cindy's world

Saturday was my old bailiff’s wedding. He and his new bride are so cute together, as they have always been. They were grinning from ear to ear and glowed all over the place. Neither looked stressed, there were no tears, and they seemed to genuinely enjoy their evening.

At the wedding reception, the MC pointed out the beautiful designer floral centerpieces over each table, and asked who would like a centerpiece to take home. A lot of people enthusiastically raised their hands. The MC said the way to resolve this, is to play a little game.
“First, we need one person from each table to donate a dollar.” Nobody was moving at our table, so I asked Mr. W to take out a dollar from the cash he was holding for me for the night. “Okay, now everybody who’s donating the dollar, stand up.” I stood, very uncomfortably. I’ve learned to not trust wedding games. “There’s just a little something you have to do,” he continued. “When the music starts, pass the dollar bill to your right. And the person who gets it needs to keep passing it to the right until the music stops.” The music started and the dollar bill went ’round and ’round. And stopped with the man sitting on my right, who is a bailiff in the building here with his girlfriend.
“Now, everyone who is left holding the dollar bill, stand up,” the MC said. The bailiff stood, also uncomfortably. “There’s just a little something you have to do,” the MC stated. “Turn to the person on your left, and get very, very close.” The dollar bill was dropped in front of me as the bailiff said, “Uh…YOU better do this one, Cindy.” Mr. W is the person to my left, so I took over the duty, which was a good thing, cuz the MC continued, “Now look that person to your left straight in the eyes, and I don’t care who it is, you tell him or her, ‘I LOVE YOU.’ ” I stared Mr. W in the eyeballs and said indignantly, “I LOVE YOU.” Thinking this is over, the dollar-holders were delighted they won the centerpiece. But no.
“The music is going to play again, and this time, I want you to pass the dollar bill to your LEFT.” ‘Round and ’round the bill went again, and this time, it stopped at Mr. W. He was told to stand up, and get very, very close to the person on HIS left, who happens to be my judge. Uh-oh. “Now, the person standing up, there’s just one little thing you have to do. Lean down to the person on your left, and I don’t care who it is, whether it’s a man or a woman, a stranger or a friend, but you KISS that person on the cheek! Go! Right now!” Mr. W looked around the table and commanded, “NOBODY TAKE ANY CAMERAS OUT.” And he leaned down, and kissed my judge’s upturned waiting cheek. That was one of the more bizarre moments in, uh, everyone’s life, I’d think. Everyone shrieked in delight and some mixed horror.
But it still wasn’t over. “Pass the bill to the LEFT again!” the MC said in ominous pleasure as the music blasted. He let it go extra long this time, and it stopped with my judge. “The people holding the bill? YOU…are the WINNERS!” the MC announced. Cheers went up around the room. “But there’s just one little thing you have to do,” the MC said in a voice of dread, and everyone laughed. “Pull your chair out a little bit, away from the table. Good. Now, winners, stand up on the chairs.” My judge gingerly, after his few glasses of wine, got up on the chair, along with everyone else who are also apparently the “winners.” “Turn around, and turn your backs to each of your tables.” What was the MC having them do? Guests looked around at the chair-standing people curiously. “Now, lean forward slightly, with your backs still to your tables. That’s it. Good. Now, shake your tooshies back and forth and say, ‘Nyanny nyanny nyah nyah!’ ” Everyone laughed as my dark-suited judge, along with everyone else on chairs, did the ha-ha dance at us “losers” for being the “winners”. “Congratulations! You people on the chairs have won…the DOLLAR BILL!” the MC yelled and everyone on the chairs froze as the seated crowd laughed and jeered. “The REAL winners of the centerpieces are the doofuses who DONATED the dollar!”
Why, that’d be li’l ol’ me!
“THAT’S NOT FAIR! I had to KISS THE JUDGE! I should get this!” Mr. W wailed.
“I had to get up on a chair and shake my rear and SHE takes away the prize!” my judge wailed. “Where’s the JUSTICE?”
I didn’t know what they were complaining about. Seemed just to me. I took the beautiful centerpiece home and gave it to my mother the next day.

