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Arlo Guthrie and More Musings from Me

Here I am with another post sponsored by Omaha Performing Arts! If you’re sick of these, take heart in the fact that the season’s almost over, and if you’re not, then I will give you a high-five the next time I see you.

(Who am I kidding? I would probably high-five you no matter what.) Anyway…

Arlo Guthrie is playing in Omaha at the Holland Performing Arts Center in Kiewit Hall at 7:30 pm on Tuesday, April 28th, and I am really excited to see him play.

While, no, he hasn’t been someone I thought I’d see in concert, he’s definitely been a presence in my life for a very long time. My dad has always been a fan, and even named our dog, Arlo, after him. I can remember Thanksgiving car rides when NPR would play Guthrie’s famous “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree” more than once. All day, maybe? I don’t remember for sure. Although, at the time, I was listening to Ace of Base and TLC on my discman and thinking “Ugh why Dad why,” I now appreciate how much my dad tried to acquaint me with the classics.

That’s what’s so special about this performance in particular; it’s Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant 50th Anniversary Tour.” He’ll be commemorating the anniversary by playing the song/monologue in its entirety, along with other songs from his library. The song itself is a monologue with a guitar backing that depicts a true story from Guthrie’s life, and was written as a protest of the Vietnam War.

I hope you guys will take advantage of this awesome chance to see a legend. I’ve gotten to see Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, and B.B. King in concert, and I have to say that seeing the people who used to stare back at me from the album covers in my dad’s collection is an incredibly feeling.

(You can purchase tickets online at Ticket Omaha.)

(Seriously, you should go.)

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Changes and Spring and Stuff and Things

I am long long long overdue for a Stuff & Things post. Life has been full around here… quite full indeed.

I’ve got a FIVE-year-old.

What!?!?!?

I seriously can’t believe it. He’s already gone in for his Kindergarten physical. I want to say that it feels like just yesterday he was a teeny tiny baby… but it doesn’t. I remember those baby days, but I think it feels like I’ve just spent the last five years of my life with this guy in it, and those years were packed with a lot of awesome things. He’s so sensitive and creative, and he likes listening to Star Wars soundtrack albums. I’ll write an official “oh my gracious my Charlie’s five” post here soon, but I just don’t have the brain capacity (or a box of tissues on-hand) at the moment.

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I’ve DEFINITELY got a two-year-old.

I forgot how awesome/terrible two year olds are. I’m not kidding… the screams that can come out of Lucy literally make my ears feel numb sometimes. I think Stephen King could probably write the horror novel of the decade if he chose to focus it on the act of getting a two-year-old who doesn’t want to sit in their car seat to ohmygosh please just sit in their car seat. BUT then they also things like “Thees eengy bud Chewbacca.” (this angry bird is Chewbacca) and “I yut you mommy. And I yut Chawwie and Daddy.” (I love you mommy. And I love Charlie and Daddy) and “Thees my favit bobble.” (This is my favorite marble.) She’s hilarious and a little nuts… but most two-year-olds are, I’m learning. Luckily, though, with her small jumps in maturity, she and Charlie are beginning to have nice chunks of time in which they play together without too much screaming. Sometimes.

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Oh, hey there Change. Can we be friends?

I am not good with change. The mere possibility of change turns me grumpy, anxious, and unpleasant in general. Sure enough, though, change swoops in and suddenly I go from work-at-home mom to work-at-home-and-also-at-a-coffee-shop-and-also-stay-at-home-sometimes-mom. Paul was working at a slightly shady, unpleasant college here in town in addition to an above-board respectable one, so we decided to shake things up a bit. Now I’ve got a pretty awesome part time job making coffee, and he’s got a pretty awesome job teaching people, and we both get to spend a healthy amount of time with the kids. It’s change, sure, but it seems to be good change so far.

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Music! Old friend! I’ve come back to you!

In college, I loved music. I genuinely cared about it. I would go to Hasting’s Books and Music on Tuesdays to check out the new releases. I would stay up until midnight and go to Wal-Mart of all places, just so I could get my hands on new albums as quickly as possible. I have a plastic tote in the basement, full to the brim with band-plastered T-shirts that I collected when I was going to school. I don’t know if it was too many disappointments from John Mayer’s social life (how are you supposed to swoon over his songwriting when he’s clearly THE WORST?) or just the fact that life took over and the only music I cared about was Sara Bareilles’ ONE ALBUM for, literally, almost two years. I don’t know, I don’t know, but that beautiful and frantic genre that is Pop Punk has come back to sweep me off my feet with a vengeance. I don’t have much more to say about that, other than it’s pretty awesome.

