First, though, we thought we would just drive around the Capital for awhile. I've spent a little more time in the city than Tom has, these last three years, and thought I'd try to show him around a bit. We like Sacramento. Besides the obvious historical/political nature of the town, we find it to be attractive and interesting for other reasons. "City of Trees". While I have no idea who counts such things, it is said that it's the world city with the 2nd-highest ratio of trees to people (the first being Paris). A strange claim to fame, but I don't make these things up. Nice neighborhoods, architecture. Rivers, museums. University (CSU), restaurants. We avoid it like the plague in the summer, though.
Speaking of restaurants, we became a bit peckish and I thought we might try the pizza at Hot Italian, a newish, uber-trendy place in mid-town. Clay and I had gone there for gelato, recently. Very stark black-on-black with white ceilings. Mostly high community tables with stools, plus the bar. Oh, and the sofas. Motorbikes in the entry. Everything is so black/white, that the pizza, when it comes out, is a blaze of color against the void. Interesting effect. Besides being the only color, the pizza is also quite wonderful, and of the hipper, more artsy sort (a two-page spread in the Bee next morning agreed with us). And the gelato--ahhh (that's Tom enjoying his right there). Two other features: An enormous, white ceiling fan in the main room--I'm guessing 15-16' dia.--and very cool bathrooms. They are all black and mirror, with very contemporary white sinks and so-cool Dyson Air-Blades for drying hands. Miraculous (but I'm so easily amused).
We still had some time before the 8:30 show, so we parked near the theater and walked K Street a few times. K Street (the Capitol is on L) is closed to car traffic, but, unlike other mall-type streets in other cities we've seen, it hasn't proved to be a profitable arrangement. They are in the process of changing it back. Besides the classic and newly-refurbished Crest theater, there is the Imax-in-another-classic-old-theater down the block (now showing 3-D Alice) and a couple of restaurants. Other than that, the street is pretty pathetic, even boarded up in some places. Not the nice evening stroll it could be, being "City of Trees", and all.
We like Ms Poundstone's brand of humor. A type of humor, is difficult to describe, I think (and it's unceasingly interesting to me what kinds of humor appeals to which people as individuals and as cultures). Wikipedia, the veritable Receptacle Of All Knowledge, uses "observational" and "improvisational" to categorize her style. Mmm, OK. But she also has a sly, wry delivery that's just funny to me. That voice. As with most good comedians, she has a keen sense of the ridiculous in every-day life. We hear her often on one of our "favorite" radio shows, "Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me", a show, by the by, you could be listening to, as well, if you don't already. Again with the NPR.
She started at 8:30. Our seats were better than the iphone photo would seem to indicate. We could see her face. Most fun for her, she said (by way of a local radio interview I had heard earlier in the week), is talking with folks in the audience and spinning her improv and prepared schtick from those encounters and it shows right away. She's quick and engaging. Part of what makes her so engaging is that she seems transparent with her life. A lot of her humor is based on her family life and the challenges thereof. She didn't go into it this time (though I have heard her speak about it a few times before this), but she's had big and public trouble with alcohol. Mostly, she spins off the audience members, which I would think of as being very difficult to do (the "quick" part), and the location (it IS Sacramento, after all--plenty of material there). She finds intermissions awkward and artificial (but the theater asked she have one) and when someone shouted that she spend it in the lobby with the people, we saw that's exactly what she did.
She ended around 11:15 admitting that she's a motormouth and doesn't know how to end a show. I think that's partly because it is such a natural extension of how she is and who she is offstage. I watched her from a couple of feet away for awhile afterward as she was signing cds and books (I "Heart" Jokes), and she carried on quite seamlessly and encouraged folks to take pictures with her as if she could do it all night. She took so much time with each individual, that I'm pretty sure only a handful got to speak with her by the time the theater was pushing them out the door.
We were, fortunately, still awake (night owls that we are) by the time we arrived home around 12:45. That's the disadvantage of old folks like us going all the way to Sacto for an evening do. Well worth it, this time, though, I must say. We "heart" Paula Poundstone.
