From the Sublime to the Ridiculous

We have done what we came to do and we are headed home...but my word was it a marvelous weekend!

I write this from Olympia, WA.  We flew here on Friday and we have been staying with our friends Gabi and Alec Clayton and their other houseguest, Steve Schalchlin.  The purpose of the trip was to attend Steve's concert, an evening which he shared with the Righteous Mothers (and if you don't know them, get yerself to YouTube and find out about them.  They are GREAT!)

Gabi and Alec are wonderful, talented, giving, and loving people.  I came to know them through PFLAG.  At the time I met her, Gabi and I had each lost a son.  Her son Bill committed suicide after a gay bashing incident.  She has since gone on to do amazing things with PFLAG the Safe School Coalition, the Gay Straight Alliances, and so many things to prevent other gay youth from suffering what Bill went through.  She's also a talented writer, photographer, web designer, organizer, life long activist, and I don't know what else.  (Check her blog)

(Gabi with Doozie)

Husband Alec is a writer and an artist and also a theater critic (we also have discovered we were both born on the same day in the same year, though I am a few hours older)  He has published seven novels and his web page is full of so many awards and accolades, I could easily make this entry about him and Gabi.  But it's about our weekend.

(That's Alec on the left)

This was supposed to be a big weekend long pajama party with our friend Michael, from LA joining us, but he made up some cockamamie story about association fees for the apartment where he lives.  I think he just doesn't like us any more.

Anyway, Walt and I arrived in Seattle, rented a car, and headed off for an hour's drive into the setting sun to Olympia, the capitol of the state of Washington.

After we had settled in, guests began to arrive for the pot luck Gabi and Alec had planned to let everyone party with Steve.  There were organizers of the concerts, and PFLAG people, both young people and parents.  Lovely group of people.

I was able to spend a lot of the evening talking with Lynn Grotsky, wife of Lisa Brodoff, one of the Righteous Mothers, and also the manager for the group.  Since what I really wanted to come up here for was to hear the women in concert, it was nice to chat with her and get some background on the group.

When all the guests left, we tried to keep Steve on Washington time, instead of New York time, so he wouldn't go sleep too early.

We obviously were not successful.

In the morning we did what a bunch of tech nerds do--we spent the morning sitting in the living room, each with some sort of device, all checking our e-mail, internet web sites, text messages, Facebook and other things. Someone said it would have been even funnier if we were all texting each other!

Steve went off to rehearsal with the Righteous Mothers and the rest of us met him at Traditions Café, where the concert(s) (there were two) would take place.

The Righteous Mothers started the concert(s) and were funny, relevant, with great harmonies.  Just like I knew they would be. And they had Steve join them on two of their songs.

Steve had the second half of each concert and in the first concert, he had everyone crying at Gabi's Song, especially one woman sitting hear the front, who dabbed at her eyes through the whole song.

His song called "Rescue" (about rescue animals) always gets me and so I had big tears rolling down my face, even though I've heard the song many times. The guy does know how to sell a song (don't tell him I said so)

Between the two shows we had dinner.

Then came the second concerts, more or less identical to the first.  They were all having such fun and for the final two numbers, Steve was joined by members of the newly forming Olympia Gay Men's Chorus and the Righteous mothers.

When it was all over, we thought it was...you know...like all over, but some of the Gay Men's Chorus invited Steve to join them at a gay bar so they could continue talking.  We all went to the gay bar and it happened to be karaoke night.  Karaoke is the thing that Steve hates worst of all.  He and the choir sat in one corner, while Gabi, Alec, Walt and I sat at a table with a drink.  The karaoke was horrible.  A lot of wincing was done at our table.  One guy did Elvis' "Now or Never" and I told Alec that my vote would be "never." Elvis deserved a lot better.  I won't even mention how they murdered Jennifer Hudson!

But eventually we came home. I was determined to finish this before going to sleep.  As I write it, it is 2 a.m. and the heat went out when the others went to bed, so I am FREEZING and think that I'm not going to try to polish it, but merely get it posted before my fingers freeze solid.

