Martini Techno-Theater Night

It is funny how a few degrees of separation can lead to new friends and laughter. If you had read my previous blog from a few days ago (Have You Had Your DNA Tested?) you would have read how my ancestral "DNA cousin" John Earl Spencer entered my life this year.

John resides in San Francisco, CA and he cyber-introduced (Is that a new word for wikipedia?) me to Jay Kuo who has become a mutual friend. Jay Kuo and I have been exchanging electronic mail messages over the last couple of months. Jay was a former commercial litigation attorney who chose to follow his passion into musical theater arts. He is a talented and accomplished composer, lyricist and producer with three finished musicals: Insignificant Others, Homeland, and Upwardly Mobile. He is currently working on two new projects that he plans to workshop and release in New York City or wherever the theater path will lead him. It is exciting to know that Jay plans to move to New York City in March 2009.

Jay has been in New York City over the last week and made a point to come by to meet myself and Alan. We arranged a cocktail meeting at our apartment in Tribeca last night. Jay brought along two of his good friends and business associates who were ever-so-friendly. We met Gregory Rae, a former software engineer with Google.com, and Lorenzo Thione, an entrepreneur, of which both have a passion for martini's and theater.

Gregory Rae grew up in Napa, California, so we touched up on our love of the Napa Valley. Gregory has been living in the Chelsea area of New York City for five years now and was a joy to get to know. Lorenzo Thione grew up in Milan, Italy. He speaks fluent Italian and one wouldn't know it. He must have been an A student in his English classes. Lorenzo was educated in Computer Engineering at the University of Texas in Austin. He was Founder and Product Architect of Powerset, Inc. a Natural Language Search company that was committed to delivering the next breakthrough revolution in web search. His company was recently sold to Microsoft for a decent amount of bucks.

Alan mixed his delicious apple martini's using the Russian vodka we received last July 2008 in St. Petersburg, Russia. The original Berentzen Apfel Korn schnapps liqueur from Germany was the magic elixir. These boys know how to drink us under the table. We couldn't join them for musical fun at SPLASH because we had an early morning meeting but we delighted in our martini techno-theater conversation.

We chatted up a storm about theater shows from West Side Story, Memphis, Billy Elliot, Gypsy and more to techno-talk on Google, Microsoft, Yahoo. We are delighted to join them again for the closing night gala of INSIGNIFICANT OTHERS on December 27, 2008 in San Francisco, CA.

It really is a joy to be random and spontaneous every now and then. Now I am hoping Lorenzo was not kidding with regard to his cooking skills. I want that home cooked 'cotoletta alla milanese' (heck...even his Italian-style pasta will do). Yummy!