Beauty is in the eye of the gambler, I mean, the beholder

Hello, it's your friendly chronicler of all things mundane in my life and the lives of my family and friends. Mundane is a subjective, well, . . . subject. What one considers mundane, another considers pleasant, or fulfilling. It's that old "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" expression. Well, I happen to be the "beholder" on this here blog and therefore your reading pleasure is totally at the whim and fancy of yours truly. While the "beholder" is a position of envy, there is of course what's called in the industry, the down side. The down side of it is that I'm often mistaken for the "gambler": a well known professional card shark, who started out his career on a train as an amateur, until he was taught the idiosyncrasies of poker by an apparently broke, nicotine addicted, alcoholic mentor, of which he applies to all life's endeavors and challenges.



I especially draw this comparison when seen in my full costume as Mr. Welch in the play It's a Wonderful Life where I wear what can best be described as a cross between a possum and raccoon skin in full winter thickness. I always seem to get stuck wearing a bad wig in these productions. Anyway, here's the Mr. Welch

as seen in Frank Capra's holiday film classic which you may get the chance to view this holiday season. As you can see, he looks normal and isn't at all afflicted with Kenny Rogers' hair, or Jay Leno hair,

or dead marsupial hair!

 It's the scene where Mr. Welch recognizes the protagonist's name and then proceeds to hand out a beat down!

"And the next time you talk to my wife that way, you'll get worse!"

You should have known better Jimmy Stewart. Yes, I'm in the only scene with fight choreography.

As Sam Wainwright I use my natural hair and am somewhat dressed up in slacks, tie and jacket. I make a couple of key phone calls from my setting in New York and France, found in the unoccupied balcony on stage left (that's the actor's left hand side, as they face the audience). Below, is Sam Wainwright's scene helping to cement the protagonist's (James Stewart as George Bailey) love to Mary Hatch (played by Donna Reed).

We had a good opening night. It was a lot of fun and we did it really well, we thought. During one particularly quiet scene where George Bailey is "having a moment", the only ornament not secured by wire tie on the Christmas tree on stage worked loose and plunk, plunk, plunked its way down about 10 steps. Saturday, we had a good night again, and the choreographed punch made a nice slap sound and the other actor's fall was believable.

Sunday's matinee was a little sloppy. I felt I maintained energy and delivered my lines well, but I know some actors ( nowadays to be politically correct, there are actors and female actors, the reasoning is there are no doctoresses, so there should not be actresses) were dropping some lines and one actress missed her only cameo on stage; it was the scene which elicited the biggest laughs both Friday and Saturday. She missed it. She blamed it on the tech guys not letting her know. However, I'm of the philosophy that each actor is responsible for being on that stage for their cue come hell or high water! I think her occupation with reading something on her laptop in the green room had a lot to do with it.

Rick, Sharon, and Luke attended the Sunday matinée performance, for which I was thankful. We immediately had a production notes meeting afterward and was unable to talk with them to find out what they liked/disliked. Sharon told Mare I did a good job and she wondered why I wasn't awarded a lead role. Well, Sharon, you may not remember, but I did audition for George Bailey, THE lead role. I think I would have done nearly as well as the seasoned actor who portrayed him, and I openly hoped I would win it. I secretly was relieved when I did not win it, because it's a big role. I'll work my way up.

One last thing about the play, then I'll give it a rest for this post. The lead role, the guy portraying George Bailey, he's the father of the female lead's boyfriend. Did you catch that? The female lead role of Mary Bailey, who kisses George several times throughout the production; she is 19, maybe 20, and is dating the son of the guy playing George! It's a little bit awkward. Of course, as a theater person (cue the snobbish snort) I didn't think much of it, because it's ACTING! I was able to get over it. I gather that some in the audience were not able to "get over it", and for them this knowledge brought the play down. Unfortunate.

Christmas will be upon us. Be of good cheer! Yours truly,
"The Beholder"


Thankfully, we have Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday off without rehearsal or performance. Thursday night is rehearsal, then three performances over the weekend.

"Don't toss us away"- Patty Loveless

Things are beginning to look like the yuletide season around here. A couple of weeks ago, around Thanksgiving, the city crew spent a Saturday in pairs with a few bucket trucks installing the light pole decorations.

They resemble the ones my hometown of Humboldt decorated with when I was growing up, and likely Humboldt continues to use these.  You've seen them: two dimensional wire silhouettes of a couple familiar shapes associated with Christmas. A candle and a Christmas tree are the two I clearly remember. Around the wire frame is wrapped some festive colored industrial strength, sparkled "tinsel", for a lack of a more accurate word, and matching lit bulbs.. They are not elaborate. They're built to last through some tough Kansas Holiday seasons. 

These kinds of decorations hold a keen sense of nostalgia for me. Similar to an angel or star which adorns a family Christmas tree each year, and which every family member agrees is gaudy and out of date; these humble Holiday decorations will be greatly missed when they are finally replaced and some little piece of the Holiday spirit of humble beginnings, like those of the first Nativity, is lost. 

Of course, I'm somewhat of a sentimentalist. However, replacing beloved ornaments for aesthetic reasons i.e. because they're ugly and old, just kind of hurts my feelings. It seems I've always had this weakness: projecting feelings into inanimate objects which I've possessed. When I was a child, I'd feel guilty about not playing with some of my older, more battered toys, or the toys I'd played with when I was younger and more babyish. I'd get that lump in my throat feeling what I thought must have been their feelings of not being wanted anymore. I'd also feel guilty about being a younger, more innocent person back when I gave that toy a lot of attention, and now, later, my tastes demanded less innocence and more flash.

It's a childish thing to do perhaps, to project feelings onto things which don't have feelings: old, disused toys; battered and out of date decorations; threadbare and worn jeans, shirts, and boots. It's likely every bit as childish to hang onto these sentimental feelings of nostalgia for familiar items from our past, and to maintain an affinity for things of the past in general. After all, the only thing that doesn't change is change itself. Eventually, everything around you will become obsolete or broken, or already has.

People become obsolete and broken, too. We eventually will become unable to contribute anything of value or use to our loved ones and our country. We become old and ugly. All that will remain, we hope, is for people to maintain a childish devotion to the way things once were; how each of us used to be on our best days according to someone else's individual  perceptions and experiences with us. This will be the value we have for others. We are different from toys, decorations, clothing, and furniture, of course. We have feelings. I want to treat people like the irreplaceable, invaluable beings they are; not like replaceable Christmas decorations.

No doubt when Humboldt and Ottawa replace these old fashioned Holiday decorations they just won't be the same for some of us. The new ones will be much better in every way, that will be the difference. But, that doesn't mean the old ones don't 't have any value. They were good enough for us "back then", when we were younger, and more innocent. I'll like the new Christmas decorations, and I'll pine for the old ones. This Holiday season, let's all be sure we don't disregard the people in our lives who were once important to us, "back then". Let's show them they're far more important than "things", and let's spend our most valuable asset on them: our time. Spend time with those people. They're more than decorations.