Last Thursday was not a good night for the Churls. Coadster was stressed out about finals and Stinky was busy trying to make up a trimester's work in three days. Right before they got ready for bed, Coadster was talking about her upcoming show choir concert and mentioned the other high school in town was doing "Pinball Wizard" as one of their pieces."Nu - uh," I said. "How do you incorporate jazz hands and The Who?" And because it doesn't bother me one little bit to make an ass out of myself for a good cause - or even for a bad one, I decided to help the girls relieve some stress. I'll never be able to give my daughters the newest electronic devices, or a clean house or straight teeth or a sense of direction or a sense of decorum for that matter, but what I can do for them is sacrifice my dignity for some schtick - the dumber the sight gag, the better. And so right there on the spot, I did my interpretation of a high school show choir performing "Pinball Wizard". Don't worry, I did it right. I worked the exaggerated hand motions to mime playing pinball and flashed spastic happy hands right up by my face while I sang, "Ain't got no distractions..." and used my most white person-Midwestern-"Up With People" voice and over enunciated the end of every line. In other words, for about three minutes, I was perfect.
It really seemed to help the girls too. They were literally on the floor laughing, and really, what better way to decompress than to bond with your sibling for the purpose of making fun of your mother?
The downside came on Sunday. I thought the show was only going to be our high school's group performing, but when I got to the auditorium, I realized it was both schools. I was actually going to have to watch the performance I had previously parodied. It was bad. The hard part was that their choreography was not all that different than mine. (including the spastic happy hands right when they said the word distraction) Obviously, I couldn't have predicted the swinging, limp wrists as they sang "...S'got such a supple wrist", or at the end when, for some reason they all started doing the robot, but I bet you didn't count on that either, did you?
After the show, Coady came up to me and said, "Thanks a lot Mom. I couldn't stop laughing during it and everyone kept staring at me." Yeah, join the club princess.
10 comments:
And there are no pictures of your preformance?
No. thank god - unless you saw some on the web. Did you see any? You'd let me know if you did, right? It's just the kind of things my girls would do to get back at me.
Or maybe it's the kind of thing you'd do to get back at them?
Oh my god. I didn't think about it that way. It would probably way more embarrassing for them than it would be for me. Next time I'll just film it.
oh how i wish i saw yours.
I promis that if you come visit next month, I'll do an abridged version...Okay maybe just the "distractions" part.
In all seriousness, I think Keith Moon would be proud.
I think show choir was exactly what Keith and the whole gang had envisioned for this song. I'm sure they imagined the happy hands when they were writing it.
I have to let you know,this blog provided those of us at 126 with hours of amusement on a painfully slow Saturday night. A couple of us actually gave breif performances of what we envisioned as an acceptable show choir interpretation of the song. We were fortunate to have a former show choir state champion, tending bar, to judge whose rendition was close to being true show choir material. We are having a public performance next week, I'll keep you posted on the times. (by the way did I say I was thinking of getting a real job? because I 'm not sure this kind of activity goes on in the office).
Dude, did you go and get a blog? That is so cool. I didn't know you worked last night. Who was doing the show choir performance...Should I be worried?
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