All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth

I went to a concert the other day and I’ve been putting off putting fingers to keyboard because it provided me with so much material that I hardly knew where to begin. I have placed a restriction on myself in the interests of brevity: (almost) no personal attacks on the physical appearance of the singers. Believe me, this alone should cut things in half. NB This refers to physical attributes, not clothing.

To help with clarity, I’ll be writing this with a simple to follow point system; just think of it as online snakes and ladders.

It was a Christmas concert. -1 point

The musical director – dressed in barbershop quartet meets ethnic hippy cheesecloth – kicked things off with “a few words”. He talked of didgeridoos, eggs, cabbages and kings… I think, but like everyone else in the audience I stopped paying attention after the 5 minute mark. -1 point

The singers emerged. The men all looked like Westpac bank managers and the women looked like a grown up, thrown up version of what my friends and I looked like in our childhood choir. – 56 points

…although where physically possible (in 2 out of 3 cases) they had cleavage on display rather than the deeply hideous things called flounces that we had to wear. + 1 point

One of the women had a really great pair of shoes + 1 point

Now to the concert itself… It’s days later and I’m still in a state of confusion over exactly what it was supposed to be or do… but I can say that watching deeply uncool people (the human version of our old flounces) trying to be cool is a really uncomfortable feeling. It’s like being at a stuffy function and having a twig stuck in your bra that is driving you nuts but you can’t remove it. It won’t kill you but it is AGONY!!! And it makes you squirm a lot. -25 points

It was Mr G does Gilbert and Sullivan Christmas Extravaganza. – 1 point

The idea behind it was to sing carols that related to the 12 days of Christmas, with spoken … um…. bits … to connect it all together. For sheer ambition I am willing to give this points. + 3 points

Unfortunately, the ‘bits’ were not particularly funny (note to the performers: enunciating your words carefully does not equal comedic delivery), and they didn’t really make sense either in combination with the songs or even as stand-alone pieces. – 12 points

When I was 6 years old my friend Ursula and I had what we thought was a fantastic idea that involved dressing up as witches to scare people we didn’t like. Upon reflection, I can see that it was a pretty crap idea. It seems that such reflection was sorely needed yet woefully absent in regard to this concert. – 1 point

There were some highlights amid the mire of confusing, non-funny, forced jocularity. Somewhere around the 9th or 10th day of Christmas, one of the singers (good, hair, bad shoes, cleavage) read out a letter to Madonna (I’m really not sure why). Her accent swung between Jamaican and Irish with a touch of Scots for good measure, but she did say “touching your private parts for vouge-ing purposes” (no, I really don’t know why) for which I must award: +1 point

Musically, it was very clever with a lot of complicated harmonies + 1point

However, much like bestiality or clipping your toenails in public, just because you can does not necessarily mean that you should. The clever obliterated most of the audience’s potential enjoyment of the music. -1 point

Staging, movement and blocking were all very good. +3 points

After the show we went out for a debrief and saw someone with a really great dress +1 point

Final score:
Points Awarded: 9
Points Deducted: 96
Total Points: oh, what's the point of it all? Nobody cares.