On FOMO and Recent Events
A look back at events I've been to recently and events I fear missing out on
To be clear, “recent events” isn’t coded language for something that happened in the news; it literally refers to events I’ve been to recently. Apologies for being clickbaity.
Try as I might to be above FOMO, when I scroll through Instafacestack or whatever, I see events I wished I’d attended and places I wished I’d gone. I’ve turned event research into a monetized hobby, so it’s hard not to feel a little bit regretful. Even if I’ve no qualms about missing the event, I might be upset that I omitted it from my monthly list.
So to hell with that. Here are the places that I DID go over these past few weeks.
TV Studio Audience
Years ago I wrote a post on where to see free and cheap events in NYC. It continues to get some traffic, and one day I noticed that the most clicked link is to 1ota.com—a site where you can sign up for free tickets to be in live TV audiences and attend other film-related events. (They also have events in Los Angeles.)
I’ve used the site a couple times before. In 2015, I remember being in a studio audience and getting to see James Taylor sing “La Marseillaise” shortly after the November 13 terrorist attacks in Paris. A while back I entered my name for tickets to a series of Jimmy Kimmel Live in Brooklyn tapings. Long after I’d completely forgotten about it, I got an email asking to confirm!
The guests ended up being quite high profile: Spike Lee and Tom Hanks, with a cameo from Matt Damon. It felt surreal for a second to be on live TV, but it also felt a little quaint. Do people still watch TV? It’s been many years since I cut that cable, and I’ve only seen Jimmy Kimmel clips myself via YouTube and Instagram feeds. I felt more like an extra in a lavishly funded social media post.
Stage Magic Shows
Magic has been on my mind a lot lately, and I’ve written about it in lists as recent as this past August and September. I saw two shows recently, Hayden Childress’ Urban Illusions, and Jamie Allan’s Amaze. To some extent, they represent opposite ends of a magic spectrum. Urban Illusions is an intimate, close-up magic show tucked away in an East Village basement, whereas Amaze is a more explosive show on an Off-Broadway stage, with people levitating and motorcycles appearing.
I am grateful to live in a city where magic is so accessible. It’s something I’ve loved reading about all my life. One of my favorite books as a kid was Expert Card Technique: Close-Up Table Magic, a decades-old book on how to perform card magic tricks. The thing was though, I couldn’t do the tricks. I just liked reading the behind-the-scenes techniques of how they were done. I felt in awe of both Childress and Allan, like I was bearing witness to people who could actually do those tricks and have clearly persisted with the craft all their lives.
I’ve since read plenty of other magic-related books, although generally ones way less dry and technical as Expert Card Technique. I was practically giddy when one of the books assigned to me in a college history class was Houdini, Tarzan, and the Perfect Man. My personal favorite so far is probably Jim Steinmeyer’s Hiding the Elephant.
I recently read Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, and it changed me. In this case it’s fiction, but the protagonist is an amateur magician and co-creates a comic book about a magician superhero. The story takes place largely in World War II–era New York City, with striking, beautiful prose along the way. I picked it up specifically because the Metropolitan Opera was premiering a new work based on the novel, but I soon felt myself inhabiting Chabon’s dark world, looking forward to each chapter, and dreading it being over. All said, I’d never done that before: read a book, followed by seeing the opera it’s based off of.
The Metropolitan Opera
I’m always happy when it’s opera season. This year, Kavalier & Clay was top of mind for me, but there is nary a show I’d say no to.1 One of my favorite things to do is to try and rush the operas. It requires clicking a button at noon (for most performances) on the dot and, even then sometimes getting a little bit lucky. Part of the fun is no doubt the savings. Each ticket is 25 dollars, and I’ve gotten some excellent seats, some amounting to over 90 percent off.
Another part of the fun for me, however, is the gamble. I wake up not knowing how my night will end. Will I stay at home, cooking dinner and playing with my cat? Or will I finish my workday then head over to Lincoln Center for three and a half hours of resplendent sung drama in Italian? On a recent Thursday evening, Turandot was playing, so I logged on to the rush site a few minutes before noon, monitored the time down to the second, clicked the button at 12 o’clock exactly, and my coin flipped up opera.
The story is pure insanity and deeply problematic, but oh lordy the music. I’ll share here the same video I did on a previous article I wrote about going to the opera in New York City:
I repeated the ritual a week later for La Fille du Régiment, another Italian opera, although this one sung in French and with several non-singing roles. (An opéra-comique.) Sandra Oh played the rich, eccentric mother of the groom in a fraught marriage. It’s a role that has historically gone to many celebrities, including Bea Arthur, Kathleen Turner, and famously in 2016, US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It’s the most champagne-guzzling pinkies-out laughter you’ll ever hear, but I do appreciate a little goofiness on an opera stage.
