In case you haven't noticed, I changed the template of my blog a few days back. No longer is the brooding, black background. Welcome to you, oh faggy green pages!
I was holding off giving the yearly rundown until I could scan in pics from the corresponding years, but that probably won't happen until next week sometime, so I'll get this time machine started back up and revv us back to:
1983
Eighth grade at Westchester Middle School. My dorkiness nears it's completion this year as I began to get tormented by Eddie Schreier, a slight, bespectled genius kid, and one-time friend. That's right: I was being mocked by a nerd. It was mostly verbal barbs, but this year I believe is the year I scribbled in my yearbook beside his name, "is dead". Pathetic, I know, but I properly humiliated him later in the school year when I finally was fed up and challenged him to a fight, one rainy, after-school day on the bus. He panicked and stammered, "In the rain?" I responded, "What, are you made of sugar?"
FACE! (Imagine me making the "face" gesture by holding my hand up as if grabbing his face in mid-air).
This is the year of the production of Fiddler on the Roof when I was cast as Tevye. Originally, I was under the impression that Niehi Teodorescu (sp?) was to be cast. He had a mustache and his voice had already changed. Alas, he backed out, and I was handed the part of the peasant milk deliverer living in turn of the century Russia - an easily relatable chracter to a 13 year old living in the Chicago 'burbs. I began voice lessons with Inez Crofts, an incredible, eccentric woman living in Riverside. She taught me more about life in the following 4 years of singing lessons than I have yet to have learned.
Inez had this Prairie School style home near where Frank Lloyd Wright designed most of his Chicago houses, and it was ulta-neat0. Every Friday night, until the age of 17, I stood on the far end of her baby grand and drank up her every word, flexed my vocal chords and learned to fall in love with music. See, my folks (Mom especially) never really listened to music around the house, and Dad, while he loved music, used it as his escape and would sit in the basement in front of the record player listening to The Ventures and Jimi Hendrix to forget about the quagmire his life had become. So Inez was the first person to dip me head-first into understanding and the appreciation of music.
She also had this crazy poodle who, when she would strike the opening chords to "The Entertainer", would come barreling in to the music room and begin howling until the song was completed. Funny, I respond the same way to "Ain't No Mountain High Enough".
I was holding off giving the yearly rundown until I could scan in pics from the corresponding years, but that probably won't happen until next week sometime, so I'll get this time machine started back up and revv us back to:
1983
Eighth grade at Westchester Middle School. My dorkiness nears it's completion this year as I began to get tormented by Eddie Schreier, a slight, bespectled genius kid, and one-time friend. That's right: I was being mocked by a nerd. It was mostly verbal barbs, but this year I believe is the year I scribbled in my yearbook beside his name, "is dead". Pathetic, I know, but I properly humiliated him later in the school year when I finally was fed up and challenged him to a fight, one rainy, after-school day on the bus. He panicked and stammered, "In the rain?" I responded, "What, are you made of sugar?"
FACE! (Imagine me making the "face" gesture by holding my hand up as if grabbing his face in mid-air).
This is the year of the production of Fiddler on the Roof when I was cast as Tevye. Originally, I was under the impression that Niehi Teodorescu (sp?) was to be cast. He had a mustache and his voice had already changed. Alas, he backed out, and I was handed the part of the peasant milk deliverer living in turn of the century Russia - an easily relatable chracter to a 13 year old living in the Chicago 'burbs. I began voice lessons with Inez Crofts, an incredible, eccentric woman living in Riverside. She taught me more about life in the following 4 years of singing lessons than I have yet to have learned.
Inez had this Prairie School style home near where Frank Lloyd Wright designed most of his Chicago houses, and it was ulta-neat0. Every Friday night, until the age of 17, I stood on the far end of her baby grand and drank up her every word, flexed my vocal chords and learned to fall in love with music. See, my folks (Mom especially) never really listened to music around the house, and Dad, while he loved music, used it as his escape and would sit in the basement in front of the record player listening to The Ventures and Jimi Hendrix to forget about the quagmire his life had become. So Inez was the first person to dip me head-first into understanding and the appreciation of music.
She also had this crazy poodle who, when she would strike the opening chords to "The Entertainer", would come barreling in to the music room and begin howling until the song was completed. Funny, I respond the same way to "Ain't No Mountain High Enough".
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home