Monday 🌖 OT for 10 April - Fools All the Way Down

I looked for "Heaven" in GoogleMaps and couldn't find it. So I reported it to Google as a "Missing Place."

 ~ The Youngest SQRL, before releasing a short giggle and digging back into her ice cream. Me:

You ever wonder if the people around you are trying out new material for their standup act on you?

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Years ago, this was pretty much true. A plague of comedians and improv and sketch performers took up a lot of my personal time. I'm not sure how this happened. Sure, they were amusing for twenty minutes or so, but they would typically hang out for hours. Exhausting to be around folks who were always ON. I spent a few hours one night watching the annual televised The Sound of Music, sound off and captions on, and watched and listened as the comedy spice flowed. Rapid exchange of gunfire extemporizing, the only detail I remember being "Dueling Woody Allens in the Black Forest," which was all, "When I was studying... herme-NEU-tics... in-in-in-in-in Uni-VERS-ity... in HEID-elberg... " for several minutes. They don't come around no more. (HEY.) Thank god.

Which is the long way round to informing you that the Youngest of Sqrls will be performing in the school musical tomorrow (3/22/23 - yes, that's almost three weeks ago, and yes, it follows logically that I'm typing this on 3/21. I'll probably have drunk away any memory of seeing it by the time this publishes.) wherein she plays the "Do You Even Lift Bro" Lobster. I'm certain it will be brilliant. They can't legally use the name of the cartoon it's based on, but here's a hint: a show about a certain four-sided Porifera wearing a shirt and a sort of lederhosen living beneath the sea in an ananas. Hijinks ensue. I've never seen the show, but the few clips I've seen put me in the sunken place (rhymes with Shmikini Shmottom). I think the pace reminded me of the nights I spent with the improv/sketch/standup comedians.

To prolong an already unacceptably lengthy narrative - my younger daughter is painfully shy. She's a natural clown with a dramatically bendy physicality she uses for laughs. When she talks though, she is one of the funniest people I know. That's only IF, she, our very own Michigan J. Frog, chooses to talk. She initially expressed reluctance about auditioning for a part. Keep in mind she's auditioned for every audition that's come to her attention, but always after some waffling and hedging, until finally much encouragement and coaxing from us helped gird her loins. She did the same here, and I'd had enough and here's what I said:

SQRL: If you don't audition for it, I will.

Spouse of SQRL: [laughs] ... a fifty-two year old man playing [PoriferaJon Four-SidedLederhosen] in a jr. high musical...

SQRL: Screw that. Any idiot can play him. I'm going for...

SQRL: ... Conch #2.

SoS: [laughs] What, why? Why not Conch #1?

SQRL: [snorts] That's a bit out of my wheelhouse. You have to be really good to be Conch #1. Conch #2 has the better lines anyhow.

Youngest SQRL: [shifting uncomfortably] What? There are no conches in the show?? I think??? What is going on????

SQRL: Shush. I'm getting ready. 

SQRL: [respires slowly, closes eyes in concentration]

 

And I think that's what inspired the Youngest of SQRLs to audition and get a bit part in the chorus before eventually working her way up to a few lines, and finally to the role of The Bro Lobster, who has seven lines. Also the origin of SQRL Family Inside Joke #2,409 - "Conch #2" meaning "Go for broke, but also aim a little lower."

I'm afraid theatre's in her blood. Can't quite see her playing Laura Wingfield or Blanche Dubois anytime soon - she is only thirteen - but I suspect it's only a matter of time before she tires of comedic roles. Since she's not doing pit, she did mention, "The orchestra sounds really awful." I bit my tongue and said that's too bad, they're probably doing their best. I'm sure the show will be awesome.

And that's where I'll be (was) on Wednesday, between 7 and 9pm.

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So how was your Monday? Remember to BE CONCH #2!

Update - Just got back from the show @9:50pm, 3/22/23. It was... a middle school musical. The only part that truly moved me (to fear, at that) was that there was a squirrel named Sandy in it. She's a scientist who's trying to save the residents of Shmikini Shmottom from an active volcano. Her invention was called "The Eruption Interruptor".  I had changed my username to "SQRL was interrupted" a week ago and to "SQRL wasn't erupted" a couple of days ago before knowing a thing about the show other than the title. [cue Twilight Zone music]

Update 2 - Looks like they cleared any copyright/trademark issues so I can say the name. Thoroughly Modern Millie. JK. It's Sondheim's Into the Woods. Ha. Ha. Haaa... I wish.