-Upper Middle-Class Sandwich

Sheryl and I had a lovely evening last Friday night: We'd purchased tickets for the opera some two months ago, and prior to the event, we stopped for dinner at a trendy (new) sushi/steak restaurant just down the way from our house. The restaurant is on the fringes of the incredibly crowded/popular retail/restaurant district that sprang from the ashes of a dead mall some four years ago. Capitalism, yay!

It was atmosphere squared: carefully orchestrated and colored down to the alternating accent lights and aluminum-clad menus. "All about the atmosphere," Sheryl said, and right she was. It was like this: name tags/black clothing on all staff members, fake breasts all around (I usually don't notice, really), divorced father(s) treating poorly-behaved kids to dinner, many Raz-r phones (sp?), young power couples (us? no!!), fawning maitre-de (Donnie is the spelling, says the name tag, much hair gel), insistent service (turn, baby, turn) and unreasonably high prices: Four rolls, one app and a beer--fifty dollars, please. We'd tried to visit the week before, but couldn't weather the 45 minute wait. Good thing the opera was early, I guess. We'd parked right out front, perhaps to valet chagrin (I personally won't pay, even tips, any time of day, for such a service, how foolish it is).

Having eaten, we repaired to the opera house--really just a rehab-ed water treatment plant now pressed into service for both opera and ballet in our city--so as to be in time to see The Marriage of Figaro. The crowd was generally younger than I expected, not that I had any right to expect anything--Who goes to see opera, really, especially when plastic chairs are involved? Still, the musicians (2 violin, 1 viola, 1 cello and pianist) and singers (look it up, about nine characters) pleased me.

A friend on staff told us afterward that none of the singers understand Italian, but they sold it--even without supertitles, the blocking and facial expressions were really rather well done. We sat in row four or five, close enough to the musicians that each sharp intake of breath by pianist/conductor punctuating transitions was distinct. All I can say about the characters is that they have just about as much depth as Archie and Veronica. Comic opera, the "Three's Company" of its time? So it seems! A girl behind us ate fruit cookies from cellophane wrapping during all acts of the performance, no matter how many times we 45-degree'd our heads with taut lips.

We met a friend of Sheryl's leaving the performance. He'd been the person responsible for the supertitles (powerpoint was the medium), letting us single-languagers in on the meaning of the words being sung. With all of the feigned identities and subtle class distinctions, it probably would have been pretty difficult to do without those words in English. He'd led us to his office in order to give Sheryl a card with his e-mail address. We chatted briefly in the office before a patron knocked and stopped in, with an apology for the interruption.

This woman asked if a call to the authorities was in order: Her car, and those of several other opera patrons, had been broken into during the performance. We exited quickly as our friend sprang into action to help the woman and other victims deal with the evening's unfortunate outcome.

We left him to his devices, and walked quickly to our car to determine if we were among the victims (we were not). I felt special and serious, chatting with an opera worker about the rudeness of patrons opening candies during performances and the cluelessness of the benevolent but vacuous seniors ("I am a huge supporter of the arts but I have no idea what I am looking at as I open my butterscotch hard candy") in attendance.

So the car thefts--that's just one piece of bread in our sandwich--call it the heel piece of bread from loaf's end--sort of half-assed and inconsequential, but enough to keep the sandwich from falling into one's lap. Driving to Wazzabi (I know) before the opera, we had to eat the butter-topped heart of the loaf: Moments after exiting our driveway, as we coasted into the first stop sign, before us, perhaps 25 feet away, we saw a car in our lane stopped in the middle of the street.

Standing next to the car, pacing and gesticulating wildly, a man pulled a gun and menaced the homeowners in the house next to the church parking lot ( I use the term "church" loosely: It looks like a converted house with a sign out front and some space on its side lawn for parking--not that you could get away with that in most neighborhoods, who knows why it's okay here (I am being PC)).

He saw us, that gunman, and when he did, he jumped into his car and drove on. We were close enough that Sheryl was able to request that we follow to get the license number. We did not. A hundred yards away, the shooter (having stopped for the red light--conditioning is king!) turned right on the red light and escaped us. We let him go to Sheryl's chagrin, only to see a cop car moments later. We yelled our observations from the window and he waved us over to talk. After we wrote out our statements with his gold Cross pen, he shook our hands and thanked us.

Tell me, which is more important, the celebration of Mozart's birthday, or the shooting of my neighbor a few blocks away? Should I feel safer at home, or in the company of strangers attracted to comic-book corn-pone musical theater hundreds of years old (I really do enjoy the music!)? We move through the world and it moves through us.

With the blood and broken glass I am surrounded by scumbags--The music tells me transcendence is possible.

Sing me a taste of tomorrow.