matthearn.com

How strange must it be to be an infant. You wake up, a familiar friendly face giggles and coos at you, changes your clothes and diaper, feeds you, and then hands you off to another vaguely familiar face, that takes you outside and puts you into a car. You fall asleep. You wake up in a completely different place, surrounded by completely different people.

It’s like time travel, I think.

Yesterday, I picked up Charles at his grandparents’ house and put him in my car, where he fell asleep. Then I headed over to the Opera Delaware studios to try on a costume and wig, at which time his OTHER grandparents showed up (Mom and Dad are in the chorus of the opera) and woke him up. Surrounded by complete strangers, he was, and pretty freaked out by it. Luckily, he’s a relatively happy baby, so he calmed down nicely and smiled for everybody.

Then he got his vengeance by flat-out refusing to go to sleep until 10pm.

I’m still kinda sick, myself, but somehow I’ll survive. The agonizing throat pain has subsided, so now I just have some sniffles. I fully expect Charles and Sarah to get sick simultaneously. Really looking forward to that.

It is getting, it is getting, it is getting rather hectic all up in this piece. Yo.

In my ongoing project to make hip-hop music accessible to aging white folks, I give you the first verse of “Scenario,” originally by A Tribe Called Quest, as performed by Trent Lott:

Here we are, sir. Here we are sir. What is your current situation?
Here we are, sir. Here we are sir. What is your current situation?

While young Vincent may be aware of many things, he sadly ignorant, as he is incapable of rhyming.
Pay attention: I am about to do so in his stead, and, might I add, for free.
My time is valuable, however, as I need to earn money so that I might be able to feed my family.
My esteemed colleagues intimate that we are incapable of rhyming ourselves, but let them be reminded that they have underestimated us in the past, to their grief.

If you are tired, I can offer you a generic cold medicine, but you may miss information that you may find interesting:
I am extremely good-looking and have superb hair.
So that you might be made aware of my heritage, I will ejaculate upon you.
I am tired of and angry with your inability to accept my legitimacy on this stage!
Perhaps you should retreat to Mexico and partake of their spicy foods.
I will continue to perform here as needed.
So, please, have a seat, and enjoy our fine hospitality.
Worry not about what has been said today, and remain self-confident in all things.

*hack* *cough* *sniff* *snort painkillers*

Sick. Not real bad sick, but sick enough that I didn’t go to the office. I am of course dialing into all the usual meetings, so I’m not entirely sure I can say I’m resting. Luckily, I have TV available to me, and plenty of food, and I don’t have to wear pants. It’s everything I’ve ever wanted! Except that my throat feels like somebody made me gargle with battery acid.

I, of course, thought all weekend that my allergies were just acting up. I had mowed the lawn on Saturday morning, so I figured once my body had expelled all the mold spores and grass seed bits, I’d be breathing normally. So I went to all my Carmen rehearsals as scheduled and breathed all over the leads. Truly wonderful. Hopefully nobody important gets sick. I’m going to advise them to bathe in vats of Purell.

I’m taking various medications (mostly just ibuprofen at this point, since my sinuses are reasonably clear, it’s just my throat that’s in agony), and hoping this thing will blow over by the weekend.

Meanwhile, rehearsals continue, and while I’m clearly still out of the league of the other folks, the differences aren’t QUITE so glaring, since at least I know my lines now. (Yes: it’s an opera, and it has dialogue. Apparently this is something relatively common with “light” French opera of the late 19th century. Who knew?) I also get to participate in a swordfight, and no one’s been injured yet! Miracles: may they never cease.

That’s all I have time for at the moment because I need to go cough up part of my lung, but I shall be back at a later date, fo shizzle.

Went I went out to my car this morning, there was frost on it. And the grass. It’s winter! Yaaaaay!

It’ll probably be in the 80s next week. And people wonder why I spend this time of year heavily sick. I’m lucking out at the moment; I’m sure I’ll catch the full-blown flu the week “Carmen” opens.

Nothing much occurring around here other than that. I ran 3.3 miles in 32:16 the other day, my fastest time since I had to outrun those South American natives after I stole their golden idol. Man, were they pissed. Based on my calculations, I should be able to run a 5K in 30 minutes 33 seconds. I could take State with those kind of numbers. Hopefully my Lil Sis and I will set some ridiculous records for “5K time for a brother-and-sister combo weighing a combined 350+” when we run our 5K in November. I have no doubt that it will happen. Because I am hella fast. For a fat kid.

