Rehearsal of Greek School Event Helen, between 50 and 55, with Alex, around 70, are sitting in a very simple living room… Helen:-But still, Alex, OK I do admire the way you made yourself into a blogger as a pensioner but I insist that, crisis or non crisis, you have much more to offer by writing in your wonderful way about all the places in East and West that you have visited as escort to Greek tourists, than by writing from your perspective too against all those whom we all speak against everyday and all you bloggers write against every day. All of you do offer something in that way too but it’s a pity if we only talk about the good-for-nothings on our back quitting our more real services to each other. OK, if you did both I wonder what kind of family man you would be to Alkisti and your grandson. Oh!Speaking of Aris: before we came back to Greece, Vassilis told me to make sure I ask you what happened when our great film director Angelopoulos had happened , I still don’t know how, in your house and Aris , still almost a baby, was present in your conversation. And I think it wasn’t in Athens , right? Alex:-OK, then we would go there for summer, now we’re there for good. OK, my daughter had the idea to mention to kid Aris that Angelopoulos makes films and he half-ran half-crept to a room where we had a video tape about which we reminded each other it needed fixing and he brought it and he was pushing it with both hands to the director, presumably to fix it, he thought that making films meant fixing tapes. Helen:-Hahahahaha! Fantastic! Alex:- Hahaha! Yeah! Right! Kids can be fantastic!... The doorbell rings. Helen:-…Your fellow blogger I wanted you to meet. Helen opens enters Angela, about the age of Helen. Helen:-…Angela this is Alex, Alex this is Angela… Angela:-What a surprise! I already know Alex. Helen:-Of course you know him! Alex and Vassilis , then me, met each other in the comments to your blog…Oh! You mean you already have met each other in real space? Not just electronically? Alex:-What an even greater surprise! Angela knows me and I don’t know her? Who am I? A celebrity? Angela:-In a sense. My older brother was a fellow student of your younger brother in their coaching school downtown Athens, and as a kid sometimes I would come with my brother and they all admired you because you had already made it, you were studying Civil Engineering in the Polytechnic, the country’s most competitive educational institution… Helen:-But, Alex, I thought you were a tourguide or travel agent or something… Alex:-That was my hobby which I was fortunate enough to finally make a living through. But I had to have quite a number of houses built before that. Helen:-So I was wrong thinking that Greeks known since young had once belonged to the same political party’s youth. It might also have been coaching school for university entrance exam not just party youths or secret antijunta resistance groups… Alex:-…or just athletic groups. Like everywhere. Anyway, we all idolized someone in our teens. Winners of Olympics, or whiz kids in science or resistance fighters imprisoned. We had quite a few idols of all of these types, back then. Angela:-And if you had double talents , both artistic and underground activist, then Theodoarakis was your idol, the absolute composer…You think we bloggers can spread such enthusiasm in today’s youth again? Alex:-What you mean by “we bloggers”? Angela:-I mean bloggers are not hindered by distance, and now with the crisis that makes so many people disperse back into every village they have a connection to…Well, you see my point? Alex:-I see it first hand. We stabilized in my wife’s village for good. And many friends of mine did similar things. But my question was about how much you know about what some youths can make even without the help of us bloggers. You still haven’t met Suzy and Johnny, have you? Or if you have, they still haven’t told you about their rehearsals… 1 The doorbell rings. Angela:-No, none of all that. But I hope this ring will bring some of it. Helen opens , enter Suzy and Johnny ,Suzyis14but looks older, but not as old as Johnny who is 15. Suzy:-Oh, hi Mr Alex, nice to see you again. Johnny:-Hi Helen:-Angela is the other half of Alex, I don’t mean in life, I mean both I and your dads in Germany, have known Angela as much as Alex, we all met Alex in Angela’s blog… Johnny:-How do you do Mrs Angela. Suzy:-Mom, we’ll be back in a minute, right now we came to pick some photocopies for Angeliki and Panagiotis… While Suzy and Helen talk, Johnny disappears and returns with a bunch of pages Helen:-Why don’t you phone them to come up. Alex and Angela will love to meet them… Suzy:-They’re heading for the souvlaki joint around the corner. We’ll join them there later. Nice to meet you Mrs Angela…OK mom, we won’t be a minute. Running they go to pick the photocopies and running they leave Helen:-Well, about Johnnhy’s father you only know what you have read in Vassilis postings. But besides having the same name, Bill and Vassilis , and besides Johnny’s mother having the same name as me , Helen, and besides all of us sharing a passion to see those pilot trial greenbelt towns grow, we have been so brothers and sisters, to each other and the kids grew up so close together , that when Johnny’s mother died… The doorkey is heard. …OK, we’ll talk about it all later. The kids enter with their own key. Alex:-So: Introductions were made in a hurry. But I can well suggest another kind of introduction, much more informative. Do you have time enough before you join your friends to tell us about the rehearsals you told me about last time I had come to Athens? Helen:-Were the pages you picked about some new rehearsals? Something tells me that in a while not only you but the whole gang will join Angeliki and Panagiotis to discuss them over souvlakis. So why don’t you bring the souvlakis here and discuss the whole matter in our presence? You don’t have stage fright, I’m sure. Alex:-Υou mean we even have a chance to watch a rehearsal live instead of just hearing a narration of it? Suzy:-Johnhy, let’s go and tell the group. But we don’t guarantee we’ll be back. They leave quietly, not running. Alex:-And, ladies, I assure you that my esteem for their efforts comes from an old timer who was proud to be in a Polytercnic of 50 class hours per week, awarding a bachelor’s degree taking 5 years and considered like a master’s when abroad and whose students were the talk of others when they became graduate students there. I don’t just flatter a proud mother, Helen, but I sure do flatter myself that I was not part of the ambiguity of the next alumni generation, some members of which started as adventurous heroes fighting the junta and are ending as notorious parts of the political corruption… The doorbell rings. A bunch of kids of 18 and 17 enter each holding some loose pages Suzy:-Johnny fix the equipment yourself please, I have to make the introductions. The older generation first and foremost, even before the proverbial “ladies first” announcement. This is Alex. Next generation: Angela and Helen, also known as my mom. Skipping one, or possibly two, generations in the proverbial gap between them we go to the current generation featuring, ladies first, Angeliki, Konstandina, Stella in order alphabetical and, in order of appearance,Mihalis,Thomas,Panagiotis and Panos,in order of disappearance Elias the one and only absent, hopefully he’ll appear later, graces to our absent disk jockeys Sylvester and Dimitris, you’re not supposed to remember these names by heart if we run a test before the show, or rather its rehearsal, since, as well known in our days, the old saying going like “the medium is the message” was just paraphrasing the new saying going like“the rehearsal is the play”… She sits in front of the laptop and projector prepared by Johnhy and comments as follows: 2 Suzy:-Al Jazeera News begot Al Gypsy Tent news, of our national comedian Lakis, descendant of the grandpa of us all comedians, Aristophanes the great , the one and only, Al Gypsy Tent News begot Al SOS PagratiPark News, of the park across our school, a park whose outdoors theater plays gave birth to generations of comedians who were among the main sequel and the main innovators of political theater and still are pillars of Greek theater. Johnny joins her at the laptop and what shows up on the projection screen is the following slight alteration of the signal of Lakis’s show: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=al-AP0VJ1Nk In front of the screen comes Mihalis with some signs (e.g. being unshaved ) making reference to Lakis Mihalis:-Good evening ladies and gentlemen. Here we are again in AlPagratiNews, for one more time, to satirize and bring to you news unshaved, and to entertain and inform both you and ourselves.