Unconventional space, young company, new playwright. Totally worked.
TheaterLab, the upstart ensemble dedicated to cultivating new talent, has brought another fresh play to town, this time for its east coast premiere.
I fumbled my way to Plant Zero's RVA event space (I'm getting marginally better at navigating Manchester with each foray there) to take in "See Jane Quit," a play about a young restaurant worker determined to finally quit smoking.
Because well know that restaurant workers who don't smoke are few and far between.
Waiting in a long line to pick up my ticket, I saw lots of familiar faces, not necessarily of people I knew, but of faces I knew from seeing theater productions.
It turned out it was "industry night" so lots of actors were there on their night off.
Let's see, I saw one from "Race," which I'd seen Saturday and a couple others from "It's a Fabulous Life," which I'd seen Thursday and another from "Wild Party," but also grade A boring non-actors types like me.
The artistic director was working the waiting group like it was a receiving line at a wedding, hugging and kissing left and right.
I'd been inside the space before - for the Italian film fest, to see Hotel X, to hear Ian MacKaye- but tonight it had been configured with the set in the middle of the room and rows of chairs on two sides.
Maggie Bavolack, who'd been so impressive in "Riding the Bull," played Jane with all the piss and vinegar of a 29-year old who lives with her cantankerous, deaf, southern grandmother ("That's because your generation places no value on language!") and works endless double shifts.
Her brother (played by the reliably good Adam Mincks), friend/sister-in-law (Louise Mason, whom I remembered as a fine Helena in "Midsummer"), grandmother (Linda Beringer playing Bessie, my grandmother's name) and even love interest (awkwardly funny Chandler Hubbard) are all eager to do whatever it takes to avoid stressing Jane so she won't reach for cigarettes.
Seems it takes a team to quit.
So major secrets are kept from Jane, but not the audience, as we learn that practically all of them are undergoing some major life change.
The dialog was fast and funny and by intermission even Jane had revealed a major secret.
It was hysterical how, once the first act ended, half the audience bolted for the cold environs of the building to have the cigarette Jane had been denying herself.
When the group behind me got up to go smoke, one asked another if she could have a sip of his soda before they went out. No, he said, he was very sick.
On returning reeking of smoke, the sick one was lecturing the others about his need to inhale.
"You know, they say never try quitting while you're sick because it makes you sick just to quit."
Smoker logic of the highest order.
The second act picked up six months later when everyone is dealing with the outcomes of their secrets.
By then everyone has figured out that life seldom works out the way you plan for it to. True story, kids.
TheaterLab may be young, but they're wise beyond their years.
We're a better theater town for having them raising up a new crop of theater artists...but Grandma was wrong. Their generation clearly does place value on language.
As Bessie would say, praise the lord (and pass the biscuits).
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Monday, December 9, 2013
Peddlers of Bombast
It took me nine days to get there but it was sure worth it once I did.
In conjunction with the VMFA's "Hollywood Costume" exhibit, they're showing 60 films in 60 days, each with a costume represented in the show.
Today's was "Shakespeare in Love," and what could be sweeter than an afternoon of Elizabethan love on a gray, rainy day?
I'd already seen Shakespeare's doublet and Elizabeth's gown, now I wanted to see the source material.
As icing on the cake, a friend e-mailed offering to take me to lunch beforehand, so we met at Chez Foushee for matching grilled romaine salads with shrimp in a cozy, tucked-away table that allowed us to gossip with abandon.
Then he was off to work and I to the museum for some romance.
Not surprisingly, the crowd was mostly women with a few men thrown in for good measure (for measure).
Since I hadn't seen it since it came out in 1998, I'm not sure if I'd forgotten or, horrors, not noticed originally how many inside Shakespeare jokes were in this film.
And I'm not talking about the obvious ones like Will's coffee mug, which read, "Souvenir of Stratford-upon-Avon."
No, I mean all kinds of lines from later Shakespeare plays being spouted by characters throughout and the Shakespeare-literate audience laughed about them all.
Plus there was the kind of language humor like when the producer takes the cast to a bawdy house and orders drinks for everyone, saying, "Oh, happy hour!"
While there someone describes a dish of pig's foot marinated in vinegar on a buckwheat pancake being served and while that might have gotten a groan in 1998, it actually sounds both tasty and trendy now.
Will discusses his writer's block with his shrink, saying, "It's as if my quill is broken, as if the organ of my imagination has dried up, as if the proud tower of genius is collapsed. Nothing comes. It's like trying to pick a lock with a wet herring."
Clearly he's not just talking about writing and the good doctor asks, "Tell me, are you lately humbled in the act of love? How long has it been?"
"A goodly length in times past, but lately..." Truly, nothing says Shakespeare like veiled genital humor.
I could relate to our heroine Viola, played by a luminescent 26-year old Gwyneth Paltrow, when she proclaimed, "I will have poetry in my life...and adventure and love."
What more could a girl ask for?
How about a man who describes his feelings by saying, "I love her like a sickness and a cure together"?
The fabulous Judi Densch has one of the funniest lines at the end, instructing, "Tell Master Shakespeare to write something more cheerful next time for twelfth night," but Viola had the most romantic.
"I love you, Will, beyond poetry."
If hearing that that doesn't clear upa man's wet herring problem writer's block, god help him.
In conjunction with the VMFA's "Hollywood Costume" exhibit, they're showing 60 films in 60 days, each with a costume represented in the show.
Today's was "Shakespeare in Love," and what could be sweeter than an afternoon of Elizabethan love on a gray, rainy day?
I'd already seen Shakespeare's doublet and Elizabeth's gown, now I wanted to see the source material.
As icing on the cake, a friend e-mailed offering to take me to lunch beforehand, so we met at Chez Foushee for matching grilled romaine salads with shrimp in a cozy, tucked-away table that allowed us to gossip with abandon.
Then he was off to work and I to the museum for some romance.
Not surprisingly, the crowd was mostly women with a few men thrown in for good measure (for measure).
Since I hadn't seen it since it came out in 1998, I'm not sure if I'd forgotten or, horrors, not noticed originally how many inside Shakespeare jokes were in this film.
And I'm not talking about the obvious ones like Will's coffee mug, which read, "Souvenir of Stratford-upon-Avon."
No, I mean all kinds of lines from later Shakespeare plays being spouted by characters throughout and the Shakespeare-literate audience laughed about them all.
Plus there was the kind of language humor like when the producer takes the cast to a bawdy house and orders drinks for everyone, saying, "Oh, happy hour!"
While there someone describes a dish of pig's foot marinated in vinegar on a buckwheat pancake being served and while that might have gotten a groan in 1998, it actually sounds both tasty and trendy now.
Will discusses his writer's block with his shrink, saying, "It's as if my quill is broken, as if the organ of my imagination has dried up, as if the proud tower of genius is collapsed. Nothing comes. It's like trying to pick a lock with a wet herring."
Clearly he's not just talking about writing and the good doctor asks, "Tell me, are you lately humbled in the act of love? How long has it been?"
"A goodly length in times past, but lately..." Truly, nothing says Shakespeare like veiled genital humor.
I could relate to our heroine Viola, played by a luminescent 26-year old Gwyneth Paltrow, when she proclaimed, "I will have poetry in my life...and adventure and love."
What more could a girl ask for?
How about a man who describes his feelings by saying, "I love her like a sickness and a cure together"?
The fabulous Judi Densch has one of the funniest lines at the end, instructing, "Tell Master Shakespeare to write something more cheerful next time for twelfth night," but Viola had the most romantic.
"I love you, Will, beyond poetry."
If hearing that that doesn't clear up
Something That You'll Never Comprehend
For a change, I really earned my night out.
The day began by seeing the VistaVision classic,"White Christmas," at Movieland with a favorite couple, one of whom was seeing it for the first time.
I don't even know how it's possible that anyone hasn't seen this holiday chestnut, but it was a distinct pleasure to listen as he cracked up to Danny Kaye's antics and Bing's corny humor.
Fittingly, that was followed by procurement of the Christmas tree, especially novel this year because it was actually snowing for the brief time it took to choose the tree.
So very Charlie Brown Christmas-like.
Once the tree was decorated, I had writing to finish to make deadline before I could even think about heading out.
By the time my day was behind me, it was 8:30 and I couldn't get going fast enough to Helen's for a show.
I'd half expected a small crowd because of the weather and instead found the place mobbed.
Luckily, a table near the end of the bar was free and I sat down next to a couple who warned me to leave my coat on because we were so near the door which kept opening for new arrivals.
I was luckier than they were because there was a large radiator behind my back, a boon for a cold-blooded type like me.
A musician friend spotted me and came over to sit down and catch up since he was just back from a month in India and we hadn't seen each other for ages before that.
Buster Keaton, blah, blah, love life update, blah, blah, travel plans.
We took a few minutes to admire the magnificence that is Helen's Christmas decorations, from the lit-up plastic nativity scene to the small, silver pom-pom Christmas trees to the reindeer in assorted positions.
The evening's entertainment began with Haints in the Holler, a bluegrass quartet who began by wishing us happy holidays, merry Christmas and feliz navidad.
"I feel that's offensive" a smart-assed guy called out from the bar.
"We aim to offend," the drummer cleverly retorted.
With fiddle, guitar, drums, bass and sometimes banjo, mandolin and washboard, they took us on a bluegrass odyssey, admitting that they weren't "super-good" at between-song chatter.
The highlight was a song called "Dead in Kentucky" about the singer's wish to be returned to Virginia if found dead anywhere else.
Best line was, "Nothing beats drinking in Richmond" and it got a lot of cheers when they sang it.
Following them was a band that many in the crowd had come to see, Dear Ghosts.
I hadn't heard the name, but I had seen half of the band, Lucy Dacus, perform at a Ghost Light afterparty a while back and remembered her stellar voice.
With her in this band was Adam Watkins and while it took a few minutes to get into their sound, I soon found myself terribly impressed with their sad songs.
Both had beautiful voices that blended together to tug at your heartstrings, sort of a lo-fi She and Him minus the chirpy side of that sound.
Adam sang, played guitar and occasional drum while Lucy sang and played some ukulele.
From the first few notes of "I Would Die For You," I knew we were in for a treat because it was one of the songs I'd heard Lucy do and knew how impressively she'd owned it.
It was even more impressive with Adam, slowed down to a languorous pace and truly the essence of a great cover as they made it wholly their own.
Afterwards, Lucy announced, "That wasn't our song, that was Prince," and I turned to my friend and asked if it was really possible that anyone in the room hadn't known that.
"Maybe," he said reluctantly. That's just tragic.
When they ended their set, the DJ across the table from me said that he, too, had taken a moment to figure them out and then really liked their sound.
All I can say is I can't wait to hear more of them soon.
During the set-up for the traveling band, another musician friend came by and we got into a discussion of the history of psychedelic music and mind-expanding psychedelia practices in general.
Recommending a documentary and a book, the man clearly knew his psychedelia.
The reason for tonight's show was Florida band Teach Me Equals, a duo with enormous dramatic stage presence who were sonically compelling and went on to play their new record for us.
He played cello like a madman, all but destroying his first bow in five songs by shredding, when he wasn't playing it like a guitar, beating on it or blowing into the hollow.
She was appealingly fast on guitar when she wasn't tearing it up on violin, playing it like a ukulele, drumming on it or singing/blowing into it.
I'd seen Dave Watkins do all those things to his dulcitar, but never seen them done to a violin or cello.
My friend and I were constantly craning our heads to see how they were making their sounds.
Songs, not so much, but edgy, experimental soundscapes, absolutely.
I gladly threw money into the donation jar to help keep these guys in gas money while on this tour.
The show finished up with Lobo Marino, just back from a month in India, and off to who knows where next month.
It's always a pleasure to hear what new influences they've picked up on their travels, which occupy what seems to be 90% of their time.
Since they didn't go on until 11:30, Laney began by making a toast to all the people who had to get up early and got to work tomorrow.
Fortunately, I'm not one of them.
Their set began with Laney walking through the restaurant playing her song flute and carrying burning incense while Jameson beat on his drum.
They truly are RVA's own world music duo.
Laney explained that her harmonium was new, having been acquired during their month in India, "So me and the harmonium are still getting to know each other."
Promising several spiritual songs, the did an intense version of "O Come, All Ye faithful" which morphed seamlessly into an Indian chant.
After their classic crowd-pleaser, "Celebrate" they did another mash-up, this one beginning with a dirge-like "O Holy Night."
Next to Jameson, one of the plastic wise men flickered on and off throughout as if in time or perhaps as a commentary on their unconventional arrangements.
The musician next to me turned and commented on how their sincerity was as much a part of their performance as their musicianship.
"This is such a genuine experience," he said. "It almost gives me the vapors."
Quick, the smelling salts. You don't want to miss even a moment of a musical evening like this.
The day began by seeing the VistaVision classic,"White Christmas," at Movieland with a favorite couple, one of whom was seeing it for the first time.
I don't even know how it's possible that anyone hasn't seen this holiday chestnut, but it was a distinct pleasure to listen as he cracked up to Danny Kaye's antics and Bing's corny humor.
Fittingly, that was followed by procurement of the Christmas tree, especially novel this year because it was actually snowing for the brief time it took to choose the tree.
So very Charlie Brown Christmas-like.
Once the tree was decorated, I had writing to finish to make deadline before I could even think about heading out.
By the time my day was behind me, it was 8:30 and I couldn't get going fast enough to Helen's for a show.
I'd half expected a small crowd because of the weather and instead found the place mobbed.
Luckily, a table near the end of the bar was free and I sat down next to a couple who warned me to leave my coat on because we were so near the door which kept opening for new arrivals.
I was luckier than they were because there was a large radiator behind my back, a boon for a cold-blooded type like me.
A musician friend spotted me and came over to sit down and catch up since he was just back from a month in India and we hadn't seen each other for ages before that.
Buster Keaton, blah, blah, love life update, blah, blah, travel plans.
We took a few minutes to admire the magnificence that is Helen's Christmas decorations, from the lit-up plastic nativity scene to the small, silver pom-pom Christmas trees to the reindeer in assorted positions.
The evening's entertainment began with Haints in the Holler, a bluegrass quartet who began by wishing us happy holidays, merry Christmas and feliz navidad.
"I feel that's offensive" a smart-assed guy called out from the bar.
"We aim to offend," the drummer cleverly retorted.
With fiddle, guitar, drums, bass and sometimes banjo, mandolin and washboard, they took us on a bluegrass odyssey, admitting that they weren't "super-good" at between-song chatter.
The highlight was a song called "Dead in Kentucky" about the singer's wish to be returned to Virginia if found dead anywhere else.
Best line was, "Nothing beats drinking in Richmond" and it got a lot of cheers when they sang it.
Following them was a band that many in the crowd had come to see, Dear Ghosts.
I hadn't heard the name, but I had seen half of the band, Lucy Dacus, perform at a Ghost Light afterparty a while back and remembered her stellar voice.
With her in this band was Adam Watkins and while it took a few minutes to get into their sound, I soon found myself terribly impressed with their sad songs.
Both had beautiful voices that blended together to tug at your heartstrings, sort of a lo-fi She and Him minus the chirpy side of that sound.
Adam sang, played guitar and occasional drum while Lucy sang and played some ukulele.
From the first few notes of "I Would Die For You," I knew we were in for a treat because it was one of the songs I'd heard Lucy do and knew how impressively she'd owned it.
It was even more impressive with Adam, slowed down to a languorous pace and truly the essence of a great cover as they made it wholly their own.
Afterwards, Lucy announced, "That wasn't our song, that was Prince," and I turned to my friend and asked if it was really possible that anyone in the room hadn't known that.
"Maybe," he said reluctantly. That's just tragic.
When they ended their set, the DJ across the table from me said that he, too, had taken a moment to figure them out and then really liked their sound.
All I can say is I can't wait to hear more of them soon.
During the set-up for the traveling band, another musician friend came by and we got into a discussion of the history of psychedelic music and mind-expanding psychedelia practices in general.
Recommending a documentary and a book, the man clearly knew his psychedelia.
The reason for tonight's show was Florida band Teach Me Equals, a duo with enormous dramatic stage presence who were sonically compelling and went on to play their new record for us.
He played cello like a madman, all but destroying his first bow in five songs by shredding, when he wasn't playing it like a guitar, beating on it or blowing into the hollow.
She was appealingly fast on guitar when she wasn't tearing it up on violin, playing it like a ukulele, drumming on it or singing/blowing into it.
I'd seen Dave Watkins do all those things to his dulcitar, but never seen them done to a violin or cello.
My friend and I were constantly craning our heads to see how they were making their sounds.
Songs, not so much, but edgy, experimental soundscapes, absolutely.
I gladly threw money into the donation jar to help keep these guys in gas money while on this tour.
The show finished up with Lobo Marino, just back from a month in India, and off to who knows where next month.
It's always a pleasure to hear what new influences they've picked up on their travels, which occupy what seems to be 90% of their time.
Since they didn't go on until 11:30, Laney began by making a toast to all the people who had to get up early and got to work tomorrow.
Fortunately, I'm not one of them.
Their set began with Laney walking through the restaurant playing her song flute and carrying burning incense while Jameson beat on his drum.
They truly are RVA's own world music duo.
Laney explained that her harmonium was new, having been acquired during their month in India, "So me and the harmonium are still getting to know each other."
Promising several spiritual songs, the did an intense version of "O Come, All Ye faithful" which morphed seamlessly into an Indian chant.
After their classic crowd-pleaser, "Celebrate" they did another mash-up, this one beginning with a dirge-like "O Holy Night."
Next to Jameson, one of the plastic wise men flickered on and off throughout as if in time or perhaps as a commentary on their unconventional arrangements.
The musician next to me turned and commented on how their sincerity was as much a part of their performance as their musicianship.
"This is such a genuine experience," he said. "It almost gives me the vapors."
Quick, the smelling salts. You don't want to miss even a moment of a musical evening like this.
Saturday, December 7, 2013
Mind Racing and Blown
If you're the least bit curious about the state of Richmond's theater scene, run, do not walk to see "Race."
Your mind will be blown and you will leave wishing you had a bigger brain to process what you just experienced.
My hired mouth and I had dinner with a girlfriend before I drove home, parked the car and walked over to Virginia Rep Center for Carol Piersol and the African American Repertory Theater's production of David Mamet's "Race."
As much as I adore good theater, I'd only seen one Mamet play produced before and that was 1999's "Boston Marriage," which I saw in Philadelphia back in the mid-aughts.
