Someone Please Compose a Happy Chanukah Song

Another weekend from hell is over. The Pineda Four (Juan, Val, Trish and I) once again pulled a show out of our asses with only one rehearsal, this time a holiday concert benefiting the LOC. I have to admit this was not one of our finer achievements. We hadn’t really even yet recovered from our parents' anniversary fiasco (was that really just last weekend?!). I mean, the fake wedding cake is still sitting in the back seat of Juan and Val’s van! By the way, as promised, I will soon post pictures of this magnificent piece of fake pastry art but I need to repair some of the minor dents and scratches. It was a rough ride back to NJ. Anyway, this concert was doomed to fail considering how well our anniversary reception show went. We surely hit our prayer quota over the anniversary weekend. A second miracle within one week’s time was probably just too much to ask for, especially when the four people asking are heathens.

So let me fill in some gaps. Thursday night was our combined first rehearsal AND final dress rehearsal for the holiday concert. “Warning, Will Robinson” and cue floppy robotic accordion arms. Oh well, panic at this point would have been redundant considering the travails of the previous weekend. We even suckered Chin Wen, an area piano teacher to volunteer her accompanying skills gratis. Actually, I think this was Val’s ulterior motive for inviting her to Thanksgiving dinner just weeks before. Way to think ahead, Val. But back to rehearsal - we sang through a couple of cheesy standards and some traditional songs and added the kids ensemble into a few numbers. Trish reluctantly pulled out Oh! Had I Jubal’s Lyre, Maureen whipped out Rejoice Greatly and we made up an arrangement of Oh, Holy Night to tie it all up. To make sure we didn’t get slapped with a lawsuit we even threw in some Chanukah songs for good measure. Now I’m all for equal time, but Chanukah songs are just plain depressing. Are there any rousing, happy Chanukah carols that end with a major chord? Anyway, I ended up staying at rehearsal until very late and took the midnight train back to the city. And even though I got home after 1:00 am, I managed to stumble into work on time - actually early - the next morning, thank you very much. I coasted through the work day thinking I'd make it through incident-free. But Murphy's Law is a bitch and before I knew it, I was knee deep in a sh*t storm.

Just as I was getting ready to sneak out of work to catch an earlier train to NJ, my boss, surely sensing I was up to no good, materialized out of thin air and appeared before my desk. He decides - twenty minutes before 5:00 pm - that he will be flying to Iowa for the weekend to attend an Obama rally (you know he just wanted to meet Oprah). I need to make all the travel arrangements as well as cancel all his weekend appointments, NOW. F*ck! How dare he ask me to do actual work during office hours. Does he not know I have personal business to attend to? So selfish. So I smile, pull my arm out of my coat sleeve, and reply, “No problem.” Just one year at Morgan and I’ve become a total corporate a**kisser! So now I’m running around like a hustler on crystal meth, frantically making phone calls, booking hotel rooms, blathering nonsense and cursing under my breath to no one in particular. To top it off, he can’t take a regular carrier. He needs to get on a buddy’s private jet from an airfield in NJ. God forbid he's forced to sit with the common folk. Oh, to be cursed with the burden of wealth. Luckily, I’m a natural pessimist, so I had already purchased two train tickets the day before in anticipation of just such a catastrophe. I raced to Penn Station and made the 6:03 express with a few minutes to spare, and even got a seat. Then I waited.

And waited.


And waited.


And waited.


Until finally the dreaded announcement, “Ladies and gentleman, due to a stalled train in Secaucus, trains are running behind schedule. We apologize for the inconvenience.” Sh*t, sh*t, double sh*t! When the train finally gets moving 20 minutes later, it crawls and stops and crawls and stops and crawls and stops the whole way. I make my third panicked call to Trish. It’s now after 7:00 pm, the concert is at 8, and I’m still in Newark. Oh well, warming up is highly over-rated anyway. Isn’t that what the first act is for?

When I finally arrive at 7:40 pm, there are maybe 5 people in the audience. I busted my ass for 5 people? Val assures me that people are coming later and then tells me that I have to accompany our guest artist, Michelle Trovato, who appeared as Adele in our recent production of Die Fledermaus. Awesome, more sight-reading!

I won’t bullsh*t you, all in all the concert sucked, even by our low standards. The only saving grace was Michelle’s performance. She busted out a flawless version of Gesú Bambino (with me sight-reading at the piano) and a hilarious reprise of Adele’s laughing song making the rest of us look like talent-free a**holes. Other concert “lowlights” in no particular order - Val and I butchering the end of Panis Angelicus; the deathly slow tempo of Oh! Holy Night (as well as just about everything else we sang); me sight-reading accompaniments of aforementioned Jubal’s and Rejoice; me staring at Juan’s mouth so I could lip read the upcoming lyrics for the second and third verses of Silent Night; me singing nonsense syllables during the German verse of Oh Christmas Tree; and me stopping the concert and making Trish come over to the piano to help look for the piano music for White Christmas right before she had to sing it.