Do to me what Annie Leibowitz did to Hannah Montana

Or don't. Honestly, I'm torn whether I should even post this. But I'm going to. Here goes.

OK, so on a dare -- I won't say from whom -- I did something that might have been really, really stupid. Time Out New York, you see, does this annual issue very subtly called "the horny issue," and as a part of that, they like to shoot photos of ordinary New Yorkers naked. Naked in what is acceptable for publications that don't come in plastic wrappers, that is. Think a risque Rolling Stone cover or such. Something that would be work-safe to view everywhere but Chick Fil A.

Through, let's just say, circumstances somewhat beyond my control, I am now one of the candidates to be one of those New Yorkers this year, and TONY is hosting an online poll to determine who it's gonna be.

Now, as anyone who has read much of this blog will be able to tell, I don't post that many photos of myself, and in almost all that I do, I'm usually fully clothed. On the other hand, I really like to win things. So, what the heck? I'm just putting it out there in case anyone wants to throw a few votes my way, or -- for those of you, which is most, with much, much more powerful blogging powers than mine -- want to throw me a little promotional bone.

Here's the link. Luckily, there are many, many people on there far more attractive than me, so I'm probably safe. In fact, I fully expect to be the Mike Gravel, or Sam Brownback if you're more Republicanly inclined, of this race and hope they don't publish the actual results. Still, thanks to my last name starting with a "b," I am the first one on the list. Let's just see where this goes, right?

And to make this seem a little bit less sleazy, I'll try to pull a positive out of it: If, for whatever reason, I come out ahead, as penance, I'll donate $100 to Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. Voting runs until May 22, and multiple votes are permitted. And don't send my momma this link!

State of the blog

I've had this blog for about a year and a half now. When I first started, I had no idea what I wanted to do with it. But I've done it long enough now that I know what I like to do -- and, thanks to StatCounter, I know what people are more likely to read. So, with that in mind, I think it's time to finally give this blog an official structure.

My intentions are now to post semi-weekly, keeping theatre reviews on the weekend and kind of a weekly column-type posting during the week. I much prefer the long-form of writing, and I've determined that -- by and large -- my autobiography is just not interesting enough to sustain a blog!

I work much better under regular deadlines, even false deadlines, so with luck, a regular schedule will keep me posting much more regularly, too.

So, I'll be back in a few days to catch up on some more reviews, then perhaps even more reviews this weekend (I'll be checking in on the folks in Texas this weekend). Then, after that, I'll start the regular schedule. So thanks to those who've stuck with me!

Artist's remorse

As a kid, I used to subscribe to one of those silly for-children magazine. Not Highlights. I can't even remember the name. Playmates or Playtime or something like that. The slightly older-skewed version of Jack & Jill, whatever that was called.

At any rate, one of my goals during that time was to get one of my drawings published on the page where they featured small black-and-white versions of the artwork that readers sent in. Now, I've never been great at drawing. True, I did win a best-in-show ribbon for a painting of flowers at the Brazoria County Fair, but that's when I was five, and my skills kind of never got past that level. But oh, I tried and tried.

Then one day, when I was 8, I got a letter notifying me that they would be publishing one of my drawings. Validation! And just in time, especially because the older you got, the better your drawings had to be to get in. I eagerly waited for the magazine to see which one they choose, and when it arrived, I realized it was the crappiest one I had ever sent in: a scribbled out, asymmetrical Christmas tree that looked even more pathetic with the green and all the decorations sucked out of it by the loss of color. Yet there it was. My name attached to it.

I bring this up because, many, many months ago, probably after drinking, I sent in something to Overheard in New York. And suddenly, they've decided to publish it. And looking at it, I'm realizing that it's not that funny. And I also apparently signaled to them that I wanted my full name posted by the quote.

The quote itself is pretty old, as indicated by the location of where it was overheard: a show I reviewed more than six months ago. It made a bit more sense then, when the U.S. dollar wasn't quite as pathetic as it is now, albeit still stronger to the Chilean peso. Considering that the top quote on the Overheard in New York site is from a Yankee's game, I'm guessing that it was just a matter of catching up.

Which reminds me that I sent in something else shortly after that one. If it ever appears, I hope this one, something I overheard in the audience while attending The Tyra Banks Show (yes, I went to that -- shut up). I think it went something like this:

Female intern: Wow, those makeovers Tyra did were really amazing, weren't they?
Guy in audience: Yeah. When are they going to give you one?

