Rebel Prince

The last couple of weekends we took advantage of our museum memberships and went to a few art exhibits in San Francisco. If you’re in the area, definitely check out the major Impressionism exhibits, one of which closes on Labor Day: Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay at the de Young. The Legion of Honor, which has same-day admission reciprocity with the de Young, has a companion exhibit called Impressionist Paris: City of Light, closing September 26. The de Young exhibit definitely had the marquee paintings, but I actually found the Legion of Honor exhibit a bit more quirky and interesting with its variety of posters, book illustrations, and so forth, in addition to paintings.

And if you can’t get enough Impressionism, just wait, there’s more! Both museums will have additional related exhibits later this fall and into the new year.

We also went to SFMOMA for Calder to Warhol: Introducing the Fisher Collection (closes September 19), a wide-ranging exhibition with works by the modern greats.

All these museums are beautiful buildings and sites in their own right and a great way to spend an afternoon in the city. Food note: After the de Young, go have a meal at Park Chow and for dessert get the warm ginger cake with pumpkin ice cream. It’s de rigueur in my book.

Same-sex marriage is in a holding pattern in California. Proposition 8, the gay-marriage ban, got overturned in federal district court (yay), but the judgment was temporarily stayed (boo). Then the stay was lifted (yay), but the effect of that was delayed a week (boo). Then the proponents appealed to the circuit court and were granted a stay (boo), but the court expedited the case to begin this December (yay). And then there’s also the mysterious cloud hanging over all of this: whether the proponents even have standing to appeal. Whew!

The entire Prop 8 trajectory has been a roller coaster of events, and August 12 was an emotional roller coaster of a day. We went to San Francisco City Hall in the morning to await word on the stay and see if we could get married. Our good friend Julie Bernstein, who had also been our wedding photographer last year, surprised us by meeting us at City Hall to offer emotional support and document what we hoped would be our legal-wedding day. To finish the job, as it were.

After waiting for a few hours in line with other gay and lesbian couples at the county clerk’s office, we were overjoyed to find out the stay was lifted, but then just minutes later disappointed to hear of the delay. Same sex-marriage may be on hold for now, but given the current momentum, we are optimistic for marriage equality and know that we will get there eventually. Julie created a lovely photo essay of that day last week; please take a look: “A Second Chance for Their Wedding Day.”

Thanks to our friends and family for their support and encouragement! And on a grander scale, thanks to the plaintiffs and their legal team for their efforts, and to Judge Vaughn Walker for his legal reasoning. The overturning of Prop 8 is a win for the Constitution and for civil rights.

» See also Thom’s blog entry “‘Not Getting Married Today.’”

Last night we went to see Idina Menzel with the San Francisco Symphony, and she was amazing. So funny, so charming, and of course what a voice! Here is the setlist:

Overture from Girl Crazy [symphony]

The Life of the Party (The Wild Party)
I’m Not That Girl (Wicked)
Love for Sale (The New Yorkers) / Roxanne
Funny Girl (Funny Girl)
No Day But Today (Rent)
Poker Face

Comedy Tonight (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum) [symphony]
Send in the Clowns (A Little Night Music) [symphony]

Gorgeous
Embraceable You (Girl Crazy)
Good Morning, Walker / I Feel So Smoochie
Look to the Rainbow (Finian’s Rainbow)
For Good (Wicked)
Defying Gravity (Wicked)

Tomorrow (Annie)

I wish I had brought my good camera with me, ’cause after the encore and during the several loud, cheering ovations it was a free-for-all with everyone’s cameras out. But we were sitting in the front row, dead center, so I can’t complain. When she sang “For Good,” unmiked and a cappella, it was like she was singing directly to us. Loved it. (I did have this fantasy that hubby Taye Diggs would show up and sit next to us, but he was at home in New York with their baby, Walker. Aww.)

In any case, I did just find a photo on Flickr (credit: T.J. DeGroat), and you can sort of make out me and Thom–we’re in the front row, towards the left of the picture, in the light shirts!

And there’s more! Here’s a YouTube video I found of “Poker Face,” where you can see us through the little square formed by the railings:

Idina’s tour continues on July 17 at Wolf Trap, and she’s coming back to California (Orange County) later this year.

We leave for vacation today, so I guess it’s time for a preview! Over the next couple of weeks we will visit the Philippines, Cambodia (Siem Reap), and Thailand (Chiang Mai). The trip was first spurred by my mom, who is going to visit the Philippines in time for a festival and other reunions in her hometown, and Thom and I decided to tag along, as we similarly did this time of year in 2007. It’ll be great to see a bunch of my relatives again. This time, to add some variety, after one week in the Philippines, Thom and I decided to plan a side trip and are going off on our own to some neighboring countries that neither of us have been to before: Siem Reap for the temples at Angkor, and Chiang Mai, one of the ancient cities of Thailand.

