Hawleyblog

A Star-Catching Weekend With the Nephews

We had a great time with the nephews this past weekend. It all started last Friday afternoon, when my sister stayed for dinner after bringing the 'phews into the city. Before we started cooking, we hung out on the terrace for a while.

With wine.

To get the meal rolling, we served the fantastic carrot-ginger-avocado soup that I've written about a few times on the blog and that I was eager to have the Gerbers try. Matt ate it rather quickly. Mike ultimately ate about 90% of it, but it took him a while. Tracey had a few spoonfuls and said the soup had too much ginger heat for her. So two out of three. :-)

Bright and beautiful daisies on Tony's serving cart in the greenhouse. I'd bought them that morning.

For our main course, Tony grilled chicken and served it with an out-of-this-world honey-coriander sauce that he'd made for me before, with salmon, as Martha intended. The sauce was equally delicious with the chicken. On the side, we had roasted potatoes and sunchokes, grilled asparagus, and sautéed pea shoots with mint.

When Mike was helping me prepare the pea-shoot side dish, he asked if I wanted the mint leaves cut in a chiffonade. I said sure. He showed me how to do it. I was impressed.

For dessert, I had made another batch of Tangelo Sorbet. Everyone loved it. Matt said it was smiling back at him. :-) I felt like a sweet genius.

The next morning, the 'phews and I had breakfast at Grounded. Later, we went to the Union Square Greenmarket. We passed on the pokeweed. Ack!

For lunch, we each had a salad like the one I'd made for myself when Mark was here, with pea flowers. And we dressed it with a pomelo vinaigrette. Delish. The guys and I all drank the last of the vinaigrette from our bowls. I took a purtier photo than the last one I ran of the similar salad, so I'm gonna run that baby.

And here's Matt finishing up his salad.

Then we went to Village Pizza to get a slice apiece to tide us over until dinner. The guys got barbecue chicken slices, and I got a plain slice.

Earlier that week, Tony and I had started some tomato, herb, flower, and bean seeds in a big tray in the greenhouse and some lettuce outside. (I'll write more about that in my eventual Part II of the Colossal Food-and-Gardening Post.) M&M and I sowed some seeds in our big containers outside: zinnias, cosmos, nasturtium, sunflowers, calendulas, carrots, and mint. The guys watered everything on our terrace. Which allowed me to kick up my feet and relax. Hee hee.

We had tickets to Peter and the Star Catcher that night. We ate an early-ish dinner at Commerce, so we'd have plenty of time to get uptown to the theater.

I started with the Chilled Asparagus Soup WIth Fresh Ricotta, Lemon, and Brioche. I thought it was outstanding, and M&M enjoyed the spoonful they both tried.

The guys ordered the Salad of 20 Herbs and Lettuces With Manchego Cheese, Olive Oil, and Lemon, which I told them I'd gotten and enjoyed before. For their entree, they split the Ricotta Gnocchi with Italian Sausage, Tomato, and Scallions. They had good things to say about both of their selections.

Tony got what we had on our previous visit: the Red Snapper with Eggplant and Bok Choi in a Thai-Inspired Broth. He said it wasn't quite as good as the previous time, when it had been perfection, but it was still very good.

I got an entree I had never tried there: Classic Steak Diane with Haricot Verts and Potato Puree. The meat was the most tender steak I'd had in forever. And the beans were just right; they were wrapped up in a band of thinly sliced carrot.

Tony passed on dessert, just like he'd passed on an appetizer. He didn't want to be too full when he went to the theater so he wouldn't get sleepy. I decided on two scoops of Mint Chocolate Cookie Ice Cream, which I enjoyed. The ice cream contained tiny bits of mint that had been blended into the custard base. The guys, at Tony's urging, shared the gigantic slice of Birthday Cake, which Paula had gotten when she, Mark, Tony, and I had gone to Commerce last October.

Before

After

PATSC was so good. It had gotten tremendous reviews, which was enough to make me decide to see a play about Peter Pan. Plus I was eager to see two actors with hyphenated names whose performances I'd previously enjoyed: Celia Keenan-Bolger, who was terrific in—and Tony nominated for—The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, and Adam Chanler-Berat, who was memorable as the boyfriend of the daughter in Next to Normal.

The production values were superb. The actors conveyed so much with simple props like ropes, and they acted at times as parts of the set in clever ways.

I stuck around after the show to get some autographs: Keenan-Bolger's and Berat's. And Christian Borle's. He played Black Stache, the dastardly pirate who would eventually become Captain Hook. Both Keenan-Bolger—who plays Molly, who will grow up to be the mother of Wendy—and Borle, who's one of the stars of NBC's Smash, are Tony nominated as a featured performer.

I also got the autograph of Kevin Del Aguila, who I thought was kinda cute in a scruffy way. :-) He played the role of Smee, the right-hand man of Black Stache.

While I was waiting outside the stage door for autographs, Tony took the 'phews home. He had to prevent two Southern tourist bitches from stealing their cab, which subsequently almost got crushed by a bus. (I'd like to think that if the Southern bitches had succeeded in stealing the cab, it would have gotten crushed by the bus. But that's because I'm a Northern city-dwelling bitch. :-) ) And then the cabbie drove like a maniac to our place.

I got home about 11:30, via the A train. M&M were trying to fall asleep in the pullout-couch bed. I joined Tony out on the terrace, and he told me about the terrible cab experience. Rudy was overjoyed to see me. He was worried when I didn't come home with everybody else.

