Deck the Lawn with Tacky Blow-Ups
Dear neighbors and all the folks in America who have decided to get into the Christmas spirit with large inflatable figures on their lawns,
It’s one thing to celebrate the holiday season by stringing your house and trees with lights. I think they are very cheery and lighten my evening whenever I see lit houses. Those reindeer that are made of Christmas lights are lovely (and I was tickled when I passed a house where the two reindeer had been arranged in a rather lewd position, although I’m sure that was probably some prank pulled off by local kids). I even like some manger scenes, when done tastefully.
But what makes you think I want to see four or five 15-foot inflatable Santas in a row on my way home? The amount of time and energy you must spend blowing up those dolls can probably be better put to use finishing your Christmas shopping or volunteering at a soup kitchen.
And while you might think you’re done inflating those things at 5 or 6 in the evening, I can tell you with all certainty that by 9:30 they are halfway deflated, and that by morning they are completely flat. So the idea that passers-by might be cheered by a large Mickey Mouse with a Santa hat smiling and waving at them doesn’t hold water, since by the time I drive by, poor Mickey looks like he’s been hitting the eggnog a little too much.
And is it really necessary to have Santa, an inflatable sleigh, and an Eagles quarterback? I know I live in the land of the Eagles fans, who are, by definition, a little bit nuts, but can you dial it back just a little bit? For the kids? Who wants to drive by a 15-foot generic football player that looks like he’s about to throw up rather than throw the ball, while an anemic Santa has overturned his sleigh?
Take some time to look at your house from an outsider’s perspective. Look at it, not when you come home from work, but right after you watch Survivor. Then look at your electric bill and think about how much money you might save if you just got rid of the inflatable dolls. You could give that money to those charities that have been soliciting you these past couple of weeks, and then you could feel much better about yourself this season, and I would feel much better about you as well.
This has been a public service announcement.
Filed under Christmas, Cranky | Comment (0)Caroling, Caroling, Up and Down
I have so many stories from this past month of caroling/rehearsals/concerts/wearing my voice out, I’m not sure where to start. As anyone who might have gone onto my calendar of events might have seen, I had no days off at all during the month of December, and hardly any even in November.
My 32nd birthday came and went with little fanfare. I got a nifty Canon Powershot Elph as a birthday/Christmas present from Ray, which I’m still trying to figure out, but this little thing takes way better pictures than my phone, that’s for sure. Plus, it’s got an underwater accessory which I will be getting before we go to Hawaii for the wedding. (You can look forward to many super duper photos in the future!)
From the day after Thanksgiving until the day before Christmas, my caroling group sang at Large Department Store on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. I wasn’t there all the time…in fact, the only one of us that was there almost every day was our bass, and to say he was tired of Christmas caroling by the end of it would be an understatement.
Most of the time, the gig was pretty easy. The first week or so we tried to settle into a routine. We were asked to sing before the light show, which played every hour on the hour, but the area where the public congregated in the middle of the store was huge, and the ceiling went up at least 60 feet. Needless to say, no one could hear us. Management then had the bright idea of having us sing up by the organ console, where there was a microphone.
That seemed like a better idea all around. Even though the microphone was unidirectional (so whoever was standing in front of the mic was the one everyone heard the most), the crowd did hear us, and they even enjoyed us. We started playing games with the audience, having them sing with us, and so on, which I think pleased the parents especially because we were entertaining their kids and giving them a little bit of a break.
However, even though we were supposed to start the shows 15 minutes before the hour every hour, there was not always someone at the organ console to let us in. Our bass (I’ll just call him Bass for anonymity’s sake) managed to figure out how to get us into the “locked” area, but we still couldn’t figure out how to turn the microphone on. Finally, we found one of the tech guys, who very nicely gave us a tutorial on the microphone. He pulled out a secret drawer from inside the organ console (you can see that thing in the picture above; there’s a lot of buttons on that thing), and pointed at some labeled buttons. Just push “Muzak” to mute the Muzak in the store, press “amp” to mute/unmute the amp to the microphone, and then turn the microphone on, he tells us. When we’re done, he says, we should do all that in reverse to return the system to normal.
