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Greetings from 32,000 feet in the air!

No, I'm not in the crappy "press seats" I got for The 39 Steps (yes, like my mother, there's no time limit on the things I'm annoyed about) — I'm flying to Seattle. I'm about to go on my ninth (!) Rosie Cruise, and it leaves from Washington State because we're going to Alaska! But before the in-flight "meal" (aka tap water), let's talk Broadway.

This week I saw the first night of Avenue Q with the final cast. The first thing I noticed were manymore black people in the audience than I've seen at most musicals. The sad fact is that many blacks don't come to Broadway unless it's a specific "black" show or has a star well-liked by the African-American community. I remember playing piano for Kiss of the Spider Woman, and when Vanessa Williams took over the title role, the whole make-up of the audience changed. And the reverse is also true. I was once hired by a so-called "black" show to write a radio commercial that would appeal to a white audience. PS, it was rejected. Why are shows marginalized as "white," "black," "gay" etc. and not just "good" and "bad"?

On Tuesday night, James and I saw Next to Normal. J. Robert Spencer was out of the show that night, and we were disappointed but then excited to see that his understudy is Michael Berry, whom I've known since 1993 when he had to hit the scary high A every night during Les Miz (We'll be the-e-e-e-e-re!"). Michael was great as the husband and, of course, I loved Alice Ripley. Her humor is so weird and quirky, and I was so impressed that she found so many moments to make funny. But I now think I must have sounded bizarre when I chatted with her after the show, and the first thing I said to her about her take as a suicidal manic/depressive was "You were so funny!!!"

On Wednesday, I had Andy Karl from 9 to 5 at my Chatterbox. He told me that he just got finished doing a reading of a new Hall and Oates jukebox musical. Of course, it's about "Sara"….who's "gone." Seriously. I tried to find out if her "kiss was on his list," but he wasn't able to answer ("no can do"). Then I had Mary Bond Davis, who was the original Motormouth in Hairspray. She grew up in L.A. and told us that she was in seventh grade math class with Michael Jackson! She remembers being in gym class and seeing Randy and Tito pick him up one day, and she and the other girls screamed their heads off. The only famous person I had in junior high school was Barbar Brass, who was the cousin to Stacy Brass who was the swing in Annie. Anyone? Well, I was impressed.

Mary recalled her first big musical audition for Ain't Misbehavin'when she was still non-union. She waited all day, and when she was finally allowed in to sing, an Equity person suddenly showed up and Mary had to sit down again. Finally, she sang, and then they asked her to dance. She remembered impressing them with her squats. Not because she could do them, she explained, but because she could get back up again. They finally told her they would call her at the beginning of the week. On Sunday she asked her mother what constituted the beginning of the week, Sunday or Monday. Of course, as I was listening to Mary I thought, "How naïve. No one gets a business call on a Sunday." Cut to: They called her that Sunday. What the-? Who gets a theatre job offer on a Sunday? I will not accept one unless it's literally for the show Tell Me On Sunday.

Okay, before I talk about my Chatterbox, let me tell you that a few years ago I was playing "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" on my Sirius/XM radio show, and I made a comment about not understanding the lyric, "Although she's dressed up to the nines, at sixes and sevens with you." I assumed it meant that Evita was dressed well but the crowd watching her was dressed a few notches below her…aka at sixes and sevens. The next day I got a call on my cell phone from a girl who nervously stammered that she was a friend of Sam Pancake, who's a super-talented actor who's friends with my friend, Jack Plotnick. She explained that "at sixes and sevens" is a British expression, and it means "at odds" But, as she was telling me, we kept getting cut off because I was getting on the subway and then in an elevator, so the whole explanation took an exhausting 30 minutes. Well, a year later I was at the baby showed of Jessie Stone and Chris Fitzgerald, and I met the girl who called me…Lauren Graham! Huh? Why did she have to say she was a friend of a friend? Why not just say who she was? And, how did she get my cell phone number? And, why does she know odd British expressions? And, speaking of which, when Nancy enters Fagin's den in Oliver!, why does she say "Plummy and slam"? Is that another British expression that will take an uninteresting 30 minutes to explain?  Continued...