Crammed Into a Box...How Sweet It Is

It’s Saturday evening at the home of friends. The baked ziti is nearly finished, and there is wine on our wives’ lips. Basically, anything could happen.

“So tell us again how you got upside down in the car,” someone asks our friend Debbie.

“I was upside down?” Debbie asks.

Flash back to a week earlier. The Hollywood Bowl.

James Taylor is in concert. For almost three hours he sings us lullabies in night air that is dry and cool as a virgin’s kiss.

“Just yesterday morning, they let me know you were gone,

Suzanne, the plans they made put an end to you.”

Taylor stands up on stage with 25% of the hair he once had, one of rock’s last remaining troubadours, singing his songs of the past and painting pictures in the dark.

We sit there with 25% of the hair we once had, hanging on to his every word.

“We love you, James!” a fan shouts between songs.

“Thank you, sir,” Taylor answers dryly.

Taylor’s voice is better than ever--choirboy clear, as if filtered through stained glass.

He’s supported by six musicians and 18,000 backup singers, a sold-out Hollywood Bowl audience insistent on helping him perform.

Many merely lip-sync the words to his classic songs. Others are less considerate. Some fans sing louder than Taylor himself.

“The guy sitting behind us, he was singing so loud,” says a friend we run into at intermission.

“Come sit with us,” we offer.

“Seriously?”

“Sure, there’s plenty of room,” I say.

Now, if you’ve ever been in a box at the Hollywood Bowl, you know there isn’t exactly plenty of room.

It’s like a game of Twister, only more intimate, and your chances of contracting a cold or falling in love are pretty good, even if you’re not looking for illness or love, which share many of the same awful symptoms.

A Hollywood Bowl box is a phone booth really, with four to six chairs wedged inside.

When my wife breathes in, I breathe out. If one person in our group itches, we all have to scratch. Women have gotten pregnant in the Hollywood Bowl just reaching for the brie.

“You have enough room there?” someone asks.

“Oh, sure.”

So our friends Joel and Mona crawl in, bringing our group to six, maximum occupancy.

As Taylor takes a long halftime break, the six of us share some dessert and finish each other’s laughs.

“We’re seeing who can spot the hottest celebrity,” I tell Joel.

“OK, we’ll play,” he says.

Debbie’s husband spots Jamie Lee Curtis. Joel tops him with Helen Hunt.

“Look over there,” I say.

“Where?”

“Courteney Cox,” I say.

“Where?”

“Or maybe it’s Howard Stern,” I say.

Then the second half begins.

“In my mind I’m goin’ to Carolina,

Can’t you see the sunshine,

Can’t you just feel the moonshine,

Ain’t it just like a friend of mine to hit me from behind,

Yes, I’m going to Carolina in my mind.”

James Taylor sings and talks, talks and sings. He introduces the musicians and singers, many of whom have been with him for years.

The crowd sits politely through an acoustic set, blood pressure medication and chardonnay mingling in our veins.

Believe it or not, you’re not supposed to bring bottles of wine into the bowl anymore. So we sneak it in. In our veins.

“Take to the highway won’t you lend me your name,

Your way and my way seem to be one and the same.”

Four encores. That’s right, four, if my math is correct.

Taylor sings an encore, then leaves for five minutes. Comes out, sings another short ditty, then leaves for five more minutes.

“Sing the whole song!” someone in our box yells after the third quick encore.

Taylor ends the evening with “Sweet Baby James,” his signature song, sending everyone to the cars happy and a little sad.

“Goodnight, you moonlight ladies,

Rockabye, sweet baby James,

Deep green and blues are the colors I choose,

Won’t you let me go down in my dreams,

Yes, and rockabye sweet baby James.”

We cow-walk out of the amphitheater with 18,000 other people, bumping elbows and flanks as we sway down the hill toward our cars.

“Another couple of days, we’ll be outta here,” I say optimistically when we reach the minivan.

“Here, let’s sit in the back,” my wife says, opening the tailgate.

At the Bowl, no one leaves right away. Cars are parked bumper-to-bumper-to-bumper.

Weeks pass, and no one moves. No one can leave till the car in front or to the side leaves. Sometimes it takes 30 minutes. Other times, hours or weeks.

Which I think is how our friend Debbie wound up upside-down in the back of the minivan at midnight, with us circled around laughing and eating Trader Joe’s cheese. An impromptu tailgate party.

“Hey, Debbie, how’d you get upside down?” her husband yells.

“I’m upside down?” she asks.

A week later, we finish the baked ziti and relive the concert. With today’s ticket prices, we have to go twice to justify the expense. First, in person. Then, a week later, in our best friends’ home.

“We should go to more concerts,” Debbie says.

“Sure, when?” my wife asks.

There is wine on the wives’ lips again. Basically, anything could happen. And usually doesn’t.

“How’d we get home that night anyway?” Debbie says, an age-old question we rarely get to ask anymore.

“Very carefully,” someone answers.

And rockabye sweet baby James. *

Chris Erskine’s column is published on Wednesdays. His e-mail address is chris.erskine@latimes.com.