So, when did we start celebrating the American labor movement with explosives?
Personally, I just learned about it today while driving to the Northern Neck in the pouring rain. Signs and stands along Route 360 were advertising "Labor Day fireworks!" Huh?
But, as always, it was worth it for my companion and I to spend the day with my parents who never cease to entertain with their pithy political commentary, extensive bird knowledge and hilarious reflections on life.
We had crab melts for lunch, the lump crabmeat from as near as Reedville, and then settled in for hours of conversation while keeping an eye on the non-stop flight patterns of birds incoming for meals at their various feeders despite the continued onslaught of rain.
A couple of tiny hummingbirds were adorable to watch, the sparrows were particularly tenacious in returning and a male cardinal arrived so drenched that the crest on his head was flattened out completely.
From my perch on the wicker settee, I watched as the rain obliterated the land on the far side of the river, making it look like the silvery water met the sky.
For fun, we looked through a massive album full of old photos, ticket stubs, poems and notes that one of my sisters had made for my Dad's 70th birthday. I especially loved the pictures of my parents from the '70s, my Dad with his massive mutton chops and plaid pants with white belt and my Mom in short skirts and hip jewelry.
My groovy parents.
One photo in particular caught my eye because it showed Dad with his six young daughters at the beach in 1969, which led to ribbing about how very fertile Mom had been.
"With three of my daughters, all I had to do was throw my shorts on the bed and she got pregnant," my Dad cracked to uproarious laughter and mild mortification on the part of my companion. Dads will be dads, no?
Of course, once he heard laughter, he couldn't stop himself from going for more, bringing up my, ahem, colorful past and passing judgement on it as only a man who found the love of his life at 23 can. Must be nice to be so lucky that way.
By the time we drove back to Richmond (with only a few minor episodes of hydroplaning, yikes), we had just enough time for a meal in service of my hired mouth before parting ways.
Given that it was already after 7, all I could think was thank goodness you don't have to look good for comedy, so I tidied up and set out (again, this time on foot through massive puddles) in the pouring rain for the Comedy Coalition and some non-Dad humor.
Tonight's show was "What Was I Thinking?" and was based on journal entries from people brave enough to share their adolescent angst.
From her Hello, Kitty locked diary, Kim read several entries from 1997 and 1999 about the posters on her walls, the songs she liked and Anthony, her one true love since 3rd grade, although she was still nervous about fast dancing with him unless there were plenty of people around. Slow dancing, now that was fine.
Life sucks. I might have to move to Cali. I might have scoliosis.
The improv performers wasted no time in riffing on her teen-aged malaise, like using pinhole cameras to avoid eye contact with someone you liked and explaining human vibrators. Best line from a Mom to her daughter: "You're going to be alone because no man is going to want to listen to your music!"
Matt was the next victim willing to bare his journal and, in his case, ephemera for the sake of comedy.
He'd brought posters acquired over time - "You don't get that kind of collection overnight" ("Ace Ventura," Ren & Stimpy, the Road Kill Cafe, Green Day, aliens) - plus the journal he'd begun when he started drinking and writing and a scrapbook of his sports accomplishments (swim team ribbons ranging from 1st place to 23rd place) compiled by - who else? - his Mom.
Your eyes take me too close to a past I'm not ready to look at yet
That mother lode resulted in a bit about his Mom knitting a sweater that incorporated his accomplishments (53rd place in arriving to school on time) and a pair of Converse painted with the names people, including bullies, called him. Another centered on "X Files" and mouth-probing aliens.
Last to sacrifice her dignity on the altar of comedy was Katie with her fuzzy blue leopard spotted journal detailing her first mosh pit at Sauce-a-palooza ("Jeez, it was so spiffy!"), poetry ("Let love come to you. If it doesn't, you don't deserve it." was topped only by "Now and forever, you are an obstetrician. You helped me be born again.") and a list of every cliched '90s CD she absolutely needed (Disturbd, System of a Down, Sublime).
Like Kim's diary entries, Katie's listed every single friend she went places with, even if it was 20 people, sometimes with first and last names and other times with just a first name and last initial, as if to keep their identity secret. Hilarious.
Clinging to you like a pair of wet jeans
Heavy on the wet
No one get deep like a teen-aged girl.
It was some rich material to pull from and the performers mocked high school poetry competitions (one teacher trading a year of overseeing detention to get out of judging the competition) and girls who started thinking marriage after a boy did no more than talk to them, all of which involved ridiculously long lists of friends' names ("Was that Cher B. or Cher M? I think it was Cher C.").
This rainy day turned out to be full of laughs start to finish. They say you have to let comedy come to you and if it doesn't, you don't deserve it.
Hell, I don't mind driving or walking to it if the laughs are good.
Showing posts with label what was I thinking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label what was I thinking. Show all posts
Saturday, September 2, 2017
Saturday, September 12, 2015
Going for Personality
Nobody tells you America's sweetheart was Canadian until you go to the VCU Southern Film Festival. O, Mary, I hardly knew ye.
This year's theme, "Screening Southern Music: Exploring Musical Traditions and Stereotypes in Popular Films" couldn't be any more up my alley. Music and film? I was so there.
"There" was the VMFA to see Mary Pickford in "Heart o' the Hills," a 1919 movie about a hell-raising mountain girl set to a live soundtrack created by the Hot Seats with banjo, fiddle, washboard and guitar.
As many times as the Hot Seats have impressed me, tonight took the cake.
Not long before the movie began, a guy sat down next to me, reeking so strongly of cigarettes I could hardly breathe. Luckily, the odor dissipated after a while, but then not half an hour in, he got up and left, never to return.
Mine was not to wonder why.
Of course a film made so long ago had plenty of dated tropes ("Mountain people were a primitive people"), although several people in the audience who'd grown up in Appalachia said they'd been pleasantly surprised that the film wasn't nearly as cliched or full of stereotypes as they'd expected.
They must have had very low expectations.
What took adjusting to were the scene cards telling the story because they were written in "Appalachian-speak," so it took a while to get used to all the misspellings (furriners for foreigners) and contractions. The phrasing - "It's so small in here ye cain't cuss a cat without getting hair in yer teeth" - was plenty colorful.
As one of the panel said after the movie, the Hot Seats really made tonight's experience. They'd worked out perfectly-timed music for every scene, using more traditional hillbilly music for the scenes in the mountains and southern music for the scenes set in the lowlands.
Naturally, "My Old Kentucky Home" showed up in the plantation scene with blacks serving cold beverages to the white folk. During what was described as a shindig, the played increasingly faster as the dancers at the gathering tried to out-dance each other.
One of the biggest laughs came in that scene when the old geezer stopped dancing to say, "Hold on, I lost my teeth!" Seemed a little corny to me, but I did laugh at the next story card that read, "After the jollification..."
The most uncomfortable scene for tonight's crowd was the one where people donned white robes and hoods (even for their horses) and set out as "night riders" to bring about some vigilante justice to the bad guys who'd bought up everybody's coal land. Too soon, still.
After the film there was a Q & A with history professors from VCU and UR, plus Josh from the Hot Seats, with many interesting questions asked and points made (including one by Josh's mother). Our VMFA host Trent said it was one of the best post-film discussions they'd ever had, probably because the crowd that stayed for it had lots to say about Pickford and the depiction of the people.
There was an afterparty at Grandstaff, but I passed on that to catch "What Was I Thinking?" at Richmond Comedy Coalition, a chance to hear real people read from their diaries before the improv troupe riffed on them.
Hysterical from the get-go.
Grace read from her 13-year old diary (complete with school photo inside), where she'd often made 3 or 4 entries in one day, talking about all the boys she liked. On one occasion, she'd made entries at 10:01, 10:08 and 10:21. That's a lot of teen-aged angst in 20 minutes.
Favorite entry: "I'm writing a soap opera called "Halls of Romance."
The comedy talent then skewered it all - the principal ("He was really good at running the school despite the allegations"), TV ("Next time on "Halls of Romance...") and 3-day relationships ("I don't feel like we connected on a connection-based level").
Next, Joey read from several pieces he'd written for the high school paper, despite not being on staff. One was about how girls were everywhere - and not just good girls - and another about beauty versus personality ("The brain wants good looks but knows it should look for personality").
Someone should have told 17-year old Joey that it wasn't the brain that was seeking good looks.
