OMG, BUBLE

I cannot explain my thoughts about Michael Buble without prefacing with a little about my feelings about Harry Connick, Jr. Basically, I fell in love with Harry in 1989 at the age of 14. I first saw him in concert in the fall of 1990, and I still have my t-shirt from that show. The back was eaten through with holes by silverfish, and I still wear it sometimes to sleep. It is soft and thin and has his face on the front and the tour cities on the back. I bought every album he ever made until a few years ago, and I saw him in concert after that first time more times than I can honestly count. I saw him perform in big venues, small venues, and the Angola prison yard. I have loved him for approximately the past two decades of my life. It was Harry who taught me the great standards sung in past generations by Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, and so forth and inspired me to buy those albums, too. Basically, it was Harry who made me fell in love with the idea of someone crooning in front of a big band, and it's Harry who has always represented that kind of music for me.

So a few years ago, I guess 2004 or so? I went home with my friend K. to her parents' house in Lakeview for a party. Her mom was watching a DVD of some dude named Michael Buble and going on and on about how awesome he was. I was like, who is this Buble and who does he think he is? Harry Connick, Jr. hadn't been making his big band albums for a long time, of course, but in my mind, he was the modern embodiment of this music and no one else needed to bother to come along and do the same kind of thing. That was my first knowledge of Buble. A few years later, after K.'s parents lost their house and their business in Lakeview, along with her brother and his family, something inspired K. to make me copies of Buble's first two albums for me. She'd already seen him in concert a few times by then and basically insisted. I don't really remember what made me have a change of heart, but I've basically worn out those albums by now, and she gave me his most recent one for Christmas. When she invited me to come to his show last night with her and her mom and some of their old Lakeview neighbors who also lost everything, I said sure.

And I'm so glad I did. I owe my pal K. big for the invitation. We went out to dinner across the street from their old neighbor's new Warehouse District loft, which is completely awesome, but not awesome enough to keep her from wanting to rebuild in Lakeview as soon as possible. She is 74 years old. Much of the dinner conversation was peppered with talk about their neighborhood, their neighbors, things that were lost in the storm (the Buble DVD, for one), their new lives.

Highlights of the Buble concert:

We were at a vantage point where we were able to see him sneak into a floor seat, largely undetected, in a t-shirt, jeans, and baseball cap, to watch the opening band, Naturally 7. Everyone seemed very oblivious to this, but K. has Buble Radar, apparently. Three young teenaged girls noticed him eventually, as they were sitting right behind him, and did not hesitate to grab him around the neck and hug him with all their might. The silver-haired gentleman next to him eventually noticed, too, and shook his hand, but it was all very discreet. Three very hot girls in front of him noticed and took pictures of him with their camera phones. No one else really noticed, but that was enough for him and he went back to sit on a stool on the floor below the side of the stage, ducking as far out of sight as possible.

Early after exploding onto the stage for his first song, "I'm Your Man," he greeted the audience and gushed about his love for the Mother's po-boys he'd had earlier that day and welcomed his waitresses, whom he'd invited and who screamed and waved from their floor seats.

He interacted with the audience time after time, holding the microphone down for the crowd to sing along. I honestly don't know that I've ever been to a concert when the performer bent so far over backwards to include the crowd.

He seemed genuinely amazed that the last time he played in New Orleans, a month before Katrina, there were 1,100 people there, and now there were nearly 10,000. It's not that surprising to me considering he's about 10 times more famous now than he was then, but he seemed blown away that this had happened in New Orleans. He dedicated "Home" to the audience and the people of New Orleans, and immediately thousands of women reached for Kleenex in their purses. A few lines into the song, an image of an old Bourbon Street sign faded up on the giant video screens, and people clapped and cheered. The video reel of New Orleans images continued as he sang and people wept and embraced, and a shot of two big LSU flags hanging from a French Quarter balcony rail appeared, and the Arena full of very emotional people went completely bananas. It was somewhat awesome.

I already knew that Buble could clearly sing and had a great voice, but I had no idea that he is such a showman. If he does not have the absolute time of his life performing on stage, then he is the best faker I've ever seen. He oozed charisma and enthusiasm from every molecule in his body, from the tips of every hair on his head to the tips of his toes. It was a polished show, sure, as anything on a tour of this magnitude is, but it was never slick. You can't fake that kind of sincerity and joy and spontaneity onstage. At least that's what I choose to believe.

