Saturday, January 3, 2009

Something's Afoot

Once upon a time, in another life, I performed in plays in college. The first week of my freshman year my suitemate, Jean, said she was going to audition for the first play of the year, which was always reserved for freshmen, so they didn't have to compete with the upperclassmen for parts. I decided on a whim to go with her. I had not been in a play since elementary school, although I had played in the pit orchestra during high school for several musicals.

That play was The Birds, by Aristophanes. I ended up with four parts, one of which died during the play by being carried off by the birds to be disposed of in unclear but undoubtedly horrific fashion.

The next play I performed in was a musical called Something's Afoot, a musical interpretation of Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians. If you are unfamiliar with the theme, 10 people are invited to a remote house on an island, and are systematically killed off. I was a maid, and I was killed. Are you seeing a theme here? I performed in probably 6 productions through the course of my time in college, and died in most of them. This is a picture of me singing the Something's Afoot theme song with Dan Meharg, who was portraying the caretaker.

I died by falling down a heating shaft into the furnace. I had to crawl through a vent in the set, and two of the crew pulled me through from the other side. I had to manage to leave a shoe behind when pulled through so the detective could find it and announce "Something's AFOOT".

This leads me to share with you a small obsession I have with random shoes I see on the side of the road or highway. It happens a LOT. I am always wondering where these shoes came from, how is it that the shoe escaped from some vehicle and was left there, alone at the side of the road. I can safely say that in my life I have never lost a shoe out of a vehicle. How does it happen and where is the mate?

Here they are:

This is a shot of thousands of shoes that mysteriously appeared on a highway in Miami the other day. No one knows how or why they are appeared, but the Bob has a theory, both for my random shoe question and these shoes: Alien Abduction. He figures that when aliens take someone away, they manage to leave one shoe behind, abandoned on the side of the road. At some point their space ship becomes overwhelmed by all the orphaned other shoes, and they have to do something with them, so they dumped them on a highway in Miami during the night as they cruised South Beach.

Sounds like a reasonable explanation to me.

5 comments:

Pirate Ninja Mommy said...

Hey. You don't know me, but I found you via Babble. I followed you to your own blog because I'm another later in life first time mom.

Anyhow, I read a science fiction story a long time ago about a monster that picked up hitchhikers. It would get them in the car, then after a while, devour them. As it drove down the road, it spat out the window things it could not digest -- things like a shoe without a mate.

Looks like the monsters had a holiday feast. EEK!

Dproudmama said...

The Bob knows.....rather like the Shadow of yore radio. What a guy!

mkosboth said...

Pirate Mommy - thanks for stopping by! You don't appear to have a blog of your own, or I would read it. And that sounds like a good explanation too! All I know is there are a lot of orphaned shoes out there.

Audubon Ron said...

I have a post somewhere I did sometime ago on Mississippi Road Shoe. We would tag, photograph and collect the shoes we find on the side of the road here in Mississippi, then sell them on Ebay.

Audubon Ron said...

PS: I didn’t know you were a lesbian, or is that thespian. Probably better to be a lesbian. I use to do theater also. Three shows a year.