Your moment of fractal art zen of the day. I can't say that I "get" Pollock, but I do find myself staring at his artwork for long periods of time for unexplained reasons. I stood in front of and stared at this painting long enough one time that for a moment, I saw a dark and foreboding forest and then it disappeared. I only saw it for a split second, but even after the forest blended back into the random splatters and lines of paint I couldn't turn away.

Online Dating

From the creators fo Shoebox DVD....a unique take on online dating.

ShoeBox DVD

Everybody Needs One!

One Night in New York

At the beginning of this month, I spent a long weekend in New York City with a group of friends. It was a great trip. We got to spend a lot of time in museums, ate at wonderful restaurants and even went to a couple of places to hear local music. The highlight of the trip however, was an unexpected surprise. (I guess all surprises are technically unexpected, but anyway...)

One friend who was on the trip had a significant birthday while we were there. He turned sixty. I discovered this fact shortly before the trip and we set to plotting a birthday he would not forget. You only turn sixty once and turning sixty in New York when you live in Houston, Texas is a big damned deal. So, the decision was made that myself, friend number 2 and the birthday boy would go out on the town the night before his birthday. We would ring in his birthday at midnight like it was New Year’s Eve. All of this was unknown to the birthday boy; all we told him was “bring your tux.”

After much debate, we made reservations for the late show at the Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel. The Oak Room is an icon of cabaret and American literary history. The Algonquin Hotel gained much of its fame for the literary round tables that were held there on a daily basis for the better part of ten years in the 1930's and 1940's. The lore of the round table is that Dorothy Parker and other authors such as Alexander Woollcott, George S. Kaufman, Robert Benchley, Marc Connelly, Robert E. Sherwood, Heywood Broun, Neysa McMein, Jane Grant, Ruth Hale and Edna Ferber would gather at the Algonquin to talk shop. The Oak Room began housing café society in the thirties and catered to celebrities and royalty alike. Over the years the likes of James Cagney, Katherine Hepburn and others have been seen in the Oak Room. On June 2, 2006 the lovely and talented Andrea Marcovicci performed to a small crowd including yours truly in that historic place.

The show was to begin at 11:30 PM and we wanted to be there by 11:00. I arranged for a towncar to pick us up in front of our hotel at 10:30 and take us to the Algonquin. The three of us arrived in our hotel lobby in our tuxedos and patent leather shoes, ready for a night on the town. The birthday boy still had no idea what was going on, but he was reasonably assured at this point that we weren’t out to embarrass him. Now, it is not every day that you get to walk into a historic landmark in Manhattan at 11:00 pm on a Friday night in a tuxedo. It is great fun, and people take notice. The only way that I can describe the Algonquin is to say it is like stepping back in time. Back to a gentler, more sophisticated era. The dark oak paneling on the walls, the high backed chairs, brass fixtures and a feeling of graceful age permeate the space. They even have a cat that lives in the lobby.

As we walked in we were guided toward the door to the Oak Room which sits to the left of the small lobby. We were seated immediately, right next to the piano. The Oak Room is probably about 15 feet wide and 70 feet long, it is a small space. A tattered volume of Dorothy Parker’s writing sat on the piano. We ordered drinks, toasted our good fortune and waited for 11:30. Scotch and water for me, Glenlivet to be precise. At 11:30 the lights dimmed and Ms. Marcovicci came in carrying her father’s top hat. She held it out to each of the tables for us to submit our requests. As you might guess, in 2006, not many, if any, people put on black tie to go to the cabaret. We were overdressed, and it was fantastic. I don’t know how to describe Andrea Marcovicci and her performance that night. One of the few times in my life I’ve seen a performance and simply been at a loss for words. The only way I can communicate what happened there is to say that she is truly and utterly captivating. In preparation for her show, “Love by Request” Marcovicci committed over 200 traditional love songs to memory and lets her audience direct where the show will go. What a tremendous risk for her! She takes each requested song, knows its story, knows its history and communicates it to the audience. The intimate setting of the cabaret allows her to connect with her audience in a way that I’ve never experienced before. Of course, it didn’t hurt that she seemed to be particularly fond of the three men in tuxedos sitting right by the piano. As her performance drew to a close, I came to the full realization that not only had we given our friend a birthday he would never forget, we all had an experience which we would remember and cherish for the rest of our lives.

After the show, Ms. Marcovicci mingled with the audience, was exceedingly gracious to us, posed for a photograph and was thoroughly engaging. As we waited for a car to take us back to our hotel, she came out and wished us all well as if we were old friends. A night to remember indeed.

I thought of trying to express why Cabaret is important and what it means to the performers and the audience but, Andrea does it so much better.

White People Really Can't Dance

I went to see John Hiatt and the North Mississippi Allstars last night at the Verizon Wireless theater in Houston. All in all, it was a great show.

