Author: Jeff Tabaco

I hope everyone had a fun Halloween. Just to look back: Last year we spent Halloween day on the grim task of moving all my stuff out of my former apartment and into Thom’s condo, marking the official start of our living together (though really I’d already been pretty much living there de facto).

The other night we went to see Rufus Wainwright at the 9:30 club, which was kind of nostalgic, as it was there that I saw Rufus back in 2002 along with a whole bunch of message board folks, including Susan and Kesha. I think this brings to 15 the total number of times I’ve seen Rufus in concert. OK Go was the opening act, a great complement to Rufus’ persona and music; they’re such dapper dandies. They closed their set with their signature bit: lip-synching to one of their songs and dancing out some great cheesy choreography. This time it was “A Million Ways.” (Previously: OK Go in D.C. with This American Life.)

Rufus and the band were in fine form, and his set lasted about two hours. (The 9:30 is standing room only, so the only downside to a nice long concert is that we were standing and tip-toeing to see over heads the whole time. My legs and feet were aching. Am I getting too old for this?) The unexpected highlight of the concert was the band doing some choreography a la OK Go, which then segued into “Gay Messiah,” staged like something out of Jesus Christ Superstar, with Rufus dressed in robes and placed against a cross by Roman soldiers and everything. Wow. (Here are some photos that were posted to the message board.)

The set list was as follows:

“Oh What a World”
“The One You Love”
“Natasha”
“14th Street”
“This Love Affair”
“Little Sister”
“Go or Go Ahead”
“Peach Trees”
“Between My Legs”
“Poses”
“Vibrate”
“Spotlight on Christmas”
“Want”
“Chelsea Hotel No. 2” (Leonard Cohen)
“The Art Teacher”
“Memphis Skyline”
“Waiting for a Dream”
“I Don’t Know What It Is”
“Old Whores Diet”
“Gay Messiah”
“Low-grade Happiness”
“Hallelujah” (L.C.)
“Beautiful Child”

By the way, hello to Tripp, who came up to me before the concert and introduced himself, having recognized me from the message board. I felt like a celebrity!

“Ma Bell Park, anyone?” From the Chron:

The name of the [San Francisco] Giants’ ballpark, which gets changed almost as often as the Giants change pitchers, is about to change again.

It’s not going to be SBC Park anymore. It’s going to be something else.

That’s because SBC Communications Inc. said Thursday that it will adopt the name AT&T Inc. after it finishes acquiring that company, a $16 billion deal expected to be official by the end of the year. The name will spread to all of SBC’s properties.

Good lord. Whatever happened to naming venues for important people or places? So long, Pac Bell, er, SBC. Couldn’t they instead name it to honor some baseball hero or evoke the area it serves? And make the company name secondary, like how the Rose Bowl, unlike the other now silly sounding bowl games, relegated its corporate sponsor to a “presented by” byline?

The city has no legal sway in naming the ballpark, which was privately financed by the Giants after San Francisco voters shot down two ballot measures to pay for the park with public money.

But that hasn’t stopped city supervisors from trying to strong-arm the Giants into incorporating local references into the commercial name.

Early last year, Supervisor Chris Daly and Matt Gonzalez, then president of the Board of Supervisors, tried to qualify a resolution for the ballot to rename the ballpark “[Willie] Mays Field at SBC Park.”

They failed.

Yeah, I know, civic pride notwithstanding, big sports is big business. Still, Candlestick will always be Candlestick to me. Sorry, 3Com. Er, Monster.

[Addendum (Oct. 31): Just to link this to the field of graphic design: Though SBC will adopt the name AT&T, the classic globe logo (or more humorously, “Death Star”) designed by Saul Bass will be replaced by a new logo, yet to be unveiled. See Design Observer (via kottke.org).]

Why do I even bother looking at the Nutrition Facts label on foods I know aren’t particularly healthy anyway? The vending-machine cinnamon danish I’m eating right now (yeah, I should know better; the brand name, Mrs. Freshley’s, sounds pretty ironic) has 56% of the FDA daily value of saturated fat. 56%! (Aunt Sassy voice: “I did not need to see that!” Further aside: I’m reminded of that Comeback episode where Valerie has to wear a cupcake costume for her sitcom.) Of course, I quickly forget about my newly learned nutrition facts and keep eating my fat-laden danish. With my cup of coffee, damn, it tastes so good. Tomorrow morning I’m going back to NutriGrain bars.

Speaking of food, one of my favorite TV shows now is The Secret Life of… on Food Network. Each half-hour episode covers the history of a different food or drink, like chocolate, doughnuts, or soft drinks. (The host, Jim O’Connor, is a bit of candy himself.) Another show I’ve been keeping up with is Party Line, hosted by Dan Smith and Steve McDonagh, business and life partners who won Food Network’s competition to find its next star. The couple comes up with menus that are easy to prepare and usually revolve around a theme, like brunch or a DVD night at home. These are just two of the many cooking shows I try to check in on; I can’t keep up!

