Favorite Moments from The Music Man

Today I did a rather fatal thing. I counted the days left until opening night of The Music Man. Forty-eight, not counting today. I feel like I've eaten of the tree of knowledge of good and evil - now that I know how many days left until we perform, I'll wake up every morning with a new nagging number in my head, unconsciously counting down the days and weeks.

Before it's too late, before I become so sick of this play that I feel like burning my script, I'd like to share my favorite quotes, lyrics and moments from The Music Man.

For some reason, I really really really like this play's music. I'm not exactly sure why. It's not powerful or brilliant in the way that other musicals are. At first it even drove me crazy. But now I've grown to appreciate songs I didn't like, or at least be more tolerant of them (Shipoopi).

So, here are some of my favorite lyrics:

Oh, there's nothin' halfway
About the Iowa way to treat you,
When we treat you
Which we may not do at all

-- Townspeople, "Iowa Stubborn."

I'm slightly biased in favor of the "Piano Lesson" song because as Mrs. Paroo, it's sort of "my" song.

When a woman's got a husband
And you've got none
Why should she take advice from you?
Even if you can quote Balzac and Shakespeare
And all them other high-falutin' Greeks!

-- Mrs. Paroo, "Piano Lesson/If You Don't Mind My Saying So"

There's not a man alive
Who could hope to measure up
To that blend o' Paul Bunyan
Saint Pat and Noah Webster
You've concocted for yourself
Outta your Irish imagination
Your Iowa stubborness
And your liberry fulla books.

-- Ditto

Remember, my friends
What a handful of trumpet players
Did to the famous, fabled walls of Jericho!
Oh, billiard parlor walls come a-tumbling down!

-- Harold Hill, "Trouble Reprise/Seventy Six Trombones"

But when I try in here
To tell you, dear
I love you madly, madly
Madam Librarian,
Marian,
It's a long lost cause
I can never win
For the civilized world accepts
As unforgivable sin
Any talking out loud
With any librarian
Such as Marian...

-- Harold Hill, "Marian The Librarian"

My mother laughs every time she hears the following line - she says it reminds her of me.

And if occasionally he'd ponder
What makes Shakespeare and Beethoven great?
Him I could love till I die
Him I could love till I die...

-- Marian Paroo, "My White Knight"

What I like more than the music in the show is its fun dialogue and characters. Here are some of my favorite quotes from the script:

----

ALMA
And there I was in Madison Hospital, and nobody come to see me! Cousin Will never come... Aunt Bertha never come --

ETHEL
Your Aunt Bertha's dead.

ALMA
She wouldn't a' come anyway.

(Our Alma's are fabulous.)

----

MAYOR SHINN
Will you members of the School Board stop bickerin' in public?

(I don't know why this line always makes me laugh)

----

ALMA
Oh, professor Hill, we're all agog - simply agog!

(Ever since I listened to Les Miserables, the word "agog" has made me giggle.)

----

ZANEETA, the Mayor's daughter
Papa, please! It's Capulets like you who make blood in the marketplace.

Later in the same scene...

MAYOR SHINN, to Harold
I'll settle your hash as soon as I get these premises offa' my oldest girl.

----

(I love all of Charlie Cowell, anvil salesman's great phrases. "They are gems," as my director says. )

CHARLIE COWELL
I got the goods on him in spades. Swindlin' two-bit thimble rigger.

A few lines later

CHARLIE COWELL
Mistake my old lady's corset cover! That fella's been the raspberry seed in my wisdom tooth just long enough.

(Brilliant... absolutely brilliant. I must start using the phrase "raspberry seed in my wisdom tooth" more often.)

----

MAYOR SHINN
And always remember, fellow River Citizens, I can only remind you that I did everything in my power to prevent this dire happening from - ah - happening.

----

Honorable Mention: The song that is way too much fun to make fun of.

"Till There Was You." The melody is beautiful, but the lyrics are lame.

I Don't Even Want To Know What My Dreams Say About Me

I have weird dreams. Weird, weird dreams. Last night I had a weird one. I won't go into all of it, but in part of it, James Dean came to a Music Man rehearsal (anyone who regularly reads my blog will know how perfectly logical it is that I should have a dream about a celebrity visiting us). In the dream, Dean had recently lost his father and so refused to talk about East of Eden (which is mainly about a young man's relationship with his father). From what I know about James Dean as a person, the guy in my dream was very much like how he really was - not entirely pleasant.

Then I woke up and remembered that James Dean is dead, and that even if he were alive he would have been over seventy. I was sad and it put me in the mood to watch East of Eden again. The DVD is on my Christmas list... Here is a scene from the movie that I like a lot. I wouldn't say it's my favorite scene in the movie, but I do like it quite a lot.

Haha... silly Abra. "HI, CAL! Aron isn't here so I'm free to flirt shamelessly with my boyfriend's brother! Whee!" No, I'm kidding. I like Abra very much.

Long version:



Short version, for those who don't have the patience to watch all five and a half minutes!



Hmm, what else do I have to say tonight? I can't think of anything, so I'll leave this post hoping that you all don't think I'm a fangirl for having a dream about James Dean. Because I'm not. I'm a Cal Trask fangirl sometimes, that's all. ;)

Gandalf the Yellow-haired

Noah, my four-year-old brother, after watching an animated movie of The Hobbit: "Could you put on my cape?"

I said, "Sure. Do you want the Superman S facing in, or out?"

Noah said, "In. 'Cause Gandalf doesn't fly."

I straightened up and grinned at my sister. "Oh!" I said, "Are you Gandalf?"

"Yep," said the little wizard in the Superman cape, "Only I'm a different kind of wizard, with a sword and shield. I'm a boy Gandalf."

Then a few minutes later, I saw him wearing a red Santa hat. It was his wizard hat, of course! "But it doesn't stay up very good," he admitted to me.

Then for part of today he was St. Michael the Archangel. With a spear, so he could "poke the devil."

Baby's First Word, among other things

My baby said her first word yesterday. I'm excluding the word "Mama" as her first word because she uses it more as a wail than a word ("Mamamamamama..."). Last night my brother had a box of the ice cream treat known as Dibs, little pieces of chocolate with ice cream inside. Zoe saw my sister eating one of these and somehow identified them as ice cream (yes, we feed our one-year-old baby ice cream). "Ice?" she said to Noah, holding out her hand. Only it sounded more like "ishe." Aww.

This morning my brother had me tell him the first part of Voyage of the Dawn Treader, when Lucy, Edmund and Eustace fall into the water and Caspian saves them. Fast-forward 20 minutes: I came out of my room to find two of my sisters thrashing about on the floor while Noah called out, "You don't see me yet, you have to hear a splash first." He made a splashing noise and proceeded to rescue them and bring them aboard the Dawn Treader.

Now for Katie's meme. Sorry it took me so long!

1. pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages)
The Once And Future King by T.H. White

2. Open to page 123

3. Find the fifth sentence:


4. Post the next three sentences:
"One of these paths ended at a clod with a natural hollow underneath it. In the hollow - again with the strange appearance of aimless purpose - he found two dead ants. They were laid there tidily but yet untidily, as if a very tidy person had taken them to the place, but had forgotten the reason when he got there."

So that's random. Dead ants, woohoo. Part One of The Once And Future King (The Sword In The Stone) is very random like that.

I thought I had some other news to tell, but I guess I haven't.

Oh. Yes. I have to have Act 2 of Music Man memorized tomorrow. Eeeeeeek! Actually, it's not a big deal. I have only a handful of lines to learn in Act 2, and I know them.

