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Wow. What a weekend. No, really. I don’t think I can get all this in one post. So here we go. Part one. I know you’ve also been waiting ever so patiently (or less patiently in your case K.Kim. Geez woman) for the Princess Ida post. Well, here we go then.
After last year’s effort I decided to give Operatunity another go, partially to beef up my portfolio of in involvement in local productions and partly to check off resolution nine from my 2011 checklist. Mainly however, it was an attempt to finally deal with my acute irrational fear of sopranos.
It didn’t work. Nor is it, I maintain, all that irrational when you look at.
I must confess, as recently as a couple of weeks ago I was quite convinced that the show was headed for a monumental collapse. The cast, which is constructed from a motley assortment of chronologically disparate performers in the first place, suffered a huge setback when the lead tenor had to pull out with three weeks to go until opening night. Combine that with an ever dwindling chorus and an orchestra that was still figuring out how the music was supposed to go on the night of the final dress rehearsal and I wasn’t exactly brimming with confidence going into opening night.
It's been rather a strange experience, trying to turn myself into a king each night. I'm the least monarchistic (a recent poll of about the only three people I could find whose opinions I trusted has concluded that monarchistic is a word. Deal with it) person I know. For one thing, everyone knows kings have beards. So now I have a beard. Sort of. It puts one more in mind of an unemployed theologian than of an imperial monarch, but as my character is supposed to be at least fifty years old, I think it's best to say the effect is... impressionistic? Thankfully I've been able to draw a lot of extra regality from the deferential endowment of the rest of the cast. And when you think about it, that's really what being a royal is all about.
My autocratic crisis of identity notwithstanding, on the whole, the show has been a great success so far. We’ve done three shows, with two shows to come next weekend. Crowds have been growing steadily, and although we’ll have to sell out the last two shows to break even, general morale among the cast and crew has been great. I’ve been run absolutely ragged taking a small cadre of baritones under my wing, who show great promise in their aspirations to take on the mantle of chief cheek-giver and applecart discombobulator. They’ve some real natural talent, but they do grow up so fast, and unfortunately there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
But the show, as they say, must go on. Twice. And then we’ll pack the sets away for another year and start all over again in a few months time. And just for now that suits me fine, as I have more than enough other things to think about for the next few weeks.
But that’s another post entirely.
Garry with 2 Rs
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It’s amazing what taking a month off blogging will do for your life. September has been a month full of… other stuff. Not having the nagging feeling of “I should be blogging about now” hanging over me has been great. And although I’ve missed Cum Tacent Clament (Is that weird? It feels like it might be weird), it’s also true that in the absence of blogging, September was month full of victory.
Victory number one came for our Wednesday night C-grade mixed social volley-ball team. I’m now the proud owner of a trophy, upon which is inscribed “Wet season mixed C-grade division winner”. This in spite of the fact that we played in the dry season and we only made it to the playoff for fifth and sixth. And we lost. But a trophy’s a trophy, right? They must have had some left over from last year. So everyone’s a winner. Yay!
Victory number two came in the corporate environment. The company I work for was nominated for an award for excellence in staff training and development. Sure, we nominated ourselves, but that’s beside the point. It’s just nice to be recognised. What’s more, we won the award for employer of the year. What an honour! So in the finest tradition of nominating yourself for an award and then winning it, I’m nominating Cum Tacent Clament for the Booker Prize, my keyboard Samantha for Most Outstanding Contribution to the Field of Metaphorical Anthropomorphisation and myself for Female Eskimo Entrepreneur of the Century.
And last but not least, my cricket team took out the D-grade premiership. There isn’t anything to mock about this one, it was a proper win in a proper competition. I could mention the marked increase in success the team experienced when they finally got around to relegating me to twelfth man, but since this blog is about me and how awesome I am, I won’t. I'll just point out that I am now an award winning cricketer, volleyballer and staff member and a second place getting Inuit woman.
Make of that what you will.
Garry with 2 Rs
P.S. The next couple of weeks are going to get pretty insane as Princess Ida rehearsals go into top gear. Watch this space for the opening night wrap up!
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It’s been an emotionally troubling week. I lost an old and dear friend who I shared a good deal of my upbringing with. Not exactly flesh and blood, but near enough.
Last year I wrote about how overjoyed I was when Mary, the Yamaha PSR 225 that had provided the soundtrack to my highschool years, had come back into my life. It’s been a happy year and a half as we’ve relived old times, rolling out like we used to for the fortnightly prison ministry. Even if it has caused a few arguments between me and Samantha, it's been worth every minute.
It is with deep sorrow and the greatest respect that I announce that two weeks ago Mary lost her battle with old age and a tropical disease known commonly as ‘cockroach corrosion’. She had lived a full and meaningful life and she will never be forgotten.
Could such a devastating loss as this spell the end for prison ministry?
Pffft. No.
It’s true that Samantha’s lack of onboard speakers (you can tell if a keyboard is hard core by whether it has onboard speakers or not. If you can get a sound out of it without a power pack, amplifier and a couple of leads, you’re not trying hard enough) makes her a bad choice for carrying in and out of prison (don’t tell her I said that). But all that was needed was a new portable keyboard. A better portable keyboard. A portable keyboard with such destructive power it…
Sorry.