Validate me!

This is shameful

It seems like all I write lately are excuses on why I haven't been blogging! Once again, I've been out of town, catching up with my father (who's doing much better, by the way). In addition, I've been working on one of my major projects of the year at work, which thankfully is over now. But no more travel for a few weeks now, at least, even though I very regretfully had to turn down a trip to Argentina next weeks.

But all excuses. As penance, here are one-sentence reviews of every show I've seen since I last wrote a show review:

Crimes of the Heart: Kathleen Turner makes a respectable directorial debut, the kind that an American Idol judge would call safe but just a'ight for me, dog.

Oroonoko: The show's already opened and closed with little fanfare, so all that really needs to be said is that there is a delightful riff by one of the female character on the uselessness of the king's penis.

Applause at City Center: I will never penny-pinch and buy the $20 nosebleed seats at this venue again, as the pole at the front of the balcony was the star of the show for me, although the dot that kind of looked liked Christine Ebersole sure sang pretty.

In the Heights: Even as a mere two-year resident of Washington Heights, I feel comfortable in saying this show is about as representative of the neighborhood as "Brigadoon" is of Scotland, but it still is a darn entertaining night at the theatre.

Dina Martina: Off the Charts!: After hearing my sister play it on the piano for years in the 1980s, finally someone made the theme from "Ice Castles" listenable again!

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: Anika Noni Rose, as Maggie the cat, more than makes up for a mostly miscast everyone else, and hearing James Earl Jones boom out the word "poontang" more than makes up for the disappointment in director Debbie Allen's failure to include an interpretive dance number.

Paparazzo extraordinaire

Yikes! I've been silent for more than a week, largely because I was in Las Vegas on business and came back with a nasty, nasty cold. As penance, here are some exclusive celebrity photos shot by moi:

TONY BENNETT!


REGIS PHILBIN!


GARRISON KEILLOR!


OK, I'm officialy 80.

An about face about faces

Okayyyyyyyy...no politics for a second!

As I mentioned once before, I've diddled around on one of the dating sites out there. Actually, I have no idea why I was being coy and didn't mention the site's name in that last post. It's chemistry.com.

Anyway, they've suddenly altered their policy. See, it's a very intricate process to actually get to have direct communication with anyone on that site, which probably explains why I, the king of ADD and no follow through, have met precious few people from it (not that that's necessarily a bad thing). Here's how it used to work: They use whatever matchmaking wizardry they glean from the initial quiz you take and show you five matches. From there, you look at the photos and read their profile and decide if you want to get to know them better. Then, they look at your profile and decide if the feeling's mutual. Then, you compare your "relationship essentials," do a few short answer questions, swap insurance information, submit to a full genetic screening and share potential names of your firstborn, and then you can communicate directly.

Here's the kicker. At any point in time, if one of you decides that he isn't feeling it, you can abort at any time. The other person has no means to respond, unless you were dumb enough to include your cell phone number or something like that in your profile. A passive-aggressive person's delight. Potentially frustrating, for sure, but no pressure. Pretty brilliant, actually.

But they just changed it. Mostly, the process is the same, except with the photographs. Now, you no longer can see a potential matches photograph until AFTER you've confirmed initial interest. On the surface, it's an admirable if not a bit too utopian of a move. Sure, we should be judging potential matches on more than their hotness. (Side note to anyone using that site: Show a LITTLE forethought when choosing a photograph. We all have our good angles, but that's rarely on the south end of a beer-spitting hat or of you rafting the Colorado River, shot from the top of the Grand Canyon.) Nobody actually does that, of course, but it's an admirable goal, nonetheless.

One problem, though. Before, you could pretty much just fill in the blanks yourself if a potential match put you in the reject pile. "Eh, our profile's just didn't mesh." "He's probably already found a boyfriend on here and just didn't close his account yet." "His last boyfriend's name was probably Mike, too, and that would just be freaky to him."

Not now. If someone clicks that initial interest button but hits the eject button after the photos materialize, there can be only one reason. He hated the photo. He thinks you're hideous. Likewise, if you succumb to shallowness--if someone sounded good on paper but in their photograph looks, as my high school band director used to say, like Lurch--you're doing the same thing to them. Oh, well. Self-esteem and good karma were nice while they lasted!

