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If you are a parent who thinks it’s OK
to dress your 4 year old daughter up to
look like this, then parade her in front of
strangers, you should reexamine your
core beliefs before Czar and ‘Puter show
up on your doorstep to beat you silly. |
‘Puter very much enjoyed Czar’s not-review of Thor 2 this afternoon, mostly because he’s experienced many of the same issues with kids’ music recitals. ‘Puter like Czar’s post so much, he actually emailed Czar to tell him so.
As any Gormogon will tell you, never get Czar and ‘Puter started on any topic capable of quickly devolving into inappropriate observations and comments. Needless to say, devolution happened right on schedule.
Most of Czar and ‘Puter’s comments are not reproducible in a fine, family publication like our website,* but ‘Puter will provide the highlights (or lowlights, depending on your perspective). Czar and ‘Puter’s comments focused on two basic areas: things we hate about recitals and things I like about recitals.
Things Czar and ‘Puter Hate About Recitals:
· Music education majors who set up the recital in the first instance. Look, music education majors are nice people, but one should never, ever ask them to set up any event more complicated than an office happy hour. Logistics and critical thinking are beyond them. Let someone who has a clue about the real world set up your shindig, lady.
· Obnoxious relatives who stand up in the middle of the recital or run down the center aisle to the stage to film their child. Sit down, shut up and let ‘Puter get back to ignoring the dissonance (aural and cognitive) that is your 9 year old daughter’s rendition of Madonna’s Like a Virgin as Britney Spears would have performed it.
· Parents who fail to control the wee performers’ even wee-er siblings. Tell little Guillermo to shut the heck up and sit the heck down or ‘Puter’s going to do it for you. If you can’t control your little snot monkeys, at least have the common courtesy to take them out of the recital hall or load them up on Benadryl before you show up. At least looped up, drugged up little kids are fun to watch. Way more fun to watch than your kid playing an extended dance version of In-A-Gadda-Da-Vidaon the penny whistle.
· Relatives who talk through each act and then expect you to remain silent as their Precious Q. Snowflake displays her competitive eating prowess by swallowing 42 kielbasas whole in under 90 seconds.** People, please. If you’re not going to show my kid respect (yes, I know he sucks), don’t expect me to refrain from going all Mystery Science Theater 3000 on your kid’s “performance.” Jeebus, it’s totally in the parent handbook. “If you want other parents to refrain from mocking your child mercilessly, show some respect while their children are performing.”
· Polite/pity applause. Rarely is the amount and vigor of applause received in direct proportion to the performing child’s talent. More frequently occurring is thunderous applause for an atonal and meandering, yet simultaneously vertigo inducing, rendition of
Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen from Mozart’s
Die Zauberflöte.
For Pete’s sake, lady, your tone deaf six year old just murdered a masterwork by one of the greatest composers ever.
It’s not as if your little Katy Perry wannabe delivered America news of the Japs’ surrender.
Look, we all understand no parents want their kid to feel unappreciated, but you can certainly show your appreciation without being an obnoxious dink about it.
· Age inappropriate numbers. Parents, under no set of circumstances is it ever permissible to allow your daughter (prepubescent or fully matured) to wiggle her scantily clad lady bits through a dull-eyed recreation of a Britney Spears video. Never. There are no exceptions to this rule. If you think you have discovered an exception to this rule, please feel free to email ‘Puter and/or your Czar. We will happily roll you in to Family Services, as you are clearly an unfit parent, showing up with lawn chairs (and cocktails) to take in the fun as you’re correctly hauled away to the stationhouse for endangering the welfare of a minor.
Things ‘Puter and Czar Like About Recitals:
· You can’t spell “recital” without “rectal.” Scatological humor makes we lowbrow Flyover Country folks laugh despite our better instincts.
· If you’re in a high rent suburb, generally there’s lots of really good looking moms around. Many of these moms are stay at home, but hire help to watch the kids while they spend countless hours sculpting the perfect body with their hard bodied young personal trainer with a romantic-sounding foreign name, usually Joachin or Raul. Too, these women keep up on the latest fashions and wear clothes to accentuate their well-toned bodies. If personal training doesn’t work, there’s always the plastic surgeon to help as well. ‘Puter’s seen it all at recitals – literally and figuratively. Say what you want about well educated, upper class, stay at home moms, but they usually pride themselves on catching one’s attention. All in all, a pleasant pastime while mired in a youth music recital.***
· You can usually wheel in a 55 gallon drum of Scope and sodas to dull the pain, so long as you share with the other parents and relatives forced to sit through this shared Hell.
Here’s your takeaway. Kids’ music recitals are more painful than a habanero enema, but if you get likkered up and enjoy the scenery, you just may survive.
* The Gormogonswebsite remains far superior to President Obama’s star-crossed ObamaCare website in nearly all respects. Mr. Obama’s website is superior to this site in one important aspect, however: ROI to inept Canadian contractors getting paid to fix mistakes they made in the first instance.
** This young lady will inevitably become the head cheerleader and most popular girl in high school, closely followed by descent into drunken college friend with benefits to every brother in the Sigma Epsilon house, culminating at maturity into a hateful, self-loathing barfly who promises herself to stop going home with a different man every night, but can never quite bring herself to do so. “WHY DID DADDY LEAVE?!? WASN’T I GOOD ENOUGH?!? MOM WAS A HOOR! COME BACK, AND I’LL LOVE YOU!!” But ‘Puter digresses.
** This point is mostly ‘Puter’s to be fair to Czar. Czar likes the younger adult ladies. And bears. Czar loves bears.
Always right, unless he isn’t, the infallible Ghettoputer F. X. Gormogons claims to be an in-law of the Volgi, although no one really believes this.
’Puter carefully follows economic and financial trends, legal affairs, and serves as the Gormogons’ financial and legal advisor. He successfully defended us against a lawsuit from a liquor distributor worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid deliveries of bootleg shandies.
The Geep has an IQ so high it is untestable and attempts to measure it have resulted in dangerously unstable results as well as injuries to researchers. Coincidentally, he publishes intelligence tests as a side gig.
His sarcasm is so highly developed it borders on the psychic, and he is often able to insult a person even before meeting them. ’Puter enjoys hunting small game with 000 slugs and punt guns, correcting homilies in real time at Mass, and undermining unions. ’Puter likes to wear a hockey mask and carry an axe into public campgrounds, where he bursts into people’s tents and screams. As you might expect, he has been shot several times but remains completely undeterred.
He assures us that his obsessive fawning over news stories involving women teachers sleeping with young students is not Freudian in any way, although he admits something similar once happened to him. Uniquely, ’Puter is unable to speak, read, or write Russian, but he is able to sing it fluently.
Geep joined the order in the mid-1980s. He arrived at the Castle door with dozens of steamer trunks and an inarticulate hissing creature of astonishingly low intelligence he calls “Sleestak.” Ghettoputer appears to make his wishes known to Sleestak, although no one is sure whether this is the result of complex sign language, expert body posture reading, or simply beating Sleestak with a rubber mallet.
‘Puter suggests the Czar suck it.
