The play I went to last night was a musical version of A Christmas Story. This started out as a short story by Jean Shepherd. That was made into a 1983 movie that apparently is now considered classic and is re-shown every year: the tale of a 9-year-old boy who wants his parents to get him a Red Ryder BB Gun for Christmas. I remember having seen the movie. In 2012 it was made into a stage musical, which according to Wikipedia had a television production in 2017. I think I might have seen that, although I’m not sure.
Anyway the Bus Barn staged the musical with a big cast, all working really hard doing some clever choreography. There were a couple of problems. A technical issue was that, although I could see most cast members were wearing microphones, there was little to no amplification, and I couldn’t get the lyrics, even though I was sitting like 25 feet from the stage. The singing by the kids, especially Ralphie, were drowned out by the small (4-piece) orchestra. The bigger problem was, this is such a silly, shallow story. It only works if you can really catch the nostalgia vibe and get involved with Ralphie’s quest, and I didn’t. So I left at intermission.
Saturday 12/07/2024
First thing was to meet with basketball friend Harriet where we have met before, the coffee shop in Midtown. Re basketball she says a couple of people have asked her about me, hoping I was all right. That’s nice to hear. She said there is noticeably less fan energy now. I’m not surprised. I walked to Midtown (2.7 miles for the day) but Harriet drove me back. When I got out of the car I noticed this back-lit coleus(?) in the planter outside the door.
Looking ahead at my calendar, next week is just jam-packed with things, so I decided to get my FOPAL work out of the way today. I did that, got my shelves all ready for the sale. Then I bought a couple things at Safeway and went home.
Codgerville 