lovin' chicago

many props to andrew mugica.

he and i caught up for a bit yesterday afternoon, and he told me a thing or two about the awesome city that is chicago.  i told him that i'd have friday afternoon free.  and two of his initial recommendations were gino's east and the water tower.  first, gino's east.

naturally, you've gotta have real deep dish while you're in chicago.  andrew recommended gino's east at ontario and wells.  and boy, he's never been more right in his life.  lunch special of a mini deep dish sausage pizza, salad, coke...7 bucks.  can't beat that, and it was probably the best pizza i've had in my life.  to put icing on the cake, my waitress was super-cute and super-sweet.  i told her i was with dreamgirls, and she said that she was considering taking one of her best girlfriends to see it as an early birthday present (our last chicago show is sun, jan 31).  unbelievably, her friend was born on feb 2, 1984 - my exact date of birth.  so i'll see if i can get angie and her friend discounted tickets.  needless to say, i'll definitely be going back to gino's east.  and not just for the pizza...

i'm staying at one of the 14 club quarters hotels that exist in the world, on east wacker drive between wabash and michigan.  right across the street lies the no-longer frozen chicago river and just on the other side of the river across michigan ave stretches the magnificent mile, which is much like 5th ave in midtown manhattan - a shopper's paradise.  well, about midway the mile lies the old chicago water tower - one of the only structures to survive the "mrs. o'leary's cow, 1871" fire.  sorry, slipped into quiz bowl mode for a second there.  the structure itself isn't particularly impressive but when you factor in its surroundings, it really chills you to the bone.  or maybe that's the biting chicago wind.  with so much grand skyscrapers all around, this tiny little building seems to stand taller than them all.  it's a very symbolic structure that represents how far the city has come in the past 14 decades.

as for the show, it's going well so far in chicago.  we've had our best overall band yet, and the show has had a few hilarious glitches.  during one show, the click track didn't start when the button was deployed, which meant that we didn't have recorded vocals for one of the radio scenes.  yikes.  during another show, one of the three roll drops did not come down with the other two, leaving parts of backstage exposed for a couple of minutes while workers frantically tried to get it down.  i would tell you the third thing, but it involves revealing something about the show that i don't want to reveal to those who haven't seen it yet.  suffice it to say that it was a minor glitch that was solved quickly and afterwards, we all had a good laugh about it.  ah, gotta love live theater.

well, my featured moment comes within the next 24 hours.  and then again next saturday afternoon.  for the first time since new york, i'll be conducting.  one huge difference though.  there was no pit in the apollo, so the non-rhythm section was upstairs playing on the third floor.  the third floor will be a lot different than being two feet from the front row in the pit.  i'm super excited about tomorrow...and super nervous.  at least back in new york, the guy who subbed for me was our original key 2 player.  so at least he knew the show quite well - you know, cue lines, the flow of the dialogue, etc.  and i'm not trying to call anybody out...but even he made a fair amount of mistakes.  so what is the sub here in chicago going to do?  he sat beside me during our 5-hour orchestra rehearsal on tuesday, will rehearse with sam and i tonight for an hour and watch the show live, then play it tomorrow!  unreal.  i already know he will mess up.  it's just a matter of how often.  hopefully, things'll go better than expected.  speaking of which, i need to shower and get to the theatre for said rehearsal now...