Throwback, um, Friday.

Last night, among other things discussed at the New Year's Party hosted by my estimable Editor (who has a book out,by the bye) and her husband, a gourmet but even better, a great friend, we talked about Rent. When the play first premiered, I was working at a firm that, inter alia, did entertainment law, and one of the attorneys had been a friend of Jonathan Larson's, who was devastated by his death, so I heard about that loss from someone directly impacted before I had seen the play.

An old friend, from the firm I had been a summer associate at, and who had gone off to a better life as a court attorney, called me up, and invited me to join him--his date had become unavailable. So I bought dinner, and he provided the ticket, and Jonathan Larson pretty much blew me away, in a score and lyrics that raised some questions I had to answer for myself, while entertaining the hell out of me. I ended up seeing it twice more--another friend with spare tickets, and a third who wanted to see it but needed a theater buddy.

Why do I mention this show, and my possibly naive attachment to it?

Well, one of my banner New Year's Eves was when 1999 turned to 2000, when, after a magnificent feast at Platforma Churrascaria, only a block or two from an old college friend's apartment, where he and I and most of our old suite-mates met up again for NYE dinner and party, my old friend and I went out on the balcony and serenaded the crowd at full volume, with a favorite from Rent. My friend, by far the better singer, did Roger's part; I was passable as Mark. Here's the song we butchered:



The crowd was, to put it mildly, confused. But we had enjoyed ourselves.

Sometimes I think that I may resemble the remark C.P. Snow gives Charles March in The Sleep of Reason; I may be (I hope I am!) more decent as I grow older, but I suspect I'm nothing like as much fun.