Kyle Kunzer turns 12

The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart

Last night, we saw "The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart."  It was one of the more intriguing, enjoyable and innovative things we've seen in a long while.

For starters, the play takes place in a bar -- an actual bar.  In this case the Bier Baron on 22nd street.  For another, the actors wander throughout the bar as the play goes on and engage the audience in participation.  Katy got a nice warm hug from one of the actors (the fellow in purple above) and had another actor (the fellow on the left) strip and throw his shirt to her.  Indeed, the play started when one of the actors said the word "snow" and all of the audience threw ripped up napkins.

Describing it that way makes it seem a bit weird ... and we suppose it was.  But the weirdness really reflected the mystical nature of the show.  It takes place in the border region of Scotland and the underlying theme is all about the mystical ballads and stories from that region.  Prudencia is an ethnographer who studies the ballads and to her surprise gets caught up in one story that seems to come to life.

The play is a joyous mix of music, laughter and fun.  It really reminded us of nothing so much as a fun night out with friends -- except this time it was 60 strangers we'd never met.  Yet by the end of the night, the play had the entire audience singing along and waving their hands in the air.

The Shakespeare Theater is hosting the production, but it is only here in DC until December 9th.  Buy tickets quick and go see this play.

Bruuuuuuuuuuuce!

We were fortunate enough to go see Bruce Springsteen last night with some friends.  The show was pretty amazing.  He played for 3:45 hours without a break.  The last set of encores lasted more than 45 minutes and finished with "Twist and Shout."  Along the way we had lots of music from his newer albums, including Wrecking Ball and Rise Up, all of which have a kind of almost evangelical, preacher quality, but in the end he went back to his roots and played the old hard rock classics -- Badlands, Thunder Road and, of course, Born to Run.

Here's a photo from our seats -- note the light pole that gave us an obstructed view:

And here is a very poor quality video of a number at the end when the lights came up.  If you can't tell, it is Devil With the Blue Dress:

Chicago -- A View From Our Hotel

My Family at the Beach.

Every year we go to Hatteras for a family vacation.  This year we had two weeks at the beach.  Mike and Debbie Kunzer were there the whole time with their four boys (until Aaron went off to college) and the first week we were joined by the Blenner clan.

The second week, the Blenners left, but Dinis Camara (Debbie's brother) and his family came down to join us.

For us, however, the best part of the vacation may have been celebrating our 19th anniversary together.  Here we are en route to our dinner alone:

Surprising Salt Lake City

I'm here in Salt Lake City for the Junior World Rugby Trophy event and to take a class.  Last time I was in SLC (admittedly many years ago) the city was almost dry.  To buy a drink you had to "join" a club at the restaurant.

It still looks the same.  Picture perfect streets.  Well manicured lawns.  The big Mormon temple at the top of the city (that's it next door).  But some things have really changed.

Even though we are staying at a hotel just two blocks from Temple Square, when we went out last night we ran in, seemingly at random, to the big counter culture scene.  We stopped at a tapas bar called Eva where the gazpacho was made firey hot by the addition of jalepno and the sangria was definitely high octane.  The three of us, all in our 50s, were definitely the oldest in the room by a good 20 years.  It was 9 PM on a Thursday and the place was packed.  All of our waitresses had more tattoos than I had seen anywhere in Washington DC.  In short, this place looked and felt like Greenwich Village in New York.  Quite surprising.

And then, on the way home we walked into, of all places, a piano bar.  The two piano players were covering lots of 70s and 80s songs -- some well (New York State of Mind) and some incredibly badly (Meatloaf's Paradise by the Dashboard Light) but, again, just to find that place in SLC was really surprising.

I guess the place has changed!

Bobbie's 85th

We gathered today to celebrate Bobbie Rosenzweig's 85th birthday.  Here is a photo of the birthday girl, blowing out her candles and below is a photo of the 4 cousins -- Paul, his brother Jim, and cousin's Rick and Scott.

We were joined by most of the Frishman family, most of the Kunzers, and Bobbie's old friends Rube and Joan Miller.  A joyous time was had by all.