Pops by the Sea 2010

And I think this was their best concert yet: their guest conductor on a Sousa march was Rachel Ray, who joked about the baton looking like "half a pair of bad chopsticks" or "a kabob without the shish".

And their guest star was... Idina Menzel... Oh dear God, IDINA MENZEL!!!! :: Squees!:: It was a given that the lady best known for playing a certain misunderstood girl with green skin wore a green gown, and her last two songs were from "Wicked" ("For Good" and "Defying Gravity"), but she also had a few surprises, such as funny stories about how she used to be a wedding/bar mitzvah singer (even mischievously belted out a few bars of "Hava Nagila" between numbers at one point). And she also sang a cute silly song which she and her husband Taye Diggs came up with for their little boy Walker (that kid is lucky to have them for parents, and if he takes after either of them I'll bet he's kyoooot!).

Also, we nipped into Tim's Used Books, afterward, while we waited for the traffic to die down. Picked up a few books including the last two books of the Sevenwaters Trilogy, aka Oonagh's canon to the carpe_ho_ras crowdn (still need to find the first book...) and Chreitian de Troyes's Arthurian Romances, as well as Beroul's "Tristan".

This year's official Pops tee-shirt could not be passed up: it's got a picture of a fish blowing a trumpet. Or a "fish horn" as I couldn't help calling it. When I'm more alert, I shall tell the Tale of the Fish Horns...