The Play. I am still alive

I am writing a new blog entry from the experience of last night.  Stepping back to Monday evening for a moment I will paste some of the prior blog entry to lay a bit of groundwork.  Just look at the prior blog for an even deeper look earlier in the week.

9/20/10 8:00pm

Taking it easy tonight for the next two hours. At about 10pm I will head downtown.

Plans are already made for tomorrow night. At 8:00pm I will be seeing a play in Westwood called Love, Loss, and What I Wore. I have no clue what it is about. I was told it is supposed to be funny. I was also told that it has good reviews. I was told there are supposed to be a lot of great clothes in the play. Hmmm, does this sound like something I can wrap my head around? .....

I will try to keep an open mind. If it turns out that I am a total convert of this sort of thing perhaps my next steps into the darkness will be opera or ballet? I think my sister and her boyfriend enjoy the opera or maybe the ballet. Heck, I enjoy a great dancer as much as the next guy as it is impressive to see somebody who has that sort of control over their extremities but do you have to watch it for hours?

When I was younger my parents would drag me to Broadway shows at the Music Center in downtown Los Angeles. It was almost a scene of my kicking and being dragged out of the house but once I got to the theater and resigned myself to the evening I generally had a good time. I think this was mostly because there was live music with real instruments.

Going to a little theater to see a play about funny women's clothing on a woman who was once in love and had some sort of loss seems like a recipe for depression. There are too many gals out there (not trying to pick on you gals out there) who are angry at men who either left them, cheated on them, ran off with a younger version of them or are still with them but have disagreements with them on a regular enough basis that their sense of humor is a bit worn.

Don't buy it? I know a lady that meets with a group of her female friends on a regular basis for dinner. From what I picked up over a few years, they all sit and talk and laugh about the dumb things that men do. I guess we males do enough stupid things on a continual basis that it provides a continual source of material for these dinner conversatios.

I am not exactly looking forward to the play tomorrow evening. I am open to the possibility that I will not kill myself during the play. Reservations at 6:00pm for dinner tomorrow before the play at an Italian restaurant that is supposed to be walking distance away which is nice after one attempts to find parking in Westwood!

9/22/10 9:00am

A number of folks reading this are already aware of the events of the evening as you were sent photos or commentary outside of what was sent to the social networking world.

Cut to the chase, or as I say ... bottom line ....  I wonder how the magic of heavy drinking eluded me for so many years in regard to making some things a bit easier to accept?  There was a triple shot in this drink and it worked well enough to make the walk from the restaurant to the play fun and interesting. 

The drink did not help much with making the play fit my taste but it did allow me to joke even more than I would normally do with my friend during some parts of the play AND it took the edge off things enough that I did not reach into my pocket, pull out my knife and slash my own throat.

The evening started with dinner at Tanino Ristorante Bar in Westwood.  Traffic to Westwood was mood setting.  A few years ago I would have said traffic was hell.  I am more mellow these days and will leave the description as mood setting.

Parking was mood setting.  Having a handicap plaque is not a lot of help in Westwood as it seems that the entire population is handicapped in some way.  Yup, they all have those blue plaques hanging from their mirror unless they are driving a car over six figures in cost.  In that case they have handicapped license plates. 

I don't think a lot of these folks got shot in Vietnam.  The wrong age or the wrong sex for that era.  Maybe the current war where both men and women are shot at or blown up? 

Most are women between the age of 25-40 that are able to walk fine in 4-6" heels yet are handicapped in some way to allow them to get a handicap plaque.  The next higher percentage seem to be UCLA students.  Made me wonder how they find people for the football and basketball teams when they have enough students to fill the streets of Westwood on a Tuesday night with vehicles sporting handicapped plaques.

Time for another drink?

Getting on to the play and my take on things.

Love, Loss and What I Wore

Bottom line - not my cup-o-meat in a vegetarian world?  I felt totally out of place which was dangerous. 

I like feeling out of place.  I am at my best and my highest level of humor comes to the surface when I feel out of place.  Reminds me at the time I was with a group of folks at a place called Verdi in Santa Monica where opera singers put on a dinner show.  A woman was holding a note forever as she leaned sligthly forward, stiff at attention like a military man, arms tightly to her sides.  The note went on and one.  At one point I lost control, stood up and exclaimed ... "watch out .... she's gonna blow".   Perhaps one of the many things I did in the past that went into the "book of Myles" onto the list of the reasons why I was so different than my last wife. 

That is a great lead in, looking at the differences between men and women.  Most women seem to keep lists.  That is one difference.

First off, the entire play seems to jump all over the place.  Over my life I have collected only one single autograph, that of Timothy Leary.  He wrote a nice bit of dialogue for me many years ago inside the cover of his book.  Over the years I have tried to read the book.  Made it less than half way through.  Too fragmented.  Just like the play.

My level of concern grew as my friend told me that the primary point of the play was the nostalgic power of women’s clothing.  Where is that knife that I keep in my pocket when I hit skid row?  Do I slash my wrists now?   Thankfully my friend has a good sense of humor.

In a nutshell ....

Small cast of five women.  They sit on stools and recall memories of their life based on what is in their closets.  There is the typical older and wiser woman named Gingy.  Reminded me of that classic "chick flick" The Joy Luck Club where there was always a wiser older woman.  This play reminded me of a scaled down version of that movie.  Scaled down in every way.

Main point, if I grasped anything at all, was talk about what people wore during the high points of their life.

I joked about this during the play and even had a few folks around us chuckle. 

"I think I could have written this.  First party dress when you first wanted to dress up for something.  First prom dress.  First bra.  First bikini.  First mini dress.  Wedding dress.  Hospital dress when you had your first baby.  First ultra expensive dress you received as a gift from a client.  Yeah, it has been known to happen.  It is a complicated world out there. 

The dialogue made me think of conversation that may go on at a "girls night out" dinner or party.  I am sure that any woman that wears clothes or has been in any sort of relationship could relate to one or more of the cast characters and that is one reason that this play may be thought of as a good play by a lot of folks .... 50% of the population? 

Bottom line - I am glad it is over.  My friend thought I was funny and amusing and I did not seem to do anything to leave a bad memory that will go into another "book of Myles".