being dan

Everybody has a relative that they want to be just like.

Or so I have been told.

Now, I do not know how universal that rule is, but I do know I wear it like a second nature. When I was growing up, I wanted to be just like my cousin Dan. He lived just down the mountain in Myrtle Point and was one year older. I thought of him as an older brother. And still do. That is him at the far left -- the charismatic boy up to some mischief.

When I started piano lessons in the sixth grade, the course I was taking gave students an option of sheet music as electives. My piano teacher asked me what type of music I would like to include on the list.

Mom overheard my teacher and suggested that I choose Broadway music because Dan liked musicals, and I admired Dan. I knew nothing of musicals at that point, but if Dan liked them that was good enough for me.

That was the start of one of the strangest paths I have ever taken in my life. I remember asking myself how Dan could like this music. It struck me as rather sappy with its emotional ballads and mawkish lyrics. But Dan liked it. Enough said.

I sometimes tend to be a bit obsessive. Once I set my mind to a project, it consumes me. And this project has consumed me for sixty years.

I bought every original cast album I could find at Al's Records, our local limited-inventory record shop in the Oak Grove Fred Meyer shopping complex, and studied the music. Then came the scripts. In addition, I attended every road show that came through Portland and scheduled my Air Force reserve duty around Broadway performances. Being stationed just outside London for two years in the 1970s was like being sent to musical heaven.

It got to the point that when I saw Bob Holiday in It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Superman on Broadway in 1966, I did not need to consult my Playbill to know that he had played the role of Neil in Fiorello in 1959. While my high school classmates were rocking with the Rolling Stones, I was analyzing the harm Richard Rogers's music in Do I Hear a Waltz? did to Stephen Sondheim's lyrics.

I had turned myself into a cultural anomaly -- a straight Broadway expert. Of course, I put that questionable skill to work whenever I could. The best venue was Broadway Trivia on cruises -- where I seldom missed an answer. 

I say the skill is questionable because it has limited my conversation. Last week at dinner, there was a lull in the chat. I have no idea why I did it (obviously, I was not thinking), but I tossed out a question: "Which ballet from a Broadway show do you prefer? Oklahoma? Carousel? Or something else?"

It must have been "something else" because my five dinner companions stared at me as if someone had sprayed obscene graffiti across my forehead. I may as well have asked what they thought about the Rule Against Perpetuities being used as a plot device in novels.

But all of those years of studying the American musical as an art form have given me a trunk of analytical templates when the Next Bright Broadway Thing comes along. That last sentence is pure self-serving justification because, as Paul Harvey used to say, here's the rest of the story.

Remember how my Mom launched me on this path with the overture that Dan loved musicals? Well, it turned out that was not quite true.

In December 2014 and January 2015, Dan and his Colombian wife Patty visited me on one of their many extended road trips. I joined them for a month while we drove through southern Mexico. Somewhere along our trek, I mentioned to Dan that I was surprised he liked musicals; I had always pegged him as a rock-and-roll guy.

His response caught me off guard. "I hate musicals. Especially movie musicals. Whatever made you think I liked them?" So, he heard the story I have just related to you.

I still do not know if Mom was mistaken or if she had a hidden agenda of her own. She certainly was not a musicals fan. She still isn't.

But there you have it. If you are sitting with me one day and ask which is my favorite Beach Boys song, I will most likely ask which beach boys you are talking about. While you were listening to Mike Love croon about good vibrations, I was chuckling at Zero Mostel's attempts to tackle Sondheim's internal rhymes.

There are no such things as bad decisions. There are simply decisions that make us who we are.

So, if you are feeling in a comparative ballet mood, come on over. We can spend an evening discussing the choreography strengths of Agnes de Mille and Susan Stroman.

You might want to bring your own No-Doz.

 
Note -- If we are going to discuss Agnes De Mille, here is your homework.