(Originally we had planned to go to Bangkok, but given the political unrest there, we finally decided to divert to Chiang Mai. We’ll still fly to Bangkok airport, but just to change flights.)

Quick airline geek-out: our total flight plan to and from SFO and within Asia covers about 18,862 miles on four different airlines–all of which I’m flying for the first time–on aircraft ranging from a Boeing 747 jumbo jet all the way down to an ATR 72 turboprop. And the way it works out, in the middle of the trip we’ll even have a stopover in Singapore, just long enough to see a few sights and rest before continuing on. Map time!

View Southeast Asia 2010 in a larger map

We’ll likely have Internet access for most of the trip, so I will try to at least update status when I can. ‘Til next time!

On Monday night we saw Audra McDonald sing with the San Francisco Symphony, and she was amazing, as usual. This isn’t a full-fledged review, but let’s just say the whole time she had me in a wonderful dreamy haze (alternating with cheering wildly). We had front-row center seats, so it was like she was singing just for us. Here’s her song list; it wasn’t listed in the program, so this is not necessarily complete or in order, only as Thom and I remembered them:

Gorgeous (The Apple Tree)
I Have Confidence (The Sound of Music)
It Might As Well Be Spring (State Fair) / Hurry, It’s Lovely Up Here (On a Clear Day You Can See Forever)
Will He Like Me? (She Loves Me)
Can’t Stop Talking (Let’s Dance)
Happiness Is a Thing Called Joe (Cabin in the Sky)
The Glamorous Life (A Little Night Music)
There Won’t Be Trumpets (Anyone Can Whistle)

Ribbons Down My Back (Hello, Dolly!)
Pure Imagination (Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory)
A Little Bit in Love (Wonderful Town)
I Wish I Were in Love Again (Babes in Arms)
Dividing Day (The Light in the Piazza)
Moon River (Breakfast at Tiffany’s)
Old Maid (110 in the Shade)
I Could Have Danced All Night (My Fair Lady)
What Can You Lose? (Dick Tracy) / Not A Day Goes By (Merrily We Roll Along)
When Did I Fall in Love? (Fiorello!)

10,432 Sheep (The West Point Story)
Edelweiss (The Sound of Music)
Ain’t It the Truth? (Cabin in the Sky)

A few more notes:

• The symphony also played The Carousel Waltz as a sort of entr’acte after the intermission.
• Audra made good on her tweet in which she promised to sing the name of that Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajökull, on a high A-flat. I can’t vouch for pronunciation, but it sure sounded pretty!
• She told us that when she was a little girl, she auditioned with the song “Edelweiss” with her father accompanying her. (He died three years ago.) Last night she sang it unmiked, accompanied by guitar and violin. So beautiful and poignant.

For Audra’s appearances on PBS singing some of these and other songs, check out AudraMcDonaldFan‘s channel on YouTube.

We’re excited for a couple of upcoming “Summer and the Symphony” concerts: Pink Martini (we’re seeing them on June 2) and Idina Menzel (July 9). Ha, I guess it shows how little I blog anymore: my post about last year’s Pink Martini concert is still here on the home page!

As you may know, this year’s Best Picture category at the Oscars is different in a couple of ways. There are ten nominees, and voters rank them all rather than vote for their single favorite. Will this set up a standoff between Avatar and The Hurt Locker on polarization vs. consensus? From the New Yorker:

Members–there are around fifty-eight hundred of them–are being asked to rank their choices from one to ten. In the unlikely event that a picture gets an outright majority of first-choice votes, the counting’s over. If not, the last-place finisher is dropped and its voters’ second choices are distributed among the movies still in the running. If there’s still no majority, the second-to-last-place finisher gets eliminated, and its voters’ second (or third) choices are counted. And so on, until one of the nominees goes over fifty per cent.

This scheme, known as preference voting or instant-runoff voting, doesn’t necessarily get you the movie (or the candidate) with the most committed supporters, but it does get you a winner that a majority can at least countenance. It favors consensus. Now here’s why it may also favor The Hurt Locker. A lot of people like Avatar, obviously, but a lot don’t–too cold, too formulaic, too computerized, too derivative. (Remember Dances with Wolves? Jurassic Park? Everything by Hayao Miyazaki?) Avatar is polarizing. So is James Cameron. He may have fattened the bank accounts of a sizable bloc of Academy members–some three thousand people drew Avatar paychecks—but that doesn’t mean that they all long to recrown him king of the world. (As he has admitted, his people skills aren’t the best.) These factors could push Avatar toward the bottom of many a ranked-choice ballot.

I’d love to see the vote tallied onstage at the actual awards ceremony (with appropriate computer graphics)–sudden death lightning round!–but I guess that’s just the numbers (and game show) geek in me. For a producer it might not be so fun to watch one’s movie be numerically verified as the last among otherwise “equal” losers, er, non-winners.

By the way, so far I’ve seen only three of the ten Best Picture nominees: Avatar, An Education, and Up. Which have you seen, and what are your picks (or rankings)?