Faint memories of childhood

So, the CDC is finally waking up after a few decades of slumber on "the choking game," or one of the many other aliases by which it's known. I hate to tell them, but it's been popular a lot longer than 10 years. I know this because I used to play it. And if we knew about it in Brazoria County, trust me: We weren't the first ones to get fads.

I'll never forget the first night I did it. I, a kid of I guess 12 or 13 at the time, was spending the night with two friends, and they apparently were old pros at it. I watched them do it to each other several times, but I was too terrified to do it myself. Finally, I succumbed. And wow.

They did it in the second way described in the article. We were never as hardcore as to throttle each other or wrap telephone cords around our necks, for goodness sake. We didn't even call it choking, as we didn't consider it as such. I don't know that we called it anything. Basically, the "victim" would bend over, take about five or six deep breaths and the hold the final breath, as the other person tightly gripped their stomach, like a frozen Heimlich maneuver, and lifted them off the ground. When the "victim" finally released his breath, you knew he was out.

I'll admit: It was pretty euphoric. No, there was nothing sexual about it. But the hallucinations and dreams experienced when one was out were pretty vivid, sometimes scary, not that I could describe a single one of them almost 20 years later, of course. And when we woke up, after what was probably only about 30 seconds to a minute but felt like hours, there would be a bizarre tingling sensation left in the head.

Adults knew we did this. Not my parents, of course, but some other adults heard us talking about it. Hell, I even remember one Boy Scout camping trip in which we were doing it in one of the leader's vans while two leaders were in the van with us. We kind of got an idea that there might be a bit more danger than we thought to it when one kid, at one of my slumber parties, started to have a seizure after we put him under. Finally, one teacher heard us talking about it and told us what we were really doing to our brains in depriving them of oxygen, even though we were pretty much over it by then anyway.

Point being: This is nothing new, nothing underground and nothing restricted to a fringe group of kids. The kids I refer to earlier who did it with me pretty much all were honor students by the time we got to high school.

That being said, some of the comments below the article are pretty appalling (and kudos to the author for calling them out). The attitude that it's just Darwinism, that the kids who die from doing this are just stupid and getting what they deserve is ridiculous. By that logic, a kid who doesn't know how electricity works and dies after sticking a fork in an outlet also got what he deserved.

Oh, and anyone who takes any of the above paragraphs -- particularly numbers two, five and six -- out of context for prurient purposes? God'll get ya for that, Walter.

Some excellent news

If I may delve into the deeply personal one more time, I'm pleased to echo a good report regarding my father. It seems all tests for cancer on the prostate came back negative. An earlier bone scan had shown the cancer hadn't spread there, and some questionable lymph nodes the doctor removed during surgery also came back negative. In other words, no chemo, no radiation, no nothing. Removal of the bladder should have eradicated the cancer, and the doctor said there's only about a 5 or 10 percent chance of it being a problem anymore.

Thanks again to all for the kind thoughts during all of this. My sister recently sent out her annual request for donations for Relay for Life. I know I'll be donating this year.

If you're going to be late, why bother coming at all?

This post is especially for my Texas friends, who don't know what 8 degrees (lower considering wind chill factor) feels like. And it's a lot less painful an experiment than freezing one's hair, something my family still laughs at me about.

I had just finished drinking a bottle of water in a very warm building before walking outside. Almost immediately, the bottle turned into mush in my hand. Now, if I remember my Charles' Law -- Or was that Boyle's Law? Or Murphy? Burke? Somebody like that. -- cold makes things contract (except that rebel substance water). In other words, the air inside the bottle had shrunk to the extent that the poor plastic had nothing to support it.

So thanks, Winter, for the high school chemistry refresher! You can go now. Really. Houseguests and fish and all that.

What would the founding fathers do? Keep quiet.

I'm now convinced that Richard Brookhiser, senior editor of National Review, works out at my gym. Or at least a darn good doppelganger. As I finished up my ab routine this evening, I could have sworn he was the one next to me who took the big ball away when I was finished.

The thing is, he's the level of celebrity you can never be sure about. You certainly can't go up and ask. If it's not him, it's not like you just asked if he was Anderson Cooper or even Paul Rudd. He's not going to say, "No, but I get that a lot." In all likelihood, he's not going to know who Richard Brookhiser is and think you're quite odd.

