For me, the holiday season begins when the leaves almost imperceptibly start changing color in October, when those warm, pumpkin-ish earth-tone appear in fields, supermarkets, and on the trees. In rapid succession we get Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Eve, and it ends with my birthday in January (what can I say? Nature saved the best for last). It also ends with five or six additional pounds, but let’s not go there.

Life being what it is, it’s often impossible to celebrate on the actual day. This year, for example, I have an opera rehearsal on my birthday. So you sort of end up celebrating around it. For ‘99, it started this evening when a group of old college friends (collectively, The Gang, aka Club Zeta) took me and a fellow Capricorn out to dinner to celebrate our respective birthdays.

The restaurant was a suggestion of mine. One of my favorites, a California gold rush themed restaurant called Claimjumper. If you haven’t been there, Claimjumper can be described in one word: big. Everything is big. For example, one person ordered a baked potato for dinner. Not hungry, you say? Au contraire, this potato weighed five or six pounds and was filled with chicken, grilled vegetables and other assorted goodies. I kid you not, this thing was a lethal weapon. It’s roughly four times the size of the typical large Idaho potatoes you’ll find at a grocery store. I don’t know where they get these things, but every time I go to this place I feel like I’m in the middle of an Alice in Wonderland episode. Either I’m shrinking or the food is growing.

Claimjumper is most famous for their Mother Lode cake. The Mother Lode is an insanely rich chocolate cake measuring about 16″ in diameter and about 20″ tall. You can gain weight just looking at it. I eat at this place quite a bit, but I can’t claim to have ever seen anyone actually order a slice. If portion sizes can be used for shock value, Claimjumper epitomizes it. They’re the Jerry Springer of the restaurant industry. Not that I’m complaining–I often eat two meals just off of what I take home, and the food is always excellent. You may be aware that Federal law requires restaurants to make nutritional information available upon request for the food they serve. I one requested the nutritional information on the Mother Lode. Total calories: 880,000.

That’s Claimjumper.

Anyway, my own selection was the black tie pasta, which is a combination of tortellini and bow tie pasta in a rich cream sauce. It’s completely decadent, and I enjoyed every bite. Oddly enough, the topic of conversation somehow got onto diets. Claimjumper is the anti-diet restaurant. But it seems my friend Dave and his wife Michelle on a self-imposed diet. They’re not supposed to eat any carbohydrates or sugars, which basically means no breads, cereals, and certainly no pasta. But they can eat all the meat and fat they like. In fact, their recommended breakfast is eggs and bacon. Kind of weird, but they claim this diet is used in hospitals to get heart patients in shape for surgery in a hurry. Almost as an additional twist of the knife, the waitress kept bringing plates of cheese bread to the table, a food Dave loves. By the time we were done, there were about 15 large pieces on various plates. At the end of the meal, the server invariably asks what (as opposed to if) you’ve got left to box up.

The conversation was pleasant and friendly. This was the first time I had seen Ken and Miriam since their wedding in December, so it was a good opportunity to hear about their honeymoon and the New Year’s Eve party they threw at their place. Miriam said she was a dishwashing fanatic because all the china and dishware was, of course, new. I think as the years go by we’ve become somehow more appreciative of each other as members of a group with a special bond.

Of course, before we left Kevin (the other birthday boy) and myself were subjected to a third-rate birthday song from the servers. Don’t they do that at all restaurants? It’s some sort of Health Department regulation, I think. Whey they do a surprise inspection, they check sanitation, food prep, and that you sing a dorky birthday song to customers. The desert they served, a cookies-’n-cream ice cream cake, was fabulous, as expected.

The worst part of the evening was battling the cold I’m stuck with. If feeding a cold is supposed to work, it sure backfired this night. After dinner I went to a walk-in clinic, sure that I had strep. Thankfully that turned out not to be the case. Despite that slight unpleasantness, my 98-99 holiday season is winding down to a pleasant though exhausted end. And just think–it a few months the stores’ll be pulling out decorations to start it all over again.

I’ve been spending all my time lately at the opera. The only days we’re not rehearsing or performing are the days AGMA (the American Guild of Musical Artists) requires us to have off–essentially every seventh day or so.

