Signs of the Times, Issue No. 168 - 08/09/11

"Once upon a time..."

Greetings to one and all on this Feel Good About Yourself Tuesday. Hope you're all experiencing tremendous amounts of self-esteem currently. Topics to be discussed in today's Issue: a recap of my latest musical journey (literally), options for what to do next, what to think when one of your close friends unfriends you, and a fond farewell to a long-time associate of the Newsletter.

Last night was the closing night for "Into the Woods," the musical I was playing my trumpet with the Taylorsville Orchestra. It was an interesting ride, that's for sure. I had been playing with the orchestra since January, but musical rehearsals started about a month and a half or two ago. After meeting each Tuesday night for June and July, we had rehearsals two Saturdays ago and then last Monday through Wednesday. These rehearsals all proved to be around four or four and a half hours long and we never ran the entire show from start to finish without stopping leading up to opening night last Thursday. The ominous weather on Thursday night was only the beginning of our eventual woes. Before the show started, the wind knocked down the set on stage twice in a matter of five minutes or so. The show started late due to the stage crew needing to tie down the scenery. As 8:10 rolled around, the show kicked off with a bevy of audio difficulties, including horrendous feedback through the speakers and the strong winds being picked up in the mics. The cast seemed nervous, with many of them forgetting or misplacing their lines, making it nearly impossible for the orchestra to follow along. To top it all off, we introduce Howard, the old, round, somewhat-absent-minded, near-sighted, and tone-deaf narrator. Howard had always struggled with his lines throughout rehearsals and Thursday was no better. In fact, it was probably worse. He proved to be just as unreliable with his timing on stage as he had in weeks prior, throwing the entire orchestra and cast for several loops throughout the production that night - the worst and most embarrassing of which had to have been when he attempted to start the second act before the orchestra had even re-tuned after the intermission. This outburst of rehearsed dialogue required several members of the orchestra to yell, "Howard! Howard! No!!", finally culminating in a cry of "HOWARD, STOP!!!!!" from the conductor. Under his breath (and into the microphone), the entire audience heard Howard mutter, "It's just a musical, people!" Talk about embarrassing. At the end of what turned out to be a Triple Facepalm kind of night, we, the orchestra, headed home dejected, embarrassed, and completely unhappy with the way things went. And that was just opening night!

On Friday morning, I woke up dreading that weekend's impending performances. It was a total failure on Thursday and I felt bad for all the people who paid to go see the show. I wouldn't have recommended to anyone that they go see the show - and certainly not that they pay to go see it! I showed up on Friday and felt horribly for the poor suckers who had shown up to the SLCC amphitheater that night. I wanted to take before-and-after pictures of the audience to see their faces. But, thanks in some part to ultra-preparation from the orchestra, Howard was unable to go off to the races with his lines for Friday's show. With only several small hiccups, the show actually went incredibly well! It was like night and day difference from the previous night. The crowd, which had started off mostly with a sort of "what the heck is this?" kind of expression on their faces ended up giving us (to my absolute shock) a standing ovation at the close of the second act. Saturday and this Monday's shows were also pretty good, but I believe that Friday night was our best outing. I'm not entirely positive what it was, exactly, that made such a difference from Thursday to the rest of the weekend, but we got the job done and you know what? For as bizarre and strange as that little show is, it grew on me a little bit. It's by no means my new favorite musical, but I will actually miss it a little bit, I think. I love playing my trumpet for musicals. I did it twice in high school ("Guys & Dolls," "Les Miserables") and had a blast doing it and it's pretty much the same experience with this show, though the songs are not as catchy and I didn't play in the songs nearly as much as I did in the high school productions. It's fun to be a small part of the big picture and then to see it all come together, so I'll definitely miss playing, as I'm taking a break from my trumpeting now. Anyway, I figured that I'd quickly reflect on some of my favorite "Into the Woods" moments. Though I know that this next section will mean nothing to most of you, there are a few Loyal Subscribers out there that will enjoy this short stroll back Into the Woods.

Best wig: Rapunzel. Closely followed by Howard as the Mysterious Man.

