• Published 14th Oct 2016
  • 356 Views, 2 Comments

Crowded - Jesse Coffey



Family members struggle to get along in an area where no space can be accumulated.

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Six

Tonight's that big night, the night where Countess Coloratura sings at that Grand Palace in Manehattan. That concert starts at 6:00, and now it's 5:00 and time I get in my car. As you'd suspect, I don't just bring my pen and paper, y'know. I bring in 8 of my family members (my five kids, plus Marta and her mother and her father) and 40 bits at hand because one ticket to the concert costs 5 bits, and we all know what 8 times 5 equals, right?

In the car, we play a few songs on my cassette player, all arrangements by that guy who corks champagne bottles all the time. We know the lyrics to a few of them: ''Wonderful! Wonderful!'', ''Don't Think Twice, It's All Right'', ''Wives and Lovers'', ''Fools Rush In'' and ''Blue Velvet''. Largely because of this, we sing along to their melodies as they come through our car speakers.

Now we are at the Grand Palace, and we approach that guy at the ticket booth, giving him two 20-bit bills. The guy says, ''OK! Good to go to the show! You're keeping the 10 Members per Family limit we have, right?''

''Yes I am.''

''OK. Good.''


The show proudly begins as a salute to her heritage (she's an Italian, as you know). She allows Babs Seed to conduct her orchestra into a piece called ''Funiculi, Funicula''; she's an expert conductor and plus, she has my family's religion! But that's not the point. The point is she invites the whole audience to sing with her (and some clap and sing along):
Some think the world is made for fun and frolic,
And so do I! And so do I!
Some think it well to be all melancholic,
To pine and sigh; to pine and sigh;
But we'd now like to spend our time in singing,
Some joyous song, some joyous song,
To set the air with music bravely ringing
Is far from wrong! Is far from wrong!
Harken, harken, music sounds a-far!
Harken, harken, with a happy heart!
Funiculì, funiculà, funiculì, funiculà!
Joy is everywhere, funiculì, funiculà!

Those same lyrics are repeated for two full minutes and THEN she ends the song.


We were all off at the concert, and we left behind eight old Blazers, consisting of Susannah, my mother Carol, my father Martin, my grandpa Larry, my grandma Jackie, Alexander, Gregory, and Sophia. Bored spending after a 30-minute dinner watching an old Andy Williams program, Larry asks if the rest of the people we left behind could treat ourselves to a game of pool. All the men are naturally happy about this idea, but the ladies all sigh. Carol says, ''Pool, whatever that is, isn't our kind of game. We're grannies. We should be playing bingo.''

Larry says, ''OK. We grandpas are gonna play some pool. You grandmas are gonna play some bingo. It's settled!''

The men cue up an old Glenn Miller album on the turntable and go right off into pool. Round one and Alexander's got one of those eight-balls. And he happens to hit the top one and he scores with a lot of balls pocketed all at once. Next goes Gregory, with the eight-balls having been re-assembled, but he proves to be quite weak at pocketing pool balls. Larry's up next with all the re-assembled balls and he's doing a wee bit better at pocketing them, and then Martin comes out and does about as well as the last guy. Alexander won this round and they all gather around him and cheer as the old ladies of the house that play bingo watch and scoff.

Speaking of the old ladies, they're really scoring at this old game of poker! Carol has won her game and it took her only 7 minutes to do so! To celebrate her win, she yells out, BINGO! Needless to say, the other three mares basically just stare at her.


Meanwhile, back at the concert, Countess Coloratura announces that she will next sing a great Italian ballad in that particular nature (of course WE know this particular song as ''Come Back to Sorrento'', but that's not the point. The point is that, well, I very well sense that Coloratura feels quite comfortable singing a song from the language of her blood in the language of her blood. That's got to be the loveliest sight I've seen at the concert so far especially given her star status. And I'm writing all that down on my paper - I can write, but I can't open my mouth up unless she wants me to, remember?)


Round 2 of the men's pool game is in session and Larry is at the table again. It's another 8-baller and, with all his luck and all his might, he SCORES AT IT! All the other stallions clap and now it's Alex's turn at the table, and, he finds the top ball and - - BAM! He pockets all them in there! What a player, the other stallions shout as Gregory takes to the table. Yet another 8-baller that he fails at. Now, Martin returns with another shot at the 8-ballers, and it's another time he gives them another BAM! As the next Glenn Miller track gets cued up, all the stallions crowd around each other, give themselves handshakes, and hug each other pretty hard. And one of the old mares, who's trying to concentrate on another BINGO round, looks at them with contempt. ''Men'', she sighs.


Meanwhile, back at the concert, again, it's been a half-hour and The Countess showstops with a tango-flavored rendition of ''O Sole Mio'', which she sings passionately and which Babs seems to enjoy conducting; Babs is one of my old buddies. And there's that comfort I sensed and wrote about from earlier in the show.

That same comfort is felt yet again in the next song of the show, which is ''Santa Lucia'', in which she sings in Italian accompanied only by her superb piano playing. Well, Countess Coloratura is Italian, which I know for a fact, which makes that particular comfort easy to understand.


The third round of the men's game is called a Bank Pool, where you have to be be the first player to bank five balls in any order. And they're ordered in a way that resembles a typical household basically.

This is the kind of game that requires participation from all the teammates, and so everybody on the team gets to play in this round. And the winner, once again, is Martin. He pockets them all perfectly, all in one round. Then another Glenn Miller thing starts up.

Similar case with Round 4 which is the same round as earlier, except it's Alex who scores at it.

And the stallions all crowd around each other and cheer again, once again, to the contempt of yet another of the old BINGO-concentrating mares.


Well, that mare's concert's about to end, it's been an hour, but definitely didn't feel like one. It could've gone on forever and it would still feel like a few minutes of time well spent with that mare. That's all I wrote down. I wrote down a great review of that concert.

Anyway, the Countess concludes her show with a powerhouse repeat of the song ''Funiculi, Funicula''. And just as the chorus around her begins to repeat the title of the song a few times she says, ''HEY EVERYBODY! DON'T JUST SIT THERE IN THE CROWD! COME ON, UP YOU GO! JOIN ME AND SING ALONG!'' and they all get up and do that. What a great woman, and what a great encouragement of audience participation she has.


Well, we arrive back home at 7:20. We're greeted by Carol, whom I brought up earlier. She says, ''Y'know, Joe? It's a school night. I'm glad you and they had their fun but it really IS time for them to go to bed. Up they go into bed.''

Then she looks at the clock. ''How did these kids ever manage to have dinner tonight?''

I say, ''We ordered from the drive-thru. It's some burgers and fries, nothing more.''

And she's like. ''Oh. OK.''

Author's Note:

Sung by Countess Coloratura:
FUNICULI, FUNICULA
by Luigi Denza and Peppino Turco
English writing by Edward Oxenford

COME BACK TO SORRENTO (Torna a Surriento)
by Giambattista and Ernesto De Curtis
English lyrics by Claude Aveling

O SOLE MIO
by Eduardo di Capua and Giovanni Capurro

SANTA LUCIA
Traditional


MOONLIGHT SERENADE
Written and Played by Glenn Miller
Courtesy of RCA Records

AMERICAN PATROL
by Frank White Meacham
Arranged by Jerry Gray
Played by Glenn Miller
Courtesy of RCA Records

PENNSYLVANIA 6-5000
by Carl Sigman and Jerry Gray
Played by Glenn Miller
Courtesy of RCA Records