Workin’ It                                                                          

A pleasant surprise is that my contract work has taken an upturn… It’s nice to have deadlines but not too many deadlines. It’s also nice to be able to contribute financially to our household as I start to turn my sights back to actively budgeting. I don’t know if any of you remember our Dave Ramsey stint allllllll the way back in 2011, but I’m gearing up to get a little hardcore about it again. We’ve loosely kept the principles over the years, but haven’t had the income to really attack our student loans with “gazelle intensity” as good ole Dave says. ANYWAY I’m getting more freelance work and it feels pretty great. I’m excited to re-attend the conferences I went to last year and get my face out there a little more.

I hope that you guys are emerging from the winter well, and if you’re getting presented with any big changes, I hope they’re at least being kind to you!

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Cherish the Ladies at the Holland Center

When somebody asks me where I want to travel, my first thought is Ireland. Hands down. My mind fills with green and mist and legends, and I imagine myself frolicking among grassy hills and tiny cottages. I want to go to pubs and see literary landmarks… and I want to just sit with a mug of tea and stare out the window, absorbing as much of the landscape as I can with my eyes and heart.

And when I’m imagining this, there’s always a soundtrack. Fiddles, flutes, heart-shaking drums. Guhhhhh. I love it. I find that a traditional Irish tune with a rolling beat gets my adrenaline pumping faster than any of my favorite workout playlists, and one that is slow and heartfelt almost pushes me to tears.

Luckily for me, Omaha Performing Arts is bringing Cherish the Ladies, an all-female Irish-American ensemble, to Omaha, along with intricately beautiful music and traditional step dancers. What I find to be incredibly cool about this group is that it has been around for thirty years, collecting some of the most talented Celtic musicians in the country. They’re bringing their 30th anniversary concert on tour, and we get to enjoy it about a week before St. Patrick’s Day.

I can’t wait. Although I’ve found lately that I’m not a huge fan of sitting through instrumental concerts (I blame Netflix and my ever-waning attention span), I know this is going to be a special case. Just sitting and watching this video on Youtube has gotten me all worked up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCcJXYrNqz8

If this kind of music makes your heart flutter too, I hope you’ll join me in seeing them at the Kiewit Hall in the Holland Performing Arts Center on May 11th at 7:00 pm. Tickets start at $25 and can be purchased online at Ticket Omaha, over the phone at 402-345-0606, or inside the Ticket Omaha office in the Holland Center at 1200 Douglas Street.

For Transparency’s Sake: I’m being compensated by Omaha Performing Arts for this post with two complimentary tickets to Cherish the Ladies. All rambling and sigh-punctuated words are my own.

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Pippin!

When I was younger, there were certain items in my life that became fixtures. They were always there, and I remember registering them in my brain for most of my childhood… and then finally interacting with them.

My dad was a high school Theatre teacher when I was littler, and I remember seeing two video tapes on the bookshelf in his classroom: Live recordings of the Broadway musicals Sweeney Todd and Pippin. Sweeney Todd was in a heavy plastic black and red case, and Pippin was in an 80’s-tastic blue cardboard case, with a picture of a beautiful blonde man with long curly hair lying down on some kind of stone altar. (Watch, I’m going to go look it up now and it will have been something completely different than I remember.)

 

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Yeah, okay. So I was mostly right.

When dad stopped teaching, the videos came home. (That sounded really dramatic… he just got a new job and brought his stuff home, nothing cryptic or anything.) I remember finally asking to see the shows, and watching Sweeney Todd about 5 million times. Pippin, however, I didn’t watch as much. I think that, despite its fantastical appearance, it was a much heavier show than Junior High Lauren was prepared for. I was pretty in to That 70’s Show at that time, so the philosophically heavy stuff was especially not on my radar.

I’m excited to see Pippin as an adult. I’ve done a little research on the plot, just to familiarize myself, and it sounds like the perfect thing to see right now. In Pippin, the title character is on a quest to find meaning in his life, and ends up discovering true happiness in an unexpectedly domestic setting. Now, that’s greatly simplifying things, but I don’t really want to give too much away.  In the meantime, I’ll leave you with the particulars, and fun video to watch.

Performances of Pippin at the Orpheum:

March 3, 4, 5 (Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday) at 7:30 pm

Friday, March 6th at 8:00 pm

Saturday, March 7th at 2:00 pm and 8:00 pm

Sunday, March 8th at 1:30 pm and 7:00 pm

Tickets are available at Ticket Omaha, by phone at 402-345-0606, or at the Ticket Omaha box office inside the Holland Performing Arts Center

Kids Night on Broadway

As part of a program designed to introduce kids from ages 9 to 18 to live Theatre, the Orpheum is offering a limited number of tickets at 50% off on the night of Tuesday, March 3rd. The limit is two tickets per adult, and can be obtained by using the code KIDS NIGHT at Ticket Omaha.

What is Pippin all about, anyway? (VIDEO)

Just so you know, I’ve been compensated by Omaha Performing Arts with two tickets to the performance of Pippin. All words and thoughts and nostalgic musings are mine!