Happy birthday to my angel boy!

Where does the time go???  How did my sweetheart get to be twelve years old?!?!  But, he is, so let's celebrate with some photos of the handsomest boy in the world.  You are welcome to sing "Sunrise, Sunset" or "The Way We Were" in the back of your minds...  :)

2012 Humana Fest, Part Two - the food

Of course, because I'm me, when I'm in a new town, I like to try lots of different restaurants.  I would never eat out so much around home, but when I want to sample as much of a town as I can, that rule goes out the window.  Even with our teeny tiny per diem.  :)

The restaurant I really wanted to try was 610 Magnolia, with executive chef Edward Lee, who was just on Top Chef: Texas.  I thought he was terrific on the show.  But, of course, the restaurant was fully booked for the times I had available.  Next year, as soon as we decide we're going to Humana, I'm booking a table there.  First thing.

When we arrived in Louisville, we were starving, so we wandered around a bit until we found Dish on Market.  We didn't really have a lot of choices - quite a few restaurants are closed between lunch and dinner.  Dish on Market was a pub-type place, with a pretty good menu.  I didn't want to eat a huge meal, since we were going to do a meeting for work later in the evening, so I just got a fried egg and cheddar sandwich.  What really sold the sandwich to me, though, was that it was served on a pretzel bread croissant.  OK, yum!  I love pretzel bread and I love croissants.  I figured the combination would be a winner!  And it was!  Though the bread could've been a tad saltier.  The homemade chips were also yummy, as was the sweet tea.  I had a lot of sweet tea on this trip.  Our server was quite sweet and wanted us to come back for the live music later that night, but we just didn't make it. 

Our boss had a lot of travel agita that day (he flew out of a different airport), so he was desperate to get dinner right away after our meetings were completed.  The hotel concierge tried to get us into 610 Magnolia, but it was impossible.  So we ate at Blu, the Italian restaurant in the hotel.  It was quite nice.  The homemade foccacia was delicious, as was the antipasti platter (I was sad to miss out on the delicious-looking prosciutto, but the mozzarella and the balsamic vinaigrette were nice).   The malbec wine I got was also delicious.

My main course was a tad disappointing.  I got the rigatoni in vodka sauce.  I have to say the sauce was pretty bland, and so were the cherry tomatoes and the eggplant inside.  Plus, everything in the dish was so soft.  There needed to be another texture somewhere, I think.  I actually ended up taking a little bit of the crust from my work chum's pizza to add a little crunch.  I think I would've preferred the dish with a regular tomato sauce, which I was going to ask for, but forgot.  Oh well.  Next time.  The restaurant itself was lovely and our server was excellent.  If we go back, maybe I'll try some fish.  Another work chum got the salmon and said it was great.

We ate the breakfast buffet in the hotel the next morning (sorry, no photos), which was quite nice.  They had delicious biscuits and I got an omelet at the omelet station, plus some very nice fresh fruit.  We worked through lunch, but then ate dinner at a very fun place, Doc Crow's.  Another work chum commented that it would be a good idea to eat BBQ since we were in the south, so I made a reservation at Doc Crow's which was 1) a BBQ place, and 2) near the theater since we had to be back in a couple of hours for more shows.  I was worried it would be crazy, since we would be there at the same time as the Louisville/Kentucky basketball game, but we were in the dining room in the back and away from the bar and the TVs. 

We started with some DELICIOUS fried green tomatoes.  Oh my, they were good.  A crispy breading, with still-firm sweet and tart green tomatoes.  Delicious.  They were served with a yummy remoulade.  I also got a very tasty margarita on the rocks.  I don't normally have a drink right before seeing a show (especially after having seen three other plays!), but I thought a cocktail was in order.  :)