Capsule review:  This was an absolutely wonderful weekend and worth every penny we paid to get here.  It had been years since I'd seen Steve in concert and while I never really had any criticism of him, I can see that he has grown tremendously as a performer since he moved into the music and theater world in New York.
AND, I got to cross something off my bucket list.  I have seen the Righteous Mothers in concert and even had a brief chat with Lisa, my favorite of the group.

What an Awesome Day!

Yesterday was awesome from start to finish and my heart was so full as I tumbled onto couch at 1 a.m.

First, I bought my new camera.  It does neat stuff like this:

It also has a 16x zoom which, when used in a moving car still gives clear pictures (no way would I have gotten this picture with my Panasonic)

On the freeway there was a kerfuffle going east (we were going west).   A helicopter landed on the freeway and traffic was backed up as far as the eye could see.  That was kind of exciting (until later that night we learned there had been a shooting, a bad guy was killed and people were stuck for as long as 2 hours in the sweltering heat.  One woman wrote that her car got up to 121 degrees!)

Walt turned on the radio to get traffic reports and instead heard that a California appeals court had lifted the ban on gay marriages (instead of waiting the expected 25 days) and that marriages were starting to be performed at San Francisco City Hall now.  We listened to the first marriage ceremony, when Sandy Stier and Kristin Perry (one of the two couples which brought the action challenging Prop 8) were married by California Attorney General Kamala Harris.  I listened to the ceremony with tears running down my cheeks.  I don't know either woman, but I remember the emotion surrounding Ellen and Shelly's wedding 5 years ago and was just so happy that after fighting so hard all these years these two women were finally legally married.

When we got to San Francisco's City Hall, there was a rainbow flag flying from one of the balconies.

We parked the car and took our Groupon to Canto do Brasil, a restaurant where I have wanted to eat for many, many years. 

At first they weren't going to seat us because it's a small place and we had no reservation, but the guy finally took pity on me and told us that if we promised to leave by 7 p.m., he would serve us.  Since we had tickets for a concert at 8, I told him that would be no problem.  In fact, I had been concerned because we had been told service there was very slow.  This would ensure that we would be out on time.

We both ordered caiparinia, that Brasilian drink with tons of limes and cachaca, a kind of Brasilian rum.  I hadn't had one of those in decades and it was as delicious as I remember it being.

Walt had feijoada, the national dish of Brasil, but I decided to order a shrimp dish because I can make feijoada myself and I remember some really good shrimp dishes.  We were disappointed that there was no pao de queijo, a really good little cheese bread that I have made and love, as an appetizer, but we had a cheese croquette, which was delicious and a new taste sensation.

As promised, we left the restaurant promptly at 7 and walked to the Nourse Theatre for a concert by the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus, called Harvey Milk 2013.  The reason we had tickets was that our friend Steve Schalchlin had written a number that was being performed.  They offered him comp tickets, but since he's in New York and couldn't fly out, he offered them to us.

When we got to the theater, they had no tickets for us at will-call, so they called their Management Director to see what he could do about it.  To our delight, the Management Director was John Alecca, former General Manger of the Lamplighters and a long-time friend, someone Alison and I had interviewed for the book a few months ago.  John got tickets for us.  Great seats...reviewer quality seats. 

I wish I could express adequately the emotion I felt sitting there in San Francisco on Gay Pride Eve, just after the first same sex marriages had been conducted and celebrating the very first gay man in the country to ever be elected to public office.

At the start of the program, two of the organizers said that they knew that they would be celebrating Harvey Milk on the 35th anniversary of his assassination, and on the 35th anniversary of the founding of the Gay Men's Chorus, but there was no way when they planned this that they could have anticipated they would also be celebrating the wins in the Supreme Court and the weddings that were about to take place.  There was a long sustained applause and cheers that rolled through the auditorium and I suspect there were a lot of tears.

The show started with a recording Milk had made to be played only in the event of his assassination.  He had a premonition of what was inevitably to happen, but probaby would not have guessed that Mayor George Moscone would be killed by Supervisor Dan White as well.  At intermission, Cleve Jones, who started the AIDS quilt so many years ago, said that as he stared down to the floor at the newly murdered Milk on that fateful night, all he could think of was "It's over. It's all over."  He went on to say that later that night as hundreds of people, and then thousands of people and then tens of thousands of people marched from the Castro District to City Hall carrying candles and as a small group of men got up and sang on the steps of City Hall (the first performance of the newly formed Gay Men's Chorus), he thought "No...it's not all over...it's just beginning."