The next morning, Mike, Matt, and I got a little something at 'sNice. Then we chowed down at home on pomelos we picked up that morning at the health food store and mangoes that I'd gotten on Friday from one of the fruit stands near my office.

Then the four of us took Rudy for a nice long walk down by the river. Here are M&M posing with the Rudemeister with their home state of New Jersey in the background.

M&M's home state, that is. Rudy's a New Yawker. :-)

After Tracey and David came to pick up the guys, we had lunch at Slice. Tony was bummed that the gluten-free crust is now corn based instead of rice based. It's nowhere near as good as it used to be, Tony said, but, according to our waitress, it's much less time-consuming for the chefs to prepare. Sigh.

I sent the guys home with a pomelo; some dried pineapple, which we also picked up at the health food store and which we'd had some of on the way to see the Jim Henson exhibit back in January; and memories of a star-catching weekend in the city.

UPDATE ON MAY 23: I meant to mention that I was shocked when the guys told me they'd gotten their hair cut only about a week before their visit! I said I thought they had the basis for a civil suit. Hee hee. They said that they didn't get much taken off. Obviously. And that they forgot to bring the stuff they put in their hair to flatten and style it.

A Wonderful Anniversary Weekend

Tony and I had a terrific weekend for our second anniversary, which was Saturday. We agree that it seems like we've known each other more than two years. He's my Sugar Badger!

Tony's dear friend Mark from DC came to visit us on Friday night. I enjoy Mark's company so much that I totally didn't care he was going to be with us on our special day. But I don't rule out using this occasion as a bargaining chip with Tony in the future: "What do you mean you can't do X with me on day Y? Did I complain when you invited Mark to spend our second anniversary with us?"

When Mark greeted Tony at Port Authority Bus Terminal, he said, "Welcome to your cockblocking weekend." Hee hee.

Before Tony went to meet Mark, he grilled steak, shrimp, and veggies for the two of us and made a delicious cilantro sauce. And we split a half bottle of California pinot noir from Gloria Ferrer. I tried a shrimp because Tony wanted me to. I just don't see what the big deal is. They don't repel me, but there's nothing to excite me. Extremely mild flavor. Not entirely pleasant texture. Meh.

We exchanged gifts. Tony gave me a ceramic berry carton–style container.

I gave Tony a custom-made T-shirt with a RuPaul's Drag Race–inspired slogan on it.

After the guys got home from Port Authority, Mark had some Tangelo Sorbet I'd finished making that morning. Tony couldn't wait until Mark arrived to try the sorbet, so we'd had ours right after dinner. Mark declared it to be "sunshine in a bowl." :-) Tony said it was my best sorbet so far. (I made the sorbet base again tonight so we could have some more this weekend.)

I followed the Tangerine Sorbet recipe in my old standby, Williams-Sonoma Kitchen Library: Ice Creams & Sorbets, except I used brown rice syrup instead of corn syrup. The roughly 5 pounds of tangelos I'd bought didn't produce the called-for 3 cups of juice. I had bought a pomelo when I got the tangelos because it had been a while since I'd eaten one and because it seemed appropriate given that a tangelo is a cross between a pomelo and a tangerine. And I happily found pixie tangerines in the fridge because, unbeknownst to me, Tony had gotten some from Fresh Direct because they were on sale. I squeezed a couple of the tangerines and about a third of the pomelo into the sorbet base to produce the right amount of juice.

On Saturday morning, Mark and Tony went out clothes shopping while I hit the Abingdon Square and Union Square Greenmarkets. At the USG, I bought two bunches of beautiful-looking and -smelling lilacs.

The three of us met up for lunch. We had planned to go to Rosa Mexicana because we forgot—just like on the day of our first date!—that it would be crazy busy because of Cinco de Mayo. We went to Markt instead. I got blueberry pancakes, Tony got chicken soup and a big-ass salad, and Mark got the Provençal-style mussels.

Mark likes brightly colored shirts and socks. Rudy was looking at Mark's socks as he was lying on the couch, and Tony said Rudy was thinking, "I'm color blind, and I think those socks are crazy."

For dinner that evening, I made monkfish—like we had the previous time Mark visited—and an opal basil sauce that I was quite pleased with. The sauce consisted of opal basil leaves, spring shallot, olive oil, salt, and a little bit of water. I roasted sweet potatoes, split them open, and topped them with a little olive oil and ground cinnamon, ginger, and (fresh) nutmeg. The guys didn't want a salad with dinner, but I made one for myself: dark lettuces and baby radicchio. And cute little pea flowers. I gave Tony and Mark some pea flowers on their plates, and they loved them.

My salad

Tony's plate

Tony had gotten us tickets for the 7 o'clock show of Sleep No More, the theatrical/dance experience that has you wandering around several floors of a building on W. 27th Street while seeing what you can see from behind a white mask. (The playing card was my ticket.)

You have to wear the mask at all times, and you're not supposed to talk. You can pick up the props in various rooms and use them to try to piece together the story that's being presented. You're encouraged to follow actors from location to location, although sometimes they'll disappear somewhere apparently off limits to ticket buyers.

There was nudity. And blood. And loads of emoting. And headstands. We didn't think it added up to a whole lot. Maybe if we were more-game 20-somethings, it would have been more engrossing.

Mark left early the next morning on a bus back to DC.

