Susan's Scribblings the Blog

I have been a member of the Metropolitan Opera for years, but it doesn’t mean I always get preferential treatment.  Joining something usually means a level of expectation amounting to service, support or reward.  In tough times, though, even a membership can result in no reward.

Over the years I have established myself as a regular participant in Richard Wagner’s classic four-part “Ring” cycle, having seen at least one performance a year (or all four) yearly until the popular 20-plus-year-old cycle imagined by Otto Schenk was retired.  The newest interpretation of the fantasy epic is in the hands of Robert Lepage and the infamous “Machine” mentioned in worldwide newscasts and in previous entries in this blog.

Last week single ticket sales began for the Met’s new 2011-2012 season.  I went out of my way to be ready when the online sales opened up at noon so I could purchase the ticket I wanted.  However, pickings were slim this year, particularly for those of us Wagnerites anxious to see the second half of the “Ring” cycle for the first time.  Deborah Voigt is scheduled to sing Brunnhilde for the love of the wild and heroic “Siegfried” and die for that same love at the climax of “Gotterdammerung” (“Twilight of the Gods”).

This year the Met has elected to offer only select performances for sale as individual pieces, and hold the spring series of all four (two cycles) for subscribers only.  This ultimately meant that the fall performances sold out before the online sales even got off the ground.  It also meant I was out of luck.

I’ve never had the experience of seeing the entire opera house sold out before I could even click a mouse, and it feels depressing to be shut out after so many years of feeling the great glass doors were open to me all season.  Sure it’s nice to see that the season is a sell-out, and lots of people will fill the opera house daily for an experience that is best had live.  The Met’s sales tactics have done that, and they are to be commended for original thinking.  It will surely lose them the respect of some patrons and the disappointment of others like me, but they are, after all, in the business to boost executive profits and still have a few cents left to pay the rent at Lincoln Center and buy the cast and crew some coffee.

If I see any productions at all, it will be from one of the many movie theatres which will broadcast select performances live (and in encores) through the season.  Not like being in the Met, but an incredible simulation.

I will be in New York City this fall for a Broadway show instead, far away from the familiar trappings at the Met, and I suppose I will likely think of them at least once before curtain time.

It may be possible that the key to solving some of our problems (or prevent potential problems) is to write about them first.  Our best documents, like the Declaration and Constitution, were well written prefaces to our decisions regarding our lives and futures, so why shouldn’t we carry that idea into other aspects of everyday life?

“I am going out to buy a $600 smart phone.  The $500 smart phone I bought four months ago is so yesterday.  Besides, if I don’t buy one, the other girls will think I’m poor or a square. . . .”

(I’ve often said that the value of “wow” is overrated).

“I’m going to go to the truck supply store and buy some mud flaps with outlines of naked women on them.  Sure, my wife won’t like it too much, but the fellas down at the Beer Bunker will get a kick out of it the first time I drive up with those cute ladies hanging from the rear of my truck.”

“My company is going to invent the Use-Less 5000.  Folks have been using something else since the dawn of time, but why do things the same old way when you can start all over learning a new way?”

This idea might also work when somebody is convicted of a crime.  They should have to write a composition about it and it should become part of their record.  No spell checking or ghost writing, either.  Just keep it as it comes out of their pencils onto the paper.  That way we can get a true glimpse into who is committing our crimes these days.  Sure, some of the papers would be brilliant (especially from well-educated criminals), but let’s face facts.

Sometimes our visual media is overcorrected and sugar-coated or exaggerated beyond normalcy.  The basic composition equalizes the playing field.  If you’re reading this, you already have an opinion of me as the author.  That is how it should always be.

It’s a fact of life that nobody who has money wants to lose money, and those who don’t have enough money rarely get enough.  Somewhere along the way, we foolishly empowered our politicians to write in whatever they wanted, and of course they did so.  Washington is filled with Rolls Royces and Lincolns, while the poor duke it out on crime-ridden streets within blocks of the capitol.

We foolishly wanted to be a free-spending decadent country, and in many aspects we have done so.  Where else do people buy $500 cell phones and throw them out six months later for a new $600 model, while the unemployed live in motels on pennies a day they can’t scrape together?

