Anti-Individuality

So I suppose the purpose of an orchestra uniform is for all of us to look uniformly identical. Our conductor does not support my view that my solid black shirt and skirt needs a little more life and personality to it, but tonight I felt more strongly than normal that my outfit could use a little tweaking to become something more "Maria". At our concert last night, I wore a colorful scarf with shades of green, blue, and purple along with some bright teal knee-length socks which I proudly sported when I had to hike up my skirt a bit to navigate the stairs safely. Although she didn't comment on the socks, she sent one of the first violins over to tell me I had to take the scarf off. Two years ago (I vaguely remember this), he wore a slightly over-sized red bow-tie instead of the customary black one and also had to "fix" the "problem" with his uniform. I heave a mighty sigh and concede that I suppose it makes some sense to be forced into visual conformity when part of a musical ensemble. I did, however dramatically replace the scarf around my neck when we stood to bow.

A few days ago, I could have gone on forever about how annoyed I am/was with the orchestra, but for now I'll focus mainly on the improvement in the past few days.

We sounded a lot better last night than I had anticipated, let's just hope we can keep it up for contest on Friday.

I am back to my rightful spot as third chair! I'm not going into the stupid reasons why Ms. Johnson decided to put me in seventh chair last concert. Even she can't defend her reasoning. If our section leader keeps skipping orchestra (we meet forty minutes before school starts for the rest of the students, so it's not unusual for people to just sleep in and skip), she may be demoted and I could end up as second chair by the end of the year. I might also eventually beat the current second chair viola. Anywho, the first two violas are seniors so I'll be first chair next year no matter what. Sadly, the grand old viola section will go from being the largest section of the orchestra this year with twelve members to the second-smallest with the maximum possible size being seven violists. Most likely we'll have only four, but three wouldn't be out of the question either.

The conductor is an extremely disorganized person and really isn't all that great of a teacher/conductor (although she's a nice enough person), but she's been making massive efforts to improve lately. I hope that they are effective for both her sake and ours.

Musical Pictures

Blogger isn't wanting to let me post a photobucket slideshow, so I'll just put all the pictures from the musical here. The spacing is a little rough in some spots, but if it's all the same to you, readers, I'd really rather not go through all the messy steps to make it fit together smoothly.



Light-up roses like one used as a special effect in the prologue of the musical were sold during intermission, and some cast/crew girls got them. In real life, the roses glowed red, not orange.






Here's a clearer view of the people in the last picture. From left to right we have Beth, Rachel (good luck telling the difference between Rachel and Beth), Becky C., Becky H., and Ellen.






Here's Sara Christenson with her rose. I couldn't find her for the group picture.







Malia wearing Alfred's hat and cape.








Amy taking a picture of Sara Crowell scowling in a pirate hat (it's hard to see the hat, but it's there)







Amy and Sara Christenson in the front with Anna's head in the back







Amy, Beth, Sara Crowell, and myslef in Gaston's chair








Becky H. watching Rachel and Bree shake each other while Becky C. laughs







the antlers from Gaston's chair








The Beast's crest, painted by Christian. The banner at the bottom reads "Disney mange les ames" which means "Disney eats souls" We wanted it to say "Disney mange les ames d'enfants" but it wouldn't fit.





And now for the gorgeous "stained glass windows" This is the stage right window. Overall, it probably has the strongest composition and may be the best looking.















I couldn't get a clear shot of the middle panel because I'm not very good at levitating yet. This one is the worst. The colors don't jive with one another or the desired mood of the piece. Plus it's slanted and off-center at the bottom. The person who started it was painting it as a punishment, and I doubt he really wanted to at all.













This one, the stage left window may be my favorite. Either this or the stage right window, I have a hard time deciding.

It's Over...

Yay!

Boo!
Mixed feelings.

The musical is over. Last night was closing night, and today we struck the set. It's a relief to have more time on my hands (mostly to do homework... blech...), but I really do miss doing the show already. Sure, tech messed up fairly obviously at least three times every night and there was almost nothing to do backstage for this show, but it was still fun.

In my opinion, the painting aspect of this show may have been my favorite so far. The new seventh grade girls are possibly the best group (overall) that I've ever dealt with. Only one of the five is a problem. I have issues with the eighth grade girl sometimes, but we've sort of become friends this show.

In addition to the joy of painting, there's also the people to enjoy (yes, I do enjoy the company of a good many people, although I'm often sick of people as a whole). I was around the crew all the time, I got to socialize with my pit friends during intermission, and I had plenty of time to talk to cast members that I hadn't been around for a while. I even made a new friend of one of the cast members.

