The Twisted Gypsy

We’ve been working on our second show, Let There Be Balloons, the past weeks and decided we needed some decent demo recordings. This is the first song in the show, sung by a 13 year old boy, Frankie, who is a Frank Sinatra impersonator. Yep.  Believe it…and thank Jamie Johnson.  He enters carrying a single red balloon.  He sings “Melancholy Town”

MelancholyTown_DEMO_Listen HERE

He then releases the balloon into the air, and as it drifts to the skies, the curtain opens.  Next up, the musical theatre cheese oozes all over the place right before all hell breaks loose in the town and the local factory.  Nippe and I are singing all the parts on all the songs, so it is pretty funny and a little schizophrenic. Check it:

SpreadingTheJoy_DEMO Click here to LISTEN

Slowly, as I post different songs from this show week by week, perhaps you will be able to piece together the plot.  Or, perhaps not? =)

Summer has returned to South Florida for the day. The count down to Chi-town for Thanksgiving and some cold weather is on!  Obscene amounts of the following will occur:  food, drinks, people staying in one apartment, poker playing and steak tacos (which I know falls under the food category, but deserves its own mention.)

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Is there really a website called whocanIsue.com? Ugh.  Our legal system is corrupt. Something has to give. 

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Off the Florida Keys…

We just finished a short re-writing session for Let There Be Balloons,  the show we wrote with the professional company last May.  On Sunday night, we did an informal reading of the piece for a group of friends.  The show really is coming along.  

We wrote this song “Out On A Line” for Sarah, a young woman of 23 who has just returned from working with the Peace Corps in Africa.  This is an actual recording from the reading, so the quality is not that hot, but you get the picture.

“Out On a Line” Click here to Listen

This is a sign on a picnic table just outside of my door.  What blows my mind is that this spelling had to make it through at least two people- the person that ordered the sign and the one that made it.  Wow.

My parents came down to Ft. Lauderdale so that we could drive over to the West coast of FL to spend some time with my Aunt and Uncle.  We got a little touristy:

I just love this photo of the two of them standing on the beach, near one another, looking in different directions- perhaps keeping watch or perhaps making sure to see every angle. 
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They arrived here in time so that we all could say “see you later” to my Uncle Phil. He passed on to another place last week and as with any passing, it feels kind of like a new era. For a while, important things become more important and silent thoughts turn into action. Plane tickets are booked for reunions and ’should haves’ become ‘glad we did.’  I hope this phase sticks around for a long while.  This living thing is pretty wonderful and time spent is just that…time spent.  It happens no matter what- so it should always be for the better, for the now and for the love.

When to drop everything and when not to?  Lives get tough and time gets away and what feels like just a few days turns into just a few years and that starts to become the new normal in the world of time passage.  It becomes less important to make small events into big events and sometimes that means no events at all. Overspending, stretching to the max, stressing to the max makes one numb and in that numbness it easier to just ‘be’ and to let the ‘good old days’ be gone, because they are just that-gone. Babies come and become the perfect excuse, but the truth is those babies are looking for adventure and will go along with your wild ride, but your ride isn’t wild anymore so thank you, baby, for taking the blame. And then, SMACK. A reminder. A wake up call. Today only happens once. Someone you love took their exit and that was it.  You missed it. Today only happens once.  And then every cliché you hate to hear goes dancing through your head just to remind you that clichés are clichés for a reason- they are true.  So now what to do?

…it does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart.