Cultural Enrichment Weekend

I think I’m finally getting over that cold. I don’t feel quite as crappy as I have for the last week or so. Nose less stuffed, too. Cough still hanging on.

Minor annoyance: Every time I log in here, Blogger says they are ready to switch me to Beta. But when I click on it, they’re all “never mind, your blog is too big.” So then why do they keep inviting me?

So, as I announced earlier, I went to Handel’s Messiah this weekend (first thing I learned, it’s “Messiah” not “The Messiah.”) And let me just say, that in a perfect world, seats with obstructed views would be marked as such and priced as such. I can’t tell you how bitter I am at the idea that you’d pay the exact same price for a seat directly behind a big stone column as someone else paid for a seat with a gorgeous sweeping view of the whole cathedral. So the three of us get up there and the whole balcony is empty, and they shove us into our seats behind this column. About ten minutes pass of us staring at stone six inches from our faces. Then we realize that EVERYONE who has shown up has been shown to similar seats. The middle section is completely empty, and we’re all sitting in these little alcoves ringing the balcony behind columns. How odd is that, that we all showed up early and just happened ot be assigned the sucky seats? Everyone in the sucky obstructed view seats start looking at the big empty space in the middle.

Well, I bet you can guess what happened. Turned into a total free for all. And no, the irony of this in a cathedral while watching a performance about the life of the Prince of Peace is not lost on me. I guess I’m going to hell. I’m also pretty sure that our assigned seats were the worst seats in the section, because they’re the ones that remained empty for the longest, and when three people showed up fifteen minutes after the start of the performance and were seated there, they complained loudly into intermission about how unfair it was that they didn’t get the seats they paid for. Tell me about it! (They either left at intermission to find other seats or left altogether.)

This is my public urging to the National Cathedral to mark obstructed seats as obstructed and not charge the same for them. I noticed that there were also obstructed seats in the gallery ($60) and that a few of these had television screens set up so that the people staring at the stone columns could at least see a video image of the singers.

It was a lovely performance. But it was freezing, and, as I said, I still wasn’t at the top of my game. The soprano was especially lovely. I’d been told it was a sing along, but I didn’t hear anyone singing, and I think I would have been shocked if anyone tried to. The show is mostly operatic recitations and a few arias. How do you sing along to that? Maybe they sing to the choruses?

Sunday afternoon I went to the Washington Revels. I’d never been before but wow, it was amazing! The theme this year was Americana, so there were Shaker hymns and Moravian carols, and Pennsylvania Dutch storytelling and Indian myths. Loved it. They did a lot of shape-note signing, which I first heard of at my friend Dorothy Fortenberry’s play, Burned Over. But this was the first time I’d had a chance to sit in the middle of the “hollow square” and listen to shape note singing in the round. Gorgeous. Really stunning.

I think I need to go to more performances and museums in the coming year. More art in my life. That’s a new year’s resolution.

Late last night, Sailor Boy took a break from his studies and we watched Shampoo, which, along with The Music Man, Dog Day Afternoon, and disc one of season two of Joan of Arcadia, forms our current Netflix selections (yes, we have eclectic taste). Aside from coveting Julie Christie’s wardrobe and recognizing Carrie Fisher by voice alone (I can’t believe this movie was only two years before Star Wars, because she looks so young!), the main thing I got out of the
film was that the main character was a total hottie player named George. Love it! And here I thought I was the first person to use that name for a lothario character. Too funny.

Also, SB and I were debating about how many people he slept with that day. I say it was the wife at the beginning, then Goldie Hawn, then the close call with Julie Christie, then Carrie Fisher, then the wife again, then the two twin chicks in the jacuzzi at the party, and then Julie Christie. He says the jacuzzi twins didn’t happen, but he wanted to know what was going on with the girl whose hair he was blow-drying while she had her face in his crotch.

Yep, so that was my weekend. Two artsy performances and then a seventies farce about 60s sexual mores.