Eric Nehrlich, Unrepentant Generalist

It’s been over two weeks since my last post. That’s probably the longest time without an update in close to a year. It’s mostly a matter of guilt - I’ve had things I would have liked to write up, but every time I think about doing it, I think about the papers I should be writing or the books I should be reading for class, and can’t justify blogging. Of course, sometimes I don’t end up getting work done on the homework either, so I might as well have blogged. I think I have this irrational belief in a writing energy well where if I write something for my blog, I’m taking energy that I should be using for writing papers for class. Or something like that.

But I’ve got a conference call with my group-mates in 30 minutes, and I’ve finished what I wanted to get done for that, and it’s not quite enough time to get started on my paper for my other class, so I’m going to write something so I can at least catch people up on what I’ve been up to so that when I do get a chance to write something meaningful, I can do so without doing a journal post first.

Class has been eating up a lot of time. Corporate Finance has been going pretty well; one of the nice benefits of being a former physicist is that math and spreadsheets are pretty elementary for me. Plus that class involves working in a group, so I’ve got other people to be accountable to, so I’m more on the ball (as an aside, I realized, both in class and at work, that I am willing to work my butt off for the sake of others, but if I’m supposed to do something that only benefits myself, I’ll slack off - something to delve into at some point). The Technology in the Business Environment class has had interesting class discussions, but I’m struggling a bit with getting my papers into a professor-approved format. While blogging has been great for developing my writing skills in a lot of ways, it appears it has also led me to be a little bit too florid and prolix for executive summaries.

That class also has a ton of reading. We average between 200 and 300 pages a week, which is nothing for English majors, but it’s a lot when combined with a full-time job and other homework. Plus I’ve found some of the reading to be a bit dry. I did like Henry Chesbrough’s Open Innovation, though; it asserts that the days of Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, and IBM are over, in the sense that corporations can no longer do all innovation from basic research to product development. Corporations must learn to live in a world where research is happening everywhere and figure out how they can thrive in such a world. Some interesting ideas, although I thought that his recommendations for action were a bit weak.

Outside of class, work continues. Not much exciting happening there.

A week ago Friday, Seppo and Ei-Nyung were in town, and we went to wd-50 for dinner. We went for the 9 course tasting menu, and it was interesting. The chef is definitely a conceptual kind of guy, in that he came up with some really interesting dishes that were well-executed, but not very tasty. It reminded me a bit of the discussion about art and craft we had a few weeks ago. For instance, one dish was constructed like a sunny-side-up egg, with a white disc and a “yolk” on top. Except that the white was some sort of cold jelly-like substance, and the “yolk” was a carrot consomme. It was wacky, but it did not exactly set my taste buds on fire.

Other dishes were more satisfying, though. The “homage to a sandwich” was excellent - it was thinly sliced beef tongue, with romaine lettuce and dried onion diced so finely they looked like micro-dots. There was a smear of some sort of tomato sauce that was vaguely ketchup-like, and deep-fried mayonnaise cubes. All the elements of a sandwich, deconstructed. And yet when you put them all back together on your fork, it was tasty.

We also really liked the miso soup with make your own noodles. The noodles came in liquid form in a squeeze bottle, and as you squirted it into your soup, it solidified, forming noodles. Great fun!

I think we all agreed that the desserts were excellent. One was a “menthol mousse”, which sounds like it might be overpowering, but it worked. There was the mousse, some honeydew sorbet, and a couple other elements all of which worked together for a fabulous taste experience. The other I remember was a chocolate gouache, where there was a beautifully arranged twist of gouache, with cocoa powder at the ends, sorbet on one side, two dabs of mint jelly, and two dabs of some sort of avocado dip (yes, avocado - it worked). It was well plated and fabulously delicious. Hopefully, Seppo will post pictures at some point and I’ll link them here because it was a work of art.

