Winding Back
14 March
I slept well that night in Victoria and woke heavily at near 8:30ish so it was a rushed breakfast and a dash to the dock for take off. It had been too quick but then it had been better than nothing. From here on in, the holiday would begin to wind back in on itself. This had been my farthest point out.
The flight back was even more choppy than the one out. We bounced about all over the place up there in the welkin and, when I got back to Seattle, I learnt that conditions had been so bad that they had cancelled all flights out to the San Juan Islands. In the event, our final descent into Lake Union was a humdinger with rain lashing the windows, a full session of pitch and toss and yaw, skyscrapers filling the front window of the plane. I tried humming the main theme from the Indiana Jones movies to myself and that seemed to help. I guess that that is what exhilarating means - scary but not really life-threatening.
Rod picked me up and we had a quiet afternoon watching There's Something About Mary which was sort of funny but the two of us agreed that it would have been better in a move theatre with lots of other folks around us cracking up. Two tired guys on a wet Saturday afternoon didn't create much of an atmosphere. Later I read an Advocate interview with Matthew Shepard's mom. She sounded very sane.
The most telling moment was when she said that she was prepared to enter the Courtroom and hear the defence lawyers tell her all sorts of stuff about her son's sex life that she didn't already know in an attempt to mitigate if not justify what happened to him.
Then Rod played part of his tape of last year's Seattle Opera Tristan und Isolde starring Jane Eaglen and Ben Heppner. One of Rod's many roles is as a video archivist for the opera so he tapes all the dress rehearsals to keep a record of the productions. He gets to keep a copy on the strict understanding that they go no further than his house. I didn't like what I saw of the production but I did like Jane and Ben.
Rod showed me his DVD system which is dead good. For a start, it's much more manageable
than laserdiscs and you get all sorts of extras too - like interviews with the director
and cast members, running commentaries so you can watch the film as an artwork as
well as a movie. We took a look at Starship Trouper which Glory Be indexes
straight to the shower scene and I can tell you than in widescreen you get more buttock
to the periphery. However, Casper's still hold centre stage in
my humble opinion. You get a very crisp image with a DVD as well.
Evening came and the three of us plus Mark (who had been watching basketball all afternoon - Gonzaga won again) were off to the newly opened and very splendid Benaroya Hall for a performance by the Seattle Gay Men's Chorus linking appropriate music with readings from Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City given by the author. Long time readers of this journal will know that I am a long time fan of the novels so this was a treat. Armistead got a rousing welcome from the audience. The man must seem like a national treasure over here.
It was a fun night out and, as Rod said later (in another of his roles he was reviewing the concert for one of Seattle's gay newspapers), he felt very disinclined to analyse the experience. I could see his point. Everyone was there for a good time and no-one wanted to hear contrary noises. However, I would say that they could have been more adventurous with the choice of both readings and accompanying music, that the choir member that they chose to represent the character Michael Mouse Tolliver was a disaster (a prissy-knickered twink with a singing voice that simpered) and that the final setting of Mouse's coming out letter to his parents was a dreadful sub-Sondheim pastiche that contained all the easy clichés used by improv artists in the UK.
I caused somewhat of a stir in the car coming home by voicing some of these opinions. Like I said we'd all had a good time and no-one really wanted to hear contrary noises. However, once I'd burst the bubble, most everyone agreed that the Mouse was really quite poor and that the best thing that he had done was to wear a Tinky Winky back pack for the finale which gave me the opportunity to tell Mark the gay actor story again.
Home, chat, discovered that Rod and Dale possess a Kristen Bjorn video. So I got my first
glimpse of Alexei Gromoff in action and he does look good.
I got to bed late. 
Which was fine since the Sunday was a relatively laid back day. As a treat, I'd booked seats for us all for Sunday brunch on the Spirit of Washington - a dinner train (and that really must be the complete range of modes of transport now). The food was fine. Dale and I chatted about work matters we share in common. It passed a very pleasant few hours as we rattled up and down the Eastern shoreline of Lake Washington.
Afternoon brought rest and relaxation and a video of Seattle Opera's production of Turandot starring Jane Eaglen and Edmund Barham - are you catching a connection here? Anyway, Jane was fabulous again. We tried to make contact with Dale's friend, Dan, who I met on my last visit but to no avail. Ah, well, maybe another time.
Evening we watched Shooting Fish, a delightful minor movie, and Dark City,
a very disturbing sci-fi/fantasy/film noire which played into all my bad fears
about truth, illusion, reality and personal identity. Surprisingly, I slept well.