As a result of my nonstop Twittering and Facebooking updates last week, you probably already know that John and I went to see Liza on Saturday, along with our two great friends Vera and Gooch.
Liza was performing at the Morongo Casino in the steaming shithole known as Cabazon, though Liza repeatedly referred to it as “beautiful Palm Springs” (proving conclusively that she’s still on Vicodin).
Before I tell you about the show itself, I’d like to take a moment to describe the ambiance of the Morongo Casino. Paint a picture with words, if you will. I just hope I have enough brown.
Yes, this is one craptastic shit box, all right. It springs like a turdblossom out of the shimmering nothingness; a big wedge of concrete and glass, surrounded by an overly optimistic amount of parking. As John said when we looked out the window from our room on the 18th floor, “This would be a great view if there was anything to look at.”
That’s the first problem with the Morongo: there is nothing else there. Part of the fun of a place like Vegas or Reno (or even Laughlin, for God’s sake) is being able to leave the casino and go somewhere else if it’s too crowded or your luck isn’t with you. At the Morongo, you have no such option. Oh, you could walk over to Hadley’s in the 110 degree heat and get a bag of dates, but that’s hardly the kind of thing the Rat Pack sang about.
Of course, if the Morongo were laid out a little better, you wouldn’t want to leave. And this is the second problem with this place: it isn’t player friendly. You can’t find a free machine and you can’t get a drink. In fact, there are only two bars in the whole place. I’m no Bugsy Siegel, but even I know that’s not how you build a casino.
Fortunately, Morongo has devoted a big corner of the casino to a food court. So thank God for that. Who needs the revenue from a sports book when you can have Panda Express? We all know that’s how Steve Wynn made his money; ripping out the slots and putting in a Quizno’s. Next year they’re going to replace the poker room with an Olive Garden.
This kind of thing is bad enough during the week, but when you add weekend crowds to the mix, the whole thing gets very tedious. If I wanted to walk around in circles, smelling stale food and looking for a place to sit, I’d go to a soup kitchen.
And it gets exponentially worse when you have someone like Liza in town. I mean the casino is minutes from Palm Springs, what do you think is going to happen? Every homo within 200 miles was there that night. Which wouldn’t be noteworthy except that I didn’t know any of them. That was weird.
I think my point is best illustrated by our waitress, who took our dinner order at 6:00 and still hadn’t brought our food at 7:40. When I pointed out that we were seeing Liza at 8:00, she said, “It’s always like this when someone big plays here.” So that made us feel much better. It wasn’t just us, everyone gets shit service when they’re busy.
And so we got up from our table full of half-eaten steaks and unfinished champagne, and hustled our way down to the casino, where the line for Liza was already moving into the beautiful, air conditioned theater.
Or so we thought.
I turns out the Morongo isn’t equipped to deal with a theater crowd, either. We suddenly found ourselves walking outside the hotel, herded uphill in the 100 degree evening heat, past the pool, past the elderly people with oxygen tents stopping to rest, past the one small concession stand selling Coronas and into a tent.
They put Liza in a tent.
My god this was dreary. Hundreds of crappy chairs lined up in a big white tent in the middle of a parking lot. It was like the worst county fair you’ve ever been to. I kept looking for the butter cow.
And how do you keep a tent that size cool? A tent full of people and lighting equipment in the middle of the desert? Why you use an air conditioning system that sounds like a jet engine, of course. So optimal conditions for a 63 year old woman with two fake hips, bad knees and a hernia.
But the tent wasn’t the only surprise in store for me that night.
I expected this to be a full evening of laughing at you, not with you. Liza is, in my mind, the musical equivalent of Jerry Lewis, and this was going to be as awful as anything I’d ever suffered through. And while it was every bit the train wreck I was expecting, it wasn’t funny at all.
I think I started shifting my perception earlier in the day when John came back from a massage. He said the masseuse mentioned that she had given Liza a massage the night before, and that she “had a nice room.” And I started thinking of her in the same unremarkable hotel we were in, looking out at the same windmills in the desert, getting her broken down body rubbed by a hotel masseuse who was probably more impressed by the room.
By the time I realized they had put her in a tent in the parking lot, a sort of sadness had settled in for me. I hadn’t really counted on the pathos worming its way into me, but it sobered me up pretty quick.