What else, what else. Steve Reich is having his 70th birthday this month. I’ve got tickets to all three concerts at Carnegie Hall this week, including a Saturday night concert of Music for 18 Musicians where I sprung for the best seats, because watching that piece performed totally blew my mind six years ago. I also get to see Drumming for the first time all the way through on Sunday night. Although I went to see So Percussion on Friday night, and they did the first movement of Drumming and it was awesome - watching another percussion quartet perform that first movement live was my introduction to Reich’s music close to ten years ago, and I knew the music much better now from the CD, but seeing it live this time helped me understand how the piece fit together better. I didn’t make it to the Reich mini-marathon at the Whitney this afternoon although I did try - I was at CultureFest and went looking for the 4,5 subway that I could take up to the Whitney, but every single downtown subway station for that line was closed. After walking a mile looking for an open station, I decided it was a sign and gave up to come home and do my class reading instead.

So that’s my life. Work, class, occasional New York events. I do have thoughts, but a lot of my brain is devoted to figuring things out for class and work, leaving me with less idle brain cycles for the random speculation that leads to blogging. Ah well. Now it’s about time for my conference call with my groupmates, so it’s back to homework.

My life, it is busy.

Let’s do the quick update of every night since my last post on Monday, September 19th, when I went to the Social Media Club.

Tuesday: Stayed home and studied. My only day without interaction outside of work in the last three weeks

Wednesday and Thursday: Class (my normal Tuesday class was moved to Thursday due to a scheduling conflict).

Friday: Sailing out in the Hudson with Sasha and Ann. Unlike last time, it was windy and crowded out on the water. Lots of four-foot wakes rolling by, which made this trip less of an idyllic sunset cruise and more of a roller coaster ride, with the whole boat tipping over to crazy angles, or coming half out of the water when going over a wave. Lots of fun, but a lot different; when I took the tiller this time, the boat was much harder to control, and I gave it back after I almost ran us into Jersey.

Saturday and Sunday: The Come Out and Play festival. More on this below after the chronology.

Monday evening: Meeting with my group for my Corporate Finance class, so we could pull together our case study for class on Wednesday.

Tuesday and Wednesday: Class.

Thursday (tonight): Was scheduled for my night off, but then I saw that NYPL Live was hosting a discussion between Chris Anderson of Long Tail fame and Larry Lessig, who I think is awesome (I’ve read 2.5 of his books and loved seeing him speak a couple years ago). So I had to go to that.

Friday (tomorrow): Going to try to check out Art (212), which is free tomorrow evening, $15 otherwise.

This weekend: I could do Wired NextFest or BarCamp, but I think I need a weekend off. Too busy! I’m not letting two nights of classes a week plus the associated homework put a crimp in my social schedule but it’s coming out of my sleep and energy schedule. Hrm.

Come Out and Play festival: Awesome. The idea is to use New York City as a gameboard for many many games. Go check out the variety of games that they were running last weekend. Or read about it at cbsnews.com. I heard about it through Jane McGonigal, who I think I heard about from either danah boyd or Henry Jenkins in the last month. There were dozens of game over the weekend, but I only participated in two.

Saturday was Cruel 2 B Kind, the world premiere of one of Jane McGonigal’s games. The idea is that all of the players arrive in the same public space, where they are text messaged a weapon of kindness and a weakness for kindness. They must go up to other people in the area, and “assault” them with their weapon of kindness. If they attack another team, and the weapon is that team’s weakness, they defeat the team and subsume them. If they attack another team, but don’t hit their weakness, the other team must respond “You are too kind”. If they attack a random person who just happens to be in the playing field, that’s when the fun starts.

In this case, the playing field was Broadway between 48th and 58th. Ann and I broke our fast at Empanada Mama’s (sooooo good), and then headed over. We got there a few minutes early, checked in via text message, and then started scoping for other teams. Since all teams started off as pairs, we were looking for pairs of people with a cell phone ready to hand. This turned out to be relatively easy to do.

At 12:30, we were text messaged our weapon (wish people a “spectacular day”) and our weakness (I can’t remember - perhaps it was being wished a “delicious day”). We had pegged another group near us as being in the game. We walked up to them. I had on my Cubs hat, had out a tourist map, put on my best clueless expression and said “Excuse me, do you know which way Rockefeller Center is?” while thrusting the map at them. They pointed it out to me, I said thanks, and Ann and I said “Have a spectacular day!” They looked at us with this dawning look of horror and said “Wait, you’re in the game?!” It was wonderful. And we’d killed them. Bwa hahahaha.

