Sunday Showtunes

WEDNESDAY

Wednesday’s theme  was "adults playing children day." 

This same day, continuing the "adults acting like children" theme, I saw “THE 25TH ANNUAL PUTNAM COUNTY SPELLING BEE."   This is the second time I have seen this show (I saw it in June 2005 in New York, and I saw it a few more times when it came to SF recently), so I won't describe it again.  If you didn't read about it in my last trip report, or if you have not even heard of it or seen it on the Tonys, or missed it when it was here, then I am wasting my time here anyway so why bother?  I WILL say that I tried very hard to be picked for one of the 4 audience volunteers they use in each performance, even paying extra for "premium seating" and getting there early, but alas I was not picked.  They picked 2 kids and 2 adults.  The 2 kids were a tall skinny white guy that looked like Elijah Wood, and a skinny Asian girl that had ripped stripes on the front of her jeans and hair that was dyed red on the ends.  The adults were a burly man in a plaid flannel shirt with a handlebar mustache and a middle-aged lady with big glasses (looked sort of like she was from "The Far Side" cartoon).  I think they tend to pick people with unusual physical characteristics, of which I have none other than being fat, which they would have the good taste not to make fun of.  I am basing this on the fact that they made 2 ad-lib jokes about each of the volunteers based on their appearance.  (The last time I saw it they did the same thing, and also in San Francisco, where I saw it two more times).   

In case you don't remember, as each student comes up the microphone, the judge provides a "fact" about them.  For example, when the tall skinny Elijah Wood-looking kid came up the first time they said "John has nicknamed himself 'Frodo'."  The second time:  "John is going through his 3rd growth spurt."  For burly man in the flannel shirt, they said "Jack is the winner of his grade-school mustache growing contest" and "Jack wants to be a Lumberjack when he grows up." The Asian girl with the red tips got "Amy is a good cook, but she recently got too close to the stove and burned her hair" and (referring to the rip stripes on her jeans) "Amy jumped over several fences getting to the Bee today." Anyway this is a fantastic show and if you missed it, shame on you and you deserve to just see crap like local productions of Sound of Music.  (Why am I getting so snarky?  My apologies).

KSHO broadcasts to the Mid-Willamette Valley in Western Oregon.
Among the communities served are Albany, Corvallis, and Lebanon.