Ready, steady…production week.

4 Replies

Some schools call it “Hell Week.” I don’t like that term. “Hell” is what took place in the 9 weeks before now. (Well, that, and last night.)

Sartre said, “Hell is other people.” I won’t go there right now, or there’ll be a rant. (In fact, I just deleted five huge sentences.) Suffice it to say that some people think they’re funny as it, and it makes me wonder if there’s a special place reserved there for them. You know the kind I’m talking about.

More on that another day, fo sho. But back to production week.

As I type this, my stomach gets all ooky. And the heck of it is, the anxiety usually centers around stuff I can’t change.

Production week for me entails thoughts and worries about:

  1. what’s still wrong and how it can be fixed
  2. things I have to let go of because they can’t be fixed in time for the opening
  3. how many details I need to tie up, and feeling that there is at least one gargantuan “thing” I’ve forgotten to address
  4. cuts in the score about which I may have failed to inform the players in the pit
  5. in this case (since I’m playing), getting my own part right
  6. most importantly, giving our audiences the quality they’ve come to expect (this is the biggy)

But, like heaven and earth, this too shall pass away. Thirteen days. Thirteen days.

Happy happy

7 Replies

Some thank — or shake their fist at — Hallmark for “inventing” Mother’s Day. Turns out that’s not the case at all. (Now Grandparents Day? Sweetest Day? I haven’t researched, but I’d be less than surprised to find they had something to do with those.)

Indeed, it was Anna Jarvis, not the Hallmark company, who picked up and ran with the idea of Mother’s Day: a concept originally conceived a few years earlier by Julia Ward Howe (of “Battle Hymn of the Republic” fame) to honor mothers and celebrate world peace.

According to MothersDayCentral.com (paraphrased):

In 1908, Senator Elmer Burkett of Nebraska proposed making Mother’s Day a national holiday, at the request of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). The proposal was defeated, but by 1909, forty-six states were holding Mother’s Day services. Celebrations also took place in Canada and Mexico.

Anna Jarvis quit her job and devoted herself full time to the creation of Mother’s Day, endlessly petitioning state governments, business leaders, women’s groups, churches and other institutions for support. She finally convinced the World’s Sunday School Association — then a key influence over state legislators and Congress — to back her. In 1912, West Virginia became the first state to officially recognize Mother’s Day, and in 1914, Woodrow Wilson signed it into national observance, declaring the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day.

What a big to-do, eh? The best part about it, for me, is getting to see/talk to my children, their wives, and my grandchildren. I think any mom prefers that over just about any other gift.

So if you’re fortunate enough to have your mother still with you, give her a call. She’ll love you (even more, if that’s possible) for it. :-)

À pleurer

14 Replies

It is to weep.

I stumbled across an article that made me giggle. I thought, yep — I bawled like a fool at that movie. And it got me to thinking…you know, I bawl at some point at just about every movie I’ve ever seen. Empathy Overdrive.

Why do I do this to myself? It’s like I can’t help it. I spent most of  Water for Elephants in boo-hoo mode. And you should have seen me during the cloying, sappy The Notebook. I couldn’t breathe through my nose for an hour. And Sophie’s Choice — I don’t even want to talk about it. Cripes — you name the movie and I cried at it. (Well, except maybe The Hangover.)

Even the old classics — The Wizard of Oz, It’s a Wonderful Life — are weepworthy for me. Why do I do this?

I once asked the Thriller (who never cries at anything) how he and I can be watching the same film, and I’ve got the box of Kleenex on my lap while he sits there munching on popcorn, totally oblivious to all the harrowing emotion onscreen. His response was, “It’s not that it doesn’t make me sad, but it’s all just a made-up story.” I realized then that some of us internalize a story, and some of us watch it as a disinterested (not to be confused with uninterested) bystander.

This was brought to bear in a conversation I recently had with the students in my vocal jazz ensemble. One of the boys made the comment, “I get so involved in the [in this case, horror] story, I can’t take it.” I totally agreed. The slash-and-gore isn’t happening to the girl on the screen; it’s happening to me. I guess that’s why I can’t watch most horror films. I totally flip my poop. Same with a sad movie: I’m right there with the people going through it. I remember seeing Ghost in the theater…oh dear, what a mistake.