This morning was my friend Edgar’s birthday champagne brunch. I was looking forward to the event, as it would be a reunion of sorts with people I hadn’t seen for years — high school friends, college friends, friends of friends. I was also looking forward to seeing the birthday boy’s cousin, who attended UCLA with me back in the day, and whom I used to hang out with in the group here and there. She was the last to arrive, and got there a good hour late. We were all seated and eating already, when she came in and said hello to people at the long table (twenty guests), and went to give her cousin Edgar a hug hello. I waited for her to look up so I can greet her, but she was busy hopping from person to person and didn’t see me. Finally, after she got to the end of the table to her seat, I did get the opportunity to catch her gaze and I waved. Her eyes opened in surprise, and she smiled in recognition as she said, “Cindy! Hi! I totally didn’t even see you! You’re half your size!”
I responded jokingly, “Hey, that’s offensive. I wasn’t THAT big before!”
She didn’t reel from it at all, or bother to correct it. We exchanged a little small talk across the table; she asked whether I worked in the same place, I said I did. I asked whether’s she’s still with her first law firm. She said she was, going on 8 years, and that she’s up for partner next year. “Congratulations!” I said.
“Well…I’m UP for partner, I didn’t get it yet,” she said.
“You’ll get it. That law firm knew what they were doing when they hired you — they put you in the driver’s seat from day 1. You never did the typical first year stuff, no running around, no paralegal work.”
“No, I didn’t,” she agreed. I thought I was being damn supportive.
Then Edgar asked me about my ring. I told him that I’d been meaning to call him, but yes, Mr. W and I are engaged. There were a few “congratulations” said around the table. The same cousin I was talking to earlier said to another guest near her, “It doesn’t count unless she actually GETS married.” Mr. W was taken aback by her comment and said something discreetly to me about it, but I defended her statement with, “Well, at our age, a lot of people just get engaged in their relationship cuz it’s expected, but when you break up in the natural course, the engagement is called off, too.” But seriously, WTF? Just what is she implying here? She is NOT helping the lawyer cliche reputation. Or maybe it’s a female cattiness thing.

That’s what I call him in my head. He doesn’t know that.

After a few days of phone tag, Dwaine and I finally caught up to each other yesterday evening. Turned out he was “on the field” all day yesterday instead of caged in his office, so after his last client visit (7pm, now that’s a long day!), he came by my house for a visit. Despite his telling me at 4:30 p.m. that he’d “just eaten” so I should have dinner without him as when he arrives after his last client, he’s going to be “really full,” I had 4 pieces of toast and an orange. My psychic and deduction skills told me that at 8pm, he just MAY be hungry again. Sure enough, “I DO want to eat! I’m hungry!” he told me on his drive over.

We went to California Pizza Kitchen in the Brea Mall. I actually can’t remember the last time I saw Dwaine in person, so as is natural for a friend I’ve had since age 12 who is like me in some respects, the food was more in the way of our excited chatter than an activity we wanted to be doing. Why does food have to be going into the same hole in the opposite direction our voice has to come out? What a pain. Good thing Dwaine and I are close enough friends that we can communicate without words sometimes. For example, when we were perusing the menu, I mentioned wanting something with protein as I hadn’t had meat the entire day. Just then, the waitress came and Dwaine asked her, “Is there anything on this menu that’s high on protein?”
She suggested, “Um…the lettuce wraps.”
Dwaine and I exchanged a quick sideglance at each other.
“What about a popular dish that people order a lot, that’s high in protein?” Dwaine tried again.
“Oh okay, um, the Margherita pizza, the Mediterranean salad…” She went on and listed a few more non-protein-heavy entrees.
Good lord. I randomly picked the new mango chicken tandoori pizza. And she left.
“WHAT the heck was she TALKING about, lettuce wraps?” Dwaine said incredulously as I cracked up. Margherita pizzas are tomato and basil, and the salad is “A chilled salad of cucumbers, red onions, fresh tomatoes and Greek olives tossed with crisp Romaine leaves and lemon-herb vinaigrette, served on a bed of hummus. Topped with Feta cheese, sun-dried tomatoes and our homemade Tzatziki sauce. Served with pita bread” according to the CPK website.

After dinner, we came back to my house and Dwaine popped open the best pinot noir I’ve ever tasted (and I’m not a red fan) which he’d brought along as a 6-year belated housewarming gift, but really, he just wanted an excuse to try this new wine that was recommended to him. So the rest of the evening was spent catching up (his love life, my health life, old friends), debating traditions (bachelor parties, yes or no?), and bagging on pathetic people on Taxicab Confessions (who raves about themselves being so hot they HAVE to model in one breath, then in the next breath, tell a stranger they just met about their childhood molestation?). As for learning about ourselves, I learned that I cuss a lot, rather uncontrollably, with pinot in the tummy. I learned that Dwaine doesn’t even bat an eye to that, but WILL take offense if I tell him “shut up” or hang up on him, both of which actions effectively terminate our friendship. In the past 19 years, I must have done neither.

