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So that happened
So, if you follow me on other social media, you probably noticed that I saw Hamilton this past weekend. Saturday night, to be exact.
Yeah. That Saturday night. It was pretty awesome.
Thanks to all of you and your way more focused attention to pop culture, I was aware of Hamilton much earlier than your average Southern, suburban soccer mom. I'd watched LMM's performance at the White House and had even shown it to my mom (she'd been a high school history teacher and is generally where I get my love of the subject.) She made me play it about 10 times so she could catch all the lyrics. (So, yeah, please pat yourselves on the back for spreading the word not just to the soccer mom cohort but to their retired mothers, too.)
And, y'know, that would have been it, because while we are not lacking for money, cash for tickets on the StubHub market really isn't in my budget (braces x3, college tuition x3, eeeeverything x3--it all adds up quick.) But then my mom passed away, quite unexpectedly. She'd been in fragile health for the last few years, due to the interaction of breast cancer chemo with some stuff that had happened because of colon cancer three months before she started on the breast cancer journey (she'd also lost a kidney to cancer about 20 years ago, which meant she had 3 unrelated cancers, survived them all, but the treatment was what finally got her.) She had so many things going on that it shouldn't have been a surprise when she slipped away, but it was pretty unexpected.
She had a lot (" ") of pictures (5 or 6 of the giant Rubbermaid tubs packed full of albums and boxes and envelopes of old snapshots) and just seeing how quickly she'd gone from being healthy and vibrant to fragile and barely able to live alone was what really kicked me in the teeth, even more than her passing. Plus, I knew there were lots of things that she and my dad had planned on doing after they retired that never happened.
And then, my brother and I had basically expected that all the money she and my dad had saved would go toward paying for her medical care, but suddenly we were looking at an actual inheritance (a modest one, but still there was a little money to split.) It's been weird.
So in the middle of all that, American Express sent me an upsell email saying that they had access to resale tickets for otherwise sold-out Broadway shows and my brain latched onto the thought and wouldn't let go. All the reasons I wouldn't ordinarily think about something like this seemed lame: the money was there (though let's not talk about how much even the rear mezzanine cost), the kids are mostly self-sufficient, and LIFE IS SHORT. I gulped and gave TicketMaster my AmEx number, working around D's crazy schedule and buying tickets in February for July.
Of such things are astonishing weekends made.
Because, yeah, the tickets I bought because I was trying to tiptoe through the non-stop tournaments my husband coaches and manages ended up being for the last performance with the main cast. And of course, despite my care with D's schedule, it ended up being BabyBoy who flew up with me and walked all over Manhattan for the long weekend.
I hadn't said anything much about having the tickets, first because it was so far in the future, and then because my brain was having conniptions about the tickets being resale and everything possibly falling apart as we walked in the door. I swear I almost cried when the ushers scanned us in with nothing but a 'keep moving, keep moving' (the entire theater was lined up along 46th Street and attempting to get to their seats in the final 30 minutes.)
But, yeah, it worked and we were in, and BabyBoy's first Broadway show was *crazy*. The energy was off the charts, the cast and the audience in one giant feedback loop. It's a good thing we all know the words to Alexander Hamilton because I don't think I heard more than 10% of them. Every time a new voice chimed in, the audience applauded and we had to stop for a minute as soon as the spotlight hit LMM because the audience would. not. shut. up. And it's not like they had quieted down after that minute or so, it was just that the orchestra started back, really really loudly.
It was bonkers—the girls behind us cried through the entire show; the entire audience sang along with King George; I thought Daveed Diggs might have actually launched himself into the audience during Guns and Ships; Leslie Odom lost it on stage, cracking up at Rory O'Malley dabbing with the crown; and Christopher Jackson basically manhandled LMM out to take a solo bow as the orchestra played the theme from The West Wing during the final curtain call (which I'm sure you've all seen.) And that was before we stood in the rain on 46th St because we couldn't bear to leave (sharing umbrellas with some kind fans who'd been there all night) and watched the crowd go nuts as Lin waved from the window. Our hotel room happened to face out over the theater and even from 50 floors up, we could hear people cheering as the cast finally left.
Totally bonkers. In all the best ways.
Okay, so, pictures (click for bigger):
The view from the room toward Times Square
The view toward the river
From the room looking straight down on 46th St...
...which, if you zoom in on the little square in front of the black roof gives you the theater
The marquee from the street
The billboard across from the hotel entrance
The program is nice but I love the button they were handing out with any purchase, :)
Yeah. That Saturday night. It was pretty awesome.
Thanks to all of you and your way more focused attention to pop culture, I was aware of Hamilton much earlier than your average Southern, suburban soccer mom. I'd watched LMM's performance at the White House and had even shown it to my mom (she'd been a high school history teacher and is generally where I get my love of the subject.) She made me play it about 10 times so she could catch all the lyrics. (So, yeah, please pat yourselves on the back for spreading the word not just to the soccer mom cohort but to their retired mothers, too.)
And, y'know, that would have been it, because while we are not lacking for money, cash for tickets on the StubHub market really isn't in my budget (braces x3, college tuition x3, eeeeverything x3--it all adds up quick.) But then my mom passed away, quite unexpectedly. She'd been in fragile health for the last few years, due to the interaction of breast cancer chemo with some stuff that had happened because of colon cancer three months before she started on the breast cancer journey (she'd also lost a kidney to cancer about 20 years ago, which meant she had 3 unrelated cancers, survived them all, but the treatment was what finally got her.) She had so many things going on that it shouldn't have been a surprise when she slipped away, but it was pretty unexpected.