This morning I read an AP story about pedestrian safety programs, which struck a chord with me. Being more of a pedestrian than a driver these days, I’ve developed an adversarial relationship towards bad drivers which reached a low a few years ago when I almost got hit by a couple of cars at N and 15th Streets NW near my former apartment. There are no traffic lights or stop signs at that intersection, and because it is so close to a major traffic-lighted intersection at Massachusetts Avenue, when the light there turns green, cars come zooming through. One night as I was crossing, two cars in adjacent lanes didn’t stop, and so I ended up being caught in the middle of the crosswalk as one car ran right in front of me and another behind me. It was terrifying. I started to periodically use a different intersection to get to my block, especially at night.

Anyway, the article talks about having pedestrians carry orange flags at dangerous intersections. Such programs, now being tested at two locations in D.C., have worked in some cities, but not in others. The bottom line, as one woman puts it: “Having the law on your side and knowing you’re right doesn’t prevent you from getting hit by a car.”

Yesterday I was in a holiday mood, sipping vanilla tea while perusing the MoMA store website for holiday cards. I especially like the intricate pop-up cards designed by Robert Sabuda.

While on the MoMA site I also saw that they sell miniature versions of classic chairs, each only a few inches tall at a physical scale (and almost financial scale, as well) of 1:6. That’s right, you can get a tiny Eames lounge chair and ottoman for $525, which, as Thom noted, is a lot more than a “normal” life-size chair might cost. And how nice of the MoMA to put the real Eames chair on the same page as a related item, reminding us of its larger-than-life price.

Still, I can just imagine furnishing a midcentury modern dollhouse with these chairs. “Billy, won’t you have a seat on the Eames?” “Thanks, Carlos, but I’m fine here on the Barcelona.”

Speaking of miniature chairs, see also Design Within Reach for their neat annual Champagne Chair contest.

Recently I got around to posting the rest of my photos from our trip to Seattle in May. This is one of a few I took at the Pacific Science Center, where Thom got to play weatherman in a TV weather exhibit made up of a green screen, a few monitors, and a video camera with a teleprompter. You press some button to get the whole thing started, and before the teleprompter starts rolling, there’s even a taped intro in which a couple of local newscasters lead into your report with something like, “And now to the weather with our guest meteorologist…” Look at Thom cheerfully gesturing at the digital Doppler. The whole experience was hilarious. I only wish they would make a video of your weather report for you to keep afterwards.

Here are a couple more photos, one of the very red fourth floor at the new public library (this photo is the current desktop on my iBook), and one of Thom and me aboard the Seattle Center monorail. Aww.

Check out Flickr for my other Seattle photos.

Thom has written a good write-up of the Betty Buckley concert last Saturday at Strathmore; go check it out.

In a similar vein I should mention singer/actor Brian Stokes Mitchell, whom we saw in concert at the Kennedy Center last month. What a voice: so strong and warm, which I’d say describes his onstage personality as well. He sang Broadway classics (like the great “Soliloquy” from Carousel) and jazz standards, which showed off his voice well. After the concert, Thom said to me, “Now I see why he’s one of your boyfriends.” Hee.

Side notes: Before Brian’s set, the National Symphony Orchestra played suites from South Pacific (Richard Rodgers) and The Light in the Piazza (Adam Guettel), and afterwards conductor Marvin Hamlisch asked the audience to name the connection between the two. One woman in the front row blurted out that the composer of Piazza is “Rodgers and Hammerstein’s grandson.” Ha! (Guettel is Rodgers’ grandson.) It became a running gag throughout the evening. “We knew Rodgers and Hammerstein were close, but…”

Hamlisch is a bit of a cutup. When one couple arrived late into the concert hall (why they weren’t escorted by an usher, especially since they had seats way up front, I don’t know), he stopped his banter, asked for their tickets, and showed them to their seats himself.

Last night Thom and I saw Urinetown at Signature Theatre, and it was so much fun! I had bought the off-Broadway cast recording on iTunes a while ago so I was familiar with the music, and it was exciting to finally see it on stage. The leads gave great performances: the hunky can’t-keep-his-shirt-on hero Will Gartshore (swoon!) and cute-as-can-be ingenue Erin Driscoll. Signature veteran Donna Migliaccio is also a standout as Mrs. Pennywise. The show is about a town undergoing a drought, where a greedy corporation has monopolized public toilets, and citizens rise up against the oppression. It’s a bizarre conceit, and yet it’s so campy (with winks and nods to musical-theater conventions) that you can’t help but get carried along in the craziness. This production of Urinetown, originally scheduled to close Oct. 9, was extended through this Sunday, Oct. 16.

I am continually amazed at the innovations at Signature. We’ve seen a number of productions there, and each time they’ve transformed their black-box space into something completely different and perfect for each show. For the grungy look of Urinetown, the set design took advantage of the theater’s origins as an auto shop by keeping much of the concrete space exposed. Their new theater complex, scheduled to open next year, will have two black-box theaters giving them more space while maintaining their spirit of flexibility and innovation.

» Related: Post and Potomac Stages reviews.