And was it ever.  Certainly nobody 35 years ago could have predicted how far the gay community has come in its fight for equal rights, and definitely not the actions of the Supreme Court this week.  Harvey Milk started it all.  I wonder if the United States will ever put his face on a postage stamp (probably not!)

The concert was in two parts.  Part 1, "I am the Legacy," four musical numbers which were chosen from hundreds that had been submitted from all over the world from the "Post-Harvey generation" who are today benefiting from and living his legacy.  Steve's "I met a boy" was second and struck a nice tone between pathos and humor as three groups of men sang about meeting their partners in different decades and what a difference it was (I asked him for lyrics, but he hasn't sent them yet.  In some places, audience reaction covered up what the chorus was singing).  It got loud, sustained applause and appropriate laughter throughout the performance.

There was also an amazing dance number and a poignant song written by a young man about growing up gay in Altoona, PA. ("I ask for the movement to continue, for the movement to grow, because last week I got a phone call from Altoona, Pennsylvania, and my election gave somebody else, one more person, hope. And after all, that's what this is all about. It's not about personal gain, not about ego, not about power — it's about giving those young people out there in the Altoona, Pennsylvanias, hope. You gotta give them hope." -- Harvey Milk).  

Part 1 ended with a song called "Give Them Hope" with visuals by the chorus that are indescribable, but amazing.  From the program:  "The selected dance, video, art, original music, and new choral pieces weave together a testimony of how Harvey Milk has changed the world for the better."  (The technicians must have been working overtime because one of the video clips included video from the wedding that had taken place that afternoon!)

Part Two was the meat of the concert, a monumental song cycle by Andrew Lippa (who also played Harvey Milk in the piece) called "I am Harvey Milk."  It combined video, choral work, solos by Lippa, by Noah Marlow, a kid with a great set of pipes and an impressive resume for one so young, as the young Harvey Milk, and Laura Benanti as "Soprano."

As an evening's entertainment, it was emotionally exhausting and I cried more than once throughout.  But then it was back out into the world again.   We took a detour and went to look at city hall, lit up in rainbow colors.   There were lots of people taking pictures.

 My heart was full and so happy for all of the gay people in California and across the nation whose equality with heterosexual people has just been acknowledged by the Supreme Court and the Obama Administration.  I thought of the 1950s, which I remember, growing up in San Francisco, where I would see photos in the paper of gay men being loaded into paddy wagons and taken off to the police station, just because they were in a bar together.  I remember the 60s, when people began coming out of the closet, when the Castro became the "gay neighborhood."  I remember the 70s and 80s when AIDS began to decimate the gay community and nobody knew what it was, and President Reagan refused to even acknowledge that there was a problem.   And I remember standing with Ellen and Shelly at Equality rallies, writing endless letters, signing endless petitions, culminating in the jubilation of their legal wedding, only to watch that dreaded Proposition 8 deny that legal right to other gay couples in love.  And I thought of last week when the Supreme Court finally admitted that DOMA was unconstitutional and struck down Proposition 8.  I thought how far this determined population has come and what an amazing feeling it must be today.  And how much more work there is to do.

The drive home was OK to a point and then we ended up stopped dead.   It was exactly in the spot where the morning's back-up had been, though I have not been able to find any reason for it, and the reports of the accident say that it was cleaned up within 4 hours.  But since we couldn't see an end to the stop and go traffic, Walt turned around and took a back way into Davis.  Still it was after midnight before we got home and the dogs were very hungry.

But what a day!  Absolutely amazing and I'm so grateful (and yeah, even proud) to be Steve Schalchlin's friend and have him think to offer these tickets to us!

The Family Dinner

I keep a database of all these entries, and, certain that I had written something like this before, I did a search on "dinner." I was surprised at how many entries I had written which included either the topic of dinner, or dinner photos.

Viewers of Anderson Cooper's new show (I am not one, but happened to see it today) have apparently been invited to take a pledge to have one family dinner a week. While this is a great movement, I find it so very strange that anybody has to encourage families to have meals together.

