i was a reader at muni auditions all day, since 8:30 this morning. that’s a mighty early hour to be out and about – i can’t imagine singing so early, but there were plenty of people doing it. last sunday i saw quite a few good people, but today…many many many people who you just had to wonder why they were up there putting themselves through such torture.
many of these people were high school girls. many of the high school girls were so skinny that one of their thighs was about the same size as my arm. the super-skinnys uniformly wore painted-on jeans. i hope they have lots of pictures of themselves in those very skinny jeans, so that someday they can look back and remember what that felt like. i, personally, was never a super-skinny teenager. a plump ungainly pre-teen and never fully felt that i looked any better than that.
while i was busy reading, kevin was marching with the 114th regiment in the st. patrick’s day parade. i got to see a little of the parade because we were on a lunch break, and here he is, marching away.
in case you can’t spot him (and yeah, those soldiers do look an awful lot alike) he’s in the third group from the front, just to the left of the guy with the brown beard.
also marching was this group of guys dressed as soldiers through the ages. matt, this young kid who used to do fencing, is fourth from the front dressed in civil war garb. matt is a garrulous, friendly guy and i like him despite his right-wing republican views. he started doing these civil war reenactments and now he’s keen on joining some wwII reenactment and soon he’ll go join the actual military.
even though i didn’t see a lot of the parade, i saw enough to remember yet again why parades around here are kind of boring – they start out ok, but then inevitably there’s suddenly a block-long gap in the procession. since i’ve never been involved in organizing a parade i have no idea how difficult it would be to get all the groups to hurry the hell up down the street, but apparently it must be very, very difficult. i can’t remember any parades here that didn’t suffer from this problem.
a guy i know said he doesn’t like parades because you’re just standing there watching other people walk by. and today i decided that he’s kind of right. kevin’s group was interesting to watch, mostly because he was in it but also because they were dressed in uniforms, and the couple of bands i saw were good, and the bagpipers were entertaining…but there were too many ragtag clumps of people with no real purpose to being there.
plus lots and lots of politicians. i do have to say that i was extremely impressed that one politician was throwing FULL-SIZED CANDY BARS. except they were paydays with no chocolate involved at all. but still, it was a good gesture. maybe he was the treasurer? hence the paydays? ironic, considering the very pathetic state of our state.
tonight we’re going to see the musical “parade” because randy is in it. if randy wasn’t in it, i wouldn’t want to go. gus gordon has been insistent about how GREAT it is, such great music, blah blah blah, but i just can’t get over the fact that it’s based on the true story of a jewish guy in post-cvil-war times who gets wrongfully accused of raping and killing a young girl, and then the guy gets hanged by an angry mob at the end.
does this sound happy to you? no, exactly. i mean, i don’t need happily ever after all the time (although i have to say i prefer it) – but i like stuff that’s dark, like “jekyl and hyde” and “les miserables” – but who decided that rape murder anti-semitism would be perfect for a musical…a musical called PARADE, no less.
i’m sure it will be very very well done, and all the people have their beautiful voices and it’ll be moving…but still. rape. murder. lynching. somebody said “well, it’s based on fact, and you have to acknowledge that” – but why put it to music? why tap your toes to horror and atrocity?
maybe i won’t feel like this after seeing it; i’m going to do my best to like it. i heard a couple of minutes of the orchestra rehearsal last weekend and they sound FANTASTIC. matt vala was singing a number and he was awesome.
but another thing is that i’ve been too close to horrible real things that have happened to people i care deeply about. as i get older, and more and more bad things happen, i have no desire to be entertained by horrible things set to music.
so we’ll see.
ok then,
rainy saturday grace.