We pulled the same ruse on two more teams before we got another one. By then we were up to 8 or so people, and the stealth option was lost to us. We didn’t adjust tactics quick enough, and were ambushed by a two person team before we got organized. Oops.

Never fear, our group of ten went on to take out another large group, and suddenly we were 25 or so. This was when things started to get a bit ridiculous. Our secret weapon at this point was offering to help people. So whenever we saw any group that might be another team, even if they were across the street, we yelled “Can we help you?!?” And they’d yell back “You are too kind! We love your shoes!” And we’d yell “You are too kind!” Meanwhile, the tourists waiting for the matinee Broadway shows were wondering what the HELL was going on.

We also had some pretty great reactions from deploying our weapon on unsuspecting passersby. One of them looked us up and down and just said “No” when we asked if we could help him. Most people just looked confused and intimidated.

A fun time was had by all, although it got a bit slow towards the end since no team who was vulnerable to our weapon got within a block of us because we were shouting it so indiscriminately. It would have been nice for the larger groups to get their weapons switched out more (they redeployed weapons occasionally during the game via text message) because we ended up just walking up and down the street for 45 minutes yelling “Can we help you?!”

For those that are interested in reading more, check out the account from the eventual game winners or this CNET article.

Then I went home and took a two hour nap, spent two hours talking to Christy and then Jofish, and then failed to study. Too much excitement.

But wait, there’s more!

On Sunday, Ann and Niko (no, not that one) and Jocelyn and I went out for dim sum before meeting up with Mira to go play the Go Game, which was basically an experiential scavenger hunt through Greenwich Village. We were issued a cell phone and a camera. I called the team Project Eris, in honor of both chaos and of the recently named dwarf planet, which a friend of mine co-discovered. The rest of the afternoon, we were issued missions via the cell phone which often had to be documented by the camera. Among other things, we had to have a mock kung-fu fight with a Matrix-y woman, explain social networking sites to a “grandmother” knitting in a Starbucks, stage a tabloid photo with Batgirl (see below), mock up a video game (we chose Pong), etc. They even posted all the game photos (you may have to login - use username nehrlich, password nehrlich and then go back to that link). Plus there were run around the Village missions where we had to enter a local establishment, find some piece of information and send it back to HQ, e.g. go to a Gristedes, find the “most patriotic section” (lots of flags), and look for the green dessert topping (maraschino cherries), and then find the ingredient it shared with antifreeze (we spent way too much time on this trying to google for stuff - we should have just guessed and moved on). But it was fun. Then we all met up back at a local bar for the judging portion, where we got to see what others had down. I think my favorites were the staged photo of Batgirl snorting coke off a dead hustler, and the amazing mockup video the winning team did of Katamari Damacy, where they ended up all rolled up in one big ball (after picking up lots of little things first). It was a fun time, and a good excuse to go run around New York with friends for an afternoon.

And now I shall shut up. I’d originally planned to write a couple blog posts tonight, but maybe tomorrow.

Technorati tag: cruel2bkind

I’m on the Carnegie Hall weekly events list. Last week’s email announced a Community Sing of Mozart’s Requiem, to commemorate the fifth anniversary of 9/11. That immediately became a priority for me to attend.

Some background: The Saturday after 9/11 was our choral retreat. We were rehearsing the Brahms Requiem at the time, and Vance, our conductor, wisely let us sing it all the way through without stopping as our method of mourning. It was a powerful experience as we shared that moment together. The concert was three weeks later, and it was one of the most amazing performances I have been part of. We were inspired, spirit and mind and body all fusing together to pour out our message of awe and sorrow and finally joy (”Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord”). It was the best memorial we knew how to give, and I think it was a worthy one.

So the idea of participating in a community sing to commemorate 9/11 greatly appealed to me. The Juilliard School collaborated with Carnegie Hall to make this happen. My parents volunteered to wait in line to get tickets and to save a good seat for me coming from work, which worked out wonderfully as we were in about the tenth row. The Juilliard orchestra and Choral Union were great, the soloists were excellent, and the audience was surprisingly good. We sang it straight through, and I did relatively well considering it had been five years since I last performed it.

