A Night at the Movies

Indy and I celebrated our 4 year anniversary on October 13th.  Very exciting! 

Since our engagement, we've had several discussions on ways to save money for the wedding/honeymoon (mostly the honeymoon!).  All of our previous anniversaries have been spent in Vermont.  It's a beautiful state, and close enough for us to get away for the weekend without too much planning/spending/driving.  Fall is Indy's most favorite season and 90% of why we go to Vermont is for the foliage.

He actually sent me this link a few weeks ago in hopes of enticing me to take an impromptu road trip: Yankee Foliage.  Yeah.  He's the biggest nerd, ever.

However, Vermont for our 4th year was one of those things we begrudgingly decided to sacrifice in the name of saving money.  I was disappointed, but not nearly as much as he was.  And in addition to no anniversary trip, we also decided: no gifts.

A few weeks ago I was opening and sorting a month's worth of mail into keep/recycle/shred piles, I came across a mailer for the New York Philharmonic.  Indy and I went with a few friends last year to an event there, and it was pretty cool.  Since then, they send one mailer a month- usually for stuff that's too expensive or just not on our radar.  Except this month's...or, well, actually last month's....that's how long it takes us to go thru mail sometimes.  Awful, I know. (I also found our land lord's PSE&G bill in our pile...Oops!)

The mailer was for John Williams: A Night at the Movies.

Who's John Williams?

Think about your top 5 favorite movies.  Chances are he wrote the scores for at least 4 of them.



I don't think I've explained why I refer to my fiance as "Indy".  That's not his real name. (Thank Goodness!)  Indy is obsessed with movies.  I mentioned in my last post that he owns over 600 DVDs- he watches, on average, 4 movies a week.  Insanity, I know.  The Indiana Jones trilogy is his all-time favorite.  He's been obsessed with them since he was a kid, and he can pretty much recite them line for line.  I know, I know- between this and the foliage website, I'm painting an amazing picture for you guys.  Yes, I'm willingly marrying this guy.

In addition to his aforementioned nerdy qualities, he listens to classical/orchestral music any chance he gets- especially when he's studying and doing homework, which as of late, feels like all the time.  He's spoken about John Williams so frequently and with such adoration, if you didn't know who John Williams was, you'd assume they were somehow related.

John Williams has composed and conducted some little ditties you may or may not be familiar with, like this one.  And this one.  Maybe this one?  Also, my personal favorite, this one.  Also this one.  And this one. 

So when I found the mailer, we decided to bend the "no gifts" rule and for our anniversary split a pair of tickets to the event.  It was on Tuesday night, and it was amazing!  We had killer seats.

See those two white dots to the left, on the second tier?  That was us!  We had an amazing arial view of the entire orchestra.

He played some fantastic stuff- the theme from Vertigo, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., he did a beautiful violin tribute to Katherine Hepburn, and of course, the Star Wars theme.

Indy started to panic around intermission when he realized that the Indiana Jones theme wans't listed in the program.

"He's gonna play it, right?  He has to- right?" He asked me over, and over, and over again.

And boy did Mr. Williams make him sweat.  Of course, he did play the Indiana Jones theme, as his second of three encores.  He made us wait, but it was so worth it.

I'm glad we got to see him when we did.  When we were debating about purchasing tickets ('cause boy, were they expensive!) Indy said, "He's 80! He's going to die soon!"

While I certainly hope that isn't the case....because really, when he dies, movies just won't have music anymore- I am glad we saw him when we did.  Indy's been over the moon all week.