By Beauty Damned

Night On The Town

On Friday night I went to see a show called Election Day - The Musical. My friend Jen Katz is one of the cast. She's a really funny woman and plays a couple characters: a secret service agent, the wife of a foreign diplomat (of a make-believe country whose name escapes me at the moment) and an ensemble cast member.

If you happen to live in New York, you should check it out at the American Theatre of Actors on West 54th Street. The score was excellent. The songs and performances were hilarious and well executed. There were a lot of great voices. The story line was, of course, centered around election day. Bits and pieces were taken from real life politics and thrown in to create a fictional presidential race with many familiar themes. For example, the sitting President vying for another term is a tall, dark, handsome character who has a presumably uncontrollable weakness for nubile interns. His opponent is a happy-go-lucky cowboy who has a lovable sort of stupidity about him and is totally clueless to the dirty, scheming ways of his Karl Rovesque chief campaign strategist, a lifelong computer geek/genius who ultimately spins out of control with greed and a desire to be the cowboy's puppet master, ruthlessly sabotaging the President's campaign to try and get his guy into the whitehouse. Of course, it backfires. Hilarity and theatrical song-singing ensues.

After it was over I went with Jen and the cast and a couple of co-workers to Bar 9 and we stayed there til two-thirty in the morning. I discovered something at the deli, new and exciting (to me) called "Chimes." (I'm sure everyone else has heard of this and I am just a Johnny-come-lately on the trend). They are chewy little ginger candies, individually wrapped and stuffed inside the cutest little tin box I've ever seen. Did you guys know about this and forget to tell me? I loooove them. I hate gum. Because it never goes away. You just chew it until all the taste is gone and then it becomes this hideous gob in your mouth that you have to get rid of immediately. Some people get rid of it by throwing it on the subway platform and then I step on it and curse them with a vengeance. And then there is the problem of those who don't know how to chew gum without sounding like a cow because no one ever told them they're supposed to close their mouth when they chew. Gum is more trouble than it's worth. So anyway, that's why I love chewy candy, because it keeps you occupied for awhile and then you swallow it before you sap every last drop of flavor out of it. But chewy GINGER candy? I am seriously considering buying up a lifetime supply.

Do you wanna hear something else really funny that happened on Friday night? My friend Anya and I were on the E train on our way to this Japanese restaurant where we were going for dinner/happy hour/barside kareoke before heading off to see Election Day. Anyway, the train was really packed. I hate taking that train because it's always like that. So when we got to the 7th Avenue stop and needed to get off, this huge guy who was standing in front of the door refused to step off onto the platform to allow others to disembark. There's a chorus of "excuse me's," but he refuses to budge. This guy is well over six feet tall, a big stuffed suit and has the physical demeanor of a brick wall. I tried to squeeze through but there was no give. He was solid as a rock. As I pushed to get past him I glanced up and said "you know it would help if you could step off the train in the future." He placed his hand on the middle of my back and gave me a nice HARD shove OFF the train and onto the platform. My mind spun around as did my body. I did a 180 degree turn, raised my handbag AND UMBRELLA all the way up and clocked him in the head with it with all my might. Not a thought went through my head. The last time I remember feeling that way was when I punched out Travis Hubca in the 11th grade. It was pure instinct. The guy was absolutely stunned. I had hit him hard. The connection was clean and the impact dead on. I was amazed that I hadn't touched a single other person in the process. I looked right at him and said "Do not ever push me. I will FUCK you up." Anya was still trying to squeeze out past him before the doors shut. He never uttered a word, but the look of total shock on his face gave me a great deal of satisfaction. Anya squeezed out, the doors closed and the train took off.

The moral of this story. Hahaa! There isn't one. I'm sorry. It was just too good not to memorialize. Ain't no big, hotheaded NY business man gonna push ME around.