Category: uncategorized

Last night I decided to give the new H&M downtown another chance. The one other time I browsed through there was a bit of a disappointment. But on this more recent outing I got two great dress shirts, cut slim, which I like. (I think all men, of whatever size, would look a million times better if they just wore clothes that fit properly. Look around; most don’t. This Queer Eye moment is brought to you by Starbucks toffee nut latte. Enjoy! No, no Disaronno at work.) And my newly acquired shirts have bolder designs than I’m used to, which is good–my wardrobe has slowly gotten blander over the past couple of years and can use a jolt of color and pattern. By the way, Thom took one look at them, and let me know, “Oh, I’ll be borrowing those.” Heh. We’re practically the same size. Convenient, eh?

So today I’m wearing one of them, thinly striped in a multi-colored variation on the theme of red and black, and very night-on-the-town-ish. (They did have it in blue too, but not in my size, so maybe I’ll check out the Georgetown location soon.) And I’m listening to some Josh Wink on the discman (CD loan courtesy of Adam), so I’m feeling quite catwalk-fabulous.

I just checked my referral logs, and was surprised to find that the number of visits to my site went through the roof today (though when I say “through the roof,” it’s still small web potatoes). Most of them are from Google searches for “Nate Berkus.” This happens periodically, so by now I know the next question is: was he on Oprah today? Let me check.

Bingo. Yes, today’s show on interior design featured him and Ty Pennington. Oh, man. A designer cutie double-header. Must set TiVo to catch the local re-run. There. It is done.

From the show’s website: “It was a job so big, [Nate] called in Trading Spaces‘ Ty Pennington to help!” I won’t comment. It’s too easy.

A new addition to my must-see travel list: the summer Bregenz Festival (Bregenzer Festspiele) in Austria, of which the highlight is opera presented on an outdoor stage that appears to float on the shore of Lake Constance (Bodensee). The set designs I’ve seen are amazing. Soaring and modern. They play so much with scale. I first saw a photo of this venue recently in an opera anthology, which featured its set for Un Ballo in Maschera–basically the stage was a huge, open book, with a skeleton rising out of the water–and pictured here is La Bohème (from 2001-02), where the stage resembles a round tabletop with chairs on either side. Stunning. Next summer the floating stage is home to West Side Story.

On Wednesday afternoon Tina and I decided to check out Rio Grande, a Tex-Mex chain with a new location just a few blocks from our office in Bethesda. They’re closing down the location on Fairmont Avenue–our gang’s favorite place for margaritas–and have moved a bit south to open a shiny, brand spanking new place on Bethesda Avenue. That whole area seems to be undergoing quite a renewal, with lots of great little restaurants and shops, anchored by the relatively new Landmark movie theater and the Barnes & Noble across the street.

So we agreed that the new Rio Grande is pretty sweet. (Only after we got there did it occur to me to record an audio post, but I hadn’t brought my cell phone. You would’ve heard Tina go, “Woo hoo!”) Its corner location allows for more windows, giving it plenty of light. The bar area is much larger, and now there’s outdoor seating. We didn’t plan to stay for lunch, but we sat ourselves at the bar and I ordered a chicken fajita special to go. They don’t skimp on the take-out orders, no, señor. The bartender came back with a shopping-size bag, which had all that and a bag of chips. Literally. (Sorry, that was so five years ago, I know.) But yeah, it came with a generous serving of chips and salsa, so you get the entire meal as if you’d dined in. All very tasty.

And after work today, we’re rounding up the gang to return for happy hour… TGIF indeed.

At the peak of this morning’s rush hour, midway up the crowded platform escalator at the Bethesda metro station, I move from the right side of the steps, where people are standing, and try to merge left into the stream of people who are walking up. I inadvertently bump into someone.

“I’m sorry,” I say. She’s slightly behind me. There’s an awkward moment as we try to figure out who gets the right of way. She says nothing, but gives me an annoyed look. And so does the woman behind her.