And it doesn’t stop at movies. I can’t read this without dissolving into weeping foolery. I cry at commercials (remember the Folger’s Coffee ones about soldiers coming home at Christmas? And I can’t even get through the opening frame of this, Lawd). But movies get me the most, because I crawl so far into the story, it’s impossible to extricate myself when things get hairy. I can’t watch Cars with my grandsons without losing it during the scene where James Taylor sings “Our Town,” and I’ve seen that movie a hundred times. I’m bawling right now, having researched and played the link. No one seems to need us like they did before…Oy…

OK, so what’s your take on this? Where do you sit on the Weep Scale? I’m off the charts, ferdangsure. What are the saddest movies you’ve ever seen? I’ll bet I could say “Oh yeah!” to more than one of them.

Off to get ready for…sniffy…school.

*sNORt*

Various & Sundry XLII

6 Replies

What to do when I’m up at 4………….

Here’s something for sure: when this school year (you know, the Three Weeks What Will Never End) is done, I’m getting back into my skin. Family, friends (although I’ve loved spending time with the always-awesome Stoney during this rehearsal run), traveling, cooking, baking, gardening, reading, walking the dog…it’s all coming back with a vengeance. Can’t wait.

I will resume my list on the Comfort Foodie; the last recipe I posted was back in March, oy. But until then, I will look for pockets of sanity when I can. It’s the best all of us can do during the crazy times, ja? Behold the V & S coolness for today:

 

Do NOT go here.

===================

Lifehacker has the coolest stuff.

===================

I entered grilled chicken  in the first box, and roast beef in the second. Nice little script.

===================

I don’t visit Photo of the Week nearly often enough.

===================

Some of these I knew; others I did not. As Suzanne is wont to say: Inneresting!

===================

You can’t stop watching. Heh heh.

Well, I suppose I will go get ready for the school house — but not before reading about how the Indians came back to tie the game in the bottom of the 9th, only to give it up to the White Sox in the 10th. Yay.

Getting there

2 Replies

Well it’s almost sold out. Tickets remain for the matinee, but otherwise, we’re full up. Can’t shove any more bodies in there. How about that?

We sort of expected it would happen for a popular show like this. I just hope we can live up to everyone’s expectations. From the movie, I mean.  Thing is, the Broadway show bears limited resemblance to the film version in many places. Profanity and general raunchiness are the biggest differences; they cleaned up a lot of it for the movie. And since we’re doing the “school version” (written by original Grease scriptwriter Warren Casey so schools in more conservative districts — like mine — could do the show), there are also several plot omissions.

For instance, there’s no pregnancy issue with Rizzo. It’s been completely excised from the story. And of course, all profanity has been removed and some lyrics replaced (most notably, the words to “Look at Me, I’m Sandra Dee” and “Greased Lightnin'”).

Actually, the book was so squeaky clean, we replaced a few of the lines with their original counterparts. For instance, the school version has Danny singing (in “Summer Nights”), “We told jokes under the dock…”

Seriously? Hahaha yeah, we changed that back to “We made out…”. Some of the changes are ridiculous.

Some people may not realize that three signature songs from the movie — “Hopelessly Devoted to You,” “Grease is the Word (main theme),” and “You’re the One That I Want” — are not included in the Broadway version. We added “You’re the One” and “Hopelessly” — I just had to write my own arrangements of them, and there’s a line of text we had to add to the program for copyright purposes. That said, there are a few songs in the Broadway version (and not in the film) that are fantastic!

And “Greased Lightnin'”? That’s Kenickie’s feature, not Danny Zuko’s. Travolta put his foot down in the movie production, reportedly insisting that the song be his.

Um, question to Samuel French (the pirates): If everyone wants to include the songs from the movie anyway, why not just put them in the original score??

Still, all craziness and idiotic complications aside, this has been a good run, and I hope they’re up to the task next weekend.

Next weekend. Oy.