Anybody with kids probably finds themselves frequently attending amateur theatrical events in the form of band and/or choir concerts and music and/or dance recitals. It is best, in fact it is necessary, to be good-natured about these, although they do have a tendency to turn grueling when the teachers lard the things up with too many numbers. The events are almost invariably net-less performing. Sound checks – who needs them? Learning to use the light-board – we’ll just wing it when the time comes.
Tonight was the night of the annual Chinese school concert. This especially holds the potential to turn grueling, as kids of all ages are involved. As you might expect from a Chinese school, the kids primarily dress up in Chinese costumes and sing and dance to Chinese songs. My daughter has participated several times in the lion dance, and, if I can be trusted in my opinion, performed quite well. Even we white devils can find the dance entertaining, usually involving as it does a couple of dancers in a fairly elaborate lion costume being led through various tricks by a girl trainer. Sadly this year the performance was a little bit half-hearted as injuries took their toll on one of the participants and the dance had to be cut short.
Things got off to a rocky start this year as one of the school’s organizers got up to give a rather lengthy speech in Mandarin. My wife informed me that it concerned school finances of all things and while the fellow’s intentions were undoubtedly good, listening to a long speech in a foreign language quickly caused my eyes to glaze over like a pair of Krispy Kreme donuts. Fortunately, an attempt to entertain was made immediately following his talk, when a gaggle of Kindergarteners came out to sing the traditional pulling-up-the-giant-carrot song.
The teachers had to get into the act as well. Even my Mandarin teacher took to the stage to belt out a couple of tunes, and did so fairly confidently I might add. In marked contrast, it was clear that several of the others had been dragooned into an appearance. Many wore that shell-shocked appearance of the timorous singer, scared to death that the audience will hear them hitting wrong notes.
A young girl who sat two rows in front of us persistently amused me. She would constantly turn around and look back with an expression of faint disgust, just as if a large turd were lying on the floor behind her chair. I can assure you that was not the case, but the young boy directly in front of us farted unashamedly whenever the mood to do so struck him.
Finally, the big moment arrived and my daughter and her cronies took to the stage for their dance number. They are all ‘teens so there was no need to herd them onto stage as they had to do with the little kids. I can quite objectively say that their performance was competent. In fact it was more than competent, it was just downright great I tell you! The dance number, however, was as Chinese as the Outback Steakhouse. Except for the rather tenuous connection with Chinese culture stemming from the fact that all the girls were Chinese, the music they chose was some sugary pop tune. Possibly it was Britney Spears, but how am I supposed to know with these young whippersnappers today?
And then we all headed home. There’s probably no message in all of this, just a bunch of kids and parents both having varying degrees of fun and suffering varying degrees of boredom. Hopefully the kids and teachers both go home a little juiced from their time in the limelight, and hopefully the parents’ butts will stop aching before its time to hit the hay.
God bless the movie spoiler guy! Just as his domain name would imply, he is in the business of spoiling movies. Whenever a new movie is released some poor sap presumably spends his or her hard earned money to see it, and they then write up a synopsis of the entire plot, ending and all, to post on the Movie Spoiler's site.
I discovered this site around the time the movie The Others was released. Movies like this always manage to generate some minimal interest in me, due soley to their purportedly surprising endings. And yet, am I really going to sit through some pretentious Nicole Kidman snooze-fest in hopes of being mildly surprised at the ending. Not on your life!
The Spoiler comes to the rescue again this week with the release of Vanilla Sky. Is it worth watching Tom Cruise mug his way through some two hour plus movie to see "mind-bending" plot twists and "secrets no reviewer should reveal"? You'll have to make the call on that yourself. I say just click here.
