Celebrate Me Home

Los Angeles, California

I have a lot of family history at The Hollywood Bowl. My mother's high school, Hollywood High, held its commencement ceremony there the year that she graduated. My father, who in college was interested in stage construction, once carried a spear as an extra in a production of Aida. As a child I first went there for a concert production of Madame Butterfly with a family of friends whose father was a musician in the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. All of that was way before my husband and I began sharing a season there with my parents each summer. We started in section E alongside the boxes, but joyfully stepped up to a box when one finally became available. I loved going to the Hollywood Bowl with my parents and seeing how much my dad enjoyed being there, champagne glass in hand. As we trudged up the hill carrying coolers containing that champagne and our pre-concert picnic, my mom would chatter about how we should have made a different meal and next time why don't we... Mom never quite got the concept of mindfulness and being in the moment. Still, it was always enjoyable to be there and often provided us with a great concert. We heard Pavarotti sing, watched Baryshnikov dance, and laughed when Randy Newman dropped an F-bomb between songs.

One of my favorite concerts ever was seeing Paul Simon there as part of his Farewell Concert tour. An experience I wrote about in a post somewhere in the volumes contained here. It was a stellar, magical concert on a perfect late-Spring night. Coincidentally, it was Sandra's birthday (although she had passed away almost five years earlier). I was in musical afterglow for weeks, having recreated the entire concert, off of a website entitled setlist, into an iTunes playlist I could listen to over and over again.

When I saw this year's Hollywood Bowl season's offerings, I was surprised to see a weekend concert of Kenny Loggins with Jim Messina Sitting In. Many years ago, I had seen Loggins and Messina a number of times, mostly at the Universal Amphitheatre up at Universal Studios. That was a relatively small, wonderfully cosy outdoor arena which offered up music and comedy all summer long, and sadly no longer exists. I saw Joni Mitchell, the Kinks, Loggins and Messina and a lot of other popular artists of that time. The concert I missed was The Blues Brothers opening for Steve Martin, back in Steve Martin's white suit and arrow-through-the-head era. We could have gone, and should have gone. But I find audiences can get too trigger-happy at comedy performances and end up annoyingly over-responding to the extent that you can miss the punch lines. So, now rather regretfully, we passed.

The opportunity to see Loggins with Messina again was too good to miss. I asked Joel if he wanted to go. Log Runs and who? he asked. He hadn't known who Paul Simon was either. But he said sure. The concert was scheduled for July 15th, but 48 hours before the concert I got a text and an email that it was canceled due to one of the key members of "the entourage" getting Covid. As far as I know, the finger didn't get pointed at anyone, but clearly whoever it was survived. It was finally rescheduled for September 22nd. On September 20th. I was still pondering putting my tickets up for sale on StubHub. The morning of September 22, my friend, Lisa, texted me to ask if I was excited about seeing the concert that night. And the answer was: No, I wasn't. I was experiencing my Post?-Pandemic Stress Disorder, pre-event dread. But I kept calm and carried on.

That evening, we boarded the shuttle at the Los Angeles Zoo. We had allowed an hour to get from my home to the Zoo which is only about thirteen miles away. We allowed another hour to get on the shuttle and get to the Bowl which is seven miles from the Zoo. Yes, this is Los Angeles. It took the full two hours and some minutes. As we walked into the Bowl, Loggins and Messina were performing their first number, Watching the River Run. It was the song I dreaded hearing.

