All dressed up for the symphony


suited and flowery
Originally uploaded by Liz Henry.

Here’s Moomin in his fancy suit, all dressed up to go to the San Francisco symphony to hear Peter and the Wolf. I got that suit a year and a half ago, for 30 bucks at Macy’s, and it’s only just now getting too small! Being short has its perks for your parents who buy the clothes.

I was proud of my own perky cheerful fancy outfit. You can’t see, but I’m wearing my completely idiotic rainbow studded “punk” belt from Hot Topic. That will jazz up any formal pantsuit and also queer it up a little. Recently I bought a cheap hairdryer (5 bucks at Big Lots!), which I used for the first time with “ICE” gel – it is a very strong gel that hardens into intense crispiness. So, gel, 2 minutes with hairdryer with my head upside down, scrunching and ruffling, and I had an instant poofy Marie Antoinette mohawk. Why don’t I do that more often? I guess it’s just two minutes too much fuss for everyday behavior.

What? You want to hear about the symphony itself? Hello… it’s all about my hair, people.

Rook also looked extremely handsome.

We got to SF early, found free parking a block away from Davies Hall, and walked around looking for, well, looking for a little walk with a cafe at the end of it. At some point I was heading for the LGBT Center on Market and Octavia, but we realized we didn’t quite have time, and stopped at Cafe Trieste instead.

The symphony hall was decorated with enormous Christmas trees all with different themes and signs explaining who had designed them: I noted the one by the French American school in SF and the whale-and-penguin one which Moomin liked a lot.

Rook and Moomin went down to look at the stage close up, before the show started, while I stayed in the nosebleed section looking down at them.

The Youth Orchestra played some Tchaikovsky, Bach, a weird modern drum thing that was a tribute to Charles Ives, and then Peter and the Wolf, narrated by Florence Henderson. Her reading was okay, but I prefer David Bowie’s, which is less barfy. There is no way to make the story non-barfy. In fact as Moomin noted, it’s all about barf. The wolf eats the duck and then the happy ending of the story is that the wolf barfs up the duck, alive. “They should call it, “Peter and the Wolf Barf”, hahahaha!” Up there in the balcony amid many tiny children running around and standing at their seats dancing, we were rowdy but not over the top. Though I think we made Rook uncomfortable with our misbehaviour.

Moomin stood up for most of the performance and made his hands into the characters. My head was the tree where the little bird perches and where Peter sits to lasso the wolf. I thought it was fun, not too disruptive, and showed his creative engagement with the work. He was definitely paying attention and was imaginging the story as he listened to the music! That was fun for me to see.

At home, listening to the story beforehand, he got very into doing interpretive dances. His bird dance was great. When Peter’s music can on he’d do a sort of happy skipping dance. For the cat, we both slinked along slyly, and for the wolf, we stomped and pounced.

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