Best line: "SHUT UP!!" - The steward's apprentice to Howard as the Mysterious Man

Honorable mention for best line: "The caaaaastle was saaaat upoooon by a giiiiiiant..." - That big Royal Family dude in his funny voice; "MOOOOO?? Looking for yourCOW?!? [pushes Milky White back onto stage] - Howard as the Mysterious Man; "And so the Mysterious Man died..." - Howard as the narrator shortly after his own death

Worst line: "Once upon a time..." - Howard as the narrator

Honorable mention for worst line: "................................................................" - Howard as the narrator forgetting his line, "Ever after"; "Once upon a time... later..." - Howard as the narrator; "When first I appear, I seem mysterious, but when explained, I'm nothing serious..." - Howard as the Mysterious Man (also consider the other two variations of this line later in the show); "The poor [young] girl's mother had died..." - Howard getting his line wrong as the narrator

Most improved actor: Howard. And he still messed up a lot on closing night, so that's really saying a lot regarding how bad he was to begin with.

Happiest part of the musical: The two times Howard was killed off on stage every night

Saddest part of the musical: When Howard returned to sing "No More" with the Baker after being killed off twice ("We disappoint, we disappear, we die but we DON'T!" *facepalm*)

Most annoying character: Little Red

Funniest character: A toss-up between Cinderella's prince and Howard in general

Something I'm not eating for at least six weeks: Beans. (Beans?) The special beans.

Something I won't miss seeing anymore: That ugly step-sister pulling loaves of bread out of her shirt when she gets hungry/scared. Nasty.

Something I will miss seeing: The Triple Facepalm

That says it all.

I brought my iPod to work today. I don't usually do this because I would only be able to listen during breaks or lunch. Honestly, the reason why I brought it was just in case a song from "Into the Woods" got stuck in my head. At that point, I planned on popping in the ZAGG AquaBuds and getting some other song to rattle around the vast expanses of my cranium. Additionally, I'm just tired of having humming the show tunes all day every day and skipping everywhere I go. I've been getting some very strange looks from co-workers here. Obviously they just don't understand. I must say, I believe that ZAGG should adapt their phone rep headsets to allow music to be pumped through. I understand why we can't listen to music when we're on the clock, but why can't we just listen to music through the headset until a call comes in and then click a button to switch from music to the phone line? Ah, work would go by so much faster. That would be a beautiful thing. Nothing like a little Ace of Base in the workplace. In your face.

Now that the musical is over, I'm kind of struggling to think of what to do with my life anymore. I suppose one option would be to move to a tropical island and rule as a dictator. I would be a kind and benevolent leader - until the banana farmers rose up against me in rebellion, at which point I would burn their banana farms to the ground and/or allow the U.S. to test missiles offshore, which would instill enough fear in them to get them to settle back down. That's just one option, of course.

Another option would be for me to pull a Ralph Waldo Emerson and relocate to the (hmmm... I'm not going to say "woods")... relocate to a mountainous outcropping of trees. There, I would build myself a log cabin using my bare hands and tools which I had molten from metal. Once completed, I would live a solitary life - a social recluse. In my spare time, I would teach myself to play the mandolin and I would write poetry. A wooden cabin. I'm living alone, my friends. Get out of my house. That's what they call a haiku.

I could join the circus. Hmm...

My co-worker suggests that I go back to school. I accidentally laughed at her.

What if I went and lived underneath a freeway on-ramp like that allegedly "homeless" girl I saw get investigated by Channel 2 a while back? The girl wasn't really homeless, but she'd go pretend that she was for a couple hours each day and she got a TON of money from cars that passed by (mostly older men, by the looks of it... perverts...). I could do that, though. I could beg for money for four or five hours a day three times a week and then see where life takes me. I used to think it was cool to build houses out of cardboard boxes as a kid. Now I could live out that fantasy life as an adult by building a cardboard fort on the edge of the Interstate. Maybe. I'd be too afraid that the fort would be blown down by wind and/or traffic.

Another suggestion was that I move to Mexico and sell bracelets to tourists. Apparently there's a lot of money in that. The problem is that they love me in Mexico. I went there once and they treated me like royalty. I'd be bound for greatness if I moved to Mexico. No bracelets for me. I'd run a hotel business. That's where I'd make my money. By welcoming all American tourists to my home away from home. Free ice cream for everybody.

