The Best Date I've Ever Had

Thursday July 11th, 2013:

Daaaah duuuuh daaaaah duuuuh daa daa daa dee daaaah daaaaaaaah!!

[For those of you who aren't as cultured as I am, that was my personal rendition of Music of the Night from the Phantom of the Opera.]

Before I go into great detail about the past two days, I first should talk about the rehearsal that I just came back from. Whatever fool decided that having a summer pops orchestra rehearsal in a high school without any air conditioning needs to be vanquished immediately. The amount of sweat I dripped while playing tonight was atrocious. It also doesn't help that Long Island summers are a mess of humid, and tonight serves as a prime example of that fact.

More on my summer music gig. Theoretically, pops music should be laughably easy and require little to no effort and still sounding good (if not cheesy). Well if that is true then my conductor missed the memo. The overly ambitious young gentleman leading all of us programmed a few pieces that may be above the capabilities of certain members of this orchestra (namely me). Call me crazy, but B minor is slightly excessive for a SUMMER POPS ORCHESTRA (thanks Wagner for writing Ride of the Valkyries). The heat and humidity only makes things worse. My playing and my willingness to make new friends, among other things, substantially decrease with the increasing amount of bodily fluids I drip (this also goes for runny noses, but that's more relevant in the winter). As of tonight, I have officially committed to this organization, so it looks like I'm stuck in a sweaty and valkyrie filled hell for the next few weeks.

I'm sure that I will have plenty to say about my future rehearsals throughout the next month, so I'd like to take this opportunity to begin the saga I like to call NYC 2K13. Tuesday night, after a semi-rushed dinner, I bolted off to the train station and headed into the city to see some lovely BC friends. Starbucks in hand and book in lap, I enjoyed the not-so-short ride into New York City. Naturally, when I got to Penn Station it was raining, so my friends and I got a little wet. But rain never stopped anyone from having fun! It was so fantastic seeing them (even if someone's early bedtime got in the way...)! I especially loved the quality time that I got with someone's mother and sister (they are my absolute favs!)!

The real story starts on Wednesday. First and foremost, I got to leave work an hour and a half early, which was truly a gift from the gods. Again, it was off to the train station, however this ride found me carrying some Dunkin' along. Though hot, there was no rain, which was super lucky since a decent amount of time was spent waiting in line outside the theatre. My dear Marissa forced her poor sister and mother to accompany us to the Phantom theatre early so that she and I could snap some pictures together with all the signs and billboards. Then, we dropped her perfect family off at their show (the clearly inferior Newsies) and headed off to find some dinner because Steve is not pleasant when he is hungry. You'd think Times Square would offer some easily found, quick dinner. This is New York City afterall, and life is supposed to move much faster here. Well, that is undoubtably a lie. Having walked five or six blocks without finding any places that could satisfy my growing appetite, and with clock rapidly ticking away making both of us more than a little bit anxious, we settled on McDonalds.

Mickey D's in NYC is slow. People are slow. People are annoying. People are stupid. All I wanted were my nuggets and some fries so that I could hate myself later that night, and I just wanted that immediately. This is not an unreasonable request. So much time was wasted in line that by the time I had nuggets in hand, I had to wolf them down in a frenzied rush to the Majestic Theatre.

Upon reaching the Majestic Theatre, Marissa's and my "date" officially began. After a surprisingly long line, which thankfully moved rapidly, the theatre's threshold was breached by yours truly. And what a threshold it was. The theatre was beautiful and our seats were amazing (long story, ask me about it in person!). Here's the view I had last night!

That's right, my seats for Phantom of the Opera were in the orchestra. Be jealous. I was so close that I could have thrown the not-so-legally-brought-in Sour Patch Kids we had with us into the pit and hit the conductor square in the head. Speaking of candy, here's my program surrounded by our illegal candy!

I absolutely cannot progress any further in my story without telling you about how perfectly matched for one another Marissa and I are. She only likes the red and orange Sour Patch Kids (what a freak!) and I obviously love the green and yellow ones. The majority of Act II was spent grabbing a handful of SPKs and then scrutinizing them in the dim light to determine which ones should be eaten and which should be tossed into the hands of the other. How. Cute. 

I cannot say that Phantom is the best musical that I have ever seen. I am too strongly bound to Les Mis to utter those words. However if there ever was any musical to beat out Les Mis for the number one spot in my heart, it would be Phantom. The music is heart-wrenchingly gorgeous and the story is so tragically beautiful. 

If you've seen Phantom (like me), you'll appreciate this. 

If you don't understand, go see Phantom. 

All these things I have described made for the perfect night! Marissa and I are a definitely a match made in heaven and I see a joy-filled future ahead of us, except for one minor detail: she is team-Phantom and I am team-Raoul. Maybe I'm not enough of a bad boy, but I'll take me a handsome, young vicomte who sings to me any day. Even though that tiny problem presented itself, I think I'll see Marissa again. In fact, we've already begun planning our next Broadway date when we'll see Les Mis (on BROADWAY). I'm literally dying. Dead. Gone. 

Although I'd love to keep writing, I am completely wiped and desperately need my beauty sleep. I'd also like to show you some pictures of my garden from today, but I never got around to taking any....for that reason, I've decided to embrace #TBT and give you a couple shots from the early days of my garden. Tune in soon to see just how far my planties have gone!