Talented

We held our second-ever all-church Talent Show last night!  It was a blast.  We had around 40 different people perform in a solid 90 minutes of talent!

We had guitar solos, piano solos and a harp solo.  There were vocal solos and duets.  We had magic tricks, poetry, short stories, an original essay, an original skit, and Shakespeare.  A guitar, piano and drum trio (a "band" in their 11-year-old eyes) played an original musical piece.  It was quite the entertainment!

We also had sub sandwiches, with side dishes and desserts provided by our congregation.  One woman brought chocolate-dipped strawberries as her talent.  (Which nobody could deny!)

After the show, we cleared away the tables, plugged in a couple of iPods and had a family dance.  Half the adults and most of the teens boogied their best, while the little kids loved holding hands, forming a circle and running so fast that the youngest nearly were airborne!  Fortunately we had plenty of room in our facility.

We didn't take any video like we did last time (click here to view a couple highlights).  But for the family annals, and because inquiring minds want to know:

--Bantam11 kicked off the evening with "It's tiiiiiiiiiime for the Muppet Show!"  He even imitated the two old geezers in the balcony:  "Why do we always come here?  I guess we'll never know/  It's like a kind of torture To have to watch this show!"

--Later B11 performed his most difficult piano number, which he plays very, very fast so it sounds quite impressive.  He also played the keyboard in the "band."

--Blondechick17 sang a Taylor Swift song that's popular now, called "You Belong With Me."

--Chicklet7 sang "Castle on a Cloud," the young Cozette's wistful song from Les Miserables.  (When Blondechick heard her practicing, she said, "Aw, I always wanted to sing that for an audition, and then I got too old.")

--Papa Rooster managed to twist B15's arm, to my surprise and delight, and they sang together the duet "Pretty Women" from the dark musical Sweeney Todd.  Papa Rooster used to sing parts of that song to me when we were in college and would go out for walks at night, so I enjoyed hearing them sing it together!

--Papa Rooster played Benedick and I played Beatrice as we insulted each other, Shakespearean style, with a short dialogue from Much Ado About Nothing.

--Papa Rooster also sang "It's a Boy!" from Shenandoah, in honor of our friends who, after 5 boys, just had a girl.  (In the song, while the grandfather is rhapsodizing about how the baby is going to be a boy, the news comes that it's a girl, and he has to "change his tune.")

What a fun night, eh?

I wish I didn't have to dig through the Christmas box to find it, but there's a quote on the album insert for John Doan's Christmas album Wrapped in White about how we have become a nation who relies on professionals to entertain us.  But it didn't used to be that way, he says--amateurs used to entertain each other, in the days before radio, TV and computer, in living rooms and at parties across the nation, singing and playing all kinds of instruments on an everyday basis.  I think of Pa Ingalls playing fiddle for his family, and the young people singing and playing piano in all the Austen-era novels.  What a greater motivation to improve your skilz than one piano recital or two band concerts a year!