Those Early Morning Calls

When the phone rings at 8 a.m. on a Sunday morning after the election, I immediately start thinking of what happened to my mother.  When I check the caller ID and see that the call is coming from her phone, I really worry.

But when I picked up the phone, my mother said "who is this?" (so I knew she was alive).  I said "Bev" and  she said "where are you?"  I told her I was at my house and that she had called me.

"I need help," she said.  I asked her what she needed help with and, after a pause, she said "With...this."  She then repeated what she has said to me every day for the past 3 years, that she doesn't know what she should be doing and she needs help figuring it out.

This is her biggest frustration and sometimes it is a mild annoyance, but sometimes it become a big cause of angst.  Today was an angst day.  I got in the car immediately and drove to Atria.  I picked up 2 cups of coffee in the lobby (because I hadn't had coffee yet) and went to the apartment.  She was in a familiar state of agitation though furniture had been moved and the house looked "messy" (for her) and she had obviously been trying to figure something out.

I sat and talked with her, the same conversation we always have.  She is supposed to be doing something, but she wasn't interested in anything I suggested she do (everything from picking up her newspapers and leaving them for the cleaning ladies, sweeping her patio, which bothers her because there are a couple of leaves on it, to going out to the front lobby to check on what activities were being done that day).  She met each suggestion with a blank stare and then asked wasn't there someone else in the family who could help her, since I was such a failure at it.

I started thinking of possibilities and the only workable one I could think of is for me to just essentially move to Atria.  Oh, not move in, but go there more than I have been going (it's been so nice having a few days off) with the idea that we are going to do something.

Monday, for example, there is bingo at 1:30.  I also noticed that my mother was out of lipstick.  I was going to make a note to go and get some for her, but decided that this was something she could do so I told her that tomorrow I would pick her up and take her to get lipstick, then we would have lunch and then go play Bingo.  Then we went to breakfast and by the time we had finished breakfast, she was her old self again.

It is obvious that she is not going to do a thing on her own and that the only way she will do anything is if she does it with me.  So, for the foreseeable future, I am going to become an active part of the life at Atria and hope that will help ease my mother's angst.

The Davis Dementia support group also meets this week (it's the 3rd Wednesday of the month and I keep having conflicting activities) and I will definitely go this week, barring unforeseen emergencies.  I definitely need support...and more importantly, ideas!

---

With all the angst at Atria, I was terribly afraid I would not be able to leave my mother to go to the Lamplighters Gala, the show we pay big bucks for and that we look forward to each year.  But she was so much better that I had no qualms about leaving her (who knows if she will remember anything, but at least she was OK when I left).

The Gala is starting to depress me.  It was always a ...gala... time meeting friends and enjoying the show, but as the years pass, more friends are no longer with us or have stopped coming to the shows, the rest of us are getting older and sicker, the people on stage are people to whom I feel no connection any more, and since I seem to have lost my taste for spirits these days, I don't even look forward to the champagne reception afterwards.

There were wonderful bits in the show, like our friend Barbara playing Laffing Sal, the British mechanical figure that stood in the window of the Fun House at Playland at the Beach, rocking back and forth and laughing continually, and terrified me .... well.... forever.

...this Sal was from The Fun House at ‘Playland At The Beach’ in San Francisco. Her bright red hair, huge towering moving figure and loud boisterous laugh are etched in the mind of every child who saw her as a child. Most were terrified of her – and many still remember that fear when they see her some 30, 40 or 50 years later. 

Her interpretation was spot on, so much so that after the show, I was going upstairs to the reception and got in the elevator with Barbara and her husband and told her I wasn't sure I wanted to ride with her because of my memories of being terrified.

The show itself was not one of the better galas, though you can't really have a bad gala because there is too much talent, both in the writing and in the performing. 

The story this time centered around a scandal in the U.S. Treasury and I think maybe money just isn't all that funny!  But the Treasury museum, which was a real tribute to Hamilton was wonderful, though probably more meaningful to those who are familiar with the Broadway hit.

At intermission, former Lamplighters president (for 30 years!) John Vlahos was given a special "legend" award and many nice things were said -- and sung -- about him.  His wife had been doing her best to keep him from finding out about the surprise and she had been successful.  He was overwhelmed and it was such a touching moment, I was in tears from the emotion of it all.  I have had many connections with John over the years, and he's one of the good guys.

He's shown here with actor Bill Neil, who was in the show.  I suspect Bill may be the oldest living Lamplighter...and he is definitely the oldest living performing Lamplighter!

It was 9 p.m. before we got home, and the dogs were starving, but we had a good night, in spite of the rocky morning.  Tomorrow will be another adventure, I'm sure.

Use the Farce, Luke

This was a 3 show weekend, but I only had to review two of them.  The third was this afternoon.  We went to San Francisco for the 50th annual fund-raising gala.  The Lamplighters is 62 years old and in its 15th year, they were having money problems and decided to put on a special show for which they would charge more money and serve champagne.  For the first year or two, a winery donated all the champagne, but I guess that we drank too much and they have bought it ever since.

I have fond memories of ushering at that first Gala (where a fire broke out backstage which delayed the start of the production) and after the show was over, standing in the theater getting snockered with leading tenor Adrian McNamara.

Tonight they asked from the stage how many people had been coming for 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 years.  Only 5 of us in the audience had been coming for 50 years (though we skipped a few years during our baby-raising days).

Tonight also honored Bill Neil, who has been performing with the Lamplighters for 50 years (and was in tonight's show).  He received a proclamation from San Francisco's mayor, Ed Lee, congratulating him on his record.

In the earliest galas, and for many years, the shows consisted of songs from the current season used to fit some sort of silly plot.  There were no lyric changes, just the songs out of context to move along a new story line.  Things changed in about 1982 when then-office manager David Witmer and I convinced musical director Gilbert Russak to base the new show on soap operas and to use the entire Gilbert & Sullivan canon and change some of the lyrics to fit the silly plot.  Gilbert, certain that would be too much for the chorus, fought us on it, but eventually he agreed to try it. The three of us wrote the show and Major General Hospital was a phenomenal success and though when viewed today, the show can't hold a candle to the work that is being done now, it got rave reviews from critics who had not seen anything like it before.

Gilbert and I wrote the show the next year, under a lot of adverse conditions, and by the third year, we had begun to assemble a small writing committee, foremost among whom was Barbara Heroux, who would go on to become general director years later, and Geoff Colton, patter man and lyric writer extraordinaire.  The year before he died, Gilbert wrote his magnum opus, a Gilbert & Sullivan salute to Wagner's Ring Cycle.

After Gilbert's death, we worried about how the show would get done, but so many talented people stepped up, with Barbara and Geoff in the lead.  I stuck around for 2 or 3 more years, but learned that you really have to be there to effectively participate in all the silliness that are gala writing committee meetings. The galas now are head and shoulders above Major General Hospital and the writers. led by an extremely talented guy named Mike Dedarian with 13 other writers far more talented than Gilbert and I were in those early days.

Tonight's offering was Return of the Deadeye or The Farce Awakens" and was based, very loosely, on the first Star Wars movie, with characters like Luke Moonwalker, Princess Ida Organa, Obi-Bun Thornobi, Juan Solo, and Poohbacca. The actress who played the 3-CPO character (GCPO) was in gold costume with gold paint on her exposed body parts.  she had the movements of 3-CPO down pat, while the actress playing R2-D2 (Mark-O) was riding on some sort of ...gosh, I don't even know what it was.  It was like a hoverboard, controlled by her feet.  She explained to me that each half of whatever it was she was standing on had a motor and she could activate each independent of each other.  She did it so seamlessly that it seemed all one piece of her costume.

