The word ‘veritable’ came up in the NY Times “Strands” puzzle recently and my brain instantly leapt to this.
I hadn’t heard that in years! Sam and I were both fans of the book as kids, and we as a family went to see the movie, which I didn’t love, but have grown to appreciate since. I’ve never seen the more recent one, but I hear that’s pretty good too.
So this will be scattershot, to get caught up in the bitsies of what’s been going on, starting with Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo Part 4, which isn’t that interesting. To wrap up the Disney experience, I woke up, had coffee, got showered and mostly packed, then headed to the food-court-ish resort restaurant for breakfast. I got a bagel sandwich, which turned out to be exactly the same meal as I’d had two days ago at Magic Kingdom – reasonable sandwich innards on a terrible bagel, plus really good tater tots. Oh, and a cappuccino, which was lovely.
Back to the room, finished up and out the door with my two rolling suitcases. (for a weekend trip? Shut up) Down the stairs, push push schlep to the lobby, and summoned an Uber, which didn’t take that long.
I was giving myself plenty of time at the airport, because (although I’d not seen this on the way down) the news was filled with reports of huge lines at security – and that is in fact what I ran into, even at the TSA Precheck line. But the line did move. And I ran into what is turning into “Peterson’s Law”. Because I have a pacemaker, they often cannot put me through the scanning machine, although some machines are OK. Normally at TSA Pre, you don’t have to take your belt or shoes off, but if they do a patdown, you do. So… Peterson’s Law is, ‘at security, if you pre-emptively take your shoes and belt off, it will turn out that you didn’t need to, but if you don’t, they will ask you to’. Sigh.
Also, my routine for airplanes is when they start making noises about boarding, I can get up and use the bathroom and come back pretty much in time for my zone. But for this flight, there were no preliminaries, it was just ‘hey let’s start boardng’. All this meant is that I boarded a little later than I normally would. Flight was fine, I watched half of Zootopia 2 and liked it enough that I should finish it at some point.
So… one thing that had been puzzling me for a couple of days was that I wasn’t getting cell phone service. I always had wifi, so it didn’t get in my way so much, but I was still confused and wondered if it was a Florida/cell tower thing. Well, I landed at LGA and turned on my phone again and *nope* I still had no connectivity. This was gong to be a problem if I wanted an Uber, which I did. OK, so I had wifi in the baggage claim area. Got my luggage, summoned the Uber, went out to the curb… where I immediately lost my wifi and no longer had a way to communicate with my driver. So… went back in the building, wifi picked up again, and I watched the little Uber map until my car was oh so close and went outside again.
To realize that there were no cars anywhere and for some reason, the cops (or whoever) were preventing any of the cars from coming into the pickup bay and again, I had no way to communicate with my driver. Eventually that got resolved (WTF? I’d never seen that before) and luckily my driver’s car was red and easy to spot when it finally showed up and I got home just fine and had a lazy afternoon.
(and the next day I went to the Apple Store in Grand Central and waited around longer than I should for a Genius Bar person because the rep who’d seated me forgot to mark on the record which table I was at… and then finally I got a genius, who looked at my phone, went to settings, flipped a switch and lo! I had cellular again. Turned out that at the MK, the phone was going through power faster than I thought it should, and not only did I put it in airplane mode, I thought it would be a great idea to turn off cellular. And then completely forgot about it. Boy, I’m loving middle age.)
Anyway, the Disney trip was fantastic and I would totally do it again. Maybe next year I’ll do the same thing, but for the Universal parks.
Since getting home, I rewatched Beauty and the Beast, which I hadn’t seen in ages, and was enchanted all over again. I’ve also cued up Ratatouille for a rewatch, probably this weekend.
A couple of fun things happened the week before the Disney trip that I have not had a chance to mention. First, I went all the way down to Bay Ridge, Brooklyn to see Regina Opera’s Suor Angelica. I’ve seen Suor a couple of times before, had never found it any more than ‘pretty’. The two other operas in the Trittico are so much more interesting and entertaining. But my buddy Manya was playing the Zia Principessa and I had to see that.