That evening, Tony and I had our official anniversary dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, Union Square Cafe.

Tony loves wines from the Bordeaux commune of Margaux. I splurged on a bottle of 2000 Château Deyrem Valentin. It was wonderfully smooth, with a smoky finish.

There was a 2008 CDV on the wine list as well, at about half the price of the 2000. I asked our server, who was terrific, to tell me whether the 2000 was worth the extra dinero. She said that 2000 was a great year for Bordeaux (which I actually recalled learning, once she reminded me of it :-) ) and that the 2000 would be less tannic. And she was right.

I was in the mood for a pasta, so for my starter, I got the Swiss Chard Pansotti With Preserved Lemon Oil and Garlic Croccante. It was out of this world.

Cheese. Lemon. Green. Earth. Garlic. OMG.

For his appetizer, Tony got a plate of Norwich Meadows Wilted Spinach. He dug it. It was redolent of nutmeg and sage.

For our entree, we both got the succulent and herbal Veal Chop with a fantastic slaw on the side.

Tony skipped dessert. But I wasn't gonna. I went for the Chocolate Hazelnut Mousse With Chocolate Cake and Espresso Ice Cream. It was quite a treat.

Oh hell yeah!

While walking Rudy after we got home, I snapped a picture of a van, with a classy message on it, parked on our street. The Bite Me van—it could be yours.

We Did a Lot of Fun Things This Past Week

Last Thursday, Tony, Joyce, Missy, Nate, and I had dinner at Rosa Mexicano in Union Square before catching Now. Here. This., the new, off-Broadway musical from the [title of show] crew that's playing at the Vineyard Theatre.

RM had a kosher-for-Passover menu, and the offerings were so tempting, I chose one for my entree even though I'm not one of the Chosen People. I got the Pulled Beef Brisket Tacos, which were described in the menu thusly: " Beef brisket studded with jicama and carrots, cooked in habanero, charred red torpedo onions and pomegranate. Served with pimento, toasted almonds, grilled baby leeks and matzoh meal tortillas." They were out of this world!

And I didn't exactly have to choke down my two La Piñela pineapple juice–and–silver tequila cocktails either.

I enjoyed the show. It had a lot more to do with funny and/or touching stories from the four principals' past than with the spiritual advice of Thomas Merton. But I mostly enjoyed those stories—written by Hunter Bell and Susan Blackwell—and the songs of Jeff Bowen, presented by the three of them and Heidi Blickenstaff.

I found myself most interested in the parts of the show about Bowen. He seems to be the most introverted of the four performers, and I was surprised to learn he made himself over as a class clown when he was young as a way of deflecting negative, homophobic attention from himself. He did some rather good impersonations, including Ed Grimley.

On Saturday, Paul and Dan took the train into the city, in anticipation of the four of us going to see another show the next day. Both P&D and I had bought a package of tickets from Roundabout Theatre Company. Before those guys go to Cape May for the season, we wanted to catch one of our shows from this year: Don't Dress for Dinner. They ended up getting tickets for the 15th, and so I did likewise.

We had already made plans that evening to go to a birthday dinner for candle-blowing Game Party host Mark thrown by his sweetie, Hanif. So I gave P&D my keys, and we went our separate ways until late that night.

Hanif lives in Parkchester. Because of weird things going on with the trains, Tony and I took a combo of the 4, 5, and 6 to the Bronx, meeting up with Jack along the way at the 59th Street station. We made it to Metropolitan Oval only a few minutes later than our expected 6 o'clock arrival time. Mark, Hanif, and fellow Game Party attendee George and his partner, Alex, were there. The park was beautiful, with a captivating fountain sculpture called Fantasia at its center.

Hanif served a variety of hors d'oeuvres and, for the main course, delicious chicken, chick peas, and rice.

Mark led us through a fun new game, Buzzword, and Tony did very well at it, even though he says he's not much of a fan of word games.

Because Mark doesn't like to accummulate possessions, I brought him an edible gift: Tangelo Sherbet. Everyone enjoyed it. That's George on the left, and Mark on the right.

And there's Jack.

And Hanif.

The next morning, I made scrambled wild turkey eggs and roasted potatoes for the three guys. We took the High Line north on our way to the theater. Here are some lovely cyclamens I snapped.

And here are my three lovely fellows.

We enjoyed the play, which featured some great physical comedy. And it was fun to see Jennifer Tilly on stage.

UPDATE ON MAY 23: Here's a photo MIssy took of Tony, Susan, me, and Hunter after Now. Here. This. It would have been perfect if Tony hadn't been looking over at, I think, Joyce. And if I hadn't had bad red eye that I edited out, making my eyes seem black instead of brown.

Aladd-twins

Last Sunday, Tony and I went to Franklin Lakes to see Mike and Matt in Aladdin Jr., their final middle school musical.

I couldn't help but be rather disappointed that the guys didn't get the bigger parts they had tried out for. There was a new director this year, and he said at the beginning of the audition process that 8th graders weren't guaranteed the parts they wanted just because they were 8th graders. I don't necessarily think that should be the case either, but it sucked that last year, Matt wanted a bigger role in Once Upon a Mattress and he was told to wait until he was an 8th grader to get one of the big parts. And the kid who played that role was terrible and so not into being that character at all. Sigh.

This year, Mike wanted to be Iago, and I know he would have been terrific. But a 6th grader got the part instead, and Mike was a guard. Matt tried out for the role of the Sultan and instead got Narrator #3. At least he had a good number of lines.

