A Cool Summer Night

Every summer here in LA, it's all about me going to the Hollywood Bowl on a Saturday night. Sometimes, the desire to simply go there supercedes whatever talent is performing.

Which is my roundabout way to explain how I wound up at a Donna Summer concert last Saturday night. Oh, don't get me wrong. I have an extremely guilty pleasure when it comes to disco music. I actually like some of the stuff and it all instantly time-transports me back to another era. Qiana shirts. Puka shells. Doubleknit slacks with a slight flair at the bottom. I bought into seeing the Queen of the Discos a lot quicker than I thought I would.

And so did almost 17,000 other frenzied people. In all my years of attending the Bowl, I have never seen as much wild mayhem as I did last weekend. The crowd eclipsed multiple age groups. But, by and large, it was mostly a throng in their 40s. All climbing on board an express to the village of Remember When. Certainly, it was the most animated bunch of concertgoers I've seen there. There wasn't a cello in the house. And nobody cared.

Beyond the music, the Bowl has always offered to me a wonderful outlet for people watching. My Saturday compatriot, the illustrious Djinn from the Bronx, commented that complete strangers always seem to be motivated to engage in conversation at the Bowl. And the Donna Summer evening was no different. Take, for instance, the Black woman behind us. She was fulfilling a dream by finally seeing Donna in concert. She also felt compelled to discuss the two times she has been ditched at the altar. And the fact that she just knows Mr. Right is still lurking around the corner. The woman sitting next to me kept offering some of her picnic food, which I kept declining. Mainly because the roasted red pepper hummus she was pushing looked like bathroom grout. The gay guy behind me kept talking to a friend about celebrity sightings. He mentioned that he used to experience a lot of them when he "was involved in a retail situation." I wanted to turn around and translate.

"You mean when you were working as a cashier at Macy's?"

Then, there were the four blonde bimbettes in the row ahead of me. It didn't take long for me to calculate that their collective IQ was pretty much less than the Dodgers' Andruw Jones' .160 batting average. Their mental incapacity was further enhanced by liters and liters of liquor. This was Sex and the City if it were set on skid row. Just as the lights dimmed for the show to begin, I felt something grabbing my foot. One of the platinum pinheads turned back to me.

"I'm shlearching for my purshe."

I yanked myself back. "That's my sneaker you've got."

"Oh, shlorry." She retreated to whatever alcohol haze was forming around her cranium.

I have been to shows or concerts where there is a predominance of gay men. This night would be the gayest of the gay. Not only would it be a good night for burglars to hit West Hollywood, thieves could have absconded with the whole city and nobody would have noticed. Or probably cared. Djinn from the Bronx lamented one more time why gay men are always so good looking. I countered that this is probably God's great practical joke on women. At the same time, given the fortyish age of all the gay guys around us, I couldn't help but think in wonderment. All these men actually lived through the 80s.

It did not take long for Donna Summer to turn the Bowl into a riot at Attica. Lights were flashing. Arms were waving. People were dancing. Drinks were spilling. Joints were lit. If somebody had told me that Jimmy Carter was back living in the White House, I would have believed them. The women with the hardware store dip got into a fight with the four drunken sluts and that had the promise to be quite an addendum to the evening. But, for the most part, Donna singing the hits turned out to be the ultimate diversion for everybody.

Miss Summer, at the age of 60, still looks like she can bring it, although, from certain angles, she resembles a drag queen doing Donna Summer. Of course, as is the norm for any concert, you do hear those four dreaded words.

"From my new album."

The automatic signal that the next fifteen minutes will be spent listening to something you haven't heard before. Or want to hear again. A great opportunity for folks to remember where they were originally seated and who they came with. But, those lapses of tedium were not long and, before long, Donna was back to the hits. People were back on their feet. Arms were waving. People were dancing. Drinks were spilling. Joints were lit.

At first, it was a little disconcerting to notice that people kept talking during Donna's songs. But, then I realized that's actually how folks used to hear her music. Played as background in some club. With a drink in your hand. And wondering just who you were going to be either on top of or under later in the night. Nothing diverted from that tired and true disco tradition at the Bowl on Saturday night.

Naturally, Donna Summer closed with "Last Dance" and the entire place rocked one more time. You can see a little snippet of the hysteria here.

With the show over, everybody staggered back to their cars and 2008. And, in most cases, somewhat reluctantly.

Most surprisingly, I was one of them.

Dinner last night: Pepperoni sandwich and salad.