The songs were wonderful (I particularly liked one about the current drought called "I once was a very hygienic person") and easily understood thanks to supertitles (and a book of lyrics you could buy to read later)

It was another winner.  During intermission there was an auction which raised about $15,000 for the company.  I met the auctioneer before the show and found out he lived in Davis.  When we started playing the "what part of town do you live in?" game we discovered that we live just a block apart.

The champagne reception was upstairs at Herbst Theater and when my knees gave out, I found a chair to sit in.  I loved just sitting there watching all these people who had paid nearly $100 a ticket for this event and thinking back to its beginnings and its history through the years.  I wish Gilbert could have seen it.

Finding Sherlock

Tonight was the very first time I was sorry not to be a Dr Who fan.  I actually watched my very first Dr. Who episode a couple of weeks ago when a snippet of it was posted to Facebook.  It was one that involved Van Gogh and I went back through 5-6 years of Netflix files and managed to find it.  So at least I knew that Dr. Who travels through time and space in a "tardis," which looks like a London police call box.  But that's pretty much all I retained.

Tonight we went to the 49th annual Lamplighters Gala, those delightful originally written scripts based very loosely on Gilbert & Sullivan plots, using Sullivan's music and new lyrics.  This year's show was called Sherlock Who? and the plot is entirely too convoluted to try to explain, but the first act revolves around Sherlock Holmes and Watson (having seen the current TV series Elementary would also have helped, I suspect, since this Watson was female too) trying to help a damsel in distress and stop a marriage from taking place, which would have resulted in the destruction of a small country.

It turns out that the only way to really save the day is for Holmes to be whisked away in the Tardis by Dr. Who (in this script "Dr. Hugh Dunnit") to 2014 by where the younger Sherlock (looking like Benedict Cumberbatch, who played the role in the short-lived TV series Sherlock) uncovers the clue that will prevent the marriage and save the country.

And then everybody drinks champagne.

As usual,, the lyrics were delightful and included my very favorite Three Little Maids variation--ever...and I've written my share of parodies of that song over the years.  In this version, written by one of my favorite Lamplighters, Jonathan Spencer (if he looks familiar, it's because he was once a contestant on Jeopardy for at least 2, maybe 3 days), had the ladies as ardent fans of Sherlock holmes

Three little Sherlock fans are we,
Odd and obsessed as we can be
Filled to the brim with geek esprit
Three little Sherlock fans

It included delicious lines like "Manic depressives turn me on," and "I plan to stalk you at Comic-Con."

There was a corporation called "Facepalm," whose story started out funny

Though we do not enlist
In their frat boy psychology
How can we resist
Their addictive technology

and got more and more funny as the song by Cary Ann Rosko went on and on having fans of Facebook in stitches at many of the inside jokes.

I wouldn't say this was my favorite Gala ever, but it certainly had its moments and we were glad to be there, which we would not have been had we gone to France.

When it was over, of course, there was champagne and snacks and visiting.  My friend Jen Kiernan, whom I know much better through Facebook, took a selfie of us (and taught me about using the "+" symbol on the side of the phone to snap the picture, which I never knew you could do before!)

Later, her daughter saw us standing with other women and decided she wanted an "old timers" picture.  It was nice to be called an "old timer" even though there is no question about whether or not I am an old timer in this group.

Our friend Bob Cortez, who performed with the Lamplighters for some 10-15 years, had asked me if we could give him a ride to a BART station, since he knew it would be impossible to get a cab that late at night in our somewhat isolated location.   I told him of course we could and we sat to wait for Walt to say his goodbyes and be ready to go.

No.  Those are not our champagne glasses!

Walt and I had planned to have dinner at a cafe in Sausalito that we discovered a year ago after last year's Gala, but we ended up taking Bob all the way to where he parked his car in the East Bay, so we ended up with hamburgers at Jack in the Box for dinner.  But we had a delightful chat with Bob, so I'm glad we did that.

When I got home there was a message from Peach telling me it is cold in Iowa and reminding me to bring a heavy coat (which I don't own) and asked if I had boots.  I guess I may have to buy something other than Birkenstocks before Sunday....

