So, this album made me miss singing.  A lot.  Listening to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir often does, but this one pushed me over the edge quite a bit.  I love singing in men’s choirs and I love sounding like… like… that!  Like sooooo good.  With awesome accompaniment of a full orchestra, singing in a such a live, resonant space as the Tabernacle.

Sigh…

Someday…

It’s time to throw the full weight and force of the WhiteEyebrows readership behind this entry.  Please click on the link and vote for his piece.  Do it lots of times.  As many as you can….

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE PICTURE AND VOTE

… or there’ll be NO MORE AMERICAN IDOL POSTS FOR THE REST OF THE YEAR!!!

(now there’s an ultimatum that will blow your hair back!)

Also, please post this on your own blog, or I’ll stop reading your blog and will turn its address over to my friends in the Cialis and fake diplomas spamming engines… then we’ll see who’s laughing!

Microphones have no business being bedazzled with all sorts of fake jewels. Are the artists who use them trying to distract you from their face or their terrible voices?

Maybe both.

Perhaps my Mom, Dad and my sister, the people who were most attuned into my crazy, nerdy childhood will be the only ones who will have known or will completely understand this obsession goal dream of mine.

And here it is… I have always wanted to be this guy:

Not this particular guy, but I wanted to be just like him. I wanted to conduct symphonies and symphonic choirs. I wanted to exist on the edge of reality and music, as these maestros often do. I wanted to walk around with music bouncing around in my head all the time!

To give you a history, when my parents bought their 80′s Plymouth Voyager mini-van, it came with the “Infinity” sound system, which also had a demo cassette. One entire side of this demo cassette was dedicated to classical music, because it was, obviously, royalty-free and who was going to listen to this stupid cassette anyway….

I was.

I listened to that thing over and over. I wore that sucker out! I listened to it in the car, at home, outside while jumping on the trampoline. Everywhere. Not only did I listen to it, I conducted it! It distinctly remember sitting in the passenger seat in the Plymouth Voyager while VIOLENTLY conducting the music! I was all over the place! There wasn’t an ictus in sight.

One night, I was watching the news (oh yeah, there was a daily ceremonial surrendering of the remote control to Dad when he got home from work so he could watch “the news”) and seeing a story about the first woman who became maestro of a major symphony orchestra. It blew my mind. They actually let real, actual, live people become that! “How do I get your job?” I wondered.

Fast forward several years… I started singing in choirs when I was 13 years old. I loved choir. Over the next 10 years I sang in lots of choirs, and some of them were pretty amazing choirs with pretty amazing directors. But my dreams of becoming a world-renowned maestro had to take a back seat to my more realistic goals of becoming a successful theatrical director.

I’m a firm believer that I have a lifetime to make my dreams come true, and so one day you will see me direct some really important choir…

Until that time, though, I’m still practicing with the cassette.

It’s mostly because of the beards. It’s like the ‘beard’ convention… I’m pretty sure people actually grow out their beard just for this annual event, and the more scraggly and unkempt, the better. These people are usually technical directors – which are people who are over the various shops and technical departments in a theatre – and who translate designers wild drawn-on-a-napkin ideas into real things that can be thrown, stood on, or shot at without breaking.

They are the true wizards of the theatre, and so I suppose it’s fitting that they actually LOOK like crazy, merlin-esque wizards. (I’ve been trying to take some covert photos, but didn’t want to look too “inspicuous” about it.)

For those of them who can’t seem to grow facial hair (genetic anomaly? natural selection?) they seem to overcompensate by growing long, ugly pony tails. Because these guys spend most of their days welding or working with wood, you can guess what this hair typically looks like… it’s not easy to get all the sawdust out, and you know they aren’t brushing it 125 times every night.

What’s even better is these lovely people are usually bald on top, so I think they’re growing out their fringe to compensate for their lack of women or social skills.

Someone just needs to bring clippers to this thing, pin these guys down, and shear the herd!

On the other hand, this hair thing is a “right” that these guys get after a certain amount of time. Indeed, theatre people and Harley riders are probably the only people in the world who can get away with such heinous hair. (and maybe I’ll throw in musicians, but they can’t be quite as greasy) It’s all part of the gig.

For those who care, the convention went really well. My stuff was very well received.

So here’s to the first million!