Overall, the play wasn't anywhere near as enjoyable as last year. Or the year before. Some of the actors were good, but the show didn't seem as polished as in previous years. And when the director spoke after the play was over, he commented on how many kids had gotten hurt during the production! He talked about the injuries in the context of how proud he was of the kids for "playing hurt." But if several members of your cast are requiring first aid or a hospital visit on your watch, you're probably doing something wrong! Tony and I should catch him in one of his cabaret shows and heckle the crap out of him. "Bitter, party of two ... uncles." Ha!

I'm proud of the guys for persevering and being part of the play in nonstarring roles. Here's a photo of them onstage after the show:

Here's Matt's headshot on the hallway wall:

And here's Mike's:

My sister's birthday was the day before we visited. I brought her some homemade coffee ice cream, which she'd requested. Here she is posing with some flowers we didn't buy her:

I can't have a post about a Gerber visit without a photo of Mollzy Girl:

Before we went to dinner with David at GAO Thai Kitchen, where we'd eaten on the day after Thanksgiving, Matt, Mike, Tracey, Tony, and I played Muggins, the game of luck and paying attention. Matt won, Mike came in second, Tony came in third, Tracey came in fourth, and I came in last, with one card left. M&M thought it was funny that the two people who had been playing since they were kids did the worst.

Matt paying attention:

And Tony laughing, which isn't supposed to be part of the game. :-) :

Paula had sent the guys a book about TItanic, which, along with the Statue of Liberty, is an obsession of hers. She had also included a card with an image painted by Keith Jansz:

Here's an art project Mike did in school:

And, finally, here's my dinner at GAO: panang curry:

The day after the play, Tony e-mailed me this photo with the message "I was looking out the window just now and saw this!" Hee hee:

Two Plays and an Exhibit

Two weeks ago Sunday, Tony and I went to see Anything Goes with Dan, Paul, and Dan's momma, Josephine. First, we got lunch at Ceci, an Italian restaurant where Tony and I had eaten once, in between the media event and the party for the season 3 finale of RuPaul's Drag Race.

We all enjoyed our food. It hadn't been that long since breakfast, so I didn't eat a lot. I got the Rigatoni Pollo Ceci, which was in a pink vodka sauce and featured sundried tomatoes in addition to the chicken.

I had ordered the tickets for us, and when I went to the will call window to pick them up, I thought it was strange that there was a line for refunds. As we realized not long after, thanks to signage in the lobby, that was because Sutton Foster, who won the Tony for best actress in a musical, was off that day. "The role of Reno Sweeney will be played by Tari Kelly. Noooo!" I wrote on my Facebook wall. My biggest theater-fan friend, Andy, commented: "You can exchange for another date. Sutton is above the title. Go to the box office." But we weren't not going to go, because of the trip involved for D&P, who had picked up Dan's mother in South Plainfield on the way in from Trenton. And I was really excited to see the show anyway, even though I was very disappointed not to be seeing the Tony Award–winning actress for the first time. (I never caught her in Shrek, The Drowsy Chaperone, or Thoroughly Modern Millie.)

It didn't take long at all for Kelly to win us over; we all thought she was terrific. And Paul, who had caught the show once before, with Dan, when Foster wasn't taking the day off, said he found Kelly to be better in some ways. For instance, he said, he thinks Foster tends to overenunciate when singing.

I'd still like to see Foster sometime. Maybe I'll take Dad to see the show.

***

Last month, Tony, Joyce, and I caught Other Desert Cities, starring Stockard Channing, Rachel Griffiths, Stacy Keach, Judith Light, and Justin Kirk. The production was great, and the actors were outstanding, to a man/woman. I left the theater feeling like I needed to think some more about the play. Overnight, I realized that I wasn't buying into the script.

THERE ARE SOME SPOILERS HERE BUT NOT THE BIGGEST POTENTIAL SPOILER OF ALL: The plot concerns an author, Brooke, visiting her über-Republican parents, Polly and Lyman, for the holidays. Her second book is about to be published, and she wants her family, including her younger brother, Trip, to have a chance to read it beforehand because of its controversial nature.

The book isn't a novel, as Brooke had originally claimed; it's a memoir focusing on the eldest sibling in the family, Henry, who committed suicide after perhaps being complicit in the death of a man killed by a bomb planted by a left-wing group he belonged to. Polly and Lyman are horrified by the book. They want Brooke to wait until after they're dead to publish it. And toward the end of the play, they reveal a huge secret that provides a reason deeper than their own embarrassment for why she shouldn't publish the book. That secret is so big that I would never have been able to forgive my parents for keeping it from me until I was in my early 40s/late 30s, as Brooke and Trip are. But the play makes it clear that that wasn't the case for those two characters. It was especially difficult for me to accept that Brooke was able to move on from this revelation because she had had a breakdown a few years earlier and was perpetually struggling with depression, largely because of what had happened to Henry.

Light plays Polly's alcoholic sister, Silda, who secretly helped Brooke write the book while hiding her own Henry-related secret from her.

The play did a great job of having you go back and forth about how much you liked/disliked the various family members. But that big reveal blew everything that came before it out of the water and made the nuances of character seem like a waste of time.

*** 

A week ago Saturday, Tony and I caught Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, at the Brooklyn Museum. (The exhibit closed yesterday.) It was powerful enough to move me to buy the companion book.