We also like to decide what things in our lives should be cheap, and other countries have enacted fair trade with us to enable us to do that.  It’s nearly impossible to find a product that isn’t made in China anymore, yet an article in a recent newscast told of a field of berries that rotted because the owner couldn’t convince anybody to pick them.

Why should we be surprised that the trillion dollar bill collectors are knocking on the door of the White House, and some folks are slipping out the back door trying to hide?

President Obama (a man worthy of more respect than he gets, but also doomed to a future of being known for a misstep or two, like any president) knows that only the rich can afford to pay for anything; the middle class (which gets smaller daily) can scrape by when called upon to pitch in some expenses, and the poor can’t help anybody, not even themselves.  But playing political games means that millions of dollars go toward silly self promotional projects (the John Q. Politician Federal Building or Library) that nobody wants to call off because the fellow with whom they shook hands on the deal may not like them anymore.  Oh, my heart bleeds for the pain of the popularity contest.  That time is over, my friends.  It’s absurdism at its most base.

When did we become this way?  Hedonistic, apathetic toadies who don’t care about anything but social niceties with countries who wish they could take us over and how much the next luxury item costs rather than who built it?

I don’t care if anybody likes the United States; I just want to be sure it will always be mine.  Nobody ever liked us, because we came over here with nothing and built from scratch, and they were jealous of our sense of democracy, our pursuit of liberty and our resourceful nature.  I fear becoming a slave to another country because of debts somebody else racked up on my tax dollars.  It’s bad enough that average Americans can’t achieve the American Dream, but don’t pervert it into a nightmare, too.  We must not borrow from people who would like nothing better than to see us go bust!  We must not let our self-sustaining land become fertile ground for other countries’ enterprises.  It was bad enough when we allowed our own businesses to ship jobs overseas because it was cheaper to pay a foreign worker than one of our own, but now we’re letting the agricultural industry rot, too.

I would gladly spend some time out in the sun to pick berries; I’d have slathered on SPF 45 and done it for nothing if the fruit could have gone to some starving familes who needed them.

In fact, I think President Obama should send those representatives on Capitol Hill out to a field and let them harvest some crops from the land we claimed with the blessing of God and worked to give our own people a way of life.  Maybe the smell of dry-cleaned $500 suits has dulled our politicians’ minds.  They’ve forgotten where they are and how they got there.

Come on, guys.  America has more decency and honor than you’re showing your countrymen.  Give up the big bucks and start trimming (if you can find scissors that are made in America).

At work, we’re allowed to wear sandals between May and October as part of our summer dress code.  I know a lot of people like to bare their feet in summer, but I find it a bit hinkie.

Feet are strange things, and they stop looking cute shortly after we first learn to walk as they get flatter and splay out and start the lifelong process of collecting icky stuff on them.  Our toes seem to attract crud like Woodstock attracted hippies, and for some reason people like that.  Or I should say they like that while they’re outside barefoot.  After that, the hose or the faucet becomes a must-have to wash off the feet before the crud comes indoors.  Believe me, it does anyway.

Sandals are also uncomfortable.  In fact, most sandals seem to have been invented by somebody who is into self-flagellation, because flip-flops have a tendency to slap the bottoms of our feet as we walk.  Why they’re called flip-flops is beyond me; they don’t flip or flop, but just slap.  Sliding on puddles on linoleum floors, they make noises akin to armpit music or farting.

The little knobs that our big and second toes are supposed to surround to keep the sandals on our feet are also little torture devices.  If they’re not smooth, or settle into the wrong place on the foot, the reward is chronic blisters galore.  The current sandals also come with a toe cuff, usually a little band of leather surrounding the big toe in place of a knob.  Same painful possibilities.

When working in an office environment, sandals can easily become the object of scrutiny, even to the point of having sandal panels to determine which styles are proper and which will send the wearer home to change into something more workplace appropriate.  I feel that, if the footwear looks more gross than the foot it’s on, confiscate the offensive shoes and lend the poor schmuck a pair of black socks until quitting time.  The dress code will be upheld (really, will anybody notice socks?) and nobody will have to look at splayed-out cruddy feet in a pair of examples of what not to wear to the office.

I do wear sandals on occasion, but I also wear hosiery to keep out crud, and I limit my choices to dressier types that surround my feet and have no knobs or rings.  Sure I’m probably considered a prude playing it safe, but like I said, feet give me the hinkies, so I guess I’m one less cruddy badly shod pair of feet in the general population.

