Starting June by celebrating the end of the post-surgery eyedrops routine. Hurrah! I’m loving the new eyes, although I’m now resigned to having reading glasses in every possible spot in the house. Also having to deal with my now-way-too-visible under-eye bags. OK, I am in my 60’s. But still!
June is largely about BB66!
We’ve started rehearsals! They’re fun! Our casts are wonderful! You should come!
We also have the Sorcerer dry-run concert at the NY G&S Society, unfortunately a week before BB66 opens. Ah well.
But this is doing what I love, so…
It’s also Pride Month. As I said on FB, I was delighted that the Philadelphia Freedom Band hosted a Pride Bands Alliance conference over Memorial Day Weekend. I am a founding member of the PFB, and a former artistic director, and we hosted the same sort of conference back in 1992. I’ll have to write about that in detail at some point, it was a big deal in my life.
But here’s a little treat that I always like to revisit from time to time: a video of the entire 1989 pride parade in Philadelphia. Right at the beginning, there we are – I think that might have been our very first marching appearance. There’s baby Eric with his alto horn!
Anyway, PFB is much bigger and stronger now and the conference concert wasn’t in some random high school auditorium, it was at the Kimmel Center on the stage the Philadelphia Orchestra plays on. Amazing!
Other than my appearances in the horn section of the Queer Urban Orchestra, I haven’t really been immersed in the gay community music scene for about twenty years now. But it brought me some of my best opportunities and learning experiences – and friendship and relationships and and and… Sometimes it’s easy to forget what a revolutionary act it was to perform, back in the ’70’s and ’80’s, as an openly gay community music group, whether it be a chorus, band or orchestra. Some performers declined to be listed in the programs for fear of losing their (for instance) public school music teacher jobs. I doubt if that happens much today, maybe it still does. Let’s not backslide to those days again.
Some media consumption. Susan and I went to see the Mandalorian and Grogu movie and loved it. Is it a good movie? Probably not. Was I tickled to death quite a bit? Oh yes. (I did mention that I saw Project Hail Mary a few weeks ago, right? Loved that too. I’m now rereading the book by listening to the audiobook, which is reportedly wonderful.)
TV-wise, I’m about to wrap up Resident Alien and this season’s Elsbeth and Shrinking. Several Hacks to go, but I hear it ends well. I’m rewatching the first season of House of the Dragon before heading into season 2, and I understand season 3 is about to drop. Almost done with Murderbot, which is wonderful, and enjoying Starfleet Academy a lot. And Your Friends and Neighbors and DTF St. Louis. That’s plenty, especially since I thought Brilliant Minds was done and they’ve started dropping new episodes.
I did finally read Heated Rivalry, so I can pick up the series now. And I’m reading Brideshead Revisited (and enjoying it a lot) so I can then watch the miniseries with Jeremy Irons. Finished my tour of the Reacher books, currently reading Gone Baby Gone by Dennis Lehane. A funny MM sword’n’sorcery book called Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to Die. A Discworld book, Carpe Jugulum, which I’m not loving as much as some of the others. A lot of good stuff cued up. That doesn’t even cover the three large-print books I bought for my eyeball convalescence and haven’t finished yet.
Haven’t been watching a lot of movies, but I did pick one off my “I should watch this” list last night, The Verdict, starring Paul Newman. I love a courtroom drama, and this one was a Best Picture nominee. I enjoyed it, it’s well-acted and uses its Boston setting for some beautiful locations. But a lot of the legal stuff had me going, ‘but… wouldn’t…’ and sure enough, when I did a little googling this morning, the movie is notorious for the sloppiness of the actual legal stuff. Check this out, it’s pretty funny.
Anyway, maybe we’ll get some June weather to match the date. Happy Pride! Happy summer!
The Toast Point Page 