The most-moving image for Tony was Interim Couple (1164) by Bill Jacobson. I enjoyed the levity of Poets (Clothed), Poets (Naked) by Wynn Chamberlain and was haunted by Robert Mapplethorpe's photograph of gay archhomophobe Roy Cohn.

We Haven't Gotten Another Dog Yet, but We've Been Doing Some Other Pretty Cool Things, Part I

We met Scruffy and a couple of the other Lil Monsters dogs three Fridays ago, and I'll write more about that experience in a later post. For now, I'm going to start writing about more-recent events and will work backwards in time until I'm all caught up on the pretty cool things we've been doing.

Last night, Tony and I went to Andy's 31st birthday party at Sardi's, which was the location for his 30th birthday celebration too. We hung out a lot with Mark McC and his sweetie, Jose. Here's a photo Tony took of the birthday boy and me:

And here's a photo he took of me acting like I'm pinching Norbert Leo Butz's cheek in his caricature at Sardi's:

Yesterday afternoon, I took Rudy to the vet to have a lump on his stomach examined. I assumed it was a harmless lipoma, and the vet thought that's what it was too, but he took a fluid sample for testing to make sure, which is what I was hoping he'd do. I also picked up Emme's ashes.

For lunch yesterday, we had leftover ribs, potatoes and carrots that Tony had cooked up in the crock pot on Friday evening. Delish! The meat-to-fat ratio on the ribs was quite high. I contributed some roasted romanesco, to which I had added only some almond oil, minced garlic, and a sprinkling of salt:

Yesterday morning at the farmers market, I bought these gorgeous dahlias:

I bought the vase after work on Friday to replace the one Rudy knocked over with his tail. I floated two of the blossoms because their stems had snapped.

Earlier yesterday morning, I went to the TKTS booth at South Street Southport to try to get discount tickets for today's matinee of Anything Goes for Dan and Paul, Dan's mother—who has a birthday coming up this Saturday—and Tony and me, but there were none available. 

Last weekend, Tony's buddy Mark from DC came into the city for a too brief visit. He arrived by bus late that Friday night. On Saturday morning, Tony and Mark did some shopping on Bleecker Street while I hit the Union Square Greenmarket. In the afternoon, we went to the High Line, and Mark and I both took a gajillion pictures:

We went from the High Line to Chelsea Market. Tony bought some monkfish tail at Lobster Place to cook for dinner. I had tried to get some at our more-local Greenmarket, at Abingdon Square, earlier in the day, after I'd gotten back from Union Square and before I'd gone to meet up with the fellows, but the stand had just sold out of it.

For a starter, Mark and Tony made a no-cook carrot-ginger soup that was creamy textured thanks to the addition of avocado. (Like Tony, Mark can't eat dairy.) They prepared it using the juicer Tony had bought a little while ago. It was crazy good.

Tony did a good job of preparing the monkfish. The texture was a little unusual but not in a bad way, and I liked the flavor. He also cooked some Brussels sprouts and mushrooms. We ate it with the somewhat embarrassingly named Cupcake Chardonnay I'd purchased at Chelsea Wine Vault. I'd asked one of the people who worked there for a buttery chardonnay, which is what Tony had said he wanted to serve with the fish, and that's what the guy handed me. I liked it more than Tony, but he thought it went well with dinner and was indeed buttery. (Mark didn't have any.)

Mark left fairly early the next morning to catch his return bus. Tony took this photo of the two of us. Mark is wearing a cool new hat he'd bought the day before:

Follies and Catch Me If You Can

A week ago Thursday night,* Missy, Nate, Tony, and I caught Follies, starring Bernadette Peters as Sally and Jan Maxwell as Phyllis, and a few weeks ago, during the weekend it closed, Tony and I saw Catch Me If You Can, starring Norbert Leo Butz, who won the 2011 Tony award for leading actor in a musical.

Tony loved Follies. I liked it, and I liked it even more after Tony gave me his take on it. I had had reservations about the ending given to one of the main couples.

The cast was amazing: Danny Burstein and Ron Raines were great as Buddy and Ben. British stage star Elaine Paige got a "starring" credit below the four principles' as Carlotta, whose big number is "I'm Still Here," and Paige really did it justice. Tony was blown away by Rosalind Elias as Heidi Schiller and Leah Horowitz as Young Heidi performing the operatic number "One More Kiss." And Terri White, whom I'd seen in Finian's Rainbow, led a bunch of the gals through the fantastic Mirror Dance set to "Who's That Woman." I enjoyed Peters's version of "Losing My Mind," and Maxwell's "Could I Leave You?" was outstanding. The cast album will be available at the end of next month.

Missy, Nate, and I waited outside the stage door for autographs. I was hoping to get all four of the leads to sign my Playbill. Peters emerged fairly quickly, and I took this photo of Missy and Nate with her:

The other three principles didn't appear for quite a long time, so we gave up on getting their autographs.

Here's my Playbill with Peters's autograph tastefully photographed next to my flowers from the Greenmarket for the past two weeks—and still going—because they're so long-lasting, ageratum:

Before the show, the four of us had a nice dinner with Joyce at Nizza, which gave her a chance to verify, along with Missy and Nate, that Tony is real and not a figment of my imagination. :-)** (Joyce had just seen Follies and, even though she'd enjoyed it, wasn't up to seeing it again so soon.) I took what would have been some cute pictures of Joyce holding Dash, the second son of Missy's BFF, Edith, who was sitting at the next table with her family, but the lighting was so bad in them, I'm not going to post one here. Sigh.