The Lass Who Loved a Chauffeur

What a full day it has been.

It started with a frantic call from my mother.  She needed to go to the store NOW.  She had lots of things she had to buy.  When I got to her house, she actually had a list (be still my heart!!).  The emergency stuff she needed to get was nail polish, lipstick, nail polish remover, and Kleenex.  We went off to the nearest CVS and it was, I'll tell ya, a trip.  I won't even bother to describe it.  It was just more of the same, but it turned out to be a real ordeal, but we did eventually not only get everything, but remember everything, including the wallet she lost, which was sitting right in front of her on the counter.

I couldn't stay and visit, though, because Walt and I were en route to San Francisco for the Lamplighters Gala.  We drove down through Marin county and over the Golden Gate Bridge and it was the kind of day I love in the City, where the air is sparkling clear, there is no fog, and everything looks like it is posing for a postcard picture.

The show was being held at the Palace of Fine Arts, my favorite building in San Francisco.  Everyone knows the iconic photo of the rounded top and the little lagoon in front of it, but I liked this photo I took from the side, where the rounded top is barely visible and you get a feel for the massive columns.

In the lobby of the theater was a huge silent auction going on.   Whatever committee had worked to get donations for the event had worked overtime.   The selections were staggering.  If only we could have afforded >$2,000, we could have bought a wonderful framed memory of "the catch" with autographed photos of Joe Montana and Dwight Clark.  Would have been wonderful for Tom, but alas waaaay too rich for our blood.

The show, with book by Jonathan Spencer and story and lyrics by a host of incredibly talented Lamplighters was, as expected, wonderful.  Called "Upside-Downton Abbey, or The Lass that Loved a Chauffeur," it was the story of the "Grandhome" family and their servants.  

 The story followed Downton Abbey's first season with lyrics to familiar Gilbert & Sullivan tunes rewritten into hilarious versions, such as this classic by Barbara Heroux, to the tune of the "matter trio" from Ruddygore, sung by heir apparent Matthew plotting to give a love potion to the Lady Mary to convince her to marry him...

I want to marry Mary,
But she looks upon me coldly,
So I thought I might address the case
A teeny bit more boldly.
Here's a potion for emotion
We could slip into her flagon
And convince the icy maiden
To hop on my bandwagon,...

Make the merry Mary marry, marry, marry, marry marry.

There was, of course, a surprising topsy turvy plot twist at the end which saves Downton from financial ruin and leads to the singing of the annual champagne song, leading to exit by the audience and the pouring of champagne in the lobby, where we had a chance to visit with Lamplighters friends whom we see only once a year, at this event. 

Such a feel good event, one to which we look forward each year.

It was after 9 when we left the theater, looking for food.  We drove across the Golden Gate bridge and into Sausalito, my favorite artist colony in the area.  We drove almost to the end of downtown before we spied a pizza parlor and decided to have dinner there.  Actually there were 3 choices of eateries, Mexican, Chinese and Pizza and pizza is never my first choice, but Walt was driving and it was his, so we went to Dario's pizza and what a delightful surprise it was.  We decided not to with pizza, but ordered pasta with pesto and clams and were served a little mountain of green pasta covered with chunks of clam.

It was preceded by (for me) squash soup, which was different from what I'd expected and a huge serving.  I took home half of it, and we both took home half of our pasta, but everything was just delicious and the waitress was attentive and delightful.  I was very happy for our choice.

The dogs were very happy to see us when we rolled into the carport at about 10:30, as they were very hungry.  I tried to finish writing this entry before I passed out, but was just too sleepy, so went to sleep instead.   Sheila, who almost never bothers me until I wake up, licked my hand at 6 a.m., desperate to go outside.

All in all, it was a wonderful day.

The Gala

This morning this video was posted to Facebook.