We’ve all chucked in a bit of money, and I've made a very special trip to the music shop in Casuarina. Prepare to experience the fury of the Yamaha PSR E423! She's in the same series as Mary was, but is fifteen years younger and - being of the next generation - just a little more tech-savvy, more environmentally friendly and more likely to miss the sunset while playing on her iphone. All the old faithful Yamaha voices are there, plus a new pitch bend wheel, a usb interface and about a billion times more onboard memory.
In honour of her predecessor, I’ve named her Marian.
Make of that what you will.
Garry with 2 Rs
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So I’ve about had it with my blog.
Readership is down, comments are down, interest is down and my ability – let alone inclination – to come up with four interesting things to write about each month is way down.
Actually, if I could have characterised August in a word, it would probably have been “down.” Or maybe “accessorise”.
No. “Down” says it better. It’s nice to be out the other side of that one.
So I’m taking September off. I’ll spend a few weeks writing other things that I care about just as much but have been neglecting (sketch comedy, music, my first novel etc) and working on a few of my unchecked checklist items.
No. Not that one.
I have every intention of coming back bigger and better (this will probably be more accurately described as “similar”) in October, but in case I lose interest permanently, always keep in mind Albert Einstein’s immortal exclamation on conceiving the theory of relativity:
“What the?”
Garry with 2 Rs
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A few posts ago, I signed up CTC to an online social network known as Twenty Something Bloggers, in an attempt to catch the wave of virtual good will circling the globe and uniting bloggers everywhere in an interlocking web of awesome. As with most of my previous attempts at surfing, I failed to immediately experience the rush of success and quickly lost interest. Plus, the board kept slipping up and taking all the skin off my chin.
However, recently I received an email from the 20sb team reminding me that it was time for the annual blog swap festival; a time when bloggers from all across the world get to guest post on a random stranger’s blog in order to promote … I don’t actually know what. The blog swappers were supposed to blog on the general theme of “summer”. As keen as was to give someone else control of my blog, unfortunately it isn’t summer here and I missed the deadline anyway.
Not to fear; I never let my self-imposed social isolationism get in the way of a chance to make fun of a perfectly harmless social diversion. So here, guest posting on CTC for the first time, is Katerina from the California Sunshine Pictogram Experience.
Enjoy.
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Wow. A guest spot on Cum Tacent Clament. I’m so jazzed to be here and swapping blogs with Gary. Thanks heaps for the opportunity Gary.
I guess I should start by introducing myself: I’m a twenty something year old post grad law student from San Diego. I live downtown with my roommate and a crazy cat named Muppet. I love writing about my crazy life and all the random things that happen to me all the time.
For instance, this morning I got a call from my baby brother in Boston. BB is still living with Mom and Dad over there and loving every minute of it. Anyway, he rings me up this morning all in a panic because he can’t find his favorite sweater. I guess he thought I might know where it was, despite the fact that I live two thousand miles away, practically on the other side of the world.
I told him to check his camouflage floor. This has been a standing joke between us since we were kids. His sweater is the same shade of blue as the carpet on his floor, and I can think of at least three times as kids when he ‘couldn’t find his sweater’ and it turned out to be lying on his floor, blending in to the carpet.
This time it turned out he’d accidentally set it on fire and fed the ashes to his fish. Craziness.
Shifting the attention back to me… I seem to be breaking a lot of stuff at the moment. For starters I was really sick last week. On Friday morning I coughed so hard I think I broke my clavicle. Seriously, I think I might be allergic to Fridays. How weird is that?
On top of that, while I was having one of those coughing fits, I accidentally knocked a glass of kool-aid over on top of a new sketch I’d been working on. I was a little bummed about this because I’d been working on it for two days, and it was just starting to come together. Mind you, every time I go hang out with proper artists at the pencil club after class on Mondays, I get all depressed because I realise I can’t actually draw. I think I’m going to take up Chinese Checkers instead.
The one thin that keeps me going is my telescope. I keep it at the astronomy department most of the time so it’s handy to all the library resources. I’ve had the telescope so long it’s becoming part of who I am, but more like an extra data interface to my brain than an actual extra appendage. That would be weird. I guess it is anyway.
The thing is my telescope is starting to show his age (Yes, his age. I call him Murray). The adjusting handles are getting sticky and one of the lenses keeps on dropping out of alignment. Sometimes I find myself staring off into other worlds and thinking to myself, “Is there anything in my life that isn’t gradually getting more and more screwed up?” sometimes it makes me want to pretend I’m someone else for a while. Even when I’m gazing into deep space, I can’t get past how annoying the real world is.
Also, I hate banjos. Sometimes I want to throw things at people who play them, but most times I just launch into random tirades about them on my blog.
So I guess that’s about all I can really expect to get away with sharing on some random Australian’s blog. I hope Gary doesn’t mind my discontinuous thought trains and slightly offensive language.
It’s salsa time!
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Right, okay fine. Thanks so much for your contribution Kat. It’s amazing what sort of things you can learn when you open your heart to the internet.
Milkfish.
Garry with 2 Rs