Monday, October 26, 2009

A Very Barry Weekend

This past weekend, Mark and I did something that is rare amongst those in our age range. No, we didn't get a colonoscopy, silly. We went and saw Barry Manilow at the Hollywood Bowl!

Now I know what you're thinking, and it really wasn't as cheesy as you'd expect. Okay, maybe it was extra-super-Velveeta cheese product-cheesy, but it was a super-fun time, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't sing along.

Allow me to back track a little and explain how this all happened. Back in 2008, Mark and I were at Spec's, a liquor and wine store in Austin, when Mark put his arm around a Barry Manilow cardboard cutout, and I snapped his picture. (Barry Manilow apparently has his own wine.)
Mark later explained to me that as a kid, he had gone to a Barry concert with his family, as his mother was a huge fan. He fell asleep before the concert was over, so his parents decided they should head home....before Copa Cabana! No!!! Well Mark's sister was justifiably perturbed about missing Copa, and come on, what young girl wouldn't be?

Fast forward to a couple of months ago when I saw that Barry Manilow was playing at the Hollywood Bowl, and cheap seats were available for a mere $9.95, (make that $19 with service charges -damn you Ticketmaster!). I thought it would make for a great evening of BYOW, (that's bring your own wine,) sing-along, cheesy fun.

We were in the furthest back section of the completely packed bowl, and were fortunate enough to sit in the loud, middle-aged woman section, otherwise known as section W2, although it's entirely possible that the loud middle-aged woman section was all of the Hollywood Bowl. The women behind us kindly shared Barry's history of writing commercials with us. Did you know that he wrote the "I am stuck on Band Aid brand" jingle? There was another big one they told us about too, but it's escaping me now. To our right, a woman insisted on yelling over and over that Mark "is a keeper!!!!" because he applauded and cheered after every song.

Anyhow, we had a great time, and we even stayed awake for Copa Cabana!

(you can't see anything, but let's be real, it's the audio that counts)

On our long walk back to the car, (we parked at Hollywood and Highland), we serendipitously ran into Patrick Gallagher, whom you probably know better as Coach Ken Tanaka from Glee. I have a feeling he was at the Barry show as well, probably singing his heart out and being labeled as a "keeper" in another section. I got giddy and whispered to Mark who he was and Mark told him I was a huge fan of the show. He was super friendly, even though I confessed that I'm embarrassed about how much I like the show. (Not a really nice thing to say, now that I'm sober and think about it.) He mentioned that there's some great/juicy/gossip-worthy things in the works coming up for the show and to stay tuned, but they're unfortunately on a three week hiatus thanks to baseball. Who watches both the World Series and Glee? There are surely more closet Glee fans out there like me, so probably a lot of people...

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