***

I mainly wanted to see CMIYC so I could see Butz in his Tony-winning role. He was very very good. I was also curious to see Aaron Tveit, whom I'd missed in Next to Normal because he was in Seattle working on this show. And I thought he was super as well.

CMIYC was fun overall, but it wasn't fantastic. And I have to agree with the assessment of the New York Times's Ben Brantley that the choreography was mostly uninspired.

Tony said the show would have been better if it had ended with Butz's FBI agent, Hanratty, visiting swindler Frank Abagnale Jr., played by Tveit, in prison. The backup dancers could have been dressed in sexy striped outfits, and the leap to Abagnale's working with the FBI instead of running from it wouldn't have seemed so abrupt, he said.

For quite a while, I was obsessively listening to Butz's performance of "Don't Break the Rules" on my iPhone's iPod. You can see it on YouTube here. And sit your fat ass down—and click here—for a wonderfully fun interview with Butz on Side by Side by Susan Blackwell, whom I loved so much in [title of show].

*Could I be any more behind on my blogging?

**One of Tony's dentists*** has an office near our office, and he was going to come in to meet Missy, Joyce, and some of my other co-workers after a weekday-morning appointment a while ago. The appointment got postponed by the dentist until our really busy workweek, when I really couldn't take the time to show the boy around and have lunch with him, which was the other part of our plan. That started us joking at work that Tony was the equivalent of my "Canadian boyfriend." 

***Yes, the boy has more than one. It takes a village to prevent his teeth from imploding.

It Wouldn't Be Summer Without a Cape May Weekend With Dan and Paul

I squeezed in a long weekend with Paul and Dan in Cape May last weekend before my superbusy week at work last week and before Tony and I move into our new apartment this week.

The weather sucked. We got in only a few hours of beachtime on Saturday before the clouds and rain rolled in. And Sunday was equally gloomy. (And in Bridgeton and its suburbs, the part of Cumberland County where I grew up, there was terrible flooding after as much as a foot of rain fell. My Dad got a half inch of water in his basement, and he had to Shop-Vac some water from Granny's basement too.)

I still had lots of fun with my buds, though.

Paul showed me this Mascul-out commercial parody video. I think it's from The Man Show. He also told me about his step-great-uncle (or as I described that relationship: no relation whatsoever really :-) ) Haskell Bus Boggs, who filmed Bonanza, Little House on the Prairie, and some other TV shows and movies that are mentioned on Boggs's IMDB page. Paul doesn't know how HBB got his middle name. I want to know whether he ever told Michael Landon to just cut his goddamn hair already.

The mention of Bonanza caused Dan to recall that our friend Petey Wetey would look for Pernell Roberts to be showing off his bulge in the show. Paul cracked that I have more of a Cokie Roberts vibe going on. Damn him and his mean meanness!

I declared the country song of the summer to be Josh Turner's "Firecracker," even though, as is always the case with my CSOTS picks, it's not new. But it's new to me. Cuz I don't listen to country music unless I'm hanging out with Paul. Josh Turner is a hottie with a furry chest and a voice so deep that you know his balls have to be this big. *makes a gesture like big balls* And this song has such fantastic lyrics: "She goes off with a great big bang. ... When she makes love, she's a heart attacker." Well done, Josh (or your songwriter). Well done.

Paul also e-mailed me a list of first-world problems that has apparently been making the rounds of the Internets but that, like most somewhat recently popular country songs, was new to me:

We drove over a bridge that has a crazy sign dividing Jersey into North and South, which is really shortchanging the South, considering that Cape May is the southern tip of the state:

The Gerbers had arrived in Ocean City on Saturday to start a week's vacation down the shore. We were supposed to meet up with them for dinner at Lucky Bones that night, but the Gerbers got stuck in crazy traffic and couldn't even get out of that dry town. (We all assumed that was because people were seeing the weekend was likely to be a rainout and so were going home.) I was bummed when Tracey texted to say they weren't going to make it, but it turned out to be the right decision. When D, P, and I got to Lucky Bones, we were told there would be an hour and a half wait for a table for only three. So we went and had a fine meal at a Mexican place just down the road called 5 de Mayo that doesn't have a website.

On Sunday morning, we had breakfast at the Uncle Bill's Pancake House in North Cape May. I got oatmeal raisin pancakes that were really good and at least seemed to be, maybe possibly, a little bit healthy. I also got a side of pork roll because I just have to eat some of that questionable, pig-derived product at some point when I'm in that area.

And speaking of pigs: Dan, Paul, and I and some of the ladies from the campground where D&P have their trailer and who, like us, were at the city beach on Saturday were all drooling over a very muscular and pleasingly tattooed guy who was building a sand castle near us. I'll have some pix of him at the end, so you'll have to stick around for that.

Paul drove me down to Cape May from and back to the Trenton Transit Center. On the way back, we first listened to some songs from his iPod Shuffle, most of which were older, noncountry songs. Then we listened to some Fleet Foxes, a group I started getting into after watching a goat-filled video of theirs on Homer's blog, on my iPhone. And I played "Brotherhood of Man," my favorite number from How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, which Paul had seen performed on the Tonys. He then played the cast recording of Urinetown, which I liked enough to buy from iTunes.

