Day Four-Fifty - Barry Recap!

Wow!  Last night was about 38 years in the making.  You see since about 1975 I have been a BIG Barry Manilow fan.... or a Fanilow.  There have been those that have made fun of me over the years when they found out that I was a once a 12 year old obsessed with Barry Manilow.  But it never bothered me.  I love Barry and if that makes me a geek, I'm OK with that.  In fact, I like to think I OWN it.  So last night Barry did a show at Verizon Theater in Grand Prairie and I went with two of my friends from the 1970's.  Both of them had been to see Barry over the years.  But for me it was my first Barry Manilow concert and it did not disappoint!

At 70 years old Barry is just as entertaining as he ever was.  The show was fabulous!  I couldn't wipe the smile off my face all night.  Even when a man yelled out, "BARRY!  I LOVE YOU!!!!" during a particularly quiet moment while Barry sang Weekend in New England cracking Barry up and resulting in him stopping the song while he recovered I was still thrilled and wouldn't have changed a thing.  Say what you will about all the plastic surgery he has had, it hasn't effected his talent in anyway.

I don't know if it would have been as much fun if I hadn't been able to go with my friends Dana and Krista.  We had a great time catching up.  It was the first time that Dana and I had seen Krista since we each moved away from Nacogdoches.  I moved in February of our freshman year of high school and Dana moved during the summer between our freshman and sophomore years.  So last night was a nice reunion.

During the year leading up to our moving Dana and I, with the help of our mothers, started making an embroidered and painted workshirt that we planned to send to Barry.  It was the 70's and those embroidered workshirts were very popular.  We spent months working on the shirt.  We would trade out who got to work on it.  Right in the middle of the work, my family moved to Lumberton, Tx. which meant that we had to start mailing it back and forth to each other when it was the other ones turn to work on it.  We took months to complete it.  When it was done I got to go to Dana's house for a visit and we took pictures of us with the shirt before it was mailed to some address that Dana's Mom had gotten where we were pretty sure Barry would get it.  I don't mind telling you, it was a master piece as far as folk art goes.

After it was mailed we waited months and months expecting to hear from Barry personally (or at least I was expecting it).  I laid awake at night and imagined that Barry would come to see us personally to thank us for the amazing shirt we had made.  But that didn't happen.  When Dana and I went to each others house in the summer for week long visits we went to the mall and got on a pay phone with all the quarters we could come up with and tried calling Barry's agent or someone else that we thought could get us through to the man, himself.  It never worked, but each time we would get a New York operator on the line as we called information my heart would race so much that I thought it would pop out of my chest.  Finally Dana's Mom wrote a letter to someone on our behalf and a year or two after we mailed the shirt we got a letter back saying that Barry had gotten the shirt and it was "one his favorite around the house shirts".  We were thrilled.  I got a copy of the letter and for years it was framed and hanging on the wall in my bedroom.  Unfortunately, the print is so faded now you can no longer read it.

Last night as we enjoyed the concert, on the video screens, various album covers were shown.  It was so cool to see all those old album covers again.  I still have my entire Barry Manilow LP collection in a box in the closet of my guest room.  But I have no turn table.  I think I am going to have to download those old albums so that I can start listening to them again in their entirety rather than just the greatest hits off of them.  If you've never been to see Barry in concert, I highly recommend it.  He is a truly great entertainer.  If I can figure out how to download my video I'll post it.

Have a great weekend!