At one point during the show, he stopped and pointed to the three young teenaged girls we'd seen him being embraced by during the opening act. The camera man pointed at them, so their dumbsquizzled and ecstatic faces appeared on the screens. He had them shout out their names and ages and welcomed them and said, "Without young little cutie-pies like you keeping me straight, I'd turn into Amy Winehouse so fast ..." Then he ran down to take pictures with them, and he grabbed the silver-haired guy he'd sat next to during the opening act and gave him a huge kiss on the cheek.

He explained that he would secretly listen to the old big band artists on his walkman at school and not let anyone know because it wasn't cool. Then one day he saw a hot girl open her locker, which had a pin-up picture of Harry Connick, Jr. in it. He thought to himself, "I'm on the right track after all." It was nice of him, I thought, to give a little shout-out to Harry while playing in his hometown.

There were several encores; I lost count. Everyone was on their feet by the time "Save the Dance for Me" came along, which made me very happy. He finished by standing on the edge of the stage and singing with no musical accompaniment -- and no microphone -- "A Song for You." Everyone in the audience was silent and still, and he just sang it out so loudly and beautifully that I couldn't even believe how great it sounded considering that the Arena is not exactly Carnegie Hall.

I paid a lot for my ticket, but if I'd paid double that, it still would have been worth it because Buble gives you that much bang for your buck. I'm still in a state of stunned euphoria over the whole thing. I had to take the day off from work to recover, which I've spent so far grocery shopping, having lunch and shopping with my mom, and trimming more of my giant mutant shrubs.

I don't know what else to say. I don't even care what kind of a dog Buble might be in real life. His show was phenomenal. If you have the chance, you really just need to see for yourself.

Update

The first thing I would like to say is that I have finished Rob's book. My friend Rob wrote a really, really good book. In case you've been holding out because you think you've already read his blog and it's just his blog on paper between two covers, you could not be more wrong. I couldn't put it down. Obviously I've been following Schuyler's story since she was in utero in Rob's blog, but the story in the book goes far deeper than that. It's beautiful, and it's just a fine achievement.

All I have to say about the Oscars is that I am sad that Hal Holbrook lost and so thrilled that Once won best song that I basically haven't stopped crying yet.

Their performance:



Their speeches.

(For more on the Oscars, go read Kymm's great-as-ever recap.)

I took charge of two giant and dead bushes, a lantana and a plumbago, in my front yard because the garden experts at the farmer's market told me to. "Just cut them all the way back to the ground!" they said, waving their hands dismissively in the face of my skepticism. "They'll grow back!" So that's what I did. And I scratched my arms up and there's now a giant pile of dead sticks on my curb.

I'd really been missing my friend Grace's semi-regular updates -- luckily she recently posted a link to where she's been writing lately. As usual, I am in love with every word she utters.

This weekend, B. and I went to Sunday brunch in New Orleans, where we hadn't been together since last fall, which is weird and wrong. It was fabulous, and it was great to meet his old friend who was in town for a wedding. We treated ourselves to mimosas and sazeracs and creole eggs benedict and seafood gumbo and really soft bread, and between the food, the drinks, the sunshine, and the jazz trio playing "A Kiss to Build a Dream On," it almost felt for a moment like neither of us is in school or working too many hours or doing anything else but relaxing like we used to spend every weekend blissfully doing.

Meanwhile, I turn 33 in two days, but that's too weird to contemplate this early in the morning.

Update

I worked 70 hours last week, something I hope not to repeat any time soon, though I might. That's nowhere near the number of hours some of my rockstar warrior colleagues worked, so I won't complain.

Here are some things that have made me smile recently:

Standing around the island in my friend's kitchen with her, her husband, her mom, her sister, and her four-year-old daughter as we adults started randomly singing "Dumb Dog" from Annie (her husband making the tinkly doo-doo-doo-doo background notes quite impressively) and the little girl just sat there looking at us like we were all nuts. I started laughing as we wrapped it up, and she said, "IT'S NOT FUNNY!" not unlike this kid, which just made me laugh harder. Then she said to me, "Why do you sing so weird?" and I just had to shrug.

Watching The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, which I found entirely hilarious and strangely riveting.

Going out for a nice dinner with B.

Seeing my mom's azaleas in bloom.

Hearing about how my dad cannot tolerate the small cups of coffee in Rome so, on a recent visit, brought several large to-go coffee cups from his favorite coffee shop here at home and took one with him every time he ordered coffee. He ordered a café Americano, an espresso, and a cappuccino and poured them all together into his large Styrofoam cup. At first he got weird looks from the locals, but then, he said, they began to envy his giant cup of coffee deliciousness as he strolled out with his cup. When they sat in the audience before the Pope, he aimed his camera at the man but not before placing his coffee cup on the railing. Coffee cup in the foreground, Pope in the background.

