A "D"-lightful Night of Opera


After a particularly lazy day and afternoon yesterday (spent finishing up The Hostile Hospital, watching Batman: The Animated Series, and sleeping), I was invited by Erico Suave and MacArthur to try out The Macaroni Grill near my house.

I was totally up for it because I've never been there before and it gave me a chance to catch up with them since I hadn't talked with them in a while.

So as we were greeted and eventually seated at the Mac G, we got a huge shock when we noticed that our old old high school friend Dizzy Faye there. Erico Suave and I hadn't seen her for, well, probably since 1999.

Way back in high school, my core group of friends, affectionately known at the time as The Loud Crowd, entered a talent show competition where the five girls in our group became, for one night only, the Spice Girls. Our team was challenged by another group of girls and I'm happy to report that we kicked their collective asses and walked away with the $50 grand prize. Well, Dizzy Faye, who wasn't really in our group (but was on loan and an honorary Loud Crowder), played the part of Scary Spice.

Anyway, so we catch up at our table. Erico Suave tells her where he works. I tell her that I work for an insurance company to which she replied, "Oh... well that's okay." And she told us that she of course works at the Mac G and is an opera singer there! That was surprising. We knew she could sing, but opera?

So as we ate our dinner, we could hear the most beautiful of operatic (if that's even a word) voices from around the restaurant and sure enough, it was Dizzy Faye! Man, she can sing! After this year, she told us, she is going to study opera singing and stuff on the East Coast. I'm so happy for her!

At the end of the night, when your friend works at a place you just ate, you are required to tip big. So we sent them a 25% tip and left the restaurant all warm and cozy or however opera is supposed to make you feel.

Then, with no plans or place to go (and perhaps to make it a theme of the night), we ended up seeing The Phantom of the Opera movie. Of course, I had no idea what to expect, and opera really isn't my thing (unless it's a rock opera), so I was pretty gung ho over the entire experience. Bottom line, I liked it. The story was slow, but interesting and some of the music was great, if not repetitive and sleep inducing, but yeah, I liked it. The Phantom though bugged me. He didn't really sing that well and the way his mouth moved sometimes was distracting. But the girl who played Christine was hot and had a voice to boot. So all in all, I don't think I'd watch the movie again, but I'm interested in seeing how things are staged in the show in New York. So I'll give it a shot (granted that it's not expensive).



Unnecessarily singing that last blog,

Ricky
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