Sunday, April 18, 2010

Mike Daisey's radio show performance

With great excitement and chutzpa financially (having just been to NY), we purchased tickets to Mike Daisey's performance in NYC at The Greene Space, reserved a hotel room at Hotel 31 (newest favorite place to stay), booked Vamoose bus round trip, and set off early Friday morning. The weather prediction was cold and rainy, but we were feeling like - well, he was the best thing we'd seen in DC for ages.
We described Mike's DC performance to my (dynamite) artist friend Marion Held, who came along to this performance and brought her husband Curtis. We had tried to get my son to join us, as well as an actor friend. Luckily they did not come, because, to my great disappointment............

Now this is really interesting. I like this guy so much that it is hard to badmouth him in any way! On the other hand, I was really really peeved to have done this trip around him and been presented with 50 minutes of low level (bordering on really awful) performances by others and only 10 or 15 minutes of the real Mike Daisey. Not two hours, and hardly anything of substance. Is he getting tired? What was happening there? I am stymied.
Might I add that we arrived an hour early to be first in line and get the best seats? Maybe if we'd just driven in for the evening from Brooklyn...

So - nope, not the BEST trip to NY but we realize that we need to do this often. Even the best performers screw up or plan badly. Even people you like have that awful "New York Attitude" and think they know best, are always right, and are better than us born mid-westerners who don't live in the City.
We sensitive non New Yorkers have to toughen up. Those of us without middle class or NY attitudes have to take our rightful places anyway. Aren't we supposed to fill in those gaps as we grow older? Who makes up these stratifications anyway?

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