Weekend notes, pt. 2 — after the show

Though slightly out of the blue and slightly off-budget, the Annie experience was surprisingly good.

We bombed out of the house with barely an hour and a half to spare before the performance. On the way, I called the box office and secured two tickets — including a half-price one for myself. We pulled up in front of Tarrant's to get a quick dinner. Tarrant's is one of those places in town that is generally reliable — sometimes very good, rarely bad — and it's location across the street from the theatre was ideal.

Service was quick and good. Buttercup was looking a little faded, but perked up when rolls appeared. I ordered a cup of the chicken and corn chowder for myself — perfect on a dreary day — and white pizza with spinach and tomatoes for us. I asked the waitress to add feta, without asking what the charge for an extra ingredient was. The question would have been a good one to ask, however, since apparently all pizzas are priced based on optional ingredients — whether they're listed as standard pies or not. The menu isn't clear about this, unfortunately, and I might have changed the order if I'd known that our $11.95 pizza was going to run $17.95 instead. Given the timing when we were asking her to box up half and bring the check, it wasn't worth saying anything; I might mention it next time though.

On a quick side note, it's also worth mentioning that the pizza was very good. The crust had a good flavor and the cheese and tomatoes were nicely done. Had I known that the spinach wouldn't be fresh, I might not have ordered it. The mushy green lent a bit too much liquid to the pie.

Dinner wrapped up, we headed across to the theatre. Theatre IV is a local theater group that puts on a few children's shows a year. They've done Peter Pan, The Wizard of Oz, and many other classics. They link in regularly with schools in the area and generally do great work. Tonight was no exception.

The sets were beautifully done, and the actors all seemed to be having a great time. This could have been last-performance bounce, but it seems more likely that they were just generally enjoying themselves. (This is only borne out by the tears streaming down the lead's face at the curtain call.) The singing and dancing were mostly very sharp. Two of the best parts: Buttercup asking if the dog was real, and her friend E asking if it was the real president up there. (For those who don't know, FDR plays a significant part in the show.) The only trick watching the show for me was getting past various anachronisms and implausibilities that are distracting, but hardly central to the story.

What also surprised me was how much of the show I remembered, and how much it touched me. Frankly, it was still a very good time when I saw Annie on its first national tour in Chicago in 1978. We were spending quite a bit of time in that city — a place I still remember very fondly — and all hell hadn't broken loose. At eight (or almost eight), the worst experiences of elementary and middle school were yet to come. My parents were still five years from telling me they were divorcing. In other words, it's a time that has deep and positive memories — the Cubs at Wrigley, Stuart Brent Books, the museums, the zoos, camping and skiing trips.

What surprised me tonight was how easily a cheesy, mawkish — albeit very catchy — libretto can pull out a whole flood of memories and associations that have laid buried for years. And how easy it is to welcome back the memories, and how much they put the present in perspective.

On Going Home

I haven't considered Dayton home for many, many years. Still, it is the place I spent many of my formative years, and it is the place where I return once a year for a sort of homecoming. It is one of the places where I never have to think about how to get some place, and one of the places I stand a fair chance of running into someone I've known for more than thirty years.

That said, it is always a strange, somewhat challenging experience to return "home."

because amy asked

Amy over at Incertus challenged me and a few other people to join the 6-word-memoir meme. I batted around a few options. For instance, there was Boston. New York. Arkansas. Virginia. Daddy. Then there was Mostly happy, I watch Anna grow. But in the end, neither of those was quite as mordant as I wanted, nor as much about the reality of my life over the nearly-twenty years I've been an adult. So I landed on one that seemed to accomplish it better.

Paul in six:
Richer, poorer. Better, worse. Better now.

Update
Per Jack: My life in diapers. No, seriously.

saturday nights

In New York and then in grad school, you'd rarely find me at home on any given evening, and particularly not on the weekends. The only exceptions to this rule were nights when I hosted friends for dinner or when I was so fried from work or life that I needed downtime. Otherwise, I was out.

Starting in 1994, this meant playing pool. I kicked around bars and pool halls from New York to Fayetteville and beyond. I drank a lot. I had loose-knit groups of friends, many of whom I have lost (for better or for worse) to those smoke-filled nights. I smoked my Gauloises--first the caporals made from the stinky black tobacco, and then after they gave me a cough I couldn't shake, the legeres. There were even a few periods when I was so tight on cash that I slipped back to the old Tom Waits character-standard, Old Golds. And always it was back to the bar or the pool hall Sometimes I'd play for money; sometimes I'd play for table time; sometimes for drinks; mostly my friends and I would play to hold a table until someone could unseat us. There were many late nights and early mornings, and in the years I worked second shift in the graphics department at J.P. Morgan, getting off at midnight with a decent chunk of cash in the bank, I saw more early morning meals at downtown diners than your average college student. In that life, you learned to spot cokeheads quickly and hustlers too, and made enough mistakes to say you should've known better. For the first couple of years of grad school in Fayetteville, things were much the same--late nights of too many cigarettes and too much beer and whiskey, and nine-ball games that continued after the bars had closed. The venues were smaller, and there were fewer of them so new challenges got stale quickly. And of course, any pool crowd has a certain percentage of characters straight out of central casting. The only difference was that I made a little more time for my curricular responsibilities, and punctuated the pool nights with nights out with the other writers--some of which had their own ill-fated results. And through all of it, I rarely knew what it was like to spend a whole evening at home.

Fast forward a few years. Slip past a whole panoply of life's roller coasters. And you land here--a Saturday night with a little girl asleep in her pink room, the iTunes on party shuffle, a couple of Yuenglings to take the edge off a long day. It's a good thing, too, because I needed to slow down and catch up with my own life. (There's also a physiological component since my shoulder and back issues necessarily mean I can't spend much time over a pool table.) The things that had been in boxes for years are beginning to feel organized; my portfolio is getting some much-needed attention; the laundry and dishes are regularly clean and put away; goals and hopes and expectations are beginning to make sense rather than appear as products (or victims) of inertia.

Do I miss those days? Those days before I had these constraints and responsibilities? No. Not really. I like being a dad. I like being at home. This life feels richer, more full of potential. And besides I know where to find a pool table when I have the time to play, after I've taken care of everything and everyone else.