I am a throwback to a former generation, I guess!

When I was growing up, there was no question about whether we would eat together. It was never even a discussion. No matter how uncomfortable meals could be, when my father was in a bad mood, meals together (breakfast and dinner) were just assumed to happen.

Holidays were for the special dinners, when the good china and good silverware came out, when we had the special tablecloth and a fancy dinner. When we at around the dining room table.

(I was going to include a photo here, but my photos are packed up and upstairs, in preparation for the installation of the Pergo....on FRIDAY!!!!)

When we had our own family, there was never a question about whether people would get together for dinner. And at holidays, we joined with grandparents and celebrated.

Thanksgiving

When my aunt Barb was in the hospital and often didn't know anybody, the way we communicated with her was through a family dinner.

When Nora came to visit us, we had a family dinner.

When our first Brasilian "son," Eduardo, came back for a visit, we had a family dinner.

I loved it when, this past week, Tom talked about remembering our family dinners, especially all the laughs we had with the big turntable in the middle of the table that was forever knocking over somebody's milk.

So I find that the idea that a television host has to encourage families to eat together once a week is something that makes me very sad.

I think this also is connected with the recent media-created "feud" between Chefs Anthony Bourdain and Paula Deen. Bourdain was talking about how Deen's simple fat/sugar laden recipes were causing the death of Americans. I have watched both chefs and the kind of cooking that Bourdain does is just not done by most people any more.

Go into any supermarket and just look at the percentage of heat-and-serve foods vs the "prepare it yourself" ingredients and while there is probaby more "prepare it yourself," the vast assortment of things that you just have to take home and heat up in order to serve a "home cooked meal" tells me how much people actually cook any more.

Look at commercials that show mom putting frozen blobs on a cookie tray to serve her children "home baked cookies." And that's what they are -- home baked cookies. Everybody knows that an essesntial ingredient of all home made cookies is the love that goes in along with the vanilla and salt. Pillsbury doesn't add the love, and kids are growing up not knowing the difference.

I can remember a lot of unpleasant dinners in my lifetime but many, many more pleasant, fun dinners. I loved nothing more than having too many people squeezed around our dinner table whether for a holiday, or a regular evening dinner. Walt and I still eat dinner together at the same table, and I still cook (though I, too, have been seduced by convenience food sometimes more than one night a week), but I miss those big family dinners. A lot. They were so much more than just eating a meal together.

---

Oh yeah...and to see if he actually reads this...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, STEVE!

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LOL...I just realized that I did do a previous entry on family dinners....one month ago!!

"Heartfelt"

There used to be a lot of teasing of Steve whenever he performed, about his performances being "heartfelt" (a term that was vastly overworked in those days). But today, which began with my mother and ended with Steve, definitely felt "heartfelt" at both ends of the day.

I had a note from Peach recently, telling me that my mother has been having chest pains (my mother was angry that Peach had let me know. I was angry that she had let Peach know and not me!). Peach got her to call Kaiser, and the advice nurse wanted her to go to emergency immediately. My mother, being my mother, said she had too busy a day to go to the hospital and that she wanted to see her own doctor, so instead of rushing to Emergency on Friday, she want to see her own doctor on Monday. Fortunately she didn't die over the weekend (the woman will be the death of me yet!)

Her appointment was for 10:30 and I told her I'd pick her up at 10. At 9:45 she called my cell phone and, calculating where I was and how long it would probably take me to get to her house, I told her I'd be there in 15 minutes, but she decided that wasn't soon enough and she should drive herself. She suggested I just go to the house and wait for her there. Well, I wasn't having any of that! I told her I'd meet her at Kaiser.

Other than getting lost in downtown San Rafael briefly because Kaiser's office building isn't well marked and I had only been there once before (I finally found it purely by accident!), I got there about 5 minutes after my mother did, apparently. They took us about 15 minutes later.

Her blood pressure was a bit high (much lower on second reading--that ol' "white coat hypertension" thing coming into play at the first reading) but the EKG didn't show any indication that she had been having small heart attacks, which was a good thing. They still need to do a stress test to be certain, so that has been ordered and she was given some medication, including nitroglycerine, in case of emergency.

