and when i asked her what classic DVDs she wanted for Christmas, she thought for a moment and answered "Bring It On"

First, we have to get some business out of the way. You heard it here first: Spring Awakening is the next Rent. Actually, strike that, because it's inventive and raw in a way that Rent never was, or was before it had all its authenticity sucked out of it by commercialization.

"But EJ," you whine, "musical theater is so lame and unrealistic. It's gay men and Barbie doll women standing with their legs apart singing covers of ABBA songs out into space." "No friend," I respond, "this is not that kind of musical theater. This is the kind of show where the powerhouse eleventh-hour number is a song called 'Totally Fucked.' If you at all enjoy theater and/or rock music, click here. You can thank me later."

There. Dorky musical theater business accomplished. But seriously, this show was amazing.

Mom and I had a great weekend. She completely shocked me by enthusiastically spending Saturday poking around the Lower East Side and Mott Street with me, eating crepes and spending too much money on shoes. She was also kind enough to only gently laugh at me when we stopped by the Essex Street Market and I practically went into fits of excitement at a spice shop. But! Lavender-infused sea salt! It's like heaven bottled in a test tube!

Now, individually, my mother and I befriend gay men. Together, we make an unstoppable Fag Hag Delta Force Team. Once our (fabulous) waiter on at Del Frisco's on Friday night heard we were going to Spring Awakening, he told us to hit the bar next door after the show. We'd spent the entire meal chatting with him and finding out his life story, and once my mother learned that he had trained at another Big Ten school she talked his ear off trying to figure out what young actors they knew in common. I expect that he sent us to this bar knowing that friends of his would be there, and that later they could trade stories about that really funny woman from the Midwest who talks with her hands and has a slightly alarming mental Rolodex of New York-based chorus boys.

Now, based on what I've told you about my mother so far on this blog, would you at ALL be surprised to know that the night ended with her doing a shot of SoCo and lime with a musical theater professor and the advertising director of Ralph Lauren? Yeah, I didn't think so.

This is all apart from the advertising director of Ralph Lauren telling me he liked my coat (!!!), or when we saw A Prairie Home Companion on Saturday, or when we followed it with cocoa and wild boar papardelle at Fiamma in SoHo. And oh heavens me, I haven't even told you about how I walked smack into Chris Noth outside the theater.

Like I said, it was a great weekend.