It started out with the Allstars doing a set on their own which included several covers of old standard blues tunes. These guys are what I would call a solid rock/blues band. Not your traditional blues by any stretch and a few extraneous guitar runs here and there but solid none the less. Luther Dickinson is a stud with a slide and it was fun to watch him work. They did mostly covers of old standard blues songs with shout outs to the greats like Junior Kimbrough and a few notable others. Luther doesn't really have to vocal chops to pull off the blues like a Taj Mahal or some of the greats, but what do you expect, he's a skinny white kid. But, the band as a whole plays to their strengths, which means a lot more instrumental and a not a whole lot of white guy singing. For my money, that's a smart move. They closed out their set with two songs that I didn't see coming and thoroughly enjoyed. The first was the Rev. Al Green's "Love and Happiness" as sang by their mountain of a bass player, Chris Chew. All I'll say is he did the song right. From there, they went in to a really fun version of ZZ Top's La Grange. I imagine that song is always a crowd pleaser, and judging from the generous amount of white people gyrating and seizing like Vincent D'Onofrio as the Bug in Men in Black, it was popular last night as well.

Which brings me to a second thought. I go to a lot of concerts; enough that I stopped counting quite some time ago. I have a drawer at my house full of old ticket stubs if that gives you any idea. Anyway, I used to go and get up to the front and dance around like a lunatic. (Occasionally I still will, but the band/artist has to be out-fucking-standing for me to even consider it.) Anyway, I've noticed that of the wide array of concert goers there are very few who I don't find thoroughly annoying. It's also funny how predictable an audience for a certain artist will be. For instance, if you go to see a 20 something white kid sing and play the "blues" while making faces as if he's constipated, you're going to see a lot of mullets. If you go to see a good band that has recently had their video played one too many times on VH1, then you're going to have a gaggle of 18 year old girls screaming in your ear as if the band were the Beatles. You will then be thoroughly annoyed to the point that you may tap one of the various hooligans on the shoulder and give them a look that says "If, in your over exuberance for this mediocre band, you bump into me one more time, I'll rip out your entrails." If you go to see Itzhak Perlman perform with the local symphony, your likely to see a bunch of very polite normal people and then the one guy who thought he was going to a Jethro Tull concert. If you buy a ticket to see Snoop Dogg at a local club, prepare to have random friends make comments that they think you might be shot when in actuality you will spend all of your time trying not to punch random drunk fraternity rats. Finally, if you go to see John Hiatt and the Allstars, prepare to be surrounded by middle aged white people who have completely forgotten that they don't know how to dance, they have no soul and they sold out to "the man" in about 1985 when they got a real job and stopped paying attention to fashion trends. Oh, and someone needs to tell the 50 year old white women dancing at the front of the stage that screaming like a school girl and trying to dance in a "sexy" fashion stopped being cool and/or sexy about the same time that their rodeo queen hair went out of style. In other words, about 20 years ago. All they are doing at this point is causing their children to need therapy. Other than that, enjoy the fucking show.

OK, so at this point in the program, the Allstars head off stage and we are left to wait the obigatory 35 minutes for stage adjustments and whatever else it is that roadies do between acts. Personally, I think there just fucking with the audience to see how long we'll sit there before we get pissed off and leave, but I digress. Anyway, John Hiatt came on at about 9 and the Allstars were his backup band. I have to say, they are a fantastic band for him to sing with and I enjoyed hearing them play for the rest of the night. John did a great job too and he sang a lot of the well known songs he's written over his multi-decade career. Just in case anyone is curious, the setlist was: Perfectly Good Guitar, Child of the Wild Blue Yonder, Bring the Family, Lincolntown, Cry Love, Master of Disaster, Ain't Never Going Back, The Tiki Bar is Open, Native Son, Real Fine Love, Blue Telescope, Paper Thin, Riding with the King and Memphis in the Meantime. Encores were Have a Little Faith in Me and Slow Turning. Overall it was a great show and I can definitely say that the Allstars added a lot of energy and spunk to some of the old Hiatt standards. It was really neat to see them working together and playing off of each other on stage. I guess it was nice because John has the kind of tortured gravely voice that Luther doesn't so hearing the Allstars behind somebody with that kind of voice was a nice combination. One story of note told by John last night. He mentioned that his song Blue Telescope was a favorite of astronaut Rick Linnehan who happened to be in the audience last night. Apparently, Linnehan was on the Columbia in 2002 and Blue Telescope was played as the morning wake up call. John apparently thought that was really cool, but forgot to sing the song last time he was in Houston. So, this time he remembered, played it and gave a shout out to Linnehan making the comment "you just can't disappoint an astronaut."

Anyway, all in all, it was a great show.