If you watched the Women's Meeting (recently defined as the first session of General Conference) on the Saturday before the first Sunday in April (yes, I do have to phrase it that way for when the first Sunday of April is on April Fool's, sucka!) you may have seen this:
It's a video featuring some lovely families, one of which is mine. You will see how perfect we are, right down to the two-year-old Toby and his munchkinness. It was a great experience for us. They called on a Tuesday, we went into a recording studio on Thursday to record the singing. Buffy was under the weather with a case of laryngitis, so they had an acquaintance of ours sing her part (yes, we are thinking of changing Lady Buffington's name to Milli Vanilli). Then, on Friday, we went to the LDS Conference Center in down town Salt Lake City, where they took us to the roof, which evidently has a weed field for pretend pic nics and had us film our part.
As you can see from the video, we were perfect. By that I mean the editors must be perfect because the shoot was a big ol' chaotic mess. Toby was screeming the entire time--with the exception of the approximately 0.25 seconds that he's featured on the video. At one point in the video he's pulling on my hand. His face is not in the shot, if it were you would have seen him screeming, "Get up! Get up!" Later they set up another shot where all three of the singing families were to stand together and sing the song. Toby did not allow any of that scene to make it to the final video. He arched his back, beat me over the head with a string cheese, punched me in the face, stole my glasses and hucked them, twice!
Of course, Toby's bad behavior had an effect on the others. Ike could not help himself; he was mad, and it showed. He sang along to the track with a scowl of pure disgust. Between takes he'd mumble about how Toby was ruining everything, and how we should have left Toby home, or better yet, never had him to begin with. Luckily, something about his face just works on camera. I've seen him practicing smiling for pictures in front of a mirror, and what looks like a fake and, dare I say, stupid facial expression in real life, looks perfect on camera. Plus his singing voice which is highlighted in the beginning of the song is really pretty.
Mimi and Kitty couldn't stop giggling.
Cubby spent one full take unbuttoning my shirt. I, not wanting to ruin the take, was powerless to stop him.
We will forever treasure the experience. And thank goodness they didn't ask us to sing the second verse, which everyone knows is the most sexist of the verses.
The next week I got to sing with a men's choral group from BYU for the priesthood session. I was really more or less a seat filler. They didn't have enough students to fill all of the choir seats, so they invited some alumni along to fill out the numbers. Watch here:
Did you see me? By my count, I made as many appearances as President Monson in this conference! If they had credits, I would be listed as a featured player. Also, isn't the arrangement for Master the Tempest is Raging excellent?
Amen.
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