It is a promo for the upcoming Lamplighters Gala and is, I suppose, a good explanation of what a "gala" is and a taste of what this year's show is going to be.  For me, having been involved with all aspects of galas, from the very first one, through writing them, to now just audience, the tone was a bit too scholarly, but I would hope that the theme of this year's show, Downton Abbey will intrigue some people to maybe wanting to go and see the show.

The Gala was "invented" in the 15th year of the Lamplighters history (the company is now more than 60 years old).  The company needed money and so they decided to take a break from the usual Gilbert & Sullivan productions and do a one-performance "gala," which would feature the actors in funny situations using the music from the shows that had been done that year.  It would be strictly a money maker, would require no new sets of costumes, they could charge a higher price and following the show, there was unlimited champagne, donated by a local winery.

The thing was a huge hit, despite an unplanned special effect when malfunctioning cooling equipment backstage began to pour smoke into the theater.  I remember looking around at that firetrap and wondering if we should leave, but the general manager came out to explain the problem, assure us that there was no danger, and the show went on.

I remember after the show that Walt and I stood with one of the leading tenors drinking gallons of champagne. I went home definitely in my cups.

It was such a big success that a "gala" was factored into the schedule in subsequent years and was usually the final show of the year.  It was almost always a variety show format and it was not until 1982, when Gilbert, David Witmer and I revolutionized the format, that it became a "plot show."  The company was doing Pirates of Penzance that year and the patterman in that show is Major General Stanley.  Gilbert, David and I were walking to lunch one day, thinking about the upcoming Gala when David, who was a soap opera buff, just said "Major General Hospital." It was inspired. Flashbulbs went off over each of our heads. We talked about making that year's gala a "soap operetta" and rapidly started thinking of tunes we could pull from other shows that we not being performed that year.   (I rewrote a song, from Mikado, to be a Tupperware song for a group of women going to a Tupperware party.  I even got Tupperware to donate some free gifts we could use as props.)

It took a lot of convincing to get Gilbert to agree.  He adamantly said that chorus members could not learn music from other operettas for a show, but we finally got him to agree to try. The thing was a riotous success and for many years people still said it was the best show we had ever done and kept wanting to reprise it, but we never did--mostly because it wasn't that great a show.  The greatness of it was in the element of surprise--nobody had ever seen anything like that on the Lamplighters stage.  Even the critics went wild--and in a few outstanding numbers (a cash register in an operating room, with someone adding up every single item as it was used was one of those, the title song was another).  But if you looked at it critically later, the show itself didn't hold up.

But it set the stage.  We had proved that principals and chorus members could learn songs that were not in shows from that year. I have to add also that the whole process was more complicated than I realized for years, until we started to do a gala type show here in Davis.  I hadn't thought of the music part of it, not being a musician.  To do the kind of Gala that the Lamplighters were now doing, you had to own all the orchestral scores for all the Gilbert & Sulllivan operettas, and you had to have someone who could spend weeks putting them in the proper order for each instrument, sometimes writing original instrumentation linking two numbers from two different shows.

Gilbert, David and I only did three Galas before Gilbert died, but his magnum opus was something he'd wanted to do for years, which was to write a Gilbert & Sullivan version of Wagner's Ring.  And he did it.  (That operetta was also titled A Star is Born, which was MY long-held dream!)

Everyone wondered what was going to happen when Gilbert died.  He died in July of 1986 and we hadn't even come up with a theme for that year's show yet.  But the Lamplighters is a company of tremendously talented people and a committee was formed, which worked on the shows for several years and the tradition continued.  I was on the committee for a couple of years.  I can't remember if I was part of the group that created The Phantom of the Operetta, which featured a group of nerds studying bats (they were chiropterologists), but it was an inspired theme and a brilliant opportunity for my friend, the late Will Connolly (the squinty guy in the bow tie below).   One of his more memorable roles.

I eventually left the committee, realizing that, not being around the company all the time, I had become less and less valuable--you really need to know all the in-jokes.  And besides, "star" writers were showing their talent.  I don't know how many contribute to writing these days, but not the large groups that we had in the beginning...and the shows keep getting better and better and better.