What he didn’t tell us was that the sound track for the light show was also on that system, and that it was on a timer. So when we accidentally ran long that first time on our own, the light show started, and Julie Andrew’s voice rang out, “Welcome, children to the holiday light show!” We quickly stopped singing mid-verse (”…and a partridge in a pear…oh, never mind”), turned the microphone off, hit the Muzak button, hit the amp button AND MUTED JULIE ANDREWS!
The light show kept going, but it looked really stupid at this point, with Christmas light ballerinas flashing on and off with no music or narration. We quickly hit the “amp” and “Muzak” buttons again, but to no avail. Soprano (it’s really her caroling group, not mine, although we’re working on the paperwork to become business partners) and I went barrelling through Large Department Store in our Victorian outfits, looking for someone, anyone, with a walkie-talkie that could get us in touch with the tech guy who showed us how the microphone worked. Bass stayed by the organ console and said, “If you don’t mind, I think I might make a couple educated guesses.” I gave him my blessing, since things couldn’t have gotten much worse. Tenor, not knowing what to do, just stayed put and watched Bass helplessly.
We made it up to the backstage area of the Dickens Village, which is sort of Command Central for the entire Christmas area. Of course, they had no idea how to contact the tech guy, but they did get security on the phone to help us out. However, by the time they had security on the phone, Bass had fixed the problem. He had ended up pushing the big red button above the button marked “LAUNCH,” which is a pretty ballsy move, if you think about it. After all, how many times have we been told to stay away from those kinds of buttons?
The whole fiasco maybe lasted four minutes, but in my mind, it lasted four hours. I don’t really think anyone in the audience really noticed that it was a fiasco, either. I was a basket case for the rest of the day, and on into the night, which was unfortunate, since I was singing Handel’s Messiah that night. The concert itself went well, but I kept having to refocus myself on the music almost every ten minutes.
And this was only halfway into the Christmas season!
Filed under Christmas, Holidays, Singing | Comment (0)Deck the Halls
I tried to post this on 11/26, but the post never happened. Better late than never…
Thanksgiving was much less stressful for me than I thought it would be. Since I’ve had almost no free time, I was beside myself as to what to prepare for my soon-to-be in-laws, since the last couple of times I got overly ambitious and they arrived 30-45 minutes early to watch me frantically put finishing touches on things in the kitchen. Ray’s mom, ever condescending (but well-meaning), keeps saying, “She’s just a baby. She’ll learn,” which grates on my very last nerve, considering the fact that they come EARLY before I’m ready for them. Last time she said that, my dad spoke up for me and said, “No, she actually did a really great job.” Thanks, Dad!
But I am learning. This year I told them to come at 5:30, planning on dinner to be ready by 5:00. They arrived at 5:15, and I was ready for them with appetizers. I was still putting finishing touches on the food, but everything was cooked and almost ready to put on the table. I was hoping she wouldn’t make any more condescending remarks, but at the end of dinner, she said, “You’re learning.” Well, I guess she’s right. I just wish it didn’t bother me so much when she said it.
Now that Thanksgiving is over, Caroling season is in full swing. I started caroling at a Big Department Store in the middle of Philadelphia (I’m taking a page from Adam875’s book and trying for at least SOME anonymity), and although the whole story of how I got the gig needs to be left for another post, it is actually quite a nice gig. They have a secure dressing room for us to take our breaks in, and we’re pretty much left to our own devices. We have been wandering through the store, found out that although almost nobody shops in Menswear, there is a really cool place for us to stand and sing so that a good portion of the first floor can see and hear us.
Almost everyone who hears us actually stops and listens for the whole song, and sometimes even hangs out for two or three songs before they go back to their shopping. The parents are really pleased to point out to their kids, “Look, Timmy, Christmas carolers.” And one of my fellow carolers commented that we were probably the only people on Black Friday that the shoppers weren’t angry at. Shoppers would push and shove their way through the crowds, but when they saw us coming, they would smile and move aside.