My mother is very put out about all of this. She has never been on medication before and she doesn't want to take any damn pills. She also told the doctor that she hoped they wouldn't schedule her stress test for next week because she had a very busy week and couldn't come in. The doctor told her that her heart was more important than her luncheons.

I do get frustrated with her, but I suspect that at least some of her bluster and irritation at having to take damn pills comes out of a bit of fear and embarrassment. But I told her if she had a heart attack and died before her birthday party, I was going to be royally pissed, so she promised to take her medicines and so what the doctor tells her. For now.

We came home after Kaiser, had some lunch, both took short naps (mine was interrupted by Walt sending a text message), and then had time for one quick game of Canasta before I had to leave.

(fortunately I was the one who woke up first and I was
the one who had the camera!)

It looked like it was going to be a crushing defeat for me in Canasta, but in the end it was a pretty good game and the final score was pretty close, so I didn't feel bad losing.

Then I drove over to San Francisco, where I was meeting Walt for dinner. He had come down to the city on the train and we were going to go to Steve's concert, "...and I Played John Lennon's Piano," but first we met at the usual crepe place (The Crepe House), where he has dinner with Char and Mike on nights when they all go to the symphony together.

I had been there before several times (actually, we were there once with my mother, Steve, and our friend Amy, who had flown out from New York to see "The Big Voice"), but now that I'm all worldly and stuff, this was the first time that I noticed that the restaurant was painted in the warm Provencal colors that I fell in love with in Arles (though on a foggy day they seemed significantly more muted and tired than what we saw throughout Southern France!)

We each had a crepe that contained crab cakes (my favorite), which were delicious, and then, the hour being early, we "sauntered" back over to the New Conservatory Theatre Center (NCTC) where we sat and waited for the show to start. For a long time, it was just me and a lobby full of men. Walt may or may not have been the only straight man there. But eventually a couple of other women showed up as well.

It was, of course, a wonderful show...and quite "heartfelt."

In the first half, Steve sang songs from The Last Session which I hadn't heard in a long time (Walt said it was like riding the car, because I played TLS in the car so often). In the second half of the first act, Jimmy came out and they did numbers from The Big Voice: God or Merman, ending with the amazing "How do you fall back in love?"

For the second half, Steve concentrated on his New World Waking Song Cycle for Peace, with guest artists from the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus and ending with "When You Care," from The Last Session, with Jimmy joining the group on stage and making a "heartfelt" speech about his love for Steve and his admiration of Steve's talent.

The New Conservatory Theatre Center is raising money to keep them going and allowing them to present works which will continue to help gay people see themselves in a "normal" light in contrast to all the stuff you see in the media. Just at intermission alone, they raised over $2,000, with another $500 pledged from someone in the audience at the final bow.

When it was all over, Jimmy was very surprised to walk out into the lobby and find a birthday cake set up for him.

While they served cake, Steve was busy greeting his many fans.

He was so busy greeting his many fans that he gave Walt a big hug and walked by me not once but twice without even saying hello. But I'm not bitter. Not me. I just did what I usually do as a designated minion of Steve,...took pictures of Steve receiving adulation for another fabulous performance.

It really was a wonderful night and I'm always verklempt when I see my friend up on stage, with a house full of people responding to his music...'cause I remember when nobody had heard of him, and he sometimes played to only a handful of people. (In those days he noticed that I was in the lobby after performances.)

(And yes, I'm giving Steve a hard time...don't believe half of what you read in this entry!)

"Says You," Part 2

I spent a part of the afternoon bemoaning my misspent youth...but I'll get to that in a minute.

First, we went out to Denny's for breakfast with Steve and Michael and found out what grown men do when they go out to breakfast on a Sunday morning.

(It's a good thing that most of us drink our coffee black!)

By the time Steve had dismissed us all and was ready to get the hell out of there, it was too late to "do" anything and really too early to head to Skirball, but we did it anyway. Not surprisingly, we were the first in line! Another guy wasn't far behind us, though. But he wasn't interested in socializing. He had come prepared for the wait, with a chair, dark glasses, big earphones, and his iPod. As the crowd began to grow and chit chat with one another, this guy sat resolutely in his chair, keeping the rest of us out of his little private world.