Mr. W and I attended a coworker’s daughter’s wedding on Saturday. The coworker had the reception for 200+ people in her home, and the spacious backyard was decked out in strings of light and rustic hand-made decorations that made it look like a fairyland. The mom of the bride went all out — there was a dance floor and DJ at one end, clothed tables throughout the house, yard, patio, front yard, garage-turned-recreation-room, catering from a local rib restaurant, commercial heat lamp torchieres, fancy flushing port-o-potties, a free photo booth, and shuttle service between their home and the church. I don’t know if scanning a long strip of photos would turn out for the purposes of posting, but the first strip of 4 photos Mr. W and I had, we did the cutsie 1) smile at the camera; 2) him kissing my cheek; 3) me kissing his cheek; 4) him doing a goofy expression with a peace sign as I stuck out my tongue. And then I had the brilliant idea of acting out a word with each of the frames, and then seeing if people could guess the word. Our words were 1) suspicion; 2) innocence; 3) horror; 4) exhaustion. As soon as I saw the photos, my formerly “brilliant idea” shattered and I announced my new revelation, “We’re dorks.” =P But other guests at our table thought our idea was brilliant, and they took our list and did the same thing, so we got good laughs passing around each others’ photos and seeing others’ interpretations of the words.

Sunday morning, we again got all dolled up after hitting the gym for a 4-mile run, this time to attend my old friend Edgar’s 31st birthday party. When I say “old,” I mean simply that he and I have been friends since we were 14, with a stint of maybe 4 years in college of being “best friends.” We were excited to see the champagne brunch location, a hilltop venue called Coco Palm, because it could be a wedding possibility for us. We were SO excited, in fact, that it turns out we got there super early…
At the front hostess stand, we were informed that there was no reservation for a party under the name of either Edgar or his girlfriend Ruby, who I know made the reservation. I stepped outside to call Ruby, and looking at my cell hone, it hit me. Edgar’s birthday, and thus appropriately his birthday brunch, is next Sunday. I don’t know what I was thinking. It’s a good thing Edgar has proclaimed long ago to not like blogs, or I’d surely not hear the end of this one. Ack. The venue is indeed exotic with flowing water, waterfalls and koi fish (and a pair of parrots named “Ricky” and “Lucy”), and I think it could be a beautiful place to host our wedding reception.

Brunchless, Mr. W and I sought out my parents to see if they had lunch yet. I knew that they were out fishing at Redondo Beach with relatives visiting from Minneapolis this weekend. Mom said they were on their way back for lunch, so Mr. W and I killed a little bit of time having great pastries and coffee at a new French patisserie I’d stumbled on some time ago, Vanille, and were so impressed by the creative fondant cakes on display that we think we may have found our wedding cake makers.
Lunch was at a muslim restaurant where I enjoyed the kosher dishes but had to choke down what tasted like rancid goat meat soup. The relatives’ two young sons were very well behaved at the dinner table. I thought about how when I was their age (approximately 6 years or so), if I decided I was done eating, I’d be under the table annoying my dad’s feet.

After lunch everyone dispersed and Mr. W and I went back to his place to watch some more “Buffy” and “2 and a Half Men” on DVD.
Halfway through our viewing, we noticed huge yellow-brown smoke plumes covering the sky when we look out the window. And then we flipped to the news and saw the Southland on fire. The dry, hot Santa Ana winds this weekend was apparently too much for some arsonists to resist lighting some fires, and even now, schools are shut down and hundreds of thousands of acres, and hundreds of homes, are burning and destroyed in Canyon Country, Malibu, Orange, and San Diego. The wind changed direction at one point and the brown smoke rolled over Mr. W’s area, making me gag as I ran around his house trying to figure out where the smoke was entering from. Turned out it was the chimney flue. Today, I excused one of plaintiff’s two attorneys from having to come in for trial because her home was ordered to be evacuated this weekend being 100 yards away from the Malibu fire and in the fire’s path. And today’s her birthday, too.

This is a post for the fellas, cuz I understand most men don’t want to read about my colposcopy today.

Sunday, Vanessa and I joined my coworker and 14 of her friends for a private burlesque lesson. The first thing the studio did was have us randomly and blindly draw “stripper names” prewritten on nametags, which we wore on ourselves as our alter ego for the hour. Vanessa was “Coco Whispers” and I was “Vixxxen Blue.” Is it just me or does my stripper self sound like she does porn?

