Well, dear readers, Kritzerland 132 is done, and I must say and will say it was a great show from start to finish. I was struggling with my voice for hours before the show and I really thought I wouldn’t get through it – and yet, I got up, I had plenty of voice and I got through it just fine. The cast was on fire – the audience was friendly and wonderful, laughing, cheering, and even getting teary-eyed. Elizabeth Sherman was there with daughter Vicki and as always, she was singing along with every song, and occasionally getting teary-eyed herself. So, here’s how it went. The opening patter went fine because I had a great joke to lead off with – in fact, I think it was one of the biggest laughs I’ve ever gotten at one of our shows. I did my usual opening and the part about being elderly and needing to read from the paper, which I’ve done at every Kritzerland show from show one to now. So, after I said I must read from the paper, I said that for twelve years I was fine with twelve-point type. Then I said a couple of years ago, I had to go to fourteen-point type, then to sixteen-point type. They were chuckling at all that. Then I said that I’d have to go even bigger for this show – and I said, “This is what it’s come to,” as I help up a piece of paper on which there were only two letters taking up the entire page in 450-point type – “Hi.” Well, what a laugh. First up was Sydney DeMaria doing Belle from Beauty and the Beast – she’s just the best. Then Robert Yacko did a put-together of Zip-a-Dee-Do-Dah and You’ve Got a Friend in Me, just what you want from a second number. After that it was young Ava Madison Gray who did a very moving When She Loved Me from Toy Story 2. Then Jason Graae did A Little Patch of Heaven from Home on the Range – great, AND he had an amusing solo oboe thing in the middle.
Then Adrienne Stiefel did Home from the stage version of Beauty and the Beast. Just beautiful, as always. After that came Kerry O’Malley doing Poor Unfortunate Souls from The Little Mermaid – what an ovation and boy would she be great in that part. Then we had a little surprise number written by young Oliviana Marie, who did her first Kritzerland show when she was eleven. She’s a woman of all seasons – musician, singer, composer/lyricist, book writer for her own musicals, conductor and heaven only knows what else. She’s very talented. She sent me her song and I thought it was fun and that it would be a nice surprise – it’s called Disneyland and it’s like an Andrews Sisters number – she had two friends, Kathryn Madigan and Alexa Spitzer, do it with her and it went over really well, a real audience pleaser. Then Sydney was back doing a great Part of Your World, followed by Adrienne doing an equally great Just Around the Riverbend.
Then we began the tribute to Richard Sherman. Robert began it with Chim Chim Cher-ee, then Sydney did a put-together of The Parent Trap and For Now, For Always, Kerry did a great Feed the Birds, then Robert did The Whimsey Works from L.A. Now and Then, and we closed that section of the show with The Shermanized Words Medley that I created back in 2001 – we’ve done it many times but always with a kid. But for the first time, the person who I created it for got to do it, just as he’d done on the album I’d done it for – Jason Graae. Then I did my thank yous, gave a shoutout to Elizabeth Sherman and daughter Vicky, and our final number was When You Wish Upon a Star, which Adrienne did splendidly. Our sing-along was, naturally, It’s a Small World. It really could not have gone better.
Prior to the show, I got nine hours of sleep with very weird dreams, got up, answered e-mails, and then rested my voice and relaxed. Then I shaved and showered, and then I moseyed on over to the club for sound check, a small Caesar salad, and then we did the show. I was so happy my voice held out just fine.
The only downside of the evening was not having enough people in the audience so that for the first time I not only did not break even, I lost money. Very irritating. We only had fifty-two paid covers – the rest were my comps. In all the shows we’ve done there I’ve actually made money – but I’m not doing any more shows there unless I know we’ll have over 100 paid covers.
Today, I’ll be up when I’m up, and I’m doing nothing. Oh, I’ll check on the book progress and Doug, who could not get the order page for the new book to work, is waiting for PayPal to get back to him on what to do. They arbitrarily change things every year or even six months and Doug doesn’t know how to interpret the new stuff – he’s very old-fashioned about these things and the fact is the site is just not working well anymore. Kids can make websites that work but not us. PayPal no longer had a forum – I mean, to me it looks like they just are shooting themselves in the foot by making things impossible. They no longer have tech support people you can talk to – they open a case, and if you haven’t heard back from the tech people in seven days, they just close the case. I’ve told Doug he has to figure it out because I have a few CDs to release by the end of the year – otherwise, he can just make a whole new site. Then at some point I’ll watch, listen, and relax.
Tomorrow, I see the eye doctor at two-thirty, then come right home. I don’t think I’ll be in the mood for attending an opening night, but we’ll see. Then I don’t know what’s happening on the weekend.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, do nothing other than check on the book progress, prod Doug to keep trying to get the order page to work, eat, and then watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: What are your favorite Disney songs? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy that Kritzerland 132 was a great if not financially successful show.