"Race" was written ten years later and boldly delves into racial differences in processing shame and guilt through the eyes of one white and two black characters who work in a law office and are defending a white man accused of raping a black woman.
An elegant and eloquent set greeted us in the Theater Gym and our usher warned us that the play ran 80 minutes, no intermission.
Fortuitously, I'd already made a pit stop.
Ten minutes of intense Mamet-speak dialog in and it was obvious why there could be no break in the action; the audience was already as enmeshed in the machinations of the story as the actors.
There were so many levels to the play: the black to black conversations, the white to black exchanges, the male to female, male to male, accused to defenders, all within the bigger context of the law and played by an all-star Richmond cast.
Billy Christopher Maupin and dl Hopkins as the two lawyers who've recently taken in a young, black female associate, play off each other with post-modern respect tempered by acknowledgement of wholly different cultural experience due to their racial differences.
Causing problems for them and their client is Katrinah Carol Lewis, who brings her own baggage to the case by being black and female, meaning she presumes their white, male client is guilty from the get-go.
The questionable client role was handled oh-so capably by Joe Inscoe, the focus of everyone's attention because he claimed the sex had been consensual, not rape.
With a Mamet play, dialog is always king ("I think all people are stupid. I don't think black people are exempt.") and provocative; between unfinished sentences, people talking over each other and as much politically incorrect dialog as could be crammed into 80 minutes, the play never let up for a second.
Twice the lights dimmed to indicate that we were going from one time of day to another and truly, it was only for those few seconds that your brain got a moment's reprieve from processing so much.
It was wildly stimulating in a way that reminds you of the wonder of live theater and the headiness of being fully mentally engaged.
When the play abruptly ended, it was with more questions than when it began and not so much as a whiff of answer in the air.
The audience was stunned and thrilled at the same time for what we'd just experienced.
My friend and I stood up but the woman at the end of our row was already asking us questions about the play.
We stood discussing it with her for about five minutes before taking our talk-back to the lobby where we found a cluster of astounded people ready to talk.
"I want there to be a second act!" an actress lamented. "I wanna know more."
"Damn that Mamet! He throws so much at you and doesn't give you a hint of how things might go," another woman said.
"Shakespeare does the same thing; look at "King Lear" or "Merchant of Venice," someone said. "Besides..."
A half dozen or so strangers stood there for the next fifteen minutes talking about the play and the issues it raised about the court system, race relations, sexual relations and how everyone brings their own baggage to them.
It was less than an hour and a half of superbly-produced theater and I can almost bet the farm that everyone who sees it will continue to question, re-examine and return to thoughts of "Race" for weeks to come.
You know how cities choose a book and everyone reads it (Richmond Reads or something like that?) so that there can be discussion groups all over town about it?
I make a motion that we have a Richmond Plays and everyone goes to see "Race."
Besides the thought-provoking discussion topics such a thing would raise, it would serve an even greater cultural good.
It would make a theater lover out of every single person who saw it.
Your mind will be blown and you will leave wishing you had a bigger brain to process what you just experienced.
My hired mouth and I had dinner with a girlfriend before I drove home, parked the car and walked over to Virginia Rep Center for Carol Piersol and the African American Repertory Theater's production of David Mamet's "Race."
As much as I adore good theater, I'd only seen one Mamet play produced before and that was 1999's "Boston Marriage," which I saw in Philadelphia back in the mid-aughts.
"Race" was written ten years later and boldly delves into racial differences in processing shame and guilt through the eyes of one white and two black characters who work in a law office and are defending a white man accused of raping a black woman.
An elegant and eloquent set greeted us in the Theater Gym and our usher warned us that the play ran 80 minutes, no intermission.
Fortuitously, I'd already made a pit stop.
Ten minutes of intense Mamet-speak dialog in and it was obvious why there could be no break in the action; the audience was already as enmeshed in the machinations of the story as the actors.
There were so many levels to the play: the black to black conversations, the white to black exchanges, the male to female, male to male, accused to defenders, all within the bigger context of the law and played by an all-star Richmond cast.
Billy Christopher Maupin and dl Hopkins as the two lawyers who've recently taken in a young, black female associate, play off each other with post-modern respect tempered by acknowledgement of wholly different cultural experience due to their racial differences.
Causing problems for them and their client is Katrinah Carol Lewis, who brings her own baggage to the case by being black and female, meaning she presumes their white, male client is guilty from the get-go.
The questionable client role was handled oh-so capably by Joe Inscoe, the focus of everyone's attention because he claimed the sex had been consensual, not rape.
With a Mamet play, dialog is always king ("I think all people are stupid. I don't think black people are exempt.") and provocative; between unfinished sentences, people talking over each other and as much politically incorrect dialog as could be crammed into 80 minutes, the play never let up for a second.
Twice the lights dimmed to indicate that we were going from one time of day to another and truly, it was only for those few seconds that your brain got a moment's reprieve from processing so much.
It was wildly stimulating in a way that reminds you of the wonder of live theater and the headiness of being fully mentally engaged.
When the play abruptly ended, it was with more questions than when it began and not so much as a whiff of answer in the air.
The audience was stunned and thrilled at the same time for what we'd just experienced.
My friend and I stood up but the woman at the end of our row was already asking us questions about the play.
We stood discussing it with her for about five minutes before taking our talk-back to the lobby where we found a cluster of astounded people ready to talk.
"I want there to be a second act!" an actress lamented. "I wanna know more."
"Damn that Mamet! He throws so much at you and doesn't give you a hint of how things might go," another woman said.
"Shakespeare does the same thing; look at "King Lear" or "Merchant of Venice," someone said. "Besides..."
A half dozen or so strangers stood there for the next fifteen minutes talking about the play and the issues it raised about the court system, race relations, sexual relations and how everyone brings their own baggage to them.
It was less than an hour and a half of superbly-produced theater and I can almost bet the farm that everyone who sees it will continue to question, re-examine and return to thoughts of "Race" for weeks to come.
You know how cities choose a book and everyone reads it (Richmond Reads or something like that?) so that there can be discussion groups all over town about it?
I make a motion that we have a Richmond Plays and everyone goes to see "Race."
Besides the thought-provoking discussion topics such a thing would raise, it would serve an even greater cultural good.
It would make a theater lover out of every single person who saw it.
Broadly Speaking
Turns out it was a good night to take the sore legs for a walk and have a sweet tart.
I invited a friend to join me for the first Fridays artwalk, which was considerably less packed than usual because so many people were apparently down at the grand illumination.
I feel certain the lit-up reindeer will be there next time I head downtown.
We strolled the few blocks to Gallery 5 to see "Hard Copies," a group show by a bunch of up and coming young artists.
Ian Gamble's sculpture, made of tree trunks and lumber, were especially compelling, contrasting areas where his chain saw had removed rhythmic sections with intact masses of wood making for organic creations of an entirely new sort.
We wandered down Broad to Steady Sounds to see Richard Busch's photography show, "1960 Rock Stars," and get a blast from the past.
The black and white photos were a peek into another era, a time when Ike Turner had cheesy bangs and Mick Jagger was so unbelievably young he was still smiling onstage.
Compositionally, the Jimi Hendrix photo was outstanding, with the guitarist surrounded by mannequins and a girl, all at an odd angle.
Striking in another way was one of "Jerry Garcia and Groupie" set under an arch and with the fan on a lower step as if in deference to her idol.
I overheard a girl ask her mother to buy one of the Rolling Stone photos for her because it would look great over her bed.
"Seriously, Mom, it would!" she whined.
Friend and I were busily discussing which photo we'd buy if we could when a white-haired man walked up and asked what had us so deep in conversation.
It was Richard Busch, who with a few well-placed questions, shared some of the back stories to the photographs.
The one of Roger Daltry gazing nonchalantly at the camera with a groupie at his side at a bar had a fascinating post script.
A few years back, the woman in the picture had contacted him to tell him her name and that she was the girl in the photo.
Oddly enough, she didn't want to buy a copy of it, though.
Maybe it's just me, but if a picture of me and a rock god from the past were to show up in a photography show, I'd want to own that picture.
Busch told us that the picture of Garcia and girl had been shot at the Cloisters in NYC after an afternoon of the three of them walking around the medieval-style building.
Garcia had paused under an archway with the girl nearby smiling in apparent delight at her good fortune and Busch had snapped the picture.
Pure luck, not posed.
When we left there, we crossed over to Black Iris so I could schedule my appointment to pick up a "sound suitcase" for the new show, "Low Frequency Travel Agency," which allows you to take a valise to six locations, push a button and hear soundscapes written for that particular place.
I love the idea of being sent to random places in the city to hear music created for specifically that spot and on Wednesday, I'll be spending my afternoon experiencing just that.
Then it was on to Quirk Gallery to see Susannah Raine-Haddad's whimsical new animal paintings.
It was my friend's first time in Quirk and she was tickled with their shop, looking at all kinds of gift items before finally choosing a smart-assed card to buy.
Let's just say it had to do with nude male asses and pressed ham.
While I was standing next to an impeccably-groomed much older woman, she unexpectedly turned to me and said, pointing, "Scented clothespins. I just know you need three jars."
I didn't really but loved that she'd made a joke to a stranger.
At the register, the smell of paperwhites blooming in a pot was exquisite, prompting a conversation between us and counter guy Adam about whether or not their heady fragrance was too much.
Not for me, which probably says something about me.
After she paid for her card, Adam told us that Tuesday night was "guys' night," with a DJ, drinks from Saison and hot shaves from RVA City Barber to entice guys to come in to shop.
"You should come, too" he suggested, making me wonder if I'd be able to get a hot shave for my legs. "I bet they would," he said with assurance.
Tempting as it might be to test that out, chances are I won't.
We walked down to Bistro 27 thinking it might be time for a drink, but they were far too busy to need our business, so we crossed back over Broad.
All of a sudden, I heard my name called and there was half of my favorite Jackson Ward couple, just coming from their monthly pre-artwalk cocktail party at their flat.
Looking around for his lovely wife, I saw she was busy dancing with the guy in front of the DJ at Turnstyle.
She came over to hug me, saying, "Jim spotted your legs all the way across the street and said 'there's Karen's legs!' He knew them from across Broad."
It's good to be recognized, right?
Comfort was just as crowded as 27 had been, so Friend and I hoofed it back to my place to collect our cars and head to Carytown, where we decided on Amour for a nosh and a glass.
It turned out to be an interesting glass, too, Le Chapeau Cuvee Napoleon pinot noir, an unlikely product of France made with Corsican grapes.
Corsica, as in the island off Italy where the future emperor Napoleon was born into a wine-making family.
Despite being at a bar table, we made friends with the people at the bar, a gardener sitting alone and then a stylish couple I've seen there before, all friendly and eager to chat with us.
My friend had never had Amour's onion soup but recalled me raving about it and did the same after a few tastes.
I'd had soup for lunch, so I went with the Alsatian onion tart, a happy marriage of onion, cheese and Smithfield bacon (carry me back to ole Virginny), followed by escargots in garlic butter, with plenty of bread for sopping all that butter.
We finished up with apple cider sorbet, which brought about the funniest line of the evening.
Normally sorbet comes three flavors to a serving, but Friend and I, happily replete at this point, wanted just one scoop to share.
Our waiter obligingly brought us one scoop and the stylish man at the bar looked over at our mini-dessert to be spli between two and cracked, "That's just sad."
It may have been petite portion-wise, but it was exactly what we'd wanted and the autumnal take on dessert was the perfect balance of sweet and tart.
Come to think of it, that's kind of how I'd like to be described myself...and maybe remembered for perfectly shaved legs and the faint scent of paperwhites and Smithfield bacon.
I invited a friend to join me for the first Fridays artwalk, which was considerably less packed than usual because so many people were apparently down at the grand illumination.
I feel certain the lit-up reindeer will be there next time I head downtown.
We strolled the few blocks to Gallery 5 to see "Hard Copies," a group show by a bunch of up and coming young artists.
Ian Gamble's sculpture, made of tree trunks and lumber, were especially compelling, contrasting areas where his chain saw had removed rhythmic sections with intact masses of wood making for organic creations of an entirely new sort.
We wandered down Broad to Steady Sounds to see Richard Busch's photography show, "1960 Rock Stars," and get a blast from the past.
The black and white photos were a peek into another era, a time when Ike Turner had cheesy bangs and Mick Jagger was so unbelievably young he was still smiling onstage.
Compositionally, the Jimi Hendrix photo was outstanding, with the guitarist surrounded by mannequins and a girl, all at an odd angle.
Striking in another way was one of "Jerry Garcia and Groupie" set under an arch and with the fan on a lower step as if in deference to her idol.
I overheard a girl ask her mother to buy one of the Rolling Stone photos for her because it would look great over her bed.
"Seriously, Mom, it would!" she whined.
Friend and I were busily discussing which photo we'd buy if we could when a white-haired man walked up and asked what had us so deep in conversation.
It was Richard Busch, who with a few well-placed questions, shared some of the back stories to the photographs.
The one of Roger Daltry gazing nonchalantly at the camera with a groupie at his side at a bar had a fascinating post script.
A few years back, the woman in the picture had contacted him to tell him her name and that she was the girl in the photo.
Oddly enough, she didn't want to buy a copy of it, though.
Maybe it's just me, but if a picture of me and a rock god from the past were to show up in a photography show, I'd want to own that picture.
Busch told us that the picture of Garcia and girl had been shot at the Cloisters in NYC after an afternoon of the three of them walking around the medieval-style building.
Garcia had paused under an archway with the girl nearby smiling in apparent delight at her good fortune and Busch had snapped the picture.
Pure luck, not posed.
When we left there, we crossed over to Black Iris so I could schedule my appointment to pick up a "sound suitcase" for the new show, "Low Frequency Travel Agency," which allows you to take a valise to six locations, push a button and hear soundscapes written for that particular place.
I love the idea of being sent to random places in the city to hear music created for specifically that spot and on Wednesday, I'll be spending my afternoon experiencing just that.
Then it was on to Quirk Gallery to see Susannah Raine-Haddad's whimsical new animal paintings.
It was my friend's first time in Quirk and she was tickled with their shop, looking at all kinds of gift items before finally choosing a smart-assed card to buy.
Let's just say it had to do with nude male asses and pressed ham.
While I was standing next to an impeccably-groomed much older woman, she unexpectedly turned to me and said, pointing, "Scented clothespins. I just know you need three jars."
I didn't really but loved that she'd made a joke to a stranger.
At the register, the smell of paperwhites blooming in a pot was exquisite, prompting a conversation between us and counter guy Adam about whether or not their heady fragrance was too much.
Not for me, which probably says something about me.
After she paid for her card, Adam told us that Tuesday night was "guys' night," with a DJ, drinks from Saison and hot shaves from RVA City Barber to entice guys to come in to shop.
"You should come, too" he suggested, making me wonder if I'd be able to get a hot shave for my legs. "I bet they would," he said with assurance.
Tempting as it might be to test that out, chances are I won't.
We walked down to Bistro 27 thinking it might be time for a drink, but they were far too busy to need our business, so we crossed back over Broad.
All of a sudden, I heard my name called and there was half of my favorite Jackson Ward couple, just coming from their monthly pre-artwalk cocktail party at their flat.
Looking around for his lovely wife, I saw she was busy dancing with the guy in front of the DJ at Turnstyle.
She came over to hug me, saying, "Jim spotted your legs all the way across the street and said 'there's Karen's legs!' He knew them from across Broad."
It's good to be recognized, right?
Comfort was just as crowded as 27 had been, so Friend and I hoofed it back to my place to collect our cars and head to Carytown, where we decided on Amour for a nosh and a glass.
It turned out to be an interesting glass, too, Le Chapeau Cuvee Napoleon pinot noir, an unlikely product of France made with Corsican grapes.
Corsica, as in the island off Italy where the future emperor Napoleon was born into a wine-making family.
Despite being at a bar table, we made friends with the people at the bar, a gardener sitting alone and then a stylish couple I've seen there before, all friendly and eager to chat with us.
My friend had never had Amour's onion soup but recalled me raving about it and did the same after a few tastes.
I'd had soup for lunch, so I went with the Alsatian onion tart, a happy marriage of onion, cheese and Smithfield bacon (carry me back to ole Virginny), followed by escargots in garlic butter, with plenty of bread for sopping all that butter.
We finished up with apple cider sorbet, which brought about the funniest line of the evening.
Normally sorbet comes three flavors to a serving, but Friend and I, happily replete at this point, wanted just one scoop to share.
Our waiter obligingly brought us one scoop and the stylish man at the bar looked over at our mini-dessert to be spli between two and cracked, "That's just sad."
It may have been petite portion-wise, but it was exactly what we'd wanted and the autumnal take on dessert was the perfect balance of sweet and tart.
Come to think of it, that's kind of how I'd like to be described myself...and maybe remembered for perfectly shaved legs and the faint scent of paperwhites and Smithfield bacon.
Friday, December 6, 2013
Crab and Camp Jingle
It was the borrowed boyfriend redux.
I made it home from a foggy day at the river with just enough time to shower off the dust and debris from another 17 trips up and down two flights of stairs to complete the tree decoration and final adorning of my parents' house.
With tight hamstrings and taut calves, I changed clothes and personas to meet a charming man who is not my own.
No, he belongs to a workaholic friend who is not the fan of theater I am, so we'd made plans for dinner and a play.
He wanted to meet at Max's on Broad, fine by me since it's mere blocks from home and I had very limited time to get properly outfitted for a night at Richmond Triangle Players.
Since neither of us had been up there, we chose the upstairs dining room to eat and were fittingly greeted by a local actor I know.
If anyone understands how to get people in and out in time to make a curtain, it was this guy.
With the balmy-like temperatures outside, I started by ordering a glass of Jean-Mauraice Raffault Chinon Rose, getting major props from the actor who said it was one of his faves, and that he'd taken a bottle of it home just last night.
All around us were other people who looked theater-bound, although the boyfriend and I agreed that in all likelihood, they were on their way to see "Fiddler on the Roof" around the corner at Virginia Rep.
As he noted, we were on the young end of the demographic and that's saying something.
We both started with the Crab Louis cocktail, a surprisingly large mound of lump crabmeat and three cocktail shrimp.
Blame my Maryland childhood, but I still get a little thrill when I see a big pile of picked crab I can just inhale without any effort on my part.
Next I had a half hanger steak salad which my date labeled as "eating healthy" but given the abundance of medium rare red meat and bleu cheese on it, I'm sure there was at least some artery-clogging going on.