But the best part was just being there. People lined up literally around the block to be part of this experience. New Yorkers came together, even in the middle of a weekday, to pay tribute and homage to that day, in the best way they knew how, by making music together. I was quoted once as saying “There’s this feeling you get at performance. Everyone breathes as one, sings as one. It’s magical.” That’s the feeling I had again today. It didn’t matter who we were outside of that hall. We sang together, we created this moment together, and that was what mattered.

P.S. It was also nice to get complemented by other singers after the performance. Two of them told me I rocked, and when they found out I wasn’t currently in a chorus, tried to recruit me to the Collegiate Chorale, which looks like a great group if I had any free time whatsoever. I was surprised to realize just how much I missed singing. I got the big goofy smile on my face several times throughout the performance as I listened to the intricate complexites of Mozart’s composition. And the sheer joy of blasting through wonderful music together is something I’ve missed. I’ll have to see how my first term of classes go before I can commit to a chorus, though.

More fun experiences in New York:

I got to go sailing with Captain Sasha on Friday evening. Sasha’s an instructor with the Manhattan Sailing School, and took a couple of us out for a sunset cruise. It was lovely and peaceful being out on the water, with just the sounds of the waves and the wind. We headed out past the Statue of Liberty and most of the way to Staten Island before turning back. Sasha even let me take the tiller on the way back for a while. I can’t really afford sailing lessons right now, but I definitely enjoyed the experience.

I spent Saturday afternoon out at Coney Island watching the Brooklyn stop of the AVP. Caught three matches, including the men’s final. What’s fun is that the crowd is still small at these events, so you can get up close to the action. I got a second-row seat for a match featuring Holly McPeak and Logan Tom, apparently in their second week as partners (there was a massive shakeup two weeks ago when the second-ranked team on the tour (Elaine Youngs and Rachel Wacholder) broke up, causing a cascading waterfall of partner changes). I happened to sit near a couple other volleyball players and we had a fun time critiquing the play; McPeak was setting Tom way too low - Tom didn’t get her arm fully extended on a hit the whole match, settling for roll shots which were way too easy to dig. They won anyway because Tom was blocking well and McPeak was picking up digs, but it was harder than it should have been.

After the men’s final (Mike Lambert and Stein Metzger won it going away), I was walking back towards the subway and noticed myself walking right behind Kerri Walsh, the premier women’s beach volleyball player in the world. It’s a bit weird seeing somebody in person who you’ve mostly only seen on TV. She was walking back towards the subway with her husband Casey Jennings (another player) and the AVP announcer Chris McGee. I tried not to goggle too much, but I probably did. As I was crossing the street to the subway station, I came up behind McPeak and Tom, who I’d seen playing earlier. They had to stop to buy tickets while I sailed through with my pass. I guess they’re just normal folks too. It’s easy to forget that when you have a one-way fanboy interaction mediated by television, which makes me wonder about the passive culture that TV is creating. But it’s late, so I won’t pursue the thought any further.

After enjoying my last outing with them, I went to another nextNY event this evening. This one was PitchCamp. Keshava recruited several investors and entrepreneurs (including David S. Rose, the pitch coach written up in BusinessWeek) to serve as coaches while volunteers tried their pitches.

The first hour was three companies doing 2-3 minute elevator pitches with feedback afterwards. The second hour was spent with a company doing a 10 minute pitch presentation with PowerPoint, then taking 10-15 minutes of questions from “investors”, before feedback from the coaches. At the end, two of the three elevator pitches delivered a new version of their pitch incorporating the coach feedback, and results were noticeably improved.

I jotted down a list of the recurring questions and advice from the coaches:

I’ve got a couple posts floating around in my head, but I can’t make any of them come together right now. Not sure if it’s the heat or general distraction or what. So instead I’ll post about stuff I’ve been up to.

