They're Playing Our Peacocks

There's a scene in the movie and musical "The Music Man" where, one summer evening, everybody in River City, Iowa gathers in a park for a night of music and socializing.

My night with the Pasadena Pops was sort of like that.  Except I hadn't sunk a lot of dough into purchasing a band uniform.  And, oh, yeah, Professor Harold Hill didn't have to contend with a bunch of peacocks.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Peacocks.

Hang in there.  I will explain.

Okay, first things first, regular visitors here know that I frequent the Hollywood Bowl, which is the great grand daddy of outdoor musical entertainment.  But, in its vastness, the Bowl certainly never invokes a small town feel.  Especially when the slob in front of you is smoking a joint or has gulped down a bottle of Trader Joe's Chardonnay.  Yeah, that never was a scenario presented to Marian the Librarian or Winthrop Paroo. 

The Hollywood Bowl is just plain too freakin' big.

Now I've heard about the Pasadena Pops before.  And I noted about one year ago that they had named the legendary composer Marvin Hamlisch as its conductor this season.

Hmmmm.

When I read that their opening performance this summer would be a reunion of Hamlisch with the stars of my beloved musical "They're Playing Our Song," Lucie Arnaz and Robert Klein, I was immediately hitting Google Maps.  I had already seen this particular concert several years ago in San Diego.  For me, that was a straight line down the 405 Freeway.  This time around, I needed to know.

Just where the hell does the Pasadena Pops play?

Oddly enough, as I would discover, it ain't Pasadena.  I guess that city can't stage anything unless it's New Year's Day and they can glue a petunia to it.  Instead, they have grabbed a venue several towns away in Arcadia.  Conveniently located near the Santa Anita Racetrack.  And the town mall, which is exactly where slobs like us had to park our cars for the performance.

The Pasadena Pops plays at the Los Angeles County Arboretum on a big lawn that reaches across about four zip codes.  There is a smallish band shell and a couple of video screens purchased at Best Buy.  If you're one of the idiots who bought general admission tickets, your view was so far away that Stevie Wonder had a better chance of seeing the show. 

Being the big "They're Playing Our Song" fan that I am, I spared no expense.  We got a table up close and you see our vantage point in the photo above.  We got to sit at a table with some linen and you actually could experience a rather homey feel about the evening. 

Forget the fact that getting to the place is about as easy to solve as the aforementioned Stevie Wonder trying to do a Sudoku puzzle in the morning paper.  If you're not a Pops subscriber, you have to park a mile off-site at a shopping mall and hop aboard a shuttle bus. 

This was a completely unique experience for most of the crowd, which was generally aged 50 to death.  I would say that a lot of them hadn't been on a bus since they were in school, but I'd correct myself when I realized that there were no buses when these people were going to school.  Nevertheless, we all piled onto shuttle vehicles driven by Mexican gardeners looking for some extra pay on this Saturday night.

Once at the Arboretum, you see a lot of signs with the word "peacock" on it.  The Peacock Cafe.  The Peacock Pond.  The Peacock water fountain.  There's a reason for this.

The Arboretum is overloaded with the things.  None of them looking as pleasant and staid as that logo which used to herald all the "in living color" shows on NBC.  They make noise and I didn't see one unfurl its feathers into a rainbow.  

Yep, these peacocks were not only annoying but lazy as well.

We had to walk a distance across some grassy stretches to get to our close-to-the-front table.  I kept looking down at my shoes because I suddenly realized I didn't have some critical information.

Just where and how do peacocks shit?

I didn't want to know.  But I watched every step I made all night.

The Arboretum is quite the nice setting and it did prompt feelings for that intimate summer night in River City, Iowa.  Even though half the crowd was so far away that they might as well have been in Gary, Indiana.  And you got that sense of small town community before the show started.

Some local high school musicians did the pre-show entertainment with some classical pieces.  This is, of course, California, so every single kid was Asian.  A couple of the local politicians then had their moment in the sun, or, in this case, twilight.  The Mayor.  The town Justice of the Peace.  A cashier from Von's Supermarket.  It was their night to sparkle.  A local glee club led us all in the National Anthem, singing the lyrics from their books.  This is, of course, California, so most of the singers were Mexican and that explains why they needed the lyrics printed out for them.

Marvin Hamlisch made his first appearance and appeared humbled to be leading this orchestra.  Or perhaps he was understanding now fully just how far his career has fallen.  From the stages at the Oscars to a field in Arcadia which may or may not feature some patches of peacock crap. 

Meanwhile, Marvin looks to have lost about 100 pounds since I last saw him in San Diego.   Being at the Arboretum would certainly assist with his food control.  The only venues we had for snacks were some food trucks.  Located across a field which may or may not have featured some piles of peacock poo.

All snarkiness aside, the show was terrific.  Hamlisch led the Pops in a medley of 50s television show themes which ended fittingly with a lush rendition of "I Love Lucy."  Robert Klein told some jokes and, as usual, sang all about his last colonoscopy.  Lucie Arnaz slinked and warbled deliciously and concluded with a Spanish tune dedicated to her dad.  The second act was devoted to selections from "They're Playing Our Song" and I was in heaven as always. 

Since this was small town Arcadia, the show wrapped up much earlier than at the Hollywood Bowl.  Lights came on around 10AM and I'm thinking the town's assisted living homes don't like their tenants wandering around out so late on a Saturday night.  We queued up in some lines for the shuttle buses that did stop.  Or sometimes not.  Once the show was over, the volunteer guides hightailed it out of there to make last call at In-N-Out Burger.  The rest of us were left to our devices on how to get back to our cars. 

But, we all did.  And, as I return back to the grandeur of the Hollywood Bowl in a few weeks, I will look back fondly on how my summer entertainment season began.  With intimacy, class, and a little bit of, albeit multi-cultural, Americana.

And I did it all without stepping in any peacock shit.

Dinner last night:  Leftover sausage, beans, and potato salad.


Tomorrow:  From Sultry New York City.