More people began to gather. The next couple behind us was, oddly enough, from Citrus Heights (where my cousin Kathy lives) and had driven all the way down for the show. We chatted with them a lot. This was their first time, but probably won't be their last.

Also, I hope someone can help me with this. Can you identify this logo? A woman in line had a bag with this logo and it looked like exactly the kind of bag I'm looking for to replace my 15+ year old bag. Let me know if you know what it is! (Isn't a zoom lens a wonderful thing?)

They finally opened the doors so we could pick up tickets and pass into the next waiting area. I hope this doesn't sound terrible, but it seems strange that in a Jewish Center, people would be herded into a small, cramped, hot room, packed like sardines, with no place to sit and have to wait for an undetermined amount of time. (I will admit that you could buy food in there, but still...)

This time we were prepared and in front when the doors opened, so we had much better seats and it made the show much more enjoyable, being able to see the entire stage rather than just half of it.

During mic check. Tony Kahn referred to yesterday's blog entry and my comment about the ceiling decoration reminding me of a giant shuttlecock. (It was fun being acknowledged, but thanks, Tony, for not pointing me out in the audience!)

As the show progressed, we were reminded of why it's so much fun to go to an actual taping since there is so much that doesn't make it to air. This year seemed to be particularly flub-heavy and while that was great fun for those of us in the audience, the flubs and offhand political comments will be edited out of the final broadcast. They were also able to re-do bits that hadn't gone right the night before. All seven of those guys (6 panelists and host Richard Sher) are such quick wits that the humor flies back and forth like a ping pong ball over a net and it's such fun to listen to.

And you always learn something. Where else can you find out that mpeg actually stands for "Motion Picture Expert Group" or that an "Elephant" is a sheet of paper measuring 23x28? And it was nice to learn that "Yabbers" was not the name of Fred Flintstone's backup singers.

We also would have missed the fact that one of the young scorekeepers had to be replaced mid-way through the second taping because he apparently didn't appreciate all the humor and banter that was being tossed about and was having a hard time staying awake.

But then we came to my lament over my misspent youth. The guest singers, who open the show and fill in during bluffing rounds, were the Scattered Tones (I think that was their name), an a capella group from UCLA. They were used in one game round to sing bits of songs that were the answer to the question. The task to the panel was to name the very first track on six well known albums. There was a lot of tittering about how little the panellists actually remembered during the period when these albums were popular, how some songs went best with brownies, etc., etc.

It made me sad because I only recognized the title of ONE of the albums, don't own any of them, and didn't know any of the songs they were naming. While many on the panel were enjoying the likes of Bob Dylan, Crosby, Stills & Nash, and the Beatles and smoking up a lot of funny smelling stuff, I was listening to crooners (Crosby, perhaps, but Bing) and belters (like Judy Garland) and girl band singers (like Doris Day). And even though Walt and I didn't marry young by the standards of 1965 (he was 25, I was 22), I was rockin' babies instead of rockin' and rollin'. So there is a huge group of people who are slightly younger than I who had a completely different experience of the 60s than I do!

All things considered, I am probably the better for it (given my addictive personality), but it was sad that I was sitting in a house full of people nodding appreciatively at not only the music, but the memories, and Walt and I were sitting there just listening. It had not been our experience.

When you add up the cost of tickets for two tapings, the cost of air fare, car rental, motel, and eating out for five meals, this ain't a cheap date, but boy was it worth every single penny. I can't wait for them to come back again.

WOW

I'm trying to decide now best to "review" the premiere of Steve's Cantata, "New World Waking" by the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus, this evening, but all that seems to fit is....wow.

We left here in the mid afternoon and got to Davies Hall a little before 5:30. Steve had said there was a reception before the concert and that we were invited...and that there would be food.

I ran into Gabi Clayton (and her husband Alec) and Carolyn Wagner almost immediately.

Both women had been the inspiration for separate songs in the Cantata. Gabi's son Bill committed suicide after a gay bashing incident, and Carolyn sued her Arkansas high school after they refused to protect her son William from being bullied by other kids. Bill's death inspired "Gabi's Song," which Steve played for the very first time in the year 2000, in Washington, D.C., just after we had all met Tipper Gore. Gabi and I sat, holding hands, and both of us crying. I met Carolyn on that trip too and sat at a dinner table with her son.

