places, everyone

A week from today, my play The Smell of Money will make its world premiere and I’ll find out how keen a sense of humour the heirs of Rodgers and Hammerstein have.  It’s a loose parody of The Sound of Music, with Americans subbing for Nazis and militant vegans for nuns.  I rewrote lyrics for 14 of the songs from the film and stage production.  Here’s a little ditty you can sing to “My Favorite Things”:

“Raindrops with acids that burn through my mittens.  Foodstuffs with hormones that turn cats to kittens.  White plastic shopping bags clogging our streams.  These are a few of the scariest things.

Salmon with sea lice and run of the river.  Various chemicals eating my liver.  Ducks stuck in tailings ponds, oil on their wings.  These are some more of the scariest things.

Air so polluted it smogs up my glasses.  Snowflakes turned filthy from foul greenhouse gases.  Polar bears scrambling to make it to spring.  That’s just three more of the scariest things.

Global warming, corporate farming, sometimes makes me sad.  But when I remember the scariest things, it actually makes me mad.”

I apologize for the layout on that, but WordPress doesn’t tolerate much deviation in spacing.

Although I’m trying to stay ahead of the curve, I still have myriad details to attend to before the curtains part.  Oddly, curtains won’t be one of those details.  We won’t even have a stage.  We’re presenting it in a restaurant.  The cast will be weaving amongst the patrons.

Jude and I went to Campbell River Wednesday to procure a holster for one of the costumes.  A military man — one Major Mal Funktion — is to carry a miniature hockey stick instead of a pistol.  We went to several sporting goods stores to no avail.  The laws in Canada on hand guns are so strict that the stores don’t bother to stock them.  In the states, we would never be any further away from a holster than the nearest Wal-Mart.

I find it reassuring that if we have any disgruntled customers, they’ll have to show their displeasure by throwing salmon rotini at us.