Birthday fun

My dear blogolytes, I have so much to tell you about. It’s been such a busy couple of days for me. Though not earth shatteringly exciting, I did have a very good birthday. Of course, it was nothing compared to Chris’ legendary rooftop surprise birthday party of several years back that was infamously marked by massive alcohol consumption, male strippers and penis ring toss. If you were there, I know you remember it with fond memories and just a whiff of regret. I won’t name names, but you know who you are Lori Leshner! Anyway, the days of Boogie Nights-type debauchery are over for this old warhorse. Instead, Trish and I had a relaxed dinner at a new midtown place called, Nizza. It’s a very affordable small-plate, tapas type joint where you can split about four or five dishes between a couple of people. Quite yummy. Definitely try the fried ravioli.

Next up was Seth’s Broadway 101 at New World Stages. This was a reprise of last year’s Actors’ Fund Benefit. The premise of the concert is that Seth is a “professor” of the Broadway musical and during the 90-minute “class,” he mixes stand-up, childhood stories, video clips and performances by a cast of Broadway singers, dancers, actors and musicians to demonstrate the numerous jobs that go into getting a show up and running (i.e. vocal arranger, swing, orchestrator). It is, of course, a show queen’s wet dream with more in-jokes and insider “winking” than a page of posts on All That Chat. The highlights: Andrea McArdle singing “Tomorrow”, Lillias White's riff-tastic "Don't Rain on my Parade", Jonathon Groff’s “Morning Glow”, clips of Cher singing “I Feel Pretty” (“…such a pretty meh”) and the whole head voice/chest voice tutorial. I’m sure this show will become a regular season offering, so I definitely recommend catching it the next time around. For all you star fuckers, seen at the 7:00 PM showing were Emily Skinner and Barrett Foa, whose aunt (the mother of one of our opera kids) is desperately trying to pair up with me. Not gonna’ happen Carla! I’m sure he’s a nice boy, but he’s totally Broad-WAY and I’m not. He’s also likely a decade younger than I and I do not date anyone who can’t remember Atari or old school TV, that’s before the “M” was added. Now, a hook-up? - that’s a different story. We’ll talk.

I took a day off from the Morg (that’s insider slang for Morgan Stanley) yesterday for my “fake” birthday since my real birthday was actually on Monday. Trish and I decided to spend the day at the Bronx Zoo. And we literally spent the whole day, seven hours, walking through all the exhibits. I know, sounds extreme. But since one of my degrees is a bachelors in biology, I loves me some scientific shit. Anyway, I highly recommend a visit, especially the gorillas in the Congo exhibit and the bug carousel (see fun pics below).

Me and my praying mantis

Trish and her bug

My new bff

After a power nap, Trish and I headed into the city to meet Dan and Chris at Whym, A new restaurant in midtown. The food was uniformly good and the atmosphere nice without being too fancy. If anything, it’s a bit on the chic-fag side, but very comfortable. Chris, of course, disagreed with my assessment until I pointed out the crystal bejeweled hanging lampshades and tight black-teed waiters. For dessert, we headed to Café Mozart where we had the nastiest (in a good way) selection of desserts - the Mozart dessert sampler and a fruit and pound cake chocolate fondue platter. As usual, any celebration involving me always revolves around gluttonous excess in the food department. So other than some splattered chocolate and an extreme case of heartburn, the evening didn’t stray into “Gays Gone Wild” territory.