The dance was very cute, complete with body rolls, hip rolls, lots of butts stuck in the air, and of course, the omnipresent furry boa.

Since the class cost us $20 apiece, I made sure to write down the choreography as soon as I got home. And being the dork, I went through the moves in my head while I was doing cardio at the gym yesterday after my colposcopy. Maybe that should be our “Blogger Girls’ Dance” that Flat Coke & Flies, Vanessa, Jordan and I have been talking about forever! Hmmm…

You can read Vanessa’s account of the class here.

Saturday was the Formula D drift racing finals.

Mr. W drove me and my parents to the Irwindale race track for that. Wandering around the booths and stuff beforehand with my parents, I grew concerned that my mom would find the loud music, cigarette smoke, and big crowd uncomfortable. She was a good sport, walking hand-in-hand with my dad, wondering what all the shocks, springs, car parts on display were.

I have concerns about the direction drifting is taking. It seemed to me that there were a lot of gang bangers there — more so than at a Nascar race function. It didn’t help that King Taco was a major sponsor; their publicity probably helped bring in a lot of the Mexican gangs from East LA. It was also unfortunate that they served beer. We had pretty cool seats on the grandstand, 3 rows up right in the center, but people started folding their flyers and advertisements they collected at the booths all day into paper airplanes, and trying to fly them down the stand and into the race track. There was a lot of drunken cheering whenever an airplane would squeeze through the large chain-link fence into the track, and drunken laughter whenever a plane would hit an unaware bystander on the head or neck as people tried to get to their seats. I was afraid to turn around and look into the stands for fear I may get an eye put out. I watched a college-age chick sitting directly in front of me get hit on the head by 4 paper airplanes, a beach ball, and a DVD. Her friend next to her got hit with a big pink inflated condom. I couldn’t believe security weren’t doing anything about that; paper on the tracks of a drift race could be some real hazards. I was even more dismayed when my dad threw an airplane, too. Twice. “It’s a strange disconcerting feeling when you realize you’re more mature than your parents,” I said to Mr. W. He thought it was funny. Childhood friend Vicky’s mom was sitting behind us, and at one point she picked up someone else’s paper airplane and handed it to my dad, saying, “Hey, help me throw this.” My dad eyed it skeptically. “This one isn’t going to fly right,” he said, and proceeded to re-fold it into an aerodynamic, ergodynamically engineered ad about some high-traction race tires. And threw it. And accidentally hit someone. GAH.

Anyway, the drift race itself started off disappointing; a few cars spun out and disqualified themselves, or they had technical problems, like one guy’s clutch went out and they couldn’t fix it in the 5-minute maximum time-out. But when it came down to the last 4 cars doing battle, now THAT was some cool stuff.

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My mom did have a headache from the noise and tire smoke and said it was going to be her first and last drift event, but it was very spiffy of her to come out with my dad for the experience.

See my first Formula D event w/photos here.

Chronologically…

Ballet (age 4) – hate it. Meanie teacher is scary as she goes around the room pushing kids down forcing us to go deeper than we’re able to in the splits. Look forward to mama coming to pick me up in her pretty dresses and fabric flower earrings.
Chinese Folk Dancing (age 5) – not too bad. But my brain keeps freezing during the big performances.
Jazz (age 7) – slightly difficult as it is hard to understand the nice teacher’s directions when I know so little English. I feel fat and uncomfortable in my oversized leotard that Mom swears I’d grow into.
Square Dancing (age 9) – wtf is with these Americans? Why are they making us do this in school? Why aren’t we in PE class? Partner up with a BOY? Gross, cooties! Do-si-what?
Modern/Lyrical/Funk (age 15) – at least I’m not in regular PE. And I’m learning lots of French! Pirouette, plie’, porte’ bourre…chaine turns…uh…does spelling count on the final? Whoa, we’re gonna be in the school dance concert? And it’s gonna be televised? COOL!!
Cardio Funk/Hip Hop (age 19) – I’m home! I am FEELING this! I LOVE this music! This is MY dance!
Street Hip Hop (age 20) – You want my body to go from the floor there to WHERE? How? WHAT? Body roll, body roll, body roll, down, kick up, leg goes from behind me on the ground on all fours to in front of me…*pant pant* Wow, this looks SO cool if I could only breathe.
Latin Ballroom (age 22) – …and we’re back to wtf. I can NOT get my hips to move this way. Feet where? I am SO not feeling this. I miss hip hop. And I’m not coming back.
Bellydance (age 30) – Okay, okay, I think I’m getting this… not the workout I wanted, but interesting. I’m starting to like the music. Some of these moves look pretty cool.
Burlesque (age 31) – I will let you guys know after the class on Sunday…

Two people contacted me yesterday to nudge me to post (one was very gentle, the other was kind of a brat about it), so okay, I’ll just sit on the blog here and see what blubber falls from my fingers.

