Dinner and Dolly

Thursday night, as part of the ongoing festivities, we had a night out. After work, Marc met me at Le Bernardin. We'd never been there before, but it was reputed to be one of the finest restaurants in New York. So we had high hopes (with a Zagat score of 28/27/27, it had a lot of promise!), and we weren't disappointed. It was fabulous.

After that, we walked a block to Radio City Music Hall to attend a Dolly Parton concert. We were met there by Jeff. He had acquired the tickets for all of us.

Now, Dolly can still sing. I'll give her that. But there were things that definitely detracted from the event.

First, the opening act went on way too long. It's not just that they were a bluegrass group--not my favorite genre--but they weren't great. Of course, opinions differ. I don't care for bluegrass. Marc likes some bluegrass but didn't like this group. On the other hand, this man was there (although not sitting with us) and thought they were very good. To each his own.

We found out about Michael being present the day after the show. He told us that MAK also was somewhere in the crowd.

Then there was Dolly's commercial focus. Again and again, she told the crowd about her new CD. It would be released in a few months and contains remakes of other people's songs. She sang a number of the songs for us. Fine, but I thought the idea was to hear her stuff.

Of course, we also got some pitches for Dollywood, too. Oh, and to make things perfect, we sat behind some truly moronic--and strange (in an annoying kind of way)--people. Plus, the air conditioning wasn't good for our part of the theater, so we were way too warm.

Not a perfect end to the evening, but that's life. Today is our party, and I'm looking forward to it. We already received flowers and chocolate from a very sweet young lady, and I'm sure the day holds more fun and surprises!