I Could Go On Singing

Hello World, Happy New Year! Hopefully better days ahead for all of us in 2015, as the bright shiny new year stretches out before us, full of surprise and wonder. It goes without saying that we should all be prepared to greet 2015 with open arms, and make up our minds to treat it well, in the hopes that our model behavior will be reciprocated, and that 2015 will treat us well in exchange. To my way of thinking, it's already better than last year at this time, at least in terms of the weather - and that's taking into account that the current conditions could be outrageously atrocious and still be better than last year, let's face it. Last winter set new low standards of mythic proportions that only the dinosaurs and I remember from Ice Ages of millennia past. I won't say that it was warm on Christmas Day this time around, but I went outside in my shirtsleeves and took a picture of a dandelion in our driveway, for heaven's sake. A coworker complained about mosquitoes in her apartment, and at home, we're being over-run with house flies, so that tells you something right there. After last year, personally, I'm just as happy to go along with the house-flies-and-dandelions version of winter for a change, and that's not just the mosquitoes talking, believe me. Christmas around the old homestead was very relaxing, and not nearly as boring as we expected, considering that there were no family members available at the time to celebrate it with. Luckily our friends took pity on us, and invited us to share their hearth and home, so once again, we found ourselves traversing the gloomy and deserted streets of Greenwich in the dark, this time perhaps even more desolately isolated than Thanksgiving. But the company was convivial, and the festive decorations and culinary abundance soon had us in very jolly spirits indeed. Even better, Bill brought along his new piano gloves, which have musical tones built into each fingertip, so when you tap on a hard surface, it sounds like a piano. (Well, maybe a piano as being played by one of those kittens on YouTube, let's say.) It also includes other instrumental sounds, and rhythmic accompaniment, and you can believe me when I say this was a really big hit on the sugar plum scene, from the youngsters to the oldsters, cats and dogs besides. We wrapped up by singing Christmas carols around the fireplace, and how perfectly Norman Rockwell is that - well, except for the piano gloves maybe. Now, anyone who knows us can tell you that we're not usually the people who rush out to see the latest Hollywood blockbusters that are released at Christmas time - unless it's something like "Star Wars" that we've been going to see over the course of many decades already. But we knew we had to go see the new "Hobbit" movie ("The Battle of the Five Armies") since it would be the third and final chapter of this saga, and we had already seen the first two. Even though it had been out in the theaters almost 2 weeks, we were still able to catch up with it while it was still at the IMAX in glorious 3-D, so we hurried on over there to get a good seat. (That's actually a joke - we've never been to the IMAX when there were more than half a dozen other spectators, and it's been known to happen that we are literally the only 2 people in the entire place.) It was nice up to a point to be able to wrap up the whole story, and see how it all comes out, but we didn't care for anything else about it, which was too bad. For a fantasy populated with bunches of elves, dwarves and Hobbits, this later installment was certainly gargantuan in scale, full of giant monsters, towering fortifications, and so much noise that it was more overwhelming than entertaining. But for all of the explosive special effects - and they threw everything they had at this, believe me - Bill and I weren't impressed with the 3-D aspects of things, which seemed oddly flat and humdrum for such a mega-budget extravaganza as this one. Since this picture was the final nail in the coffin of the franchise, as it were, they apparently took the opportunity to kill off any number of the featured players, like this was some sort of ancient Greek tragedy where angry gods exact revenge on hapless mortals, and devil take the hind-most. Honestly, it's not like "The Abraham Lincoln Story," where you have to kill off characters for the sake of historical accuracy, and I doubt that the imaginary realm of Middle Earth would have been irreparably damaged if the motley inhabitants had all lived, instead of hugely breathing their last in IMAX proportions. Next time, you can believe that I side with the angry gods and not the little guys, by golly. Speaking of the holidays, I was at church for their Christmas Eve service, but neglected to remember that the tiny clutch of us who make up the ad hoc choir were supposed to perform the anthem during the offering, and it was no one's fault that this reared its ugly head as an unwelcome surprise at the eleventh hour, as a result. It was all too true that we had not rehearsed it enough beforehand, and I pretty much forgot the whole thing, from whatever rehearsing we had done previously. Frankly, I don't know that I have ever sung that badly in church in my entire life, and not only did I do nothing to help the other singers, but more likely, threw them off even further than they would have been on their own, I dare say. In any case, the poor congregation felt obligated to acknowledge our efforts, and grudgingly gave us a weak round of applause as it finally lurched to a stop (and not a moment too soon, I'm sure) more out of pity than anything else. We skulked back to our seats, and perhaps I wasn't the only one who toyed with the idea of never singing in public again, which at the time, seemed like more of a boon to the community than otherwise. Fortunately for all concerned, we managed to redeem ourselves the following Sunday, when we tackled a contemporary piece with some very complicated sections, and positively nailed it, first time out of the gate without so much as a hitch from beginning to end. So all is not lost, and I guess that the moral of the story is that rehearsal is not over-rated, and I ought to know. In other seasonal news, such as it is, I had an inspiration to run out on Friday the 26th to snap up an assortment of left-over greeting cards at the dollar store, rather than paying full price for them before the holiday. Not so fast! The one thing I hadn't considered is that in our area, the dollar stores are located in neighborhoods where what they sell tends to be the Spanish language version of things - which admittedly, doesn't make much difference when it comes to stuff like paper plates, shower curtains, socks, or thumbtacks, for instance. Sure enough, the stores had plenty of cards left to choose from, and I could have wished anyone all the Feliz Navidad that I could ever want, with a side of Prospero Ano tossed in for good measure. So that was an idea that didn't pan out exactly as I might have hoped, but not from lack of trying on my part, and anyone out there in the wide world who gets a Feliz Navidad card from me next Christmas, I certainly hope that I can count on your understanding. After all, you may think that you have no reason to be afraid of my singing at this point, but you absolutely don't want me to break out the piano gloves, believe me. Elle