We did have a strange incident, however, of a couple of teenagers we passed as we were walking to the escalator. They saw us and said, “Hey look, immigrants!” Immigrants? Um, how do you get immigrants from four people wearing Victorian-era outfits? Maybe immigrants who stepped out of a time machine. Those kids must be products of the Philadelphia public school system; obviously well-educated.
HallowThanksMas
Yesterday I did my first caroling gig of the season, all bedecked in my Victorian finery. We were hired by an Acme store (for those of you not on the East Coast, that’s a big supermarket chain) for a grand reopening of their store.
I have to say, this gig definitely goes into the category of bizarre. Here we were, strolling through the produce section in costume, singing Christmas carols on Nov. 4. Not only were we competing with the muzak being piped through the store and the “clean up on aisle six” pages over the loudspeaker, but we had added competition of people dressed as pilgrims, hired to wander through the store and hand out what I can only guess was leftover Halloween candy.
Talk about sending a confusing holiday message.
I would say this was a pretty low pressure job, but we had also apparently been advertised in the paper, apparently, and a couple people came to the store specifically to hear us sing. Our two fans hung out by the canteloupes for a while until we strolled back to the floral department, and then they did some shopping while they were there. Hey, I don’t blame them. If I hadn’t been on the clock, I would have done some shopping too.
Filed under Christmas, Holidays, Singing | Comment (0)Round Yon Virgin?
So I haven’t written much in the past few weeks because I’ve been too busy going from bed to the gym, to work, to rehearsals/concerts, to the mall, and then back to bed. I’ve been stressed for the Christmas season before, but I’m pretty sure this is the first year I’ve really wanted to just yell “Bah, humbug!” at everybody and everything.
In other news, I have been roped into playing the Virgin Mary in the Christmas Pageant at the church I work at. I’m not even sure I’m getting paid for this, and it’s really making me super bitter. Of all the people to play Mary, am I, the pagan, living in sin with my fiancé, really the right person to be playing the mother of Christ? I suppose, since Mary is really an embodiment of the Goddess, I’m not really being untrue to my own beliefs. I just hope the baby Jesus (yes, we’re using a real live newborn in the pageant) doesn’t spit up on me.
Filed under Christmas, Singing | Comment (0)Snow
My Christmas was very quiet, as is expected at the Brehms’ place. I ended up making just simple sweet potatoes with brown sugar and butter, and it turned out just fine.
You know, I scrambled so much trying to get gifts out on time, and the only people who sent me any gifts were my mom and my aunt Renda, so I think I need to just plan ahead better next year. I still haven’t gotten Ray’s gift yet, but that’s okay, because he still hasn’t gotten me mine. I want the Treo 650, which is now available with Sprint, but I also want to switch to Cingular, and they won’t actually have the Treo 650 until end of January. So I’m willing to wait. Ray wants a GPS navigation system, and since he didn’t tell me what he wanted until the day before Christmas Eve, I told him he was going to have to wait for it just like me. 
We All Like Sheep
I just finished the last performance of The Messiah tonight. All in all, the soloists were very good. Celena Shafer rocked the house, and so did the bass, Philip Cutlip. His voice is so warm and beautiful, and he did the runs impeccably, even at the hyper-caffeinated pace of Maestro McGegan’s conducting.
Nicholas McGegan is so much fun to work with, even if he does take everything really fast. He’s so happy up there on the podium, and he’s always trying to make us smile, and he has all sorts of fun gestures for different parts of the piece. At one point it looked like he was going to fly away, Peter Pan style. He made me giggle. The best part was when we had to stop after “And the Glory of the Lord” to let the latecomers be seated. He kind of did this little mime where he would tap his feet and glare at the latecomers, making the whole audience chuckle. It was so fun!
Filed under Christmas, Singing | Comment (0)