I'm a bad blogger, too. It's okay, though. It's a habit I'm returning to slowly. The redesign took a while, and frankly isn't close to finished, but now that this part is up, I've found that I've forgotten how to blog. I've also completely lost my audience, such as it ever was, but that's not so important.
Or is it?
It must be mentioned that last night I attended a "Sound of Music Sing-a-long". Not familiar? Well allow me to educate you. This is a ... thing ... well, imagine Rocky Horror Picture Show, if you can, but with lots of little kids dressed up like brown paper packages tied up with string and wearing lederhosen made of curtains. Instead of throwing things at the screen, the audience is instructed to boo at the Nazis and hiss at the Baroness. When they sing "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?", you are to hold up small cards (provided upon entry) with a question mark and a picture of Maria at the appropriate times. Our goody bags also contained a small sprig of plastic edelwiess and an invitation to the grand party thrown by Captain Von Trapp. Oh, and did I mention that everyone sings all the songs?
So, yeah, it was a little weird.
At first I thought I might freak out. It was all just a little too strange. Camp taken to extreme, unecessary places. By the end, though, I was just kind of enjoying the film. It's not bad, despite the plain oddness of musicals in general. There's something about people bursting into fantastically sappy songs while acting like it's all perfectly normal, it's just not right.
Of course, I had some issues. First, why hiss at the Baroness? Sure, in the beginning of the movie, she's pretty bitchy, and screws with Maria's mind and gets her to run back to the abbey, but by the end she's very noble, politely bowing out, telling the man she loves to go with his heart. I say, at the very least, they should stop hissing her when she turns good.
Second, there were the people in the audience who took this endeavor far too seriously, who unfortunately seemed to make up most of the crowd. A film screening like this is a great opportunity for would-be comedians to yell out jokes with the relative annonimity offered by a dark theater. Most of the jokes people yelled out were terrible, but hey, the whole place was pandomonium anyway. A theater filled with average people with, at best, average singing voices belting out Broadway show tunes is hardly a place to shush anyone. There were those, however, who thought it necessary to point out to people when they were making jokes at the wrong time, or booing at the wrong characters.
The funniest moment of the night was naturally performed by Liz, who, while not known particularly for her comedy, has a particular gift of timing sometimes, made all the more hilarious because you don't expect it. They provide those little champagne bottle pull-the-string poppers, to be popped when Maria and the Captain kiss for the first time. About 45 minutes before this happened, while Mother Superior was singing Climb Every Mountain, right as she's at the peak of the song, drenched in sunlight through the abbey window, Liz popped her popper. I suppose you had to be there, but let me here publicly recognize that the timing was absolutely perfect. I laughed for 5 minutes.
