Manilow Hell

My lovely wife's and my passion for Barry Manilow started a few years ago when I got a box of cassette tapes my buddy from work, Jose, gave me (I think his friend on the bus gave them to him). After weeding through the Time-Life Swingin' Years tapes and Journey hits, there he was staring at me in a white leisure suite, star necklace and the cocky "I write the songs" smirk.

We were quickly mesmerized by his catchy, cocaine like melodies and lyrics. He had plenty of practice growing up, writing countless jingles for every brand you can imagine...."I am stuck on band-aids, cause they are stuck on me!"...and, "Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there."

After watching his live show on PBS, we decided we had to see him in concert. We had a trip to Vegas planned already, coincidentally staying at the Hilton where Barry has an ongoing show. Of course the weekend we stayed there he took off. The only dark weekend in months.

One day we were riding in the car with my Mom and Uncle when lovely Wife and I spontaneously broke into song...a Manilow song. My Uncle said, "Hey, that's Barry Manilow! We just got to see him last week at an invite-only free show at The Forum."

Apparently, he and my Mom wouldn't think that we would enjoy his music...and that The Forum was too long of a mid-week drive for us, so we didn't find out about it until after the fact.

It also turns out that the trumpet player for Barry's show is a friend of mine from college. Despite all the connections to Manilow, we haven't been able to score tickets, or make the time to get to Vegas and see the show.

Then I had a brilliant plan. Barry is doing a Valentine's Day show at the Staples Center! I decided to go all out (because lovely Wife deserves it!), and bought 2 floor seats to the show. This was back in December. It turns out that her schedule in her second semester Master's classes consists of back to back classes on Thursday nights. After a few weeks I put 2 and 2 together and realized Valentine's Day falls on a Thursday.

Much of her grade in those classes is based on attendance and class participation.

In the past few weeks I've tried unsuccessfully to unload the tickets and salvage some of the small fortune I spent on them. In the meantime, I had to scramble to find something else to do for V-day (note: we normally don't do much on Valentine's Day, but in light of our lack of anniversary plans this year, I thought we could make up for it).

While I can't divulge my backup plans here since lovely Wife lurks, it involved another (not as lucrative) purchase.

If the Manilow tickets don't sell, I'm going to personally call her professors and explain the situation and make her go with me! Add that to the backup plans scheduled for the night before and we're going to have a Valentine's Day extravaganza.

Good thing I'm going to be a lawyer...I might be able to eventually pay for Valentine's Day this year!