The crowd was, of course, on their feet from the moment she entered. There was no shortage of love in the tent, but it was so exaggerated that I felt like I was at her wake, not her concert. It was like the person had already departed, and we were celebrating her memory. Which I guess, in a way, we were.
The feeling was helped along by some of her patter, which was less than cheery: “Everyone I ever cared about has joined the choir.”
And then there were the terrible, hokey oldies she dredged up, from songs about her mother (we know who she was) to Liza with a Z, which she should never do again. It’s much too fast for her to keep up with, and her “S” and “Z” now unfortunately, sound exactly the same.
The whole performance seemed really taxing. She told the audience that her knees hurt and she had to sit for a few songs, giving showstoppers like Maybe This Time all the excitement of a fireside chat. And she was completely out of breath after every number, due in part to having to sing over the air conditioning. But she didn’t help herself by bringing along a full orchestra playing at top volume. She shouted over them for an hour, until I got a sore throat just from listening.
When it was time for the encore, I had no idea where she could possibly go. She was hoarse by this time, and she’d already done New York, New York. And when she came out for one last song, she came out with only her piano player.
The lights dimmed, and the tent went silent, except for the 1350 hp air conditioning system. Liza sat down on the piano bench and sang Every Time We Say Goodbye, and it was absolutely perfect. It was what was in her heart, and without a blaring orchestra to sing over, she sounded clear and strong and full of emotion.
That was the last surprise of the evening. I already knew I wouldn’t be able to get a drink in the casino.
28 responses so far ↓
1 Susie // Jul 20, 2009 at 5:02 pm
The photos look like there should be rattlesnakes, speaking in tongues & healing going on. Sorry it was such a bust. But then…it..was…Liza…
2 Susie // Jul 20, 2009 at 5:02 pm
(At least you got cookies & milk!)
3 John Foley // Jul 20, 2009 at 5:07 pm
The best part about the Liza concert? There were a LOT of black people there.
4 haineux // Jul 20, 2009 at 5:12 pm
Just as I was reading this, I was handed this bulletin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN75im_us4k&fmt=18
Since just the other day April twittered a similar link, I feel that she might approve of this. Especially the creativity.
In any case, nausea loves company.
5 RCoA // Jul 20, 2009 at 5:12 pm
This is effing awesome. Thank you for suffering so that we could remain free.
6 captiveww // Jul 20, 2009 at 5:38 pm
Morongo is just wrong. Oh.
7 2duur4u // Jul 20, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Liza plays the casino circuit and was also at Chumash Casino a few days ago…at least there you could have eaten aebleskivers in Solvang, done wine tastings, and visited the gates of Neverland. Plus it’s a much nicer drive and about the same distance. I am so sorry I didn’t save you from the revival tent!
8 DavidinBerkeley // Jul 20, 2009 at 6:47 pm
Folding chairs for a headliner? Wow.
9 Doug // Jul 20, 2009 at 8:25 pm
Moron? Go!
10 Doug // Jul 20, 2009 at 8:32 pm
Got shrimp?
http://www.godhatesshrimp.com/
11 tear it up... // Jul 20, 2009 at 8:41 pm
fancam Liza with a….Zee
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H80T1DeGDpo&fmt=18
12 joshpincusiscrying // Jul 20, 2009 at 8:59 pm
I watched as much as I could take of the above “fancam” video of Liza with a Z. I distinctly remember that song being sung a lot faster. She sounds old, and bored and old. I guess playing in a tent will do that to you.
We saw Tony Bennett last weekend in Atlantic City. He’s 83 and a former coke addict… and he sounded GREAT! What’s Liza’s excuse?
13 pal Jacky // Jul 20, 2009 at 9:43 pm
“Everyone I ever cared about has joined the choir.”
How dare this bitch dis dame Liz.
14 John Foley // Jul 20, 2009 at 9:49 pm
And not a word of tribute for Michael Jackson? That’s the whole reason we went!
15 pal Jacky // Jul 20, 2009 at 10:54 pm
if all your fucking friends and relatives die from ODing, shouldn’t you start wondering if it has something to do with you?