Speaking of falling blubber, I did a 45 minute hilly run yesterday at lunch for my workout. I hadn’t run in a long time, and it surprised me that I was never out of breath, and my brain never bitched to me about how awful the run was and tried to bargain with me for cutting the run short. My only limit was time. However, the first half-mile to mile of the 4-mile run was painful on my stomach and abdomen, because all the fat bouncing around made my skin ache. I wished for a fitted bodysuit. I wished for a jog bra for my entire body. (There, that’s some TMI for everyone who wants to tell me I’m not fat.) How do those seriously obese people on “The Biggest Loser” do it? I enjoy that show, BTW. I find the participants’ weekly 15-lb weight loss inspiring, in the same impossible wistful way that I aspire to live like Mother Teresa.

Gee. I sound cranky. I wonder why that is. Maybe it’s due to the awful nightmare I had this morning that brought to light all the worst qualities of who I am and played it out in a dream about going to China with Mr. W. Poor Mr. W. I suck. I don’t know whether he hasn’t realized it yet, or whether he’s realized it and loves me anyway. Sucker!

Speaking of Mr. W and trips, this Friday evening we are leaving on a flight to the Big Island of Hawaii to attend “Wilco”‘s destination wedding. I took care of the flight, accommodations and rental car as a 2-year anniversary present for Mr. W. He’s definitely the most expensive wedding date I’ve ever bought, snicker.

Speaking of wedding dates, there isn’t one for us, yet. People keep asking, I keep replying “9 years.” It’s gotten so that Mr. W automatically replies “9 years” as well. Over the weekend when Mr. W and I were visiting my parents, they talked about all the wedding venues being booked up for 8-8-08 (8 in Cantonese, a Chinese dialect, is the phonetic equivalent to the word for “to prosper,” so many Chinese people want things with 8s in them for good monetary luck. House numbers, phone numbers, social security numbers, dates.), similar to how there were a ton of American people who thought they were brilliantly original for aiming for 7-7-07, lucky number 7. My dad brought up that if couples wanted luck for their wedding, they really ought to aim for 9-9-09, because 9 in Chinese is the phonetic equivalent to longevity. We don’t want to get divorced, or have our spouse die early on us, do we? I’m all for aiming for 9-9-09, because it gives me leave to procastinate more.

It’s no secret that I am a huge “Friends” fan. I scheduled my life around their episodes, and despite owning the entire 10-year show on DVD (thanks, Mr. W!), I caught every episode of the re-runs I could when it aired on TV. That means that for the longest time up until recently, I was in front of the TV at 7p and 11p weekdays. I’d sometimes watch “Everybody Loves Raymond” as it leads into “Friends” if I was before the TV early, and would watch “Will and Grace” after “Friends.” I’d fall asleep to that lineup late at night. When “Sex and the City” started running at 11p pushing “Friends” back half an hour, I was ticked because it made me wait a half hour longer and stay up later.

This week, however, something shifted in TV Land. “Friends” at or around 7p disappeared, and the 11:30p episode got pushed back to past midnight. In their place are two episodes of “Two and a Half Men,” starring Charlie Sheen. I’ve always enjoyed the show whenever I happened upon it, but it’s a rare occasion for some reason and I don’t know when or where it airs. Despite my feeling disloyal to “Friends”, I can’t think of a better replacement, and I found myself for the past few days and nights staying up just to watch “Two and a Half Men,” which makes me laugh out loud in a way that “Friends” no longer can, having made myself immune by inadvertently memorizing all the characters’ lines from frequent overwatch. I call it Bland Overwatch of Reruns dEsensitivity Disease, or B.O.R.E.D.

Charlie Sheen’s character “Charlie” is a womanizing bachelor who lives alone at a Spanish-style house overlooking the ocean in Malibu which he affords by writing commercial jingles, but he secretly has a warm heart which he’ll deny to the death. The series begin when he takes in his geeky overly conservative younger chiropractor brother when the brother got a divorce. The brother’s son visits on weekends and the stuff that comes out of the kid’s mouth is irreverent and very boy-like. The show is witty and funny and the best part is that Mr. W, who has a tendency of talking through every show and movie he watches as he tries to predict the upcoming plot and lines, has been wrong on every prediction. HA!