After Monday night at Hallo Berlin, there was bowling on Tuesday (company field trip fun - did you know there’s a bowling alley on the second floor of Port Authority?), and Avenue Q on Wednesday (also corporate-sponsored) (very fun musical, by the way - I enjoyed it a lot - “It sucks to be me” is a catchy song).

On Thursday, I had a little shindig, where about 15 people came over to my place for wine and cheese and conversation. I’d been meaning to do this for a while - I’ve got several sets of friends here in NYC (I later counted that there were four distinct social circles at the shindig), and I wanted them all to meet each other, and there were particular connections I wanted to make between pairs of people. And it was excellent - people showed up, there was good conversation all around, connections were made, etc.

The next morning I was trying to figure out why I enjoyed it so much (yes, I’m over-analytical). I like making connections. I like the fact that I have all of these different people in my life who are doing different things (a sampling of job descriptions of people who showed up: software consultant, intern at Goldman Sachs, publisher, language services coordinator, developmental geneticist, urban planner, and sailing instructor). I really enjoy being able to talk to them, and be able to understand a little bit about what they’re doing and explain it to others - the one time that Jofish and I took turns explaining each other’s work to strangers was a lot of fun. I need to figure out how to cultivate more of these sort of cross-connections in my life.

Somebody asked about cafes with wi-fi on the nextNY mailing list, and one person recommended the Housing Works Used Book Cafe. It’s a volunteer-run used book store/cafe where all proceeds go towards providing housing and other services for homeless New Yorkers. I went to go check it out this afternoon, and it’s a wonderful space. Their book selection isn’t that extensive, but they’ve got lots of chairs for browsing, plus the cafe in the back to chill at for a while. Highly recommended. I’m having thoughts of volunteering there. And, of course, I couldn’t resist buying several books despite having stacks of unread books already. I’m a hopeless addict.

In other wandering around news, I also wanted to go visit art galleries in Chelsea this afternoon, but they’re basically all closed on the weekends, either because their summer hours are weekday-only, or because they’re just closed in August. Good to know.

A few weeks ago, I came across the nextNY site, a networking group for folks in technology and media in New York. It was started by Charlie O’Donnell, an up-and-coming executive (he just left Union Square Ventures where he’d been working to join a startup they’d funded). I was intrigued because they organized a dodgeball league, so it was clear they were a little bit less strait-laced than the typical networking group. Plus, Charlie linked to one of my posts, so that predisposes me to like him.

Anyway, nextNY had a happy hour last night at Bar 13, and I stopped by in an attempt to meet more people here in New York. It was a lot of fun - interesting folks involved in a variety of entrepreneurial ventures. Unlike many others there, I wasn’t trying to pitch anything and I didn’t have an agenda, so I was able to just enjoy meeting people, and hear them talking about what excites them (much like my experience at BrainJam). Plus, I got my first taste of the Joel halo effect - after saying I worked at Fog Creek Software, most folks say “Oh, you work for Joel!”, so that was kind of neat. I had to leave early to meet up for dinner and drinks for a friend’s birthday, but I will be going to more nextNY events in the future.

The last couple weeks have been all about taking advantage of New York. I’d been feeling a bit overwhelmed, so I figured it was time to remind myself that this is NEW YORK, and I should be going out and doing fun things here. So I’ve done all sorts of things, including:

• Check out the Village Voice Siren Music Festival at Coney Island. Coney Island was even more cheesy than I imagined, but it’s cool that it’s right there on the subway. And I really liked The Cribs, and bought their CD.
• Spent an afternoon with a friend at the Met, before their admission prices go up in August.
• The Yankees game
• The New York Philharmonic concert in Central Park
• Playing ultimate frisbee over in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, including doing one awesome catch where I slipped despite my cleats and managed to lunge off of the ground to snag the disc with my left hand anyways.
• Hanging out in Greenwich Village with some friends.
• Dropping in on the Hackers On Planet Earth conference, including the excellent NLP talk by Mike Murray

So I’ve been keeping myself busy. In case you were wondering why there’s been a dearth of blogging recently.

P.S. My company, Fog Creek Software, is having an open house this evening if you’re interested in seeing where I work.

Tonight, the New York Philharmonic gave a free concert in Central Park. I’d been thinking of going, but then Nate and Beth (last seen in this post) said they were organizing a picnic so that cinched things.

It was awesome. Beth got there around 5:15 (for the 8pm concert) to snag a great spot, people brought blankets, wine and snacks, somebody contributed a little table for the food. I think the group ended up being around 20 people or so by the end, with all sorts of random connections in there; only Beth knew everybody (I only knew Nate and Beth and my friend Ann who I’d invited). We were a bit worried because there was the possibility of rain in the forecast, but it was sunny when we got there.

Alas, by the time the music actually started, there was a hint of a drizzle. Not enough to bother breaking out the umbrella for (except to cover the food), but water falling from the sky. After the first piece (Chairman Dances, by John Adams - typical John Adams - inoffensive minimalist melodic music), the drizzle had stopped, but they announced that due to an incoming front which they predicted would arrive at 9:50pm (remember this!), they were going to skip intermission, and only do the 1st and 4th movements of Beethoven’s Fifth, which had been scheduled for the second half. We booed, of course - New Yorkers are hilariously prone to booing.

The second piece was one I’d been looking forward to - Prokofiev’s First Violin Concerto, performed by Leila Josefowicz, who I’d seen performing John Adams last year in New York. She was fabulous again, at least based on what I could hear from the speakers. I thought the piece was interesting for the first two movements, with lots of good rhythmic ostinato that Josefowicz really dug into, but the last movement was kind of by-the-numbers Romantic with lots of scale-like runs.

Then, as stated earlier, they did Beethoven’s Fifth, skipping the middle two movements. I was sitting there enjoying the familiar strains of the first movement and just had this big involuntary smile on my face. This was a genuine New York experience, enjoying a picnic in Central Park with new friends, surrounded by people as far as the eye could see, and the downtown skyline rising behind them. Evenings like these are why I came to New York.

After they rushed through the Fifth (seriously, the first movement was taken faster than I’ve ever heard it before), there were fireworks! (Oooh! Aahhhh!!) The fireworks ended at 9:42 or so. People started getting up to move out. At 9:45, strong gusts of wind started blowing across the park. And, unbelievably, at precisely 9:50, it started raining. And not just raining, but pouring. Lighting, thunder, rain coming down so hard that even with an umbrella, I got soaked. And the people without umbrellas? It was all over. Thousands of people trying to make their way out of the park in the driving rain was pretty hilarious. Several folks in the crowd (including myself) were just laughing because it was raining so hard. It would be pouring, and then, it would start raining even harder. It was just ludicrous. But we all made it out of the park, crowded onto the subway, and thence home. And now I’m writing about it!

My company organized a Yankees game trip, and I had to go cuz it’s Yankee Stadium (thus completing my collection of “real” baseball stadiums, counting Wrigley and Fenway as the others). Yankees against the Mariners, nothing too exciting.

The highlight for me was A-Rod completely self-destructing. I’m anti-A-Rod, partially because he sold out (admittedly, I wouldn’t turn down $25 million/year) and because he never comes up in the clutch. I’m somewhat influenced by the Sports Guy on this one, as in this column:

Two classic A-Rod moments from the last 48 hours: The crushing DP with the bases loaded on Sunday night at Shea, followed by the homer in the ninth with the Yanks down by eight runs at Fenway. He’s the best. Three separate readers e-mailed me to tell me they won money on the DP, including San Diego’s Brad Garey: “I made a $5 bet with my father, father-in-law, and brother-in-law that A-Rod would ground out in an inning-ending double play. They took the bet and, of course, I am now $15 richer.” Ladies and gentleman, your 2005 AL MVP!

A-Rod was already struggling on the evening, having committed three errors. Then he came up in the bottom of the seventh inning. They actually intentionally walked Jason Giambi to load the bases to get to A-Rod. One out, bases loaded, two-run lead. A chance to break the game wide open. If he makes any sort of decent contact, he at least scores a run. I turned to my co-worker, calling the double play. I was wrong - he struck out swinging instead. Absolutely pathetic. He got booed coming off the field, and didn’t even come out of the dugout again - he couldn’t take the heat so they sent out a defensive replacement (Nick Green?! Seriously? They replaced a $25 million player with a guy I’ve never heard of?).

