shelley's and my co-godchild, and she's an adorable little bundle of cute with black hair. My friend birthed her like a champ. Tonight I went to visit them, we had sushi, her three-year-old made up a dance to her Big Sister Dora doll's song, I held the baby and smelled her head a lot, and we watched Alanis Morrissette sing "My Humps." Birth and new life are very beautiful and miraculous to me but also very Discovery Channelish, like, hello, we are totally animals.

My boyfriend came to town, and we went out for an excellent Nepalese dinner. We also watched Lost Boys of Sudan, and I find myself still wondering about Peter and Santino.

I went on a 24-hour road trip with my old friend Eva. Somehow we ended up renting this car. Which was very amusing. It would have been great to actually put the top down à la Thelma and Louise as my boyfriend called us, but it rained the entire time both there and back. Oh, well. We went to Houston to see Wicked, and we had a good time. The nice thing about traveling with Eva is that we know all of the same Broadway soundtracks by heart and like singing the songs loudly and proudly, so we belted our way through Rent, Spring Awakening, The Last Five Years, Jesus Christ Superstar, Miss Saigon, Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and so forth. We also hit a few highlights from Aspects of Love. My favorite part of our songfest was when Eva, she of the deep singing voice, became Caiaphas. It seemed fitting with Holy Week approaching and everything.

We found our hotel, a shockingly nice Holiday Inn Express (I thought we were staying in more of a motel), showered, drove to the theater, parked, and walked umbrella-less in the rain to Sake Lounge at the Angelika. We had wonton soup, edamame, and a few sushi rolls. Eva kicked off her heels and had two cosmopolitans, which I enjoyed watching her enjoy. She has two little kids and this weekend was a rare un-mom outing for her. Our seats for the show weren't together so we split up, her in row three of orchestra left and me in row five of orchestra right.

As for the show, what can I say? I've wanted to see it for a long time even though there are songs on the soundtrack I always skip and had never heard all the way through until seeing it live. I guess the main problem with the Wicked tour is that there is no way that anyone's voice is ever going to live up to Idina Menzel's. It's just impossible. That said, I thought that Victoria Matlock was good, particularly her acting. There were times when her voice seemed kind of weak and quiet, but that could have been because it was tired or an audio issue. When she had to belt, she definitely belted, and it was very good. Christina DeCicco played G(a)linda, and her singing pipes were very impressive. I was extremely annoyed by her acting at first as I did not expect G(a)linda to be such a bouncing, spastic lunatic, but maybe that's how Kristen Chenoweth created the character -- not sure. She eventually grew on me. Honestly, I thought the best female voice belonged to Deedee Magno Hall, who played Nessarose. I think she'd make a kick-ass Elphaba. Her real-life husband, Cliffton Hall, was a decent Fiyero. His acting was good, but his voice was just okay. He kind of reminded me of a more traditionally handsome Mark Ruffalo type, actually. He and Matlock did have good chemistry. The whole production impressed, definitely, but I would definitely suggest NOT sitting on the side. Try to get in the center section, even if you are farther back. It's really kind of a downer to see the stuff happening in the wings. I tried not to look, but when I saw crew guys in jeans and t-shirts setting up lights or Fiyero climbing on the rope before swinging out on stage, for example, it kind of killed the moment.

And now a word about the audience. Good God almighty. There were college girls behind me who laughed hysterically every time the flying monkeys were onstage. I had no idea why. It would be when nothing funny was happening, they were just being the flying monkeys. It made me hate them. But that hate was sunshine and flowers compared to my loathing for the two fools next to me. They were a young engaged couple if her ring was any indication, and they were mostly fine during the first act, but despite many signs posted forbidding food and drinks to be brought into the theater, these two raging assclowns strolled in after intermission with coke cans, cups of ice, and candy bars. This worried me. I hoped they would finish them before the curtain rose. But no. They were just getting started. They popped open their coke cans, poured their coke into the cups, and proceeded to rip their giant Kit Kat and peanut M&Ms open and eat them with abandon. I think they must have thought they were at home, right? Surely they could not have realized that they were sitting in a beautiful, pristine theater surrounded by people who had paid $100+ for their tickets with a professional Broadway touring company onstage. They took no care in not crackling their candy paper and in fact chewed not only their candy (peanut M&Ms are loud, I mean LOUD) but their ICE. I started clenching so angrily that I had to keep telling myself to ignore them and not let it ruin my experience, but it was hard. It was really hard for me. I don't know what this says about me as a person but I was so enraged. Once their feeding frenzy was over, I was able to relax a little bit, and the girl started cracking her knuckles. Knuckle by knuckle. Did she have the courtesy to wait until a really loud song and dance number started up? No. She cracked them through every quiet moment. I wanted to kill her! And to top off their extravaganza of rudeness, they didn't even pick up their cups, cans, and candy wrappers when they left. They left them on the floor. And of course I stood up and accidentally kicked a half-empty coke can over, and it poured out toward the stage in a sticky puddle. I was so disgusted and also embarrassed because more than one theatergoer making their exit saw me kick it over and I just stood there helplessly and I know they thought it was my goddamn coke. Anyway, rude couple, I hope you never set foot in another theater, and I hope you spend a horrible lifetime annoying each other with your inconsiderate ways and then go straight to hell!

I don't mean to be so crazy angry about it, but I am getting angry all over again just sitting here thinking about it. When you go to a movie, sadly enough, you expect people to be answering their cell phones, cutting up, and generally acting like hooligans. But when you pay so much for your ticket, and you've driven almost 300 miles to get there, and you've waited to see this show forever, and you're surrounded by little girls in their best dresses who are staying up way past their bed times and are so excited they look like they might explode and yet are behaving like complete angels, it's really just fucking maddening to sit next to a bunch of grown-assed idiots who have exactly zero awareness of their surroundings or regard for the fact that (a) for some people, this is a very special occasion or (b) some people are going to have to come along behind them and clean up their nasty mess. It just really kind of makes me sick.

But I am really trying to let it go and focus on the fact that we had a great trip, I got to spend time with an old friend, and for the most part, the show was really good. It was not some kind of transcendent emotional experience like Spring Awakening was for me, but it was certainly entertaining.

I've also been faithfully going to my crazy exercise class and trying not to die during it. Last night I was trying to balance and do lunges on the Bosu ball and fell ass over teakettle, which was delightful. The very, very, very, very fit superstar woman in my group laughed at me, but I like to think it was with affection. It's so weird to experience the group exercise dynamic after running solo for the past year or so. I still haven't mastered the jump rope, but I'm working on it. And Shelley will be proud to know that I am now brave enough to stand up on the bike! It's crazy, I know.

A nice weekend is on the horizon, thankfully, and meanwhile I'm just going to try to work, work out, attempt to post this entry even though a cat is lying on my forearm, finish Human Croquet, and try not to overdose on my latest addiction, Milk Duds.