You Have To Keep Active

I must admit that since I retired, lo these nine years ago, I have experimented with any number of ways to creatively waste time. There are many people who would say that this blog shows that I have elevated it all to an Art. I’m not going to argue with them. I don’t think that I could win such an argument.

So…(aside from this blog) some of my other temporal thumb twiddlings have included belonging to a Dart League for three years. I suck at darts but that doesn’t stop me from proudly displaying my three championship trophies. I was the worst player on the team, but that was my role – to lower the team handicap to balance the presence of a Dart Savant on our team. That guy couldn’t miss. He was scary good. I was just scary bad.

In another effort to fill my days with something passably interesting that would also get me out of the house before my wife, the lovely and patient beyond the statute of limitations, Dawn, started arranging kayak lessons for me, I began doing plays with the local Community Theatre. I did four shows with them before my endurance for late rehearsals wore thin. I’m a Geezer. I need my sleep.

Other avenues needed to be explored.

I think I may have found the perfect thing to occupy my mind that doesn’t involve sharp objects or driving home at midnight when the streets are filled with marauding raccoons. I am part of a Barroom Trivia Team.

Every Monday evening at 7:00 PM I haul my trivia loaded brain to a nearby Pub for a two hour long test to see who knows more useless information. My kind of game!

I feel that I’m there representing all of those Liberal Arts Majors who are still under-employed twenty years after graduation, but who can to this day name every major artist in 16th century Belgium. On our team I am far and away the oldest member. That gives me an edge when the question involves History or Early Television Programs. Most of the other players are under 30 years of age. They wouldn’t know Calvin Coolidge if he walked into the room or who played Tonto on The Lone Ranger . Of course, I’m totally in the dark when it comes to things like “Who was the biggest selling Rapper in 2014?”

I had a birthday recently. Which one is not important except to my Cardiologist and to the people who keep sending me junk mail peddling Hearing Aids and Cemetery Plots. I did receive one gift from my lovely and forward thinking wife, Dawn, who knows what I need even if I don’t.

She bought me a book – “The Ultimate Book Of Trivia.”

This thing is 349 pages jam packed with more trivial information than PBS and Congress combined! It is the ideal book to have with you when you are seated in the loo after a Twelve Course Taco Bell Banquet or entering that Fourth of July Hot Dog Eating Contest I see on ESPN. You will have plenty to read.

I hope that this book will help me on my Monday night Trivia contest. It couldn’t hurt…unless i drop it onto my foot. It could easily break a toe or two. Next week I am going to wow them all at the Pub when I toss out the fact that the shortest U.S. President was James Madison who was only 5’4″ tall. If they ever make a movie about him Tom Cruise will play him…in lifts.

The Play’s The Thing Wherein I’ll Catch The Conscience Of The King

SOMETIMES I AM MY OWN SANTA CLAUS! I hadn’t planned on it. It just happened as a byproduct of finally doing something I should have done ages ago.

My desk usually looks like Dresden after World War Two. Calling it a pile of rubble is generous. It had reached the point where I didn’t know what was stacked up there. Anyway – the other day I was looking for a small pocket knife that I know had been on my desk at some time in the past. I was rooting around when I saw something that was held together with a rubber band. It looked like a bundle of plastic cards. I gave up on the knife. It will work its way to the surface at some point, but the plastic cards had my attention for the moment.

Throwback Thursday -From Dec. 2015 -“The Worst Show I was Ever In”

Throwback Thursday!!

 

AH, THE THEATER. A place where magic can happen. A place where the Muses join to bring light, sound, and poetry together.

Unfortunately, it is also a place where disasters can happen. A place where the gremlins join to bring darkness, silence, and confusion together. When that takes place you can send audiences away into the night feeling lost, numb, and regretting the cost of both dinner and tickets.

That’s My Cue

BE WARNED. I’VE GOT ON MY THINKING CAP.