This year's is a take off on Downton Abbey and I know it's going to be hilarious, whether you are a Downton Abbey fan or not.  It's the Lamplighters' biggest fund raiser and, sadly, with the slumping economy, it no longer gets sold-out houses, though the quality of the productions is better than ever.

But we'll be there this weekend and I can't wait.

The LGBZ Community

I spent a lot of time with the LGBZ community tonight. But let me get to that in a minute.

We left here around noon, I guess, to drive to San Francisco for this year's annual Lamplighters Gala. I had to get there a bit early because there was going to be a silent auction and I had donated a couple of copies of the Lamplighter history that they wanted Alison and me to autograph for a gift basket.

We got into the city early enough that we could stop by City Hall (just 2 blocks from where the show was anyway), which was still all decked out in its Giants finery.

I wasn't alone. There were about four of us standing around in the plaza opposite city hall taking pictures.

Then we went over to Herbst Theatre where I signed books so they could be added to the gift basket. I think there was a $125 value put on the basket and the last bid I saw on it was $185, so I hope they made enough to make it worth their while.

It was a real "scene" in Herbst Hall, as there were apparently several events taking place. There were paunchy old men wandering around in fatigues and military veteran hats, uniforms and pins. There were half naked native Americans in bare feet with feathered headdresses and grass skirts running out of the building and into the street, or just mingling with the Lamplighter guests who were in the lobby. And there were young adults in Victorian costumes wandering around selling raffle tickets.

We didn't buy any raffle tickets or bid on any of the silent auction items. I had looked through the entire catalog on line and didn't see one single thing that interested me. I'm at a point where I want to get rid of things rather than get new stuff. And I'm certainly not up for voice lessons!

I enjoyed visiting with a few old friends before the show and then thoroughly enjoyed the show. This year it was "You Can't Bite City Hall" or "Some of My Best Friends are Vampires," and it centers around the local LGBZ center (Lycanthropes, Ghouls, Bloodsuckers and Zombies...plus a few mummies thrown in as well) and the city's plans to run a high speed rail train through the building, and the LGBZ community's fight to save it. As usual it was hilarious, rife with puns, double entendres and brilliant song rewrites. My very favorite character name was Mayor Navin Gruesome

I thought about Gilbert and the very first of the "new" galas that he and I wrote back in 1983 and how reluctant he was to stray too far afield, with things like new lyrics or songs from shows that had not been done that year. It was such a huge success that it started a whole new tradition and I am so proud of what it has become, far eclipsing whatever I contributed in the few years I worked on it. This is now a thoroughly professional show.

Not only is it a thoroughly professional show, but in this particular show, the funniest number was a hip hop version of "When the Night Wind Howls" from Ruggygore which was arranged by the son of Geoff Colton. Geoff has been writing these galas from about the fourth year that we were doing them. I don't say the torch has exactly been passed, since rap is more Tyler's interest than Gilbert & Sullivan, but he certainly did a fine job on this number. It had the longest sustained applause (and more laughter) of any number in the show. I'm so glad we've ordered a DVD.

After the show was over, we went upstairs for champagne or cider (champagne for Walt, cider for me)

Jennifer Kiernan and I had Walt take our traditional picture.

And Walt found Zombie Paul Sinasohn to chat with.

We had made plans to stop at a Chinese buffet on the way home to get dinner, but when we got there at 9 p.m., though it said it was open until 10, we were the only customers. The place is huge and they offered to sell us to-go boxes for $5 each. We each went through the buffet stations and filled up a to-go box and then I asked for something a bit larger to carry legs of snow crab. The woman gave me a cup, which I rested outside on the hood of the car before we drove home.

It was really a fun day, and I've come home to an "urgent request" from the SPCA about some puppies who need bottlefeeding. I don't know if they found someone else while I was gone, but I guess that will be a chapter for tomorrow, if they did not!