Guffman

This week, my church choir is doing the samba. Which is as bad as it sounds. Perhaps I should start at the beginning to put this in perspective.

I sing in my church choir at a large, poor and amazingly liberal Catholic church in the heart of Hollywood. I LOVE my church. It’s all about acceptance and diversity and love. Which I personally think is what it SHOULD be all about. I knew it was the church for me the first time I attended mass there, and a tall, rather lovely transvestite took communion right in front of me. I have actually heard the priests (Jesuits, God bless them) stand in the pulpit and say that women should be allowed to be priests. Sometimes I’ll just sit there thinking “Shhhhh! The Vatican will hear you and shut you down!” A couple of weeks ago, we had our “Ministry Sunday”, and representatives from each of the church ministry groups walked in carrying banners during the processional. Down the aisle comes the Legion of Mary, then the Gay Lesbian Organization (their banner actually has a fish made of rainbow stripes –it’s like something from South Park), followed by the Knights of Columbus. Ah, Hollywood.

Anyway, my choir is really damned good. I say that in all modesty, because it’s not good because of me. I am merely a small (though loud) part of it. And usually, we sing a lot of serious music. Serious as in Good music. I guess it’s both good and Good. Bach, Beethoven, Handel. Good stuff.

But once a year, we break out of our sacred music shells, dive into the secular, and have our annual Cabaret Concert, a fundraising event that coincides with a silent auction. I run the silent auction. Which is a ridiculous amount of work, but I always to do things like this because…I am my mother’s daughter.

The Cabaret always has a “theme” and we all select solos to go along with the theme. This years theme is “Out of This World” so we’re all singing about the moon and stars and shit. Everybody pitches in to make the show happen. It’s all very Judy and Mickey, accept instead of somebody’s dad having a barn for the show, we have the “cafetorium” of the church school. We’re real excited this year, because the lighting designer of General Hospital has come and hung actual lights for us. In the past, we’ve performed under the fluorescents plus a couple of follow spots that we make somebody’s husband (who has no idea what he’s doing) run. We’re hoping that the new lighting will help people forget that they’re sitting in gum-crusted folding chairs, surrounded by the smell of old Salisbury steak.

Musically, the show’s always very good. Many of us are professional musicians, and the band is pretty serious. And the group numbers always sound great. But for some reason, our choir director, Rodger, normally a man of excellent taste, is always compelled to pull out the jazz hands and make us dance. I use the word loosely. Mostly, it’s a lot of swaying and big hand gestures. “The suuuun….” we and slowly raise our right hands “shiiiiiines” and we open our fingers dramatically. Yes, it’s as embarrassing as it sounds. Most of us are…dance challenged, and ...middle-aged.

So this year, I was horrified to learn that since we’re doing a kind of latin-flavored choral version of “Fly Me to the Moon”, we’re all doing the samba. Badly. Did I mention the dance challenged part? I am very, very, very, very, very afraid that we will end up on YouTube. Like these people…

That said, it’s always good fun. Everybody in the choir is terrific and we laugh a lot. And it’s all for a good cause. And the audience always loves it (of course, they are people who are actually going to see a church choir cabaret concert). I must keep telling myself this while I’m going step touch, step touch, step touch, step touch and “selling it”. And I must remember that at the end, I get apple martinis. That’s become our rather non-traditional tradition. On Saturday night, after the show (at least we’re supposed to wait until after the show, but…) we all stay and clean up and get tanked on apple martinis. Because as everyone knows, we Catholics drink. I consider it a major perk of the denomination. Liquor is actually built into the church service.

So that’s what I’m doing this week. Jazz Hands for Jesus. Samba for the Savior. Lambada for the Lord (okay, that was one too many, right?).

Sway, sway, sway, sway, sparkle (good cause), step, step, one, two, three, (apple martini), and hands up, two, three, four and pose! Applause. God help me.

Comments

[Danabug]

Your church sounds a lot like mine - except that we're Episcopal & have a woman priest. And we're tiny - but we're VERY liberal. We have two members who've had "the operation," gay, straight, black, white, undocumented alien - we've got it all. It makes it easier to feel compassion for the world when you're confronted with all that diversity every week.

On another note - way back in the day I volunteered at Raleigh Little Theater & ran the follow spots for The King and I - I had Anna & following that ginormous dress around during the dancing was pretty tricky for an ameteur like me!

[Lisa]

Jazz Hands for Jesus. There really isn't much more that can be said.