The Brian McKnight/Boyz II Men concert last Tuesday was great. It was an intimate setting out in a park with only about 500 seats under the stars. Boyz II Men opened with a 50-minute set, with one or two songs from their new album and the rest from their classic albums from the 90s. I did miss the fourth member of the band who, according to my gym trainee, had left the group to pursue a solo singing career. I didn’t know which one was missing until the older songs that I’m very familiar with were performed, then I realized it’s the guy with the deep sexy bass voice who had gone. So all the speaking parts of the songs were missing. The remaining 3 members more than made up for it as far as I was concerned by the obvious fun they were having onstage, playing “guess the song” games with the audience, telling us to take out our cell phones and wave them in the air like lighters after calling our mothers on them, as they sang the song “Mama,” having us sing along with their classics and fill in the lyrics, making us laugh with their jokes and spirited performance. Oh yes, like Vanessa said, they each took out a dozen long-stemmed roses and threw them out one by one to the groveling women in the audience as they sang “I’ll Make Love to You.” Then there was a 15 minute intermission that ended up being more like 35 minutes as we waited for Brian McKnight to come on.

I took advantage of intermission time to go to the concession booths and buy my gym trainee a Brian McKnight t-shirt. She had told me that Brian McKnight is looking “real fine” since his divorce, so I got her a black T with a photo in the front of him lounging on a chair with a smoldering “come hither” expression. While I was selecting the t-shirt, two women to my left asked the guy behind the booth about the backstage passes you can get with purchase of an overpriced “limited edition” shirt, and he informed them, as he handed two passes attached to lanyards to two lucky guests to my right, that he had just sold the very last two to these people, sorry. The two women looked enviously at the couple forking over inordinate amounts of cash in exchange for the lanyards, then walked away. I waited patiently for the guy behind the booth to get to me, and made my shirt purchase. By this time, all other customers had left so it was just him and me. As I paid him, he paused then asked, “Did you want to see Brian?”
I said, “Oh, no, it’s okay, I overheard that you’d sold the last passes.”
He pulled a small stack of paper passes out his front shirt pocket, and said, “I have these — I was saving them for some friends, but now I don’t think they’re coming.”
Instantly in my head I pictured having to stay behind and fight the crowd instead of getting out of the parking lot early and beating the traffic. I pictured meeting someone who’s waaaay iconic and I had no idea what I would say or do, it was easier simply to not be in the situation. I said, “I have a tendency to be starstruck and I’d rather not make a fool of myself in front of a celebrity,” and laughed.
He actually looked a little rejected, and said, “Oh, it’s pretty quick, he just signs an autograph for you. I don’t have any uses for these anyway, like I said, my friends didn’t show.”
I smiled gratefully at him (or I’d hoped it was gratefully altho in retrospect it was probably retardedly) and said, “Nah, it’s okay, but thank you very much.” The passes disappeared back into his pocket.

I told Mr. W about this encounter after he came out of the port-a-potty, and he looked at me a little bit in surprise, and said something complimentary about me being alone and looking pretty. But he was probably wondering why I’m such an idiot.

Brian McKnight came out, gave one hell of a performance, showed his charismatic and very humorous, very sexy personality and I was just kicking myself. I sooo wanted to be his friend. He would be a blast to hang out with, this man making goofy faces at the audience, making fun of his own romantic failures and pathetic phone-stalking weepy moments in between songs. He announced that he’s doing something special this year, he’s been bringing his sons along with him on tour, and introduced his 14 year old and 19(?) year old, who proved they are as talented and well-sculpted as their father is as they performed a few songs they wrote with their dad. The 14 year old is kick-ass on the electric guitar, and blasted out my ear drums playing a Prince song while their dad rested backstage for a few minutes. I’d never heard the song before, but Mr. W has and said it was extremely well-played. The entire experience was fun and actually, very romantic.

After the concert, a small line formed at the back of the staging area as the rest of the crowd shuffled out the front entrance where we’d entered. Mr. W and I milled about with the short back line at first, hoping it was a way out that avoided the main crowd, but then realized it was the line to see Brian McKnight and Boyz II Men on backstage passes. “We would’ve been one of the first in line here,” he made sure to note as we walked forward and joined the large exiting herd.