Saturday review

We had a very busy Saturday this past weekend.

We had bought tickets a few months ago to two Birmingham Broadway shows this season: "Ain't Misbehavin'" and "Wicked". We used to buy Season tickets each year but realized the shows just weren't good enough to earn that much of an expense from our family budget. I enjoyed most of the shows over the years but really just enjoyed having the tickets because it forced us to make plans for a babysitter and "go out." That rarely happens anymore unfortunately. Having two kids will do that to you.

Anyway, this weekend we saw "Ain't Misbahavin". Anytime we go to these shows it's an adventure. We typically take our boys to my parents house in Woodstock, AL which means us leaving early enough to get them there (75 minute drive) then back to Birmingham for the show (45 minute drive.) This time we had a stop or two we needed to make enroute so we left our house at 10AM to go to a 2pm show. How crazy is that.
We got the boys dropped off , got to the show with plenty of time to spare and sat down to watch . That's when my disappointment set in.

I bought these tickets expecting a broadway musical. I knew it starred Ruben Studdard and Frenchie Davis from American Idol and had an idea it was mostly music from the 20's and 30's. When I sat and started looking through the playbill I saw that there were only 5 cast members. And their character names weren't very creative. Ruben was played by Ruben. Frenchie was played by Frenchie, etc. Uh Oh! looks like this will be a 2 hour concert. And that's exactly what it turned out to be. 2 hrs of singing and dancing music from the depression era. Every song was written by Fats Waller. To give you an idea... here's one of them that Ruben did. This is an original "Fats Waller" performance.


I will say, those singers and band members were really good. So the performances were good. But I really didn't care to hear 2 hours of that kind of music.

As we left I saw that a bunch of church youth groups were arriving at the Civic Center.
I remembered that "Winter Jam" was happening that night. Now, I realized a long time ago that my Winter Jam days were over. I think I would have spent much of the night saying "who are these guys?" what are they singing? I can't understand the words".
But I think in this case, i would have rather been going there than having gone to see Ruben.

So, then we headed to eat, Red Lobster. I've got a whole very long story I could write about Red Lobster but I won't. I'll just say their lack of customer service did not surprise me.

One we got back to Woodstock, picked up the boys, and got them home it was 9pm, time for bath and bedtime. Whew! What a long day.

If we're lucky maybe things will be less hectic when we see "Wicked" in April, but I doubt it.