How Sweet It Is

I must apologize in advance for the first part of this entry, which is deliberately obtuse, but every once in awhile this becomes my personal blog for me to remember certain things in my life that I don't feel comfortable being completely open about.  There may be those who can read through this delicious moment and understand what I'm talking about, but I hope not.

The situation is this.  I've been having difficulty with a person who is driving me absolutely bonkers (this person is not related to me).  Some times are more irritating than others and there are days when I reach my wits end and just want to strangle this person.  That has been my situation recently (no, it's not my mother!)

I had been ranting and raving to Walt about how I was coming to the end of my rope and just could not stand being with this person one more moment.

Then we went to see a play tonight.  It was an original play, a comedy, which was very good.  The first act was so funny, and I was in a better mood.   Then the second act started.  I swear, the playwright must have known my irritating acquaintance.  The second act was also funny, but even funnier than the rest of the audience must have found it.  Walt and I were both in hysterics because it hit every single irritation that I've been having and made it hilarious.

By the time we came out of the  theater, I was still giggling softly to myself and actually felt better able to deal with the irritations, at least for now, because now I can think about the funny script when things irritate me instead of letting it get to me.

The theater we went to tonight was a new theater to me.  My colleague, Jeff, has been encouraging me to review shows at the B Street Theater for years, but it was not on my list of acceptable theaters to review.  In the past, the criterion set by the former entertainment editor was that, for space reasons, we would only review out of town shows that had some sort of connection to Davis (somebody in the cast lived in Davis, the director was from Davis, or somebody involved in one way or another got a degree from UCD).

However, Buck Busfield (brother of Tim Busfield, whom you may remember from 30 Something), the Pooh Bah of the company, finally called the current entertainment editor and pointed out that there is a huge percentage of the B Street audience that comes in from Davis and convinced her to let me review the shows.

(aside:  I seem to be having difficulty, lately, getting reviews printed in timely fashion because of lack of newspaper space, so I'm not sure how adding another theater to the mix is going to work, but we'll see.)

The whole experience was a delight and makes me sad that it has taken me 13 years to get to the B Street Theater.  First of all, we brought Mitch Agruss, about whom I have spoken before as the "grand old man of Sacramento theater."   Mitch, now 90, has performed with B Street for many years and as he got older, often Busfield would write special character parts for Mitch to play.  However, in his last production he had a fall in rehearsal and broke his wrist, which has never completely healed, and he's now a spectator, no longer an actor.  But going to any Sacramento Theater with Mitch is like accompanying visiting royalty.  Everybody loves Mitch and, sitting with him after a show, you end up not only chit chatting with the actors in the play, but every other Sacramento show biz personality who came for opening night.

(B Street also has the best opening night post-show hors d'oeuvres, I might add...always a plus in my book!)

As for the show, Busfield apparently usually writes an original play around Chrstmas time and if this one is any indication, I have been deprived all these years of the fun of one of his original compositions.  

It was a cast of 3. act one featuring a couple on their first blind date, and act two an old married couple...and to say much more would bring me back to revealing too much, so I won't.  But Act 2 ends up with one of the actors getting all the ingredients of a German chocolate cake poured over his head, the four eggs being the funniest of all.  Fortunately in the brief final scene, he has to wear a hat, so doesn't have to worry about residual gunk in his hair.

We came home to watch shows on our DVR (including Amazing Race, which had recorded while we were out).  While we watched TV...for three hours, I was going through my new iPhone contact list, transferred over from my Android which had copied EVERY entry in my gmail contact list, 90% of whom are people I don't even know.

In 3 hours I only got through most of the Bs.  I have since discovered there is an app called "spring cleaning" which might help me delete entries in one fell swoop.  I'm hopeful for that, but it's nearly 2 a.m. and I'm not going to try that now!