The other highlight was that because A-Rod choked, the game remained close, so it was still a 2-run lead in the top of the ninth. And that meant it was time for Mariano Rivera. Watching him come running in from the bullpen with Enter Sandman blaring, as the stadium goes electric with energy; that was awesome. I had been looking forward to seeing one of the top relief pitchers ever pitch in person. He immediately gave up a double and a single to put runners at the corners. Then he got mad. His next pitch audibly POPped into the catcher’s mitt. A strikeout, a pop up, and a strikeout, and the game was over. Totally great to watch a master at work.

Oh, and I missed out on a foul ball by a couple feet - it actually hit my coworker and I couldn’t quite snag it before it ended up in the row in front of us. Closest I’ve ever come to getting a foul ball.

Fun night.

P.S. Sorry for the slow-responding web page yesterday - the feed provider for my del.icio.us links decided to switch locations, so I had to update that.

Bats came to town, so I finally made the time to go see Sweeney Todd on Broadway, with the lovely and talented Patti Lupone. It was pretty awesome. Not as awesome as the the definitive Sweeney Todd version, but I might be slightly biased.

One of the amazing things about the production was that there was no orchestra. The cast members were also the orchestra. So they would be playing instruments when they weren’t singing, and sometimes even while singing or moving. The two romantic leads played matching cellos, Pirelli played an accordion, Toby played the violin, several people took turns on the keyboard, and Patti played the tuba. With pizzazz. And it all worked. It was pretty inspiring to see these ten people create all of the music themselves. The spareness of the orchestration also brought out the weirdly wonderful dissonant harmonies of Sondheim, which was neat.

The staging was also fantastic. It was a simple set: a few chairs, some shelves at the back of the stage, a ladder and a coffin centerpiece. Yet they fluidly rearranged the pieces and moved themselves around to create all of the different scenes without missing a beat. One thing Batman commented on is the way they effectively used vertical space to create distance. In a couple scenes, they had two folks talking to each other while standing on chairs, while something else was going on at stage level, and it created an effective separation between the two scenes. They also managed to move all the scenery around while keeping track of their instruments. It also led to entertaining bits for those of us that knew the work; there was one bit where Antony was playing the keyboard at the back of the stage, but I knew that he had to come rushing into the scene in a second, and I was wondering how they were going to manage that. Toby leapt to the back of the stage, slammed Antony out of the way to start playing the keyboard, and in one motion, Antony ran to the front of the stage to make his entrance. Nice bit of staging. Another bit of staging that amused us was at the end when Johanna is hiding from Sweeney, she ducked behind her cello.

It’s hard for me to judge the production fairly, since it’s always going to be compared to the one I did. But I think the quality of voices in the San Francisco version was higher, probably because they could get pure singers instead of multifaceted performers. And there are a couple times where I felt that the show missed the wall of sound that we generated with a full orchestra plus 30 chorus members (especially in the “Swing your razor wide, Sweeney” choruses). But this show had its own charm; the charm of the exquisitely designed miniature rather than the extravaganza.

Afterwards, Bats and I had dinner at the confusingly named Chelsea Grill of Hell’s Kitchen. We managed to get a table right on the sidewalk, so we got to enjoy watching the people of New York wander by. The food was excellent (I had “Bacon-wrapped BBQ meatloaf”, which was every bit as sinful as it sounds) (plus the waffle fries were tasty), we enjoyed a beer together, and we managed to still get Bats on his train. Barely.

A very pleasant evening out. I’d forgotten how much I like the theater. I need to go more often.

P.S. Oh, one other random New York moment. Before the show, I was scanning the crowd while waiting for Bats and saw this woman who looked familiar. I thought to myself, she looks just like somebody I knew in the San Francisco Ultimate League. Then she saw me, and did the same sort of double-take. So I wandered over and said hi. She was in NYC on vacation, I told her I’d moved here, etc. So random. But excellent. It reminds me of why I’m here - New York is where things like this happen.