Now Playing -
"Be Still My Beating Heart" - Sting on CD101.9.
Now Eating -
a Cold-Eeze lozenge
Now Feeling -
scratchy-throated
Now Tweeting
- Melanie
So we had a performance of S & Z Tuesday, at a high school. In an upscale Lawn Guyland neighborhood, just a stone�s throw away from the area Fitzgerald called �West Egg.� So for narrative purposes, let�s call it West Egg High. This was our first school performance, for about 200 juniors who are studying Gatsby this year. Before the show, I said to Steve that I hoped the kids would behave. He replied, �They�re from West Egg, one would hope so.�
Yeah, I�m sure you can see how that turned out. Sniggering each time we kissed (and these are incredibly tame kisses, there�s no full-out macking going on), comments, whispering among themselves�all of this not helped by the fact that there were only three teachers supervising, the others having dropped off their classes and run like hell. Talking during the Q&A, asking inappropriate questions.... But I�m not sure if I did something slightly out of line. One of the last questions was from a student who asked if we felt the play �glorified alcohol.� And were we actually drinking it onstage? (Oh, come on.) David explained a bit about the social use/abuse of alcohol during the time period, and said that it was probably considered the drug of choice for the Fitzgeralds� set, to which another kid called out, �Like POT is today!� And there was much laughter and rejoicing. But the first kid then said that from the moment we mention gin onstage, he was waiting for us to drink it. We mention gin once within the first five minutes of the play, and then no more until it is mentioned again and drunk during the last five minutes. And he thought of nothing else the entire time? I couldn�t resist. I said, �Well maybe that�s more your problem than ours.� Which brought on a collective �oooOOOOOooo� from his classmates.
Was I wrong? Because in some small way I feel kinda wrong about it. Sinking to the kid�s level, letting the fact that I know altogether too much about �their kind� get to me (7 years spent working for that demographic), picking on a high schooler. Lest you think I misinterpreted, trust me, it wasn�t a serious question. Said with only slightly less sarcasm than the kid who asked us if we wanted �to go to Hollywood someday.�
Was I wrong? Because these kids have all the advantages: money, a great district that has Westinghouse Science winners and has been ranked in the top 5 in the whole state, teachers who really seem to care�is it too much to ask for them to behave like humans for less than an hour? There�s no excuse for it. Other than�
�The rich are not like you and me.� � F. Scott Fitzgerald himself
and
money doesn�t buy class.
All that aside, the show went very well. The program coordinator was as nice as could be (and cute!), and apologized to us for the students� behavior. I told him I�ve seen worse, which I have. (During one performance of the anti-DWI show I toured with for Theatre Three, we had to stop the show because the kids were so rowdy. And the teachers were just sitting in the back doing nothing. Brilliant.) But he asked us back for next year.
We�re off to Florida this afternoon to visit the in-laws. Minnie may have had a
TIA over the weekend. SIL says she seems fine; her mouth is just drooping a little bit. She was due to be checked by a doctor yesterday and we haven�t heard anything, so no news is good news. Last month, Huz finally had the old home movies transferred to video, so we sent down copies for SIL and Minnie. We also sent down our wedding video (because Minnie�s under the impression that Huz has not yet made an honest woman of me), and we�re hoping to get to watch some of the videos with her over the weekend.
Other than that, we�ll spend the mini-vacation the way I prefer to spend most vacations � eating! We�re both having massages here tomorrow morning, followed by lunch here and dinner here (live jazz!). Saturday we�ll take Minnie out to the local Johnny Rocket�s (it keeps things simple and also vaguely nostalgic, which can�t exactly hurt with an Alzheimer�s patient) and have dinner with SIL at some Italian restaurant she likes called Caf� Cibo. BIL won�t be in attendance because he has to babysit the kids. Their regular sitter has family coming in this weekend as well, da noive! Sunday involves a return to Ellington�s for Jazz Brunch. Jazz Brunch! Whee!
And we�ll be flying song again, so there�ll be ass-kicking at trivia and cool snicky-snacks in my near future!
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a very fine cat indeed - Friday, Jan. 17, 2014
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a very late last year's wrap-up - Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2012
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