I knew last night would be surreal, but it surpassed all my expectations.

My dive-club buddy Carol invited me to join her to the Hollywood Bowl’s annual “Sound of Music Sing-Along.” It’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like: they play The Sound of Music on an enormous screen in front of 18,000 people, with the words to the songs displayed so everyone can join in.

But the most surreal part of the day was before we even found our seats. We arrived at the Bowl around 5, and the pre-show wasn’t until 6, so we grabbed some food and parked ourselves on a bench for dinner. Suddenly, a familiar face strode by, and I found myself being greeted with a big hug – it was one of my sponsor-group hallmates from freshman year at Pomona. This was a bit out of the ordinary on several counts:

1. I haven’t seen this guy since Pomona, had no idea he was in LA, and we weren’t really even very good friends after freshman year
2. Carol is also a Pomona grad (we discovered this just last December)
3. But I was really confused, because I thought this person was in jail. He had a psychotic episode his senior year, and stabbed a teacher in the neck.
4. He introduced me to all of his “church friends,” which also confused me because the guy I remember from freshman year was not remotely religious (though he was into philosophy)

Turns out he spent two years stuck in a prison hospital (I’m glad it was that and not normal prison, or longer – he had been clearly not in his right mind at the time of arrest, and I’d always liked him). After a little Googling around, I found his blog which describes how he became a Christian while stuck in the normal jail waiting for his trial.

So, that was a bit out of the ordinary.

Then, a few minutes later, we spotted actor Jeffrey Jones – who also happens to be a convicted felon.

Good grief – were we ex-con magnets?

We took our seats in time for the great-grandchildren of the “real Captain Von Trapp” to come out and sing a few numbers (most from the movie), and then sit through a very, very, very long costume contest. The contest featured lots of entries dressed up as “My Favorite Things,” quite a few transvestite Marias, far too many very small children who were dressed up simply as “Cute” as far as we could tell – and the winner, a carbeurator. That’s right: part of a car engine. Why, you ask? Don’t you remember the scene where the nuns steal the parts out of the Nazi’s cars at the end of the movie?

The carbeurator won a 7 day cruise to the Mexican Riviera. Nice!

Finally it was dark enough for the movie to begin. I’ll try to describe some of the more bizarre highlights:

• They gave everyone little bags of “stuff” to use during the show – kind of like a Rocky Horror Picture showing. We had little poppers to set off when Maria and the captain first kiss; fake edelweiss to wave during the song; little pieces of curtain material to wave at Maria and yell “Look behind you!” when she’s trying to figure out play clothes material, etc.
• The participation went beyond singing along. Everyone cheered at Maria, hissed at the countess, booed at the Nazis, made barking noises at Rolf (?), and yelled “Wheeee!” with Liesl after her first kiss (very loud!)
• Lit-up cell phone displays have replaced lighters as the thing-to-wave of choice. Looks very cool.
• People who aimed laser pointers at the screen were very annoying, and got yelled at by 18,000 people. Except for when they aimed the pointers at the countess; then it was funny.
• We sat next to about a dozen nuns. Not real nuns, of course. They brought rice krispies to throw into the air at the wedding scene.

I didn’t make it home until about 1 in the morning – I was EXHAUSTED, having been up since 5:30am for a 2-dive trip to Catalina! I guess I’d better blog about that later; in the meantime, here are Jeff’s pictures.