Hearing the theme music begin in the trailer for the new Indiana Jones movie. My sister says she does not remember the movies well; I do, especially the second and third - I think I spent a lot of time watching them at a friend's house. I am super pumped about this one.

Spending yesterday in its entirety with my sister on a warm and sunny Sunday. We went to see Definitely, Maybe, which was very sweet and cute, ate soup and salads outside on a nearby restaurant's patio, got coffee, walked to an estate sale, went to the bookstore and posed dorkily with Rob's book, drove around listening to showtunes, had heart-to-heart conversations, and went to the pottery painting place. It was very nice. Then we went to my parents' house for a dinner of shrimp & corn soup. Glorious!

Misc. stuff

Crazy! That's how life's been lately.

Let me rewind a little bit to earlier this week. On our day off, B. and I decided to go see There Will Be Blood. (Possible spoilers in this paragraph.) I have to say that I rolled right along with it for most of the movie. I found the music highly irritating, but I thought it was a pretty darn good movie. The only other Daniel Day Lewis movies I've ever seen are The Crucible and The Boxer, but they were both so long ago that I have no real memory of them, and so I am not a part of the universal human family who worships at his altar even though I really enjoy his startlingly serious and heartfelt acceptance speeches and obviously think he is a beautiful physical specimen. But I liked him in this part, mostly, and I thought the oil drilling stuff and the small town stuff was really neat, and the kid was adorable, so fine. But by the time it flashed forward, it lost me, and I just wanted everyone to die (except for H.W.) and put themselves and me out of our misery. I also thoroughly misunderstood the preacher character. I thought that Paul and Eli were his split personalities and had no clue they were actually two people. We walked out of the movie theater, and I was like, "Huh?" And B. was like, "Clearly it was an allegory about the defeat of religion by commerce in America." Ooookay. I'm sure he's right, but I really did not need to see that bowling alley scene to teach me that lesson. I am becoming annoyed all over again just thinking of the goddamn straw and milkshake business.

Thankfully, I watched The Jane Austen Book Club a few days later, and it was so sweet and adorable and lovely and I really liked it. I liked every single person in it, and Hugh Dancy is clearly destined to become a Major Movie Star.

Something that makes me happy: The Weepies have a new album coming out on April 22. It is called Hideaway. I cannot wait.

My shopping at the produce market has altered the way I'm trying to eat lately. I'm not trying to diet, but I'm trying to eat so many healthy, natural foods that I don't want to fill up on crap all the time. I still have the occasional cookie at work, but I'm really enjoying the healthier foods right now. I'm also over meat for the time being. I've never been a major meat lover, but I've been eating some tofu and soy crumbles lately and trying to find protein substitutes for meat. I continue to be obsessed with roasting vegetables. This is very dull so I will stop.

Cute.

Based on hearing 2 of their songs, I think I have a new favorite band! The Avett Brothers. "Die, Die, Die" is a song that gets better as it goes along and becomes pretty great by the end. I am intrigued and want to hear more.

One of the better things I've done lately was spend a lunch break pulling over, parking my car, and standing under Japanese magnolia trees and taking pictures of them on a sunny afternoon. They are pretty and pink and smell like heaven.

Yes we can

Some things I know

Here are some things that I know:

I want Barack Obama to be our next president.

That he won the state where my sister spent Super Tuesday standing on corners with a sign and pounding the pavement and knocking on doors makes me immeasurably proud.

That it would be wrong for me to miss work at such a busy time to attend his visit tomorrow morning makes me unbelievably sad and has made me weep more than once today.

I had a picture of Barack Obama hanging on my office wall for over a year, and I felt like I should take it down a few days ago because we're not supposed to advertise such opinions there. Which bums me out and makes me mad. I think it's even made me afraid to talk about it on my own personal website. Which is just ridiculous and it's stopping now. It should have stopped a long time ago.

My vote for Kerry was my vote against Bush. I never felt any kind of love for Kerry or any deep belief that he could save us from ourselves. He just wasn't Bush and that was enough for me. But now I feel so much love for Obama, and I believe in him so intensely, and I feel like if he doesn't make it, it's going to leave a trail of broken hearts all throughout this country, my own included.

I have no idea what is going to happen. I know I will be voting in my state's primary on Saturday and for whom I'll be casting my vote. Mine is just one little opinion, mine is just one little belief, but it feels huge inside me right now.