The tough part now is finding friends on the homefront. Janae Balibrea has asked me to discuss the differences, similarities, seriousness, and ridiculousness of online/social network friendships versus "real life" interaction. An interesting topic, surely, Janae. I think, as I've discussed in the past, that people take online "friendships" so seriously these days that they undervalue actual human interaction. They take it so seriously that I knew people would be slightly offended this last week (and some, indeed, were) when I became so busy with rehearsals and performances that I may not have time to (gasp) send a text or an instant message every single day. Here's a tip, people: Just because somebody doesn't text you every single hour of every single day doesn't mean that they don't want to be your friend. I appreciate it when somebody takes time to call me on the phone or asks to see me in person. There is nothing that annoys me quite like receiving an invitation to a Facebook event. If you really want me to go to something, ask me in "real life." Sending out a mass Facebook invite to all of your so-called friends is about the least personalized way to let somebody know that you want to hang with them. I give people a lot of crap about their Facebook habits, but there definitely a few good ones out there that I really enjoy chatting with. These are the ones that I consider my real friends - the ones that go out of their way to contact me, not just the ones that merely respond when I say hello. But what do you do when one of the "good ones" unfriends you on Facebook or unfollows you on Twitter? What does this mean? I'm infamous for my unfriending sprees, but I feel justified in the cuts I make. I'll drop you like Math 1060 if you never respond month after month after month. But just because we don't see eye to eye about everything or just because you tweet about stuff that I don't care about isn't reason enough alone for me to cut you loose. When I feel like I've been unjustly unfriended or unfollowed, what does that mean? Does that mean that I have finally annoyed that person with my opinions to the very brink of our actual relationship? There's something called the "Hide from news feed" button that you can click if you want to ignore me. But if you unfriend me, how seriously should I take that? If you unfollow me on Twitter does that mean that you don't care about my interests and hobbies? Or just that you don't care about me at all as a person? These are the Questions we must ask ourselves. I'm sticking with my original thoughts, which I've expressed in the past - that people with opinions are punished, that people who speak their minds and sometimes say things that not everyone agrees with are shunned, and that people in general way too easily offended. (Editor's note: I apologize if I offended anyone out there with my tweets about getting a standing ovation on Friday night. I understand how upsetting that must have been for my followers.) And, oh yeah, if you don't like it, don't read it. Unfollow, unfriend, and unsubscribe, by all means!

Yeah.

I feel like I've been neglecting The Boo Box lately and I truly, honestly feel bad about that... So do you know what I hate? those people who make left turns into the turning lane of a big road and pull up right next to you, even though there are no other cars coming in either direction. I suppose this is why they refer to it as the "suicide lane." Can you not just wait two seconds and pull out behind me?? Why do these people insist on doing this? If it's a busy street and it's clear one way, by all means, pull out into the turning lane and then wait your turn to get into the actual lane. But if there aren't cars coming either way, just wait! Ugh... that ticks me off. Am I the only one that this has ever happened to? If this has happened to you in the past, if you've ever braced yourself for your sweet life thinking you were about to get T-Boned in the driver's side, join with me. Everybody together now - BOOOOOO!!

Crazed driver.

Finally, it's time for the Shoutout of the Week. This week, it is with heavy heart and great appreciation that we bid a fond farewell to a great friend of the Newsletter, Richard Brunson. The Brunsonator, as many have deemed him, was my band teacher at Alta High School and was not only a great instructor and a great musician, but has also evolved into one of my closest (and most witty, clever, and sarcastic) friends. I have had the privilege to be in close contact with Richard in the years after my graduation from Alta in 2005 and I do not know many people as smart, well-rounded, and quick with a joke than this guy. He's always good for a laugh, he's a friend who will listen when you need to talk, and I'm extremely excited for the next chapter in his life as he and his family leave the state of Utah. Richard has been hired as a professor at the University of Wisconsin (Marshfield campus) and will continue his illustrious career as an educator. I wish him and his family the best of luck and know that he will accomplish great things in this capacity. Richard, on behalf of myself, the Banditos of Alta High's class of 2005, the Loyal Subscribers, the A-Towners, and the Junior Mounties, I (SALUTE!) you! Happy trails, my friend. Stay in touch.

That's about it for this week, children. In closing, as Howard the narrator has been known to say, just remember that "every knot was once straight rope."

Until next Time,

Move It. Sell It. And Leave the Door Open.

Aaron