Here are some more photos from the weekend:

Me and Paul at Uncle Bill's

Dan at Uncle Bill's

A Westie name Bob, who belongs to Sam's mother Barbara

Dan and Paul's Claire, hoping for a ride to the beach

And the sand castle builder

A Catchall Catch-up Post, With a Show, Lots of Food, Some Flowers, and Maybe a New Apartment

Tony and I have probably found our new home. It's a penthouse apartment in a small building on Jane Street here in the West Village. We haven't signed a lease yet, but things are looking good that we're going to get it. I'll write more about it once it's a done deal.

***

Last month, Tony and I caught Unnatural Acts, a new play based on an actual gay witch-hunt at Harvard University in 1920. I was enthralled by the story and found the staging to be inspired, particularly during sequences when two different pairs of actors spoke at the same time as they offered testimony before the panel of administrators trying to root out students and teachers who had engaged in homosexual sex. Actually, in the latter of those sequences, one actor was ratting out his lover while the lover was delivering a monologue about betrayal during an audition for a production of Antony and Cleopatra.

Tony really didn't like UA, for reasons I didn't find compelling. I'm looking forward to discussing the play with him and Lou, who also caught it before its extended run ended on July 31 and who told me in an e-mail exchange that he very much liked it.

***

On Thursday, Tony and I ate at Bell Book & Candle. He was prepared to get only a salad, in case they weren't able to guarantee him a full meal that was gluten and dairy free. But our waitress was very thoughtful and well informed about the menu items and their ingredients, and so he was able to get an asparagus soup he raved about that was made creamy by the addition of pistachios and a fantastic diver scallops dish for his entree. I got the Rooftop Mixed Greens With Old-School Thousand Island and the Grilled and Roasted Seasonal Vegetables With Romesco Sauce. To destroy the unabashed good health I would have enjoyed from the light meal, I got the Warm Chocolate Brownie With Pistachio Ice Cream for dessert. We enjoyed glasses of a rosé made from the aglianico grape. That grape tends to produce red wines with a sledge hammer of tannins, but this rosé was elegant yet wonderfully flavorful. I was disappointed that BB&C was out of another rosé on the wine list, by Beaulieu Vineyard. I gotta try that wine.

***

On Saturday evening, Tony and I had a terrific dinner at his house. He roasted some potatoes with cajun seasoning and broiled some steaks that we splashed with Worcestershire sauce, which is gluten free. They were both delicious, but the highlight for me was the side dish of Sun Gold cherry and reddish-purple grape tomatoes that we roasted (after sprinkling them with salt) until they popped and finished for a couple more minutes in the oven after adding a drizzle of olive oil, a little more salt, and some chopped opal basil. Mmmmm.

***

The Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home book I mentioned in my last food-and-drinks post has inspired me to make some delicious fruit sauces that I've been using in ice creams—as Jeni intended—and in sodas.

I layered Jeni's Blackberry Sauce into my homemade vanilla ice cream and was really happy with the result. I decided to pour some of the leftover sauce in a glass and topped it with club soda to make Blackberry Soda. It was so good that the next weekend, I bought a lot of the berries at the Union Square Greenmarket and made some more syrup to give to Tony, along with a bottle of club soda. The recipe for the sauce consists of boiling two parts of berries to one part sugar and then pressing the resulting mixture through a sieve and chilling it. Tony really enjoyed the soda.

One weekend ago, after Tony had told me that peaches were his favorite fruit, I made him some Peach Sorbet using the Concord Grape Sorbet recipe from The Last Course as my guide. It turned out really well.

Yesterday, I made Peach Ice Cream With Peach Swirl as my follow-up to the Vanilla Ice Cream With Blackberry Swirl. I had thought about making raspberry syrup and using that as the swirl, but I went a little nuts with the peaches at the Greenmarket and wanted to use some more of them up. And I figured that if I made peach syrup, I could give some to Tony to make Peach Soda and use the rest in the ice cream to make it doubly peachy. I was very happy with how both things turned out. I took some of the ice cream to the Game Party yesterday, and Mark said it was my best so far. And the soda was enjoyable for me and I'm sure will be for Tony too.

Here's the VICWBS:

The peach ice cream with extra peachiness:

The Peach Soda:

And the soon-to-be Blackberry Sauce cooking on the stove:

***

I was pleased with the last two arrangements I made with flowers from The River Garden, particularly the rudbeckia-and-chamomile pairing I created on Saturday:

I had so many rudbeckia (green-eyed Susans?) that I was able to cut a few very short and put them in a little vase in my bedroom:

The week before, I'd combined echinops with purple asters:

Happy Times, Part II

Man, it felt great to be on the winning side of a progressive issue for once. "Chalk one up for love and equality," I wrote on my Facebook wall Friday night, with a link to the New York Times story on the victory for gay marriage. I followed that up with "And Ruben Diaz Sr. and our cowardly president can eat my shorts!"