The boyfriend told me about his recent trips to Ireland and Nashville and wanted to hear about my recent weekend in Washington, leading to a discussion of career servers and how the Richmond restaurant scene could use the kind of people who make service their profession and not something they do in between other jobs or pursuits.
People can dream, can't they?
Before we knew it, it was time to get to Richmond Triangle Players in Scott's Addition for "It's a Fabulous Life."
Who else would produce a play based on "It's a Wonderful Life," where the protagonist's crisis necessitates him seeing what his life would have been like if he'd been born straight?
Perish the thought, of course.
Our hero, a gay playwright, is frustrated with his latest play, a gay Christmas musical where he's stepped into the role of Randolph, the gay reindeer.
He wants to write something universal instead of all the gay-themed plays he's become known for. To that end, he's already cut "I Came Upon a Midnight Queer" from the play.
There was an explanation of the difference in a vicious queer and an evil queer (it's all in how they tell you how you look).
The crowd loved the big, musical number, "The Pole Got Hot," which ended with all the dancers in g-strings of Santa hats.
By the end of the first act, our hero Joe has done it, he's wished that he were never born gay and that's when his angel shows up.
But unlike in "Wonderful Life" where the angel comes down to help a man so he can finally get his wings, this gay angel already has his.
So why's he down helping a lost soul?
Well, the standard-issue wings are white and he doesn't want to wear white after Labor Day so he's hoping to earn some lavender wings.
"Helluva Time in Heaven!" gave us angels in gold lame briefs that allowed plenty of, um, detail and movement.
The boyfriend and I had seats in different rows, but just behind each other and during the intermission, a man came over and asked if he could sit in the empty chair next to me.
Looking at the guy on my right, he checked first, asking, "Does she bite?"
"Yes, but in a really good way," my seatmate claimed as if he knew.
"Ooooh, your tights are fab!" the newcomer said, complimenting the perennially-popular Berlin tights.
He started right in asking me if I came to RTP often, what brought me in and if I knew any of the actors in the show, so I wanted to know something about him.
A Texan here visiting, he'll be directing an upcoming show at RTP and wanted to get a feel for the stage and sight lines.
I immediately explained that as a short person, I'd missed some great dance moves by Joe and the angel because of where they were on the stage and he said he'd take that into consideration.
Always doing my part for the vertically-challenged.
The second act started with Joe dressed impossibly preppy now and singing "Great to Be Straight," admitting, "It's dull but I can't complain" and extolling the virtues of wings, titties and baseball.
Who knew those things defined the straight man?
I loved that the play was set in Richmond, so when Joe runs into a gay man from his past and they try to figure out how they knew each other, the guy assumes it's his looks.
As in, he'd been on the cover of Gay Fitness and Gay RVA. "Or maybe you saw me in Style Weekly?" he guesses, pulling an issue of Style out and flashing a picture of himself from a real issue.
Joe slowly discovers that when one thing changes, everything changes. "I don't seem to be able to dance anymore," he laments.
Just another straight guy problem.
It was some time after we heard a lovely rendition of "We Three Queens from Oregon Are" that Joe finally comes to his senses and wants his true self back, problems and all.
When his angel instructs him to close his eyes and click his heels together three times, he looks down and sees Joe is wearing loafers, the ultimate straight man embarrassment.
By the time he returns to his real life, it's time for the audience singalong to the Hawaiian-flavored "Come on A Wanna Laya Christmas."
First the gays were instructed to sing along and then the straights, who unexpectedly turned out to be louder, causing the drag queen playing Mrs. Claus (Liza Minnelli-style, of course) to express surprise at how many of us were in her midst.
It's scary, we're everywhere.
The show closed with the affirming "God Bless the Road Less Traveled By" with the characters taking the time to appreciate who they were and how they got to that place.
Like in the classic "It's a Wonderful Life," it was a reminder during the bustle of the holidays to pause and be grateful for how each of us matters to others.
I like to think that there are a number of boyfriends I mattered to, some my own, some belonging to others.
Sending him home to his beloved, at the end of the night I thanked tonight's borrowed one for several things- for not wearing loafers, for being able to dance and especially for treating me to a lovely evening.
Some boyfriends you send home, others you want to keep. Maybe even bite in a good way.
I made it home from a foggy day at the river with just enough time to shower off the dust and debris from another 17 trips up and down two flights of stairs to complete the tree decoration and final adorning of my parents' house.
With tight hamstrings and taut calves, I changed clothes and personas to meet a charming man who is not my own.
No, he belongs to a workaholic friend who is not the fan of theater I am, so we'd made plans for dinner and a play.
He wanted to meet at Max's on Broad, fine by me since it's mere blocks from home and I had very limited time to get properly outfitted for a night at Richmond Triangle Players.
Since neither of us had been up there, we chose the upstairs dining room to eat and were fittingly greeted by a local actor I know.
If anyone understands how to get people in and out in time to make a curtain, it was this guy.
With the balmy-like temperatures outside, I started by ordering a glass of Jean-Mauraice Raffault Chinon Rose, getting major props from the actor who said it was one of his faves, and that he'd taken a bottle of it home just last night.
All around us were other people who looked theater-bound, although the boyfriend and I agreed that in all likelihood, they were on their way to see "Fiddler on the Roof" around the corner at Virginia Rep.
As he noted, we were on the young end of the demographic and that's saying something.
We both started with the Crab Louis cocktail, a surprisingly large mound of lump crabmeat and three cocktail shrimp.
Blame my Maryland childhood, but I still get a little thrill when I see a big pile of picked crab I can just inhale without any effort on my part.
Next I had a half hanger steak salad which my date labeled as "eating healthy" but given the abundance of medium rare red meat and bleu cheese on it, I'm sure there was at least some artery-clogging going on.
The boyfriend told me about his recent trips to Ireland and Nashville and wanted to hear about my recent weekend in Washington, leading to a discussion of career servers and how the Richmond restaurant scene could use the kind of people who make service their profession and not something they do in between other jobs or pursuits.
People can dream, can't they?
Before we knew it, it was time to get to Richmond Triangle Players in Scott's Addition for "It's a Fabulous Life."
Who else would produce a play based on "It's a Wonderful Life," where the protagonist's crisis necessitates him seeing what his life would have been like if he'd been born straight?
Perish the thought, of course.
Our hero, a gay playwright, is frustrated with his latest play, a gay Christmas musical where he's stepped into the role of Randolph, the gay reindeer.
He wants to write something universal instead of all the gay-themed plays he's become known for. To that end, he's already cut "I Came Upon a Midnight Queer" from the play.
There was an explanation of the difference in a vicious queer and an evil queer (it's all in how they tell you how you look).
The crowd loved the big, musical number, "The Pole Got Hot," which ended with all the dancers in g-strings of Santa hats.
By the end of the first act, our hero Joe has done it, he's wished that he were never born gay and that's when his angel shows up.
But unlike in "Wonderful Life" where the angel comes down to help a man so he can finally get his wings, this gay angel already has his.
So why's he down helping a lost soul?
Well, the standard-issue wings are white and he doesn't want to wear white after Labor Day so he's hoping to earn some lavender wings.
"Helluva Time in Heaven!" gave us angels in gold lame briefs that allowed plenty of, um, detail and movement.
The boyfriend and I had seats in different rows, but just behind each other and during the intermission, a man came over and asked if he could sit in the empty chair next to me.
Looking at the guy on my right, he checked first, asking, "Does she bite?"
"Yes, but in a really good way," my seatmate claimed as if he knew.
"Ooooh, your tights are fab!" the newcomer said, complimenting the perennially-popular Berlin tights.
He started right in asking me if I came to RTP often, what brought me in and if I knew any of the actors in the show, so I wanted to know something about him.
A Texan here visiting, he'll be directing an upcoming show at RTP and wanted to get a feel for the stage and sight lines.
I immediately explained that as a short person, I'd missed some great dance moves by Joe and the angel because of where they were on the stage and he said he'd take that into consideration.
Always doing my part for the vertically-challenged.
The second act started with Joe dressed impossibly preppy now and singing "Great to Be Straight," admitting, "It's dull but I can't complain" and extolling the virtues of wings, titties and baseball.
Who knew those things defined the straight man?
I loved that the play was set in Richmond, so when Joe runs into a gay man from his past and they try to figure out how they knew each other, the guy assumes it's his looks.
As in, he'd been on the cover of Gay Fitness and Gay RVA. "Or maybe you saw me in Style Weekly?" he guesses, pulling an issue of Style out and flashing a picture of himself from a real issue.
Joe slowly discovers that when one thing changes, everything changes. "I don't seem to be able to dance anymore," he laments.
Just another straight guy problem.
It was some time after we heard a lovely rendition of "We Three Queens from Oregon Are" that Joe finally comes to his senses and wants his true self back, problems and all.
When his angel instructs him to close his eyes and click his heels together three times, he looks down and sees Joe is wearing loafers, the ultimate straight man embarrassment.
By the time he returns to his real life, it's time for the audience singalong to the Hawaiian-flavored "Come on A Wanna Laya Christmas."
First the gays were instructed to sing along and then the straights, who unexpectedly turned out to be louder, causing the drag queen playing Mrs. Claus (Liza Minnelli-style, of course) to express surprise at how many of us were in her midst.
It's scary, we're everywhere.
The show closed with the affirming "God Bless the Road Less Traveled By" with the characters taking the time to appreciate who they were and how they got to that place.
Like in the classic "It's a Wonderful Life," it was a reminder during the bustle of the holidays to pause and be grateful for how each of us matters to others.
I like to think that there are a number of boyfriends I mattered to, some my own, some belonging to others.
Sending him home to his beloved, at the end of the night I thanked tonight's borrowed one for several things- for not wearing loafers, for being able to dance and especially for treating me to a lovely evening.
Some boyfriends you send home, others you want to keep. Maybe even bite in a good way.
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
I'm Gonna Do All the Things for You
It's time for my December dutiful daughter trip.
That means a couple of days on the northern neck helping my parents transform their house into a winter wonderland of their own making.
I made 22 trips up and down two flights of stairs to bring down box after box of wreaths, ornaments, decorations, lights and ephemera, the better to clutter up their house in seasonal mode.
Outside, I held the Christmas tree while my Dad sawed and chopped the bottom off and my Mom watched anxiously from the back porch, sure there would be a tragic accident with the axe.
She's the worrier, not me.
After six hours of decorating and wrapping gifts, with only one break to eat lunch and cut the last of the pink rosebuds still miraculously on the bush three weeks before Christmas, Dad and I made a break for it.
We had talked about going out to one of their favorite local places, the Oaks, for dinner but Mom didn't feel like getting cleaned up, so we compromised by ordering our food to go.
That meant Dad and I were going to head out to pick it up.
But because they live in the sticks, you never go out for solely one reason, so he decided to load up the truck (according to him, if you live in the country, one of your vehicles must be a truck) and we'd make a stop at the recycler before the restaurant.
So there we were in the late afternoon, tooling along back roads (my father will never take the direct route when a back road can be meandered) and talking about Virginia politics.
He told me to keep an eye out for deer as it got toward dusk.
By the time we'd dropped off the recycling, it was too late to take the branches he'd brought to the wood yard, a place I'd never even heard of but would have been curious to see.
But we'd finished our chores early, so he suggested taking the scenic route to the restaurant, until a better idea occurred to him.
"Or we could go and I'll have a beer and you can have some wine while we wait for the food."
The apple doesn't fall very far from the tree.
There were a half dozen people at the bar when we got to the Oaks where the music was blaring and the owner's wife Nancy recognized Dad and greeted him like the regular he is.
According to the chalkboard, tonight's specials were blackened prime rib and coconut shrimp.
As we sipped our bevvies, the Temptations were singing one of my favorite Motown classics, "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me," and a couple of locals were talking about how you needed to allow extra time to get home in the evenings these days because of all the deer in the roads
Nancy came back and asked if she could tempt me with dessert (duh) and we added a magnificent slice of coconut cake to the order after I told her that I was the only one of my parents' six daughters who, like them, loves coconut cake.
Once the food came out, we walked outside with our dinner and Dad pointed out the new moon, insisting that I move around a stand of trees to better see it.
Starting back on yet another back road home, we hadn't gone two miles when a couple of deer appeared on the side of the road and Dad neatly swerved around them in his 27-year old truck.
I don't know that I've ever cruised the countryside with my Dad in his truck before. What a distinct pleasure I've missed.
Back at the house, Mom had the Christmas music on and had set the table with (what else?) her holiday plates and we heaped the Oaks' home-style cooking on them.
It had been way too long since I'd had a good hamburger steak smothered in gravy and onions and finished with coconut cake.
Sometimes it's both delicious and delightful being the dutiful daughter.
That means a couple of days on the northern neck helping my parents transform their house into a winter wonderland of their own making.
I made 22 trips up and down two flights of stairs to bring down box after box of wreaths, ornaments, decorations, lights and ephemera, the better to clutter up their house in seasonal mode.
Outside, I held the Christmas tree while my Dad sawed and chopped the bottom off and my Mom watched anxiously from the back porch, sure there would be a tragic accident with the axe.
She's the worrier, not me.
After six hours of decorating and wrapping gifts, with only one break to eat lunch and cut the last of the pink rosebuds still miraculously on the bush three weeks before Christmas, Dad and I made a break for it.
We had talked about going out to one of their favorite local places, the Oaks, for dinner but Mom didn't feel like getting cleaned up, so we compromised by ordering our food to go.
That meant Dad and I were going to head out to pick it up.
But because they live in the sticks, you never go out for solely one reason, so he decided to load up the truck (according to him, if you live in the country, one of your vehicles must be a truck) and we'd make a stop at the recycler before the restaurant.
So there we were in the late afternoon, tooling along back roads (my father will never take the direct route when a back road can be meandered) and talking about Virginia politics.
He told me to keep an eye out for deer as it got toward dusk.
By the time we'd dropped off the recycling, it was too late to take the branches he'd brought to the wood yard, a place I'd never even heard of but would have been curious to see.
But we'd finished our chores early, so he suggested taking the scenic route to the restaurant, until a better idea occurred to him.
"Or we could go and I'll have a beer and you can have some wine while we wait for the food."
The apple doesn't fall very far from the tree.
There were a half dozen people at the bar when we got to the Oaks where the music was blaring and the owner's wife Nancy recognized Dad and greeted him like the regular he is.
According to the chalkboard, tonight's specials were blackened prime rib and coconut shrimp.
As we sipped our bevvies, the Temptations were singing one of my favorite Motown classics, "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me," and a couple of locals were talking about how you needed to allow extra time to get home in the evenings these days because of all the deer in the roads
Nancy came back and asked if she could tempt me with dessert (duh) and we added a magnificent slice of coconut cake to the order after I told her that I was the only one of my parents' six daughters who, like them, loves coconut cake.
Once the food came out, we walked outside with our dinner and Dad pointed out the new moon, insisting that I move around a stand of trees to better see it.
Starting back on yet another back road home, we hadn't gone two miles when a couple of deer appeared on the side of the road and Dad neatly swerved around them in his 27-year old truck.
I don't know that I've ever cruised the countryside with my Dad in his truck before. What a distinct pleasure I've missed.
Back at the house, Mom had the Christmas music on and had set the table with (what else?) her holiday plates and we heaped the Oaks' home-style cooking on them.
It had been way too long since I'd had a good hamburger steak smothered in gravy and onions and finished with coconut cake.
Sometimes it's both delicious and delightful being the dutiful daughter.
Tuesday, December 3, 2013
Diary of a Tongue-Loving Feminist
Let's start with the archaic title: Diary of a Mad Housewife.
Do we even use the term "housewife" anymore? "Stay-at-home mom" is as close a term as I can think of to describe women who don't have an outside job beyond housekeeper, child-raiser, chauffeur, cook and laundress.
In my continuing pursuit of revisiting some classic feminist literature, I moved from the very liberated 1973 classic Fear of Flying, here, to an earlier book and time period documenting women's quest to break out of constraining societal roles.
Back before feminism became a bad word with subsequent generations, truly a sad thing.
Diary of a Mad Housewife was written in 1967 and while a six-year difference may not sound like much, I found the life of heroine Bettina much more rooted in the Eisenhower years' traditional roles for women than FoF's Isadora.
But that's because I discovered rereading this book that 1967 was the olden days. You know how different things were then?
Bettina's building on Central Park West has an elevator man, yes, a man whose job it was to push the button for you.
In uniform, no less.
She calls for a Jamaican laundress to come do the dirty clothes brought back from vacation after her husband complains about their trunks still sitting around.
Trunks?
She and her husband sleep in separate beds, with him saying, "Hey, Teen, how about an ole roll in the hay?" when he wants to come to her bed for sex.
Ew, just ew.
She regularly cooks tongue and serves it for dinner with horseradish because her husband and daughters like it.
Striking for me was that it wasn't unusual to still be cooking tongue for dinner in 1967.
There is a smoking room in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and a store nurse at Lord & Taylor.
Before a party, she puts cigarettes in boxes and urns (?) for their guests.
Milk still comes in bottles and is delivered, with the empty bottles sitting on the back landing until the milkman comes again.
Their black housekeeper has to remind them that no cab driver will take her uptown at 8:30 at night.
The Yellow Pages didn't list doctors by specialty.
A married woman did not have a checking account, instead getting a weekly allowance from her husband.
And, perhaps most unbelievably, bacon has a negative connotation. Her husband comes home and yells that the whole apartment smells of bacon.
"It's perfectly respectable smell, " she tells him calmly.
"It's a smell that takes hours to go away. It'll be just like the Bronx when our guests arrive," he rages.
And god forbid it should smell like the Bronx.
Somehow, when I think of 1967, I think of the Beatles releasing "Sgt. Pepper" and mini-skirts and the musical Hair, but after reading Diary of a Mad Housewife, I realize that most women were not living that life.
Instead, like Bettina, they were catering to demanding husbands who sent them to therapists to get their "heads straight," making sure dinner was on the table when hubby got home and sinking into depression (and self-medicating) to deal with such a stifling life.
This was so not the swinging '60s.
When she puts on jeans to go walk the dog, her daughter tells her she can't wear those pants downstairs.
Why not, you ask? "Ladies your age don't wear jeans," she's told. For the record, she's in her thirties.
No wonder the poor thing was having a crisis and felt the need to secretly scribble notes to herself about the unsatisfying life she was living and hide them away from the world.