On the other hand, if it is him, you're immediately suspect for recognizing him, too, especially when you don't exactly fit the average National Review demographic. Honestly, I probably wouldn't have even thought it if I hadn't seen him on Colbert last night, although I've been familiar with him since we had to read his Washington biography back in freshman university political science.

Supposedly, Matt Damon works out at my gym when he's in town. Why don't I ever see him, darn it? Ah, well. I wonder: If a conservative writer works out at Crunch, specifically doing ab crunches, does that make him a Crunchy Con?

Is this supposed to be sexy?

I've never understood how spam is profitable in this day and age. It would seem to me I'd get more money rattling a cup full of coins during my morning commute than I would by tricking those one or two people who have just discovered this magical thing called email after a 20-year slumber--you know, the one or two who still forward that thing to you that says Bill Gates will write you a check for $1,000 if you just forward their email to a few dozen people.

But I understand porn spam even less. First of all, it's not like people who want porn are sitting around and waiting for an email telling them where to find it. What's more, the subject titles are never enticing at all.

Take the last few days' sampling. Sexyandtallns wants me to "see [presumably her] wide gaping holes." Charming. Grocer promises me "real university students forced to stripp (sic) of their clothes -- 2 pics!" Wow! Two whole pictures? Of a college student undressing, probably the hardest thing to ever see? Sold. Betty Klay offers a "round butt for u to play with." How about a round of mini golf? And Cassie Carrter, whom I seem to get something from every damn day, wants to show me "MidWestern Chicks Flashing Their Tits For Free." Darn it Cassie, if they were from the Pacific Northwest, I might have considered it, but the Iowa chicks just don't do it for me.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some horny women to whom sweetsarah0 says are incredibly eager to beat me. Geez, don't these people have any demographic research at all?

Happy Super (um, Duper) Tuesday!

I went back and forth several times, but I cast my vote this morning for Hillary Clinton. And, should Barack Obama ultimately pull it off, I'll have no problem supporting him in the general election.

This is the first time I've ever voted in a presidential primary where it actually mattered. I just missed the 1996 primary because I was too young, although I was old enough for the general election (not that the primary really mattered by the time it got to Texas, anyway). In 2000, I threw a vote to Bill Bradley, whom I really liked but was already long gone from the race. In 2004, there was a really tight race in my county for sheriff that was going to be decided in the Republican primary, so I held my nose and voted in the Republican primary, skipping the presidential section (and ardently stopping the election volunteers from stamping an "R" on my voter's registration).

With that behind me, I look forward to eating hummus and watching the returns tonight. I even switched a show ticket I had so I could be home for it. Isn't that incredibly dorky? If it's a bad night for the greased-up Wink Martindale clone, as I hope it is, it will all be worth it.

A side note: CNN was at my polling place this morning, but as they obviously were there to gauge Latino voter opinion, they paid me no attention.

A brighter week

Many thanks to those of you who left the kind thoughts in comments or elsewhere. Since I broached it, the full story is that my father had his bladder and prostate removed (my oldest sister keeps calling it a prostrate, but I've given up trying to correct her) after they found and removed and orange-sized tumor off of the bladder late last year. Not to get too graphic, but they had to remove the tumor through the penis bit by bit, which, well, I've probably lost all male readers at this point.

At any rate, he made it through the surgery fine last week, but as Sophia Petrillo said, "No one looks good after surgery." Like many older patients after surgery, there were some delusion problems, which is a difficult thing to see. At one point in time, he was convinced he was in Louisiana at an LSU game. When I called to check in last night, however, I got the good news that he was passing gas. Yes, that's good news, because it means the intestines are active again and that he can eat again. And with food back in him, he's doing much, much better, and with the morphine cut down, the delusional spells are pretty much gone. And he might be able to go home sometime this week. So things are looking good at this point.

Honestly, though, I've been in so many conversations about bodily functions in the past few weeks that I feel like I'm in a Rob Schneider film. My three sisters and I were in the Best Western near St. Luke's in Houston, eating breakfast and talking loudly about urostomy bags and all sorts of other unseemly things that we barely even noticed the lone, horrified other woman trying to eat in the breakfast room. Hope she enjoyed her biscuits and gravy.

