Hey, remember Avenue Q?

Here’s an update.

And a bunch of other stuff.

Your Daily Lex That first part of the show just now sounded weird, right?

Like, the microphone was weird there.

I don’t know what the deal was, because I haven’t changed anything, but it seems to sound normal again.

But I’m going to leave the weird mic there.

Good stuff.

Anyway, I have my first Avenue Q rehearsal tonight, as we speak.

There were other Avenue Q rehearsals.

It started while I was in France, and so I couldn’t attend those.

And then there were some since I’ve been back, but I wasn’t called for those rehearsals.

I’m called for tonight’s.

So hopefully they’ll know.

I just don’t have a script, but it’s fine.

I found the script online.

Don’t tell anyone.

But anyway, first Avenue Q rehearsal tonight.

And today I put on a shirt.

I think calling it a Hawaiian shirt would be overstating it, but a floral print shirt.

And I was thinking in my mind as I wore it, hey, this is the kind of shirt that Brian, my character in Avenue Q, might wear.

I got two different comments on it during Zooms today for work.

One person just said, wow, that’s quite a shirt.

And another person said, you going to a Jimmy Buffett concert later?

So I look good, I think is the point.

I look good.

Yesterday I drove Ani to camp.

It was supposed to be both me and Lauren driving Ani to camp, but Lauren had been exposed to COVID.

She’s going to be negative.

But we just wanted to make sure we didn’t trap everybody in the car for all those hours and risk giving Ani COVID on the way to camp or whatever.

So Lauren stayed home and I took Ani to camp.

And man, I don’t know if you saw the news, but there was a lot of rain in the Northeast yesterday.

Sometimes truly blinding driving rain, torrential, including right after we stopped for lunch.

We stop, we’re charging the car, we go in to eat at this place.

Then while we’re sitting there, it just starts pouring like insane.

And I’m such a good dad that I left Ani in the restaurant for the decent, you know, eight minute walk back to the car.

We did have an umbrella and I drove and picked Ani up door to door service because that’s how dads do.

But man, then we’re still driving and it’s blinding rain.

And of course you could pull over, which some cars did, a handful, but we still have a place to go.

And my feeling was, I said to Ani, as long as I feel safe, I’m going to keep driving.

If at any point I feel scared, we’re going to pull over too.

But I admitted to Ani, I’m a little bit nervous about pulling over because some of those cars are awfully hard to see that are pulled over.

And I don’t want anybody to crash into me because they can’t see me over there.

I was using my blinkers and my headlights and all those things.

We got there in one piece.

Then you get to the camp line and the camp line, normally you go and park on this grass parking lot.

That’s at the entrance of the camp.

And then you start going through all the initiation stuff.

But they, and I was telling Ani on our way there, boy, I really don’t want to park on that grass parking lot and get stuck in the mud.

They didn’t want anybody to do that either.

So they had all the cars lined up, even backing out onto the road that leads to camp, which is just a normal street.

And there’s, you know, they would come to each car and you’d lower your window so you could get soaked while the poor counselor talking to you would get even more soaked since they were fully outside.

And they’d say, Hey, we’re going to stay in your car.

You’ll drive up and then we’re doing all of the entrance stuff at the dining hall.

So you’ll walk to the dining hall and get soaked, but then you’ll be inside instead of doing the normal outdoor thing.

So they tell this to each car in line, but sometimes people are getting out of their car anyway, or they’re having their kid and a parent get out of the car.

I couldn’t do that since I was the only person in the car.

In one case, a whole family got out of the car and they abandoned their car on the street.

And the counselor’s like, Hey, you can’t just leave your car here.

It’s a road.

It’s a road.

So weird.

But of course, when people see some people getting out, even though they’ve said, wait in your car, when you get to the front, we’ll have you go to the dining hall.

They’re like, Oh, what if, what if somebody else is getting more camp experience than my kids and then more people are getting out.

But Ani and I were content to wait in our car as we were told, and then go through the process.

So we eventually park, we walk across a giant wet field at the dining hall.

I didn’t know it was going to rain.

I hadn’t checked the forecast.

It was warm in New Jersey.

I was wearing Crocs.

These were not weather appropriate shoes for the amount of mud and rain that we were dealing with.

But we go through the orientation of the dining hall, check Ani in, deal with the vitamins, whatever, get the t-shirt, go outside.

And then you get to pick up a golf cart with a driver who’s going to take you back to your car so you can load up the golf cart with your kids’ luggage.

And then they drive to the camp or to the cabin.

And when we go to my car, another counselor’s like, Hey, can you move your car?

And I’m like, Yeah, we’re loading up Ani’s stuff to take to the cabin.

And they’re like, Yeah, but can you move your car before you go to the cabin?

And Ani’s cabin is like the furthest possible away cabin.

And I’m like, So you want me to move it?

And they’re showing me where they want me to put my car.

It’s on a different, ostensibly less muddy grass field that’s in Guam.

So like a bajillion miles away.

And they’re like, Yeah, so just put your car over there and then you can walk and meet your kid.

And I was like, uh, and I had a very kind golf cart driver’s like, why don’t I just follow you or drive over to that same parking lot?

And I can give you a ride from there.

We do that.

It’s pretty cramped in that golf cart because normally somebody might sit in the back or you might just walk.

But it’s because of the pouring, pouring rain that nobody wanted to do that.

And we get to the cabin in one piece.

We get on it backed up or unpacked, I should say.

And then we, uh, we leave.

We being me.

In the cabin though, you know, there were no counselors.

I never met anybody’s counselors.

And, uh, there were a couple of the kids, but it was pretty quiet.

There’s a kid who on his very close friends with, and they were talking, uh, but it’s quiet in the bunk.

And I say to Ani loud enough for everybody here, there’s a real weird dad in the cabin vibe in here.

And then he’s like, yes.

And I’m like, I’m the weird dad.

Lex.