A Witch, A Bitch and Living on Eighty Cents

Below are some photos from a gala this past Friday that honored one of the owners of the Fox Theatre and featured a performance of Wicked. In case you're not a gay, or could give a shit about show tunes, Wicked is the musical about the Land of Oz, told from the Wicked Witch of the West's perspective.

I provided some graphic design assistance to the event planners and scored a couple of tickets to the event in exchange -- which was a pretty fair trade, as far as I was concerned -- the tickets started at $1,000/person. The usual suspects were there: the mayor, a former mayor, a bevy of socialites, the usual hangers-on and the captains of industry. Oh! And me....and an Angry Black Bitch. I dunno if I felt outta place or right at home....or maybe both, at the same time. Oh, Toto, indeed!

The event started off with a sassy little cocktail party in the lobby of the Fox and then moved up the Grand Staircase for an amazing dinner in the Fox Club. The place is a beautiful Byzantine labyrinth and about 300 of us were tucked into private nooks for hob-knobbing and wine-snobbing. The Diet Coke....superb!

The food was outta-sight and then we eased on down to the flipping front row of the theatre to watch a performance of Wicked. The costumes were unbelievable: so many corsets and bustles and gleaming, hard muscles. Let me tell ya this, flying monkeys: scary -- fellas in flying monkey costumes: hot as hell....

It was, I must say, one of the most swankified things I've ever been able to do in my life.

It's just very weird - going to a party like that, wearing a twelve dollar suit from Goodwill. For most of last week, I had $.80 in my bank account, was eating $.89 boxes of Macaroni and Cheese for days on end and I'm still riding my bike everyday -- and Lord, it's getting cold outside.

That's just my life -- it's like I'm some broke-ass gadfly standing at the off-ramp of the social highway, decked out to the nines, holding a sign that reads, "Will work for a fabulous entree and primo seats...."

Don't get me wrong -- it was fun to go. But I can tell ya, two thousand dollars for a dinner and a show seems more far-fetched than a green witch and a world somewhere over the rainbow.