Photo distraction

I just got back from Texas yet again this week. I was there for some fairly major surgery that my father had to undergo. The recovery process is going as well as could be expected, considering that he's in his 80s, but of course, it's going to be slow. And it's all left me a little drained and tongue-tied for now. So, without much to say at the present, here instead are some photos from my trip to Budapest late last year, which I realize I never posted.

Click for the full image, of course. These were taken in and around the city's lovely Castle District, right on the Danube (crossed by the Chain Bridge). Oh, and doesn't the Hungarian parliament look a lot like that Thames Productions logo?

A case for vandalism

Today was one of those mornings when the alarm clock seemed to be speaking a different language. You see, I had a nice two- or three-hour break in sleep thanks to an extremely courteous neighbor letting his car alarm go off all night.

First of all: Did you know that if you call the non-emergency hotline to report an annoying car alarm, they'll automatically transfer you to 911? Not that it makes the police come any faster, but it's an interesting point. It probably has something to do with reports of a terrorist plot involving car alarms.

I had no earplugs, just my noise-canceling headphones, which I can't sleep in because of my inability to sleep on my back or my stomach for any extended period of time. If the police ever came, I had finally dozed off to dreams of revenge. After a few hours, I actually get used to the noise.

But at least I'm not suffering alone. I had no idea how much bandwidth has been dedicated to these nuisances.
Like here.
Or here.
Or here.
And here.
And the best one.

My favorite part of those is the stories of people retaliating against the offending car. The thought crossed my mind last night. In fact, I even stood at the window for a moment with an old jar of satay sauce from the refrigerator, contemplating hurling it down six stories through the windshield. I thought better of it, mostly because I didn't trust my aim at 4 a.m., but also because I didn't particularly want something with my fingerprints on it in the car should my aim have actually worked and should the police have ever arrived.

I'll be ready next time, though. I'm still trying to decide which would be best. Dumping a jar of molasses on the hood and windshield? A dozen or so eggs? Or just an old-fashioned keying? Ooh, I smell a future blog poll question!

And my theme for 2008 is...

..."Beautiful," by Jessica Molaskey. Not bad, considering it took me--well, my iPod, actually--until March to make up its mind last year. At any rate, I'm happy enough, because I adore Molaskey and can't wait to see her in "Sunday in the Park with George" in a few months. I actually downloaded the whole Pentimento album by accident, meaning to get only one song but hitting the "buy album" button by accident. Serendipity, actually, though.

So I'll be waiting for those sounds of the rude world to lull away with the moonlight, thank you very much.

Farewell, independence

I forgot to mention yesterday that I'm now officially a New Yorker. And also officially a Democrat.

Yes, just before leaving for the holidays, I finally got around to getting my New York driver's license, simultaneously registering to vote. Apparently, to vote in the primaries here, you have to be registered in a particular party. And there's no way I'm going to allow an R by my name.

I haven't made up my mind yet about my choice, though. I'm watching Barack Obama give his victory speech in Iowa as I type this, and he's still probably my top choice. Yeah, there was that whole ex-gay Gospel singer thing, but--as I apparently never blogged on my thoughts about that--my end feeling about the situation is that it was the singer who was compromising, not Obama. John Edwards just creeps me out sometimes with that Joel Osteen vibe. Hillary Clinton could still change my mind again, and I'd love to see those Clinton-hating veins pop out of the Limbaugh et al foreheads over the next four to eight years. The rest would just be a wasted vote. This is coming from someone who voted for Bill Bradley in the 2000 Democratic primary in Texas.

As for Mike Huckabee? Well, he turns my stomach a lot less than Mitt Romney. I'll give him that. Considering he once called for the quarantine of AIDS patients, this says a lot more about Romney than it does about Huckabee. Plus, Limbaugh and Ann Coulter hate him, so there's a plus.

I guess there could be one silver lining to a Huckabee presidency. It's a lining about the width of a cell wall, but a lining, still. Finally there would have been a U.S. president who shared my name. You know, since that homophobic, doltish dwarf from Massachusetts blew his chance back in 1988.

Happy new year!

Things are finally back to normal. No more long trips, no more leaving the country, no more business conferences -- nada. At least not for a few months. So consider my new year's resolution to get this blog up and running again.

That and the gym. I realized today that, with all that's going on, I hadn't had a good workout in about a month. Fortunately, this is the best time of year to go to the gym. For once, it's not all the toned people who make me feel bad. All those other resolution people are there, too, and their weight-lifting choices are just as puny as mine. Keep at it, guys. Pretty soon, we'll be the ones who control the assisted chin-up machine. Until about mid-February, at least.

