I Love Diana

As expected, Saturday night's concert by Miss Ross was fantastic. Once again, she completely surprised me. This woman knows her audience and gives them what they want. There were very few ballads (Touch Me In The Morning, Mahoganny, 2 songs from Lady Sings The Blues, and the title song from I Love You), and very few recent songs (after I Love You, the most recent was Why Do Fools Fall In Love from the mid-80's, thankfully there was nothing from her horrid last album, Every Day Is A New Day, that was so bad it is now, only seven years later, out of print). She once again stuck to her big disco hits and threw in a liberal dose of Supremes songs. I counted only 4 costume changes instead of the 5 mentioned in the Sun Times article, but on the plus side, the concert was closer to 90 minutes instead of 75. I ended up with a terrific seat. I was in the front row of the upper balcony section, so I was able to sit or stand as I pleased instead of being at the mercy of fans in front of me, and I had an aisle seat, so I was able to get out quickly when it was over. She started fairly on time with one of the most dramatic entrances I have ever seen. She had strobes, smoke, flashing lights, and a pounding band whipping the audience into a frenzy bigger than Madonna and Britney Spears put together while she remained off stage belting out "I'm. . . Coming. . . OUT!!!!" each time setting off louder and louder cheers. Finally she appeared in a gorgeous red sequin dress with a gigantic ruffled boa and got the night started. If I can look half as good as she does at 63, I'll consider myself very lucky indeed. As usual, she showed class and warmth throughout the entire set. It boggles my mind that she can't keep it turned on whenever she's in the public eye, like going through a metal detector at Heathrow or outside a closed Blockbuster Video in Phoenix. While this concert focused mostly on the bigger hits (this was a highlights tour for casual fans who recently rediscovered her through Dreamgirls rather than the for-the-fans outing she did in 2004 that featured more obscure but well loved tunes mixed in with the career highlights), she did manage to work in It's My House, which is probably my favorite of hers, and Ease On Down The Road, giving the hardcore fans a treat. It was a fantastic night, and the audience seemed unwilling to leave at the end, always a good sign. Here's hoping she can find her Believe and turn out at least a couple good CD's in the years she has left and really go out in style.

In other news, what the hell is the USOC thinking? I know this topic isn't really theatre related, but it does relate to something most hard core theatre queens hate; sports, which means its worth at least keeping tabs on. Chicago does not have the infrastructure or room to accomate all the people that live and/or work here now, and there's no attempt to try to improve it other than a years long project on the CTA slowing it down to a crawl for the next several years and will already by outdated and insufficient by the time it's done. Where the hell does the city think it's going to put another 100,000 people for 20 days 12 years from now? I have a cousin in Atlanta, a much more modern city, and I've heard enough horror stories about the 1996 Olympics to know I never want anything like that in my city. At least it's still 12 years away and there's a chance we may not get it after all. If we do get it, hopefully I'll have the vacation time and money to go to Europe for 3 weeks and I can sublet my place for $10,000. Maybe it won't be such a bad thing after all.

Lastly, this may be my last post for a while. My employer is switching to a new internet provider at noon today and has informed all of us that our previously unfettered access is about to be severely restricted due to the new provider's filtering capabilities. I don't know why they're bothering, they don't provide enough work for us to do as it is, hence this blog to keep me entertained. Of course, they have to do this 4 days before Ravinia tickets go onsale and a week before Billy Elliot tickets go onsale, they couldn't have waited until the end of the month to make the switch. My plan is to twice a week lug my laptop in and I can use my cell phone as a modem and access my sites and make posts. The only downside is that I can't hook it up to the printer to print up ticket confirmations, but that's ok, I've never had a problem where I needed the confirmation yet. It's not as fast as broadband, but it will have to do. I won't be here forever. At some point I'll have another employer to provide my unfettered broadband access. I also have my cell phone itself for low-bandwidth sites so I can still check on Playbill everyday and see what's going on in this fabu world we call Theatre. See you soon.