Friday night we went and saw Ethan Hawke in Hurlyburly. Wallace Shawn, Parker Posey and Bobby Cannavale were also in it. I wasn’t crazy about the story but there were some really funny parts and good commentary on the world.

The story centered around Ethan Hawke’s character and three of his friends, the women in their lives and heavy drug use. It was one of those stories where at the end nothing really changes or gets better. No character ever has an epiphany or anything, it just ends. So we were kinda left to wonder what the point was. Patrick can deal with that kind of story a little better than me, but I need a clear cut ending, preferably a happy one.

My favorite line is when Parker Posey and Ethan Hawke are having a very melodramatic arguement and she tells him to stop yelling. He says, ” My voice is raised for emphasis which by the way is a perfectly legitimate use of volume.” Patrick likes when Josh Hamilton (the jerky friend from With Honors)the only one who didn’t do any drugs, says to Ethan Hawke, “Are you going to remember this in the morning or is this one of your biodegradable moments?” So we enjoyed it, and the acting was good, but not my favorite story.

Yesterday we went to the movies. First time we’ve been to see anything new in awhile and it was nice to go. We watched “A Lot Like Love”, which I really liked. I know, I’m a total cheesey romantic, what can I say. And darn it if I don’t like Ashton Kutcher more and more everytime I see him in something else. I really don’t want to like him, but I do.

Today I’m very tired from several days of running around like crazy and not getting enough sleep. Think I’ll head to bed early and get ready for the week.

Tonight we went to a benefit for the Association of Hole in the Wall Camps which Paul Newman founded for children with serious illness and life-threatening conditions.

Tony Bennett, The Emerson String Quartet, Robin Williams, Julia Roberts,and Paul McCartney along with Paul Newman and some kids from the camp put on an hour and a half show to raise money for the camps. I never really thought I liked Tony Bennett, but he was actually pretty darn good. Of course Patrick was increadibly excited to see Robin Williams since that’s one of his favorite comedians. I was excited to see Julia Roberts, and a little beyond excited to see Paul McCartney.

But see them we did. We were just off the left of the stage, in a box on the second level. Sounds expensive, but it really wasn’t. We had a great view, if you don’t count having to look through the rail. When Paul McCartney played the piano, we had a perfect view of his hands. He sang Yesterday, one of my favorite songs, and Lady Madonna. Julia Roberts was really cute, she was nervous as she read a college essay written by a former camper. And at the end, she was laughing at Paul Newman, and she really does have that funny laugh. I loved it!

It was a really memorable night, and we were a little star struck. Especially after having walked through the line of photographers waiting outside. Not that they paid any attention to us!

Stuff like this is the neatest part of living here.

Erasure was awesome! The concert was at Irving Plaza, a small venue where everyone stands up the whole time. We were fairly close, and if I was taller, I would have had a great view of them the whole time. But, I did get to see them about half the time. They are such fun performers. They are like the Barenaked Ladies in that respect, you can just see on their faces that they really love what they are doing. They played all my favorites too, so I was very happy. The only problem was the we were packed in very tightly and every once in awhile I had to stick my head into the nearest open space to take some deep breathes because I was getting a bit claustrophobic.

On Friday Patrick got an announcement that tickets would be going on sale at 10:00 that day for a benefit, and he managed to call in and get tickets before they sold out. He really does have the best luck, if only he would use it to win the lotto! So, this benefit— Here’s what they say about it:

Stars in the Sky: An Evening to Benefit the Association of Hole in the
Wall Camps Paul McCartney, Julia Roberts, Paul Newman, Robin
Williams, Mary J. Blige, Tony Bennett, Hezekiah Walker and The Love Fellowship Choir, the Emerson
String Quartet and AntiGravity. Live on stage for one-night-only at Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center to benefit the Association of
Hole in the Wall Camps.Thursday, April 21, 2005 at 7:00 p.m.

I’m pretty excited about that! I don’t even care what they will be doing. I’ll write more about that on Friday after we’ve been.

Sunday we had a nice day in the city walking around Soho. It was another nice day and everybody was out enjoying it. If we had a sailboat it would have been really tempting to hop in and sail away. I would say maybe we are in for nice weather from here on out, but it’s supposed to rain and the temp. will drop Thursday through the weekend.

The Rob Thomas solo cd comes out tomorrow. Hope it’s not too KISS FMie for me.

Man I’ve been under a fog this week. I’ve been having a hard time coming up with complete sentence or anything remotely intelligent to say. I’ve been kidding Patrick about all the intellectually stimulating conversations we don’t have. But then again, today I was one of the only two people at work who knew what succinct meant. Even the english major in the bunch didn’t know! Come on…AP English. So that made me feel a little smart! Especially when the human resource lady said she thought it sounded like something to do with the kitchen sink.

Tonight Patrick and I went to the free thursday night movie that we sometimes go to. They were showing The Usual Suspects, which is one of his favorites. On the way in Patrick tried to lose his wedding ring. He’s lost so much weight that it’s really loose and it fell right off his hand and started rolling….right into oncoming traffic. But I managed to grab it and not get hit by any cars. Now he’s wearing it on another finger until we can get a smaller one. We’ll probably go to the Thursday night movie again in two weeks when they show L.A. Confidential. Tomorrow night is Erasure! I’m looking forward to that. Then Saturday Patrick will be in Philly again.

Next Friday night we are going to see Hurlyburly. Not exactly sure what it’s about but I know it was on broadway in the 80’s and a movie in the late 90’s. But the most important part is that Ethan Hawke is in it, and I’m an Ethan fan. Well, not as much after the whole cheating on Uma thing, but what can you do? We wanted to go around Valentine’s day but it was always sold out. Last Friday I got a notice that tickets were on sale for the extended run and I sent it to Patrick just as a reminder to talk about it, but he actually took the inititive to buy the tickets for me since I was having a bad week! Pretty sweet of him.

It’s been nice weather during the day, but cold and windy at night. I told Patrick if I never see either of my gray winter jackets afer this year I won’t cry. The endless sea of gray and black coats gets a little old. You know someone’s a tourist when they are in color.

Friday afternoon Patrick got the idea that we should go to D.C. and look around on Sunday. It was the peak weekend for viewing the cherry blossoms. So we decided to head that way, taking a car to a city close to D.C., parking, and then taking a train the remaining 20 minutes in.

It was a gorgous day with perfect weather, sunny and about 70. So of course I got a sunburn! We had a great time though. The city was so clean and beautiful and everybody was out enjoying the day. There was so much to see and we only had a few hours so we didn’t catch it all. We’ve decided we’ll have to go back and spend the weekend there sometime so we can go to all the musuems and see some of the memorials that we didn’t make it to this time. Here are pictures from our trip. Pretty much if we saw it, we took a picture of it. It was a really great way to relax from an overly long week.