Even though I had a fried appetizer, I still wanted to get a po' boy.  They had a combination oyster shrimp sandwich, served with yet another delicious remoulade.  I also got some hush puppies, which were tasty, if a little spicy for my tastes.  Thumbs up on the po-boy.  I even put some of the housemade tomato-based barbecue sauce on the sandwich - that may have made it inauthentic, but it sure made it tasty.  The restaurant also had a vinegar-based sauce on the table, but I forgot to try that one.  Darn it.  Next time.  (We were going to go back there for lunch the next day, but they're closed for lunch.  Darn it again.)   And, if I still ate meat, I would've gotten their dessert called Wilber's Sundae, which had cinnamon pork rinds and candied bacon atop bourbon praline ice cream.  Oh. My. God.  No one else was brave enough to try it, darn them.  How can a vaguely-vegetarian person live vicariously through others if they won't order the dessert with cinnamon pork rinds?!?!  Oh, the humanity!!!  ;)

I met a dear pal from undergrad for breakfast the next morning.  She drove me to a place I'd heard about from a lot of people, but since our work crowd didn't have a car, I didn't think I'd get to try it.  Hooray for college pals with cars!  Lynn's Paradise Cafe has been featured on the Food Network several times, apparently.  Bobby Flay has done a couple of 'throwdowns' there, but I haven't seen those episodes.  I'll have to keep my eyes open for them.  The restaurant is adorable and quirky, with a very fun menu.  There are disco balls, and really fun lamps all around.  I liked it there.  Of course, I became the boring one and just ordered eggs with biscuits, because I love me some biscuits and can never get them in NYC.  I also ordered a side dish of fried apples.  YUM.   Thumbs way up for the food and for the fun shop attached to the restaurant.  I bought some souvenirs, along with a tiara cookie cutter for myself!  Look for some tiara-shaped cookies in the near future...

We snuck out and got some pizza for lunch at Impellizzeri's.  The pizza was ok, nothing special.  We ordered the thin crust pizza, but the crust wasn't really very thin.  I'd hate to see what the regular crust pie looked like.  Their sweet tea was quite good, though, as were their breadsticks.  Tons of butter and garlic - just the way I like them. 

[OK, you're thinking that all we did was eat, right?  Not really - we also saw a lot of plays. :) ]

For dinner, I made a reservation for our group at a nice place called Proof on Main.  It's inside a very funky hotel and art museum.  There's something to look at everwhere you turn.  Even the trip to the bathroom is an experience.  The restaurant has a very nice cocktail list, but I couldn't decide which one I wanted, so I got a glass of falanghina.  It was delicious.  Even though we had had pizza just a few hours earlier, I went ahead and ordered the soft shell crab for dinner.  It was DELICIOUS!  It was fried in a light tempura, on top of gnocchi, mushy peas and a carrot reduction.  I really loved it.  It was light and yummy and didn't make me feel full at all.  Everyone seemed to like Proof, so I'm glad I picked it.  Their dessert menu wasn't anything to write home about, though, so we didn't try any.  Again, next time.

Oh, and to end the evening, we went to the Maker's Mark Bourbon Bar.  I had my first mint julep, which was yum yummy.  If I hadn't had to get up at the crack of dawn the next morning, I would've had two.  :)  The trip was a lot of fun, both theater-wise and food-wise.  I'm looking forward to heading back to Louisville next year.  To end, I'll add some Louisville-local-flavor photos.  Enjoy...

2012 Humana Fest, Part One - the shows

I spent last weekend in Louisville, KY, for the Humana Festival of New Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville.  We went for work to the Industry Professionals Weekend.  It's a whirlwind weekend, seeing all of the shows in the festival, along with the one-acts, in two days.  Whew!  It's a marathon, but ultimately so fun and worthwhile.  It's nice to see so many industry people in one place, plus it's gratifying that the local folks are so excited about new plays and new play production.  It is always a very uplifting weekend.

I'm happy to report that the shows this year, on the whole, were much more interesting and exciting to me than in the past.  I thought there was more of an eclectic point of view, with different stories that I hadn't seen before.  The acting, directing and design were again top notch.

I think my favorite play was Lisa Kron's The Veri**on Play.  It was certainly the most fun.  Lisa has put together a script dealing with the craziness of modern life, especially the growing impersonal aspect to customer service.  Everything she went through was completely recognizable, from the wackadoodle procedures of foreign ATMs and wireless phone company's customer service representatives.  The play is realistic, yet also a complete farce, with chase scenes, one actor playing identical twins (even in the same scene!), maniacal CEOs and an oddball support group.  I laughed a lot and also found some stuff to think about.  The original music by Jeanine Tesori is terrific, too.  I'm sure the show will have a future life (I saw a couple of NYC producers at the performance).  The script could maybe be trimmed a bit in the middle, but, all in all, thumbs way up from me.