“My mother would have loved your magazine-if she hadn’t died on the crapper-love Liza”-from national lampoon’s 100th anniversary issue.
16 socalfrank // Jul 20, 2009 at 11:48 pm
You could have skipped the show and gone bowling next door (at the old casino).
17 esmetutu // Jul 21, 2009 at 9:00 am
This makes me think twice about seeing Huey Lewis and the News at the Ventura County Fair this year! It could go from mockery to maudlin very quickly… on second thought… NAH!
18 Stretch99 // Jul 21, 2009 at 9:56 am
Seems like it was Liza with and S
and the S was for SAD…:-(
19 Auntie Vera Charles // Jul 21, 2009 at 11:56 am
It’s all such a dim memory now….thank god.
XOXOXOOX
20 Andre // Jul 21, 2009 at 12:26 pm
No on-stage nervous breakdown? No incoherent babbling? No emotional collapse? No hip breaking? I’d have asked for my money back.
21 Stretch99 // Jul 21, 2009 at 2:15 pm
From even as far away as Morongo
I SMELL FISH
22 pal Jacky // Jul 21, 2009 at 2:29 pm
http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2009/07/new-details-burn-notice-dui-he-crashed-police-cruiser
at least one person has listened to me. I’ve raved for years of the joys of benedryl and booze. It may not be the greatest OTC high. but it is one of the simpliest.
‘All I did was drink benedryl with three glasses of wine”
No asswipe-you drove afterward.
Don’t believe me how out of it you become, try it yourself.
23 Craig Crumpton // Jul 21, 2009 at 5:15 pm
April, I really enjoyed reading this, especially since I just saw Liza last week.
I work as a background performer on “Drop Dead Diva” and the episode we shot over the last two weeks included guest stars Delta Burke and Liza.
The production crew had taken all manner of extra security precautions while she was on set, even going as far as to put a fence up next to the sound stage the morning she arrived.
But it hurt just to watch Liza — not because she kept ruining take after take because she didn’t know her lines and couldn’t see her cue cards even though they were only 6 feet away. It hurt because she was in such poor health. She could barely walk for more than 10 feet without help, and couldn’t stand up for more than a 5 minutes at a time.
They also allowed her to smoke *inside* the sound stage, and at the end of one day of shooting I noted from the butts next to her chair that she’d smoked more than a pack of cigs while she was on set. In an 8-hour period.
However, she was entertaining to watch just because she’s such a larger-than-life personality, and she had a good sense of humor about her too.
I got to meet her as well, although it was accidental and pretty dang funny in the way it happened.
I was positioned sitting on a bar-type stool at the kitchen area counter of the law firm — about 6 feet from where Liza was standing on her mark to shoot the scene. We were waiting for the crew to change a camera battery or something when I noticed that Liza was backing towards me slowly, without looking. She was headed for the stool next to me.
I think she thought she was reaching for the counter to help foist herself up into the chair, when instead she slid her hand right up the inside of my upper thigh.
A couple of the crew witnessed this and nearly burst out laughing when they saw how red I had turned from embarrassment.
Liza turned to me when she realized what she’d done, smiled and said (in her unique way), “Oh, sorry dahling. I thought you were the chair.” And then she laughed that Liza laugh, and I forgot all about my embarrassment.
And now I can say I’ve been frisked by Liza Minnelli.
24 John Leader // Jul 21, 2009 at 6:43 pm
Really enjoyed your review.
I would rather have dinner with Hannibal Lecter than see Liza in concert (or anywhere else, for that matter), but your sad commentary of her performance really captures the “show biz is my life” endgame. Eventually, everyone stays on stage too long. Sad, but true.
25 jj // Jul 21, 2009 at 9:26 pm
Wow…wow. This sounds amazing. We have tickets for her at the Bowl in late August. I hope she lives that long.
26 TalkinHorse // Jul 22, 2009 at 3:04 am
Life was once a cabaret, but now it’s more of a buffet, eh?
27 Stretch99 // Jul 22, 2009 at 9:02 am
…or a Panda Express at the food court. Corn dog ANYONE?!
28 jasonthegreat // Jul 23, 2009 at 8:30 am
Poor Liza. I wonder if she’s considered having Lorna Luft dub her?
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