Once in a Red Moon

"I feel like Tevye," Walt said.

In Fiddler on the Roof, Tevye's son-in-law, Motel the tailor, has just gotten a new sewing machine.  All the people of Anatevka, the little town where they live, are very excited about it and crowd around the shop to see it.  Tevye arrives late and wife Golde is ready to go home and tells him he can see it later.  He insists he wants to see it now, sticks his head in the door, then comes out and says something like "OK, I've seen it"

There was a lunar eclipse tonight, called a "super blue blood moon."  According to Reuters, "the Earth will cast a darkened red-tinted shadow across the face of its natural satellite, hence the term “blood moon."  The last time this kind of moon was visible was apparently 1866.

Reuters goes on to report, "In Los Angeles, a crowd ranging from 1,000 to 2,000 people was expected to make a pilgrimage in the dark to the Griffith Observatory on Mount Hollywood, where extra telescopes will be set up for them to see the celestial show, Griffith Observatory officials said."

We didn't have a telescope here.  Walt set the alarm for 5 a.m. and woke me up.  I hadn't been asleep long because I had been up until 2 writing a review.  The moon was visible from our back yard and yep.  There it was.  A red moon.

"OK.  I've seen it," Walt said as we both came right back in the house and went back to bed.

It seems like it should have been a bigger deal, but there really wasn't much more to do other than see that yes, it was red...or rust colored, really.  I couldn't take a photo--too far way--so I had to rely on Google Images to find a picture that looked like what we saw.  Even this doesn't look like what I saw because of my eyesight making it look blurry.  Maybe this is what it looked like to Walt.

But by golly, we saw the blood moon.

My plan last night had been to finish watching the David Letterman interview of Obama during the State of the Uniom [sic] speech, but in fact I had a show to review, so while #45 droned on, we were on our way to Sacramento to see Jersey Boys.

I wasn't particularly excited to see this show, which it seems like I just reviewed in this venue very recently (actually it was 10 years ago).  It's a wildly popular story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons and is chock full of the songs of my young adulthood performed by some very talented singers, while telling the often tumultuous story of the group. 

I realized that I hadn't remembered much of it, so I enjoyed it all over again.  Call me an old fogey, but it's nice to hear ballad-ish songs that I know rather than loud discordant new music that I don't.  The Four Seasons (who got their name from the name of a club where they were performing at the start of their career) lasted from 50s to the 70s

I found watching their signature "choreography" with synchronized hand and leg movements...I don't know....quaint.

One of the four died in 2000 and I think another one died a couple of years later, but here are three of the four at the opening of Jersey Boys back in 2005.

That's Tommy DeVito, Bob Gaudio and Frankie Valli.  Valli is now 83