I'd gone off about Obama in a comment on Homer's blog earlier that day:

Obama held a fundraiser here in the city last night to rake in money from well-heeled LGBTers. He said he believes in equal rights for gay and lesbian couples, but he wouldn't dare say he was in favor of marriage. Just more bullshit about leaving it up to the states. "Under the leadership of Governor Cuomo, with the support of Democrats and Republicans, New York is doing exactly what a democracy is supposed to do," he said, according to a Daily Intel post on nymag.com. WTF? This is the best a "fierce advocate" of ours can do in front of a pack of queer bigwigs who are shelling out a lot of cash to get him re-elected? And the Republican leadership is not in fact doing what should happen in a democracy. They're delaying movement on the gay-marriage bill and may not allow it to come to a vote at all, while making noise about increasing protections for those who oppose marriage equality on religious grounds. Which brings me back to your point about religion being the root of the problem, Homer. "I believe that marriage is a union between a man and a woman. For me as a Christian, it is a sacred union. You know, God is in the mix." Presidential candidate Obama said that while speaking at asshat Rick Warren's church to curry favor with the mouth breathers WHO WOULD NEVER VOTE FOR HIM IN A MILLION YEARS. When our supposed heroes give ammo to the wingnuts, we have no choice but to tell them to fuck themselves. Republican politicians rush to endorse (or fail to repudiate) whatever crazy-ass nonsense their core voters believe (Obama was born outside the U.S., global warming is a myth, keep the government out of my Social Security), but our former-Consitutional-law-professor president had no problem endorsing the clearly un-Constitutional notion that religious beliefs trump civil rights in this country. And he still won't say what he ought to have the courage to say today, even with most polls showing a majority of Americans are now in favor of marriage equality. We have no real leaders in this country who stand up for basic American principles and values. Only cowards who yield to the haters at every turn.

Ruben Diaz is a bigoted, twice-married asshole who is worthy of all of the scorn heaped upon him. But how many of the LGBTers who rightfully denounce Diaz act like they have no choice but to vote to re-elect a man who, like Diaz, says that civil unions are sufficient for the queers (even though back in the mid-1990s, he said he was all for gay marriage)? And the White House's statement after Governor Cuomo signed marriage equality into law was just as tepid as the bullshit he served up at the fundraiser. And let's not forget where Mr. Hopey Changey went after he'd gotten what he wanted from teh gayz.

It's also sad and discouraging that the successful vote depended partly on well-timed bribes of Republican lawmakers from "libertarian" billionaires. As Max Read writes for Gawker at that second linked article, it's great that some of the billionaires had relatives or friends who are gay and so felt inclined to join this fight. But what about the poor people on Medicaid? Which billionaires are going to feel bad for them and come to their rescue?

And hello, NYT!? Carl Kruger is a closet case who changed his position only after he was outed as a result of his indictment on bribery charges. Why would you try to stuff him back in the closet in this article? "Some gay activists, assuming he was a lost cause, had taken to picketing outside his house and screaming that he was gay—an approach that seemed only to harden his opposition to their agenda." Right. How dare "some gay activists" treat a seated state senator like that? And at great peril to their cause, because all they've done is succeeded in HARDENING his ... opposition. To their AGENDA! The paper of record's selection of the word "agenda" seems designed to make homophobes happy, and that bullshit article has only helped to harden my continued opposition to paying for a NYT digital subscription.

***

On Sunday, I marched in the Pride Parade with a group of gay bloggers, like I did two years ago. LIke the last time, the difficult part was waiting around for our group to start moving. But it was fun to see some of my blogger friends who I don't see in person all that often. And all of the positive energy from the crowd lining the streets felt wonderful.

Tony stayed with the dogs while I was away. Poor Rudy got separation anxiety and seemed genuinely afraid that Tony was going to take him away from me for good when he walked him, first before I left to join up with the bloggers and then again later in the afternoon. Rudy didn't want to go very far from the apartment, and when he came back inside the second time, he looked around for me. My special basset guy still feels the pain of when he was abandoned by his previous human(s), and it breaks my heart.

Stacy and Hal came into the city for the parade. They had made plans to visit Bob and Jen in Brooklyn at around 4 or 4:30. Our group was scheduled to be at the very end because Tony A., the head of Queer New York and the guy who has signed us up to march the past two years, forgot to do it this year until after the official deadline, and the groups line up in the order in which they had registered. (A week ago Sunday, I sent him an e-mail asking whether we were going to be in the parade.) H&S wanted to hang out with me after the parade and before they left for Brooklyn, and I told them I didn't think we'd be at the end of the parade route by 4. And we weren't. We were supposed to step off at 1, but it was after 3:30. I did get to say hi to S&H on the street. Stacy took this photo of me that's now my profile pic on Facebook:

And I took this pic of S&H before giving them hugs and running off to catch up to my group:

Hal texted me a whole slew of pictures of the parade that he took with his iPhone, so I felt like I got to see a good deal of it. Thanks, Hal! :-)

Here's a pic of fellow QNY blogger Patrick (in the sleeveless shirt with the cool pattern) and his squeeze boy Bill G., whom I knew from the Sunday game group before they started going out. Sometimes it's a small gay world, even in the big city:

To the right of Patrick, in the fetching new blue hat and with his back to the camera, is Tony A.

Here are Stash and QNY blogger Jim, aka Mondschein, who told me I need to see this play:

And here's Jeff Kagan, whom I think half of the gay men in New York know. We went to college together (when, unfortunately, neither of us was out), and we need to get together in person again soon. He came around to confirm that all of the groups that were supposed to line up for the parade on 37th Street between 5th and Madison were present and in the correct order:

There was a group of Bradley Manning supporters a few spots in front of us bloggers in the parade. And I totally agree that he's a gay hero:

My favorite sticker of the day—and quite similar to my "Make (Illustration of Cupcakes) Not War" T-shirt—said "Make Out Not War." And my favorite T-shirt of the day said "Save a lollipop. Suck a dick." And on that classy note ...