I’m less likely to go the rush route for contemporary operas, which I don’t even want to risk missing! This is the music that’s more than beautiful to me, it’s current. It’s relevant. Madama Butterfly, La Bohème, Turandot, etc. all have breathtaking scores, but the classical canon has been done to death and, more troubling for me, falls into this centuries-long Western tradition that is shockingly devoid of women and people of color.2
The 2025–26 Met Opera season has three contemporary operas:
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (Sep 21–Feb 21)
Innocence (Apr 6–Apr 29)
El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego (May 14–Jun 5)
As I mentioned, I was fortunate enough to see Kavalier & Clay already, and I thought librettist Gene Scheer did masterful work trimming the gigantic book down to the essentials needed for an opera. The material is so heavy that I was actually relieved by some parts of the novel that were left out of the opera. The real hero for me was Mason Bates. He composed the work and is known for incorporating electronics into his music. I loved how well the score melded superhero adventures with military marches.
Musical Theater
Musical theater, opera’s microphone-laden cousin, is another art form I’ve gabbed on about plenty of times. Last year, I wrote about having seen every musical playing at the time on Broadway. Drama with music will always feel natural to me, and similar to the Met Opera’s rush program, over the years I’ve made liberal use of Broadway rushes, lotteries, and other discounts.
A show that’s been on my radar for a while (and was in last September’s Blankman List) is Mexodus. It’s a two-person show where all of the music (and sound effects!) are created live on stage using looping tools. The story takes place during nineteenth-century Texas, where a person who had been enslaved found freedom by escaping to Mexico.
I thought it was a stunning, original show, and it made for an interesting comparison with the other show I’ve seen recently, Heathers. Both shows played Off-Broadway, where the smaller scale (and lower mounting costs) can allow for more experimentation than Broadway. Mexodus was trying something very new: a story that hadn’t been told much, original music in a style rarely seen in theater, and orchestration that emerged as the show unfolded. Heathers, on the other hand, was straightforward musical theater writing, based on a film that came out nearly 40 years ago.
That said, the decades-old plot still feels fresh to me. Without spoiling too much, both shows involve a murder. Both murders are arguably rooted in justice. Yet in Mexodus, the murder is understandable and necessary, whereas in Heathers, it was committed by an irreverent teenager and completely avoidable. I left Mexodus contemplating immigration and slavery. I left Heathers humming the tune to “Dead Gay Son.”
I don’t mean to dismiss Heathers. It’s a show I’ve long wanted to see after it gained a fervent cult following its previous Off-Broadway run in 2014. High school is fertile breeding ground for all sorts of drama, and Heathers turns the dial to 11. The jocks are homophobic idiots and sexual predators. The popular girls have eating disorders and are mercilessly cruel. I sympathize with anyone who passes because of the show’s many triggers. But to those who believe there is no line in comedy, the writing is sharp. The original cast (which I saw) includes many actors I’ve been longtime fans of, too. I’ve written before about Olivia Hardy’s singing in the context of a Beyoncé cabaret, and just last August, I promoted Casey Likes’ cabaret. I suppose I like a good cabaret.
But in the end, it’s always, always, always about the music for me. I’ll forgive any plot if the music slaps. Before seeing Heathers, I’d already gone entire weeks where the chorus of “Seventeen” played on an endless loop in my brain, infecting it deeply and making it impossible sometimes to fall asleep or concentrate on what another person was saying because all I could hear was, “Can’t we be seventeeeeeen? That’s all I want to dooooo.”
FOMO and JOMO
To combat FOMO, I’ve seen people singing the praises of JOMO—the joy of missing out. The idea is not to lament missing out but rather to celebrate what you do spend your time on. There’s a lot to be said about passing an occasional night gorging on Oreos and watching comfort TV.
Working on an NYC events list month in and month out means that I’ve long stopped feeling overwhelmed by what I’m missing out on. There’s just too much. On any given night, I could be at the greatest party I’ve ever experienced, but there are still hundreds of other parties happening that I’m missing out on. Such is life.
But it’s not quite JOMO for me either. I don’t revel in missing events. I suppose I just don’t care. I go to the things that I can, and I don’t go to the things that I can’t. The reason can be as plain as “I don’t want to.” One of my favorite ways to go to the opera is alone. It becomes meditative. I know my time on this Earth is limited, and the older I get, the more aware of it I feel. But when I hear music, I’m happy to be alive.
Er, I’ve said no multiple times. I love the art form, but I have lukewarm feelings about commuting home from Lincoln Center at, like, midnight on a Tuesday.
This remains a problem, no doubt, but I’m aware the Metropolitan Opera understands the value and need for diversity among creatives. Grounded, by composer Jeanine Tesori, opened last season, and in this season, both Innocence and El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego are also composed by women—Kaija Saariaho (1952–2023) and Gabriela Lena Frank, respectively.