While waiting in the Tom Bradley International Terminal for my LAX-Brisbane flight, reading a two-month old copy of the New Yorker (yeah, I’m somewhat behind!), listening to Billy Joel’s song Pressure (muzak), being surprised and disappointed by the unintelligible and drawly accent of the Aussie next to me (”yeah, mate, kanoiged’n'athemfroistedglazez - goodonya”) and drinking myself slowly into oblivion, I managed to catch 15 depressing minutes of Family Feud on TV:
“OK, the category is ‘Something a woman president would want in the White House’…”
“Um…a hairstylist?”
“No…incorrect…what about the other family?”
“Um…curtains?”
“No, again, incorrect. Let’s take a look at what the people answered: “Flowers,” “A man,” “Candles,” “Chocolates,” and “A mirror.”
Oh. My. Good. Lord.
The next category: “What fruit wouldn’t you want your body to look like.” The number one response?
“Pear!”
I love this country, and am looking forward to an amazing 2008/09 season with 8bb, but nothing has made me as homesick for Australia as those 15 depressing minutes.
Oh, and lest you think that our month-long summer vacation might harm my blogging schedule, I will continue to write entries over the the next five weeks! There are still lots of unfinished blog posts (currently 54 saved drafts!) for me to complete.
Don’t give up on me while I am on my extended pub crawl around wintery Australia…
Our season officially ended tonight at 10.15pm with the conclusion of a concert at the Governor’s School in Erie, PA. Our season-ender was their program opener.
High school aged students (typically rising juniors or seniors) from any educational institution (public, private, home-schooled) receive scholarships to take part in this 5-week-long summer program at beautiful Mercyhurst College. The program puts an emphasis on multi-disciplinary cross pollination, so the 60 music, 60 theater, 30 dance, 30 art and 20 writing students must room with someone not from their own field. At the beginning of our show the poetry professor talked briefly about Wallace Stevens then recited the poem that inspired our name, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.
In typically bizarre 8bb fashion we celebrated the end of a very long, complicated, often frustrating, sometimes uniquely satisfying, and overall incredibly successful season by eating ice cream.
Strangely, no beers were harmed in the course of the evening, no champagne corks were jettisoned, no bourbon was poured. We all craved something sweet, creamy and fatty. Upon find DQ dark, we cruised the picturesque strip malls of Erie until we came upon a Bruster’s, home of the…well, home to cheap, crappy ice cream.
“What is a Blast?”
“It’s like a Blizzard.”
“….um, what’s a Blizzard?”
“Bloody Aussie. It’s like a McFlurry.”
“Well then!”