Steve, of course, was perfectly calm.

(And if you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you. Actually he looks more numb than anything else.)

At 6:30, Steve gave a pre-concert talk, explaining how the piece had come to be written. He did it sitting at the piano...

...and he played a little bit of one or two tunes. He didn't need to do that, but I think he couldn't pass up the chance to sit on the Davies Hall stage and sing for an audience! There was sparce attendance for the talk, but as it got closer to start time, I looked behind me (we were sitting in the third row) and the place was packed. In fact, they held the start of the show by about 10 minutes because the Will Call people were lined up out the door and down the sidewalk. (Ned and his friend K.C. were in that line; Steve had invited them and left tickets for them.)

My little pocket camera doesn't do well at all in low light situations, so I concentrated on taking video snippets, which I've tried to weave together into something somewhat coherent (see Video of the Day--it's long--10 minutes--but it will give you the flavor of the concert). They usually tell you ahead of time that you can't record, but they didn't and so as the concert went on, I got braver and my video snippets got longer!

I cannot tell you how amazing the whole experience was. All of Steve's familiar tunes with Dr. Kathleen McGuire's magnificent arranging--it was a marriage made in heaven. Or at least in the LGBT community. I cried all the way through "Gabi's Song," which was the first in the Cantata. The songs that followed were either moving or funny or both. In the "war/peace" section, Steve's friend Piper Laurie did a brief reading.

And then Jennifer Holliday (from the original cast of Dreamgirls) came on to do "My Rising Up," which closed the cantata. She was explosive and at the end of her number, and the entire piece, people leaped to their feet for a standing ovation. Usually standing-o's bother me because they are rarely deserved. This one was deserved.

I've been watching (and hearing) these songs come together for eight years now, watching Steve struggle to get them written and then wondering what exactly he had. I cannot tell you how many times he said he just wanted to hear people sing his songs.

Well, he certainly got his wish. Over 250 men sang his songs today to a house that probably held over 2,000 people. At the end he was given a standing ovation. I would call that a very good day!

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Tomorrow's entry will be late...we're doing another Cousin's Day.

Belated Greetings

I didn't exactly forget my friend Steve Schalchlin's birthday on October 4th. I sent him a note via Facebook. I had intended to surprise him with a journal entry all about him, because he's such a shy guy and hates publicity.

(bwahahahahahahahaha)

But I wasn't inspired to come up with an entire blog entry worth of material that didn't sound forced. But this morning I was going through Facebook and came across a new video he'd just posted. It's not a new song, but he's lately been performing at a little club near his house and the videos from Kulak's are always just excellent, so I sat here and listened to the famliar words by the familiar voice and was struck yet again why I love this man.

I can't remember when he wrote this, but I believe it was either just before or just after our troops entered Afghanistan. See what you think:

(My apologies to people who can't view embedded You Tube videos.)

I met Steve because Paul died. The weekend that Paul was supposed to have been performing in Davis, I wanted to get out of town, so Walt and I went to Los Angeles to see Steve's first show, The Last Session, about which I have written much in previous years. Steve wasn't performing in the show, but I was taken with the heartfelt (I stuck that in for Steve) lyrics. I don't think I ever fully felt them, though, until after I'd met Steve in person, a few weeks later. He and I met for lunch in San Francisco when he came up to do a one night show at a club there, and we hit it off right away. A friendship began.

Not long after that, Walt and I flew to Denver for the first meeting of what I call "Friends of Steve," to see a production there. The day before the group was going to see the show together (Steve was doing a guest shot for two performances this time), the group was going to go on a sightseeing tour. The tour would include Columbine High School. The tragedy was still fresh in everyone's mind. Paul died the day of Columbine and my first thought, when we all thought he'd killed himself, was that it was in response to the Columbine shootings, since he tended to get very emotional (and dramatic) about stuff like that. So the very last thing I wanted to do was to see Columbine High School.