I also enjoyed How We Got On, by Idris Goodwin.  It tells a story completely unknown to me about the beginnings of rap in Detroit, through two kids in a suburb, trying to get on the tv show Yo MTV Raps.  The performers were fantastic, especially the gal playing the DJ.  There was just a lot of verve, excitement and fun in this piece.  It was the last play we saw, and although I was tired, it woke me up and kept me fully engaged throughout.  I really liked it.  I think this play and Lisa Kron's play were my favorites.

Death Tax, by Lucas Hnath, was our first play.  I enjoyed it a great deal as well, though I think the last scene could use some work.  The characters were really well-developed and the dialogue was realistic and interesting.  The use of repetition was particularly well-done.  I remember seeing a Law and Order episode about sort of the same topic and found it really interesting.  This point-of-view about the subject matter was really interesting, too.  The play was a great start to our weekend.

Next we saw Eat Your Heart Out by Courtney Baron.  I really liked it, too, though, again, I feel some trimming could really help.  Here we have a modern story about how everyone's life touches everyone else.  We've certainly seen this kind of story, but I thought this one was done well, using contemporary references like online dating, international adoption and teenage angst to good effect.  The actors were really great in this piece, too.  They all hit the right notes, from the humor to the pathos.  There was a nice balance and I was very engaged (I thought I knew the way the play was headed and I was so upset, but then it went someplace else, which was a relief).

The other two full-lengths, The Hour of Feeling by Mona Mansour, and Michael von Siebenburg Melts Through the Floorboard by Greg Kotis, were less successful for me.  The former needed more dramatic conflict for me to be fully engaged.  I did enjoy the premise and the actors very much, plus the lighting and sound design were first-rate, but the way the story played out just didn't grab me.  I'm sure it's my problem and not the play's, because the rest of the audience seemed to enjoy it quite a bit.  Using poetry as a metaphor for politics is very provocative and I do wish the play had revealed itself to me.  Oh, and the lead actor is my new boyfriend.  Yay.  I'm sure he's thrilled.  :)

The Greg Kotis piece was just not my cup of tea at all, which is not his fault at all.  It was a satire/farce about cannibalism.  So, if you know me at all, you know I was out as soon as the cannibalism was revealed.  When a play contains either vampires, pedophiles, serial killers, big bugs or cannibals--NO STOMACH FOR IT.  I spent a lot of the play with my eyes closed.  But, again, the rest of the audience was really digging it.  So...take my thoughts with a grain of salt.

The 10-minute plays were fun, though they didn't seem to be extraspecial to me.  The intern piece, Oh Gastronomy, was hit or miss, with more hits than misses.  It had over 25 little vignettes, all dealing with food.  I will say that if you have a play where baking brownies is done on-stage and the audience can smell it, you should really pass out brownies to eveyone.  Thank you.

To sum up, I'm very glad I went to Humana this year.  I'm happy to say that the plays' subject matter was more compelling to me than in year's past.  The new artistic director will begin putting his stamp on the festival beginning next year, so I look forward to what he brings to the table.

Tomorrow:  the food of Louisville... ;)

Review - Pipe Dream

I wanted to jot down a few thoughts about Encores’ current production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Pipe Dream.  Even though the show ran nearly 250 performances in 1955, the show was considered a flop and it certainly wasn’t one of the team’s favorites of their work (at least as far as what I've read).  But I’m glad I saw it, considering it hasn’t been seen in New York since its original run and I doubt it would ever have a major revival.

Based on John Steinbeck, Pipe Dream takes place on Cannery Row in Monterey.  There’s not much plot, per se, just a lot of ‘will they or won’t they’ tension between our leads, a marine biologist (played by Will Chase) and a gal of indeterminate profession (played by Laura Osnes).  Leslie Uggams plays a madam with a heart of gold; Tom Wopat is a Luther Billis-type character, and we meet other denizens of the flophouses and waterfront.

