Diva Dish - Brea, CA

There are three different ways I can start this entry. They are as follows:

• Tell you about the weirdness of living in close proximity to Los Angeles (but not IN Los Angeles as I’ve tried to stress to people before) and therefore having encounters with more-than-NOT-famous people…
  
• …or tell you about how growing up I used to be in a bunch of plays, both junior high and high school…
  
• ...or the anecdote in which I mention how all my friends out here are older than me, that after I wrote it out, wasn’t even amusing enough to warrant a ‘hmmmm’.

But I'm not going to. Actually, I had written up 3 more very thought provoking bullet points of why I wasn't going to start with those things, but my hand did some weird force of nature twisty-bendy thing on the keyboard and I lost those thoughts forever. Don't worry, any bullet point that mentioned Harry Anderson from Night Court isn't worth re-typing.

So where does that leave us? It’s basically an entry without a beginning. Well there you go. This is what happens when I start to slack in my regular writing.

On Sunday afternoon (notice, I’m just going straight to the middle part) I went on Orange Country Register’s website, looked up events for that day that were less than 30 miles from my house, and decided that I would go to Brea to see a one man comedy tribute show to his mother called Diva Dish.

The website describes the show (in case you don’t feel like clicking that link and watching the little video) as:

• Most people only get to see Hollywood stars on screen. Luke Yankee got to see them up close.
  
  As the son of Academy Award® winning actress Eileen Heckart, Luke Yankee got up close and personal with some of the biggest stars the world has ever known. This live, multimedia event is like a fabulous party with the biggest stars from Broadway and Hollywood.

It sounded fairly interesting and admittedly I haven’t seen a play in about 10 years so I figured why not. As well, I’ve never been to Brea (as it’s “inland”) so there was that too.

I ended up leaving the house an hour early so I could go grab something to eat before the show. I ended up going to the Cheesecake Factory. I’m telling you this so you don’t make the mistake of going to the Cheesecake Factory in Brea, CA on a Sunday afternoon and order the soup\salad\half sandwich plate. The salad was limp, the soup lukewarm, and the sandwich bread so tough it cut the roof of my mouth. I went ahead and ordered the cheesecake, because you know…the CHEESECAKE Factory…but found that it was frozen solid. I should have complained, but I didn’t. Instead I’m just going to pan the place on the internet for all the world to see.

Don't eat here please.

I didn’t have too much time after lunch to make it to my show, but thankfully the Brea Civic Center was practically in the same parking lot as the mall (and hence, the Cheesecake Factory).


This next picture has nothing what-so-ever to do with this entry, but if you click on it to blow it up, you can see one of the many reasons why I love California in winter. Palm trees with a backdrop of snowy mountain tops. Oh yeeeah. Because I know my dear friends and family in Wisconsin have been dealing with relentless snow (15 inches on Wednesday indeed!) and bone chilling cold (-7 this morning when I looked) I honestly (I do, I swear!) feel bad in mentioning the 80 degree heat wave we’ve had here the last few days. But it has been beautiful and it makes the sting of paying over double in rent to my WI counterparts a bit more bearable.

Wish you were here. No really, I do.

So yeah, the show….I don’t think I have to mention that I was the youngest person there by a fairly long shot. As well, I didn’t know the layout of the theatre and ended up getting a seat in the 2nd row on the aisle. The theatre was small enough that the 2nd row might as well have been ‘on stage’. Most of the show was rather entertaining (I really wish you’d click that link and watch the video because me trying to relate one of the stories isn’t going to cut it) but there were….a couple singing numbers. If you know me at all you have to know how much I hate musicals. And when the man started singing, because I was practically on stage, sometimes he would be looking RIGHT AT ME. Of course I was trying my best not to grimace (I really really HATE musicals) so I kept having to look away and stare at the floor. Which made my neck hurt. I can’t exactly go around panning (I like that word today) a show about a man’s dead mother can I? I’m not the devil you know. I liked the ‘dish’ about Marilyn Monroe. I liked the ‘dish’ on Lucille Ball. I liked the ‘dish’ on Ethel Merman. I hated the singing. I hated the ‘doing the last scene of some play with my dead mother’ with the use of modern technology. But since most of it was funny stories, it was good enough for me to sit through it all. I’d give it a solid 6 out of 10. Maybe a 7 if I was sitting farther back.

A very illegal photo I took of the stage I was practically sitting on.

I think I’m going to start a website called ‘Ban the Music in Musicals’. Anyone with me?