Thank You Population of Williamsburg...

For reminding me why this site has the name that it does, and why I generally can't be around people. Two run-ins I wanted to chronicle.

At the Messiah performance, the music was gorgeous, the audience was hilarious. Bruton Parish does not have pews like most people are used to. They're really deep. Unless you're above average height, I would say you're not going to see much going on in the front of the church unless it's elevated. Which most of it's not. The chorus and musicians may have been a step or two above the level of the audience. So, you're not seeing much, but it really shouldn't matter. I thought we were there to hear the room fill up with some overwhelming music. What it became for me was laughing at people craning their necks or even standing up to see when a new soloist started, as if Alice Cooper had just come out and was about to do the guillotine. Then there's the Hallelujah Chorus. Being Mr. Has-A-Problem-With-Everything, I'm already not a big fan of standing during it. I know it's a tradition, but I think it's a really cheap piece of audience participation that takes away from the music a little bit. Especially when you hear people around you whispering, "It's almost time to stand," like it's their chance to be the star. But what was totally unforgivable, and I never saw it coming, was when people started singing along with it. Those half-hearted voices you'd hear at semi-indie concerts from the people who just want you to know that they know all the words. During the Hallelujah Chorus. This trend has gone too far.

More later at the IHOP. There was pretty much nobody there when I got there, which of course I was delighted with. (Except that it highlighted the reason I've waited so long in the first place to get holiday pancakes. Sitting by yourself in a pancake house while you're waiting for your food to come out is uncomfortable. I thought for sure they'd have a local coupon book I could read, but no dice.) But of course after a while a gaggle of college students, if 4 makes a gaggle, comes in and of course they get seated in the booth right next to mine. I swear I tried not to pay attention to them, but eventually they started talking about how their neighbors were such assholes because they got the cops called on them when they were having a party. And they went on to talk about the situation, with them of course being the pure victims, saying everything I bristled at having flashbacks from the time we were living next to Kevin to the apartment I lived in under college students here in Fredericksburg and beyond. He would have never understood why I did it, but I think I would have been totally justified in pouring the rest of my carafe down the back of his shirt and walking out on the bill while he pulled skin off his back.