One almost classy family...kinda sorta

Emi was restless yesterday, and we were bored so while friends got together and did something that sounded completely uninteresting for the price tag we decided to classy our lives up a little and slip on down to the city (Detroit) and spend much more extravagantly...and by extravagantly we mean "more bang for the buck." If there's anything we'd like to get good at around here, I mean aside from parenting, it's spending our loot more efficiently and with a better return on our investments. So before morning faded into lunch we were booked into the Detroit Symphony Orchestra with a pre-indulgence indulgence of dinner at The Whitney. Shrug...anything worth doing is worth doing right I guess.

Before our grilled cheeses (is that even a word?) had been digested we were setting out fancy duds and downloading concertos and symphonies and generally bubbling around a home more used to Saturdays filled with the Grateful Dead than all those dead composers. It was our first time to the symphony...all of us...June, myself, and Emi...and since Emi can now hear things pretty damn good we were extra excited at the prospect of perhaps planting the seeds for a future prodigy right there in June's belly. All those stringed instruments and acoustics filtering out perfection for little almost Emi's quickly developing ears. We even held a vague hope that perhaps one of us could beat the odds and somehow morph into a prodigy of sorts ourselves...somewhat late blooming, of course, but a prodigy nevertheless. By the way...spell prodigy wrong and you'll end up here which seems kind of funny, you know, in an ebonics kind of way...

Anyway...the most incredible part of the story remains to be told. Mister Brian (that's me) has himself two tickets to see his most favorite of bands on the planet at the moment, Kings of Leon, at The Fillmore just down the street from all this fanciness and classy-ficationing. Yes indeed, he did, and boyo sold them so that little almost Emi (or Ella, or Elli or I don't know...it seems we're wavering) could go and soak up all those genius vibes. Well, that and he thought it'd be a pretty kick ass way to score huge super giant extra bonus points with his wife in order to firmly cement in her mind the notion that he may very well be the coolest dude and eventual Dad ever (Sorry, that was too easy to just slip in there without prior restraint). So now the evening is beginning to take on epic proportions AND the whole family...all 2.5 of us...get to look pretty nice too.

We should speed this up a little...reservations at The Whitney...valet parking...coolest restaurant ever...scallops...mushrooms flown in from France...2003 Terra D'Or Pino Grigio...risotto...$15 martini in the 3rd floor Ghost Lounge( which officially makes the bar tab $30 for a glass of wine and a martini)...bathroom bigger than our first three apartments and with the best paper towels ever ... Blah blah blah... Max Fisher Theater...treated like regular royalty...kick ass view...musicians tuning as goose bumps raise...lights down...HOLY #$%&!...blah blah blah...the coolest night of my life.

Any night that includes crazy mushrooms (summer truffles) flown in from France along with Seared Nantucket Bay Scallops and Creamy Aged Gouda Grits with Sauce Perigueux has GOT to be good. Chuck in two of the most beloved composers of all-time and you're starting to slip past the point of no return. Baiba Skride does the solo thing in Mozart's uber-elegant Violin Concerto No. 3 and then the way-in-demand conductor Jankowski goes and leads a beyond captivating performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 2 and we're supposed to just swallow the whole thing as a regular, run-of-the-mill evening? Uhh, nope.

I guess I'll catch Kings of Leon later, and regardless of whether little Emi, Ella or otherwise turns into any kind of prodigy or not this was one night worth remembering forever and ever...kinda like that Happy Days episode where the Fonz jumps all those busses.

Then we came home...ate popcorn, drank Stella (me, not the preggers girl) and watched SNL. The funny part? Kings of Leon were the musical guests. Can you say synchronicity? We can...it's sometimes hard to spell though.