Walt wasn't eager to see Columbine either, nor was he interested in seeing The Last Session twice in one day, so he went off by himself to walk around downtown Denver. I went to the matinee of the show. It was the first time I'd seen Steve play the role of Gideon, the singer-songwriter who is dying of AIDS and who assembles his best friends to make one last recording as a farewell to his partner, Jack, before he plans to kills himself.

Steve lives with AIDS and is doing well, but at the time he wasn't that long into his "bonus round," and I sat there alone in that little theatre, watching this man I had come to regard as a good friend, singing this song about his own funeral, the funeral of Paul still so fresh in my mind. I sat there sobbing., thinking that there was a very real possibility that this man I had come to love might one day die of his disease. I still get teary when I hear the song, though I know that when I die (because I will die before Steve--it has been decreed), he's going to be the one bringing nachos to my funeral and will sing this song for me.

Steve and I have been through a lot together. We became best friends, did a lot of traveling together when he was giving lectures on living with AIDS to college groups. I was able to go to Stanford University with him when he was honored there. Walt and I flew to New York when Steve's second show (both were written with his partner Jim Brochu) opened at a Musical Theatre Festival. We've shared hotel rooms, meals, and deep, dark secrets. And he almost always eats half my dinner when we go out to eat, something we haven't done in a long time now.

We've kind of let space come between us in the last year or two. He's busy about things and I'm busy about things and we haven't seen much of each other, and don't have our morning on-line chats as often as we used to. But I am very eager to see the world premiere of his Cantata, "New World Waking!" which the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus is going to perform at the Davies Symphony Hall in early December.

The best thing about my now 8-year friendship with Steve is that he has also become friends with Ned and the Preoccupied Pipers crew and has actually recorded a couple of songs with them, and even performed with the group a couple of times

So I guess this is a belated birthday greeting to my friend, who still has the power to move me with his music and for whose presence in my life I am still very grateful, even if he does drive me crazy sometimes.

Friends of Friends

It's nice to have semi-famous friends with more famous friends.

You can read about Steve & Jimmy's evening out with Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner and Charlotte Rae here.

A not-so-famous, but up-and-coming famous person is 6 year old Malia, the hostess of Minor News Today.

Malia (known as "Bunny" in her show) and her mother were interviewed on CNN this morning. I was prepared for the interview because Malia's grandmother had written to me yesterday and sent me a link to one of the show's episodes, which is on YouTube. I fell in love with Malia then and there. The term "militantly adorable," which I first encountered in The Last Session, definitely applies to this precocious little girl.

(I hope Keith Olbermann sees her book report on Bill O'Reilly's book!)

Now, the reason I heard from Malia's grandmother is that Malia's mother performed with David (and possibly with Tom too) in high school, and we have known them for a very long time.

After the CNN report aired, I sent a note to Malia's Mom congratulating them on the appearance and it was nice to hear back from her. She's an extremely talented woman, whose talents were much in evidence even in high school, and it's fun to see what has happened to her in the interim.

But whatever you do, do yourself a favor and check out Minor News Today. The first show aired on November 13 of this year and they have been broadcasting 5 days a week. Apparently it has already attracted quite a following. Malia is missing several teeth at the moment and I wonder if it will still be as cute when the teeth come in!

And speaking of "teeth coming in," Daisy is definitely getting her teeth and teething on everything. I had to put a gate in front of my knees here at my desk to prevent her from getting to the electrical cords. She is now teething on the wooden legs to this desk, which I don't care about.

She is putting on so much weight and becoming so solid that I've started calling her "Chunk" because it is much more descriptive than "Daisy" was. She and Half Pint play-fight all the time (see video of the day!), but they really like each other (see Photo of the Day).

The nice thing about them having become good friends is that when I put them in the playpen at night there is not one peep from either of them. They just curl up together and go to sleep. I don't hear from them, usually, until after I'm already awake.

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MYSTERIOUS CHRISTMAS CARD

We received a mysterious Christmas card today. It is like a large postcard, with edges that look like they've been cut with special scrapbooking scissors. It's addressed to "Bev & Walt Sykes" and has a Kwanzaa stamp. This is the back side:

The card is unsigned, so if you sent it, could you please write and identify yourself! (I know Char & Mike couldn't possibly have sent it because Mike wouldn't ask directions if his life depended on it!)