So while the dot-com companies take their employees to screenings of Star Wars and microbreweries (actually it’s more like Red Hook), at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center we go to the circus! Last night one of MSG’s PIs used money earned from antibody patents to take his employees and their spouses to the Cirque du Soleil- performing in Renton, Washington. The 25-or-so of us convened 30 miles from Seattle in the VIP tent, where we mingled with clowns and enjoyed the champagne and snacks (and where, at intermission, we refueled with more champagne and desert).

There we were- indulging and celebrating the news of benign tissue in MSG’s mouth, hanging with his cancer research crew, and keeping his circus-ambivalence at bay. I’ve never seen MSG like this- on edge about the carnies somehow sniffing out his circus-blood (you can take the boy out of the circus, but you can’t…?), and also strangely at home. He hadn’t been near the circus since his Big Apple days, and there was a peculiar light in his eyes. It was a strange combination of circumstance.

The performance itself was all we could hope for-- goofy clowns, unbelievable talent, exoticized cultures, young contortionists, and overbearing moaningvoice+guitar music.