Monday, September 29, 2003

Dancing The Red Sea parted during last night’s total eclipse, as the intergalactic sentinels, who have been studying our planet, finally made it to the United Nations and announced that they were taking us in hand and turning all our weapons of mass destruction into solar powered food synthesizers. That’s the sort of miracle it takes to get Harvey up and out to a concert or club and, Lo! The three of us went dancing last night. Harvey loves music, lives music, plays music and reviews CDs nearly every single day. That sort of super saturation isn’t what keeps him away from live performances. He’s got allergies and asthma that rule out closed in, smoky venues. Even though he’s retired from the VA, he’s still on working stiff hours: in bed at 9:00 and up around 5 AM. He doesn’t drink, hates drunks. Not exactly pub-crawling material. Harvey likes an Austin based band, Brave Combo (URL here) and stays in touch with bandleader Carl Finch. The last time BC played Cleveland, we might have made it out the door if Harvey had not been flattened by a second go ‘round with lymphoma. He’s been doing OK lately. And the Beachland Ballroom (URL here) is a comfortable, all ages place run by a friend, Cindy Barber. It used to be a Croatian dance hall. Murals of musicians and dancers in ethnic dress still grace the wall. We could bring Danielle. I remember the three of us dancing with the crowd at an outdoor zydeco concert in our neighborhood park about five years ago. I specifically remember Danielle doubled over with laughter at the sight of her recently acquired guardians in motion because we looked, to her, “like a parakeet on her perch and a gasping fish out of water.” Harvey is not an easy partner to follow. If he ever took lessons, it was from the Zero Mostel school of crazy old Jewish guys who shut their eyes and flail. We didn’t do so badly last night. Harvey stayed out until 1 AM. Danielle seems to have accepted our wobbling ways or else we’ve improved. Her ruling, expressed with the merest tinge of adolescent exasperation, was “You guys did OK. If you were actually embarrassing me, I would have told you at the time. And left you.” 10:53:49 AM