Crazily Eventful Day

Since yesterday crawled by like a half-frozen earthworm it seems only fitting that today was just stupidly full of epiphanous moments.

This morning as our eldest and I stumbled about checking on the status of GC17VPJ I realized that I was neglecting one of the legs of the metaphorical 3-legged-stool that is my life. Lately I've been keenly attentive to the 1/3 of my life related to personal/interpersonal goals and I've also been forced to pay a bit more attention to the 1/3 related to my work. In the hubbub, the remaining 1/3, my physical health, has been allowed to go by the wayside. My diet has completely gone to hell and it's been three weeks since I last went out and roamed aimlessly about the woods getting a bit of exercise. It occurs to me that the other 2/3 make little sense if this one is allowed to slip so it's time to get back onto the straight and narrow. Then I wondered to myself as I wandered about the woods, "Why in the hell am I using this 'stool' metaphor to describe my life?" It quickly dawned on me that it was a leftover from a conversation I'd had a few days earlier about work. This person's stool metaphor had been floating about in my head and was reused for something else completely quite against my will. Neat how that works when you can trace the lines back to their place of origin. Only slightly later I was caused to remember that at current job minus 3 the exercise bit was not really a problem because I had an insane lunchtime walking partner. I remember with relish those 2-hour lunches when we would walk 6-8 miles over hill and dale; exercise is clearly not a problem when you have a hyper-motivated person to walk with. I quickly calculated my odds of finding another even half-motivated partner (<10%) and those of getting the old partner to work in the office again (<50%) and became somewhat pessimistic but determined to carve out some time anyway.

At 5 we had dinner with some of the wife's school chums; I have to say that I'm always in awe of what good friends she has in these people. For the most part I try to just stay out of the way in these situations but I have to admit they're nice people but a bit difficult to relate to in many ways. They swapped random stories for an hour or so until it was time for the Chris Rock concert downtown at the Murat.

The 'warm-up' comedian was supremely unfunny as they always are but the introductory musical act was "Biz Markie." Mr. Markie was revelatory to me on several levels but the first of which is the fact that I don't know shit about music. During his 30 minutes on stage he played bits of about 25 songs and until he got to the very end of his set I can't say I'd heard of a damn one of them. Based on the reaction of the crowd around me though I was in the vast minority. I did find myself somewhat puzzled as to what talent the man was actually displaying however. From a purely practical point of view he seemed to be merely operating electronic equipment on a stage; he didn't sing or perform in any visible way until the final song. His 'scratching' was annoying and served only to fill time while he changed from one song to the next. The crowd was effervescent in their praise of his performance but I failed to see the value in merely playing recorded music. All THAT said, I was not untouched by the urban undertones and Terpsichore moved me to "grove" in my seat in what I thought a highly amusing manner but my wife quickly arrested my attempts to "get down" by tendering her assessment that my dancing was, and I quote, "awful." Looking at those around me it seemed evident enough to me that that was the point but apparently my "awful" was not of an appropriate subtype.

Secondary to the aesthetic principles of Mr. Markie's performance I realized something about myself that I don't really pay much attention to. Despite my outward appearances of stoicism and a general "stick in the mud" attitude, it's just possible that I am, in fact, a wild, outgoing party person at heart. It seems that as the months creep by my reserve in front of the world is slowly lowered and that by the time I'm 50 I'll be completely unstoppable. I realize that this is hard to imagine but as each month goes by it seems like I do something new that I would have considered unthinkable in previous years.

It was about that time that I was reminded of a time years ago when my wife was a bridesmaid in a wedding and as such she had to go out and dance with the wedding party. But because there were 4 bridesmaids and only 2 groomsman (I was merely a guest at the wedding) she was going to be left with another bridesmaid as a partner. Well if there's one thing you can say about us it's that we CAN NOT dance. Our best attempt at dancing is more of a non-rhythmic, uncoordinated swaying. Anyway, my wife was terrified; all we talked about for weeks was about how she did NOT want to dance and she knew I was too scared to dance with her so what was she going to do? This was going to be awful. Well, the wedding came and went and the reception came and suddenly it was time to dance and my wife slunk coyly onto the dance floor ready to try her damndest to look inconspicuous on the dance floor by herself. It was at that point that something snapped inside me. As terrified as I was, I was not going to let my poor wife stand on that dance floor by herself and feel horrible while I could do something about it. So I crept up behind her and tapped her on the shoulder and when she saw who it was her face just about exploded in a dozen different flavors of surprise. We did our un-rhythmic, uncoordinated swaying in front of a few hundred people and the world did not explode, nobody laughed, but my wife and I enjoyed ourselves immensely just for the sheer joy of being there for each other. I actually consider that one of the defining moments of our lives together and we still do our un-rhythmic, uncoordinated swaying at weddings today.

ANYWAY, random reminiscences aside, the reason that has anything to do with anything is because of a yet unintroduced third couple at the concert. In addition to the friends we had dinner with we picked up a third couple from my wife's school at the show. The husband in this couple is a good friend of my wife's and he's actually the reason we're here to see Chris Rock in the first place. Rock is apparently one of his favorite comedians so this is all primarily for his benefit. Not long into the performances it's clear that his wife is NOT having a good time. If her facial expression isn't enough to make it clear her statement of, "I'm going to need alcohol to get through this" seals the deal. The practical lesson I take from this is to reaffirm one of my general rules: as "the spouse" your primary job in these situations is to make sure that your spouse has a good time with her friends. So basically, no matter how crappy a time you may be having, make sure your spouse doesn't suffer because of it. I would say that I fulfilled my responsibilities in that respect this evening despite the fact that I found the content of the main event somewhat trite and cliche. What was more entertaining than the performance was the audience's response to it. They were particularly boisterous and it's hard not to get swept up in the energy of that many people in such a tight space so personally I'd have had a hard time being a wet blanket no matter how hard I tried. Apparently some people are a lot better at it.

Lastly and least importantly, I got home in time to see the end of the Patriots/Giants game. I'll save you all my vituperative rantings about the Patriots but suffice it to say that when a Gucci-wearing prettyboy like Tom Brady goes down in history as the quarterback of the greatest NFL team of all time it's time to shut off the fvcking TV for good. What a crock. But that's a post for a different day.