Even vegetable farmers hit the town once in a while.
Last weekend, Christina and I put on our cleanest and least dirty clothes and headed on over to the Paramount Theater in Aurora to see “Rent”. According to the Interweb, “Rent” is a rock musical that tells the story of a group of impoverished young artists struggling to survive in New York City under the shadow of HIV/AIDS. A backstory like that will put even the grumpiest farmer in a good mood. We were excited to see the show.
As loyal readers know by now, I am a big fan of the arts. I like sculpture, ceramics, painting and photography too. Conceptual art and modern art and even a little bit of antiquity. I like performance art and my very sophisticated tastes cut across a wide range of musical styles, stretching all the way from Whitesnake to Bad Company. But when I found out 30 seconds before the opening – to my horror – that “Rent” was a musical, I knew I was in for it. The conversation went something like…
Rob: Oh, did you see that “Rent” is a musical?
Christina: I know. Isn’t it great?. It’s one of my all-time favorites.
Rob: What great news! Now I am really, really excited! This is the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me!
No, really, it was terrifying. The musical lasted 3 hours, which is approximately equal to one hundred thousand bagagazillion years in Rob time, and made absolutely no sense to me. Did you know that, in musicals, they don’t talk normally at all? They sing everything.
Everything.
Everybody sings. All the time. And dancing too. I almost forgot about that part. Lots of dancing and general frolicking about. It was enough to make a cowboy cuddle up in a corner and cry.
And people clapped all the time. They clapped before a song. They clapped after a song. They clapped at intermission. I swear someone let out a toot (not me!) and somebody else clapped. They even clapped before the musical even started. Now, I am all about supporting the hard work and countless hours that these performers put into their craft. And a little clapping goes a long way to express a SINCERE appreciation, but all this clapping was a bit much for me. I don’t hear anyone clapping when I grow a thousand pounds of heirloom beets. All I hear is, “do you have any that are purple?”. Tragically, I missed the only nude scene while I was busy twitching my toes to wake up my leg that fell asleep.
In conclusion, there is a reason that vegetable farmers never really get off the farm. Oh, we like to pretend that we’re working all of the time. But really – really – we’re just trying to avoid anything with “Tony award” in the title. The only redeeming quality about the whole thing was that I got to spend an afternoon with my one true love. And I’d sit through a hundred musicals with a thousand songs for one more day of that.