back from the Big Apple

i survived the show, Beloved survived the ride home (without me to navigate), meg barely survived the ride to my mother's to come and get me. i don't always like to go away but i always love to come home.

we arrived at the waldorf in plenty of time to check our bags, find an irish pub and as Beloved likes to say, "adjust our attitudes" in time to see the show.

ah, the show. here's where i show you how odd i really am. i can't say i liked the show much. don't get me wrong. it was Broadway, it was brilliant - in the most technically correct kind of brilliant. the timing - for the most part - of dancers and music and lyric and line was impeccable. the actors were all bright, polished, shiny people, with taut, toned bodies, projecting the kind of charisma only actors and politicans can.

but the story? call me jaded but i've seen this one before. singer (or group) starts out small, struggles, gets big, past comes back to haunt, or someone goes out of control, singer or group tumbles from the limelight, learns lesson, comes back bigger or fades gracefully.

the jersey accents were endearing but straight out of the sopranos, not off the backstreets... the use of dialect in anything is a bug-a-boo of mine. the music was okay if you like whining falsettos and lounge-lizards.

needless to say, Beloved loved it.

i mostly reminisced about how the last time i was in that very theatre it was with my friend lorraine. we had stopped at the same pub for lunch, and when the show was over, i remembered how we popped up out of our chairs and ran for the ladies room, lorraine yelling "save me a stall!" under cover of the applause as i sprinted on ahead. i'm pretty sure it was the last show we saw together, too.. the full monty, which is more my idea of an original show.

afterwards, we checked into our room on the 35th floor. it had a king-size bed covered in acres of down, and a mound of pillows nearly as tall as Beloved. the view was mostly grand - i dared a peek straight down and left moist palm-prints on the glass. i hate to say it, but the thought of what it would have felt like to fall from three times that height with a fire at my back shivered through me. i can't go to new york any more without remembering September 11.

the best part of the night came when we retrieved the car and zipped through manhattan to brooklyn, and the place that serves lobster tails that remind me for some inexplicable reason of the restaurants of my childhood. it's also Beloved's favorite italian place in his mother's neighborhood, and so we both got to sit and enjoy the sense of being in a familiar place.

i ate shrimp and crusty italian bread, lobster tails and broccoli rabe with such abandon Beloved stared me when i finally put down my fork. i've never seen you strip a lobster tail like that, he said.

i haven't been this hungry in quite a while, i replied.

early the next morning, we loaded up the car and, in the Boss's words, "crossed the river to the jersey side." at one point, i thought we were lost, but a quick call to my stepfather reassured me that we hadn't missed our exit.

i spent most of sunday reading tarot cards for my mother's dragon-boat team's fundraiser. i underestimated the size of the event to the degree that you might be calling hurricane katrina a bad storm. the money all went to my mother's team but i guess i racked up enough good karma that when i got a call about my father being hospitalized suddenly that morning, it was enough to do the trick.

this was a close one, said my stepsister, pam, as she filled me in on the details. fortunately, they managed to get it all under control - your dad is an amazing man.

but he can't last forever. i'm thinking it's time to book another trip.

and furthermore, the war will end. blessed be.