Showtime

We made a reasonably early start today; we left the house before 11am to head out for a late breakfast at a Waffle House with Brett’s parents. A delightful ‘diner’ kind of experience and tasty food. Then Brett’s mum took us over to the ‘Firewheel Town Center’ to do some shopping.

Imagine if Disney bought a piece of land and constructed the commercial centre of a small American town on it and you kind of have the idea; it’s an open air shopping mall where all the buildings are eerily pristine and there is music coming from every lamppost.

Alas, building in the Disney-style doesn’t normally have to incorporate traffic through the Magic Kingdom, and it’s clear that the developers of Firewheel had no clue what they were doing in that regard; there’s roadside parking outside every shop which means all of the cute little streets are chockablock with traffic looking for a parking space within stepping distance of their preferred store and lots of shoppers wandering everywhere with no clear rights-of-way for either car or pedestrian.

The Disney analogy doesn’t stop with the design either! Each of the shops seemed to have at least one person wearing a headset whose sole purpose was to say ‘Welcome, to ‘X’ store. Do you need any help?’ and ‘Thanks for stopping by, y’all.’ The first time I got approached it quite freaked me out as I couldn’t quite pick up what she was saying and thought she wanted something from me...

A curious thing I’ve noticed in a lot of the advertising here is the presumption that people have a right to the best, newest, cheapest of everything; a badly overused phrase is “Get the ‘X’ you deserve.” It reminded me of something I heard some time ago; a comment on why so many people feel unhappy with their lives and end up in therapy, “When I was young, all we hoped for was to be comfortable. Nowadays people take comfort for granted and expect that life will bring them happiness too.” I fear I agree; we expect way too much and adverts telling us we have a right to the world on a plate isn’t improving anybody’s lot.

After we’d done enough shopping we drove over to Susan’s and then on to Steve’s place up in Denton, about forty-five minutes away. It was planned to be an evening of musical films; firstly a showing of the archive DVD of a production of Superstar in which Steve recently starred, followed by a visit to the local multiplex to see The Producers.

Superstar was a bit of a revelation; compared to the quality of AmDram show you get in the UK it was virtually professional! Steve has an excellent voice and carried the role of Christ very well. There were a couple of times where my fingers twitched and I went into ‘Director/Producer’ mode, thinking how much better it would have been if it had been done the way I would have done it, but generally the standard was very high. Brett and I had vaguely talked of flying over to see him starring in their production of Into The Woods and, having seen Superstar, I think I’d take that idea more seriously in future.

After that we headed out for dinner at a nearby barbeque diner and had some fairly tasty meat (although I’ve no idea whether it was pork or beef!) I even managed to scavenge some salad! Highlight of the meal was actually seeing someone wearing what looked like a ten-gallon hat in earnest!

Coming out of the restaurant, I marvelled again that it was Boxing Day night and yet we were wandering around in our shirtsleeves. (The forecast is for snow in London tomorrow!)

Then it was onto the cinema; a notice at the ticket desk reminded patrons that this was a no-smoking theatre and that they could not bring food, drink or firearms into the venue. It left me freaked out by the thought that polite people who would take note of such a request might have wanted to bring firearms with them to see a film in the first place. This country is a madhouse! [Edit: See here for photo.]

The movie was good though. I’d seen the stage show of The Producers in Washington, DC, last year but had fortunately forgotten a lot of the details, so it was like seeing the show afresh and I laughed heartily in lots of places. (I also still have just a bit of a soft spot for Matthew Broderick even when he is playing a dork.) So, on the whole, a jolly good day.

Tomorrow also looks busy; Brett has to try and renew his driving license first thing, so that he’ll be legal to drive us to Austin on Thursday. Then we have lunch with Alex B whom we met in Montreal during the GALA Festival last year. At the time he was singing with the Kansas City chorus, but has since moved to Dallas. Then it’s on to Kevin & Chris’ place for the evening. I think it’s still up in the air as to exactly what we’ll be doing, but I expect there will be food and drink involved and hopefully lots of talk.