Having just recently finished Diary of a Mad Housewife, I couldn't have asked for a better opportunity to discuss it than the one that unexpectedly presented itself this afternoon.
I was interviewing a painter, a woman who had come of age in the '60s, and told her of my re-reading of this classic piece of feminist writing.
Pointing out some of the surprisingly dated things I'd read, she nodded knowingly.
During her first marriage back in the '60s, she got an allowance from her husband. Allowed him to tell her what to do and when, and then did it. Accepted the staus quo until she couldn't anymore and then got the hell out.
Now she's happily married to the same man for 30 years and they deliberately keep separate bank accounts.
He reminds her when she gets stressed to go back to doing what she loves, thus supporting her and allowing her to decide what makes her happiest.
We've come a long way, baby, in 46 years.
The lucky ones grew up after the Bettinas and Isadoras had blazed the trail so that the rest of us could do what we wanted...in relationships, in careers, in life.
Namely wear jeans (or not, in my case), manage our own money and cook as much smelly bacon as we damn well please.
Don't kid yourselves, girls. That is feminism.
Do we even use the term "housewife" anymore? "Stay-at-home mom" is as close a term as I can think of to describe women who don't have an outside job beyond housekeeper, child-raiser, chauffeur, cook and laundress.
In my continuing pursuit of revisiting some classic feminist literature, I moved from the very liberated 1973 classic Fear of Flying, here, to an earlier book and time period documenting women's quest to break out of constraining societal roles.
Back before feminism became a bad word with subsequent generations, truly a sad thing.
Diary of a Mad Housewife was written in 1967 and while a six-year difference may not sound like much, I found the life of heroine Bettina much more rooted in the Eisenhower years' traditional roles for women than FoF's Isadora.
But that's because I discovered rereading this book that 1967 was the olden days. You know how different things were then?
Bettina's building on Central Park West has an elevator man, yes, a man whose job it was to push the button for you.
In uniform, no less.
She calls for a Jamaican laundress to come do the dirty clothes brought back from vacation after her husband complains about their trunks still sitting around.
Trunks?
She and her husband sleep in separate beds, with him saying, "Hey, Teen, how about an ole roll in the hay?" when he wants to come to her bed for sex.
Ew, just ew.
She regularly cooks tongue and serves it for dinner with horseradish because her husband and daughters like it.
Striking for me was that it wasn't unusual to still be cooking tongue for dinner in 1967.
There is a smoking room in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and a store nurse at Lord & Taylor.
Before a party, she puts cigarettes in boxes and urns (?) for their guests.
Milk still comes in bottles and is delivered, with the empty bottles sitting on the back landing until the milkman comes again.
Their black housekeeper has to remind them that no cab driver will take her uptown at 8:30 at night.
The Yellow Pages didn't list doctors by specialty.
A married woman did not have a checking account, instead getting a weekly allowance from her husband.
And, perhaps most unbelievably, bacon has a negative connotation. Her husband comes home and yells that the whole apartment smells of bacon.
"It's perfectly respectable smell, " she tells him calmly.
"It's a smell that takes hours to go away. It'll be just like the Bronx when our guests arrive," he rages.
And god forbid it should smell like the Bronx.
Somehow, when I think of 1967, I think of the Beatles releasing "Sgt. Pepper" and mini-skirts and the musical Hair, but after reading Diary of a Mad Housewife, I realize that most women were not living that life.
Instead, like Bettina, they were catering to demanding husbands who sent them to therapists to get their "heads straight," making sure dinner was on the table when hubby got home and sinking into depression (and self-medicating) to deal with such a stifling life.
This was so not the swinging '60s.
When she puts on jeans to go walk the dog, her daughter tells her she can't wear those pants downstairs.
Why not, you ask? "Ladies your age don't wear jeans," she's told. For the record, she's in her thirties.
No wonder the poor thing was having a crisis and felt the need to secretly scribble notes to herself about the unsatisfying life she was living and hide them away from the world.
Having just recently finished Diary of a Mad Housewife, I couldn't have asked for a better opportunity to discuss it than the one that unexpectedly presented itself this afternoon.
I was interviewing a painter, a woman who had come of age in the '60s, and told her of my re-reading of this classic piece of feminist writing.
Pointing out some of the surprisingly dated things I'd read, she nodded knowingly.
During her first marriage back in the '60s, she got an allowance from her husband. Allowed him to tell her what to do and when, and then did it. Accepted the staus quo until she couldn't anymore and then got the hell out.
Now she's happily married to the same man for 30 years and they deliberately keep separate bank accounts.
He reminds her when she gets stressed to go back to doing what she loves, thus supporting her and allowing her to decide what makes her happiest.
We've come a long way, baby, in 46 years.
The lucky ones grew up after the Bettinas and Isadoras had blazed the trail so that the rest of us could do what we wanted...in relationships, in careers, in life.
Namely wear jeans (or not, in my case), manage our own money and cook as much smelly bacon as we damn well please.
Don't kid yourselves, girls. That is feminism.
Modern Love
Best kind of away weekend possible.
Hometown: eat, art, eat, sleep, eat, art, art, eat, sleep. And the latter, only because I had to.
With a mere 37 1/2 hours in Washington, the itinerary was tight, albeit good tight.
First stop: Bistrot du Coin in Dupont Circle, my old neighborhood to meet a trio of strangers for champagne and mussels.
Our French server moved around the table, asking who wanted bubbles but when he got to me, just poured without asking. Why, I asked him, hadn't he checked first?
"You look like fun," he said, as if it were obvious.
An auspicious start.
My choice to go with the Piper Heidsieck Brut champagne was the moules au Pistou (mussels with pig two ways), a savory combination of pesto, prosciutto and French ham with enough crusty bread to sop up broth until I got near exploding.
Thus fortified, my companion and I did a walk through my old neighborhood, with me looking in the windows of my former apartment on 21st Street and then the condo my ex and I bought on N Street.
My imaginary soundtrack was David Bowie's "Let's Dance," which the guy who lived under us on N Street played endlessly when it came out.
And by endlessly, I mean for hours every day for about two months.
Let's sway
You could look into my eyes
Let's sway under the moonlight
The serious moonlight
You have no idea how that album came back to me in a rush when I looked into the front window of the brownstone that used to be ours.
After the walk down Memory Lane, we walked to the Phillips Collection to see "van Gogh: Repetitions."
The downside: it was timed entry and mobbed. The upside: many of the works in the exhibit came from private collections and I will probably never see them again.
Life is a balancing act and sometimes you share space with people who were raised by wolves as you all jostle to see incomparable art.
Le sigh.
Dinner was at Del Campo, a restaurant where meat reigns no doubt due to the chef's Cuban father and Peruvian mother.
The tailored-looking restaurant is a place where smoke reigns supreme, starting with both the olive oil and sea salt imparting smoky and delicious flavors.
Because there were six of us, we got to try all kinds of things: buttery ceviche of tuna, grilled avocado, olives, burnt shallots and pistachios; decadently rich Roseda farm beef heart anticucho, tartare and quail egg on grilled polenta; to-die-for charred beets, boucheron goat cheese, beet greens, burnt onion and balsamic; empanadas of wagyu skirt steak, caramelized onions and romesco; and my least favorite (but only because I'm not especially a salmon fan unless it's smoked) ceviche of grilled salmon, rapini, citrus, pork rinds and aioli.
Throughout the evening, we would get whiffs of meat on the grill or herbs being roasted, making for a delightful smell-o-vision experience.
Since we had enough people to mitigate the guilt, we followed that with a 48-ounce dry-aged Piedmont ridge tomahawk ribeye, an obscenely large chunk o' meat that arrived with bone marrow and two sauces, chimichurri and rosemary salsa verde.
Then there were the three kinds of chorizo - house, a rustic Argentianian and blood sausage- plus micro brussels sprouts with bacon and honey, executed so beautifully the green vegetable hater liked them. Yum all around.
Our accented server also talked us into grilled jumbo head-on prawns and we proceeded to bite the head and suck the tail the traditional way.
My favorite moment came when the pickiest eater in the group ate one of my beef hearts and raved about how rich and good it tasted, proving my theory that you can't dislike something if you don't know what it is.
All in all, a most enjoyable evening that morphed into an unexpectedly late night gab fest with a guy named Matt, bowls of popcorn and a '70s soundtrack at Harry's.
Then we got up and did it all over again.
Today began with another meal, this one at Graffiatio, TV chef Mike Isabella's Italian and Jersey-inspired joint.
Going at lunch was inspired so we didn't have to deal with crowds, instead taking bar seats right in front of the wood-burning oven and ordering Prosecco on tap to start the meal.
An appetizer of broccolini with red peppers, feta and walnuts was a beautiful marriage of flavors served at room temperature, a surefire way to start the day feeling somewhat virtuous.
While we listened to a soundtrack of Passion Pit, Two Door Cinema Club and Phoenix (and agreed that the kitchen staff looked like mechanics in their grey shirts), we watched our two pizzas being exactingly placed in the carefully-tended oven.
Porky's Revenge (soprassatta, pepperoni, sausage) spoke to my morning-after need for pig while the White House (Tallegio, prosciutto, ricotta and black pepper honey) had a delicate sweetness that was habit-forming after one bite.
After lunch, we walked barely a block to the National Building museum because I wanted to see "Overdrive: L.A. Constructs the Future 1940-1990," but got waylaid.
A docent was offering a tour of the building itself, the former Pension Bureau, and we joined a couple of strangers to learn about the space that was built to house the administrative offices that served former Civil War soldiers and grew to host inaugural balls and is now a museum.
Our guide was full of information, but also a real slow talker, a repeater and if we hadn't been standing up, probably also capable of putting us to sleep.
After a half hour with him, we politely excused ourselves to go see something more stimulating, like an exhibit about how car culture defined land development in California.
I learned that all that distinctive, colorful and futuristic-looking architecture was designed to draw in people driving by at high speeds.
And how about his: there were even drive-up churches built. You could pray and be on your way.
I found myself fascinated by the contrast in photographs of Wilshire Boulevard in 1935 (mostly fields) and 1955 (a close-together community of houses taking up every available inch).
There were several wildly funny and compelling bits of film to watch including one that advocated how to enjoy fast, safe freeway driving.
I'll warn you right now, the guy who was always changing lanes like a jack rabbit ended up getting a ticket and a stern talking-to from the police officer.
As for all those freeways and speedways built in California, who knew they had 35 mph speed limits in the beginning?
The only way to follow a show about the cultural history of L.A. was with one about Paris, so we walked down to the National Gallery to see "Charles Marville: Photographer of Paris."
Chosen to document the "modernization" of Paris after Napoleon, the galleries of exquisite black and white photographs were an extraordinary look into parts of the venerable city that no longer exist today.
Because the advent of street lights was a game-changer (the nighttime being too dark to venture out into), Marville did a series on streetlights, showing the variety of styles installed, and how they varied from poorer neighborhoods to upscale ones.
There were several photographs of the public urinals installed to improve sanitation; one even had a street light installed above it.
How is it Paris had public bathrooms in the 19th century and we still do not in the 21st, asked the woman who is frequently in need of a bathroom when in public?
The exhibit was as much a cultural lesson as a visual treat since I learned so much about the remapping of Paris to widen boulevards and correct narrow, winding streets to straight ones.
Interestingly enough, when revamping the Bois de Boulogne, a large public park, the planners set about to change the straight paths within it to meandering, curved paths instead.
Sometimes the Parisians need to curve and sometimes not apparently.
But my favorite moment seeing the show came when I read an explanation for why Marville sometimes inserted a figure into his photographs.
Sometimes it was to give a sense of isolation to the setting in order to mirror the feelings many Parisians were having as their old city disappeared.
But sometimes, the figure was meant to represent a flaneur, a person who walks the streets with no purpose other than to collect impressions.
I had learned about flaneurs only yesterday while reading a book review of "Tales of Two Cities: Paris, London and the Birth of the Modern City," a look at how Paris mimicked London to become modern.
In the review, flaneurs were mentioned as having come into existence far sooner in London than in Paris solely because of the improvements there in urban design, meaning gutters, sidewalks and, yes, streetlights.
In other words, all the things that Marville had photographed. It was a delightful overlap in my ongoing cultural history education.
Because we had time, we also looked at "Yes, No, Maybe: Artists Working at Crown Point Press," a show of working proofs and edition prints by artists as varied as Chuck Close and John Cage.
We finished our afternoon at the National Gallery with a new acquisition, Dutch master Gerrit von Honthorst's "The Concert," notable for the painter's Carvaggio influences and because it's just come into the collection.
Asking at the information desk where to find it, I mispronounced "von Honthort" and the man gently corrected me.
I had no excuse except that I wasn't raised in a groot.
Art needs met, we set off for happy hour at Ambar, a Balkan restaurant with a wine list unlike any I'd ever seen.
Full of Moldovan, Serbian, Bulgarian and Slovenian choices, we chose Belje Welschriesling, a Croatian wine that tasted of stone fruits and gave us time to talk about all the art we'd just taken in.
The music varied from pop goodness from the likes of Ivy to what sounded like Balkan trance music as we drank our wine and rested our feet.
We were in no hurry after a non-stop 30 hours.
To finish out a lovely weekend, we walked down the block to Rose's Luxury, securing two stools at the cozy garden bar ("It's my favorite place in the restaurant," the hostess told us) and getting a hip hello from the bartender with the partially shaved head, pale pink sweater and pearls.
I'm not sure when she decided to take a shine to me, maybe when I gave her a hard time, maybe when I called her on a few things, but before long she was my new best friend and we were good-naturedly parrying across the bar.
While giving each other a hard time, we tore into a warm loaf of potato bread with butter topped with chives and baked potato crumbles.
Someone in Richmond needs to do this STAT.
From there, we had Kusshi oysters with a Dark and Stormy granita, but only after I gave our bartender crap about the California oysters.
Yes, I know they're all the rage out there and yes, their small size and buttery flavor were just lovely, but, as my date observed dryly, that's a mighty big footprint for a small plate.
But, yes, they were yummy and the distinctive granita was slurp-worthy.
Because we're both fried chicken devotees, we had to get the pickle-brined fried chicken, which came in a bowl with honey and benne seeds.
We weren't expecting "nuggets" but that's what we got and while they had a perfectly crispy coating, we both agreed that the only way the pickle-brined chicken could have been improved was by cooking it in bacon fat and fortunately we know a place that does just that...and much closer to home.
For our main course, we got a family-style plate of pork schnitzel with baked applesauce, sunchoke salad and fresh greens, a satisfying meal.
By then, our bartender had pointed out which server was hot for her and asked how long my date and I had been seeing each other.
Naturally, we talked about music and which shows she'd been to lately and next thing I knew, she was bringing me a dessert I hadn't asked for.
Celery root mascarpone with poached pear juice and a brown sugar and nut crumble topping was both refreshing and elegant, a lovely and unexpected treat.
Ditto when she handed me a piece of paper with her name and e-mail address on it, making me promise to contact her so we can meet up again here or there.
Until then, she promised to send me pictures of her and the cute server who likes her.
In my quest to be a modern-day flaneur, it will be one more impression to collect.
For now, still full of good food and art, it is time for this observer to sleep.
Hometown: eat, art, eat, sleep, eat, art, art, eat, sleep. And the latter, only because I had to.
With a mere 37 1/2 hours in Washington, the itinerary was tight, albeit good tight.
First stop: Bistrot du Coin in Dupont Circle, my old neighborhood to meet a trio of strangers for champagne and mussels.
Our French server moved around the table, asking who wanted bubbles but when he got to me, just poured without asking. Why, I asked him, hadn't he checked first?
"You look like fun," he said, as if it were obvious.
An auspicious start.
My choice to go with the Piper Heidsieck Brut champagne was the moules au Pistou (mussels with pig two ways), a savory combination of pesto, prosciutto and French ham with enough crusty bread to sop up broth until I got near exploding.
Thus fortified, my companion and I did a walk through my old neighborhood, with me looking in the windows of my former apartment on 21st Street and then the condo my ex and I bought on N Street.
My imaginary soundtrack was David Bowie's "Let's Dance," which the guy who lived under us on N Street played endlessly when it came out.
And by endlessly, I mean for hours every day for about two months.
Let's sway
You could look into my eyes
Let's sway under the moonlight
The serious moonlight
You have no idea how that album came back to me in a rush when I looked into the front window of the brownstone that used to be ours.
After the walk down Memory Lane, we walked to the Phillips Collection to see "van Gogh: Repetitions."
The downside: it was timed entry and mobbed. The upside: many of the works in the exhibit came from private collections and I will probably never see them again.
Life is a balancing act and sometimes you share space with people who were raised by wolves as you all jostle to see incomparable art.
Le sigh.
Dinner was at Del Campo, a restaurant where meat reigns no doubt due to the chef's Cuban father and Peruvian mother.
The tailored-looking restaurant is a place where smoke reigns supreme, starting with both the olive oil and sea salt imparting smoky and delicious flavors.
Because there were six of us, we got to try all kinds of things: buttery ceviche of tuna, grilled avocado, olives, burnt shallots and pistachios; decadently rich Roseda farm beef heart anticucho, tartare and quail egg on grilled polenta; to-die-for charred beets, boucheron goat cheese, beet greens, burnt onion and balsamic; empanadas of wagyu skirt steak, caramelized onions and romesco; and my least favorite (but only because I'm not especially a salmon fan unless it's smoked) ceviche of grilled salmon, rapini, citrus, pork rinds and aioli.
Throughout the evening, we would get whiffs of meat on the grill or herbs being roasted, making for a delightful smell-o-vision experience.
Since we had enough people to mitigate the guilt, we followed that with a 48-ounce dry-aged Piedmont ridge tomahawk ribeye, an obscenely large chunk o' meat that arrived with bone marrow and two sauces, chimichurri and rosemary salsa verde.
Then there were the three kinds of chorizo - house, a rustic Argentianian and blood sausage- plus micro brussels sprouts with bacon and honey, executed so beautifully the green vegetable hater liked them. Yum all around.
Our accented server also talked us into grilled jumbo head-on prawns and we proceeded to bite the head and suck the tail the traditional way.
My favorite moment came when the pickiest eater in the group ate one of my beef hearts and raved about how rich and good it tasted, proving my theory that you can't dislike something if you don't know what it is.
All in all, a most enjoyable evening that morphed into an unexpectedly late night gab fest with a guy named Matt, bowls of popcorn and a '70s soundtrack at Harry's.
Then we got up and did it all over again.
