If You Know What I Mean

Friday was a classic rainy August day: angry bursts of torrential downpours, followed by periods of sunshine and heavy, humid clouds without rain. It was during one of these resting periods that the Smelmooo and I began our walk to the train station, the first leg of our journey to see Neil Diamond in concert at Madison Square Garden. And it was during this walk that the weather abruptly shifted into the "downpour" cycle, and we were -- despite our hooded, waterproof (or, in my case, "waterproof") windbreakers -- fairly soaked by the time we reached the NJ Transit platform in town. On the bright side, though, we arrived just in time to hop on the train, so we didn't have to wait outside any longer.

We were cold and wet and cramped and tired (Tucker was all out of whack after his surgery, and kept getting up in the middle of the night, which wreaked some serious havoc on my REM sleep)on the train ride in, which took nearly an hour (it was rush hour on a Friday, and the train made every blessed stop between Metuchen and NYC). And an hour later, we were still pretty much soaking wet when we arrived at NYC's Penn Station.

Not wanting to risk any more rain, or to try to find a decent restaurant that wasn't too far away, we decided to have dinner at the Houlihan's in the train station (we discovered only later that there's a less chainy bar and grill on the other side of the station, right next to the Krispy Kreme, which probably would've been a better choice, but Houlihan's it was). We had the sort of an unremarkable dinner we expected, but noticed that a good number of Neil Diamond fans were also dining at Houlihan's, and when the jukebox started up with Sweet Caroline, there were lots of heads bopping all over the restaurant, and when I went to the restroom I noticed an awful lot of sequined shirts, American flag shirts, and Diamond Girl shirts like mine (on women and girls of all ages, shapes and sizes, which I guess is kind of fun, but also made me worry that I'm really too old to be wearing it, but I kind of don't care, because it's a really fun shirt, with pink letters and faux sequins).

Anyway, after Houlihan's and Krispy Kreme, we headed up to the Garden and made our way to our floor seats. You heard me: floor seats. Smelmooo had gotten our tickets, and he wouldn't let me see them ahead of time, so I had no idea how close we were. There were tuxedoed servers with champagne and strawberries in our fancy section, which I thought was very exciting, and most of the people around us appeared to be true Neil fans, which is always fun.

We were in the middle of a row, which was excellent both in terms of lines of vision and in not getting knocked around as people came and went, although when the couple next to us took their seats, the woman knocked into me and spilled her beer on my sandals, and then apologized profusely, which I've never experienced at any sort of concert. We need floor seats more often.

So the show began, a little late but not obscenely so, and Neil was accompanied by like 13 other people onstage (liars called it a "solo performance" before he came on stage, but I think they were trying to establish that there wouldn't be an opening act, but still). The beer-spilling chick and her date didn't get out of their seats once, until Sweet Caroline, and then they left immediately and never came back. So much for the diehards in the floor seats.

It was a good show -- I wish he'd played Heartlight and Solitary Man, but otherwise, he hit all my favorites -- but I couldn't help thinking that Neil's losing his edge. My mother-in-law -- who saw his show last week in Philadelphia -- said that he sometimes just can't quite hit those special notes that were once his signatures, and that's probably part of it, but I also felt like he was phoning his performance in a little bit. He hit all the schmaltzy bits -- my least favorite parts -- on You Don't Bring me Flowers and such, and he did a fun bit with Red, Red Wine, thanking UB40 for changing it up and allowing him to revel in the royalties, but overall he was not at his best. He seemed a little...old, and off. He did a funny rendition of Forever in Blue Jeans -- my very favorite Neil song, and the first song the Smelmooo and I danced to at our wedding -- and it was frustrating not to be able to sing along properly.

But Neil is like what other people say about pizza -- even when it's bad, it's good (although I don't agree with those people, who clearly have never eaten a beer-battered pizza topped with corn and chicken that's been sitting under a heatlamp at a take-away restaurant in rural England). And even though Neil wasn't in top form, he still put on a darn good show. He has that totally arrogant star quality, tempered just a smidge by the "I'm just a guy from New York" thing that comes out so beautifully in I Am, I Said.

So I shuffled out of the concert hoarse and smiling, happy to have had a fun date with my husband and to have seen a good show, and to be going home to our puppy and our bed. Good times never seemed so good.