Gay dating in the styx, or lack thereof

In recent months, I’ve been playing around with one of the online matchmaking services. No, I’m not talking about Gay.com or Manhunt. Let’s just call it one of the less fickle dating services, one of those sites that makes you juggle toggle meters and write essays just to gain the right to even correspond with someone. I’ve met some interesting people through it, one even pretty close to what I’m looking for in an LTR, although just not quite enough to get me to give up my confirmed bachelorhood just yet.

My schedule as of late, however, has made me put it all on the back burner. Just last night, someone whom I had been chatting with and who seemed like he might have a little potential suddenly bumped me to the reject pile largely because, I presume, I’m so hard to nail down nowadays. Dropped before the first date even had a chance to happen! As I alluded to in an earlier post, if Mr. Right had come along at any point in mid-November, I would have had a window of maybe two or three days to fit in a single date with him by the end of the year.

As evidence, I’m putting up this very blog post from a hotel in Bethesda, Md., where I just arrived tonight and will be leaving tomorrow following a brief business meeting.

All this made me realize: Do you know when the last time was that I had an actual date? Try around Halloween.

So I’m wondering – is my not dating right now a neglectful act? If it were all work causing this, it would be a no-brainer, but a lot of this hectic schedule is stuff I truly enjoy doing: traveling, seeing shows, visiting family and, of course, the chorus. And those two or three days I had in that dating window I really needed to fuel the introverted side of my personality. It's not as if I feel like I'm missing anything -- until people tell me that I am, that is.

Honestly, I’d rather not try to date if I don’t have the time to properly cultivate a good relationship should it come along. Self-centered? Perhaps. But I never jump into relationships quickly, and I’d rather not waste time spinning my wheels if it means cutting time out of things I enjoy doing. My usual philosophy on dating has been to give anyone a shot or two, even if they don’t seem my type, just to see what happens. But now, consider my bar officially raised. Or at least mounted. I just can’t decide if this is a mature or immature decision at this point.

And besides, that one guy who just sent me his “relationship essentials” is kind of cute.

My peace pipes are getting hoarse!

Things have been so hectic lately that I failed to give my usual shameless plug for the New York City Gay Men Chorus' concert! Alas, this time I missed out the off chance that I might help sell one extra ticket to a lost googler trying to figure out Tyler Hanes' sexuality of find the script to "A Coupla White Chicks Sitting Around Talking" (seriously -- that's been the most frequent search leading people here as of late). So, I'm left to praise the morning after.

Really, I always hate the day after a performance, especially one for which I truly enjoyed preparing. Such a crash! Our new director, Charles Beale, did a really great job putting this one -- our annual holiday concert at Carnegie Hall -- together. Admittedly, some of the song choices had a lot of us saying "Huh?" at the beginning of the rehearsal process --"You're the Voice"? That Heart song? Really? -- but it really blended into a lovely, coherent program, if I do say so myself. Angels and peace were the motif throughout, and it really spoke to some personal stuff with which I'm dealing right now, not to mention the crap that's going on in the political landscape right now. (I'm ready for my quarantine, Mr. Huckabee!)

I'll especially cherish the memory of working with Kelli O'Hara. She was a real workhorse for this concert, doing four numbers in a row in the first act as well as a surprise appearance in the second. She told us it was a special occasion for her as well, as a friend of hers who has since died had been in the chorus a few years back. She and bari/bass Robert Osborne were stunning on the Gerald Finzi cantata "In Terra Pax." I wish I'd slipped in my voice recorder for a bootleg, but those Carnegie folk are pretty scary about that, and I didn't want to risk getting caught and getting the chorus stuck with a heavy fine. Even if I had, the organ would have been overpowering from where I was standing, anyway.

Beyond that, I wouldn't be so presumptuous as to review my own performance! I will say, however, that there's no feeling like walking out to an applauding, packed house at Carnegie. Last year, my first concert with the chorus, I was really too overwhelmed to appreciate the experience. This year, I savored every moment.

So, since I can't plug the concert, buy our recordings! Even though I only participated in one of those recordings.

OK, enough of that. I'm falling behind, so I have a lot of reviews to get through this week as well as photos from Budapest. And a silly little detail called "work."