The hidden pretzel tradition continued, this time bringing an interesting quote that may result in me receiving yet another nickname. Since I had very few jobs backstage, I got some homework done, much to my relief. Well, for now it's done. I actually remembered my camera on closing night, so here are the pictures I took:

I can't resist making a report on the current weather here next to the Central Baptist Bog/Moor (yesterday it was a river, and on Tuesday it was an ice field). The wind is rushing so swiftly and with such force that our front door keeps flying open and our poor deteriorating white pine has lost another limb. The rain lashes our house. There is an occasional moan of thunder. I think the elements are protesting the fact that the air was 55º F today. On the whole, the weather has quite a mournful tone, and I love it. This has been Maria the funny-looking pretzel telling you about how I feel about the weather... again.

Snow Day!

The roads here in the land-locked hamlet of Finneytown or covered in snow and ice, so we get a snow day! To test out the ice, our five-year-old neighbor, my friend J.T., decided he was going to ride his bike down the hill on our street. He got down just fine, but when he tried to get back up the hill, he kept on slipping. It took several minutes for him to get anywhere, because at first, no matter how hard he tried to walk, his feet would just slide back on the ice and he wouldn't get anywhere. But JT has great perseverance, so he eventually made it back up the hill.

Thanks to my teachers (well I guess it's partly my fault for choosing the classes I did and caring way too much about the hardest two), my free day has been spent doing homework. My life is pretty much spent doing homework.

Unfortunately, canceled school doesn't mean canceled rehearsal. Since we're behind schedule, the director of the musical have decided that we need double rehearsal every day if we're to open a successful show on Thursday. This means that snow or no snow, we come to school at three, rehearse until 5:30, take a one hour dinner break, and come back until roughly 11 pm both today and tomorrow. Depending on his mood, we may have to stay after school on opening night for additional rehearsal time.

My one opportunity to go home after school for the first time in three weeks was yesterday, but that plot was foiled. Rehearsal wasn't scheduled to start until 5:30, so I decided to help the varsity academic team out again. Yet again, one of their members was sick. After playing two matches (both of which we lost, but one was close), we returned to the school at 6. I had planned on taking a playing test for orchestra at 5:15, so I had to go take that as soon as I got to school (I did well enough that I better get at least third chair, if not second). Upon showing up forty-five minutes late to rehearsal, I discovered that we hadn't really started yet, so it didn't matter that I was late. Hell (aka rehearsal during hell week/opening week) lasted until 11 pm. Cast, crew, and pit banded together like never before as we checked outside every few minutes for snow. When we had still only gotten a few flakes by 10, we began to despair. However, at 10:30, two of my tech friends and I looked out and beheld a glorious sight: it had finally begun to snow in earnest! We danced and jumped out in the snow, and Sarah took several good pictures.

Druidic Sacrifices at Church

Sunday was the annual congregational meeting at the church, and this year's food related competition was to see what you could make using pre-packaged dessert snacks, such as Little Debbie snacks and others of that ilk. My idea wasn't too exciting. I cut overly fudgy brownies into rectangles and built a castle out of my bricks. My thirteen and eleven-year-old sisters, however, had an ingenious idea (which I got to contribute to later on): they built Stonehenge.

First they filled the bottom of a circular cake pan with marshmallows (yes, they had the foresight to spray it with Pam first, thank goodness) and put them in the oven until they were slightly melted. Next, they stuck Nutty Bars into the marshmallows for the vertical pieces, slopped some peanut butter on top, and then laid Nutty Bar "stone slabs" across the tops of some of them. For the others, they broke Nutty Bars and positioned them near the vertical stones. Once they had done that, I notice what they were doing and made a suggestion. We then built an altar in the middle of the pan, laid a plastic hippo on top of it, and then slathered the hippo in red icing to be the druidic sacrifice. We wanted to use a plastic cat we found, but our youngest sister cried, so we stuck with the hippo. Besides, it had its mouth wide open, so we decided it looked more like it was in agony. Thanks to the fact that Ben and Todd were the judges, we got honorable mention for best appearance. Unfortunately most people didn't see the sacrifice at first, but we got the desired results when we pointed it out: some people looked slightly disturbed, but others really enjoyed our morbid sense of humor. It took a couple minutes for Dan Chan to stop laughing, and one of the younger boys promptly showed it to his mother while declaring how cool it was.

Here are some pictures of Stonehenge:

Tale As Old As Time...

Beauty and the Beast. Finneytown's musical opens this week, whether we're ready for it or not. We normally pull the shows off moderately well even if it looks like an impending disaster during tech week, so it won't turn out horribly. In fact, it still has a chance to turn out splendidly.

