(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Top Comments: Singing with Carole King Edition [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-06-18 This diary was inspired by a comment from Tara in a TC diary over the weekend. I have written a few times about attending The Hole in the Wall Gang Camp up in northern Connecticut. This will be another diary about that period of my life. My third summer attending the camp, I got very heavily involved in the theatre. I probably spent every moment I could doing something either in the theatre or with the program staff and clowns that session. It culminated with me doing three different acts during Stage Night. I did a really ridiculous rendition of the Star Spangled Banner using only my fingers and nose; I also performed a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip (I played Hobbes) involving the word smock with a good friend of mine; and our unit performed the story on the back of the Newman’s Own Lemonade carton. The powers that be at camp must have really liked what I did that summer because it got me to have a very unique experience the September after camp ended for the summer. My mom got a call early in September asking if I was interested in coming back to camp to perform in their annual gala fundraiser. Not knowing what is was but always willing to help out the camp, of course I said yes. We figured it was a way for Paul Newman to invite a bunch of his rich friends to get a glimpse of what goes on in the theatre during a camp session and raise money for the camp. Boy, we were we wrong. It’s a whole Broadway style revue/variety show where famous performers come up to perform alongside about 25 campers. Back then, the annual gala would generally fund the entire summer of camp. Carole King was one of the many celebs invited to the 1996 gala which was one of the ones to which I was also invited. Looking at the schedule of the gala, I saw she would be performing “You’ve Got a Friend” with some of the other performers invited that year. “You’ve Got a Friend” is one of the songs in the camp songbook we would sing at least once a session in the dinning hall. Since I wasn’t scheduled to be in that many acts, I had been looking for ways to get myself in more of them. During the weekend rehearsal time, I went to Carole and told her about her song being in the camp songbook and asked if it would be possible to have some of the campers, myself included, sing the final chorus with her. She thought it was a great idea and presented it to the director. (The director was Patricia Birch who has choreographed movies such as “Grease” [both films and the original Broadway production] and “The First Wives Club” and “”Big” among many others.) Thankfully, the director agreed, and I was now in another act. Being on stage and singing with her was so cool and such an honor. I was able to “weasel” my way into a few more acts that weekend including performing “Hound Dog” with Amy Grant, who had performed during my session that summer and sing “Leaving on a Jet Plane” with some of the other campers. I almost got Marissa Tomei to give me the Peter Pan hat from her costume from the Peter Pan skit the whole cast was performing but unfortunately it was rented costume. Even my ability to manipulate has it limits. LOL I have quite a few stories related to that weekend. Maybe in the future I will share more of them. Feel free to share your celeb stories in the comments tonight. Diarist reserves all rights to his original writing only. Community material is not covered by this © Now a word from out sponsor and onto the Tops! Here at Top Comments we welcome longtime as well as brand new Daily Kos readers to join us at 10pm Eastern. We strive to nourish community by rounding up some of the site's best, funniest, most mojo'd & most informative commentary, and we depend on your help!! If you see a comment by another Kossack that deserves wider recognition, please send it either to topcomments at gmail or to the Top Comments group mailbox by 9:30pm Eastern. Please please please include a few words about why you sent it in as well as your user name (even if you think we know it already :-)), so we can credit you with the find! Top Comments for june 18, 2024 None tonight unfortunately. Please send us those comments when you find them. TOP MOJO june 17, 2024 First comments and tip jars excluded. Thank you mik for the mojo magic! For those of you interested in How Top Mojo Works, please see his diary on FAQing Top Mojo. TOP PICTURES june 17, 2024 Top Pictures is still down. Hopefully, it will be back soon. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/6/18/2247090/-Top-Comments-Singing-with-Carole-King-Edition?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/