Follow the trail o' pork

Hey-

This afternoon, I was treated to a performance at Twelve Corners Middle School of Fractured Fairytales. For those of you who do not have nieces that participate in these sorts of things, it's basically a staged, contemporary re-telling of a fairy tale. There were six performances, and they were hilarious. Lots of references to contemporary technology, Starbucks, Napolean Dynamite, etc. Also, there was a lot of cross dressing: clearly none of the girls felt like playing wicked stepmothers and witches.

There were two Rapunzel retellings, both awesome. In the first, Rapunzel's hair was actually extensions. Perfect. In the second, it wasn't her hair that was long, but her eyelashes. When she later fell into a shallow ditch, her friends tried to help pull her out by her eyelashes. It wasn't until hours later than "The Voice of Reason" spoke to Rapunzel, letting her know that she was perfectly capable of climbing out of the ditch herself, which she then did. Amazing.

Still, my favorite Fractured Fairytale was the retelling of Hansel and Gretel that started the whole production off. In this retelling, Gretel was an insatiable beast. When the children learned that a girl was lost in the woods near their house, they set off to find her, leaving a trail of pork chop tidbits to mark the way home. Unfortunately, as Hansel drops the pork choplings, Gretel follows behind, gobbling them up. When they finally reach the witch's house, they find that it is made of bologna, not candy, and Gretel wastes no time getting to business. She gets so caught up in her porky rapture that when the witch arrives, Gretel attacks and eats her too, mistaking her for a talking ham.

The funny thing about this all is that Brighton is a very, very Jewish suburb (Anna and Aaron are thinking of moving here, I think) and Twelve Corners Middle School is a school with a large Jewish population- the kids get all the Jewish holidays off from school. I was not expecting so much pork-talk this afternoon, and even more surprising, my Puerto Rican niece was in no way involved with this fractured fairytale.

Anyway, I don't have pics of the pork for y'all, but I do want to share some really cute pics of the chirruns: