Saturday, April 10, 2010

Big night

Tonight is our church's Annual Potluck Dinner and Talent Show, a high point of the year for some of us.

Asa will perform "Three Hours" (see previous post). He will also play electric guitar in a band assembled for the occasion. Tesi, Amadi, and I, backed by part of that same band, will sing "We Are Family" (which is possibly Amadi's favorite song ever to listen to, and which always reminds Tesi and me of the final scene of the wonderful movie "The Birdcage" -- the remake of "La Cage aux Folles" with Robin Williams). Oh, and with my 11-year-old friend Elijah I will be performing a version of the Abbott and Costello routine "Who's on First". Can't wait.

23 comments:

AJP Crown said...

I hope you'll be making a video.

empty said...

I wouldn't be surprised if some of it gets recorded. I have mixed feelings about that. There is a recording of parts of last year's show. I didn't try playing until the other day (which tells you something), and some part of me was relieved when the disk appeared to be unplayable.

Nijma said...

Break a leg.

empty said...

Thanks, Nijma.

We had fun. Though Amadi, who is 9, was in a past-my-bedtime daze by the time it was our turn to sing.

Yes, Tesi brought the camcorder and presumably we've got the whole show for posterity. To YouTube or not to Youtube.

AJP Crown said...

Oh, please, please!

empty said...

Yeah, OK. I'm working on it, getting instruction from Asa on how. "Who's on First" should be available soon.

empty said...

Enjoy

AJP Crown said...

Brilliant, congratulations to both Elijah & you. Very good. "Who's on First" is always funny no matter how many times you see it, you're just waiting for the jokes. What did you throw out at the end? They didn't look like baseballs.

empty said...

Those are bags of popcorn from the tray that he was carrying around. Glad you enjoyed it.

Julia said...

Congratulations! Your son (the actor) is great! I really enjoyed seeing see you :-)
¿Y ahora Broadway?

empty said...

No, the young actor is not a relative. The guitarist in the other video (previous post) is my son.

I wish we had rehearsed a few more times, but it was great fun.

Nijma said...

Oh. My. God. That was better than the original. And without rehearsal. I was expecting, you know, church social, yadda, yadda, but the timing...absolutely instinctive. And how interesting to see our Empty in person.

Julia said...

Oh, I'm sorry, empty, I misunderstood! You and he were very funny and fresh, no matter what.
And I also enjoyed the act of your real son (the musician), though I didn't comment when I first saw it (just being shy...)

empty said...

I'm not saying we didn't rehearse at all. But if we had run through it a few more times, we could have avoided these awkward pauses where I whisper "What do I say" and he looks at his script and tells me.

AJP Crown said...

I really & truly didn't notice any awkward pauses.

empty said...

There were moments of confusion, but we never lost our momentum entirely. I'll tell you one thing that I learned from this experience: I'm a good deal less susceptible to stage fright if I have a stick in my hand.

AJP Crown said...

That was a big stick, maybe it's the audience that should have stage fright.

empty said...

It may have been a big stick, but it was a very small baseball bat.

empty said...

I have never tried Gussie Fink-Nottle's method of dealing with the same problem.

AJP Crown said...

Gussie would have been all right, it was just that everyone else was plying him with more or less straight liquor too.

empty said...

Oh, no, I didn't mean that method. It didn't occur to me that my last comment would have two interpretations, but of course it does.

Yes, in preparation for giving the speech at the school prize-giving, Gussie had a few drinks, against his better judgement. I will not pretend that I have never tried that method. In fact, I had a beer or two inside me when I appeared in these home videos.

No, I meant the method that Jeeves recommended to Gussie when he was in such dread of giving a speech at his own wedding breakfast: to learn to despise his audience. Here Gussie's blunder was to write down his observations on various unattractive habits of Roderick Spode and Sir Watkyn Bassett, rather than keeping it all in his head.

Having a drink comes much more naturally to me than despising an audience.

AJP Crown said...

It might have come easier if you'd had Roderick Spode in the audience.

No, I was thinking of the Market Snodsbury Grammar School prizegiving.

empty said...

While I was thinking of the affair of the silver cow-creamer and the small brown leather-covered notebook.

About Me

I am a professor of mathematics. (I began calling myself "Empty" or Ø when hanging around at blogs, because I am somewhat fixated on the empty set. Students and colleagues know that I can be a bit of an ancient mariner about it.)