Today began with another meal, this one at Graffiatio, TV chef Mike Isabella's Italian and Jersey-inspired joint.
Going at lunch was inspired so we didn't have to deal with crowds, instead taking bar seats right in front of the wood-burning oven and ordering Prosecco on tap to start the meal.
An appetizer of broccolini with red peppers, feta and walnuts was a beautiful marriage of flavors served at room temperature, a surefire way to start the day feeling somewhat virtuous.
While we listened to a soundtrack of Passion Pit, Two Door Cinema Club and Phoenix (and agreed that the kitchen staff looked like mechanics in their grey shirts), we watched our two pizzas being exactingly placed in the carefully-tended oven.
Porky's Revenge (soprassatta, pepperoni, sausage) spoke to my morning-after need for pig while the White House (Tallegio, prosciutto, ricotta and black pepper honey) had a delicate sweetness that was habit-forming after one bite.
After lunch, we walked barely a block to the National Building museum because I wanted to see "Overdrive: L.A. Constructs the Future 1940-1990," but got waylaid.
A docent was offering a tour of the building itself, the former Pension Bureau, and we joined a couple of strangers to learn about the space that was built to house the administrative offices that served former Civil War soldiers and grew to host inaugural balls and is now a museum.
Our guide was full of information, but also a real slow talker, a repeater and if we hadn't been standing up, probably also capable of putting us to sleep.
After a half hour with him, we politely excused ourselves to go see something more stimulating, like an exhibit about how car culture defined land development in California.
I learned that all that distinctive, colorful and futuristic-looking architecture was designed to draw in people driving by at high speeds.
And how about his: there were even drive-up churches built. You could pray and be on your way.
I found myself fascinated by the contrast in photographs of Wilshire Boulevard in 1935 (mostly fields) and 1955 (a close-together community of houses taking up every available inch).
There were several wildly funny and compelling bits of film to watch including one that advocated how to enjoy fast, safe freeway driving.
I'll warn you right now, the guy who was always changing lanes like a jack rabbit ended up getting a ticket and a stern talking-to from the police officer.
As for all those freeways and speedways built in California, who knew they had 35 mph speed limits in the beginning?
The only way to follow a show about the cultural history of L.A. was with one about Paris, so we walked down to the National Gallery to see "Charles Marville: Photographer of Paris."
Chosen to document the "modernization" of Paris after Napoleon, the galleries of exquisite black and white photographs were an extraordinary look into parts of the venerable city that no longer exist today.
Because the advent of street lights was a game-changer (the nighttime being too dark to venture out into), Marville did a series on streetlights, showing the variety of styles installed, and how they varied from poorer neighborhoods to upscale ones.
There were several photographs of the public urinals installed to improve sanitation; one even had a street light installed above it.
How is it Paris had public bathrooms in the 19th century and we still do not in the 21st, asked the woman who is frequently in need of a bathroom when in public?
The exhibit was as much a cultural lesson as a visual treat since I learned so much about the remapping of Paris to widen boulevards and correct narrow, winding streets to straight ones.
Interestingly enough, when revamping the Bois de Boulogne, a large public park, the planners set about to change the straight paths within it to meandering, curved paths instead.
Sometimes the Parisians need to curve and sometimes not apparently.
But my favorite moment seeing the show came when I read an explanation for why Marville sometimes inserted a figure into his photographs.
Sometimes it was to give a sense of isolation to the setting in order to mirror the feelings many Parisians were having as their old city disappeared.
But sometimes, the figure was meant to represent a flaneur, a person who walks the streets with no purpose other than to collect impressions.
I had learned about flaneurs only yesterday while reading a book review of "Tales of Two Cities: Paris, London and the Birth of the Modern City," a look at how Paris mimicked London to become modern.
In the review, flaneurs were mentioned as having come into existence far sooner in London than in Paris solely because of the improvements there in urban design, meaning gutters, sidewalks and, yes, streetlights.
In other words, all the things that Marville had photographed. It was a delightful overlap in my ongoing cultural history education.
Because we had time, we also looked at "Yes, No, Maybe: Artists Working at Crown Point Press," a show of working proofs and edition prints by artists as varied as Chuck Close and John Cage.
We finished our afternoon at the National Gallery with a new acquisition, Dutch master Gerrit von Honthorst's "The Concert," notable for the painter's Carvaggio influences and because it's just come into the collection.
Asking at the information desk where to find it, I mispronounced "von Honthort" and the man gently corrected me.
I had no excuse except that I wasn't raised in a groot.
Art needs met, we set off for happy hour at Ambar, a Balkan restaurant with a wine list unlike any I'd ever seen.
Full of Moldovan, Serbian, Bulgarian and Slovenian choices, we chose Belje Welschriesling, a Croatian wine that tasted of stone fruits and gave us time to talk about all the art we'd just taken in.
The music varied from pop goodness from the likes of Ivy to what sounded like Balkan trance music as we drank our wine and rested our feet.
We were in no hurry after a non-stop 30 hours.
To finish out a lovely weekend, we walked down the block to Rose's Luxury, securing two stools at the cozy garden bar ("It's my favorite place in the restaurant," the hostess told us) and getting a hip hello from the bartender with the partially shaved head, pale pink sweater and pearls.
I'm not sure when she decided to take a shine to me, maybe when I gave her a hard time, maybe when I called her on a few things, but before long she was my new best friend and we were good-naturedly parrying across the bar.
While giving each other a hard time, we tore into a warm loaf of potato bread with butter topped with chives and baked potato crumbles.
Someone in Richmond needs to do this STAT.
From there, we had Kusshi oysters with a Dark and Stormy granita, but only after I gave our bartender crap about the California oysters.
Yes, I know they're all the rage out there and yes, their small size and buttery flavor were just lovely, but, as my date observed dryly, that's a mighty big footprint for a small plate.
But, yes, they were yummy and the distinctive granita was slurp-worthy.
Because we're both fried chicken devotees, we had to get the pickle-brined fried chicken, which came in a bowl with honey and benne seeds.
We weren't expecting "nuggets" but that's what we got and while they had a perfectly crispy coating, we both agreed that the only way the pickle-brined chicken could have been improved was by cooking it in bacon fat and fortunately we know a place that does just that...and much closer to home.
For our main course, we got a family-style plate of pork schnitzel with baked applesauce, sunchoke salad and fresh greens, a satisfying meal.
By then, our bartender had pointed out which server was hot for her and asked how long my date and I had been seeing each other.
Naturally, we talked about music and which shows she'd been to lately and next thing I knew, she was bringing me a dessert I hadn't asked for.
Celery root mascarpone with poached pear juice and a brown sugar and nut crumble topping was both refreshing and elegant, a lovely and unexpected treat.
Ditto when she handed me a piece of paper with her name and e-mail address on it, making me promise to contact her so we can meet up again here or there.
Until then, she promised to send me pictures of her and the cute server who likes her.
In my quest to be a modern-day flaneur, it will be one more impression to collect.
For now, still full of good food and art, it is time for this observer to sleep.
Sunday, December 1, 2013
Making an Independent Woman Yours
I went and got my country on over on southside.
There's words you might not have expected out of this fan of new music, but I'd been wanting to hear Loversville for a while now.
So in the quest for classic country music, I headed over the river to Crossroads coffee to listen to songs by the likes of Loretta Lynn, Faron Young, Buck Owens, Conway Twitty and Roger Miller.
Foolishly, given that I'd never been to Crossroads, I under-estimated the crowd size.
Most every seat was taken when I got there but I found a couple with a spare chair and they let me use it.
Since I'm not a coffee or hot tea drinker, I went with ice cream, perhaps not the best choice on a 39 degree night, and even more so given that the guy at the counter was a musician who recognized me from his band's shows and gave me enough ice cream for three people.
But with a seat and a bowl, I was ready for whatever was next.
"Okay, it's country time," singer Cassandra said by way of getting the ball rolling, starting with Glen Campbell's "Try a Little Kindness."
Now that's what I'm talking about: a singer/guitarist, bass player, drummer and pedal steel/fiddle player.
Glen was followed by the classic Hank Williams' tune, "Your Cheatin' Heart" ("Everybody knows that one, it's a universal thing"), and Dwight Yoakum's "Close Up the Honky Tonks" in short order.
Although I don't much go out for country music, every song's a story, so it's a lot like going to Secretly Y'All, Tell Me a Story except the stories are all about drinking and relationships.
You know, life.
By the third song, it was standing room only and people came in saying either they loved this band or they'd been trying to catch this band.
Midway through "Crazy Arms," Cassandra smiled beatifically and said, "Isn't that pretty?" about the pedal steel solo.
If the music was "purdy," the song titles were appropriately dire, like "I'm Down to My Last Cigarette," a crisis I've never known.
They did one original ("We made this one up and it's kind of autobiographical"), "Independent Woman," which contained my favorite lyric of the entire evening.
I sure could use a hand getting out of this dress.
True story.
As they were finishing that instant classic, in walked a woman who was immediately called to the stage.
"This lovely woman is Octavia, who used to play bass in this band," Cassandra explained. "Until she was stolen away by the drummer's best friend. How's that for a soap opera?"
Octavia did several songs with the band, songs like "Walking the Dog" and "Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down" but it was "You're Out of Time" that had the best lyrics.
I said baby, baby, baby, you're out of time
Yes, you are left out, yes you are
I said you're left out of there without a doubt
Cause baby, baby, baby, you're out of time
You can't come back and be the first in line
No, sir, mister, you'll have to wait your turn.
There was a run of Loretta Lynn songs, including "Farther to Go," which Cassandra said, "She wrote it and no one else but us ever covered it."
While the band took a break to get alcohol, because how can you play this music without it, a young man named Cole came up and played Cassandra's guitar.
Doing all sad songs - "House of the Rising Sun," "Hallelujah" and "A Broken Heart is Blind" - he captivated a crowd old enough to be his parents if not grandparents.
Loversville came back with the best song title of the evening, "Grits Ain't Groceries" and after singing it, Cassandra said, "Grits ain't groceries, eggs ain't poultry, I don't know what that means except he really loves her."
By then I knew there are only two options in classic country music, either it's love or it's heartbreak, no in-between.
Almost as good was "It's the Bottle Talking," with lines like, "But it's the bottle talking when you say you're mine. It's the bottle talking that makes the love light shine. But your heart is as empty as the bottles in the wine."
Wait, country types drink bubbly?
Between songs as the band tried to decide which song to play next, Cassandra would throw out pearls like, "George Jones! Boy, did he leave the world a better place."
A couple of the covers they did were kind of surprising, like when she said, "We're going to do a Ramones song written by the Seeds."
Whoa, what?
Actually, they did a fine version of "Can't Seem to Make You Mine" with a killer pedal steel accompaniment that I doubt Joey Ramone could have imagined.
The other was the Rolling Stones' "Time is On My Side," which got a lot of affirming head nods from the boomer crowd in the room.
Late in the set, a guy took a recently-vacated chair near me, smiling and saying he liked my tights.
"Tell me the truth, though, do they keep you warm at all?" he asked. Truth be told, they're better than bare legs and that's the best I can say about them.
Okay, so it wasn't my typical Saturday night, but I had a ball and heard some classic story songs of love and drinking gone bad.
You want me to prove my love for you
I'm surprised that's the way you're asking me to
You've known me so long I can' understand
What kind of girl do you think I am?
The kind of girl who occasionally needs to spend a night in Loversville, that's who.
And, by the way, she could use some help getting out of this dress.
There's words you might not have expected out of this fan of new music, but I'd been wanting to hear Loversville for a while now.
So in the quest for classic country music, I headed over the river to Crossroads coffee to listen to songs by the likes of Loretta Lynn, Faron Young, Buck Owens, Conway Twitty and Roger Miller.
Foolishly, given that I'd never been to Crossroads, I under-estimated the crowd size.
Most every seat was taken when I got there but I found a couple with a spare chair and they let me use it.
Since I'm not a coffee or hot tea drinker, I went with ice cream, perhaps not the best choice on a 39 degree night, and even more so given that the guy at the counter was a musician who recognized me from his band's shows and gave me enough ice cream for three people.
But with a seat and a bowl, I was ready for whatever was next.
"Okay, it's country time," singer Cassandra said by way of getting the ball rolling, starting with Glen Campbell's "Try a Little Kindness."
Now that's what I'm talking about: a singer/guitarist, bass player, drummer and pedal steel/fiddle player.
Glen was followed by the classic Hank Williams' tune, "Your Cheatin' Heart" ("Everybody knows that one, it's a universal thing"), and Dwight Yoakum's "Close Up the Honky Tonks" in short order.
Although I don't much go out for country music, every song's a story, so it's a lot like going to Secretly Y'All, Tell Me a Story except the stories are all about drinking and relationships.
You know, life.
By the third song, it was standing room only and people came in saying either they loved this band or they'd been trying to catch this band.
Midway through "Crazy Arms," Cassandra smiled beatifically and said, "Isn't that pretty?" about the pedal steel solo.
If the music was "purdy," the song titles were appropriately dire, like "I'm Down to My Last Cigarette," a crisis I've never known.
They did one original ("We made this one up and it's kind of autobiographical"), "Independent Woman," which contained my favorite lyric of the entire evening.
I sure could use a hand getting out of this dress.
True story.
As they were finishing that instant classic, in walked a woman who was immediately called to the stage.
"This lovely woman is Octavia, who used to play bass in this band," Cassandra explained. "Until she was stolen away by the drummer's best friend. How's that for a soap opera?"
Octavia did several songs with the band, songs like "Walking the Dog" and "Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down" but it was "You're Out of Time" that had the best lyrics.
I said baby, baby, baby, you're out of time
Yes, you are left out, yes you are
I said you're left out of there without a doubt
Cause baby, baby, baby, you're out of time
You can't come back and be the first in line
No, sir, mister, you'll have to wait your turn.
There was a run of Loretta Lynn songs, including "Farther to Go," which Cassandra said, "She wrote it and no one else but us ever covered it."
While the band took a break to get alcohol, because how can you play this music without it, a young man named Cole came up and played Cassandra's guitar.
Doing all sad songs - "House of the Rising Sun," "Hallelujah" and "A Broken Heart is Blind" - he captivated a crowd old enough to be his parents if not grandparents.
Loversville came back with the best song title of the evening, "Grits Ain't Groceries" and after singing it, Cassandra said, "Grits ain't groceries, eggs ain't poultry, I don't know what that means except he really loves her."
By then I knew there are only two options in classic country music, either it's love or it's heartbreak, no in-between.
Almost as good was "It's the Bottle Talking," with lines like, "But it's the bottle talking when you say you're mine. It's the bottle talking that makes the love light shine. But your heart is as empty as the bottles in the wine."
Wait, country types drink bubbly?
Between songs as the band tried to decide which song to play next, Cassandra would throw out pearls like, "George Jones! Boy, did he leave the world a better place."
A couple of the covers they did were kind of surprising, like when she said, "We're going to do a Ramones song written by the Seeds."
Whoa, what?
Actually, they did a fine version of "Can't Seem to Make You Mine" with a killer pedal steel accompaniment that I doubt Joey Ramone could have imagined.
The other was the Rolling Stones' "Time is On My Side," which got a lot of affirming head nods from the boomer crowd in the room.
Late in the set, a guy took a recently-vacated chair near me, smiling and saying he liked my tights.
"Tell me the truth, though, do they keep you warm at all?" he asked. Truth be told, they're better than bare legs and that's the best I can say about them.
Okay, so it wasn't my typical Saturday night, but I had a ball and heard some classic story songs of love and drinking gone bad.
You want me to prove my love for you
I'm surprised that's the way you're asking me to
You've known me so long I can' understand
What kind of girl do you think I am?
The kind of girl who occasionally needs to spend a night in Loversville, that's who.
And, by the way, she could use some help getting out of this dress.
Saturday, November 30, 2013
Funny How Time Flies
I got the memo: it was small business Saturday.
With limited funds, I couldn't do a lot to support the cause, but I did what I could.
That meant a walk to Carytown, five plus miles there and back, to pick up a shoe being repaired at Mitchem's and observe capitalism in action.
It was a zoo.
Traffic barely crawled, the sidewalks were jam-packed and all I could hope was that all those independent stores were making bank today.
But you can be sure that once I procured my shoe, I escaped as quickly as possible.
Turning south to escape the hullabaloo of Cary Street, I was greeted by the sound of bells and horse hooves clopping as a holiday-decorated horse and carriage headed down Idlewood.
Nice seasonal touch.
Returning to Cary just in time to score a chocolate-frosted doughnut from Dixie, I headed east where I was surprised to see two artists working on a street art mural near Stafford Street.
Curious about why they were still painting at this point, I crossed the street to ask.
Seems there were a couple of unfinished sections of wall and they'd been given the chance to do something about that.
"This is our third weekend working on it. So now we're out here in the dead of winter, well, I guess the dead of fall, but it feels like winter, finishing up finally," one told me.
A foursome walked by and complimented her on her piece, saying it looked like a quilt and she smiled broadly as if she wasn't freezing with a paintbrush in her hand on the shady side of the street.
An unexpected art bonus.
Further on, a favorite bartender jogged past, waving and saying hi as we uncharacteristically saw each other in broad daylight.
In what seemed like no time at all, I was back in J-Ward where we also have small businesses in need of support.
This was more fun because it involved music.
Local band My Darling Fury (a brilliant band name if you ask me) was playing at Steady Sounds as part of Black Saturday/Record store day or maybe just because they frequently host bands on Saturday afternoons.
Here was my chance to support a local business and hear live music.
The first surprise was that the performance started right on time, a rarity in record store shows, but MDF began playing before I even got started looking through the record bins.
It was at least my third or fourth time seeing the band and I like these guys a lot.
In the casual atmosphere of Steady Sounds, the crowd was practically on top of them, but in a good way.
Some people continued to browse the stacks but eventually they were won over by the sound.
I recognized several of the songs like "Friendly Parasite" and "Spilled Milk" and laughed when during "Perfectly Mad," drummer Joel called out "guitar solo!" to alert us what was coming up.
Midway through their set, Todd, whose upright bass playing adds immeasurably to MDF's sound, suggested to the others that they do "Head Over Heels," and Danny claimed he didn't know the lyrics.
Conveniently, Joel had them in a zip-lock bag so with that instantly-recognizable (at least to me) intro, they launched into the 28-year old nugget as Steady Sounds owner Marty looked over at me grinning.
