Saturday, August 6, 2005
Breakfast at home by myself while Patrick slept in. Hash browns, 3 eggs, 3 sausage, 2 toast with margarine. Worked on a birthday present for Nate. Dinner at Citizen Cake (415-861-2228, 399 Grove St) with Patrick: soupe du jour (spicy organic tomato), romaine hearts salad with bleu cheese dressing and bacon, squash blossom. Dessert: taj mahal. Everything about our meal was perfect except that Patrick's iced tea was frequently left unfilled. Upon arriving at 6:00 pm, our host asked us if we were seeing a show. We'd said yes, 7 pm. He handed off the info to our server, Sarah, who sped us through by suggesting we order only appetizers, which worked well for us since we weren't terribly hungry. Patrick enjoyed his soup, and I thought my salad was perfectly proportioned and prepared. The squash blossom was new to us—two small, delicate, almost translucent squash were stuffed with seasonings and some kind of grain the name of which we couldn't remember but which was very tasty. The dish included raisins, champagne grapes, roasted and coarsely chopped almonds, olives. The taj mahal chocolate dessert tasted a little strange at first likely because we're not used to mango paired with chocolate, but after getting comfy with it, we ate it all to the last speck. After dinner Patrick and I saw Charo (and her Las Vegas Show), one night only at the Herbst Theatre, and her first show in San Francisco in 10 years. Our attendance tonight was the culmination of a decision I had made months ago. I cannot recall exactly how I had learned of it, but I must have received an e-mail from the show's producer, Kung Pao Kosher Comedy, which advertised the event and, somewhat on a whim, I decided to get tickets. We don't do this kind of thing often, so I decided to splurge: $75 seats. It was to be a surprise event for Patrick—we do these surprise events to keep things romantic. He found out at Citizen Cake (when the trying-to-be-helpful host said, "Are you trying to make Charo at 7?"), but he was again surprised when he found out we were in the fourth row on the aisle, as I know Patrick prefers aisle seats so as to not feel cramped. We sat down, and Patrick exclaimed, "We're in booby range!" The show was fabulous, lively, exciting, funny. The show was mostly as bringdown.com (now defunct) had reviewed it last summer. My co-worker Joel pooh-poohed the event, saying that Charo wasn't even C-list entertainment, and for a while I had worried I'd gone out on a limb that would break under me. But it was all worth it a few songs into the show during (I think) "Caliente," the song during which Charo breaks through the fourth wall for hugs, kisses, and high-fives. She had made her way befriending audience members in front of us, and when she saw Patrick, she shrieked in passion and excitement, and then she pulled Patrick's head to her breast and held it there while vigorously shaking her voluminous breasts. I kind of suspected this might happen, and I could do nothing but laugh and smile and keep clapping along to Caliente, like the rest of the audience (except for the old man seated on my right—more on him later). Afterwards, Patrick said he felt special because he was the only one in the theatre who got the cuchi cuchi booby shake. Secret insider's tip: the beads and sequins on her flaming red jumpsuit are very hard on the face, so receiving the cuchi cuchi is very memorable but not very comfortable. Charo sang Fernando and Chiquita by ABBA. She played Ravel's Bolero on the guitar. She played one song by Ibeniz. As part of her encore, she sang and danced the Macarena. She performed more songs than we can remember, and it was all a lot of fun. She seemed like a really smart, talented, and funny individual who is very at ease on the stage and a master of showmanship. So the old guy sitting on my right came to the show dressed in a dark suit. He was accompanied by no one. As far as I know, he said nothing the entire time. Just before the show started, he pulled out a pen and a small deck of blank, lined 3 x 5 index cards wrapped with a rubber band. During all the songs including Charo's 4th wall venture, his face was like a stone revealing nothing. He didn't clap or laugh or smile. During the first standing ovation, he didn't get out of his seat. I didn't see him write anything the entire show. During a couple of Charo's jokes, I saw him barely begin to smile. Not an actual smile, mind you. Just the seeds of smiling. I tried to ignore him, but how can one ignore the only person in the theatre who isn't openly having fun? In my mind, I tried to guess what his deal was. Did he have a childhood trauma? Was he Catholic? Or was he just an event reviewer who had seen everything? That this man was able to sit through Charo's show and show hardly any emotion was perhaps more amazing than Charo herself or Charo's guitar skills.