Thursday, October 9, 2008

Barbershop Convention Blues & Tina Fey: 7 Weeks ain't enough, and yet it is.

Once again, we're nearing late October and the Pioneer District's Fall Barbershop Harmony Convention. Unfortunately, it appears this one's not going to go at ALL like I had envisioned it 4 months ago.

My plan was to go up mid afternoon on Friday, compete with my quartet, make finals, compete with my chorus the next day, kick some ass at finals and maybe move up a spot or 2, and have an amazing night touring the hospitality rooms and singing tags in the lobby till all hours of the night. I'd built up a helluva weekend in my head.

Since then, the job hasn't turned out as profitable as I had hoped (still not BAD, but this economic apocalypse has slowed my sales growth a bit), our bass has been in Texas helping with disaster relief and is on call to do more at any minute, and Liam's Haunted Cub Scout Campout has been scheduled for the same weekend. Adding to the financial frustration, I just had to pay a $195 ticket for not having my current proof of insurance in my car and now a $200 "Driver Responsibility Fee" the state has started assessing to milk the average citizen for whatever they can get away with.

In order to make convention, I have to come up with gas money, food money, pay my society dues, arrange to sleep on someone's floor at the hotel, and coodinate child care for Courtney while Sonya and Liam are at the campout...but I haven't given up yet. It's not impossible. Difficult and improbable, but not impossible.

I wouldn't feel so bad about it, but our tenor section is a bit weak and we've already lost 2 of our front row. With all humility, having me missing hurts the presentation AND music scores. I truly don't expect my presence means the difference between winning and losing - Mt. Pleasant, Lansing, and Macomb have that to worry about. It would be nice to start building up our scores again, however, and set ourselves up as contenders again. We won 4 years ago. It's not out of the realm of possibility to do so again, but we need all the help we can get.

I'll keep exploring my options.

Meanwhile, on the campaign front...

When Sarah Palin entered the race, my first though was that she looks a bit like an older Tina Fey. For the past 3 weeks, Tina has made a return to Saturday Night Live to play the Alaskan Governor in opening sketches - absolutely BRILIANTLY! Just go Google it (NBC has managed to pull most of the clips from YouTube), and you'll see what I mean. The funniest sketch was her depiction of the CBS Interview with Katie Couric. It was absolutely hilarious in that, rather just picking a few catch phrases like so many of her predecessors (Dana Carvey's "Naa-Gaa-Daait" comes to mind), she quoted one of the Governor's lengthier responses nearly verbatim - and it was ROTF hilarious! That's funny and scary at the same time.

I'd love to see a lot more of Tina Fey as Palin, but God willing, SNL will only need her for another 4 weeks before Palin hops the first dogsled back to the tundra.

Plenty of other stuff to bore you with, but time's a wastin'. Gotta go earn my keep.

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