Not that I’m complaining. I’m more than happy to have all the work, and I’m learning new shows, having fun with friends, and earning a dollar or two. When I say a dollar or two, I mean literally. But that’s another story.

I can hear Henri cracking the exact same joke about his own salary and laughing melodramatically. Henri Venanzi is one of the best things about working at Opera Pacific. Sometimes I wonder why he sticks around. I’d like to think it’s because we’re such a personable, talented, and generally irresistible group of musicians. But why kid myself?

Now as I was saying, Henri always makes things fun; I’ve laughed my ass off in rehearsals more times than I can count. His voice is not exactly his greatest talent, but he always sings the principal parts in rehearsal. With all the typical scoops, cracks and misses they make. It’s like watching a 3-hour comic monologue as we rehearse. Boy is it great to be someplace where you laugh a lot.

But you don’t want to get on his bad side. Henri is the All Seeing, All Knowing Dude. That’s what I call him in my head. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen people screwing around in staging rehearsals and watched Henri follow them with one eye while playing fiendishly difficult music on the piano, following the action on the stage, and watching the conductor with the other eye.

The other great thing about Opera Pacific is that all I have to do there is sing and act. There are others who are paid to costume, stage manage, sell tickets, raise money, create brochures, clean the theatre, and in general make it super easy to concentrate on the music. You can’t put a price on that. I think some singers don’t fully appreciate this. I certainly do, especially after working in small professional theatre where a) you never get paid, b) you put your own money into shows, and c) things don’t get done unless you do them yourself. I suppose that kind of performing art has it’s merits, but right now I’d be hard-pressed to tell you what any of them are. When you’ve worked hard on a show and the curtain finally goes up, would you rather play to a house of 20 people or 3,000 people?

Exactly.

So Flying Dutchman opened tonight, to a full house no less. It’s an interesting production, though I remain on uneven terms with Wagner. While the music still doesn’t send me off into seventh heaven, I think his concept of “total theatre” is exactly what opera needs. Unfortunately it was still kind of half-baked when he composed Flying Dutchman. Keith, our director, is an expert on interpreting Wagner–in fact, he studied the “total theatre” thing with Wagner’s great-granddaughter in the early 1980s.

The most interesting element of this show (and probably its most exciting moment) is when we transform from sailors to ghosts onstage. We literally tear off our costumes on the set while the stage splits in half, ghosts come up from out of the ground, and thick fog billows into the house. The idea behind it is that the ghosts are not some separate entity from the sailors. We are the ghosts. Our irrationalities, prejudices, and hatred eventually turn us into the very thing that we fear. It’s got a ring of truth to it, and I like that.

Opera with relevance. What will they think of next?

From what I’ve seen on the monitors, it’s a visually stunning show. You can do nice things when your production has a $900,000 budget. But now we’re getting to the sticky point. While Dutchman continues to run, we’re going to start rehearsal for Pagliacci and Carmina Burana (which has approximately 1.21 bazillion words). Hence the full schedule.

But again, I’m not complaining. I really do like this. In fact, I was checking out the web site for the Metropolitan Opera, the 500-pound guerilla of the opera world with a $150 million annual budget (compared with Opera Pacific’s $5-6 million). The Met has a performance of an opera every single night for five or six months. And they don’t do the same show back-to-back, but will run five or six shows in rotating repertory. Monday might be Carmen, while Die Zaberflote will perform on Tuesday and Elektra on Wednesday. And so on. Can you imagine what their chorus schedule must be like? Of course, from what I hear a member of the Met chorus will make a very sizeable six-figure income each year. They don’t have a “day job”. Singing is all they do. Must be nice.

I’m sure Opera Pacific will get there someday soon. Of course, then I’ll probably wake up. Haaaa ha ha ha. I hear Henri laughing again. Probably a subliminal message that I’m late for rehearsal. Gotta run…

All good things must come to an end.

Or so they say. I don’t know that my association with Vanguard was always a good one, but I would like to think it had its moments. Whatever the case, it has certainly come to an end: I resigned from the theatre last week. On my birthday, now that I think about it.

