Dolly

I cannot even begin to tell you how great the Dolly Parton concert was last night. She is incredible. At 62 she looks as good as she did 40 years ago. And she brought her a-game last night. She sang some of her best songs. Including 2 doors down, coat of many colors, and why'd you come in here looking like that. (I love the line"... with your cowboy boots and your painted on jeans, all dressed up like a cowgirl's dream...") We had excellent seats. I had a perfect view of her.
One unfortunate thing was that I could see the teleprompter that was running the lyrics for her during the songs. Now, first of all she did not appear to use them very much. Second she has a huge songbook so I don't expect her to remember every lyric perfectly to every song. But the problem was that I kept finding myself watching the lyrics scroll by instead of the concert. It is a problem that I have, if a TV is on whether I want to watch what is going on or not I cannot help but look at it. The teleprompter was no exception.
She did an hour and then took an intermission and came back and did another 45 minutes. At the end of the first hour when she said she was going to take a break, I couldn't believe it had only been one hour. She had already sung so much. It was so exciting to think about what she might sing when she came back.

She would have sung at least one song more, but because the venue is an outdoor amphitheater there was a 10 o'clock curfew. I read in a blog today that she had been singing "the grass is blue" while accompanying herself on the piano at her other shows. She took that one out. Which was unfortunate because I love that song. But she did "Little Sparrow" acapella and she sang the hell out of that song.

Seriously, I loved it. I couldn't wipe the silly grin off my face all night. She was so, so, so good!!!!! I saw her a few years ago and I think this might have been an even better concert.

She did not seemed to phased at all at her academy award loss a few years ago for "Travelin' Thru" from the movie Transamerica. Although she could be holding it all in--like I am. I mean it was the same year the Brokeback Mountain lost for best picture--that I could live with but Dolly losing to that "Hard Out Here for a Pimp" song was a travesty. I still haven't recovered. But apparently she is moving on. Maybe that is why she wrote the "Better Get to Livin'" song. She is moving on from the disappointment. And maybe I should too, but I'm just not ready.

Oh a few other things about the concert. A woman apparently took off her shirt and tried to give it to Dolly. That was weird. There were lots of people who had brought flowers. People were smoking pot. Now this isn't all that weird in Berkeley but I thought it was a bit weird at the Dolly Parton concert. But there were clearly a lot of people smoking because the smell was really strong. She even mentioned it when she came back after intermission. She said "I'm feeling really good now. Something is just in the air."

And finally I went with some pretty annoying folks. My friend Lee and his boyfriend Kurt and I went together but we met up with their friends Jay and Travis before the concert for dinner and then Jay drove us all to the show. It was very nice of Jay to drive us, so I feel a little bad to complain. But I'm going to. They are both going to be in some drag show this weekend. It is a long story--they are normally drag performers, but are performing this week. Travis is a former Mr. San Francisco Leather and Jay was his handler after the pageant for the National Pageant. (It would take too long to explain this to you and I think it is pretty ridiculous.) Anyway seriously all they talked about all night was their upcoming drag performance, what they were wearing, what they were performing, etc. etc. They are both doing 3 numbers plus they have an outfit for their arrival. You heard me right they have an arrival outfit. They are having a formal arrival. Oh and they wouldn't tell us what they were performing because they wanted it to be a surprise. Is the art of surprise really that important to drag? Honestly, I am not exaggerating when I say they talked about it almost the entire evening. And they kept dropping names that I'm guessing I was supposed to know. Ridiculous. Fortunately they did not sit next to us. Had I spent the whole night with them I someone would have ended up dead. I'm not sure which one of us, but one of us for sure.

Alright, enough. To recap: Dolly fantastic!!! Pseudo-Drag queens annoying!!