I suppose it’s a cliché to be gay and traveling a great
distance to see Barbra Streisand in concert.
To clarify, it was my straight girl friend who purchased the
tickets. And she just happened to think
of me. There are far worse types of
profiling.
On a frosty Los Angeles night—it may have dipped below 50!—I
raced toward my favorite concert venue, the Hollywood Bowl, after a weekend of
slogging and slugging it out as a wannabe sitcom writer. I stood out as soon as I got out of my car
after generously donating $22 to the Starving Parking Lot Owner fund. “Aren’t you cold?” asked an attendant while I
walked past in a t-shirt. That’s when I
noticed everyone in the Babs flock wearing winter coats, scarves, gloves and
lugging totes with blankies. In the
men’s washroom, a fellow mentioned wearing two pairs of long underwear. It wasn’t a lewd come-on. He just needed to talk about the freakish
weather. Los Angelinos are a fragile
lot.
Despite her New Yorker background, our favorite diva has
spent too much time in Malibu. She too made
at least two dozen references to the cold and draped a parka over a fabulous
red dress that we got to see in a photo that flashed on video screens. Our Funny Girl bantered at length between
songs, coming off as amusingly folksy although I suspected that even if the
most throwaway lines were fully scripted.
(Celine Dion, take note. Divas
can still project a real personality.)
Coming just five days after Obama’s re-election, the concert
provided a forum for Babs to share the political equivalent to a post-coital
glow as the liberal-leaning crowd clapped and whooped in all the right
places. (I imagine Romney supporters
stayed away, licking their wounds while slouching in La-Z-Boys and catching up
on DVR’d episodes of Reba sitcoms at home.)
It was an odd mix of concert goers. I thought I’d glory in a Gay Immersion
experience when I saw a drag queen dressed as Liza Minnelli clomp by me before
I met up with my friend. Alas, my gaydar
lapsed to Inactive mode. The night
belonged to seniors and clusters of women who could not persuade their husbands
to turn off Sunday football.
As we ascended the steep paved path to our nosebleed seats,
I detected a wisp of marijuana, a sign that a lone headbanger was going to be
very disappointed when he realized this was not the Iron Maiden show.
One of the charms of the venue is the picnic atmosphere
before the show. My friends and I staked
out a bench outside the main gate to dine on takeout from California Pizza
Kitchen as a hodgepodge of buffets popped up around us. Others feasted at their seats, smuggling in
bottles of wine to toast the fact they’d escaped the profane armchair
quarterbacking that comes with watching a Cowboys game on the tube.
There were other noise distractions. Ushers moved about, their walkie-talkies
blaring loudly as they tried to negotiate conflicts between several clusters of
people purporting to have claims on the same seats. Ugh!
Why can’t concerts be like tennis matches, whereby ushers refuse to
allow movement until logical breaks?
During intermission, Crinkle Bag Lady was forced to mosey
along elsewhere as someone else rightfully had a ticket for the spot. Relief!
But shortly after the lights went down again, an older woman ascending
the stairs fell and remained sprawled in the aisle. I power-focused on music from “Gypsy” and
missed most of the hullaballoo as attendants escorted the woman away. Was it a tragic hip injury? A casualty from smuggled wine? Maybe it was the result of a sudden case of
rheumatoid arthritis, brought on by the frigid air.
In the end, the sideshow distractions didn’t matter. The Hollywood Bowl will always be a glorious
setting. Babs will always be a talented
vocalist whose perfectionist tendencies are fascinating to watch unfold. And getting to spend a Sunday evening with a
university friend I’ve known for (gasp) thirty years is the ultimate cause for celebration.
No force could rain on my parade.
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