Saved by the Bowl

SO we leave behind the lullaby of the American home -- the flushing of toilets, the banter of cable TV -- for a night at the Hollywood Bowl, a popular concert venue along Cahuenga Boulevard with 18,000 seats and three parking spots. If that’s not a metaphor for Los Angeles, what is?

“Ooops, we missed it,” I tell my wife as we drive past the entry point.

“Maybe you can turn around over there,” she says politely.

It turns out to be a good suggestion, for we are able to pull around, then while waiting at the light, chat with a cop who tells us the Bowl shuttle is always a good way to go (as if we don’t know) and that he and his wife took it when they came to see Andrea Bocelli, and had dinner at Miceli’s right before. It was an early start, he said, like 4.

“Thanks officer,” I say, and head to Lot D, perhaps a little too quickly.

This isn’t just another date for my wife and me. This is, by my estimate, our 1,000th date, based on about 40 dates a year over a 25-year marriage -- including school open houses and trips together to Target.

It starts off quite well.

“We can’t bring in wine?” she says, reading a flier they hand out in the parking lot.

“Lemme see that,” I say.

This is one of those never-ending quandaries at the Hollywood Bowl. Sometimes you can bring in your own bottle. Other times you can’t. If you can figure out when it’s one way and when it’s the other, you’re a better lush than I am. (Call me, OK?)

Anyway, we manage to sneak our bottle in -- “Just don’t take it out of your bag,” the security guy suggests -- but fail to find a discreet way to open it among a security throng that rivals Allied forces at Monte Cassino. We are down pretty low in the boxes, which I guess is where a lot of the trouble usually starts,

Boy, could I use a drink. This is my last-ditch effort to save our marriage, which has been teetering since -- well, since our honeymoon, when I made my wife go horseback riding and a rental mare nearly brushed her from the saddle while ducking under a low tree branch.

“Ow, my head,” she said at the time.

“You have to be smarter than the horse,” I responded, which wasn’t what she necessarily wanted to hear.

Since then, many things have happened. I have gifted her with four children widely spaced, several cars, two houses -- all lemons. The houses and the cars, I mean, not the kids. The kids are mostly limes.

Which brings us to this 1,000th date, at the Hollywood Bowl, with much at stake. If this doesn’t go well, it’s adios Lone Ranger.

“He says his butt itches,” the baby-sitter/daughter says over the phone. “He wants me to look at it.”

“Try a warm wash cloth,” answers my wife.

See, our life is not without glamour. Anyway, we settle into our seats and watch the crowd flow in, the show within a show. One young woman evidently spent so much on her ticket that she couldn’t afford a complete shirt. She saunters to the front of the stage nearly naked, poor thing.

“You can see her entire breast,” my wife notes, as if I needed help with that.

Also here tonight is the Third Wives Club, willowy young trumpeter swans on the arms of far older men. The game my wife and I play is that you have to immediately guess if the trumpeter swan is the man’s wife or daughter. The person who guesses “wife!” the most always wins.

“This is so fun,” says my first wife, snuggling beneath her blanket.

Then out come a couple of opening acts, followed by the King himself, John Mayer: a nerdy guitar virtuoso with a voice like smoke.

“I wanna run through the halls of my high school, I wanna scream at the top of my lungs, “ he yodels from the candy-colored stage.

My thoughts? First there are good reasons why you’re not supposed to run through the halls of your high school. Someone could get hurt. In addition, the success of U.S. education relies on a regimented, militaristic order. Imagine what our trade deficit would be without that?

“Gravity ... is working against me,” Mayer sings.

Here, a song I can relate to. Gravity has been bringing me down for years too. There’s no telling how far I could reach were it not for Earth’s gravitational pull. Seriously, shouldn’t we have more songs about Newtonian mechanics?

“He sounds sooooo good,” says my trumpeter swan, who found a way to open the wine.

We escape by about 10:30; home by midnight. Exiting the parking lot takes 15 minutes longer than Mayer’s performance. As you read this, days later, the last few cars are still trickling out of Lot D.

But that’s the Hollywood Bowl for you. That’s love for you. Really, only the strong survive.

Chris Erskine can be reached at chris.erskine@latimes.com. For more columns, see latimes.com/erskine.