Last Sunday was Easter, which is a pretty big deal in Christianity. I classify it as a bigger deal than Christmas for myself, since it's commemorating the culminating fulfillment of Christ's mission rather than just His birth. Let's face it-- Christmas represents the deep-rooted desire by baby-hungry women to have a perfect child. Can't have a perfect baby Jesus yourself? Bribe your kids with Santa Claus and you too can have that cherubic glow of obedient offspring in your household. It's not that I'm anti-Christmas, it's just that I feel Easter is under-hyped. Between you and me, let's keep it that way!

This post is not, however, about Easter. It's about what we did to violate and desecrate the day. You see, the traveling production of the Broadway musical "Wicked" was in town, and we spent our afternoon with our bums in the theater seats rather than the church pews. I was FANTASTIC! I like musical theater-- probably more than most guys, and certainly more than most guys would be willing to admit even if they did like it.

We don't get to see a lot of plays, but when we do it's always fun. My poor wife has been trying to see Wicked for nearly 2 years now-- it's been hard on her because EVERYONE in the family has seen it, even my mom who's not really a theater-goer! They happened to be in New York for a convention thing, and hey, it was playing, so why not? During that time we've been in New York twice for various reasons, and we tried both times to get tickets. Last time we stood in line for a couple of hours for the ticket lottery and the two people in front of us got the tickets. SO close!!

So last November when pre-sales came up for the show, we HAD to get them. Our bank was one of the sponsors, so they had a day when you could order tickets before everyone else. All day long the website was blocked solid. All day long the phone lines were packed. I tried for 3 hours on the website, dealing with server overloads and session timeouts until they finally gave up and posted a static page, "Web orders are no longer being accepted." Then I used my office phone to flash/redial/flash/redial for close to 40 minutes before I got somebody on the line. EVERYTHING was sold out except for Sundays. There were 2 Sundays with seats in the cheap section ('cause yeah, $50 a seat was the CHEAP section). I picked one, and lucky me, I picked Easter. Oh well!

After all that, how was the play? AMAZING! FANTASTIC! The costumes were a great cross between steam-punk and psychedelic. The music (which we all know word-for-word at this point) was great, and it was just a wonderful experience all in all. Even from the 2nd-from-the-back row of the highest balcony.


I think later on this summer I'm going to have to make an Oz Dust Ballroom Mixer... lemons and melons and pears. Oh my!