Favorite entry: "Also, I'm going to give atheism a try."
I give people like Grace and Joey major props because they lay their history out there and allow it to be the stuff of mock game shows (three punk rock bachelors competing for a punk rock bracelet), skits about a Britney Spears Halloween costume ("I'll just shave your head") and worshiping Barney ("And then he gave the world Baby Bop").
And that, I learned, is how you end a night with some serious jollification and no hair in your teeth.
This year's theme, "Screening Southern Music: Exploring Musical Traditions and Stereotypes in Popular Films" couldn't be any more up my alley. Music and film? I was so there.
"There" was the VMFA to see Mary Pickford in "Heart o' the Hills," a 1919 movie about a hell-raising mountain girl set to a live soundtrack created by the Hot Seats with banjo, fiddle, washboard and guitar.
As many times as the Hot Seats have impressed me, tonight took the cake.
Not long before the movie began, a guy sat down next to me, reeking so strongly of cigarettes I could hardly breathe. Luckily, the odor dissipated after a while, but then not half an hour in, he got up and left, never to return.
Mine was not to wonder why.
Of course a film made so long ago had plenty of dated tropes ("Mountain people were a primitive people"), although several people in the audience who'd grown up in Appalachia said they'd been pleasantly surprised that the film wasn't nearly as cliched or full of stereotypes as they'd expected.
They must have had very low expectations.
What took adjusting to were the scene cards telling the story because they were written in "Appalachian-speak," so it took a while to get used to all the misspellings (furriners for foreigners) and contractions. The phrasing - "It's so small in here ye cain't cuss a cat without getting hair in yer teeth" - was plenty colorful.
As one of the panel said after the movie, the Hot Seats really made tonight's experience. They'd worked out perfectly-timed music for every scene, using more traditional hillbilly music for the scenes in the mountains and southern music for the scenes set in the lowlands.
Naturally, "My Old Kentucky Home" showed up in the plantation scene with blacks serving cold beverages to the white folk. During what was described as a shindig, the played increasingly faster as the dancers at the gathering tried to out-dance each other.
One of the biggest laughs came in that scene when the old geezer stopped dancing to say, "Hold on, I lost my teeth!" Seemed a little corny to me, but I did laugh at the next story card that read, "After the jollification..."
The most uncomfortable scene for tonight's crowd was the one where people donned white robes and hoods (even for their horses) and set out as "night riders" to bring about some vigilante justice to the bad guys who'd bought up everybody's coal land. Too soon, still.
After the film there was a Q & A with history professors from VCU and UR, plus Josh from the Hot Seats, with many interesting questions asked and points made (including one by Josh's mother). Our VMFA host Trent said it was one of the best post-film discussions they'd ever had, probably because the crowd that stayed for it had lots to say about Pickford and the depiction of the people.
There was an afterparty at Grandstaff, but I passed on that to catch "What Was I Thinking?" at Richmond Comedy Coalition, a chance to hear real people read from their diaries before the improv troupe riffed on them.
Hysterical from the get-go.
Grace read from her 13-year old diary (complete with school photo inside), where she'd often made 3 or 4 entries in one day, talking about all the boys she liked. On one occasion, she'd made entries at 10:01, 10:08 and 10:21. That's a lot of teen-aged angst in 20 minutes.
Favorite entry: "I'm writing a soap opera called "Halls of Romance."
The comedy talent then skewered it all - the principal ("He was really good at running the school despite the allegations"), TV ("Next time on "Halls of Romance...") and 3-day relationships ("I don't feel like we connected on a connection-based level").
Next, Joey read from several pieces he'd written for the high school paper, despite not being on staff. One was about how girls were everywhere - and not just good girls - and another about beauty versus personality ("The brain wants good looks but knows it should look for personality").
Someone should have told 17-year old Joey that it wasn't the brain that was seeking good looks.
Favorite entry: "Also, I'm going to give atheism a try."
I give people like Grace and Joey major props because they lay their history out there and allow it to be the stuff of mock game shows (three punk rock bachelors competing for a punk rock bracelet), skits about a Britney Spears Halloween costume ("I'll just shave your head") and worshiping Barney ("And then he gave the world Baby Bop").
And that, I learned, is how you end a night with some serious jollification and no hair in your teeth.
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