I was married to my husband, Tom, at my parents' home and my dad escorted me out of my parents' master bedroom to where Tom and the minister were waiting before the fireplace in my parents' living room. And that walk was accompanied by the recorded song: Watching the River Run, by Loggins and Messina. Back at the concert I found myself protected, as the distraction of finding our seats and settling in blessedly mitigated any attention I might have given to hearing them perform the song. After settling in, and as they launched into The House at Pooh Corners, Joel got our bottle of The Prisoner opened and poured into our stemless, plastic glasses with the fingerprint pinch in the sides for ease of holding (more about this later). Soon they took a turn into the 'country' portion of the set. By the time they were doing their retro fifties rock Your Mama Don't Dance, I could see Joel was not enjoying this concert. He didn't know the music, and clearly didn't like it. I had asked, as we drove to the Zoo, if he wanted me to play some of their music so he could acquaint himself with it. He had replied that he would rather experience it fresh at the concert so if he didn't like it, he wouldn't know before it even started. Good call, because now he was frowning. Frankly, I too was having a hard time enjoying the concert because the two women sitting directly behind us were talking through every single song. Loudly, incessantly talking. Have you ever noticed that when these inconsiderate people regale you with their conversation at inappropriate times, that the content of their exchange is always ridiculously inane? The concert continued. Joel kept frowning. They kept talking. Had Joel turned and given them the look, it might have shut them up, at least temporarily. At some point, I decided to take matters into my own hands. As we were sitting on the aisle, and I was one seat in, I handed Joel my wine and scooted out and down the steps to where I found an usher. The women sitting behind us have been loudly talking through the entire concert. Do we have any recourse? I would like to at least enjoy the second half. In the middle of this, L+M launched into Angry Eyes. Oh, I like this song! I had interjected (yes, wine drinking) into the middle of my complaint. This young, very cute Latino usher wrote down the location of both our seats and the seats of the chattering brujas behind us. Through the next song or two I saw him walk up and down the aisle, but evidently they did too, because they stopped talking. But, as he passed they started right back up again. And here is what I question about this increasingly more practiced problem. Why would you spend money for a concert, film, or theater production and talk through it? Why not just go to a restaurant or a bar? And secondly, let's say you do want to do this. How can you not have the sensitivity to know that you are disturbing the people around you who want their attention focused solely on the music and performers? Unfortunately we all know the answer to that question. We could call it one of the largest social issues facing our society in so many areas today: The New Entitlement.

Forty-five minutes into the concert, L+M called out goodnight and thank you! What? Forty-five minutes? They came back and did another two songs, then the lights came up. Is it over? No one left. We were continuing to ponder when the nice, cute usher approached us and asked us to follow him. We got down onto the promenade where he gave us tickets and handed us over to another usher who took us down further towards the stage to a section set up with folding chairs down front, on the side. There were a few people there but most of the chairs were empty. So this is how they deal with this. Instead of getting the offenders to cease and desist, they just move you away from them (elementary school was so different. I really wanted those women sent to the principal's office).

Soon two people joined us in the seats behind us. Are you also refugees? I asked them, who turned out to be a mother and 20- or 30- something son. Their story was that the women sitting behind them were not only being loud and disruptive through the concert but also had dumped a drink on Adam, the son. When he turned around, the spiller said: Relax, it was only water! But it wasn't. It was a wine glass that still had residual red wine in it, which was now clearly on his jacket. He pointed this out and the response he got from this woman was: F*#k you. Other people sitting around them called security off the app on their phone and as Adam and his mother were walked down to our area, a squad of security people surrounded those women. Maybe they got sent to the principal's office.

We talked with Adam and Randy as the intermission continued for a very, long time. They had enjoyed dinner at the Bowl and had been told that the second half would be Kenny Loggins, solo. And so it was. A few more refugees had joined us and it turned out to be such a fun group of people and actually seemed like a totally different second concert. And... Joel loved it. Evidently, everyone who has seen Top Gun and its sequel had come out for this and those songs created a frenzy. We sang along with Celebrate Me Home, all stood and clapped with I'm Alright, and Joel and I danced to Footloose in the space that was in front of our seats. It was a fabulous, fun second half. Ok, except maybe for the fact that while trying to balance that plastic glass of The Prisoner between my knees while I applauded at the end of one of the songs, I spilled it. I spilled it on the seat, on my pants, and on my Toms (fabric) shoes. But I didn't spill it on anyone else, so I didn't care (except that I didn't get to drink that portion).

Reflecting on the whole experience the following day, I thought about my reticence to go. After fighting traffic to the Zoo and standing in the line for the shuttle, fleeting thoughts of Why are we doing this? I'm not doing this anymore. were dropping into my consciousness. We had talked about going to the Dodgers game the following night. I had pulled the plug. Too much. But it wasn't too much. Albert Pujols hit his 700th home run that night, and we could have been there. So, maybe Kenny, and the kind staff at the Hollywood Bowl, gave me a new perspective. GO. It reminds me of that self-help thing about standing on a precipice in fear of stepping off. And when you finally do, you fly. I'm going to try harder. Maybe I can't fly. But thanks to my gratitude for this concert experience, I think I have learned the lesson that I don't have to fly. I don't even want to fly. I can be perfectly happy just being footloose.