A Greene Man’s Blog

On our Alaskan cruise in June, the ship held a talent show/contest. I hemmed and hawed about joining it, but finally decided to go for it at the last minute. I chose to sing “Our Love Is Here to Stay” by George Gershwin because the band had the music, and because I had sung it on my first cruise in 1993 on Norwegian Cruise Lines (which we were traveling with again). I could pick apart my own performance, but I’m sharing it anyway for what it’s worth. Several passengers came up to me after the contest and said they thought I should have won, although the woman who won was not a singer but a fabulous flamenco dancer. Anyway, enjoy!

Here are the lyrics:

It’s very clear / Our love is here to stay / Not for a year / But ever and a day.
The radio and the telephone / And the movies that we know / May just be passing fancies / And in time may go!
But, oh my dear / Our love is here to stay / Together we’re / Going a long, long way
In time the Rockies may crumble / Gibraltar may tumble / They’re only made of clay / But our love is here to stay.

Here I am singing and signing the song “Pure Imagination” from the movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, one of my favorite songs since I was a little kid.

And here are the lyrics:

Come with me / and you’ll be / in a world of pure imagination / Take a look / and you’ll see / into your imagination

We’ll begin / with a spin / traveling in a world of my creation / What we’ll see / will defy / explanation

If you want to view paradise / simply look around and view it / anything you want to, do it / want to change the world? / there’s nothing to it

There is no / life I know / to compare with pure imagination / living there / you’ll be free / if you truly wish to be

When I was eight, I went on about 25 commercial auditions with my maternal grandmother in NYC. I once went up for a peanut butter commercial against the boy who played Mikey in the famous Life Cereal commercial– you know, they one where the brother says, “He likes it! Hey, Mikey!” Well, “Mikey” was about 9 or 10 by that time. Of course, he booked the gig and I saw him on TV a few weeks later. There’s nothing like auditioning in NYC as a child to make your life surreal. I would see the competition in the waiting room and then see them on TV a few weeks later. It was strange and disappointing to audition and never get anything. Eventually, I stopped getting calls from my agent.

Apparently, none of the exhuberance I had on the train to the city translated to the studio once I got there. I would be an excited little ham on the train, telling anyone around that I was going to an audition, but I would clam up in the audition itself. Of course, I never had any acting training or preparation for commercial television. Oh well.

Thank God I went to the School of Creative and Performing Arts when I was 11 and got a great performing arts education for 7 years. I’m happy to say that I’ve had many rewarding performance experiences in my life since then. I even finally got to do a local television commercial.