I let them pass, and find myself actually kind of angry. I want to follow her, and be like, “Hey, I was talking to you! I said I was sorry. What more do you want?!” But of course, I don’t. Is it just me? Should I not care? I think that’s what makes me so mad: granted she’s probably in a hurry–aren’t we all?–but that she doesn’t even acknowledge my sincere apology. I go on my way in a huff. Furthermore, I forget to add fare to my metro pass before exiting the faregate, and so it doesn’t let me through, thereby holding up more people behind me. Oh, great.

What’s happened to civility? I try to treat people the way I wish to be treated, but some people make it very difficult. Grr.

I’ve been quite lax in recounting Thom’s and my latest spate of outings and activities, but he’s been doing a good job of reporting–taking up my slack, as it were. (Yes, the Prius is suh-weet.) You regularly read his blog too, so you’re up to date anyway. Right?

Upcoming on the cultural calendar: Rufus (of course!) at Lisner, Chanticleer (GMU), Mamma Mia! (National) to coincide with Rajani’s visit next month, A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Shakespeare Theatre, and Camelot at Arena Stage. And this spring the Washington Opera finally returns to the refurbished Kennedy Center Opera House after a run at the cavernous DAR Constitution Hall…

Once again, zoom in on my empty wallet.

Next month the York Theatre Company, in New York City, presents The Musical of Musicals (a Musical!):

June, an ingénue who can’t pay the rent, is threatened by her evil landlord. Will the handsome leading man come to her rescue? In an evening of variations on a theme, this basic plot is musicalized the way Rodgers and Hammerstein might have envisioned it, taking place in Kansas in August, complete with a Dream Ballet. The story is then done in the style of Stephen Sondheim, featuring the landlord as a tortured, artistic genius who slashes the throats of his tenants in revenge because they don’t appreciate his art. When presented in the style of Jerry Herman, the story becomes a splashy star vehicle, while the Andrew Lloyd Webber version is a rock musical, with borrowed themes from Puccini. The story is re-told one last time in the style of Kander and Ebb, set in a speakeasy in Chicago.

Ha, sounds like fun. In other theater news, Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick will reprise their original roles in The Producers on Broadway from Dec. 30, 2003 to Apr. 4, 2004. Tickets go on sale Nov. 16, and the return should spark some renewed interest after a reported slump in ticket sales.

Just now as I was talking to myself–yeah, I do it all the time, though I prefer to think of it as “talking as if someone were there,” ’cause it’s not like I have a complete conversation with myself; that would be silly–and I started to say, “I amn’t sure…” I actually had to think hard for a moment, is there really no other way to contract “I am not” short of “I ain’t”? And then it finally came to me: “I‘m not.” Duh. My frappucino must’ve given me a brain freeze. Yeah, that’s it.

Anyway. Speaking of language, on Monday nights I take a course in introductory Brazilian Portuguese at the USDA Graduate School. Yes, the Department of Agriculture. Turns out they run a school aimed at working professionals, with courses in all kinds of subjects. I sort of like the fact that it calls itself a “graduate school.” Do I get to call myself a “grad student”? Actually, the school doesn’t confer degrees (other than certificates in certain subjects), nor does it have any general requirements for admission. It’s basically like a continuing-education program, which is nice, since you can be flexible in choosing courses. (A couple years ago, I took one on general foreign-language translation theory.) And I get to count this as a business expense, since at work I deal with journal articles in Portuguese from time to time.

So yes, Portuguese is fun. Up to now, the only context in which I’ve heard Portuguese is in Brazilian music, so when our teacher started speaking at the first class meeting–something as simple as “Como vai você?“–I couldn’t help but smile: the sound of the language is so smooth and musical.

I downloaded a Portuguese language update from Microsoft, so now most of the menus and dialog boxes on my computer at home are in Portuguese. It’s by turns very cool and very confusing. But now I know how to say esoteric things like “view source code”: exibir código fonte.

Thom, meu namorado (new vocab word!), is getting down with the language at his work, também.