They did a really excellent version, and let's be real here, plenty of singers don't have the range for that song, but it took some of the audience a while before they recognized it, understandable since they hadn't been alive in 1985.
Singer Danny didn't want to do "Blots in the Margins" but bowed to band peer pressure and then finished with "The End of the World," which has been their closer, appropriately enough, every time I've seen them.
My music itch scratched, I finally got a chance to do some record shopping, picking up three albums for Christmas presents and doing my small part for small business Saturday while the band packed up.
It occurred to me that if My Darling Fury wanted to cover a Tears for Fears song, they'd have the perfect set-ender with "Goodnight Song."
Here on the stage the time has come
With the strains of "be my angel" of rock in two four
Time may keep alive that old swan song
That we've been playing forever
Till the time may be right to say goodbye
But then I remembered that my responsibility on this Saturday was to spend money, not offer set list advice to strangers, so I took my records and walked home.
You have to admit, 'tis the season for an angel of rock in two four...just saying.
With limited funds, I couldn't do a lot to support the cause, but I did what I could.
That meant a walk to Carytown, five plus miles there and back, to pick up a shoe being repaired at Mitchem's and observe capitalism in action.
It was a zoo.
Traffic barely crawled, the sidewalks were jam-packed and all I could hope was that all those independent stores were making bank today.
But you can be sure that once I procured my shoe, I escaped as quickly as possible.
Turning south to escape the hullabaloo of Cary Street, I was greeted by the sound of bells and horse hooves clopping as a holiday-decorated horse and carriage headed down Idlewood.
Nice seasonal touch.
Returning to Cary just in time to score a chocolate-frosted doughnut from Dixie, I headed east where I was surprised to see two artists working on a street art mural near Stafford Street.
Curious about why they were still painting at this point, I crossed the street to ask.
Seems there were a couple of unfinished sections of wall and they'd been given the chance to do something about that.
"This is our third weekend working on it. So now we're out here in the dead of winter, well, I guess the dead of fall, but it feels like winter, finishing up finally," one told me.
A foursome walked by and complimented her on her piece, saying it looked like a quilt and she smiled broadly as if she wasn't freezing with a paintbrush in her hand on the shady side of the street.
An unexpected art bonus.
Further on, a favorite bartender jogged past, waving and saying hi as we uncharacteristically saw each other in broad daylight.
In what seemed like no time at all, I was back in J-Ward where we also have small businesses in need of support.
This was more fun because it involved music.
Local band My Darling Fury (a brilliant band name if you ask me) was playing at Steady Sounds as part of Black Saturday/Record store day or maybe just because they frequently host bands on Saturday afternoons.
Here was my chance to support a local business and hear live music.
The first surprise was that the performance started right on time, a rarity in record store shows, but MDF began playing before I even got started looking through the record bins.
It was at least my third or fourth time seeing the band and I like these guys a lot.
In the casual atmosphere of Steady Sounds, the crowd was practically on top of them, but in a good way.
Some people continued to browse the stacks but eventually they were won over by the sound.
I recognized several of the songs like "Friendly Parasite" and "Spilled Milk" and laughed when during "Perfectly Mad," drummer Joel called out "guitar solo!" to alert us what was coming up.
Midway through their set, Todd, whose upright bass playing adds immeasurably to MDF's sound, suggested to the others that they do "Head Over Heels," and Danny claimed he didn't know the lyrics.
Conveniently, Joel had them in a zip-lock bag so with that instantly-recognizable (at least to me) intro, they launched into the 28-year old nugget as Steady Sounds owner Marty looked over at me grinning.
They did a really excellent version, and let's be real here, plenty of singers don't have the range for that song, but it took some of the audience a while before they recognized it, understandable since they hadn't been alive in 1985.
Singer Danny didn't want to do "Blots in the Margins" but bowed to band peer pressure and then finished with "The End of the World," which has been their closer, appropriately enough, every time I've seen them.
My music itch scratched, I finally got a chance to do some record shopping, picking up three albums for Christmas presents and doing my small part for small business Saturday while the band packed up.
It occurred to me that if My Darling Fury wanted to cover a Tears for Fears song, they'd have the perfect set-ender with "Goodnight Song."
Here on the stage the time has come
With the strains of "be my angel" of rock in two four
Time may keep alive that old swan song
That we've been playing forever
Till the time may be right to say goodbye
But then I remembered that my responsibility on this Saturday was to spend money, not offer set list advice to strangers, so I took my records and walked home.
You have to admit, 'tis the season for an angel of rock in two four...just saying.
Wet and Under the Tide
I'd been looking forward to this since September when I bought my ticket.
The Glaswegian band Chvrches, a trio that straddles '70s disco and '80s new wave with some of the best-written music that ever set a booty to shaking, was playing the National.
I couldn't find anyone interested in going with me, but as it turned out, that didn't matter.
Arriving ten minutes before the opening band, I found a drummer friend on bar duty at the very chilly front bar and from him got Cazadores and conversation.
Moving inside, I found far more people already there than usual, a good sign.
Opener Wet from Brooklyn was tough to categorize because while the trio's music was fairly minimal (think the XX), lead singer Kelly had an exquisite and soulful voice she could use in almost any way she wanted.
All their songs were short and most ended abruptly, but when she was wailing, the crowd was entranced.
After their second song, she said, "This is our second show in Virginia and this one's already way more fun!"
No surprise there since they played the Norva a couple of nights ago and that's always an unpleasant crowd, no matter what the band.
Fact it, they were so interesting sounding with songs like "U Da Best" and the lead singer's note-bending voice, we didn't really have any choice but to respond.
Baby, you're the best
Figure out the rest
Maybe it's a test
Think we better quit while we're ahead
And in what felt like a hot minute, they finished. A friend walked by, stopped and said, "A seventeen-minute set, that must be a record!"
Maybe they were annoyed by the crowd.
I was ready to judge them based on the idiots in front of me when a girl looked at her phone and read what the guy next to her had just posted.
"You stole my words!" she accused him."I was going to write 'great music, great friends' but you just did!"
She paused, unsure how to handle this catastrophe. "I'll just share yours now."
Give. Me. Strength.
Fortunately, I turned to my left when I overheard a guy say he had driven down from Philly for this show.
Now that's a music fan I want to meet. He and his date were debating between driving back tonight or staying with friends in Washington. I voted for the latter.
The couple next to me jumped in, too, and, lo and behold, they were from South Africa, now living in Church Hill.
He came here for his ph.D. and she followed, obviously smitten enough to change continents for him.
Once they found out I'd visited their motherland ("We never meet people who've actually been"), we became fast friends.
Talking about wine, he told me he'd been amazed to find that the CVS in the Bottom carried the South African wine Two Oceans, although, as he put it, "That's a shit wine we'd use to mix with Coke."
I assured him there were restaurants in Richmond who carry South African wines that do not require a mixer.
Like me, they were thrilled to pieces to be seeing Chvrches, so we lined up along the sound booth as the lights went down.
By then the crowd was dense, if not sold out then very, very close to it.
The Scottish trio came out and wasted no time playing their one album's worth of music against a pulsating backdrop of lights.
They began with "We Sink" and it was like they'd switched the on button for the dance party to begin.
The only problem was that there were so many people, it was tough to move much, not that we didn't do the best we could.
Singer Lauren was a bundle of energy whether singing or dancing and framed by Martin on synths/samples and Iain on guitar and keyboard.
After she stated the obvious ("This is our first time in Richmond"), they barreled through pitch-perfect renditions of songs that ensured the dance party never wavered.
"Thanks, guys," she said as nonchalantly as if we'd held a door open for her or something. "Hands up if you're feeling a little post-Thanksgiving full tonight. You! Put that away! I wanted you all to share, but we didn't need to see that."
My post-Thanksgiving feeling was I was thankful I hadn't seen whatever she had.
I loved hearing one of my favorite songs, "Night Sky," for Martin's backing vocals in a thick Scottish burr.
Saying that this was their fourth (!) tour in 2013, Lauren thanked the crowd again for coming out, as if there could have been anything nearly as much fun going on tonight.
"Recover," the fabulous pop song that several DJs have already remixed, sent the already dance feverish crowd into overdrive, making me wish there had been about 200 fewer people in there, but dancing nonetheless.
During another of my favorites, "Tether," the crowd sang out the chorus as if one cue.
I feel incapable of seeing the end
I feel incapable of saying it's over
"This is f*cking amazing," Martin said of our mass singalong.
Even better, he finally came out from behind his knob-turning station to roar out "Under the Tide" while Lauren took a back seat.
Her voice is a big part of the band's appeal, I admit, but his thickly-accented singing and killer dance moves during the chorus made me wish he had more lead vocals. Maybe on the second album.
"We're gonna play one more song," Lauren warned us like you do a small child so we could start preparing, "and let you get on with your Friday night cause there must be lots of fun things to do. I don't know what they are because I don't live here."
Listening to them play the bouncy "The Mother We Share," I think most of the crowd was already thinking about the encore.
Given that this is a band who just put out their first album in September, this was a room full of uber-fans not ready to let go of the real thing after listening non-stop to recorded music since it first began leaking out into the ether.
We made enough noise for them to come back in short order.
"Holy f*cking shit," Martin yelled. "This is my favorite show of the year!"
Lauren pointed to a child in the front row and chastised Martin for his language, as if a Scot could refrain when excited. "In context, it's fine," she reminded him.
"By the Throat" with its swirling synths and dark lyrics was the climax of the evening, thrilling as we listened and danced to it and leaving us worn out and already missing it when it ended.
All that's golden is never real
And I won't play fair with you this time
All that's golden is never so
And I'll be thankful when you let go
When the lights came up, I blinked at my new friends, the ones with whom I'd been dancing up against all evening.
Raving about what we'd just experienced, they finished by asking for my e-mail so we could stay in touch.
Extending his arms, the ph.D. candidate and his beloved gathered me in. "South African love hug!" he said, encircling us both. Tethered to strangers and set to a stellar Scottish soundtrack.
I'm with Martin. F*cking amazing night.
The Glaswegian band Chvrches, a trio that straddles '70s disco and '80s new wave with some of the best-written music that ever set a booty to shaking, was playing the National.
I couldn't find anyone interested in going with me, but as it turned out, that didn't matter.
Arriving ten minutes before the opening band, I found a drummer friend on bar duty at the very chilly front bar and from him got Cazadores and conversation.
Moving inside, I found far more people already there than usual, a good sign.
Opener Wet from Brooklyn was tough to categorize because while the trio's music was fairly minimal (think the XX), lead singer Kelly had an exquisite and soulful voice she could use in almost any way she wanted.
All their songs were short and most ended abruptly, but when she was wailing, the crowd was entranced.
After their second song, she said, "This is our second show in Virginia and this one's already way more fun!"
No surprise there since they played the Norva a couple of nights ago and that's always an unpleasant crowd, no matter what the band.
Fact it, they were so interesting sounding with songs like "U Da Best" and the lead singer's note-bending voice, we didn't really have any choice but to respond.
Baby, you're the best
Figure out the rest
Maybe it's a test
Think we better quit while we're ahead
And in what felt like a hot minute, they finished. A friend walked by, stopped and said, "A seventeen-minute set, that must be a record!"
Maybe they were annoyed by the crowd.
I was ready to judge them based on the idiots in front of me when a girl looked at her phone and read what the guy next to her had just posted.
"You stole my words!" she accused him."I was going to write 'great music, great friends' but you just did!"
She paused, unsure how to handle this catastrophe. "I'll just share yours now."
Give. Me. Strength.
Fortunately, I turned to my left when I overheard a guy say he had driven down from Philly for this show.
Now that's a music fan I want to meet. He and his date were debating between driving back tonight or staying with friends in Washington. I voted for the latter.
The couple next to me jumped in, too, and, lo and behold, they were from South Africa, now living in Church Hill.
He came here for his ph.D. and she followed, obviously smitten enough to change continents for him.
Once they found out I'd visited their motherland ("We never meet people who've actually been"), we became fast friends.
Talking about wine, he told me he'd been amazed to find that the CVS in the Bottom carried the South African wine Two Oceans, although, as he put it, "That's a shit wine we'd use to mix with Coke."
I assured him there were restaurants in Richmond who carry South African wines that do not require a mixer.
Like me, they were thrilled to pieces to be seeing Chvrches, so we lined up along the sound booth as the lights went down.
By then the crowd was dense, if not sold out then very, very close to it.
The Scottish trio came out and wasted no time playing their one album's worth of music against a pulsating backdrop of lights.
They began with "We Sink" and it was like they'd switched the on button for the dance party to begin.
The only problem was that there were so many people, it was tough to move much, not that we didn't do the best we could.
Singer Lauren was a bundle of energy whether singing or dancing and framed by Martin on synths/samples and Iain on guitar and keyboard.
After she stated the obvious ("This is our first time in Richmond"), they barreled through pitch-perfect renditions of songs that ensured the dance party never wavered.
"Thanks, guys," she said as nonchalantly as if we'd held a door open for her or something. "Hands up if you're feeling a little post-Thanksgiving full tonight. You! Put that away! I wanted you all to share, but we didn't need to see that."
My post-Thanksgiving feeling was I was thankful I hadn't seen whatever she had.
I loved hearing one of my favorite songs, "Night Sky," for Martin's backing vocals in a thick Scottish burr.
Saying that this was their fourth (!) tour in 2013, Lauren thanked the crowd again for coming out, as if there could have been anything nearly as much fun going on tonight.
"Recover," the fabulous pop song that several DJs have already remixed, sent the already dance feverish crowd into overdrive, making me wish there had been about 200 fewer people in there, but dancing nonetheless.
During another of my favorites, "Tether," the crowd sang out the chorus as if one cue.
I feel incapable of seeing the end
I feel incapable of saying it's over
"This is f*cking amazing," Martin said of our mass singalong.
Even better, he finally came out from behind his knob-turning station to roar out "Under the Tide" while Lauren took a back seat.
Her voice is a big part of the band's appeal, I admit, but his thickly-accented singing and killer dance moves during the chorus made me wish he had more lead vocals. Maybe on the second album.
"We're gonna play one more song," Lauren warned us like you do a small child so we could start preparing, "and let you get on with your Friday night cause there must be lots of fun things to do. I don't know what they are because I don't live here."
Listening to them play the bouncy "The Mother We Share," I think most of the crowd was already thinking about the encore.
Given that this is a band who just put out their first album in September, this was a room full of uber-fans not ready to let go of the real thing after listening non-stop to recorded music since it first began leaking out into the ether.
We made enough noise for them to come back in short order.
"Holy f*cking shit," Martin yelled. "This is my favorite show of the year!"
Lauren pointed to a child in the front row and chastised Martin for his language, as if a Scot could refrain when excited. "In context, it's fine," she reminded him.
"By the Throat" with its swirling synths and dark lyrics was the climax of the evening, thrilling as we listened and danced to it and leaving us worn out and already missing it when it ended.
All that's golden is never real
And I won't play fair with you this time
All that's golden is never so
And I'll be thankful when you let go
When the lights came up, I blinked at my new friends, the ones with whom I'd been dancing up against all evening.
Raving about what we'd just experienced, they finished by asking for my e-mail so we could stay in touch.
Extending his arms, the ph.D. candidate and his beloved gathered me in. "South African love hug!" he said, encircling us both. Tethered to strangers and set to a stellar Scottish soundtrack.
I'm with Martin. F*cking amazing night.
Friday, November 29, 2013
Over Hill and Dale
Black Friday, not really my thing.
I hate shopping any time of the year, much less on a day when you can get knifed in a Walmart parking lot over a parking space.
So looking for something as far removed from that madness as possible, I came across the best possible antidote: a farm tour.
Lavender Fields Herb Farm, an organic farm less than thirteen miles from J-Ward, was any easy drive but a world away.
Since it was a walking tour, I'd followed directions to dress accordingly but we began inside the little cafe where the rest of the group, a foursome just finishing up their farm ice cream (whether they were having honey or lavender, I didn't ask) was already waiting for us.
If I hadn't still been so full from my traditional Black Friday turkey and stuffing sandwich, I'd have had some ice cream myself.
Nicole, one of the owners, began the tour with some family history about the house and property with all kinds of show and tell.
Oh, sure, she had an array of arrowheads and a very old shovel used for digging latrines, but she also had old belt buckles (both an officer's and an enlisted man's), old lead bullets and uniform buttons.
We heard about the Richmond Ashland trolley line that ran right in front of their farmhouse, how it took her husband to school and his father to work. The farm's been in her husband's family for something like eight generations.
After explaining how the barn's site had been chosen (high, flat and near water), she got up to lead us on the walking part of the tour.
That's when the ice cream-eating contingent began wavering, with one woman choosing to opt out even after she was informed it was not that far - 2/10 of a mile.
Come on guys, what's a walking tour without walking? The other three said they'd catch up with us.
Nicole and I didn't let their inertia stop us and she led me down a very steep hill toward a bend in the Chickahominy river, running high with the recent rain, talking about how General Lee had crossed near here despite the extreme difficulty of crossing wagons and horses given the vertical topography of the land.
She went on to tell me that we were on the Henrico side and directly across the water was Hanover County, where her two kids sometimes play within sight of their farm.
She showed me 200-year old beech trees including one with its bark eaten off on one side almost to three feet high, but the other side of the tree went vertically down to the river so the beaver hadn't been able to get to that side of the bark.
"That probably saved the tree," she said in her delightful Australian accent.
Curious about how she'd ended up here sounding like that, I asked and got a love story.
She'd been on vacation in New Orleans and so had her now-husband and they'd met on Bourbon Street.
Love, marriage and life in Sydney followed until she told him she'd always wanted to live in the U.S.
Now they're happily ever after raising thousands of organic seedlings and selling them to places like Ellwood Thompson and Whole Foods.
She showed me some of their beehives, from which they make honey, and their newest greenhouse, built by her husband from a kit.
Since he finished building it, he's had extra times on his hands, to the point that the kids finally asked her why Daddy was around so much.
Forget the kids, my first comment was about how great it is to have a partner who can build and fix things, leading to a woman-to-woman chat about how appealing that trait is in a man, at least to the two of us.
We wandered the 37 acres for a good, long while before heading back toward the shop and only then did she look at me and say, "They never caught up with us, did they?"
Nope, they never did but I, for one, was glad they hadn't since I probably wouldn't have gotten all that great girl talk about her husband and her farm life if they had.
"We started with a three to five year plan," she told me laughing. "And now I tell him we're on a 35 year plan with two kids and a farm."
