Back Again

From NY and the Yale Parents Weekend.

The shows we saw in NY were all quite different. Depending on your taste, you could probably have chosen any one of them as your favorite. Talentwise all three were great. A Light in the Piazza had non-memorable music and a story line that made it a bit hard to warm up to. Billed as a mother and daughter on a trip to Italy, daughter discovers romance with hot Italian boy, it also involved the daughter being -- as they put it -- "special," since she was kicked in the head by a pony at her 10th birthday party. Jeez. Spamalot was, well, Monty Python. Pretty much the Holy Grail movie brought to stage. Same gags (and Dara has the "I'm not dead yet" T-shirt to prove it), so it had that same appeal. Neither of us is the type to go gaga over Monty Python -- you might know the type, the ones who recite it to you and expect you to laugh with them. Are you laughing at the "I'm not dead yet" reference -- see? Still, very well done and very funny. Tim Curry and David Hyde-Pierce (from Frasier) were great, and it also had the spaceship pilot from Serenity. Dara hung around afterward and got some autographs. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels was, I thought, the best. It was kind of a traditional musical. Very funny. John Lithgow and a number of other recognizable faces were all really terrific. In between musicals, we hung out in Central Park and Greenwich Village a bit, and we ate at Serendipity.

We got to Yale at around 2AM after a wild taxi ride to Grand Central and a 1 1/2 hr train trip. Lots of pretty laid back time with Kyla, which was really nice. Saturday was the big polo exhibition, with mixed boys and girls teams (because the girls would whip the boys' asses if it was girls v. boys!) playing a couple of chukkers, with refreshments and socializing in between. A lot of this is for the new players' parents to see what it's about, and coach Jimmy put on a great show using the students to demo the various shots, etc. Since Kyla is captain of the women's team, she was very happy it turned out well. We shopped a bit and ate various nice places, and we saw one (and almost two) of Kyla's roommate's acapella performances. It poured rain on Friday and Saturday, yow! Good thing the polo was indoors. Kyla looked great but has a very action packed schedule this semester. ("I don't have time to read the blog, Dad!" she said when she heard about AJ and Ursula's move to PA.) We had to leave the hotel at around 3:40AM Eastern time this morning to get the bus down to JFK and then out. Garrett seems to have survived, although once again he came up sick during Parents Weekend. Everyone is recovering.