The Tall Blonde Lady in the Shiny Green Alligator Dress Sings!

Nate's first choir concert was last night!! (He's probably not in the picture to the right, which I found on the Lehigh website, which was probably from last year, so don't go blind trying to spot him.) He looked quite dashing in his tuxedo. I wanted to kiss him passionately for half an hour or so after he put it on, but oddly enough he said he had to go to this concert thing... yes, anyway, I went to the concert thing too, with my Fabulously Cheap Student Ticket, and had quite a marvelous time. My seat was on the third row, far left, and Nate's head was invisible part of the time through the harp!! :-( So at intermission I switched seats and sat on the very top row, in the center, which gave a much better view of everything. There was a perfumy old rich lady next to me and I kept explaining enthusiastically, My husband! He is in the Choir! :-) And I tried to point him out: He is the MOST HANDSOME ONE, there, in the upper right!! For some reason, she wasn't sure which one he was after that!! Can you imagine???!?!

Anyway the music was nice, and it was mostly in German and Latin and Russian and Italian. I don't know how Nate knows how to pronounce all those languages, but he does, somehow! Also he can sing notes printed on a page! My husband, he is amazing, yes?? Anyway, the words to the songs are printed in the program and my inner Obsessive-Compulsive likes to follow along in Russian or whatever as the people sing, but the problem is, you have to do that from the very beginning, because if you get lost, it's hard to find your place again in the printed words (considering that the printed words look like this: "Puskai pogibnu ya, no pryezhde... Ti v snovidyenyakh... uvi, zasluzhennim." What kind of a word is "v," anyway?) If you get lost, one trick is to find a word that looks like it will sound very distinctive (I picked "Voobrazi," although in my head I was pronouncing it with an Italian accent) that is definitely past the region where you think the singer might be, and wait till you hear that word, then you'll find your place again. I tried this and it didn't work. You might have better luck.

The choir conducter is this cute little short man in tails, maybe he's four feet tall or something? (I'm exaggerating) who has lots of degree from places like Harvard and Yale, etc. He stood on a very high podium but even so, when the Tall Blonde Lady in the Shiny Green Alligator Dress (TBLitSGAD) came onstage I think she was still taller than he, just about. There was an Incident in the first half: the TBLitSGAD came onstage at the wrong time!! One song too early!! She came out all swishy and shiny and big and tall and soprano-y and Beamy and everyone clapped and cheered, and then the short little choir director gave her this wide-eyed look and mouthed something like, NOT YET!! So she was all embarrassed and walked back offstage. And to fill in the amazing awkward silence the director said something semi-audible like, "Nice dress!" And those of us on the third row heard, and giggled. I asked Nate, how could she goof that up...? Didn't she have a program? And he said that a Backstage Knome probably sent her, as they have people to keep track of that kind of thing for the performers so that the performers can focus on just Performing. I would NOT like to be the backstage knome who messed up queing her entrance and caught the wrath of the TBLitSGAD!! Anyway, I felt bad for her because I think half the fun of a concert (when you're a TBL who sings) is the Revelation of the Dress, and that moment was spoilt just a bit, wasn't it? Kind of like the bride starting to come down the aisle too soon, or finding out who the murderer is in the first chapter of a mystery. It almost makes you want to go home right then and there. (Except of course, I was there to see The Most Handsome Baritone in the Choir, so it was okay.)

Anyway, the TBLitSGAD was all kissy-kissy with everyone all the time, every time she finished a song and bowed and went offstage and came back onstage, she kissed people and people kissed her- like, the short choir director kept kissing her, and she kissed the first chair violinist, and she kissed the girl who gave her flowers at the end, she probably kissed the terrified little seventh-grade boy who had a couple of solo lines... Thankfully she did not feel the need to ascend the risers (she would have tripped over the SGAD, anyway) and start kissing her way through the baritone section, 'cause if she would have reached The Most Handsome Baritone in the Choir there would have been a Scene with a certain audience member from the third row, and, let's just put it this way... she wouldn't have gone home with all those shiny alligator scales intact!

At intermission, they had a refreshments ("concessions"? I don't know if that word fits. "Concessions" is a little low-brow, isn't it? Like a baseball game or a county fair? Maybe I'm way off here. I don't go to enough high-brow stuff to know if they've adopted that word as their own.) stand, which had Chardonnay! Other alchohol! In addition to chocolate and Starbucks coffee. Of course I didn't consume anything, but it was nice that it was there. :-) Also there were perfumy old rich ladies in sparkling dresses wandering around. (I was, regretfully, in khaki pants.)

Did I mention how much I love student tickets? And how much I've missed going to concerts and things since leaving Wheaton? We went to cheap-ticket concerts at Wheaton all the time. It shall go on my Things-I-Love-About-Going-to-Lehigh list.

Afterwards I took The Most Handsome Baritone in the Choir home with me (ha ha! Take THAT, envious alto section!! HE'S ALL MINE!!) and we stopped at the grocery store for the traditional Victory Giant Muffins. All in all, a very pleasant evening.