When that happens the dogs howl, babies cry and milk goes bad on the “Best if used by…” date. And I usually end up with my neck in a wringer.

What triggered my lobes into action was a feeling, a nostalgia, perhaps. I got an email from a local theater group that is holding auditions for their next production. I have no interest in that particular play, but it hit a responsive chord in my heart.

Throwback Thursday from July 2015

Throwback Thursday from July 2015

I Can Smell Them

A FEW DAYS AGO I got into a discussion with an acquaintance about what it is like doing a play in “The Round.”

Theater in the Round is where the stage and the actors are completely surrounded by the audience. There is no formal stage separation with the audience sitting “out there” beyond the footlights. Such an arrangement can create problems for both the performers and the audience members.

Happy Birthday, Momo

IT’S A BEAUTIFUL DAY FOR THIS EARLY IN THE YEAR. The sun is shining and the temperature is in the low 60s. If I didn’t know better I’d call it a Spring Day. I like it.

The only dark cloud on the horizon seems to be that it is getting to be time to take the Toyota in for its 30K mile checkup and an oil change.

“Open your hood, stick out your air filter and say ‘Ahhh’.”  The mechanic grabs the fan belt and says to hit the turn signals and cough. Rotate those tires.

I don’t expect there to be any major problems. It seems to be running just fine. It goes forward when I step on the gas and it stops when I hit the brakes. Beyond that I don’t ask for much. It’s a car – not a financial advisor or a podiatrist.

I Decline To Recline

EVEN THOUGH I’M TECHNICALLY RETIRED I still find my days filled. I’m not “busy,” but “occupied.” And I don’t mind that at all. I think it helps to keep my mind and body just clicking along.

We have all known people who have retired only to take up permanent residence in a recliner in front of the TV. That is what they do – and they are dead within a year. These are also the same people who, if you asked them to tell you about themselves, would start off by talking about what they did for a living. I’ve never understood people like that.

Throwback Thursday from July 2015

I Can Smell Them

A FEW DAYS AGO I got into a discussion with an acquaintance about what it is like doing a play in “The Round.”

Theater in the Round is where the stage and the actors are completely surrounded by the audience. There is no formal stage separation with the audience sitting “out there” beyond the footlights. Such an arrangement can create problems for both the performers and the audience members.

With A Song In My Heart

LET ME BE THE FIRST TO ADMIT IT- I’m not the best singer in the world. But I think that I was always passable. I never have been a virtuoso, but today I saw an item on Facebook that put me in the same bracket as some of the Big Names.

Someone, I don’t recall who it was posted a picture of Kelly Clarkson, a singer who is definitely BTSB (Big Time Show Biz). With the picture was a link to a video of her performing somewhere. It carried the caption saying that after listening to her sing I would be crying too.

Well, that’s no big deal.

Do We Need More Performance Art?

I HAVE BEEN SURVEYING THE WORLD OF PERFORMANCE ART.
It’s not hard to do –just look in your local newspaper for listings under “Live Entertainment and whenever you see something that boasts only one person doing the show, you’ve found it. But beware and tread carefully.

What An Evening!

WE WENT TO SEE A SHOW last night at a local college – The Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. We saw a touring company production of “Mummenschanz” – a show that was a huge hit in the 1980s, running for three years on Broadway.

I have to admit that I have not seen that much toilet paper being put to good use since the day I spent helping out at a Day Care Center.

When Sylvie Sang

This story was created as a performance piece. I presented it a number of times over the years.

It is longer than my usual posts.  

I hope you enjoy it.

 

WHEN SYLVIE SANG the men at the bar would stop and turn on their stools to listen.  The bartender would dry his hands, move to the end of the bar and light up a cigarette.  The waitresses would huddle by the wall and hug their trays.  And the drunken man who cried softly to himself in the corner by the door would lift his eyes and rub his hands together underneath an invisible spigot.

When Sylvie sang, the room was locked in glass and still – as still as a new widow hearing that first long silence. 

In the spotlight the smoke was frozen.