You may have noticed that my output here as increased over the last few weeks; no, I’m not any less busy, but I’m coming to the realization that if I don’t do a better job of keeping y’all in giggles, what miniscule readership I have (hi Mom!) will disappear. If I were you, I would expect to see more stuff here, mostly just pointless blog entries completely devoid of anything that makes any bloody sense, each of them probably not much longer than THIS pointless entry making little sense. Since I won’t be bothering to edit much, you’ll be noting more grammatical errors and the like, so don’t think I’ve had a stroke or anything. I’m just in a big dang hurry.

Stay loose, killers. More to come next week.

Wow, does my brain hurt. A whirlwind few days of “Carmen” rehearsals have left us with one simple fact: I am working with very talented people, and am only barely keeping my head above water. It’d be helpful if I could learn my dialogue and music, I think, so I’ve spent probably 10 out of the last 24 hours muttering to myself in French. In French! And I’m enjoying it, which is doubly surprising. I’d always considered French to be the province of beret-wearing, chain-smoking, skinny men with a deep knowledge of Proust.

I have more of a knowledge of Beavis and Butthead, myself.

In other news, Charles continues to expand in size and capabilities; despite having a head that’s planetary in scale, when lying down he basically insists upon holding his head and legs in the air. It’s an abdominal workout that I can’t even begin to duplicate. It’s becoming clear that our son is very strong. Like, World’s Strongest Man strong. It’s my dream to see him competing against Swedes, his enormous belly hanging out over his kidney belt, throwing huge boulders at passersby. If he was green I’d’ve named him Bruce Banner. Or maybe Elphabor, or something.

Note: the previous paragraph contains something for everybody: sports references, comic book characters, even Broadway shows. Thusly, it probably made sense to no one on this earth but myself. Forgive me: my brain is functioning partly in French at this point.

Charles also seems pretty darn smart, if you ignore the fact that right now he’s attempting to eat plastic. I base this on his ability to watch Baby Einstein DVDs; he lasted about 15 minutes through one the other day and followed everything. This is in sharp contrast to Sarah and I, who sit and stare at the screen for the full 30 minutes as if we had just eaten a 13×9 pan of pot brownies.

Not that I, uh, know what those are. Just…nevermind.

For a little while there, I was fairly certain that God just didn’t care for my presence in this world and was attempting to cause my death. Strike me down, Sith-style, if you smell what The Hearn is braising. In an effort to limit my girth, which has once again neared Rosie O’Donnell proportions, I have taken up running. Sadly, the good Lord appears to want me to be overweight, because as it turns out, running hurts. A lot a lot.

I was even going slow! We have a track around the buildings at work that I measured (with my bike, which has an odometer computer thingy) to be .55 miles (designed by Etruscans, or something, I think), and I was doing laps at a pace of nearly 7 minutes per lap. For those of you adding at home, this means I was running a mile every 12 minutes, 44 seconds, which isn’t enough to outrun a Swiss glacier. And I actually managed to run 5 solid laps, a distance of nearly three miles.

I’m told that after a short distance, your body wakes up to the fact that you are causing it INTENSE BLOODY PAIN and begins to flood itself with endorphins, which amount to naturally secreted heroin. For me, this was never happening. I began to think that God, in His wisdom, had simply not granted me the ability to create endorphins. I nearly gave up.

Then I had a brainstorm. Well, two, actually. The first was, “Screw this, let’s just see if we can get over 300 pounds and get on disability.” The second was, “Hmmm…perhaps I’m simply not causing my body ENOUGH pain to start the endorphin rush!” The next day, I laced up my venerable New Balance cross-trainers, stretched a bit, and took off. I wasn’t running flat-out, but roughly 85% of my maximum effort. By about halfway around the track, I was sure I was going to die, but I didn’t let up, and lo and behold, just a few hundred yards later, I had the unmistakable feeling of calm and lightness that comes only from high-grade opiates. It was delicious! It was delightful! It was probably Gordo sticking a dirty needle in my arm. Still.

I ran a bunch more laps, setting a personal record time for 3 miles, and went inside to shower. It was hours later before I figured out the downside of running without pain: the pain just hits full-force when the endorphins wear off, usually by dinner. And I was crippled. Oh, was I crippled.

Which is why it was probably foolish for me to have done it again the following day.

If you want to party, let me tell you, Seaford, Delaware, is the Place To Be. There’s a Friendly’s, and a Walmart, and a strip club right next to the middle school! And you thought London was classy.

