March 21, 2008: A Visit to the Arboretum
	March 8, 2008: A Play at the Pocket Sandwich Theatre
	Return to Index for 2008

On Friday night, Mario had gotten the four of us tickets for the cabaret concert being performed by Maureen McGovern at the Irving Performing Arts Center. This was a concert that Mario was reviewing, and so the plan was to have some dinner, attend the concert and then go with Mario back downtown to the Dallas Morning News building and wait there while he wrote and filed his review. This would be my first opportunity to see the environment in which Mario works; my mental image of anyone who works at a newspaper is colored by movies such as "The Front Page" or, perhaps, "Superman." Mario tells me that, like everything else, newspapers have gone high-tech and digital, and that the old newsroom is a thing of the past. Well, tonight I'll get to see for myself.

We ate supper at the Highlands Cafe over near Mario and Steve's house, and then we went over to Irving to the venue. I have been to this venue once before- many years ago when Ron Drew was working for GTE Public Affairs and they were sponsoring some other kind of performance there; he and Lowery and Lynne Richardson and I all attended. So the venue was much like I remembered it.

I didn't recall from my last time being here that there was a sculpture garden adjacent to the Performing Arts Center, but there was. And since we'd arrived a bit early, we had time to wander around and take a look at it. I filmed a movie of the garden area and the other guys walking around, and you can watch that movie using the movie player below:

Outside the Irving Arts Center

The light was fading so I didn't take many pictures, but I did get a good one of the other guys and the long fountain wall that forms a border for one side of the garden.

"There's Got to be a Morning After"

The actual performance was quite good. If you don't remember who Maureen McGovern is, just think "disaster movies." She sang the Oscar-winning song from "The Posiedon Adventure"- "There's Got to Be a Morning After." She also sang the Oscar-nominated song from "The Towering Inferno" called "We May Never Love This Way Again." But those are just her signature songs; she is an accomplished singer, of course, and has covered any number of other songs. In her current incarnation, she has this cabaret-style performance which plays well in small, more intimate venues such as the IPAC. So she came across quite well. We had good seats, and the performance (all ninety minutes of it) was quite enjoyable.

Here are two more excerpts from her performance:

"But Will You Love Me Tomorrow?"

"Imagine"

After the pleasant performance, we headed downtown to the Dallas Morning News. Mario took us up to the fourth floor where he and the other reviewers and specialty writers have their home. And he was right- it wasn't at all what I expected. There were no people running around yelling "Copy!" or "Stop the presses!" or anything like that. Except for all the arts‑related memorabilia piled everywhere, it could have been an insurance company- cubes and files and workstations. Sure, I'll admit, there were vastly more interesting and varied books on the shelves and pictures and stuff on the cube walls, but only marginally more than I have seen at some other companies I've been to.

Mario's cube is pretty typical, although he, being a music reviewer, had rather fewer tschoskes and souvenirs than many of the other cubes did. We stood around or walked around while Mario wrote his review. I, myself, was very interested in looking through the stuff all laying around. One cube was just overflowing with all kinds of movie freebies and stuff; it turned out to be the cube belonging to one of the two primary movie reviewers for the Morning News, and I had Steve take a picture of me hard at work.

We had a really enjoyable evening, and it was fun to see where Mario works. And now I know it's not nearly as glamorous as I had once thought.

You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.

	March 21, 2008: A Visit to the Arboretum
	March 8, 2008: A Play at the Pocket Sandwich Theatre
	Return to Index for 2008