Life is Just a Bowl of Harry’s
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Last night—for the first time this summer—I went to the Hollywood Bowl. Harry Connick Jr. was performing. Although the night was (by L.A. standards) cold, both Harry, and is brand of jazz, were exceptionally hot—effortlessly banging out snappy retro tunes on several pianos, accompanied by his equally retro, albeit feisty timbre.
My favorite part of the evening was several very gay duet(s) with his flaming, African American trombone player. They sang together, flirted with one another through instrumental duets, eventually morphing into a dance that had them sashaying about the stage like Rupaul—all eventually, um, ending with a ass-to-the-audience serving of shimmy. In case you haven’t noticed, Harry has a cute butt.
All the antics just made me wilder about Harry. Clearly, he is a man comfortable with who he is; one minute having a sweet playful moment with his daughter, the next flaming about the stage or telling funny, self-deprecating tales about himself. Perfection.
Unfortunately, a sea of tech-obsessed people surrounded me. My friend here…
…the perfect example. When not noisily digging into his cooler for another beer, (parked on the bench to his left) he spent the remainder of the evening texting, e-mailing and checking his Facebook page.
Gross.
While Harry elegantly crooned his collection of retro tunes, all around me the bowl of “bowlers” was half-empty; all lost in the up-to-the-minute business of technology. When the stage was not bathed in colorful light…
….beautiful right?—every time I looked up into the stadium, I could see a sea of faces bathed in the lights from their cell phones! A far cry from my early concert-going days, when excited audience members would elevate their Bic lighters high into the crowd….different light, different times. Perhaps engaged spectators have become dimmed by the bright future-infusion of tech?
But..on the way out, I was comforted when I saw the elderly African American man and his singing plush puppy-puppet crooning away as if it were my first trip to the Bowl.
Happily, technology has not taken away the singing puppy—who sang from the bowels of the Bowl, as my friends and I faded into the dark night of Hollywood, happily full from a bowl’s worth of Harry……