She had a lot (" ") of pictures (5 or 6 of the giant Rubbermaid tubs packed full of albums and boxes and envelopes of old snapshots) and just seeing how quickly she'd gone from being healthy and vibrant to fragile and barely able to live alone was what really kicked me in the teeth, even more than her passing. Plus, I knew there were lots of things that she and my dad had planned on doing after they retired that never happened.
And then, my brother and I had basically expected that all the money she and my dad had saved would go toward paying for her medical care, but suddenly we were looking at an actual inheritance (a modest one, but still there was a little money to split.) It's been weird.
So in the middle of all that, American Express sent me an upsell email saying that they had access to resale tickets for otherwise sold-out Broadway shows and my brain latched onto the thought and wouldn't let go. All the reasons I wouldn't ordinarily think about something like this seemed lame: the money was there (though let's not talk about how much even the rear mezzanine cost), the kids are mostly self-sufficient, and LIFE IS SHORT. I gulped and gave TicketMaster my AmEx number, working around D's crazy schedule and buying tickets in February for July.
Of such things are astonishing weekends made.
Because, yeah, the tickets I bought because I was trying to tiptoe through the non-stop tournaments my husband coaches and manages ended up being for the last performance with the main cast. And of course, despite my care with D's schedule, it ended up being BabyBoy who flew up with me and walked all over Manhattan for the long weekend.
I hadn't said anything much about having the tickets, first because it was so far in the future, and then because my brain was having conniptions about the tickets being resale and everything possibly falling apart as we walked in the door. I swear I almost cried when the ushers scanned us in with nothing but a 'keep moving, keep moving' (the entire theater was lined up along 46th Street and attempting to get to their seats in the final 30 minutes.)
But, yeah, it worked and we were in, and BabyBoy's first Broadway show was *crazy*. The energy was off the charts, the cast and the audience in one giant feedback loop. It's a good thing we all know the words to Alexander Hamilton because I don't think I heard more than 10% of them. Every time a new voice chimed in, the audience applauded and we had to stop for a minute as soon as the spotlight hit LMM because the audience would. not. shut. up. And it's not like they had quieted down after that minute or so, it was just that the orchestra started back, really really loudly.
It was bonkers—the girls behind us cried through the entire show; the entire audience sang along with King George; I thought Daveed Diggs might have actually launched himself into the audience during Guns and Ships; Leslie Odom lost it on stage, cracking up at Rory O'Malley dabbing with the crown; and Christopher Jackson basically manhandled LMM out to take a solo bow as the orchestra played the theme from The West Wing during the final curtain call (which I'm sure you've all seen.) And that was before we stood in the rain on 46th St because we couldn't bear to leave (sharing umbrellas with some kind fans who'd been there all night) and watched the crowd go nuts as Lin waved from the window. Our hotel room happened to face out over the theater and even from 50 floors up, we could hear people cheering as the cast finally left.
Totally bonkers. In all the best ways.
Okay, so, pictures (click for bigger):
The view from the room toward Times Square
The view toward the river
From the room looking straight down on 46th St...
...which, if you zoom in on the little square in front of the black roof gives you the theater
The marquee from the street
The billboard across from the hotel entrance
The program is nice but I love the button they were handing out with any purchase, :)
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(I have never regretted spending money on tickets. Not that I've ever actually bought any super expensive tickets, but with hotels and flights it tends to add up.)
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It was pretty amazing.
I can't even imagine seeing that email too late! I mean, I can see where it happened, because no one ever expects to win that lottery, not really. But still. aieeeeeee.
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When my mom died, Ashley and I stayed in TN to help dad clean out some of her stuff. (He wanted everything gone right away, and I tried not to be judgey, we just helped him do it.) When we got home, Ash had some time to kill, and we knew from overhearing things at Challenge that Joey's run in Little Shop of Horrors was coming to a close. Or maybe the whole show was about to close, I can't remember. Anyway, Ashley looked at me on Wednesday and said, life is short, let's be spontaneous. So we booked a hotel, got tickets to both the matinee and evening performances on Saturday, and hoped in the car Thursday morning. We drove to Weehauken, parked the car in the ferry lot for the weekend, took the ferry over to Manhattan, grabbed a bus to the Paramount Hotel, and had such a good time. The guy at Will Call was a little confused that we had tickets to both shows that day and tried to cancel one of them, but we set him straight. Joey was fabulous but so hoarse by that night.
That was back when the only way we were allowed to do fun things without Erin was if we didn't tell her. (You know, like bowling with NSYNC.) So she called Ashley as we were walking from dinner to the theater and said that she'd called the house but Larry told her that we were at the mall, because he knew better than to tell her we'd gone to NYC without her. Anyway, Ashley 'fessed up and told her where we really were, and her answer was a puzzled, "Does Dad know??"
We've spent a lot of years since with "does Dad know" as the punchline to all sorts of things.
I'm so happy you went.
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It was a crazy scramble leading up to the weekend, but once we were there, it was completely distracting, in all the best ways.
I don't think I knew that you guys had taken off to see Joey in LSoH! It was pre-Chicago Challenge, I guess, which is really when we discovered the hive mind. Sadly, there was no sparkly dancing boy involvement, though I almost managed to meet up with assorted fangirls.
On a tangentially related sidenote: you know those horrible slabs of granite as you're walking into Epcot? The ones with the aluminum pictures on them...? Did you know our favorite sparkly boys have their pictures there? All together?! I feel like there could have been at least one or two (or 20, knowing fandom) stories that could have been carved out of that!