For those of you who are not involved in the non-profit arts scene, let me start off by saying that it’s a difficult one. Budgets are small, salaries non-existent, while expectations and competition are at an all time high. Things are stacked against you at every turn. Vanguard Theatre Ensemble has some other unique challenges on its plate, chief among them being the fact that the theatre is running year-round. For eight years it’s been this way. Most theatres run for nine months and are down for the remaining three. But VTE always has a show in rehearsal or running, and it takes its toll. Also, the theatre doesn’t have a traditional founder/artistic director, so decision making has proven troublesome.

Part of what I did there was to try and help fill that gap as the Managing Director. Apparently I did a piss-poor job of it. The Board of Directors took an anonymous written poll of the ensemble members, and their comments about my performance were, without exception, negative. At times, vitriolic. I found some of the allegations surprising. Weather they are true is not for me to decide. It wouldn’t matter even if it was, because as someone wise beyond their years once said, perception is nine-tenths of reality.

Things had gotten personal. They sometimes do, especially where artistic matters are concerned. Why? Because artistic expression is a personal thing. I’m willing to take a lot of heat, a lot of crap, in order to further a cause I believe in. Vanguard was that cause. But every person has a line–a personal threshold–and when that line is crossed it’s simply not possible to put aside issues such as fairness, right vs. wrong, etc. for the common good anymore. I’m a human being with feelings, and they got stepped on in a way I didn’t think was possible until it happened.

You might be interested in the sordid details. What was said. By whom. Oh, you probably wouldn’t admit it, but in some dark place we don’t talk about at high tea, the desire for it is there. It’s the Jerry Springer in all of us. But I won’t go there, because despite everything I certainly think highly of what Vanguard has achieved. As I wrote in my letter of resignation, I wish only the best for VTE and continue to encourage people to support the theatre.

And besides, the things that were written may be true. It seems to me the adult thing would be to accept responsibility for it and move on, and that’s what your friendly neighborhood Spiderman has attempted to do. The bottom line is that I believe Vanguard will be a better place without me. So this chapter of my life closes, and I move on to other and hopefully more successful partnerships.

I’m cool with it. You see, I have this philosophy about life and the way I live it: I try not to begrudge myself the mistakes I make, as long as I learn from them. Hopefully I grow and don’t repeat my errors. Only time will tell if I learn the proper lesson from The Vanguard Experience, but by the grace of God I will.

When it comes to political figures, it’s been quite a while since anything has come down the pike to make me say “Well isn’t that special?”. But my Church Lady attitude may be changing, because it appears Elizabeth Dole may make a run for the Republican nomination for President in 2000.

I hope she takes the plunge. I think it’s about time we had a female Chief Executive. I would never vote for a candidate based on their sex, but Dole seems to generate a hundred times more interest than her husband ever did. In fact, there are a number of interesting potential Republican candidates right now, but Dole excites me the most.

It’s very early in the 2000 election process; she hasn’t declared herself a candidate, and her positions on most issues have not been officially stated. Which is fine at this point. But when I think of the qualities of a good President, she seems to fit the bill. Substance and charm. Intelligent, articulate, humorous, and gracious. I’ve admired her for years. She’s been a member of five Presidential administrations, served as Secretary of Transportation and Secretary of Labor, and has led the American Red Cross to a record $562 million in fund-raising while leading 30,700 paid and 1.3 volunteer members of the organization. Degrees from Duke and Harvard Law (with honors). She’s established scholarship funds, programs for at-risk children, and is purportedly one of the world’s ten most admired women. It’s rare to find a candidate with a long and varied history of high-level government service without also finding a career politician, but she has managed to walk that rather thin line.

It would be ironic if the first female to ever appear as a presidential candidate for a major political party was a Republican. Contemporary political wisdom has just assumed it would be a Democrat. Perhaps there hasn’t been a Democrat because of 1984. No, not the book–the election, silly. I’ve run into a lot of people who think that Mondale lost in ‘84 because he had Ferraro on the ticket with him. But as far as I can tell, Mondale lost because people didn’t want Mondale in the Oval Office. I don’t think a running mate has ever been responsible for sinking a ticket. Hell, if V.P.s were that important, Bush would have never been elected in ‘88. But what do I know?

Anyway, though I’m certainly getting way ahead of things here, I hope Dole runs. You know, Christine Todd Whitman (governor of New Jersey) would be another excellent female candidate. Also Republican, for what it’s worth. Shocking.