The show is perfectly pleasant, though a bit boring as well, since nothing really happens.  I realize the problem can partly be attributed to the cutting of the libretto for a concert version, but even the stuff that remains is kinda dull.  Seriously.  Nothing happens.  Doc meets Suzy, Fauna wants them to get together, two and a half hours later, Doc crawls through a pipe (get it?) and they do. 

Not that there’s anything exactly wrong with having very little plot.  If the characters were compelling, or something vaguely dramatic were happening, that would make up for it.  But…there isn’t.  It’s just kinda nice, sorta sweet, a bit charming, and fairly dull.  I mean, hello, you have a bordello.  Let’s spice it up a bit.  You can certainly see why this show doesn’t really rank with the top notch stuff from R & H.  And no one loves an R & H musical more than me.  In Pipe Dream, I think perhaps there are too many characters, so you can’t really get to know anyone.  And there are too many group numbers, which are most likely meant to provide the atmosphere, but don’t.  And the script is too vague about Suzy’s ‘profession.’  Clearly, she’s supposed to be working in Fauna’s brothel, but the text has been so watered down (it’s well-documented that Hammerstein had trouble writing for the lowlifes in this piece), it just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

The cast is very good, though, and there IS some lovely music, especially Suzy’s “Everybody’s Got a Home But Me” and Doc’s “All at Once You Love Her.”  Oh, and the duet between Fauna and Suzy is gorgeous.  Some of the music, though, sounds like a first-draft to Carousel.  Will Chase and Laura Osnes are appealing and attractive and sing beautifully.  If their acting isn’t quite setting the world on fire, well, neither are their characters, though a little subtext from the two of them might have been helpful.  Leslie Uggams kicks some butt and looks fantastic.  Tom Wopat was fine.  The guy playing Doc’s other best pal was way overplaying the ‘dimwitted-guy-with-a-heart-of-gold-and-maybe-he’s-smart-after-all’ kind of thing.  And why he has a solo in the second act is beyond me (clearly I realize this isn't the actor's fault).  Philip Hernandez was terrific as Joe and I would’ve liked to have seen more of him.   I think the show has been directed to move at too stately a pace (a little more oomph would’ve been fun) and the choreography, while interesting, looked a little too stylish for these decidedly un-stylish people.  Was that what they were going for?  I guess it didn’t work for me.

So…sorry, blah blah blah.  It’s not a great show, but I think it’s still worth a look.  City Center is lovely, hearing a full orchestra play Richard Rodgers music is always a treat, and Will Chase and Laura Osnes are pretty to look at and listen to.  There are worse ways to spend your time.  J

**six years ago, I reviewed the Lincoln Center revival of Awake and Sing, which I loved; two years ago, it was Time Stands Still, which I also loved.  I adore Donald Margulies... 



Happy Birthday to Me!

(of course, this post is via auto-post.  I think you'll notice as you read that I wouldn't take the time to do all this work on my actual birthday...lol)

Growing up, my family always made a big deal out of our birthdays (they still do!).  We had a party every year, though rarely were they parties with school chums.  Just my cousins and other family members.  Why?  One, we didn't have a lot of money back then for party stuff; two, my mom considered school chums a necessary evil but didn't really want to have them around; and three, my birthday almost always fell over my school's spring break, so kids just weren't in town.  I can count on one hand the number of non-family-centric birthday parties I had in the past.  I can also count on one hand the number of birthdays spent in school so I could receive dozens of birthday wishes during the school day.  Wah.

All of the above is a bunch of pseudo-psychobabble blah blah blah explaining why I feel the need to celebrate my birthday for at least a month and throw myself a big hairy party every year FOR MY OWN SELF.  :)  I love my birthday!  And I love having everyone around me love my birthday!  I've learned to live with it.  So should you.

This year, though, I'm having a nice dinner with my four best friends.  Because, in the big scheme of things, who really needs more than that??  I mean, even I get tired of planning big 'celebrate me' extravaganzas.  But I'm still toying with saving my pennies for a huge blow out for the big five-oh in 2014.  Mark your calendars now.  In the meantime, here are some blasts from my birthday past (clearly, my 'awkward' phase lasted a really long time).  Everyone celebrate!  Celebrate spring AND my birthday!  Viva me!  [lol]