Suor is a one-act and Regina, rather than pairing it with another one-act, made the first half of the program two orchestral concertos: the Handel harp concerto and the Haydn trumpet concerto. Purely by coincidence, these are both pieces I know very well, and love. The Haydn is one of only two pieces in all of Western music that I was once paid to perform as a bassoonist. Bassoon is like my fourth double down the list, and I’m not great, but the 2nd bassoon part to that piece isn’t particularly challenging, and that was a fun experience. Anyway, that was many years ago, and this performance I just got to enjoy as an audience member. Both concerti were beautifully performed (the trumpet player is a new member of the Met Opera Orchestra) and I was surprised by how tight the orchestra was (meaning ‘they were good’).
After intermission, we got Suor, sung in Italian with English surtitles. And it was really great. So much better (and more interesting) than I was expecting, marvelously performed and again, the orchestra was tight – far more so than the Magic Flute orchestra for Amore I’d seen a couple of months ago. Manya was wonderful, of course – she’s young for the old bat roles, but that’s where her voice sits and she can enjoy these roles for a long long time. But all the performers were excellent. I will certainly return to Regina Opera, despite the very long public transit commute.
The other event was getting invited by my former upstairs neighbors Mariah and Josh to Bemelman’s Bar, a New York institution I’d never heard of! I was meeting them after a doctor’s appointment on the Upper East Side, and although this wasn’t planned, it turned out that my doctor’s office was an easy walk away from the Carlyle. I got there quite early and enjoyed a Prosecco on my own.
Mariah showed up, then Josh and we got all caught up, with cocktails and a charcuterie tray, and a pigs in a blanket appetizer (this all turned out to be dinner). Having also been with them to the Algonquin and the Plaza, we’re now more deliberately going to plan ‘let’s meet up at classic NYC watering holes’ events. That was really great!
OK, what else. More doctor’s appointments. I’m finally getting cataract surgery and had a consult for that. It’s a bigger deal than I thought, but not sure why I thought it wouldn’t be a big deal. First surgery is mid-April. Second surgery undetermined, but I need to schedule it around opera rehearsals, so it may have to wait.
I went to a book event! My favorite author of MF romances, the hilarious Lucy Score, was launching her second book in the Story Lake series, and was having a talk at the Union Square Barnes & Noble with Xio Axelrod (an author I’d never heard of, but now I want to read her stuff too). I’d loved the first Story Lake book, had been rereading it via audiobook to remind myself of the characters. We all got (pre) signed copies of the new book, and the talk was really fun and interesting. I could have stayed to get a photo, but it was the end of a work day, so I just went home. But will have to remember that attending that sort of event is worth the effort. (and I’ve finished the book now. It’s a hoot, but, like the first one, has more depth than some earlier books. She as an author is growing.)
The Oscars happened! Mariah and Josh are my usual Oscar partners, but they were out of town, so I invited Susan over instead. We had a good time, and I thought the show itself was largely entertaining. Didn’t really have any issues with who won. I’m seeing backlash over One Battle, but I enjoyed the heck out of it. I would have been happy if Sinners won, too, and was very happy for Michael B. Jordan – and Jessie Buckley, who was amazing in Hamnet. I thought the In Memoriams were handled very well.
And this week (which included a day where I technically worked from home, but didn’t get a lot done because of tummy trouble) was largely about casting the opera double bill we’re doing in June! That was an interesting process, and included some zoom chats with some of the auditioners (who’d submitted their vocal auditions online) and we are making offers now! Stay tuned…
I will say, as I’ve been saying to anyone who’ll listen, that one of the ways that this project is stretching me is it’s been a long long time since I’ve had to music-direct a project where I didn’t already know the work like the back of my hand. For instance, I’ve known all the G&S shows really really well since college, and two of the last three musicals I’ve MD’d were also pieces I knew really well already. But Mame in 2007 was a ‘starting from zero’ project for me, and also the Dvorak 8th symphony, where I looked at the score for the first time ever 3 weeks before starting rehearsals.
Which is to say I have total confidence in my ability to learn and MD these two cute little operas, but I need to put in the work. And will. And am.
Oh, I’ve started skating again, that’s cool. Although it feels like I’m starting from zero there as well.
Can I commit to finishing the writeup of the jury trial this weekend? Let’s say YES. I’ll do that tomorrow. Enjoy the weekend!
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