People always talk about the inevitability of death and taxes, and birthdays just hammer the point home that we’re one step closer to leaping the mortality line in the sand and landing in a place not like life as we’ve known it.  No matter how many birthdays we may celebrate, it seems there is always at least one that stands out as “remember the year when you were this age and that happened?”

A coworker who just had a milestone birthday reminded me that chalking up another 365 days by your personal calendar isn’t all joy and candle blowing.  Out of respect for her privacy, I won’t go into detail, but when she had finished the story I was glad to have had a sedate night at home on my birthday:  after what she described as her natal hell day, it puts the strangeness of everyday life into focus.

Sometimes we wake up on our birthday and life just goes haywire from there.  Maybe it’s the significance of a birthday, that one can anticipate well in advance, that sets us up for some tough times.  Since we usually have family and friends involved, it rubs off on them, too.  Whatever the cause, we spend 24 hours dealing with remembering how old we are, and ultimately somebody or something will get into the mix and muddle the whole thing up.

I have my own story.  One year, we picked up my cake at the local bakery, only to find that they had given us a leftover holiday cake, at least ten days old,  that was dry inside and on the verge of being a science project as it had been frozen.  Luckily the cake was just for family, and we did get our money back.  Compared to some stories I’ve heard, though, that one is a clunker in the bad birthday hall of fame.

The list I’ve heard includes delayed flights, conked out cars miles from anywhere, and a cruise ship that didn’t get to port until the last day of what would have been a six-day birthday vacation.  I’ve heard of injured pets, kids with boo-boos requiring hospitalization, and somebody’s spouse whose leg was mistakenly pummeled by a weed whacker.  There have been boozed up brothers, deodorant challenged in-laws and absentee teenagers who went out partying until the next day, having forgotten what date it was.  Folks celebrating birthdays have gotten re-gifted former Christmas presents, melted chocolates (especially in August), burst bottles of bubbly left in a hot trunk too long and last-minute what-were-they-thinking gifts that would leave Dr. Phil scratching his head.

Other than Christmas, when else do we set ourselves up for such insanity?  In the quest to have a perfect day, we often get shortchanged.  Sometimes it might be a good idea to just let that day go and hold something private a day or so later, with just a few close people at your side in case a weed whacker seeks revenge.

Something is happening to the simple wristwatch.  Some folks don’t bother to wear one, choosing to depend on their handheld devices’ clocks to be right.  Others buy $10 cheapies and pitch them when they conk out.  I have a collection.

Sure, they’re just middle-of-the-road Timexes at about $20 a pop, but I like to switch watches to suit the day, outfit and conditions.  The water resistant ones come out when it’s rainy outside, the slim one for work, the big backlit one for a night at the theatre.

The problem with watches is that the batteries die.  In the middle of one’s day, it’s not good to have a battery breathe its last.  The whole watch suddenly loses meaning.  If you take it off, though, you’re left with a pale mark from that spot on your wrist that gets no sun.

The other thing that breaks on watches is the band.  Until a few years ago, watches came in dependable sizes for which there was always a replacement band.  You could get one put on by a happy customer service person at the jewelry counter.  Nowadays, places like Boscov’s, who are easygoing with just about anything else they sell like other department stores, won’t replace a band on a watch they didn’t sell.  I have a Timex that’s a good 20 years old or more, but Boscov’s won’t sell me a band for it.  Yeah, I bought it at a K-Mart long defunct, but that’s beside the point.

Also, I needed a longer band for this watch.  I visited one of those small kiosks that specialize in watches, situated in the middle of the mall, to ask about a band.  “Long ones’ll cost you extra,” the bored to tears fellow pontificated, not nicely.  I left, since that was the way he felt about it.

One band I actually have to send away for, because it is not the usual “one hole and a pole” type.  The folks at Timex recommend I send just the band, but I can’t seem to get it separated from the watch, and none of the jewelers will do it if they can’t sell me a new band.

I refuse to part with the watch.  It’s a nice watch.  It runs.  Of course I’ll find a compromise eventually, if I have to send the whole timepiece away by insured mail.  Naturally, by the time I manage to get a new band, it will probably need a new battery.