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Dec. 18th, 2011
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Dec. 18th, 2011 06:49 pmYou know, I'm beginning to think that for the money there's no better way to spend an afternoon in Chicago than a Music Box special event.
The thing is, no matter how excited I am about any event at the Music Box, I invariably end up hating everyone I see, the annoying loud talkers and people standing in the aisles and fucking around instead of ordering their popcorn. I hate them all!
Right until the lights go down. And then we are family. (How like the holidays.)
The Music Box sing-along involves Santa Claus leading everyone in a few Christmas carols, accompanied by the pipe organ, and then we all settle in and watch either White Christmas or It's A Wonderful Life or both. I can't imagine watching both, because the seats are just slightly uncomfortable, especially for long-legged people, but it's no trial to sit through one. Plus they were selling jingle bells on strings at the concessions stand, so I bought one of those, and during appropriate carols -- like Jingle Bells -- I jingled along with everyone else.
Technically the White Christmas showing wasn't an audience-participation event, unlike the Sound Of Music a few weeks ago, but it ended up being that anyway. The woman next to me asked if we were supposed to sing along, and I said I wasn't sure, and she said she was going to anyway because she'd been practicing for two weeks. So, you know, I thought I'll sing too, nobody can see me and it's not like I don't have the whole damn movie memorized ("You might've been stuck with this weirdsmobile for the rest of your life!"). And there were a few other scattered singers, and we all sang, and then others joined in so by the third or fourth song everyone was singing. Even people who didn't know the words, which was...interesting.
And there were catcalls for some of the outfits or lack thereof -- I never noticed Bing Crosby gets down to his underwear before -- and at one point everyone shouted LOOK OUT when the general was almost beaned by a horseshoe. Also some people had clearly been at the Sound Of Music sing along because they started to hiss at certain points.
You do lose detail when you don't see a film like that on the big screen, and certain things become way more evident. I don't think Rosemary Clooney's torch number (Love Done Me Wrong) was supposed to be funny, but on the heels of the Choreography number people just started to laugh, and every time her backup dancers did something we lost it.
So, an excellent evening. And I have a commemorative jingle bell to hang up in my cube!
The thing is, no matter how excited I am about any event at the Music Box, I invariably end up hating everyone I see, the annoying loud talkers and people standing in the aisles and fucking around instead of ordering their popcorn. I hate them all!
Right until the lights go down. And then we are family. (How like the holidays.)
The Music Box sing-along involves Santa Claus leading everyone in a few Christmas carols, accompanied by the pipe organ, and then we all settle in and watch either White Christmas or It's A Wonderful Life or both. I can't imagine watching both, because the seats are just slightly uncomfortable, especially for long-legged people, but it's no trial to sit through one. Plus they were selling jingle bells on strings at the concessions stand, so I bought one of those, and during appropriate carols -- like Jingle Bells -- I jingled along with everyone else.
Technically the White Christmas showing wasn't an audience-participation event, unlike the Sound Of Music a few weeks ago, but it ended up being that anyway. The woman next to me asked if we were supposed to sing along, and I said I wasn't sure, and she said she was going to anyway because she'd been practicing for two weeks. So, you know, I thought I'll sing too, nobody can see me and it's not like I don't have the whole damn movie memorized ("You might've been stuck with this weirdsmobile for the rest of your life!"). And there were a few other scattered singers, and we all sang, and then others joined in so by the third or fourth song everyone was singing. Even people who didn't know the words, which was...interesting.
And there were catcalls for some of the outfits or lack thereof -- I never noticed Bing Crosby gets down to his underwear before -- and at one point everyone shouted LOOK OUT when the general was almost beaned by a horseshoe. Also some people had clearly been at the Sound Of Music sing along because they started to hiss at certain points.
You do lose detail when you don't see a film like that on the big screen, and certain things become way more evident. I don't think Rosemary Clooney's torch number (Love Done Me Wrong) was supposed to be funny, but on the heels of the Choreography number people just started to laugh, and every time her backup dancers did something we lost it.
So, an excellent evening. And I have a commemorative jingle bell to hang up in my cube!