Whoa, as Keanu would say. Last week just about wore me out. About this time last year, I decided I was going to try to spend more time enjoying the city I love. I was going to "Visit the museums. See a few shows. Walk around and take photos." Of all the things I wanted to work on last year, this seems to have been the most successful, and the most fun to do. I took a lot of photos, out of which I'm building a book (another thing I wanted to work at). And I reconnected with my friends, sort of with a vengeance, especially last week:
- On Tuesday, I went out to dinner with Paul and a couple of his pals from work and his frat brother, Chaz, whom I hadn't seen in, oh, 25 years, and who looks pretty much the same, too, like Paul and I do. (Hmm, the portraits in the attic really work!) We went to our usual haunt, Rosa Mexicano on 58th and 1st, where the food is so much better than the other Rosa restaurants, and the margaritas are killah.
- On Wednesday, I met Roz and Eva for dinner at our standby, Telephone, and did some catching up, since we hadn't seen each other in a couple of months.
- Friday, it was off to the chiropractor at noon, then up to the Japan Society to check out the Contemporary Ceramics exhibit with Dr. Em before it closed. This was fabulous, but Dr. Em's beaten me to the blogging about it punch. We liked pretty much the same pieces, especially the ones by Katsumata Chieko and Koike Shoko, which were amazing designs based on organic shapes (shells, flowers, coral colonies) with wonderful, textural glazes. We decided that some of the glazes looked almost edible, or at least lickable. The incredibly tiny bowls and boxes, no larger than the fingernail on your little finger—if that big—were absolutely astonishing. The wood firing produces such interesting surfaces and glazes, and a couple of pieces were buried for a decade after their firing, then dug up again, giving them the look of archaeological artifacts. Now I know what I want to buy when I go to Japan: one really amazing piece of stoneware.
- Then Monday night, after a weekend playing catch-up, I went to see Spring Awakening with Peggie and her daughter Vail and their friend Sylvie. The show was every bit as good as I'd heard, and more. Duncan Sheik did the music, someone whose work I've liked for a long time, so I'm going to have to buy the soundtrack—something I rarely do for shows. This is really a rockin' show though, and the cast can sing. And act. Wow can they act. And dance. And most of them are making their Broadway debuts. One is still in high school, and she's by no means the weak link. I'm not sure there is one.
The show itself is a really interesting mix of styles: set in late 1800's Germany with contemporary rock music. What's most striking about it is how contemporary the themes are. It's the same stupid misinformation, the same attitudes of shame, the same willful denial of sexual feelings in the young. You'd think all of that would have changed by now, but I was painfully reminded of one of my high school friends who eloped the night before she was supposed to go off to college because she'd gotten pregnant. Thankfully, her story didn't end in tears, but I'm sure the same stupid attitudes led up to it.
I'm not one for free advertising of commercial products, but man, this is a show that really needs to be seen. I was thinking that it ought to be a show performed in every high school across the country (Rosie O'Donnell's claim on The View that it's for adults, notwithstanding), but it won't be, simply because it's so honest, and so dead-on about late adolescence/young adulthood. So here, watch the video:
And this isn't even the best, or my favorite, song. Get tickets. Drag your high school kid. Go! I may even go again.
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