I've watched this video at least a dozen times, and I've cried big honking tears every time. I sent it to my mother, who is a Republican because she is pro-life, really, I think is the real reason; she was zealously, obsessively into politics during Clinton's final term but has stepped back the past few years and focused more on spiritual matters; she told me recently that thinking of Hillary as president makes her "sick to her stomach." She is one of those people who would never, ever, ever vote for Hillary under any circumstances, but I think she would consider voting Democrat if that Democrat were Barack Obama. Case in point, I sent her this video even though as a rule we do not, cannot discuss politics, and she wrote back, "What a GREAT speech!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" with all those explanation points. It made me feel close to my mom. I truly think that if Obama were the candidate, she would at least stop and think about him as an option before voting in a knee-jerk manner along party lines. I feel like he could really speak to her heart. But I worry there are many like her who would cast a vote that would in essence be a vote against Hillary. I think a lot of people's dislike of her dates back to 1992 or even before then and that's a long time to dislike someone. That would be the message they'd send with their vote for the Republican candidate -- no Hillary, no way -- just like my vote was not really for Kerry but against Bush. And I don't really see people lining up to vote against Barack Obama in the same way. You know what I mean? I am no political strategist but this is what my instinct tells me. And I swear I believe that my parents are both big bleeding liberals deep down inside. I do not hate Hillary, and as my sister and I discussed in one of our many rapid-fire e-mails about this, it will not take long for us to get behind her if she's the nominee. But. But.

Obama makes me feel like I have a string of explanation points in my heart. I love him, and I believe in him. I think that if he were our president, the world might stop hating us so much and might even love us a little bit again. Maybe that is simplistic and maybe that is naïve. But I really believe it.

Laughter & tears

Every once in a while we are lucky enough to make friends with someone who loves the same kind of books that we do and who sends those books bursting through the mail and into our hearts. Melissa is one of those friends for me, and her latest gift to me is a galley of My Most Excellent Year: A Novel of Love, Mary Poppins, and Fenway Park by Steve Kluger.

I feel like the author somehow saw into my mind and put everything into this book that would make it mean a whole lot to me. Like musical theater in all of its awesomeness and insanity and private musical theater jokes that make you feel like you're sharing a giggly secret with the characters who love musicals like you do. And deep and intense friendships between teens that remind me of my friendships at that time, several of which I'm lucky enough to still have. And the love of a really neat little kid. And not only Mary Poppins as a major plot point but the understanding of how important a movie it is and how important Julie Andrews is to humankind. And brothers who aren't related by blood but who are still brothers, just like my nieces aren't my nieces by blood but are still my nieces.

Last night my friend (who's been my friend since we were Annie's age) and I took her four-year-old daughter who is my non-blood-relation-niece to see Annie. It was the national touring company, and it was so fantastically top-notch in every respect. The cast, the production value, everything. It was so wonderful that even though it didn't end until 11:00 at night, this child fought with all of her inner strength to stay awake until the end even though her head and limbs were literally collapsing into themselves. I have known every note of every song of Annie since I was a little girl -- my sister and I wore out the Broadway cast album before the movie came out in 1982, and I remember my mom telling us sadly that it wasn't getting good reviews and we were like, so? Come on! We loved it anyway. My point is that it's not like Annie is anything new to me, but there was something about seeing a big professional splashing performance of it with my friend who's loved it for just as long as I have, if not longer, with her little girl sitting between us in a theater full of little girls that made me weep openly throughout the entire show. I don't know when Annie suddenly became the most poignant thing I've ever seen, but I couldn't help it. The moment when Annie came down the big winding staircase with her hair curled, in that red dress -- it was almost too much to bear. It made my heart explode with joy and my eyeballs explode with tears. It was such an iconic musical theater image and such a beautiful moment. And even though they were all singing about getting a New Deal for Christmas with all kinds of happiness and I was sitting there thinking about how world war was about to break out and was hearing Alejandra from My Most Excellent Year in my head telling me that FDR authorized the Japanese internment camps, I still loved it! It was awesome.

And then today, all afternoon, after a morning of revelry at a parade in the sun with B. on the most beautiful sunny day of 2008 so far, I got to lie on the couch finishing this wonderful book, and I cried and laughed out loud at the same time, and I was like, man. Sometimes I get so despondent for no reason with the weight of a crushing sadness and feel like the world is going to come to an end any day now, but weekends like this remind me that I am living the dream.