René and I watched the Tony awards tonight as hosted by the estimable Neil Patrick Harris. I like the Tony's, it does a great job of featuring the art of the stage while putting on display the wild dramatics that go along with the culture of the theater.
I would like to send a special thanks to the sound guys in charge of microphones for the show tonight. During the whole show the mic work was, as they say in France, spotty. While it seemed surprisingly amateur for an award show telecast (although, to be fair, there have been some Oscar presentations that were equally rough) it did allow a rarely heard glimpse into private conversations that normally you see on stage but never hear. My favorite of these was as Jessica Lang presented the award for Best Featured Actor in a play. He came up to collect his award and, as the applause continued the mics were still hot. Ms. Lang congratulated him and mentioned that she saw the show, the recipient asked, before the mics were turned off, "Why didn't you come back stage?" It wasn't any major secret or scandalous comment, but it wasn't meant for our ears and I got a voyeauristic thrill hearing it. There were more all night, each one sending imp-like grins to my lips.
If there's anything that the Tony's does it inspires me to want to go back to New York. I waffle back and forth on wanting to live over on the east coast. New York is an easy city to love, I don't need a car, there's theater everywhere and it's a gateway to the world. But there's always thinking about leaving all of my friends and family behind, not having any job prospects out there and the fact that it is one of the most expensive cities in the world. The Tony's kills all the nay-saying voices and pumps up my excitement! Maybe at least a visit.
Now I need to go maintain my eBay account and get ready for a very busy week.
See you tomorrow! Forgive the spelling, please!
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device