Ahh the sweet taste of recovery.  Anyone who had the unfortunate displeasure of talking to me yesterday knows it was an all day marathon hangover here at Duke’s desk.  I had a pretty wild Tuesday night in Hollywood… watching Gustavo Dudamel drop BOMBS on The Bowl while conducting Mozart.  Weren’t expecting that one were you?  Well we like to keep you on your toes here at HTG, so I switched venues to something a little less dangerous and traded in the UNTZ for the pleasant fluttering of flutes and cellos.  I have to say, it was a blissful experience.  Classical music isn’t something I typically go out looking for, but I’m not ashamed to say I found it… or it found me.  I won’t sit here pretending I took it seriously the entire time – because I spent the first few minutes scanning the orchestra for Black people (just out of curiosity) – and I was disappointed, yet hardly surprised, not to find any.  However, somewhere around the second bottle of Pinot (you stay classy, glimmerface), I found myself sitting there with eyes closed just focusing on the multitude of notes filling my ears.  Albert Einstein once said that Mozart’s music sounded as if he had just stumbled upon it – like it had always existed as part of the inner beauty of the universe.  I thought of it as listening to calculus – like a brilliantly solved equation unfolding in my mind.  I mean, I never passed calculus (3 tries), but it was how I imagine a brilliantly solved equation would sound if I possessed the ability to solve one, and then turn it into music.  Moving on…
 
It’s important, I feel, to get a well rounded sampling of the stimulus available out there.  So often we limit ourselves to a certain genre of music or events – that we forget to take time to open ourselves up to the diverse plethora of pleasurable experiences.  When was the last time you went to a jazz bar and listened to the blues?  How often do you participate in wild haired drum circles?  Ever have your face melted by the metropolitan opera?  Maybe you’re just too busy posturing in line at Club Douché, waiting to pay $18 for a glass of ice with three drops of vodka in it…
 
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not here to shit on anybody’s idea of a good time – I did that enough last week.  If you like clubbing, if you’re really into following around that one band I probably never heard of, if you’re at Avalon every Friday night for a dose of boom boom (see you on the dancefloor, Tracy) – that’s great!  Have at it.  I’m just saying, be open to switching it up a little, because there’s a lot of interesting shit out there.  There’s plenty of fun, cool, alternative places to have a few drinks and a few laughs with good company… Festivals, wine tastings, art exhibits, comedy clubs, concerts, plays, carnivals, jazz bars, 1980’s clubs, 1780’s clubs.  No wait, seriously.  What if there was an after hours spot that played Vivaldi and only served 18th century cocktails?  Powdered wigs and tights optional, of course.  That might sound like a Renaissance fair, but I think going out should be about more than just getting sauced and looking for sex.  It should involve all the senses, and require some active thought and participation.  What about a reggae joint that’s also a medical marijuana dispensary – so you could get irie when the bomboclat rasta tells you to?  I’m just spit balling here, but If those kind of places exist, tell me – I’m there.  If not, feel free to run with these ideas or come up with your own, because the recreational landscape needs even more mind blowing fully immersible experiences.  Places where you can really get a feel for alternate perceptions, cultures, and lifestyles.  We live in the future, and although we have yet to invent a time machine, I want to walk through doors that transport me to other times and places.  I don’t want cheesy theme bars, I want to transcend.  Challenge accepted?  Good.  Go.