one of them crazy days...

so you read about the snow (which was had school in spite of)... there was class, there was pizza seminar, there were errands, there was realizing during pizza seminar that i have to tweak the bijection i found last night to really make it work, and i haven't fixed it yet, so that's tomorrow night... but then there was some fun.

my friend jessica is a grad student in philly. we know each other from HS so we hang out periodically either here or there. this was the first we'd gotten together since the 4th of july. anyhow, the plan was to go up to NYC to see this show

you'll notice from the title (walking in memphis) it already has hometown draw. what you probably don't realize is that jon, the guy performing the one man show, was one of our HS classmates. not someone i saw outside of school. i think the extent of our interaction was that he and i were in the same homeroom for 4 years and we might have had science class together in 9th grade. but he was a class officer, voted class favorite for the yearbook a few times, in all kinds of theater productions, and just generally involved in all kinds of things around the school and a friendly guy. since i saw him every morning in homeroom and that's about it, i figured maybe if there was time afterwards, we'd say hi and see if he recognized names, but didn't really expect anything more than that.

anyhow... jessica and i headed up to the city early... saw the rockefeller tree... ran by a quiznos deli... then went to the theater. half an hour early, we were the only ones in the theater... 20 minutes, still the only ones... 10 minutes, still the only ones... 2 minutes til 8, jon came out and beelined to me and said "you're lara p-------, i recognized you! what are you doing in new york these days?!", and then turned to jessica with "hi, i'm jonathan, and you are?" (he commented that 5 minutes into the performance he remembered her name too and it all came together... i was totally impressed he knew who i was without any prompting off the bat).

anyhow, he did the whole production for just me and jessica... comments about HS teachers were especially entertaining since i could picture the people he was talking about,... places in memphis were vivid too even though i have different memories... basically, it was his life story, interwoven with bits of the song "walking in memphis"... he really pulls you in while he's going... after talking about his grandmother's and his mother's deaths in the past few years, his last segment talked about how someone's smile, or smell, or laughter fades from memory over time, but stories never fade, they go on, and need to be told so they can keep going on. it was quality.

not to fear -- jon also told us that although we were the only two in the audience tonight, last night he apparently had a packed house... that it kinda goes up and down with the night and there's no telling how many people he'll have around... go figure.

totally didn't expect a personal greeting or such an intimate show. how bizarre would it be to perform a one man show for two people you vaguely remember from HS 7 years ago and that's it? from my point of view, though, not only was it a fabulous show, and well worth seeing (if you're around NY look into it while it's still running this month and a little into january), but it was also really cool to see what's become of someone who had a lot of talent in HS (and still does).

post jon's show, it was back to jersey where jessica and i paged through our HS yearbooks and chatted about how bizarre of an era that is, and about other such fun before we both dozed off while watched garden state... waking up again during the end credits, now it's time to crash for real.

anyhow, yeah, it's one of those "go figure" kinda days. (but in a good way)

really, now, time to crash.

later dudes. :P