Previously on my blog, I was just about to head off on my honeymoon, and if you followed my Twitter or Facebook updates, then you know it was an amazing time. I haven’t gotten around to uploading all my photos (of course), but Thom’s full set is here.

The past ten years sure have been a decade of change in my life. In 2000 I found my first post-college job and moved across the country, from California to Washington, D.C. In 2001 I discovered the music of Rufus Wainwright and became a semi-groupie. In 2003 Thom and I first met. In 2006 we moved to my hometown just weeks before my father died. And this year Thom and I got married.

The other day I put together a “decade in pictures” slideshow, hastily assembled and thus imperfect, but evocative nonetheless. Enjoy.

Tonight we’re going to a small get-together to celebrate New Year’s with my family. Happy new year, and happy new decade!

Wow, I really meant to write a wedding recap (more than a month has passed since the wedding, so it’s not like I haven’t had the opportunity!), and I will eventually, but for now here are a couple of links to photos, which you may have already seen on Facebook etc.: our Flickr group Happy Together, and our pro Julie Bernstein’s photos. Speaking of photos, if you’ve seen my Flickr photostream lately, you’ll notice that I recently started to post last year’s Alaska cruise photos. You know how I procrastinate. I figured I would try and post them all before our next cruise, but I may have to put that on hold yet again, ’cause our next cruise is here!

That’s right, our honeymoon is upon us! Tomorrow we fly via Amsterdam to Venice, and the day after that we embark on a twelve-night cruise aboard the Grand Princess from Venice to Rome, stopping at the following ports and cities in Croatia, Greece, Turkey, and Italy: Dubrovnik, Corfu, Katakolon (Olympia), Athens (Piraeus), Mykonos, Kusadasi (Ephesus), Rhodes, Santorini, and Naples. We finish in Rome, where we’ll stay for a couple of days before heading back home. (Google map? You got it.)

View larger map

We’re totally excited, as you can imagine. I can’t wait to see so many things in person for the first time that I’ve only seen in pictures, like the Parthenon in Athens, the canals of Venice, and so on and so on. I’ll try to update now and then, but for now, γειά σου and ciao!

A couple of weeks ago we saw Pink Martini with the San Francisco Symphony, and as expected they were amazing. We’d seen them here with the symphony in 2007, but this time I was on the ball when tickets went on sale, so we were sitting in the second row. It was great! And we ran into our friends Richard and Dennis at intermission, which was one of those “small-town San Francisco” moments.

Here’s the song list, as printed in the program:

Quizás quizás quizás (Farrés)
Tempo Perdido (Alves)
Sympathique (Forbes / Lauderdale)
Ebben? No andro lontana (Catalani)
Uskudar (Traditional)
Adagio from Concerto in F (Gershwin)
Pièce en forme d’Habanera (Boléro) (Ravel / Leyden)
¿Dónde Estás, Yolanda? (Jimenez)
Malagueña (Lecuona)

Splendor in the Grass (Marashian / Lauderdale)
Andalucia (Lecuona)
Sway (Gimbel / Ruiz)
Autrefois (Forbes / Lauderdale)
Praeludium and Allegro (Kreisler / Taylor)
The Flying Squirrel (Taylor / Lauderdale)
Amado Mio (Fisher / Roberts)
Il fox trot delle gigolettes (Lehár)
Carioca (Youmans / Eliscu / Kahn)
Aspettami (Forbes / Lauderdale)

For the encores, they did “What’ll I Do?” (Berlin) and “Brazil” (Barroso), and we joined in the conga line that went around the hall, led by bandleader Thomas Lauderdale. Fun!

After the concert, Thom and I went to Absinthe for a late dinner, and who should we see at the table across from us but Cloris Leachman! Apparently she was in town for the Pride parade the next day, in which she was one of the grand marshalls. (Here is Thom’s dark and surreptitious photo from over his shoulder.) On our way out Thom said hello to her as we passed her table, which turned into a conversation about the food, and then her manager (whom we later found out is one of her sons, I think?) started asking us what the local buzz was, if any, surrounding Cloris and her participation in Pride, so suddenly we were the voice of the LGBT community, heh.

And as we left the restaurant, we ran into Thomas Lauderdale, who was on his way in. I guess it was the place to be after the show.

By the way, Pink Martini will be back in the Bay Area later this year (tour schedule): Santa Rosa on October 1, and Mountain Winery on October 2.

We had a fun Fourth of July yesterday: first we had a big lunch with my aunt’s family at their house in Concord, and it was Thom’s and my first time to meet their new dog, Odie. How cute is he?

In the evening all of us, minus Odie, went to nearby Martinez to watch the fireworks at the waterfront. Here’s a short video I took of the very end of the show; don’t mind my addition of some stock iMovie music (the clip is called “Vintage News,” as in old newsreels, but it also reminds me of Wallace & Gromit):

Hope everyone had a great weekend!