Claymation Christmas

Fit Fare Friday is being put on hold as I am participating in 2nd Cups Fall into Flavor...so a new recipe will be up on Monday.

I went to my son's band concert last night. I know it is kind of crazy to say that because my son plays the cello...but he plays the cello and bass in the jazz band. We are a small private school so they need all the instrumentalists they can get. It is pretty cool to see my son playing cello in the jazz band.

Anyway...my colleague the band director took the new approach to his wind ensemble (band). He decided that the kids needed more creative control and well he basically went out of the box in the name of good music education. He took a big risk for what he thought was right and I feel it really paid off. I am so happy to have these kinds of people working around me...it gives me a live bubbling brook to work in...instead of a stagnant mosquito ridden pond...

During the concert one of the pieces was an entirely percussion piece. Every one in the band regardless of what instrument they usually play picked up a percussion instrument for this one piece. They had two kids playing the xylophone each kids was supposed to have two mallets. Well one young man came out on stage without his mallets. He couldn't find them. He looked and looked and looked and looked...almost making me laugh. He even walked up to other members as if to ask if he could borrow theirs...even though they were using them. It was so over the top it almost seemed as if losing his mallets was part of the show.

Anyway it reminded me of one of my MOST favorite holiday specials as a young lady. My dad and my brothers and I loved Claymation Christmas. We especially love this one particular segment...Carol of the Bells. It tells of a not very smart bell in a bell choir in Paris. The members of the bell choir are the bells themselves and they hit themselves on the head with a mallet to play the song Carol of the Bells. Our not so smart bell has the last note of the entire song. He gets into mischief waiting for his turn. The director of the choir is Quasi-Moto himself. Well our not very smart bell seems to lose his mallet and he does everything he can to play his one note...even trying to borrow his fellow choir member's mallet.

Our favorite line...and the one we still quote to this day is towards the end and kind of hard to hear...he looks at one of the members and says "I lost mine"...it is really the only words spoken in the entire video and we just laughed and laughed. Such good memories...


Enjoy Claymation Christmas' Carol of the Bells....and to my brothers...I miss those times.





More Later

-A Ro