Do It, Rockapella!

Last night TB and I went on over to the Strathmore to witness my 4th ever Rockapella concert. Despite the fact that I've seen the group before, this was a new group to me. The baritone and bass had left the band and been replaced, and this was the first time I'd even heard them with the new members.

I don't handle change very well, so I wasn't being optimistic about the new singers. But I'm happy to say that the concert was amazing, and that they are every bit as awesome as they ever were.

Here are the highlights and lowlights of the evening. Because I like to think of myself as an optimist, I will go through the highlights first.

-I have a new obsession. For the last 15? 16? 17? years I have been constantly professing my undying love for lead/hi tenor Scott Leonard. I think I've mentioned him before. Well, my friends, I have a new love interest. George Baldi. Sigh. He's the new bass. But, in addition to his deep, sexy, melodic voice, he's an AWESOME dancer. Very smooth. Just to give you an idea of how awesome he is, he did a solo while doing the robot. Read that sentence again. He did a low low low bass solo while flawlessly executing the smoothest sexiest robot I've seen in my life.

The first time I saw Rockapella in concert, Sean Altman, Elliott Kerman and Barry Carl were still in the band. It was at Goucher College, and I was maybe 14 or 15 at the time. None of my friends were interested in Rockapella (big surprise) so I begged my mom to make the hour-long trip from Frederick to Towson for me. She had no interest in attending the concert, but since my brother attended Towson University, she agreed to drive me since she could pass the time by nagging my brother. So there I sat, all by myself, in the most awesome seat ever. I was at eye-level with the band, maybe 20 or 30 feet back, dead center. I was wearing a baseball cap, probably backwards, because even then at that early age I was the epitome of high fashion. Elliott caught my eye, and for some bizarre reason I smiled. He smiled back. That was probably one of the most wonderful moments in my life. Because it was natural and genuine. I tried to channel George in this same fashion, but he didn't respond. I'll have to keep working on it.

-My future husband George said these sentences: I had to clench my butt cheeks really hard. I might need 20 or 30 seconds now. Sure he was joking around about reaching high notes, but just the mental image that comment produced alone....

-They closed with Rock the Boat. Which is still stuck in my head today. Actually, this might be a lowlight.

Not-So-Highlights included:

-Some numbskull thought it was appropriate to, not only bring a 2-year old to this concert, but force the poor kid to sit through the entire show without break. The show was 90 minutes straight through (no intermission). I hardly had the attention span for this, and I was occupying myself by drooling over George and imagining what our kids would look like. The poor kid was loud and fidgety. Which made me angry and unsympathetic. I'm a mom, and I can understand that kids aren't always cooperative. But what upset me the most is that, instead of taking this child out to the lobby when he got loud, they just made things even worse by shushing him and indulging in his desire to crawl across the laps of his 3 escorts. And it didn't help that they were just across the aisle from me.

-The Babysitter that wouldn't leave. I like the girl. But by the time we got home, it was late and I just wanted to get to sleep. I need to be at work at 6am. So I'm putzing around the kitchen, trying to get stuff ready for the next morning, and I turn around and she's standing there. She asks for a Pepsi, I assume she wants the caffeine for the ride home, so I give her one. And then she just stands there in front of me, staring at me, and drinks it. I tried to make small talk because let's face it, it was getting awkward. Finally TB came upstairs and I broke free.

-TB and I are putzes. At close to midnight last night, he was looking for his keys and I was looking for my cell phone. He had discovered that he'd misplaced his keys just before we left for the concert. Not wanting to be late, we just took mine, and he picked up the search for them when we got home. I had left my phone at home for the concert (which NEVER happens), and I had picked it up when we got back to look at my text messages and set my alarm for the next morning. Then put it down somewhere and couldn't remember where it was.

So both of us numbnuts are trying to quietly ransack the house looking for our keys and phone. I'm not sure where he found his keys, but my phone had been placed on a bag of marshmallows on the kitchen counter. Makes sense, right?