I Love You People

I came home from an interesting Music Man rehearsal to find myself awarded on my dear Lady Rose's blog, tagged by Katie, and begged to update by the same. You dear, dear people certainly know how to make a person feel loved. So Katie, I will do your meme the next time I get on the computer, because the nearest books are all schoolbooks. :P

Lady Rose awarded me this lovely award on her blog:



Thank you! I award... ah... Elenatintil, Leigha, Serendipity, Miss C.N.W., Olivia, The Real Katie, and Alyosha.

Now, some updates: I mentioned that we had an interesting Music Man rehearsal tonight. Let me tell you about that...

Last week, our musical director told us that we would have a "special guest" tonight. "He's had a lot of experience, and you're going to like him," she promised. Tonight, before my younger sister's rehearsal, we were talking to a friend of hers. "You're in for a surprise tonight," she said. "You mean you know who the special guest person thingy is?" (That was his nickname before we knew who he was: Special Guest Person Thingy.) "Yeah, but I can't tell," said the friend. That was only mildly aggravating.

Then my sister and her friends went in, and some of my group people arrived. So we were all talking about character shoes and movies and dancing and such, when we heard the younger crowd screaming inside as the real special guest person thingy entered. So one of the girls peeked in... and saw a guy standing on the stage. "That's him? I don't recognize him," she said. I peeked. "That's what they were screaming about?" I thought, "Hmm..."

Then I started talking to people again. And another scream was heard. The girls peeking in the window jumped back with a gasp. "Oh... it's... it's..."

Then one girl said, "Oh no! I really don't like High School Musical!"

Yes. It was Corbin Bleu, from High School Musical. There was general pandemonium outside, ranging from, "Noooooo!" to "Hm... wow..." and "Really?" Then more people arrived, peeked, and shrieked and "Corbin Bleu is here!!!" was whispered constantly for the next 15 minutes.

So, yeah. He gave a talk on theatre and acting, and answered questions (among them, "Is that your real hair?" HA) which was neat. And a lot of people went up and got his autograph. And we danced the Shipoopi for him. Hahaha... yeah, that's coming along pretty well, actually. :) But... the screaming... squealing... whispering. Fans scare me.

AND THEN came the really exciting part. ;) We learned part of "Marian the Librarian"!!! I was so excited to learn that the ensemble gets to dance in that song! I was beginning to think we wouldn't. That dance is probably going to be my favorite. That, and "Trouble." :)

I got some cavities filled today. My teeth are still in pain... but the dentist said that I'll probably have "sensitivity" for the next two weeks to two months. Fun. My mouth was numb for about two hours. I had a lot of fun poking, scratching and pinching my chin to see if I would feel anything at all. I didn't. :D (Yes, I get enjoyment out of strange things.)

Have a lovely week, everyone!

Happenings

Apparently I'm hard-hearted: On Saturday after my sister's soccer game, someone came to the field with a box full of puppies marked "Free." The kids picked up the puppies, annoyed their parents to ask if they could keep them, and apparently the lady considered the dogs as "claimed." As far as I can gather from my mom and sister's versions of the tale, my mother told Courtney to put the dog she had picked up back in the box, but the lady had already put the box away and said she wasn't going to take it. So off Courtney went to my mom again - she again said no. But the lady was gone. GAH. So we were the owners of this puppy for about 20 hours. I didn't want to keep it, although my sisters did call upon me to name it (Elinor, or "Ellie."). And then of course I was accused of being "mean" because I didn't want it... Ah, well. We found a home for it with a family that I like very much. I'll call them the V's.
Mrs. V is the dramaturg for my town's Shakespeare Festival. She ... knows a lot about Shakespeare. And literature. And she does NaNoWriMo every year!
Mr. V is a musician - he leads the community band. He's played on movie soundtracks such as Ratatouille and Pirates of the Caribbean - and on the Focus on the Family Narnia productions. So they got those for free, I think. Way cool.
Little V the elder knits and acts - she and her cousins put on their own Thanksgiving Shakespeare Festival each year. This year she's playing Katerina/Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew. She and Little V the younger are in The Music Man with me, and she played the Duke in The Comedy of Errors.
Little V the younger loves piggy-back rides. We established this as a fact on July 4th, 2008. After a long, hot Comedy of Errors rehearsal, both of our families drove up to a nearish town to watch fireworks. We sat around for a few hours waiting for them, and in that time I swordfought with both Little V's, gave them piggy-back rides, spun them around, etc. Quite fun. And she looks like Georgie Henley sometimes.