Well, you seem really happy about it all, I told her and she agreed that she's right where she wants to be, loving her life.
I like a woman with an appreciation for how to do Black Friday right.
I hate shopping any time of the year, much less on a day when you can get knifed in a Walmart parking lot over a parking space.
So looking for something as far removed from that madness as possible, I came across the best possible antidote: a farm tour.
Lavender Fields Herb Farm, an organic farm less than thirteen miles from J-Ward, was any easy drive but a world away.
Since it was a walking tour, I'd followed directions to dress accordingly but we began inside the little cafe where the rest of the group, a foursome just finishing up their farm ice cream (whether they were having honey or lavender, I didn't ask) was already waiting for us.
If I hadn't still been so full from my traditional Black Friday turkey and stuffing sandwich, I'd have had some ice cream myself.
Nicole, one of the owners, began the tour with some family history about the house and property with all kinds of show and tell.
Oh, sure, she had an array of arrowheads and a very old shovel used for digging latrines, but she also had old belt buckles (both an officer's and an enlisted man's), old lead bullets and uniform buttons.
We heard about the Richmond Ashland trolley line that ran right in front of their farmhouse, how it took her husband to school and his father to work. The farm's been in her husband's family for something like eight generations.
After explaining how the barn's site had been chosen (high, flat and near water), she got up to lead us on the walking part of the tour.
That's when the ice cream-eating contingent began wavering, with one woman choosing to opt out even after she was informed it was not that far - 2/10 of a mile.
Come on guys, what's a walking tour without walking? The other three said they'd catch up with us.
Nicole and I didn't let their inertia stop us and she led me down a very steep hill toward a bend in the Chickahominy river, running high with the recent rain, talking about how General Lee had crossed near here despite the extreme difficulty of crossing wagons and horses given the vertical topography of the land.
She went on to tell me that we were on the Henrico side and directly across the water was Hanover County, where her two kids sometimes play within sight of their farm.
She showed me 200-year old beech trees including one with its bark eaten off on one side almost to three feet high, but the other side of the tree went vertically down to the river so the beaver hadn't been able to get to that side of the bark.
"That probably saved the tree," she said in her delightful Australian accent.
Curious about how she'd ended up here sounding like that, I asked and got a love story.
She'd been on vacation in New Orleans and so had her now-husband and they'd met on Bourbon Street.
Love, marriage and life in Sydney followed until she told him she'd always wanted to live in the U.S.
Now they're happily ever after raising thousands of organic seedlings and selling them to places like Ellwood Thompson and Whole Foods.
She showed me some of their beehives, from which they make honey, and their newest greenhouse, built by her husband from a kit.
Since he finished building it, he's had extra times on his hands, to the point that the kids finally asked her why Daddy was around so much.
Forget the kids, my first comment was about how great it is to have a partner who can build and fix things, leading to a woman-to-woman chat about how appealing that trait is in a man, at least to the two of us.
We wandered the 37 acres for a good, long while before heading back toward the shop and only then did she look at me and say, "They never caught up with us, did they?"
Nope, they never did but I, for one, was glad they hadn't since I probably wouldn't have gotten all that great girl talk about her husband and her farm life if they had.
"We started with a three to five year plan," she told me laughing. "And now I tell him we're on a 35 year plan with two kids and a farm."
Well, you seem really happy about it all, I told her and she agreed that she's right where she wants to be, loving her life.
I like a woman with an appreciation for how to do Black Friday right.
Praise Be
If the field at Abner Clay Park is filled with weekend warriors playing a Turkey Bowl, it must be Thanksgiving Day.
The other clue that the annual day of gluttony has arrived is that my neighborhood is deserted.
Wednesday evening I was in the Museum District and parking was impossible to find. Apparently all the turkey-serving grandmothers live there and all the starving students live here.
And there's really no other day that I begin by frying up a pound of hot breakfast sausage to go with the multiple sticks of butter that go into making stuffing, this year my only contribution to the big meal that defines the day...and leaves my apartment smelling delicious for hours.
Having a glass of wine at a not-so neighborhood bar, I met a couple who stopped for a snack before hitting the road for the Outer Banks to meet up with friends.
The time spent eating their mini-feast - smoked trout, housemade pickles, turkey, crackers- both fortified them and gave us a chance to get acquainted.
Because they lived in Washington and because that's my hometown, we found lots to discuss.
They live in Shaw, so they recommended their favorite Ethiopian restaurant. I told them I'm on my way to D.C. Sunday and they wanted to hear what my plans were.
Eat, art, eat, art, eat, art... they got the idea and we got off on a tangent about the under-appreciated Building Museum, one of their favorites and one of my destinations Monday.
I met a policeman who claimed he didn't like yams but gobbled them up for the first time today, acknowledging that perhaps it was the simple preparation that won him over.
There was a woman who started talking about how bad Virginia wines were until a friend (who, after years of wearing glasses, doesn't anymore and so I'm still getting used to seeing his face naked) with superior Virginia wine knowledge started a small campaign to inform her, leading off with Cardinal Point "Green" as a good entry point.
Since the last time I was at Cardinal Point, after doing the tasting, my date and I chose "Green" as the bottle we bought and took outside to enjoy on that sunny afternoon, I seconded his recommendation.
And of course, I ate a fabulous turkey meal, made all the more so because I didn't have to cook it; making stuffing doesn't count because it's really just an excuse to pick at the sausage and onion cooking in the pan.
As for what I'm thankful for, it's probably the same things we were all appreciating today.
Family and friends. Health. Sunny skies and occasional rainy days. Music and art, theater, poetry and anything else that entertains and/or makes me feel. Random conversations with strangers...and non-strangers. A funny man who can crack up an eccentric woman.
To paraphrase Woody Allen, I am thankful for laughter, except whenmilk wine comes out my nose.
The other clue that the annual day of gluttony has arrived is that my neighborhood is deserted.
Wednesday evening I was in the Museum District and parking was impossible to find. Apparently all the turkey-serving grandmothers live there and all the starving students live here.
And there's really no other day that I begin by frying up a pound of hot breakfast sausage to go with the multiple sticks of butter that go into making stuffing, this year my only contribution to the big meal that defines the day...and leaves my apartment smelling delicious for hours.
Having a glass of wine at a not-so neighborhood bar, I met a couple who stopped for a snack before hitting the road for the Outer Banks to meet up with friends.
The time spent eating their mini-feast - smoked trout, housemade pickles, turkey, crackers- both fortified them and gave us a chance to get acquainted.
Because they lived in Washington and because that's my hometown, we found lots to discuss.
They live in Shaw, so they recommended their favorite Ethiopian restaurant. I told them I'm on my way to D.C. Sunday and they wanted to hear what my plans were.
Eat, art, eat, art, eat, art... they got the idea and we got off on a tangent about the under-appreciated Building Museum, one of their favorites and one of my destinations Monday.
I met a policeman who claimed he didn't like yams but gobbled them up for the first time today, acknowledging that perhaps it was the simple preparation that won him over.
There was a woman who started talking about how bad Virginia wines were until a friend (who, after years of wearing glasses, doesn't anymore and so I'm still getting used to seeing his face naked) with superior Virginia wine knowledge started a small campaign to inform her, leading off with Cardinal Point "Green" as a good entry point.
Since the last time I was at Cardinal Point, after doing the tasting, my date and I chose "Green" as the bottle we bought and took outside to enjoy on that sunny afternoon, I seconded his recommendation.
And of course, I ate a fabulous turkey meal, made all the more so because I didn't have to cook it; making stuffing doesn't count because it's really just an excuse to pick at the sausage and onion cooking in the pan.
As for what I'm thankful for, it's probably the same things we were all appreciating today.
Family and friends. Health. Sunny skies and occasional rainy days. Music and art, theater, poetry and anything else that entertains and/or makes me feel. Random conversations with strangers...and non-strangers. A funny man who can crack up an eccentric woman.
To paraphrase Woody Allen, I am thankful for laughter, except when
Thursday, November 28, 2013
First, Last, Everything
Ah, yes, the annual Thanksgiving eve get-together with the city-bound.
I got the e-mail this morning, inviting me for what sounded like the typical Italian Christmas Eve meal - all kinds of seafood- and since it also promised, "reds, whites and a bubbly," I RSVP'd yes indeed.
The evening began with music from a Buffalo Springfield box set while we marshaled our forces and decided how to best attack preparing this meal.
My charming host began with the most time-specific wine choice for the next few weeks, a Georges Duboeuf beaujolias nouveau to celebrate the harvest.
That got us through the Stephen Stills covers of Neil Young songs, into the Graham Beck Brut Rose and through the shrimp cocktail, lobster tails, crab legs and basmati rice.
My charming hostess told me how she'd seen a blast from the past today: the Thanksgiving episode of the "Beverly Hillbillies" from 1963.
They ate on the pool table, FYI, she said.
It was four hours in when we retired to the living room to continue sipping and discuss life that I made the mistake of yawning.
"Don't you dare," my hostess instructed firmly. "Ordinarily, you'd just be going to Balliceaux now."
She did have a point. It was then that the host decided to put on "The Velvet Underground and Nico," the banana album, saying that he wanted to play a song for me.
The grand irony was that I'd never heard the album start to finish, so even after he'd played "Femme Fatale" for me, I insisted on hearing the rest of it.
Interestingly enough, my hostess had never heard it, either, but then she's a fan of '40s and '50s music, so there are a lot of '60s and '70s bands she doesn't know.
But after a few songs, and she did admit that Nico must have sounded like a revolutionary vocalist for the time (1967), she rolled her eyes at me as I rhapsodized about finally hearing this piece of musical history.
You have to remember, I reminded her, this band and this unique sound inspired legions of people to start bands.
And she, out of step with much past 1979, said, "And now they just sound like everybody else!"
Talk about nailing it on the head, but what an evolution that is.
When "Banana" finished, my hostess requested something from the disco era and the host obliged with "Saturday Night Fever."
Overplayed? Yes, to death. Listened to much recently? Nope, definitely not. Evocative of a very young period? Without doubt.
The host was not the disco fan we were, but totally got into it when "Tragedy" came on and picked up a nearby kazoo (noteworthy in and of itself) and played kazoo accompaniment for the rest of the song. And pretty damn well, too.
We challenged him to reach out to that other side of our impressionable young selves and he responded admirably with Joni Mitchell's "Hits" (as opposed to "Misses"), starting with a song from "Court and Spark," a high point for both her poetic songwriting about youth and the perfection of her voice.
I was a free man in Paris
I felt unfettered and alive
Nobody was calling me up for favors
No one's future to decide
You know I'd go back there tomorrow
But for the work I've taken on
Stoking the starmaker machine
Behind the popular song
"Stoking the starmaker machine" may be one the of the most well-written musical phrases of 1974.
Talking about "Court and Spark" reminded my hostess that on the "Beverly Hillbillies" episode she'd just seen, Elly Mae had been given lessons of courting and sparking.
Coincidence? We didn't dwell on it.
Not sure what possible musical direction we could go in with our Lemarca Prosecco, in a masterful stroke, our host chose "Barry White's Greatest Hits," a record so worthy I also own it.
A record so satisfyingly danceable that two of us were soon dancing on the couch, at least until the host grabbed his woman and danced with her on the floor.
The other of us continued her couch dancing.
When they finished, he chided her for not wanting to dance more with him. She challenged that she didn't know how to dance.
If you're old enough to have danced to Barry White the first time, you can dance. Hell, if you can do it, you can dance.
Never tell a man who's said out loud that any night he sees you is a special night that you don't want to dance with him.
Remember Barry's advice, my dear? "I'll Do anything You Want Me To."
Second only to "Let the Music Play."
I got the e-mail this morning, inviting me for what sounded like the typical Italian Christmas Eve meal - all kinds of seafood- and since it also promised, "reds, whites and a bubbly," I RSVP'd yes indeed.
The evening began with music from a Buffalo Springfield box set while we marshaled our forces and decided how to best attack preparing this meal.
My charming host began with the most time-specific wine choice for the next few weeks, a Georges Duboeuf beaujolias nouveau to celebrate the harvest.
That got us through the Stephen Stills covers of Neil Young songs, into the Graham Beck Brut Rose and through the shrimp cocktail, lobster tails, crab legs and basmati rice.
My charming hostess told me how she'd seen a blast from the past today: the Thanksgiving episode of the "Beverly Hillbillies" from 1963.
They ate on the pool table, FYI, she said.
It was four hours in when we retired to the living room to continue sipping and discuss life that I made the mistake of yawning.
"Don't you dare," my hostess instructed firmly. "Ordinarily, you'd just be going to Balliceaux now."
She did have a point. It was then that the host decided to put on "The Velvet Underground and Nico," the banana album, saying that he wanted to play a song for me.
The grand irony was that I'd never heard the album start to finish, so even after he'd played "Femme Fatale" for me, I insisted on hearing the rest of it.
Interestingly enough, my hostess had never heard it, either, but then she's a fan of '40s and '50s music, so there are a lot of '60s and '70s bands she doesn't know.
But after a few songs, and she did admit that Nico must have sounded like a revolutionary vocalist for the time (1967), she rolled her eyes at me as I rhapsodized about finally hearing this piece of musical history.
You have to remember, I reminded her, this band and this unique sound inspired legions of people to start bands.
And she, out of step with much past 1979, said, "And now they just sound like everybody else!"
Talk about nailing it on the head, but what an evolution that is.
When "Banana" finished, my hostess requested something from the disco era and the host obliged with "Saturday Night Fever."
Overplayed? Yes, to death. Listened to much recently? Nope, definitely not. Evocative of a very young period? Without doubt.
The host was not the disco fan we were, but totally got into it when "Tragedy" came on and picked up a nearby kazoo (noteworthy in and of itself) and played kazoo accompaniment for the rest of the song. And pretty damn well, too.
We challenged him to reach out to that other side of our impressionable young selves and he responded admirably with Joni Mitchell's "Hits" (as opposed to "Misses"), starting with a song from "Court and Spark," a high point for both her poetic songwriting about youth and the perfection of her voice.
I was a free man in Paris
I felt unfettered and alive
Nobody was calling me up for favors
No one's future to decide
You know I'd go back there tomorrow
But for the work I've taken on
Stoking the starmaker machine
Behind the popular song
"Stoking the starmaker machine" may be one the of the most well-written musical phrases of 1974.
Talking about "Court and Spark" reminded my hostess that on the "Beverly Hillbillies" episode she'd just seen, Elly Mae had been given lessons of courting and sparking.
Coincidence? We didn't dwell on it.
Not sure what possible musical direction we could go in with our Lemarca Prosecco, in a masterful stroke, our host chose "Barry White's Greatest Hits," a record so worthy I also own it.
A record so satisfyingly danceable that two of us were soon dancing on the couch, at least until the host grabbed his woman and danced with her on the floor.
The other of us continued her couch dancing.
When they finished, he chided her for not wanting to dance more with him. She challenged that she didn't know how to dance.
If you're old enough to have danced to Barry White the first time, you can dance. Hell, if you can do it, you can dance.
Never tell a man who's said out loud that any night he sees you is a special night that you don't want to dance with him.
Remember Barry's advice, my dear? "I'll Do anything You Want Me To."
Second only to "Let the Music Play."
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
An Apple Butter Future
I am not a weather wimp so I walk no matter what it's like outside.
But it's even better when I have a worthy goal in sight, so when the wonderful world of Facebook (thank you, Suzanne Hall) informed me that Goat Busters would have a herd hard at work behind Bark Park today, I set out for Church Hill.
I'd been reading about the public apple orchard planned for behind the dog park up there and today there would be goats munching their way to begin clearing the land.
Dressed for the weather since a wintry mix was forecast and with umbrella in hand, I set out to see some goat-scaping.
Not sure how many people would be willing to brave the cold and wet for the sake of watching omnivores eat, I was pleasantly surprised to find a half dozen people already there when I arrived.
Several were parents with kids, not doubt lured out on this dreary day to entertain, maybe even educate a little, the young 'uns.
Personally, I was there to show my support for public orchards, a cause I've long seen a need for here, wondering why it took so long for Richmond to be ripe (ha!) for such a thing.
Philly has long had public orchards and the idea makes sense to me on so many levels - use of vacant land, means of supplying healthy food to under-served areas, environmental boon of planting more trees- that I was thrilled to see that it was finally happening in the capital city.
Today's goat demonstration was just that since the herd of 47, which included a requisite black sheep, was clearing a fenced-off area not on the site of the proposed orchard but a nearby space.
But there they were in the cold and the rain chomping away at anything and everything they could find, even occasionally standing up, front paws against a tree trunk to reach some higher leaves.
It was funny when one did that because others would notice and head over to wait for a shot at the tree too, munching on kudzu until their turn.
Included in the herd were two dogs who'd been raised since they were puppies with the goats and who, with their white coats, were almost invisible in the group.
John from the Enrichmond Foundation pointed out the flat area behind the dog park where the goats will return in the spring to clear the orchard site, a process expected to take a week.
Thanking me for coming out on this miserable day, I thanked him and the group who'd conceived of this brilliant project, telling him I admired places like Philly who have been dedicated to public orchards for years.
"My wife's from Philadelphia!" he said, lighting up like I'd said the magic words. "Yes, they do a great job with public orchards."
As does Boston. As usual, Richmond's a little late to the party, but here we are finally doing it and I for one am wildly excited about that.
Since it can take up to seven years for apple trees to produce fruit, we need to get as many trees planted as we can and think about additional sites.
Naturally, I vote for Jackson Ward, for a possible second orchard.
Walking back from Chimborazo, the promised wintry mix began pinging off my umbrella.
"Pop Pop, it's hailing!" a little boy with a bucket called out excitedly from the fenced-in front yard of a corner house.
I'm willing to bet the goats continued eating right through the wintry mix.
Like me, they're no weather wimps. We might also have hearty appetites in common.
As for what that one black sheep and I have in common, you can draw your own conclusions.
But it's even better when I have a worthy goal in sight, so when the wonderful world of Facebook (thank you, Suzanne Hall) informed me that Goat Busters would have a herd hard at work behind Bark Park today, I set out for Church Hill.
I'd been reading about the public apple orchard planned for behind the dog park up there and today there would be goats munching their way to begin clearing the land.
Dressed for the weather since a wintry mix was forecast and with umbrella in hand, I set out to see some goat-scaping.
Not sure how many people would be willing to brave the cold and wet for the sake of watching omnivores eat, I was pleasantly surprised to find a half dozen people already there when I arrived.