The set is done being built, and almost done being painted. Only detail painting is left, and if the head painter and I ever see each other (he missed two practices this week and three last week because he gets sick easily), we should be able to significantly simplify what the original plans were. Besides, it's not uncommon for some of us to be finishing up the set on opening night. Our biggest obstacle in finishing the only task we have left is the fact that we need to be painting on the stage, but the actors are there during rehearsal. Since rehearsals are in the evening this week we can stay after school to put details on the castle walls.

I had hoped to be in the pit orchestra during the actual show, but the score we ordered lacks a viola part, and all the violin slots were taken up so I couldn't just transpose one of their parts. So now I'm on running crew once again. This will be my eighth show backstage and seventh show backstage at Finneytown. Learning backstage cues will be a bit complicated this year. Three of the six people with me on stage left have been painting during rehearsals for the past two weeks, so we don't know what our cues are. Of the three others, one is possibly the most annoying crew member. The freshman guy is okay, he's just bitter that the new freshman gets to do more than he does, even though he's been part of two other shows. He now tries to take over and be knowledgeable and "helpful" in every circumstance he comes across. At least he doesn't pout about it. The last person on our side is an asset to stage left. He's been able to watch rehearsals so he knows what's going on, he's competent, and he knows how to be quiet. We were supposed to do a dry tech run today, but we did some finishing touches instead, so we get to come in tomorrow. We've never been this far behind on running crew. This could get interesting in a stressful sort of way.

We rented many of the costumes from Disney, and they came in this week. They're amazing! If nothing else, the actors will look wonderful. They had an excellent rehearsal yesterday. I actually had to leave my secret painting corner to go check if they were just playing a recording - it was that good. If they keep it up, the major musical numbers will be successful. The cast can be a bit squirrely, but I think they'll take the show seriously once they're performing for a real audience.

Story Time!

First things first: yesterday was Groundhog Day, and Punxsutawney Phil did in fact see his shadow. We now have six more weeks of "winter". Maybe that means that we'll actually have a real winter sometime in the next few months.

Now it's time for a random, amusing little thing that happened as I was leaving church. My brother decided to only look in one direction as he turned left out of the parking lot onto Winton Road, so he ended up clipping a large SUV. He and the other driver pulled over into the St. Barts parking lot to decided what to do. The oldest two of my younger sisters and I were left in the car as he talked to the other person. The hazard lights were on, so there was a ticking noise in the car - one that could even be described as a Mysterious Ticking Noise, if you so desired. I turned around and told my sisters that it was pipe bomb that had been planted by Lord Voldemort, not expecting them to know what I was talking about (if you don't know what I'm referring, go to YouTube and type in "mysterious ticking noise"). Much to my surprise, Allison (the younger one) immediately did a perfect imitation of the puppet Snape.

Allison: "What is that mysterious ticking noise?"
Me: "It's kind of catchy though. Snape. Snape. Severus Snape. Snape. Snape. Severus Snape."
Rachel: "Dumbledore!"
Me: "Snape. Snape. Severus Snape."
Allison: "Ron. Ron. Ron Weasley."
and so forth
We re-enacted the entire thing, but it was a little hard with just three people when Hermione and Harry were added into the mix.

After we had finished our unexpected burst into chant, I turned around to see how my brother was doing with the other driver. Much to my surprise, the other person was Ms. Mascari, the director of TX (St. X's theather program). It was really quite odd. I'm glad she didn't recognize me, because it may have been hard for me to find something pleasant to say to her and vice versa. We were not always the best of friends.

Anyway, that's it for my story today. Unfortunately, it's just not the same to type stories as it is to tell them orally. Why has the art of storytelling been lost in our society? I think it was a wonderful little talent, and truly an admirable one. While we may have people that like to tell what happens to them in dramatic and interesting ways, the days are long gone when troubadours, bards, and minstrels roamed the land, welcomed in the halls of lords and kings as they told tales both new and old of laughter, sorrow, heroism, and the like. If someone wandered the countryside today, offering to sing ballads and arias, someone would call the police in a heartbeat. Okay, so I'd probably be a little uncomfortable if a bard came to my front door, but if only we lived in the days when such happenings were commonplace. The times when patriarchs' stories were the bread and butter that sustained a little hamlet through the winter months and the word of a poet was worth more than the verdict of a king. Sure, life was harder then. To reach forty years of age was no small feat, with threats of all sorts lurking about your very doorstep. Illness, famine, war, bandits, beasts, bipolar rulers, consistently cruel rulers, crop failure, kelpies, dragons, imps - take your pick.