They have a dog named Curly who has, as Mrs. V said, fallen in love with Ellie or Spicy as they have named her (she is a sort of spicy color :) ). So I don't feel bad at all about not wanting her. :P

I woke up this morning at six o'clock with a stuffy nose and the kind of sore throat that makes you feel like you're going to swallow your whole throat when you gulp. So I got up, nodded sleepily to my parents (dad leaves for work very early) and made myself a cup of chamomile tea. My mother made me take some Airborne (gag), which I managed somehow, between a cup of water and a box of crackers. It was a mild lemon-lime flavor - definitely not as nauseating as the orange stuff I took last year. Blech. So I drank my tea and went back to sleep for a few hours, and woke up feeling a bit better. Then at around 2 o'clock I lost my voice. I've never lost my voice before. It was very strange: I would try to say something, and finally just give up because I could barely hear myself. I was very worried, since we had a Music Man rehearsal tonight; but I drank a lot of special Throat Coat tea, and I feel a bit better now.

On Wednesday we Music Man leads had our first run-through of Act 1: with double and triple cast characters, this was interesting. It usually meant that whoever was more prepared would do one scene or another, and both the Harold Hills and Marians did their songs together for extra practice. I had a lot of fun doing a scene with one of the Harold Hills. We had blocked it, but never acted it out before, so it was fun to experiment a little. But my favorite moment was watching Marian the Librarian. Some of the cutest blocking I've ever seen, involving the Harolds lying down and folding their arms over their chest at "I could lie on your floor unnoticed, till my body had turned to carrion." I'm used to the movie, so I just about fell off my seat laughing. Next favorite was watching one of our Alma's do a small scene in the middle of Iowa Stubborn: "And there I was, in Madison Hospital, and no one come to see me!" Both of our Alma's are small 12-year-olds with POWERFUL voices. So it's a lot of fun to watch them.

I'd love to sit here and type up the whole evening (I've committed much of it to memory) but I'm being told to get off the computer now. Have a lovely week, everyone! :)

Dead Tired

Some things to say before I drop off to sleep in front of the keyboard:

We had a long, hard rehearsal tonight. I can't remember my Iowa Stubborn alto harmony for the life of me whenever we start singing. The sopranos have it so easy. Bleh. We worked on partner dancing tonight. My cousin Lindsay was my partner first, which was fine because we both know the dance, and we're about the same height. But then I danced with a boy who was a good deal shorter than me, so his elbow angle was obtuse where it ought to have been right. (Yes, I'm doing Geometry this year...)

During my little sister's rehearsal, I got to stand around for about 45 minutes with my town's Shakespeare Festival's "dramaturg," talking Shakespeare. AND NANOWRIMO!!! I'm not doing NaNo this year (I'd love to try it... maybe next year) but as I know so many who are participating, and follow their wordcount status eagerly, I was SO thrilled to learn that she is participating - and has for years! And she's gotten to 50k every time. Wow. Her 9 or 10-year-old daughter who played our duke in Comedy of Errors is also doing NaNo. :D

My very wonderful confirmation class teacher gave all of her students little pro-life pins. The exact replica in size and shape of an unborn baby's feet at 10 weeks after conception. The pin is titled "Precious Feet" for good reason. When I showed my four-year-old brother, he asked why I was wearing it. How can you explain "pro-life" and abortion to a four-year-old? So I just said, "To show that I love all the babies in mommies' tummies." Well, it's true.

Um... I think that's all I have to say tonight. ;)