Okay, I’ll stop burning Seaford, because it really is a nice little town, and also because the residents are just close enough that they might consider repaying the favor and burning my house. We were in town Tuesday and Wednesday so we could do “Billy Lee’s Washington” at Seaford High School for various groups of school children. The first show was at 10am Wednesday morning, so rather than make us all get up at the buttcrack of dawn to be there by 8:30 to get costumed and painted, the organizers put us up at the Seaford Best Western on Tuesday night. As a hotel, it’s everything you could possibly dream: it had a beds, and an alarm clock, and shady characters wandering around at all hours (some of which were in our group).

I was in charge of Charles (of his days, and also sometimes his nights) until Sarah got home from class on Tuesday, so I got a late start, arriving at the hotel around 9:30. I got settled in my room and looked over my score for Carmen (oh, I’m appearing in Carmen with Opera Delaware, I may not have mentioned that; more later) for a while, until Jenny (previously referred in this space as My Illustrious Costar^TM) arrived around 10:30, and we decided we’d like to have a beer. So we went a-driving, looking for an open restaurant.

Apparently Seaford basically shuts down around 10, because no restaurants were open, and no liquor stores either. We ended up driving to Federalsburg, MD, in a search for a 7-11 over the state line that might sell beer. We found a Citgo with a liquor store attached, which was of course closed. So we returned to the hotel and to our respective rooms, and bemoaned the lack of booze in our lives. Total time spent failing to find tasty liquor: about an hour.

The next morning we enjoyed the hotel’s Continental breakfast. By “Continental” I assume they mean Africa, because there was hardly enough food for a family of one. They had set out roughly a gallon of milk, some cereal, and, strangely, a waffle-maker and about 20 gallons of batter.

Seaford High’s auditorium is really nice, though, and seats some ungodly number of kids. The performances went just great, and we followed them up with one more at Caesar Rodney High in Dover yesterday afternoon, and now we are D-U-N, unless the folks at Mount Vernon call and ask us to come perform there, which I’m not sure is going to happen because the cost of renting the costumes again would be prohibitive.

Now if I could get the songs out of my bloody head. Rochambeau est bon camarade! Rochambeau est bon camarade! Rochambeau est bon comarade, que personne ne disputer!

Please shoot me in the face.

Martha and George, pimpin’ it ol’ school. And whatnot.

John Mayer’s new CD, “Continuum,” came out about 3 weeks ago, so it goes without saying that I have been listening to it largely non-stop for approximately three weeks. I thought it might be a nice idea to give a quick review of the CD, but first, a couple disclaimers:

1. I am singularly unqualified as a judge of music. For example: I agree that “Lips of an Angel” by Hinder is not a very good song. It is harmonically depraved, and devoid of any real musicality or virtuosity. However, if it pops up on my XM radio, I will listen to it, possibly twice because my radio can record up to half an hour of tunes for later playback.
2. I am also pretty much absent of any emotional depth, so my grasp of lyrical ability is tenuous.
3. I have a pretty serious man-crush on John Mayer.

Nevertheless, you should totally trust my opinion that “Continuum” is the best album released this year, and possibly in my lifetime, and I include “Pyromania” by Def Leppard in that statement. A quick run through of the tracks, in order:

1. “Waiting On The World To Change”- Sure, it’s only been on the radio for 2 months and it’s already wildly overplayed, to the point that I actually have been skipping it when I listen through the CD. That doesn’t change the fact that it’s a cool retro tune with some kind of bell organ that makes me giggle like a schoolgirl. Plus, I guess it explores what a lot of people my age are feeling about the state of the world, or something. This song is the first thing he’s released that is actually too high for me to sing. I was like, whaaaa?
2. “I Don’t Trust Myself (With Loving You)” – The first time I heard it, I thought the tweeters in my car stereo had stopped working. The introduction simply doesn’t contain any high frequency sound. It’s like they recorded under a blanket. Still awesome.
3. “Belief” – This is the only one that I’m sort of cold on; I don’t think 28-year-old singers should really spend a lot of time expostulating on world affairs. That’s what we have Jackson Browne for. I wanna hear songs that I can learn to play at a coffeehouse and have hot girls hit on me afterwards. Not that they ever would, because I have the stage presence of Crisco^TM, if that Crisco was in the shape of a guy with a lot of restraining orders against him.
4. “Gravity” – I do not know what this song is about, and I have it on two JM albums now. Still makes me bop my head.
5. “The Heart of Life” – Speaking of head-bopping: this song basically makes the CD for me. It couldn’t be simpler, really; undistorted electric guitar, light percussion, occasionally the bass player stops smoking and plays a note or three. After the guitar solo, the chorus comes back in with a cymbal roll, and I get a feeling in my pants that could best be described as “moist.”
6. “Vultures” – This song seems to be about John being sad about being famous and how people bug him. While I can feel his pain, perhaps he shouldn’t have sold so many albums. I usually sing along with this one and ignore the fact that it’s kind of a sad song.
7. “Stop This Train” – I read a review in which the critic didn’t like this song, and I wanted to kick him right in the pills. This is the best song on the CD, I think. Sure, it seems to take a while to get anywhere, but that just heightens the anticipation. This song would have made Hitler cry, if Hitler had spent all day smoking weed and listening to Rush albums.
8. “Slow Dancing In A Burning Room” – This is one of several songs on this disc that seem to indicate John was breaking up with a redhead. At one point in the song, he makes a guitar sound that makes me think of stabbing.
9. “Bold as Love” – Jimi Hendrix cover. Totally incomprehensible. Totally rad. The guitar solo in the middle may not be strictly anything Jimi would do, but it’s got a taste of Stevie Ray Vaughan, and the whole thing is constructed, musically, better than anything Jimi could manage. Part of that is because John’s backups, Pino Palladino (bass) and Steve Jordan (drums), are absolutely light years beyond Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell (the rest of the Jimi Hendrix Experience) in every way. Also, John Mayer and Jimi have similarly-sized lips.
10. “Dreaming With A Broken Heart” – Dreaming about lost love. Example lyrics:

    Do I have to fall asleep with roses in my hand?
    And would you get them if I did?

    My heart skipped a bit at that. Seriously. I called 911 and everything.

11. “In Repair” – If there’s anything with which I can identify, it’s being broken. I’ve been miswired and faulty for years.
12. “I’m Gonna Find Another You” – Post-breakup song, which had the potential to be kinda creepy-stalkerish, but the melodies and harmonies take it in completely the opposite direction; it comes across as totally fun. Great way to end a CD.

Does it measure up to “Heavier Things” and, before that, “Room For Squares?” Absolutely. John changes his style so much from CD to CD that it’s like a different artist, and personally I think he could release a dozen more discs without ever once repeating anything.

If only he would answer my letters.

So I was talking to the French Ambassador to the US, Jean-David Levitte, and his wife the other day, and I said . . .

What? Of course I’ve met the French Ambassador to the US, Jean-David Levitte, and his wife. Hasn’t everyone? Oh right, I’m sorry, I’m just That Special.

Ha ha! Just kidding! I’m not THAT much of a tool. (Yes I am.) But I did meet the French Ambassador to the US, Jean-David Levitte, and his wife, on Friday night. Let me back up a weeeeeee bit.

I may or may not in this space have mentioned that I am playing George Washington in a new musical written by noted local composer Evelyn Swensson. We spent most of September rehearsing, and opened at the “Baby Grand” (a new, small theater built next to the Grand Opera House in downtown Wilmington) on Friday morning for a bunch of school kids bussed in from all over creation. On Friday night, we had our “gala debut,” which involved some extra scenes with Revolutionary War reenactors, and the presence of the French Ambassador to the US, Jean-David Levitte, and his wife.

The show itself is lovely; it’s approximately 75 minutes long, and features music from the 17th and 18th century that Evelyn adapted with different words to fit her story and script. The cast is quite good, featuring a group of talented kids and some of their parents. Even the ever-remarkable Jennifer Kennard (whom you may remember as My Illustrious Costar^TM from Brigadoon in 2004) appears as Martha Washington.

After the show was over, I was introduced to the French Ambassador to the US, Jean-David Levitte, and his wife, at which time I apologized for what I had done to their language (one of the songs I sing is “Rochambeau Est Bon Camarade,” the French-ified version of “Rochambeau’s a Good Fellow”), and we had a lovely conversation in which I pointed out that Washington himself was probably sterile, which caused a brief awkward look between the Ambassador and his wife. If there’s anything that Matt Hearn knows, it’s embarrassing himself in front of foreign diplomats.

I’ve decided I would very much like to be His Excellency something. Even if it’s just His Excellency the Royal Garderobe Sponger.