The Girls of Cabaret/ the Rabbi and the Nun

The Girls of Cabaret:

My Cabaret class has some very interesting characters. Last night only four of us showed up: I was there, the guy who reminds me of a cross between Nathan Lane and Ernie Sabella, and two other women-- Blondie and Lucci.

Blondie is a soprano and a very good singer-- a voice teacher, in fact. She teaches at the school where I'm taking the class. I've heard from the others that she signs up for this class every single semester that it's offered. It's a little annoying because she's a bit of a diva and even though she doesn't pay anything for the class, she takes up a lot of the teacher's time. Also, it's interesting how she's managed to arrange it so that she's opening the show. In general, I like to "live and let live," and I'm one of the least competitive people that I know, but I do sometimes feel a little swell of competition when it comes to singing. So, I have to admit-- she annoys me a little. And I have to make note of her diva personality. She accepts people's compliments all the time, but never have I heard her compliment another singer.

Then there's Lucci--so named because she looks related to Susan Lucci. This girl is really strange. The first week I met her, we were both talking about stage fright, etc. She told me that she deals with it by popping xanax-- an interesting revelation to a complete stranger, n'est pas? A few weeks later, she casually revealed that she needs medication to sleep in order to deal with her anxiety. She must be a mega-anxious person. But guess what she does for a living? She counsels torture victims! Kind of a strange combination, right?

Anyway, last night was the strangest yet-- Blondie was singing a song called "Stars and the Moon." In the song, the narrator rejects "true love" in favor of a guy who can buy her a yacht and champagne, etc. But at the end of the song, the narrator realizes that she'll never "grow" as a person and despite all of that money, she'll "never have the moon." (This is Narc's view of women in a nutshell.)

"That's the story of my life!" Lucci announced.

"What? Aren't you a newlywed?" I asked. (She just got married in October.)

"Yeah, but we never would have gotten married if our parents didn't know each other," she said. "And he can give me all the money I need..."

Isn't that a rather strange thing to announce to a class full of relative strangers? Especially when you've only been married for six months? I didn't know what to say...

Anyway, Lucci told me that she "loves" Marie's Crisis. So I took her number. Maybe she can join me and Hammer and Sissy (and maybe even SingMan!) there sometime!

She also said that she's obsessed with Linda Eder.

"Linda Eder is why I sing again," she said.

"You stopped singing?" I asked.

She said that she went to McGill as a vocal major where she sang roles like Barbarina in Figaro. Then she was mugged and ended up in the hospital for a few weeks. After that, she couldn't sing anymore. I asked her what other roles she sang and she said that she "couldn't remember"-- that she hardly remembered anything from her life "before." It was all very strange. She then said that she started law school, but dropped out before meeting her husband at the London School of Economics.

The whole thing was bizarre.

Anyway, here's another story I found interesting...

The Rabbi and the Nun:

My mom practices family law and does a lot of divorces. When I saw her on Friday she had just picked up a message from her secretary and I thought it was HYSTERICAL.

A year ago, or so, my mom did a divorce for a Jewish woman who was married to a real thuggish kind of guy. This husband was a "wheeler-dealer" type (or a "wheela-deala" as they say in my mom's native "Brooklynese"). Anyway, she left this guy and started dating a Conservative Rabbi-- a very religious man, with whom she was sure she would find stability and long term happiness. They moved to "the house in Connecticut" and all was well.

Anyway, on Friday my mom's secretary took the following message from said woman:

My new husband ran off with a Russian Orthodox Nun and lost his job. Please call back.

I don't know why I found that so incredibly amusing.

Ha ha ha... Where did he even meet this nun? At some kind of interfaith event?

Well, that's it for now... I'm sitting in my office, waiting out my office hours. Students rarely come by and I'm itching to leave.

I'm really hungry. And I want to get a pedicure.

Bye...

-h-