Several were parents with kids, not doubt lured out on this dreary day to entertain, maybe even educate a little, the young 'uns.
Personally, I was there to show my support for public orchards, a cause I've long seen a need for here, wondering why it took so long for Richmond to be ripe (ha!) for such a thing.
Philly has long had public orchards and the idea makes sense to me on so many levels - use of vacant land, means of supplying healthy food to under-served areas, environmental boon of planting more trees- that I was thrilled to see that it was finally happening in the capital city.
Today's goat demonstration was just that since the herd of 47, which included a requisite black sheep, was clearing a fenced-off area not on the site of the proposed orchard but a nearby space.
But there they were in the cold and the rain chomping away at anything and everything they could find, even occasionally standing up, front paws against a tree trunk to reach some higher leaves.
It was funny when one did that because others would notice and head over to wait for a shot at the tree too, munching on kudzu until their turn.
Included in the herd were two dogs who'd been raised since they were puppies with the goats and who, with their white coats, were almost invisible in the group.
John from the Enrichmond Foundation pointed out the flat area behind the dog park where the goats will return in the spring to clear the orchard site, a process expected to take a week.
Thanking me for coming out on this miserable day, I thanked him and the group who'd conceived of this brilliant project, telling him I admired places like Philly who have been dedicated to public orchards for years.
"My wife's from Philadelphia!" he said, lighting up like I'd said the magic words. "Yes, they do a great job with public orchards."
As does Boston. As usual, Richmond's a little late to the party, but here we are finally doing it and I for one am wildly excited about that.
Since it can take up to seven years for apple trees to produce fruit, we need to get as many trees planted as we can and think about additional sites.
Naturally, I vote for Jackson Ward, for a possible second orchard.
Walking back from Chimborazo, the promised wintry mix began pinging off my umbrella.
"Pop Pop, it's hailing!" a little boy with a bucket called out excitedly from the fenced-in front yard of a corner house.
I'm willing to bet the goats continued eating right through the wintry mix.
Like me, they're no weather wimps. We might also have hearty appetites in common.
As for what that one black sheep and I have in common, you can draw your own conclusions.
Anniversary Song
Four years ago, in an alcohol-free church basement, the Listening Room was born.
I know because I was there that night, here, and thrilled to have found a place where music trumped blather.
Tonight was the fourth anniversary Listening Room and the program ably demonstrated how far the series has come.
Curated by Shannon Cleary of WRIR's Commonwealth of Notions show, it featured three local bands, all of whom I've seen before and all of whom impressed me mightily.
Chatting with some fellow long-time regulars before the show, we talked about how the series has evolved, having begun as all acoustic with no drums and no electric instruments.
Tonight was all about the drums and the plugged-in instruments.
Way, Shape or Form had originally appealed to me with their jazzy guitars and unique time signatures, dancing right on that edge of math rock with just enough pop thrown in to be catchy.
Tonight was more of the same but the band sounded even tighter than when I'd seen them last winter.
Singer Troy apologized late into their set, saying, "Of course I picked this week to get sick and have to do a show where everyone is quiet and listening to my voice."
Honestly, his voice sounded fine, plus they did two songs, the first and the last, without vocals, always a pleasure to hear because they veer beautifully close to soaring post-rock soundscapes.
I did the seated mingling thing during the break, turning to talk to friends behind me and waiting for others to come sit in the row with me and catch up.
As a veteran of 42 of the 44 Listening Room shows, I think I've earned the right to play queen bee on occasion.
Next up was Warren Hixson and just before they started, a bearded friend leaned down and asked if anyone in the band was actually named Warren Hixson.
Is there an Echo in the Bunnymen? No, and there's no Warren here either.
Brent, the leader of the band, began by asking if the stage lights could be turned down a bit.
"They're fixed," sound man Dave called down to him. "Just like me," Brent joked (or maybe not).
Their sound is unlike anyone else's in Richmond at the moment, one part garage rock, a little grunge-like guitar, killer keyboards that wove the most interesting sounds plus male and female vocals (including the incomparable Nelly Kate).
A couple songs in and the listener has to acknowledge the sound as a pastiche with no discernible genre other than its own.
Every time I think they're veering too close to classic rock for my taste, those keyboards kick in and they start sounding surf-like and psychedelic and I find myself sucked back in.
Pausing to acknowledge the room, Brent said, "This is cool. We once played a show in an attic with four dudes dancing and unplugging our pedals, so this is very cool."
Because they didn't have dudes dancing or people talking, they decided to do "Cruel Whims," the last song on their record and one Brent characterized as a "bedroom song, one that's awkward to do in loud situations."
Such are the benefits of hearing a band when they can be heard.
When their set ended, a photographer friend slid into the seat next to me and said, "I wasn't ready for that to be over. They were amazing."
Since he's a big show-goer, too, I was sincerely surprised that he'd never seen them before but agreed with him about their set.
During the second break, I got up and moved around to mingle, ending up talking to some people about how electric the Listening Room had become.
In the old days, breaks between sets were extremely brief; one guy with a guitar walked offstage and another guy with a guitar walked on.
Now it's like a regular show with break down and set up times that approaches 20 minutes, an unheard of amount of time in the old days.
"Yea, in another four years, we'll have entire orchestras playing," one guy observed humorously.
Curator Shannon took the stage again, this time to talk about the local music scene and what a terrific point in time it is for it.
He thanked the people who document the scene, mentioning specific sites and blogs (including this one, she said proudly), at "this moment in Richmond's music history."
Last up was trio White Laces, a band who only has to begin playing to remind me how very much I love their dreampop sound and that it's always been too long since I heard them last.
Tonight they were here to play the songs that will be on their new album, which they start recording in a week.
"Most of these songs have been played out once or never," singer Landon told us before treating us to some absolutely brilliant new hook-filled songs.
Admitting that many of the songs never got past their working titles - "Skate or Die, "Janet," "Keith Sweats"- the audience sat entranced by melodic songs, kick ass drums and guitar hooks that surely must get them laid.
Of "New Jam 2," Landis said, "It still doesn't have a name beyond that. We've been calling it that for five months now, which doesn't bode well for it."
Named properly or not, the song was one more strong example of songwriting and execution.
Drummer Jimmy kept track of the set list, reminding the others what was upcoming and occasionally getting distracted by the joking onstage.
"Every time we start laughing, I forget what the next song is," he explained before a do-over.
"We don't have humor at practice," Landis deadpanned, "So when we do up here, it's weird."
We didn't used to have alcohol or drums at the Listening Room and now we do but it's not weird, it only makes things better.
I'd say that bodes very well for the next four years. But don't take my word for it, check it out for yourself. Just be quiet about it, will you?
Because some things about the Listening Room will never change. Lucky us.
I know because I was there that night, here, and thrilled to have found a place where music trumped blather.
Tonight was the fourth anniversary Listening Room and the program ably demonstrated how far the series has come.
Curated by Shannon Cleary of WRIR's Commonwealth of Notions show, it featured three local bands, all of whom I've seen before and all of whom impressed me mightily.
Chatting with some fellow long-time regulars before the show, we talked about how the series has evolved, having begun as all acoustic with no drums and no electric instruments.
Tonight was all about the drums and the plugged-in instruments.
Way, Shape or Form had originally appealed to me with their jazzy guitars and unique time signatures, dancing right on that edge of math rock with just enough pop thrown in to be catchy.
Tonight was more of the same but the band sounded even tighter than when I'd seen them last winter.
Singer Troy apologized late into their set, saying, "Of course I picked this week to get sick and have to do a show where everyone is quiet and listening to my voice."
Honestly, his voice sounded fine, plus they did two songs, the first and the last, without vocals, always a pleasure to hear because they veer beautifully close to soaring post-rock soundscapes.
I did the seated mingling thing during the break, turning to talk to friends behind me and waiting for others to come sit in the row with me and catch up.
As a veteran of 42 of the 44 Listening Room shows, I think I've earned the right to play queen bee on occasion.
Next up was Warren Hixson and just before they started, a bearded friend leaned down and asked if anyone in the band was actually named Warren Hixson.
Is there an Echo in the Bunnymen? No, and there's no Warren here either.
Brent, the leader of the band, began by asking if the stage lights could be turned down a bit.
"They're fixed," sound man Dave called down to him. "Just like me," Brent joked (or maybe not).
Their sound is unlike anyone else's in Richmond at the moment, one part garage rock, a little grunge-like guitar, killer keyboards that wove the most interesting sounds plus male and female vocals (including the incomparable Nelly Kate).
A couple songs in and the listener has to acknowledge the sound as a pastiche with no discernible genre other than its own.
Every time I think they're veering too close to classic rock for my taste, those keyboards kick in and they start sounding surf-like and psychedelic and I find myself sucked back in.
Pausing to acknowledge the room, Brent said, "This is cool. We once played a show in an attic with four dudes dancing and unplugging our pedals, so this is very cool."
Because they didn't have dudes dancing or people talking, they decided to do "Cruel Whims," the last song on their record and one Brent characterized as a "bedroom song, one that's awkward to do in loud situations."
Such are the benefits of hearing a band when they can be heard.
When their set ended, a photographer friend slid into the seat next to me and said, "I wasn't ready for that to be over. They were amazing."
Since he's a big show-goer, too, I was sincerely surprised that he'd never seen them before but agreed with him about their set.
During the second break, I got up and moved around to mingle, ending up talking to some people about how electric the Listening Room had become.
In the old days, breaks between sets were extremely brief; one guy with a guitar walked offstage and another guy with a guitar walked on.
Now it's like a regular show with break down and set up times that approaches 20 minutes, an unheard of amount of time in the old days.
"Yea, in another four years, we'll have entire orchestras playing," one guy observed humorously.
Curator Shannon took the stage again, this time to talk about the local music scene and what a terrific point in time it is for it.
He thanked the people who document the scene, mentioning specific sites and blogs (including this one, she said proudly), at "this moment in Richmond's music history."
Last up was trio White Laces, a band who only has to begin playing to remind me how very much I love their dreampop sound and that it's always been too long since I heard them last.
Tonight they were here to play the songs that will be on their new album, which they start recording in a week.
"Most of these songs have been played out once or never," singer Landon told us before treating us to some absolutely brilliant new hook-filled songs.
Admitting that many of the songs never got past their working titles - "Skate or Die, "Janet," "Keith Sweats"- the audience sat entranced by melodic songs, kick ass drums and guitar hooks that surely must get them laid.
Of "New Jam 2," Landis said, "It still doesn't have a name beyond that. We've been calling it that for five months now, which doesn't bode well for it."
Named properly or not, the song was one more strong example of songwriting and execution.
Drummer Jimmy kept track of the set list, reminding the others what was upcoming and occasionally getting distracted by the joking onstage.
"Every time we start laughing, I forget what the next song is," he explained before a do-over.
"We don't have humor at practice," Landis deadpanned, "So when we do up here, it's weird."
We didn't used to have alcohol or drums at the Listening Room and now we do but it's not weird, it only makes things better.
I'd say that bodes very well for the next four years. But don't take my word for it, check it out for yourself. Just be quiet about it, will you?
Because some things about the Listening Room will never change. Lucky us.
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
Tending and Stoking
I am the daughter of a master fire-maker.
Growing up in what is now reverently called "mid-century modern" and what we then referred to as a three-bedroom rancher, I remember how my parents were always adding something to the little house.
First it was more bedrooms, a necessity given six children. Then a bay window with window seat in the dining room overlooking the backyard. A pool, but not until all six of us were old enough to swim so as to assuage my mother's fear for our safety.
But the most dramatic change began with a giant hole.
I came home from elementary school to find a gaping opening where one of the living room walls had been when I'd left that morning and as we ate an after-school snack of warm-from-the-oven cookies and milk (yes, really), Mom explained that we were having a fireplace put in.
And not just a standard fireplace, but a white brick one with a raised hearth and built in seats on either side with areas for log storage underneath that would take up the entire wall.
It was about as mid-century modern groovy a fireplace as could be imagined and once completed, my father took it upon himself to school all six daughters on fire-making.
We were taught the difference between tinder and kindling, how to properly use bellows and when to add logs to an existing fire.
As we grew up, I can guarantee you that every one of used our fire skills to impress a guy at some point or another.
But mainly, Dad instilled in us an appreciation for a well-made fire and the pleasures one brings in cold weather.
This is a roundabout way of saying what an unexpectedly wonderful time I had with a date in front of a fire last night.
Our destination was far beyond the city, not usually my first choice, but a leisurely drive out River Road landed us at Portico, a place I knew of, but hadn't been.
He'd been for lunch a couple of times so dinner-wise, it was a first for us both.
Honestly, considering it seemed like we were out in the sticks, I was surprised at how busy it was for a Monday evening.
There was a large, older group with loud voices and napkins tucked under chins. Beside us was a young couple, also on a date, although she was very dressed up in a one-sleeved red cocktail dress. Near them was another couple looking at a map and discussing going to Bowling Green via Route 301. Several couples arrived after we did.
We took a table with a view of the garden patio with its big stone fireplace full of logs burning briskly beneath a candlelit mantle.
Over a bottle of Pinot Noir, we considered the all-purpose menu (burger, sandwiches, pizza, pasta, entrees) while doing the early-stage date chatter about what each of us had been up to lately.
I told him I'd been reading in the Washington Post about how so many restaurants up there keep their patios open year-round, adding fire pits and heaters and serving toddies and hot buttered rum to enhance the experience...and their bottom line.
We agreed that a heated rooftop bar with a view of the monuments and a drink sounded right up our alley. The date was going well.
But for now, food was the priority, so beginning with simple green salads, we moved on to penne bolognese and pizza rustica, more notable for its Italian sausage, pepperoni, mushrooms and pepperoncini oil flavor than for its flacid crust.
The music, when we could hear it over the noisier customers, was safe and soft, artists like Willie Nelson and James Taylor.
It was while we were sharing a creme caramel that my date suggested we finish the evening outside by the fireplace with some other sort of warming beverage and our server said he'd go throw some additional logs on the fire for us.
We wouldn't be able to see any monuments, but the tables on the slate-floored patio were twinkling with tea lights and that fire had a nice glow to it.
Carpe diem and all that.
Not surprisingly for Goochland, the tequila choices were limited, but my date encouraged me to give Cabo Wabo a try and if not Sammy Hagar tonight, if not in front of a roaring fire, if not with a date thoughtful enough to suggest such a thing, then when?
In a bonus bit of forethought, he asked for his bourbon and my tequila in snifters, the better to warm them.
We had the patio to ourselves and with snifters in hand, stood in front of the raised fireplace (shades of childhood) laughing, drinking and enjoying the kind of late-stage date banter that feels like it could go on all night.
I'll even admit things got pleasantly warm out there with him and maybe a small part of that was my occasional stoking of the fire.
There is nothing like being wooed well and making Dad proud at the same time.
Growing up in what is now reverently called "mid-century modern" and what we then referred to as a three-bedroom rancher, I remember how my parents were always adding something to the little house.
First it was more bedrooms, a necessity given six children. Then a bay window with window seat in the dining room overlooking the backyard. A pool, but not until all six of us were old enough to swim so as to assuage my mother's fear for our safety.
But the most dramatic change began with a giant hole.
I came home from elementary school to find a gaping opening where one of the living room walls had been when I'd left that morning and as we ate an after-school snack of warm-from-the-oven cookies and milk (yes, really), Mom explained that we were having a fireplace put in.
And not just a standard fireplace, but a white brick one with a raised hearth and built in seats on either side with areas for log storage underneath that would take up the entire wall.
It was about as mid-century modern groovy a fireplace as could be imagined and once completed, my father took it upon himself to school all six daughters on fire-making.
We were taught the difference between tinder and kindling, how to properly use bellows and when to add logs to an existing fire.
As we grew up, I can guarantee you that every one of used our fire skills to impress a guy at some point or another.
But mainly, Dad instilled in us an appreciation for a well-made fire and the pleasures one brings in cold weather.
This is a roundabout way of saying what an unexpectedly wonderful time I had with a date in front of a fire last night.
Our destination was far beyond the city, not usually my first choice, but a leisurely drive out River Road landed us at Portico, a place I knew of, but hadn't been.
He'd been for lunch a couple of times so dinner-wise, it was a first for us both.
Honestly, considering it seemed like we were out in the sticks, I was surprised at how busy it was for a Monday evening.
There was a large, older group with loud voices and napkins tucked under chins. Beside us was a young couple, also on a date, although she was very dressed up in a one-sleeved red cocktail dress. Near them was another couple looking at a map and discussing going to Bowling Green via Route 301. Several couples arrived after we did.
We took a table with a view of the garden patio with its big stone fireplace full of logs burning briskly beneath a candlelit mantle.
Over a bottle of Pinot Noir, we considered the all-purpose menu (burger, sandwiches, pizza, pasta, entrees) while doing the early-stage date chatter about what each of us had been up to lately.
I told him I'd been reading in the Washington Post about how so many restaurants up there keep their patios open year-round, adding fire pits and heaters and serving toddies and hot buttered rum to enhance the experience...and their bottom line.
We agreed that a heated rooftop bar with a view of the monuments and a drink sounded right up our alley. The date was going well.
But for now, food was the priority, so beginning with simple green salads, we moved on to penne bolognese and pizza rustica, more notable for its Italian sausage, pepperoni, mushrooms and pepperoncini oil flavor than for its flacid crust.
The music, when we could hear it over the noisier customers, was safe and soft, artists like Willie Nelson and James Taylor.
It was while we were sharing a creme caramel that my date suggested we finish the evening outside by the fireplace with some other sort of warming beverage and our server said he'd go throw some additional logs on the fire for us.
We wouldn't be able to see any monuments, but the tables on the slate-floored patio were twinkling with tea lights and that fire had a nice glow to it.
Carpe diem and all that.
Not surprisingly for Goochland, the tequila choices were limited, but my date encouraged me to give Cabo Wabo a try and if not Sammy Hagar tonight, if not in front of a roaring fire, if not with a date thoughtful enough to suggest such a thing, then when?
In a bonus bit of forethought, he asked for his bourbon and my tequila in snifters, the better to warm them.
We had the patio to ourselves and with snifters in hand, stood in front of the raised fireplace (shades of childhood) laughing, drinking and enjoying the kind of late-stage date banter that feels like it could go on all night.
I'll even admit things got pleasantly warm out there with him and maybe a small part of that was my occasional stoking of the fire.
There is nothing like being wooed well and making Dad proud at the same time.
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