There are more over here. I’m told it’s worth it to get them all to play at the same time. I don’t think I’ll ever try that as it would probably make me throw up a little.

And despite not understanding one word of Elmo’s portion of the song at the end, I’ve been humming “Set Your Piggies Free” for going on fourteen hours straight now.

Seriously, this production is a new take on one of Shakespeare’s more…traditional plays.  Tickets are going fast and limited because we’re placing the audience in chairs on the stage of the Pines Theater with the play taking place on the hillside beyond.

Tickets’re on sale right now right here.

I hope you can make it.

I am not in Winnie the Pooh.

But these people are and it’s going to be awesome.

Opening day is tomorrow, Wednesday, at the Mendenhall Center for the Arts on Green St. in ‘Hamp and showtime is 10:30am.

I will be in Chicken Little which runs July 22 – 25 and Pinocchio which runs August 5 – 8.

I was all set to be in the full season of PaintBox this year but then thought I was going to NYC with another show for the run of Winnie. But then all those plans fell through and blahblahblah yadda yadda yadda Bob’s your uncle, I’ll be in the audience for Winnie, and happily so. Sometimes it’s just nice to be on the other side of the stage for a change.

OK, break time’s over, everyone. Back to work.

Rosie made a wonderful cake to honor the final episode of LOST. It was complete with a marshmallow polar bear and hand-distressed airplane. The latter is the catalyst for our thirty-second PSA video.

Rosie's fancy cake

Ill-Fated Mini-Flight 815

We went out in front of our house to hand-distress* the little plane.  That’s where the trouble started.

(* hand-distressed = hammer the shit out of it)

But the show is about talent.  I get that.  If Susan Boyle had shown up offering anything less than what she gave, she would have been laughed off the stage.  You can bet on that.  And that’s where I would have liked the kindness to kick in.  Had she not pulled out that soaring voice, instead of people booing her off, in my Bizarro Kelsey Place, I would have liked to see people still applauding her courage to get up and try.

Because AH-HA!  MY POINT!  I knew I’d find it around here somewhere.  Because we’re all not going to hit it out of the park and poke our former bullies in the eyes all the time, every single time.  Awesomeness, excellence are things we strive for but in the meantime, we’re dealing with a lot of learning.  And when the bar is set so high like what Susan had to achieve, I get scared and frankly, just don’t want to try.  There’s no room for the learning or the practice or the trying anymore in this American-Britain’s-Got-Talent-Idol World of ours.

We just see the outcome, and maybe if we’re lucky and a budget allows for it, we get a montage of the learning/practice/trying that only lasts for 90 seconds.

Let’s see some shows that deal with process beyond “America’s Biggest Loser.”  Some in-depth, real-time studies of the ups and downs, failures and falls of a process.

Or maybe they’re already out there?  L’il help?  Anyone?

So here’s my question.  What if Susan Boyle had walked out on to that stage, did her little jig of the hips from side to side, opened her mouth to sing “I Dreamed a Dream” and something else entirely different burst forth?  What if a totally tuneless, pitchless, warbling came out? 

We’d know about her for a different reason.  “Look at who this woman thinks she is!!!”  “What a disaster!”  The Susan Boyle Effect could also be dubbed the Reverse Oscar Effect.  You know the Oscar Effect – the most beautiful actor becomes the most hideous character and Bob’s your uncle!  They get an Oscar nomination if not the award.  I think the opposite holds true in waking real life.  The more frumpy, homely you are, the more you stray from the norm of appearance and behavior, the more outstanding your talent must be in order to be celebrated.

That makes me sad.  Sure, I’m happy, delighted, ecstatic for Susan Boyle.  But she’s just the one who was able to knock it out of the park and stick it to all those who’ve rolled their eyes at her through a lifetime. 

I’m not quite sure what my point is here but I think it’s along the line of acceptance.  We’re still far and away from it as a crowd and a culture.  There’s a proving that’s required of us by us and it starts early in life and becomes more and more difficult to succeed at the older we get. 

I think I’m rambling here so I’ll end and take the dog out for a walk.

But I’m not done with this!

I’d like to thank the voters in the 2009 Best of the Valley Readers’ Poll for voting my defunct, deflated, detached, just plain de-a-d blog Paradise City Best Local Blog.  It’s really nice of you all.  Thank you.

However I am but one person distilling one experience of one perspective in this great big Valley of ours.  We all walk around this beautiful side of paradise every day having singular experiences and I want to use this opportunity of unprecedented advocacy-journalism media attention to do some advocacy for those capturing the goings and comings of Valley life better than I.

First there’s the man who’s been blogging for longer than the term itself existed, Tom Devine.  I make that distinction not as a snarky comment on age but as a tip of the hat to his lengthy tradition of consistently wonderful musings on his experience of the world around him from space to UMass to Beacon Hill.

Then there’s Gazette writer Mary Carey with her AboutAmherst.  I love her candid reflections and confessions.  Just today I learned that she used to be a department store Easter Bunny.

Another regular stop for me is Jennifer Myszkowski’s blog.  Again, she’s someone who’s been detailing the antics of her life on and off stage for a long, long time.  Lately, as she’s been pursuing stand-up comedy more steadily, it’s been exciting to read about her discoveries within the craft.  And it’s just nice to catch up with someone you love but never see.

Jim Neill’s Life in the NohoDome is a must-read.  That man has more in his head than most and the way he puts it all, really ALL, down on the virtual page is pure elegance.  Plus the photos of his walkabouts downtown are one-part painterly and one-part story.

Daryl Lafleur’s Northampton Redoubt on the Advocate’s site definitely deserves a shout-out.  I can’t think of a more detailed writer of what’s happening around City Hall.  Daryl goes through meeting minutes with a steel flea comb and I mean that in a good way.

There are dozens and dozens and dozens more people writing up the world as they see it and I think it’s all awesome.

KelseyFlynn.com is a babe in Blog Wooods compared to them all so the blogroll down on the right of this page is just getting started.  Please shoot me an E-mail if I don’t have yours and I’ll gladly slap it down there along with the rest of them.

When it comes down to it, all I got here on kf.com are stories.  No analysis, no punditry, just the distillate of this life of mine after it works its way through the still that’s my brain.  And by the looks of that last sentence, you’ll find no poetry here either.  That’s why Tommy Twilite’s site is good to have on hand.

Teri Incampo as Teri Incampo

It’s a gem of a show if I do say so myself.  But honestly it’s very different from anything else I’ve been involved with on stage.  Sure there’s live music and live video but that’s just the start.  It’s more an experience to be witnessed as opposed to a play to be spectated, there’s a very active component to it for the audience.

Caroline Gart as Caroline Gart

There is definitely narrative, definitely a story that is being told, but it’s more a choose-your-own-adventure than a one-size-story-fits-all.  I believe there are multiple entrances to this story with many threads being cast out for the people of the audience to grab a hold of.

Kelsey Flynn as Normandy Biggs

Sure there’s the boy who met the girl.  But then the boy gets abducted and the girl has to come looking for him.  But it’s all for the best at the end.  Or is it?  And where is the end?  Sometimes, pretty much every time, the end is the beginning.

Double-fisting microphones is just the beginning of my egomania.

Come for the spectacle, stay for the story.

OUR TOWN REVISITED

APRIL 17 & 18 @ 8PM

APRIL 19 @ 2PM

Tickets available now at CABOTIX.COM.