A Friendly Notice to Non-Puerto Rican Opera Singers
Gentle Bitches,
Poundpapi would like to personally apologize for the wackiness of fonts around here lately. He knew something was up after the last post took a day to finally show up on the blog. Tender as he is about the visual discontinuity of the last post, he will do his best to hook you up with tender morsels.
Our first performance in Fairfax started out like any other show. The guys' dressing room was loud with dirty talk and my continued threats of a panty raid. Nothing new here. We bitched, moaned, sang and acted (some of us did, at least). Great. One act down, three to go.
However, during Act II, it became clear that my night could get more interesting. As I listened to the famous Flower Song in the dressing room, it sounded like Don Jose was not singing as well as he should have. At first I thought, "The monitors in this new hall are weird," but the Assistant Conductor came up to be during the intermission and told me he was worried whether the tenor would make it or not. At this point, we assumed he was getting sick. So for the last two acts, I was in "the Zone" knowing that at any moment I could be called upon to go on as a sub, either singing from the wings or actually walking the role if the situation was dire enough. Act III was neither stellar nor horrible. Act IV, however, was a different story! Almost from the beginning it sounded like Jose was losing his voice. Some notes lacked any phonation at all. It was friggin' scary! I stood in the wings, bracing myself, wondering if I knew the blocking well enough to go on. Fortunately, he had made it most of the way through the opera, and only had about seven more minutes to go, so they would most likely let him finish, and put me on for the next show if he was indeed sick. It was so uncomfortable listening to him struggle to get through the final duet, but I wasn't worried for him as much as I was for myself.
Anyway, after the show was over, I was speaking to my friend Sonic, who was able to shed a little light on the situation:
For those of you non-Boricuas, a chicharron is a good ol'fashioned pork rind, whoa! When homemade, they are crunchy and meaty and salty pork goodness. However, those of you evil enough in your past lives to have deserved mothers who don't cook chicharrones may only be familiar with their less glamorous, less delicious convenience-store cousins sold in plastic bags like filthy potato chips. Mind you, they're still delicious enough for me to buy a bag every seven years. (Last week was obviously my seven-year anniversary, cause I sho'nuff bought a bag of them spicy jawns. 1 ) However, that is neither here nor there.
Let us say that you are an opera singer en route to a performance. Carmen, for instance. Your role is a large one, and vocally taxing, so you take every precaution to make sure your performance goes off without a hitch: you've been drinking water, not speaking, sleeping well, doing lines of Prilosec, etc. Or so you thought! On the trip to the performance, one of your colleagues innocently opens a bag of pork rinds up, and offers you one. Being from the South, you can't resist porky goodness! In goes a rind- and a satisfying crunch-crisp sound escapes from your mouth as you reach into the bag for more. Pork rinds by the handfuls, dammit! It's all good and well, until you gasp for pork-scented air because the delicious rinds have caused you to forget to breathe, and poof! tiny pork styrofoam particles have lodged themselves in your larynx and lungs. Listen, folks- choking is guaranteed to accompany every convenience-store-pork-rind orgy, much like them purple icee pops so close to my heart. Your body's natural reaction to pork in the lungs is four fold:
Step 1: CELEBRATE!!!!
Step 2: Cough as a sign of enjoyment.
Step 3: Surround pork-ticles (pork particles) with mucous; and
Step 4: Allow the mucous-covered pork to escape the lung party via your larynx, preferably while singing.
By this time, your vocal folds are perfectly primed to sing an operatic role. Let's just say that both Don Jose and Micaela (who also partook and choked) were pissed at themselves for being so naive, but not as pissed as they were with the Polish bass who, legitimately dared to make fun of Rindgate after the night of terror was over. Come on, people, Pork Rinds are inherently funny, and allowing them to endanger you in any way is the equivalent of slipping on a banana peel, thereby requiring mockery.
So, in summary: on performance days, only moist foods (such as panty cakes) are permissable, lest you lodge a pork rind in your alveoli!
1. "Jawn" is Philly-derived slang for "joint". Of course, you potheads thought I meant "joint" as in a marijuana cigarette, but you would be wrong! In this case, "joint" is a pronoun, and a substitute for just about anything you'd like.
