Kvetching and Moaning
Two concerts down, four more to go. GODDDDamn, I hate concert season.
The sweet voices? Love them. My kids? Love them too.
The rest? I hate concert season. The parking-three-blocks-away-on-a-cold-night, the orchestra's endless pieces, the band's endless pieces, the singers (not endless, because those voices are so lovely, even doing horrible holiday medleys and singalong Rudolph), the national anthem (wtf?) and occasionally, the Fruited Plain song. Wartime made this township particularly patriotic.
Each section punctuated by the announcements from administrators about how wonderful the teachers are. Teachers announcing how wonderful the school system is, how supportive the school administration is, how wonderful our kids are, how wonderful we are for driving our kids in to practice. We are to give ourselves a round of applause for being so wonderful. The concerts last, no kidding, a few hours.
Yes, the teachers, the school, the kids are wonderful. It's just the concerts and crowds that make me want to gnaw my leg off to escape the overheated auditorium.
That David Sedaris piece featuring a theater critic snarling about school Christmas productions? That's me.
And speaking of snarling criticism and WTF. What was the theme song from Shindler's List doing at that last special concert--the big old Holidays On Ice event two days ago? If they hadn't told us the title of the piece, I wouldn't have noticed. A professional orchestra playing some kinda classical subdued music = Fine. (better than fine. We only went for middleschool boy's singing and the rest was a bonus, especially compared to the usual concert.) The ice skaters were gracefully sliding around looking subdued, even mournful = Good.
But some things are just not meant to go together. Holidays on Ice = Santa, gingerbread men, Rudolph, Holiday Song Medleys, Carol of the Bells and . . . Schindler's List. No, I don't think so. (Ice skating to Schindler's List, for that matter. No.)
Just to be inconsistent, my favorite song from the big event was Dry your tears, Afrika. Turns out that's from the movie Amistad. But, see, I didn't know that. I just thought it was pretty.
Holidays! Christmas, slavery and the holocaust.
/stupid criticism part
Here's the section where I'm supposed to put in some qualifier about how much I'll eventually long for those school concerts, and how touching they actually are, but I won't miss them, not a moment. The sweet voices and the kids--them, I'll miss.
I have a less boring thing over at Romance Unleashed. Now I have to go pick up boy 2 from concert practice and find his good shoes and a clean button down white tuxedo shirt. Concert tonight!
Good thing the kids got bored with reading my blog, huh.......
EDITED: Six more concerts, not four. Elementaryschool boy only has one concert, but I forgot middleschool boy's and highschool boy's specials groups (jazz band! elite singers!) which mean extra concerts. Not repeats. More, more, more. We so love our music around here.
EDITED AGAIN: That was okay. No National Anthem tonight and the violins screetched less dying-cattish than usual and it was over in less than 2 hours. Tomorrow's concert is short. Thursday's should take approximately a week and a half. Hey, don't you worry--I'll be sure to bore on and on about the rest.
The sweet voices? Love them. My kids? Love them too.
The rest? I hate concert season. The parking-three-blocks-away-on-a-cold-night, the orchestra's endless pieces, the band's endless pieces, the singers (not endless, because those voices are so lovely, even doing horrible holiday medleys and singalong Rudolph), the national anthem (wtf?) and occasionally, the Fruited Plain song. Wartime made this township particularly patriotic.
Each section punctuated by the announcements from administrators about how wonderful the teachers are. Teachers announcing how wonderful the school system is, how supportive the school administration is, how wonderful our kids are, how wonderful we are for driving our kids in to practice. We are to give ourselves a round of applause for being so wonderful. The concerts last, no kidding, a few hours.
Yes, the teachers, the school, the kids are wonderful. It's just the concerts and crowds that make me want to gnaw my leg off to escape the overheated auditorium.
That David Sedaris piece featuring a theater critic snarling about school Christmas productions? That's me.
And speaking of snarling criticism and WTF. What was the theme song from Shindler's List doing at that last special concert--the big old Holidays On Ice event two days ago? If they hadn't told us the title of the piece, I wouldn't have noticed. A professional orchestra playing some kinda classical subdued music = Fine. (better than fine. We only went for middleschool boy's singing and the rest was a bonus, especially compared to the usual concert.) The ice skaters were gracefully sliding around looking subdued, even mournful = Good.
But some things are just not meant to go together. Holidays on Ice = Santa, gingerbread men, Rudolph, Holiday Song Medleys, Carol of the Bells and . . . Schindler's List. No, I don't think so. (Ice skating to Schindler's List, for that matter. No.)
Just to be inconsistent, my favorite song from the big event was Dry your tears, Afrika. Turns out that's from the movie Amistad. But, see, I didn't know that. I just thought it was pretty.
Holidays! Christmas, slavery and the holocaust.
/stupid criticism part
Here's the section where I'm supposed to put in some qualifier about how much I'll eventually long for those school concerts, and how touching they actually are, but I won't miss them, not a moment. The sweet voices and the kids--them, I'll miss.
I have a less boring thing over at Romance Unleashed. Now I have to go pick up boy 2 from concert practice and find his good shoes and a clean button down white tuxedo shirt. Concert tonight!
Good thing the kids got bored with reading my blog, huh.......
EDITED: Six more concerts, not four. Elementaryschool boy only has one concert, but I forgot middleschool boy's and highschool boy's specials groups (jazz band! elite singers!) which mean extra concerts. Not repeats. More, more, more. We so love our music around here.
EDITED AGAIN: That was okay. No National Anthem tonight and the violins screetched less dying-cattish than usual and it was over in less than 2 hours. Tomorrow's concert is short. Thursday's should take approximately a week and a half. Hey, don't you worry--I'll be sure to bore on and on about the rest.
the national anthem (wtf?)
ReplyDeleteWaaaay back when I was in high school, my friends and I liked to take the foreign exchange students around town to introduce them to certain Americanisms (baseball and football, e.g.). Once we were out with a German and he couldn't get over the fact that we sing the anthem at seemingly all public gatherings. (In the interest of good international relations, we kept snarky comments about Germans + overt nationalistic displays to ourselves - I think they had gotten the message on that topic awhile ago.)
That being the first it was pointed out to me, it never occurred to me that it could be considered a little overkill to be singing the national anthem at sporting events. Ever since then I've marveled at just how many places we sing that anthem...it's quite a few.