Solstice be damned, we all have our own particulars for marking the beginning of this season. For some it's the first dip in the pool or the first cook-out. For many people, it's the mini-vacay known as Memorial Day weekend. And while mine, in the past, has typically had less to do with a tangible event and more to do with reaching a minimum number of gallons of sweat excreted through, say, my upper lip or that awkward place under your bra, this year it had everything to do with one very momentous occasion.
Saturday was the first Live at the Garden concert.
A while back Stef and I decided to go balls to the wall on this one and get season tickets, which means that Saturday at 5 p.m. as we lined up at the Botanic Gardens with our booze and our cheese and battery-operated fans and blankets and general overwhelming SQUEEEE -- yes, that is a thing -- we were embarking on the beginning of a five-concert journey into awesome. SUMMER.
Saturday's concert, it just so happens, was the legendary Ms. Diana Ross. She sang our favorite songs, we drank about a bottle of wine each and sweated our lips and boobs and asses off dancing like wild women for about an hour and a half, in a PRIMO location if I do say so myself, since I was the one who ran like the wind upon entering the gates, passed everyone lumbering in front of me with coolers and camp chairs, and flung myself onto said location to save it for our enjoyment. It was the least I could do, really, for the Queen of the Divas herself.
(But frankly, just between me, you and my flop sweat, I would totally do it again for every concert, and not just my lover Al Green. For every one of 'em. Because it was a TOTAL rush. Who needs drugs when you can foot race people for the best patch of grass at an outdoor concert?)
Anywho.
At work on Monday we were chatting about Ms. Ross, and someone was sharing that they'd heard tell of her epic bitch-tastic-ness in the backstage area. And you know what? It didn't even phase me. Because she's Diana Effing Ross. She's a legend. She's like 70 years old. She helped invent the girl group. She is responsible for some of the most amazing pop music in the American Songbook. I don't give a flying rat's patoot if she wants only green M&Ms in her dressing room or if you're not supposed to look her directly in the eye because by God, she had about 17 wardrobe changes, and they ALL sparkled, and she sang and I danced and I think all of us pretended, at least for a second, that it was 1966 and we were in the audience of The Ed Sullivan Show, witnessing something that we instinctively knew was history, screaming our teeny bopper lungs out.
Oh y'all. It was awesome.
cheers,
elizabeth
Posts
