Thursday, January 31, 2013

Now Playing At This Theater...NOT YOU!

Friends and Followers,

I just got home from one of the nicest movie theaters in the city of New York, the Ziegfeld, where Jae and I were seeing Les Miserables with our friend Julie.
Julie is a wonderful singer and a lover of the show and we always have a good time together.
We also happen to have the same shock and dismay concerning the crumbling of manners and etiquette in the world of late.



THE INDOOR VOICE

What the world needs now is a knowledge among people that we, as the strangers around you, don't care and don't want to know what you and your friends are talking screaming to each other about.
There is no need to holler at the top of your lungs to person who is right next to you.
My theory is that these people - both young and not-so - are screwing up their hearing by sticking earbuds in their ears all the time and pumping up the volume enough to do enough damage to ruin their ears. Edit your vocal volume for your surroundings. You are NOT in a bar. You are NOT outdoors in traffic. You're in a theater....have some respect and keep your voices down.
Think of it as a library with a giant screen.

SHUT YOUR PIE HOLE
  
At Les Mis there was a group behind us a couple of rows in which there was a woman - I'd say she was in her early thirties - talking to a slightly younger woman...CONSTANTLY.
Not only was she talking, mind you, she was saying the most inane things. Explaining absolutely everything.
One character shot at another and she told her companion, "He just shot at that other guy."
Wanting to be the kind of guy who gives the benefit of the (always increasing) doubt, I thought that perhaps this younger woman might be blind, so I look back just in time to see the younger woman TEXTING during the film. AARRGGHH!

EVEN THOUGH IT'S A MUSICAL...

The actors on the screen have been paid a goodly amount of money and have a great deal of experience (Russel Crowe notwithstanding) onscreen. It's their job to act and sing. NOT YOURS.
I've made my living as a singer, both in opera and musical theatre, and I wouldn't dream for a moment to usurp the actors' performance by singing along.
Even though it's a musical...we are not in your bathroom shower. SHUT UP and let the professionals do their jobs.

And, again...I want to tell you, my friends and followers, that I don't expect, for a moment that any one of you might be guilty of any of these things and that, even if you are, you would have the presence of mind and grace to change your ways.

Enjoy the movies!

- SSG

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