Nea Fane – Un Biet Român Pripășit în America / A Hapless Romanian Stuck in The US

Initially Published (and misplaced) in 2010

The concert started at 7:30 PM with a 40-minute opening act featuring an Argentinean guy on acoustic guitar and an Argentinean woman with a flute and a decent voice. It was nice, but it put me in a sleepy mood. By 8 PM, I was pretty much out, temporarily aroused only by the intermission. Whatever.

Finally, at 8:30 PM, Diana Krall took the stage. She got right down to business, making fun of the many saguaros and other prickly plants in Phoenix (to prove, I guess, she actually knew where she was performing), sharing stories about her two sons, and making some absolutely unnecessary remarks about how hot it was outside. Thanks for the reminder! At that point, I fell asleep again while my son shyly made out with his girlfriend (!), and, two rows in front of us, a couple of middle-aged ladies were really, shall we say, hitting it off, aided by the music and a couple of giant beer buckets (or whatever was in those containers).

I could feel my son’s dilemma: should he simply be embarrassed by his loudly snoring father (think chainsaw) or risk being possibly even more embarrassed by me seeing him make out with his girl. Eventually, he chose the former, I think, because, throughout the concert, I felt a sharp, familiar, elbow jabbing my ribs, jolting me awake from time to time. I decided to show him mercy and so I woke up completely by 9:45 PM, while the singing goddess was making her last jokes about sun and cacti, and the two ladies in front were, in a sense, all over each other.

Suddenly, they decided to leave, which (for reasons we needn’t go into) left me frustrated. I shifted my attention to my nephew, who had been asleep since the very moment he sat down, missing all the good stuff, and to my son, who was skillfully making origami out of the concert tickets. By 10:05 PM, the concert was over, encore and all. Summoning my last shreds of energy, I drove the girl home, then gratefully continued my sleep (in my own bed this time) secretly envying the middle-aged women sitting only two rows in front of us.