Apr 6 2002

Yesterday, Destiny and I dragged ourselves from bed in the earliest hours of the morning. Our destination was the Fargo Theatre, for a live performance of MPR's Morning Show. I've been listening to the show since the 1980s, and Destiny has heard it pretty much every morning of her life. I couldn't pass up the opportunity to see them live, and Des has never been to the Fargo Theatre, so everything sorta came together at once.

The performance began at 6am - usually that's the moment where my alarm engages, at which time I instinctively turn it off and return to bed for 10 minutes. We were sitting in the third row, house left, directly in front of Dale & Jim Ed's stools. Des didn't quite know what to think; large groups of people are overwhelming for her, but she did fine once the show got moving. I expected that Destiny would last only an hour or so, at the most, but she wanted to stay the entire 3 hours that were broadcast.

Part of her reason for staying started when a woman sat down at the end of our row, two seats away. I looked at her, doubted myself, then looked again: it was A∴ B∴, entertainment writer for the Fargo Forum. Once, she had interviewed me for a piece she did on local websites, and we've exchanged emails in the past, but I'd never met her in person. I recognized her from the photo in her newspaper column, and when I introduced Des & myself she commented that she recognized us from our websites (different media, same outcome). She took a few quotes from us during a news-break, and I thought that was that. Destiny wanted to move up to the balcony, and as we were packing our stuff she turned to Ms. B∴ and said, "you can come with us!" Destiny took quite a shine to her; A∴ ended up being more entertaining than the MPR performance :) She let Des doodle on her notes from last week's n*sync concert, and we got to bring a few sketches home. I must've made an impression as well. Later that day I asked Andrea if she'd like to go out to dinner or a movie, and she accepted (she reads this site, so I probably need to watch what I type :) Destiny's high point occurred as we were leaving. A∴ had gone backstage to get some interviews, and as we were putting on our coats she had walked out onstage. I said "Des, look," at which point A∴ waved. Des waved back as everyone onstage turned to see who Andrea was waving to. Another cute comment: Andrea emailed me to say that, as she was going backstage, someone asked if that cute little girl she was sitting with was her daughter. If only Destiny were more comfortable with crowds, she could easily be an entertainment force unto herself! She certainly draws attention.

But, back to the show -- Peter Ostroushko was wonderful; his name is tossed around a lot in the Minneapolis music scene, and he's been around the entire music industry, with good reason. Becky Schlegel, whose music isn't really my style, impressed me. Her music is reminicent of Jewel, but with a more country twist. My ears defined her sound as "folk," the lone singer/songwriter with her guitar, but she has a level of talent exceeding that of the "poets-with three-chords" which weighs down most folk collections. Bluegrass is probably the best defininition, given by her website. The Hard Bop Saxophone Quartet, a local collection of music teachers with saxophones, prompted this question from Destiny: "What's a quartet?" These Hard Boppers performed a couple songs, and helped out Jim Ed with a comedy segment. There was a flautist and another stringed-instrumentist, too. All together, the live performers put on a great show.

Boy, this is getting long -- anyways, Dale Connelly & Jim Ed Poole did their usual schtick. The focal performance was the stunt of Nephew Thomas, pulling down a flying helicopter to the stage floor. Silliness abounded (Peter Ostroushko played the helicopter pilot), but Nephew succeeded in the end. I enjoyed the performances, Destiny had fun, we got quoted in the paper, and I met A∴ B∴ finally -- all in the first three hours of the day!